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Juno's Daughters

Page 18

by Lise Saffran


  One eye appeared out from under the blanket. “Lilly gave me that,” said a muffled voice.

  “Here.” Jenny dangled it over the bed.

  “Put it on the dresser.” Frankie pulled the blanket back over her head.

  Jenny felt an unaccountable prick of loss as the charm left her fingers. “I’ll be back in one hour.”

  There was no response from the bed.

  It was a cold morning, it was a weekday, and a good fraction of the island’s residents were hungover from the party the night before. As a result, there were just a few people assembled on the dock to see the actors off. Mary Ann was snug in a homemade patchwork denim coat with a sheepskin lining. Chad had dragged himself out of bed, knit cap, long underwear, and all, to see off a woman he was sure would have been the love of his life had she only chosen to give up her acting career and stay with him in his cabin. Dale and Peg were there, of course, unbrushed, unwashed, and looking as if they had both aged ten years overnight.

  “Morning,” said Jenny, and she gave Peg a quick kiss on the cheek. “Great party. You haven’t seen Lil, have you?”

  “Not since last night,” said Dale.

  Peg pulled her hair into a wiry bun and secured it with a pencil. “She’ll turn up,” she said. “If I know Lilly.”

  The actors stood around Peg in a half circle and several nodded their heads in agreement. By now they all knew Lilly.

  “We’ll pick the next play by February,” said Peg. “And hold auditions in March.”

  “I’ll be ready,” said Trinculo.

  “If I don’t have a part in a series by then,” said Caliban, “I may go back to teaching high school. Maybe I could get a job up here.”

  Peg laid her hand on his shoulder. “Well, Felix. That would certainly be a loss to the stage. You were wonderful in our show.”

  Felix. Jenny looked around at the others, standing with their backpacks and suitcases at their feet and thought: Lucy, Corbin, Lawrence. She turned to the man beside her and said softly, “Andre.”

  Andre, once Trinculo, touched her cheek. “At your service.”

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, with a predictably good imitation of Schwarzenegger.

  “Well, I’ll be here.”

  The captain blasted the horn on the ferry, signaling that it was almost time to go.

  Lawrence, formerly Ariel, lifted the handle of his wheeled suitcase and turned his body lightly toward the boat. Jenny stepped forward to wrap her arms around him.

  Though there had been plenty of hugging, and more, in the last few weeks, she had never embraced Ariel before, and he looked almost embarrassed as she did so. Embarrassed but pleased, too.

  He was a good six inches taller than she was and had to bend to lay his head on her shoulder. “You take care of my girl,” he said.

  “She would have come. But she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I get it, Jen. Believe me. You don’t need to explain.”

  “Okay. Be well.”

  He turned to give a quick parade wave to all of them before he boarded the boat.

  Lucy, once Miranda, kissed Jenny on the cheek. “She won’t stay mad,” said the younger woman, and they both knew she meant Lilly. “I promise.”

  Jenny hugged her tight. “Thanks, Lucy. I hope you’re right.”

  One by one the others shouldered their packs or picked up the handles of their suitcases and wheeled them toward the boat. Seagulls circled overhead, looking for bits of waffle cone, sandwich crusts, or french fries dropped on the outside dining deck of the Fish Shack.

  Andre hung back at Jenny’s side. When his companions had all gone, he bent his head to give her a self-conscious kiss on the lips. Even now that Lilly knew about them, they had been hesitant about public displays of affection (the private ones were a different story).

  Jenny closed her eyes as his lips touched hers and then, when she opened them, saw that he had already started across the wooden walkway. He was wearing the leather jacket he had worn the night they’d gone to the Colors Ceremony at Roche Harbor. His hair brushed his collar and his jeans came all the way down over his city boots. From where she was standing she could not even see a sliver of his skin, just his broad back growing smaller.

  Jenny had been mentally preparing herself for this moment for days. She had been reminding herself that it would be hard on both Frankie and Lilly and that she would need to be attentive to them. What she had not anticipated was how her heart would constrict to the size of a walnut as she watched Andre go. Mary Ann, who was standing next to her, had tucked her arm through Jenny’s. Before Andre reached the open mouth of the ferry, Jenny broke away from her friend and ran. She reached him just as the ferry workers were starting to give the all clear for the vehicles to board. They stood near where the bicycles were bungeed to the railing and clung to each other like teenagers.

  Jenny was panting from the sprint. “Take me with you.”

  Andre tilted her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Really? Do you want to come?”

  The boat would soon push off from the slip and Jenny, hearing the hope in Andre’s voice, came quickly to her senses.

  “I wish I could,” she said. “But I can’t.”

  Andre gave her the long, sad look of a kicked puppy. “Just what I thought.”

  She kissed him again. “Come back soon.”

  Just before stepping onto land, Jenny turned to look and saw him standing there still, his suitcase at his feet.

  “Well, well,” said Dale, as Jenny joined the islanders on the pier. “I believe that’s the first time I’ve seen Jennifer Alexander chase after anyone.”

  “Except for Lilly,” added Peg.

  Jenny shot her a wry glance. “Well, I’ve certainly done a whole lot of that.” She waved to her friends and gave the ferry one last, lingering look before she climbed into her truck and started the engine.

  The road was dense with fog and Jenny slowed to let a covey of California quail cross in front of her. Mist clung to the trees alongside the road, and each solitary house she passed, some with hay in round bales dotting a nearby pasture, seemed to exist on its own shrouded island. When she reached the break in the trees and the reflectors that marked their road, she suddenly decided not to turn. Frankie was sleeping. She could go out to San Juan County Park, just for a few moments, and look at the sea. A few children from the campground were playing on the beach in spite of the cold. She perched on the picnic table and watched them climb over the lichen-covered rocks for a while before lifting her eyes to the horizon. The water was as calm as a fishbowl. In the mist beyond, Vancouver Island seemed to waver and then appear as if it had been created that morning for her alone.

  Jenny returned to find Frankie sitting on Lilly’s bed.

  “Feeling better?” She brushed the top of her daughter’s head with her palm and then, catching the expression on Frankie’s face asked, “Is your sister around?”

  “She took her stuff.”

  “Which stuff?”

  Frankie’s gaze traveled to the spot in the corner of the room where Lilly’s backpack had stood for more than a week. Jenny’s followed. The spot was empty. Jenny cast her eyes over the piles of clothes on the floor and the food wrappers on the night table. Lilly’s room always looked like she had packed and departed in a hurry. “Did she leave a note?”

  Frankie nodded and lifted her favorite article of Lilly’s clothing, a beaded peasant blouse, from her lap. “She gave me this.”

  Jenny took the blouse, and saw the note attached to it. Tell Mom not to worry cause I have bus fare. You can have this shirt as a going away present. How Lilly, she thought then. Generous, but within limits. Even as she grieved, the implicit message would not be lost on Frankie, but keep your paws off the rest of my stuff.

  Jenny was shaking, she realized, as she dialed Lilly’s number. Furious. How like her also to leave before the actors did. To stage a mysterious departure of her own. Ho
w like her in both its drama and its thoughtlessness. Jenny’s message was brief and to the point. Call me now.

  The next number she dialed was Sue’s. Jenny’s sister had not heard from Lilly yet that morning, which didn’t mean she hadn’t heard plenty nonetheless.

  “So who is this new guy, Jenny?” she asked. “The one that Lilly liked and that you got instead? Is he going to last, do you think?”

  “I didn’t get him, Sue. We’re in a relationship.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t, Sue. Not really,” Jenny said, walking farther away from Frankie’s door. “It’s not important, anyway. What matters is that Lilly is on her way. I need her to call me as soon as you hear from her.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “It’s important to Lilly, clearly. And what about Frankie? How is she with all this?”

  All what? Jenny wanted to ask. The events of the last twenty-four hours or my whole, entire life? Our lives?

  “Frankie is fine,” said Jenny, but even as she said so she found her eyes searching anxiously for Frankie’s form in the next room. She wished that she were more confident that it was true.

  Sue said, “What if Lilly doesn’t want to talk to you? Do you want me to phone and tell you that she’s arrived?”

  “Thank you, yes. That would be nice of you.” Why, oh why, she wondered, did she always have to sound like Lilly herself when she talked to her sister?

  “Okaaay. Well, talk to you soon.”

  Jenny stood for a moment longer with the phone in her hand, willing it to ring or for a text to scroll across the screen. She could hear Frankie shuffling around Lilly’s room, conducting an inventory of all the things that were missing. She could hear her neighbor mowing a path through the tall yellow grass with a bush hog. It was eleven on an otherwise perfectly ordinary day in August and she was scheduled to work at noon. She thought she ought to make Frankie something to eat before she left for the store. She cradled the phone in her hand like a polished stone. Then she dialed a number she knew by heart but did not call nearly as frequently as she ought to.

  “Mom?”

  “Jennifer!” Her mother set the phone down. “Arthur! It’s Jennifer on the phone.” She spoke back into the receiver. “Is something wrong?”

  Jenny flinched. “No. Everything’s fine.” Less than ten words had been spoken and she was already feeling guilty and defensive. “You know, I’m actually dating someone for a change. A very nice man.” How strange, she thought, that she still wanted their approval. Even—no, especially—now.

  “That’s wonderful, dear. What does he do?”

  “I’m on, Jennifer. Your father’s on the phone.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “What does who do?” asked her father. “Who are we talking about?”

  “Jenny’s new boyfriend. He is new, isn’t he? Or have you been seeing him for a while now?”

  Jenny considered the best way to describe Andre to her parents. It struck her that she had allowed so many gaps to develop in their understanding of her life that it would require more explanation than she had energy. Back when she was a girl living at home, they might have failed to grasp what things meant to her, her friends, the music that she liked, how she did in school, but at least they knew something about them. They had known the contours of her life if not the center. The very things, she realized, that she knew about Lilly now. For Jenny and her parents the balance had shifted when she moved away. And so it would for her and her daughter. Once Lilly was gone, the only details Jenny would know about her life would be the ones she chose to share.

  “He was out here for the summer. He lives in New York.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” She could hear her mother’s enthusiasm draining away.

  “It’s okay. Really. We plan to visit each other.”

  Her father cleared his throat. “Can you afford that?”

  “Sure. Oh, hey, there was one thing I did want to mention.” She had so longed to hear her mother’s voice, but now all she wanted to do was get off the phone. “Lilly is on her way down to Sue’s on the Greyhound. She might call, you know, if she gets stuck.”

  Her father said, “The Greyhound?”

  “She can always call us,” said her mother. “And, you know, so can you.”

  “I do know,” said Jenny. She was about to hang up.

  “So how’s my little Fritzie girl?” said her dad. “Is she there? Can we talk to her?”

  Jenny carried the phone toward Lilly’s room. “Oh, yes. It might cheer her up.”

  “She needs cheering up?” asked both her parents at once.

  Jenny backpedaled fast. “It’s always a bit sad when actors that were here for the Shakespeare play leave. That’s all. No biggie.”

  Business was brisk that afternoon and in spite of how distracted she was, Jenny managed to sell a dozen glass figurines to a Canadian couple on their honeymoon. Even as she rang up their purchase, her mind was traveling south on Highway 5, past Shasta and Redding and Weed, following the route of a particular Greyhound bus. She could almost feel the road under the tires. Jenny was a forty-two-year-old mother of two, but somewhere deep inside she was still the girl who had left home to marry a rock and roll musician. When a message from Lilly finally scrolled across her phone, Jenny found she understood both its contours and its melancholy center. Goin2CA. Jenny read the message and then, in her mind, she heard the familiar guitar chords that followed. Just as Lilly had known she would. She flipped the phone shut and wiped her eyes. “Going to California,” she sang out loud to herself, “with an aching in my heart.”

  She wandered through the store for the rest of the afternoon without a clear purpose, unable to settle on dusting or inventory or any of the million other things she needed to do. She remembered the burst of adrenaline that sent her charging toward the boat after Andre and realized that that was nothing next to what she was feeling now. She tried to ignore the urgent voice that whispered in her ear, go, go, go. Go get her back. Peg was right; she had been chasing after Lilly for years. Was she just supposed to stop now? Could she? What an old liar that Prospero was, she thought as she traded her dust rag for a handful of peppermints. She unwrapped the first and popped it in her mouth. Prospero could have just stepped off-stage at the first scene and let Miranda and Ferdinand be together if he’d wanted to. It could have been a very short play. But he didn’t. He made up this big long story about how the obstacles he placed in their path would make them appreciate each other more, yada yada yada. She bit down hard and the candy split in half with a satisfying crack. She knew the truth, though. He just didn’t want to admit to himself that letting your daughter go, even when the time was right, was too damn hard.

  CHAPTER 15

  For I Have Lost My Daughter

  Two weeks later, Lilly was a full-blown California girl and Frankie was a diligent, if glum, part-time employee at the antique store. Jenny lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the early evening glare. It was hard to believe that the days were slowly growing shorter. In early August the sun still didn’t set until after eight p.m.

  She said to Mary Ann, “I tried to arrange for her to spend an afternoon with Megan Bermann—you know Erica has a daughter that’s in Frankie’s grade—and she practically begged me not to call. I offered her ballet lessons and she asked me if she could have the money instead.”

  Mary Ann looked at Jenny with interest. “I think she’s probably earned, what? A hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars by now. What’s she saving for?”

  “She says she’s saving to go visit her sister.”

  Jenny tucked her arm through Mary Ann’s. Their old routine had kicked in now that the play days were behind them: They would walk downtown for quick glass of wine together before splitting up to go their separate ways. The only difference was that now they visited the wine bar Swirl instead of their old haunt on Second Street and they had a whole new collection of memories to flip through like snapshots when
they got there.

  “She says?”

  “No. I’m sure that’s what it is. She wants to go see Lilly.” They found a table near the window and sat down. Jenny glanced through the glass and saw David walking across the street from somewhere—China Pearl probably, because he liked their fried rice—toward his car. She waved, but he had his head down and didn’t see her. She turned back to Mary Ann. “She asked me to lend her a hundred dollars.”

  “Did you?”

  Jenny shook her head. The smile that played on her lips was a complicated mix of embarrassment, regret, and selfdeprecation. “Money’s a little tight right now. I sent Lilly some, via Sue. Sue wanted to turn it down, but I told her the decision was Lilly’s.”

  Mary Ann tapped her fingernails on the menu. Neither woman needed to open it anymore; they had its contents memorized. “Let me guess. Lilly kept it.”

  Jenny’s smile was genuine this time. “Bingo.”

  “I could lend you some.”

  “No, Mary Ann. Thank you, but no.” She toyed with the salt and pepper shakers. “I’m not sure I want her to go down to visit Lilly now, anyway. Those Bay Area kids can be a little wild.”

  “Lend? What am I talking about? I would give it to you.”

  Jenny reached across the table to place her hand on the back of her friend’s. “I know you would.”

  The waitress paused next to them on her way to deliver an order. She was carrying an armful of plates loaded down with black bean quesadillas, bruschetta, and chicken satay. “A bottle of Chardonnay?”

  Mary Ann looked at Jenny for confirmation. “A whole bottle?”

  “No. Just a glass. I have to get home to Frankie.”

  Jenny paused on her front step to pinch some sagging blooms off the pansies and impatiens. It would be nine o’clock in New York and she wondered idly what Trinculo was up to. They had talked a few days before and so she knew he was reading for a part in a play about a man in a feud with his two brothers. It was a serious show, and he thought it would provide a good counterbalance to the comic roles he usually played. She wondered if he’d heard yet. She’d left a message on his voice mail that morning, but so far he hadn’t returned her call. He was bound to be busy. Still, she didn’t plan to call him again unless he called first.

 

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