It Happened One Night

by Lisa Dale

  When she put down the phone, her heart was beating frantically as if squeezed into too tight a space. She’d planned her whole week around Eli’s homecoming. She even would have cut short her date last night had she known he was arriving early. She’d expected Eli would have done the same if their roles were reversed. But now she worried that something had changed, that maybe their friendship had weakened somehow in the months he’d been away.

  She put on her jacket, picked up her purse, and told herself to cheer up. She was being ridiculous, completely overreacting. She would see Eli sooner or later. And when she did, they would pick up where they had left off. Things would return to normal. She just had to give it time.

  June

  Lady’s slipper: This wild orchid requires unusual help to reproduce. The soil must be pH-perfect and must contain a unique microfungus that dissolves the seedlings’ hard outer cells. It can take up to four years for a lady’s slipper to fully recover from producing a single flower.

  June 5

  Someone in the science museum had turned the air conditioner to cryogenic. Eli was comfortable in his khakis and navy polo shirt, but his date, Kelly, had wrapped her little pink sweater so tight across her chest it stretched like shrink-wrap, and she was furiously rubbing her upper arms to stay warm. In every sense she had overdressed by being underdressed; her knees were exposed by her short black skirt, her small toes peeked out of high strappy heels, and her walnut-colored hair was twirled up in some kind of knot that exposed the goose bumps on her neck. Obviously she’d dressed for a different kind of date than a science museum—a date that didn’t include roomfuls of children with light-up sneakers and jelly-smeared grins. But when Eli had picked her up and told her what he’d planned, she said she’d be happy to go. Now it was clear she’d said it just to be nice.

  He tried to make the most of the afternoon by telling her interesting facts about the universe. The professor in him hoped to spark her interest.

  “And this,” he said, standing beside a colorful picture on the wall, “is an image from the Hubble. It’s called the Keyhole Nebula.” He looked at her, watching for her reaction as she looked at the swirls of red, blue, and green. Her face remained dull, as if she were a student sitting in an Intro to Astronomy class. He tried to connect with her another way. “What do you see?”

  She frowned.

  He tried again. “What does it look like to you?”

  “It looks like…” She leaned closer, squinting. “Like a nebula.”

  He laughed. He and Lana had played this game a hundred times, like kids picking shapes out of clouds. But he and Lana weren’t entirely normal, and so he gave Kelly a break. “Well, somebody saw this.” He ran his finger over the image. “God’s birdie.”

  “Why do they call it that?”

  “Because it’s a cloud shaped like God’s middle finger.”

  “If you say so,” she said.

  Eli rubbed nervously at the back of his neck. Picking up women had always been easy enough. He had a good face—not rugged, but friendly, handsome, with a high forehead and a good solid jaw. The day after Lana’s birthday—the most horrible night he’d had in years—he’d successfully scored Kelly’s number at a downtown bar. But three dates later, the usual problems had begun.

  For him, being romantic required too much showmanship—grandiose gestures, overwrought love poetry, power ballads, and heavy cologne. He preferred the “just be yourself” technique. But that was probably why he was single—and on the wrong side of Lana’s “let’s just be friends.”

  Kelly had wandered a few feet away from him, standing so that a six-foot-wide picture of Mars dwarfed her from head to toe. He caught up with her silently. She was rubbing her near-naked legs together, a pathetic attempt to keep warm.

  He sighed. “Look. Do you want to get out of here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that a lot.”

  Later, after a big steak dinner, they were standing at the back door of her apartment, far away from the stylish brick buildings of downtown. He could hear someone’s television blasting commercials from a nearby living room, but otherwise the street was quiet and dark.

  “I had a nice time,” Kelly said.

  The last two times they’d stood in this doorway, Eli had kissed her—not quite real kisses, but more of a courteous brushing of lips. Now the moment had come for him to either kiss her for real or put an end to it all.

  He stalled. “I’m sorry about the museum.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I want to do things you enjoy.”

  Oh, man. She was going to invite him upstairs. Any second now. He cleared his throat, a little nervous. He’d been out of practice with women for a long time. But that was exactly why he was doing this, he reminded himself. Why he was dating. He couldn’t expect it to feel perfectly comfortable right off the bat.

  Kelly smiled, her lips shiny and parted, waiting for him.

  Don’t think of her, he warned himself. Don’t.

  For a long time, he’d believed the best way to have a relationship with Lana was as her friend. She’d rejected the idea that they could be more, and gradually he’d come to agree. Friendship meant he could hold on to everything he loved most about Lana, but he could shirk the responsibilities and commitments of being a lover. For a long time, he was happy that way.

  At least, he thought he was.

  There had been no single moment that made him realize he loved her. Wanted her. Over the years he’d told himself that occasional “blips” of attraction to her didn’t mean he was actually attracted to her: Those moments were merely the natural and meaningless biological result of a man having a woman for a close friend. But over the last eight months, what had started as a whisper had become a four-part orchestra playing at full blast in his mind. And now he was here, on Kelly’s front stoop, trying to get that terrible music to stop.

  He looked down into Kelly’s face. And he kissed her. Not gently. He put his hands in her hair and tipped her head to the side and did what he had to until Lana faded into the background of his mind. When he pulled away, Kelly had whole galaxies swirling in her eyes.

  “Nobody’s ever kissed me like that.”

  He said nothing.

  “Do you want to come inside?”

  “You want me to?”

  “I want you to,” she said.

  He didn’t mean to hesitate. But she saw.

  “I’m not angling for something serious, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said, a smile on her lips. “No strings. Just… fun.”

  He stood still.

  She unzipped his jacket an inch. “Well?”

  So he didn’t have to answer, he kissed her again. He wrapped his arms around her waist. He dragged her up close to him and felt her large, soft breasts pillowing low on his chest. Finally his body responded. Like he’d hoped it would.

  She drew away. “Can I take that as a yes?”

  He’d pulled off her cardigan before the door slammed shut behind them.

  June 13

  “Oh my gosh. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Karin asked.

  It was evening, and she stood at the stove in Lana’s house, stirring a simple soup of vegetarian broth and orzo that she hoped Lana could keep down. Lana lived near the south end of Burlington, where she rented a small Cape Cod–style house with white siding and navy trim. Everything about the house was small—the rooms, the windows, the yard, and the amount of furniture. But it was perfect for Lana since she didn’t want a family of her own.

  When Lana didn’t answer, Karin turned around. Her sister was sitting with the flat of her cheek squished hard against the wooden tabletop. Her skin was ashen and dull. “Well?”

  “I don’t think I’m pregnant.” She sighed.

  “Are you sure?” Karin asked. She’d been teasing before. But the question that had been a joke just moments ago suddenly took on more serious possibilities. “You use condoms or something, right?”

  “Why are we
even talking about this?” Lana asked, lifting her head. “Yes, we used a condom. But even if we didn’t, I got my period on… the day the mulch came. That was, like, three weeks ago or something.”

  Karin snickered. “You mean you got it after your visit with Ron.”

  “I just have some kind of stomach thing,” she said, and she put her head back down. “Plus I didn’t sleep that great.”

  Karin nodded. She didn’t really think her sister was pregnant. The odds were far against it. No one knew that better than Karin. Under good conditions a couple had only a 25 percent chance of a successful pregnancy, give or take. Add in real-life factors like stress and timing, and the odds plummeted from there.

  She stirred the soup one last time, then opened the old wooden cabinet where Lana kept the bowls. She supposed she was a little preoccupied with pregnancy these days. She and Gene had had sex twice in the last forty-eight hours. She would have slept with him tonight as well, but he’d left on business. Her house—so gloomy and quiet—was unbearable without him.

  She ladled the soup out of the pot; the broth was so weak she could see the daisies painted on the bottom of the bowl. She crossed the little kitchen and set the bowl on the table with a clunk.

  “I can’t eat,” Lana said.

  “Try.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  They shared a smile. Karin made herself a bowl of soup and sat down. “So tell me. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “I got a letter. Yesterday.”

  Karin cringed at the sound of her sister’s voice. Lana stood, walked to her junk drawer, then dropped a yellowed and beat-up greeting card on the table when she sat. The front showed a picture of a watercolor lily; the background was striated purple and orange smears. Karin opened the cover.

  Dear Lana. Happy Birthday. From Cal.

  Karin frowned. With one finger, she slid the card as far away from her as the table edge allowed. Calvert. She and Lana hadn’t seen their father since Lana had graduated from high school. As soon as she could manage, Karin had packed up with her baby sister and returned to their home state of Vermont—away from their father’s Wisconsin boardinghouse. From that day to this, Karin had never looked back. And she’d assumed Calvert hadn’t either. Until now.

  “He’s a little late,” Karin said.

  Lana shrugged—a gesture Karin was intimately familiar with, Lana’s left shoulder always rising a touch higher than the right. “He must have forgotten the real date.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Karin said.

  Lana shrugged again.

  Karin searched her brain for an explanation, for the reason that Calvert would suddenly want to get in touch with them after so many years. “Maybe he’s dying.”

  “You think?”

  “If he was, would it matter?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not,” Lana said.

  Karin tapped a fingernail against the table. “It could just be that he wants money.”

  “Or maybe he was thinking of us.”

  “After he ruined our lives?”

  Lana shook her head. “He didn’t ruin our lives.”

  “He killed Mom!”

  “Not really.”

  “Son of a—Lana! How can you defend him?” Karin said, and only after the words had flown from her mouth did she realize that she’d stood up, was looming over her wan-faced sister, and was talking a few decibels too high.

  Long ago she used to have a temper. Anger issues, her high school teachers had said. Moving away from Calvert had helped her get her fury under control—that and an excellent therapist. Years had passed since she’d had the kind of flare-up that threatened to get the best of her now. She walked to the window, taking long, deep breaths. “Sorry. I’m sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. But I wasn’t defending him,” Lana said.

  Karin nodded, but she wasn’t so sure. While Karin had a tendency to fly off the handle, Lana bottled things up inside. In middle school she’d once been brutally bullied by a handful of mean girls. They sneered at her secondhand clothes, “accidentally” spilled milk on her in the cafeteria, aimed for her during dodgeball, and more than once made her leave class in tears.

  After the girls finally moved on to torment someone else, Lana maintained that the girls were actually good, kind human beings deep down. Some people thought Lana said those kinds of things because she was angelic. But Karin knew better. Kindness was Lana’s way of rearranging reality so it became more bearable. It was always sunny in Lana-land.

  Karin crossed the room, plucked the card from the table, and threw it in the garbage can.

  “You should have recycled,” Lana said.

  Karin ignored her. “Listen. I don’t want you to get upset about this. If for some reason we hear from him again, I’ll take care of it. For now let’s just focus on getting some food in you, okay?”

  Lana frowned into her bowl while Karin sat back down. “It’s not that.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Lana stirred her soup but didn’t eat or speak. She’d always been reluctant about opening up to Karin. Karin suspected the root of her silence went back to their childhood, when Karin was more like a mother than a sister in Calvert’s house. They’d hadn’t quite figured out how to find equal footing yet. But that didn’t stop Karin from trying.

  “Is it Ron? Did you meet someone else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did he?”

  Again Lana shook her head.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “I think I need to go lie down,” Lana said.

  Karin’s heart sank. She didn’t want to go home. Her dark living room, the upstairs bedrooms that were meant for children but instead stood full of storage bins and unused exercise equipment—she couldn’t bear it.

  “Fine.” She pushed out her chair and stood.

  “Karin, wait. That’s not what I mean. You don’t have to leave.”

  “Look. I get it. It’s fine.”

  “Just… please. Calm down for a second. If you want to hang out here, that’s okay. I’m just really tired. I’ve never felt so tired. I should probably sleep.”

  Karin took a deep breath and counted to ten. She was angry. And as usual, Lana was the closest target in sight. She hadn’t meant to be so curt. When she spoke, her voice was back under control. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I mean, you should sleep.”

  “I don’t mind if you hang out.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well. Thank you for making dinner.”

  “Don’t thank me. Just finish it.”

  “I will.”

  “And if you start to feel feverish, give me a call.”

  “Okay. But I’m sure I’m fine.”

  Karin picked up her purse from the counter and looked around. There was nothing more to do. “Good night,” she said. Then she grabbed her jacket, went outside to her minivan, and drove out of the city, heading as slowly as she could toward home.

  Later, Lana woke from a nightmare for the second night in a row. She was lost in a fun house, crooked windows, slanty floors, and doors everywhere. So many doors. People rushed around her—men coming and going, their pupils dilated, their smiles as wide and floppy as clowns’ mouths. When she woke she was sweating and afraid and smothered by her bedroom walls. She had to get out.

  In her favorite pajamas—boxers and an old T-shirt of Eli’s worn to near translucence—she padded barefoot downstairs, opened the screen door, and sat on the warm concrete of the front stoop. She dropped her house phone beside her. The neighbors’ windows were dark. Cars were lined up front to back all along the curbs. The air smelled like asphalt and earth.

  She ran her fingers through her hair and covered her face with her hands. It had been years since the dream had come back to her, so many years that she’d thought whatever cells in her brain had once stored the information must have died off and taken the memories with them. But that wasn’t the case.

  Unlike Karin—who could r
emember every detail of their years with Calvert—Lana remembered things in stops and starts. She suspected the fragments were better left scattered to the four corners than brought together. The pieces, she could handle. The whole, she could not.

  She fingered a bit of chicory growing up around the front walk; its stalk was tough and strong, its short-lived petals cool against her skin. She tried to focus on the positive. She supposed if there was one thing to thank her father for, it was her love of flowers.

  Calvert had made money by opening up his creaky old Victorian to cash-only boarders, mostly men. Lana never knew who would be standing behind the door of any given room. The house seemed to breathe transients: truckers, construction workers, addicts, recovering addicts, and the endless parade of girlfriends—women who smoked, drank, and swore with the same ribald fervor as the men. Calvert had made it clear from the get-go that his daughters weren’t to ask too many questions. They were to lie low, to leave him and his tenants alone.

  He’d never given them anything beautiful or indulgent, never owned anything that was brand-new. But once she’d seen him pause at the edge of the yard in front of a bright orange bush to pick a flower. And when he’d passed her where she sat on the front step, he’d dropped the flower beside her and said, “Here.”

  It wasn’t poetry. But how Lana’s heart leaped to see the jewelweed in her palm, its petals folded like the most complicated and elegant origami. And what breathlessness, to discover that the spatterings of purple at the edge of the lawn were actually the most heartbreakingly delicate heal-all, each pinprick of a flower like a universe of its own.

  And now even as an adult who lived every day among flowers, she still felt humbled to think that a wildflower could coax the most iridescent purples or fierce magentas from the most inhospitable soils. She wanted her own life to be like that, to grow something worthy from hardship and strife.

  Somewhere a mockingbird was singing in the darkness. The phone dangled heavy in her hand. She stood and sank her bare toes into the damp grass of the lawn, and above, the sky was peppered with stars.

  Calling Eli was practically instinctive. He calmed her. He made things right. She put the phone to her ear and listened to the static breath between rings.