It Happened One Night

by Lisa Dale

  “What for?”

  “For fertility,” Charlotte said, her smile beaming. She reached into the basket and pulled out a small clay medallion. There was a crudely drawn woman on the front, her breasts rendered as two half-circles with dots for nipples. Wiry serpents twisted in her hands. “It’s a Minoan snake goddess. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. I just thought…”

  Karin felt her eyes begin to tear up. Part of her thought that if Charlotte told her the key to getting pregnant was eating nothing but cupcakes and learning to walk on her hands, she would do it.

  “Thank you,” she said sincerely. She didn’t believe in Charlotte’s gifts, but she appreciated the sentiment behind them. She gave Charlotte a big, heartfelt hug. “That was really very sweet.”

  “This must be hard for you. Especially with Calvert coming back.”

  “I’m trying not to think about it so much,” Karin said.

  Charlotte put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s probably a good thing.” She glanced at Lana, her expression softening. “I have to go. Lana? I’ll see you?”

  “Right,” said Lana. “We’ll talk later on.”

  When Charlotte was gone Karin couldn’t help but feel a little off, as if she was being kept out of the loop somehow. On good days Gene called her “overly sensitive”; on bad days she was merely “paranoid.” But Karin believed that even if her suspicions were right only one time in ten, that was still a high enough percentage to make her trust her gut.

  She tried to hear Gene’s voice in her head, telling her to not be jealous, to not grip Lana so tightly to her heart. Every day Karin lived with the knowledge that Lana would leave Vermont if the opportunity ever arose—not that Lana ever mentioned it. Lana was like a kite that sailed in whatever direction the wind happened to be blowing; only Karin kept her from drifting away.

  “I drove past the Madison,” Karin said, hoping Lana would want to talk. “I can’t tell if he’s still staying there or not.”

  Lana didn’t answer. She was staring at a daisy that she rolled between her fingers. She was somewhere else.

  “Did you hear me?” Karin asked.

  “Right,” Lana said. “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of ironic that the man who made us so miserable with his endless procession of boarders is now nothing but a boarder himself?”

  “What goes around comes around.”

  “What do you think he wants?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Karin tried a few more times to get Lana to talk about Calvert, but Lana had clammed up. Her answers were always appropriate but never really intimate. Finally Karin said she was going to go sort the storeroom items, pleased to find a reason to sneak away. She threw herself fully into the task, and an hour later she looked up from the new canvas carryall bags to see Lana standing in the doorway to the storage area, her purse on her shoulder.

  “Leaving?”

  “I’m sorry. I have to go out.”

  “Oh.” Karin bit her tongue. She had a very, very strong sense that she was not allowed to ask where. “Can I help you do something?”

  Lana raised her arms over her head, pulling her straight blonde hair into a ponytail. “I just have to run some errands before everything closes.”

  “Okay. Well, good luck.”

  Lana nodded and left.

  Karin stood up from the box that she’d been leaning over, something ugly and suspicious roiling around in her guts. Of course Lana was going to run errands. So why didn’t she feel better knowing that?

  It wasn’t until she was back to the register at the front of the Barn that she realized: What if Lana wasn’t going to run errands? What if she was going to see someone?

  Like Calvert.

  Karin’s stomach tightened. She didn’t want to believe it. And yet there was no other logical explanation. Lana had been so distracted lately, so different from her usual, cheerful self. It was as if some part of her had been sectioned off, tucked away, and was even more unavailable than usual.

  The pieces fell together. Lana had been surprisingly insistent that she pick Calvert up from jail. And now she was whispering with Charlotte and leaving the Barn in the middle of the day. What if her loyalties were shifting? What if Karin—who had practically raised her sister after Ellen died—was being relegated to a lesser role now that Calvert was around?

  She pulled a bundle of beige bags out of a box and let them flop over her forearm.

  Maybe she was overreacting. That was probably it. And yet knowing that she was overreacting didn’t lessen her fear. Whether it was irrational or not, Karin couldn’t shake the idea that her sister was hiding something. She hoped that the truth would come out. Fast. Because until she saw an alternative, she wouldn’t be able to shake the suspicion that Calvert had come to Burlington to drive a wedge between her and her sister, though why he would want to, she couldn’t say.

  Along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, the sun was turning the atmosphere translucent, the stars emerging through the gossamer sky. Eli and Lana sat together among the pines on the high red rocks alongside the lake. Lana’s bare feet hung over the rock’s edge, her shoulders slumped prettily as she leaned back on her palms. Below them the waves sloshed against the cliff. The sound it made, sucking wetly on the rocks, was like a pulse—the irregular and wild heartbeat of night.

  He and Lana sat in rare silence. Usually Lana liked to talk. About anything and everything. The first time Eli had come up here with her, Lana had told him a story her mother had told her—a fable that explained the origin of Lake Champlain, which had been called Odepsék before the French settled the area. Another time she had talked about the historic shipwrecks that were hidden under the surface of the water, preserved perfectly by the motionless cold at the lake’s deep bottom. She’d always delighted in sharing the things that made her happy. But there were no charming stories from her tonight.

  He felt that after all these years of being her friend, he should know more precisely what was going on in her mind. A new distance lingered between them lately, a distance that he knew he’d caused. He’d been trying desperately to make his feelings for her recede back into whatever place they’d come from—Kelly had proven to be a good distraction from time to time—but the longing that he’d felt for her while he was away was still as strong now as it had been then. Even though he’d been home for weeks, he still had the odd feeling that he missed her somehow.

  He stole a look at her while she gazed out toward the dark water. She’d always been beautiful. Something about her high cheekbones gave her face an openness, an eagerness that made people interested in her even before she said hello. Children threw their arms around her knees just moments after meeting her and dogs rolled belly-up before her, begging to be petted. She might tell a total stranger the most intimate details of a trip to the dentist, or offer up a play-by-play description of a first date. But she rarely offered information that was more than superficial fact. Part of her outgoing, carpe diem attitude was protective: Her good manners and cheerful spirit were actually like a barrier that she’d drawn around herself.

  If he wanted answers, he had to tread lightly. To tell her, in not so many words, that he would listen if she wanted to talk. “I might go for a bike ride this weekend,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t know yet. I was hoping to do something a little different. I thought Ron might know a trail to recommend.”

  Lana said nothing.

  “Maybe you could ask him for me?” He held his breath. He hoped, in the silence that followed, that Lana would say, “Ron and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

  But instead she said, “I could ask him. If he stops by. But I never really know when that will be.” A moment passed. When Lana spoke again there was a hard, sharp edge to her voice. “Why do you think Karin wants a baby so badly?”

  Eli plucked up a bit of grass growing from a crack in the rock and then tossed it away. He could have ans
wered her question. Like Karin, he too worried he was running out of time. But instead he said, “You tell me.”

  She got to her feet and brushed off the folds of her blue cotton sundress. “A baby just… ties you down. Keeps you from doing things. Things you want to do.”

  “You don’t think Karin might be worried that if she doesn’t have a baby, Gene will leave her?”

  “He’d never leave her. And she’d never leave him. Neither one of them will ever leave each other, or the Barn, or Vermont, or anything else.”

  Eli watched her carefully, the muscle tightening beneath the delicate skin of her neck, the quickened rise and fall of her chest. The time for subtleties was over. He asked her, point-blank, “What’s on your mind?”

  She stood at the edge of the cliff and gazed into the darkness. During the day high school boys liked to moon the tourists on passing ferries. They also liked to jump and dive into the deep, cold waters below. Lana hung her toes off the rock, and Eli bit back a warning: Be careful, please.

  There was no way he could have been prepared for what happened next even if she’d spontaneously launched herself off the cliff.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  His heart dropped, hit the bottom of his chest like an anchor hitting sand. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because maybe it’s just… false symptoms. Did you take a test?”

  “Not yet. I’ll do it tomorrow after work… if you want to be there.”

  “Of course I’ll be there. It might all turn out to be nothing.”

  “Maybe.” She turned to face him, her eyes glinting madly in the moonlight. “But all signs point to yes.”

  “That’s why you’ve been sick.”

  She nodded.

  He got up and stood beside her. He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. “Does Ron know?”

  “How could he? I haven’t seen him,” Lana said, laughing with a kind of hysteria now. “I don’t even know Ron’s last name. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know anything about him. And I don’t think he’s going to look me up again anytime soon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He hasn’t been by in a while. That’s all.”

  Eli was not an angry man. But now he couldn’t remember a time in his life that he’d felt so furious. His fingernails dug crescents into his skin. “We’ll find him.”

  “He doesn’t want me to find him.”

  Neither do I, he thought. In the most secret corner of his mind, he worried not only for Lana, but for himself. What if she got married? He would lose her forever.

  “I can’t have a baby,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have… I had… plans.”

  “Costa Rica?”

  “I can’t live in a jungle if I’m changing diapers and breast-feeding,” she said.

  “Would you… I mean, would you consider…?”

  “Abortion?” She shook her head. “I don’t think that will work for me. I mean, I’ve been a vegetarian for half my life. I can’t even eat a hamburger without feeling like I committed a mortal sin.”

  Eli nodded.

  “Adoption is probably the answer.” She looked at him, her gaze seeking his, looking for confirmation of how she felt. “I want to do something with my life. To not be pinned down. I’m not cut out for motherhood, so I see no choice but adoption.”

  She still had her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers curled around her shoulders. He wanted nothing more than to unfold those crossed arms and embrace her and rock her and tell her wordlessly that he loved her, that she had him—no matter what.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “And yes, we did use a condom.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” Eli said.

  “You know I don’t take anything,” she continued, toying with a wooden bead of the bracelet on her thin wrist. “I’m not on the pill. Something just… went wrong.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “I don’t know. There must have been some kind of a tear.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and didn’t care if it looked a mess. He tried to ignore the anger, but it was there, a pinching, twisting pain. “I just don’t get it, Lana. Why were you with him?”

  “He’s an interesting person.”

  “They’re all interesting people. Every single time.”

  “Please,” she said, her voice pleading. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  He drew in a deep breath. The air was scented by the lake and something sweetly powdery on Lana’s skin. His heart was pounding and his mind reeled. He stepped toward her, to put a hand on her shoulder, to give what comfort he could. But the moment his hand was close enough that he could feel the warmth rising from her bare arm, she slipped away.

  She kicked off her sandals with a fury that sent them flying toward the trees.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” With her back turned toward him, she pulled her dress over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra; she rarely did. He saw the long bony curve of her backbone, the flexible strength of her shoulder blades, the trim column of her waist and hips.

  All at once he was struck by the strangeness of the evening, of his relationship with her. She could take off all her clothes and stand entirely naked before him, and he still felt as if there were a hundred layers between them, as if the air itself obscured them one from the other.

  She didn’t hesitate. She ran off the edge of the cliff into the dark, where she hung suspended for a brief moment like a slant of moonlight before she fell into the blackness, into the water far below.

  Eli sat down on a rock at the top of the cliff and waited. He’d swallowed his own desires so deeply and efficiently that he’d once believed them to be gone. And he’d suffered rejection—humiliation even—when he’d offered everything in his heart to her all those years ago, and she’d turned him down. He’d allowed himself to be relegated to the sidelines, and he told himself he could be content. But the plain fact was, he wasn’t.

  He heard Lana swimming in the water at the bottom of the cliffs. The rocks weren’t impossible to climb, but they were treacherous even during the day. He could picture her down there in the darkness, her skin pebbling in the cool air, her hair ropy and clumped about her shoulders like some Grecian naiad as she began to hunt among the rocks for the best route.

  He stood to peer over the edge, wondering if this time she would let him help her climb back up.

  July

  Queen Anne’s lace (also known as wild carrot): Some say the white flower was named because the purple center represents when Queen Anne pricked her finger while making lace. Some say that purple mole is the queen and the “lace” is her collar. Some say Queen Anne challenged her ladies to see who could make lace as lovely as the wild carrot; the queen won.

  Queen Anne’s lace has reportedly been used as an abortifacient.

  July 4

  Lana stood with her hands on the railing overlooking the lake from the vista of Battery Park. On the grass far behind her, Karin, Gene, Eli, and Kelly were sitting together on a picnic blanket. The twilight sky was a deep, wide azure, and the horizon had been tinged a yellow so soft a baby might grab a corner and use it like a blanket.

  She could remember the exact moment she first thought she didn’t want children. Karin was downstairs preparing a meal for the boarders, and Lana was sitting cross-legged in the locked attic, a consignment-store baby doll in her arms. The doll had a smooth bald head like a newborn and a soft cotton body that was stained yellow in spots. She had been cooing and cuddling the baby in a way that made love bubble up in her heart, when she heard her father come into the house. His footsteps were as heavy as an executioner’s. She paused a moment to listen. Then she returned to the doll on her lap, searching out that feeling of love once again.

  But it was too late. The feeling was gone. Unrecoverable. E
ventually, she put the doll back in a milk crate in the corner and didn’t take it out again.

  Of course back then she’d been only vaguely aware of the connection between the sound of her father’s return and the doll. And certainly the change hadn’t been instantaneous—probably, it had been building up for some time, and that moment in the attic was the last straw. But whatever the chronology was, from that moment on she knew she would never want a baby of her own. She wanted an adventure—to come and go as she pleased just like the boarders did. The stories all those men told her had fired her imagination. She had no patience for just sitting home.

  A handful of skinny, elementary-school kids ran past her, cackling and playing tag. Children were everywhere, flailing and wiggling and squealing. Parents pushed strollers, chased down wayward toddlers, and wiped dirt from their children’s hands. Some of the families looked happy, but some did not.

  Lana dropped her head in her hands.

  “What are you doing over here by yourself?” Karin asked.

  “Huh?” Lana looked up, startled. “Oh. I’m just enjoying the view.”

  “You’ve got to come back. No offense, but I can’t stand Eli’s new girlfriend. I mean, good for him for finally getting in the game. But she’s driving me nuts!”

  “Oh, come on. They’re not that bad,” Lana said, laughing and looking toward the couple. All evening long, Kelly had clung to Eli’s arm when they walked, kissed him at every possible opportunity, put her hand in his back pocket, and played with his hair. Lana turned in time to see Kelly sit back against Eli’s chest—and an emotion she couldn’t quite define made her chest go tight.

  At one point in the very beginning of her friendship with Eli, she’d been attracted to him. Even now she remembered the first moment she heard his voice, so warm and fervent, when he’d raised his hand in biology class to question something their teacher had said. She’d noticed him, not in a passing way but on a deep, meaningful level. And she realized she was drawn to him. They meant something to each other.