Jennifer's Triad

by Laura Anne Turner

“Mmmmm, that’s good,” I say, taking a sip of coffee.

  Emilia smiles. “Yes, it certainly is. It’s a special blend.” Then she adds, carefully casual, “Stephen gave it to me.”

  My heart sinks. “Stephen? Like Stephen, the drummer in Martin’s new band?”

  Emilia regards me, her features perfectly composed. “Yes, that Stephen.” She sips her own coffee. “He’s a good drummer, maybe not quite as good as Robin, but he’s a lot nicer than Robin.”

  I set my coffee aside as my stomach clenches unpleasantly. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I don’t like the sudden turn this conversation has taken. I don’t like it at all! But I’m not going to lose my temper. After taking another moment trying to calm myself, I open my eyes again. Emilia’s still sipping her coffee. She has a bland expression on her face that doesn’t give anything away.

  “Oh?” I need all my willpower to keep my hands from shaking. “How nice is he, Emilia?” I ask, trying to keep my voice and expression neutral, like Emilia’s so good at doing, but I know without having to look at myself in the mirror that I’m failing utterly.

  A sly smile appears on Emilia’s pretty face. “Oh, like I said, he’s a nice guy, and I like him.”

  I don’t know why, but her simple statement infuriates me. She really knows how to push my buttons, and I don’t know why she’s doing it! All I know is that I’d like to wipe that smug smile from her face.

  “Yeah, I could see how much you like him at the mall when you showed up for our gig,” I say my voice shaking. I can just barely manage to keep myself from screaming at her.

  “It was a really nice performance by the way,” Emilia says, still smiling calmly. She takes another sip of her ‘special blend’, eyeing me over the rim of her mug. “We all liked your acoustic set quite a bit.”

  I’ve had all I can take. I fling the comforter aside, and abruptly push myself out of bed. I glance back at Emilia and growl at her. “Oh did you? I’m sure you and your new boyfriend had a nice talk about it here in your bed after he finished fucking you!”

  Emilia’s absolutely shocked, horrified, really. I don’t know what kind of reaction she thought she was going to get from me when she started fucking with my mind, but whatever she was expecting, this wasn’t it. And I wasn’t expecting my reaction either.

  Unnerved she sits up and tries to grab my hand, but I back away from her, and hurriedly start gathering my clothes from the floor where I threw them last night.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say coldly.

  “But Jenny, where are you going? And why are you in such a sudden hurry?” Emilia replies, sounding panicky.

  I put my panties on, and then I pull on my jeans. “First, we have a gig tonight. But more important I need to pack a few of my things. I’m moving out. I’m moving in with ‘The Coldhearts’. I’m going to live at their farmhouse with them.” I blurt all of this out without looking at Emilia. I know it’s going to hurt her, and I hate myself for doing it, but I can’t stop myself either.

  I hear Emilia gasp, and I look up. I’ve never seen her so pale. “You’re…what? You can’t be serious.” Wild-eyed she shakes her head, frantically. “Please tell me this is some kind of really, really bad joke!”

  The look on my face tells her that it’s not a joke, and she covers her face with the palms of her hands. Her shoulders shake as she starts to sob. Suddenly she looks up. She’s enraged, too.

  “You’re moving in with them? You mean you’re moving in with her, right?” She starts shrieking and sobbing. “How can you be so cruel to me, Jennifer? How can you treat me like this? I can’t even begin to cope with this!” Her whole body trembles, completely overwhelmed emotionally. “It’s not fair! Last night you said you loved me, and I believed you, and now you’re leaving me to move in with another girl?” She stares at me blankly and shudders. “I shouldn’t have believed anything you said.”

  I cringe. I can’t argue with anything she’s said. I know I’ve made a horrible mess of things, and seeing her pain breaks my heart. But there’s only one thought in my mind, I need to get out of this room. I can’t handle this situation I’ve caused at all. Somehow I manage to finish dressing. I look back at her before I leave the apartment. Emilia looks utterly drained. She’s trembling, and her beautiful blue eyes have lost their shine.

  “I can’t understand you any more, Jennifer. I don’t know who you are and what you want,” she says.

  I stand looking at her with my shoulders slumped. My heart is aching, and my stomach clenches, making me want to throw up, while Emilia goes on in a hoarse whisper. “Nobody’s ever treated me the way you have, Jennifer. Robin was an asshole, but you? You’re the woman I love, Jennifer, the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with!”

  Then she seems to grow stronger, her voice growing cold, and there’s steel in her eyes. “I don’t think you even understand what you’re doing anymore, Jennifer!” She’s using my name, making it sound like a curse, and as always it makes me shudder. “I think you’re a child. I think you need to go. I think you need to grow up.”

  My eyes are brimming with tears, and I wipe them away with the sleeve of my sweater. I take one last look at her before I go. Tears are running down her own cheeks again. I know that I’m the cause of all her pain, and all her anger and sorrow. It makes me feel like a monster. All I can say to her is, in a faint voice, “I’m sorry, Emilia, I’m so, so sorry.”

  She frowns, and says bitterly, “Just go, Jennifer Meier, and leave me in peace for good.”

  All I can do is to turn around and let myself out, feeling utterly numb.

  +++

  “Well, that certainly didn’t go well,” Ina says with a heavy sigh, stating the obvious. She closes her eyes and becomes lost in her own thoughts. What’s she thinking of? Did she have horrible scenes of her own with Caro?

  After my awful scene with Emilia I took the next bus and went straight to ‘The Coldhearts’ farmhouse. Tears streamed down my face leaving black rivulets of eye shadow on my cheeks. Before anything else I sat down in the living room with my bandmates, telling them all about what happened the night before and this morning. I didn’t spare myself anything. They listened silently; even Bette.

  After Ina falls silent, Nellie’s the next one to break the silence. “You know, Jenny, I feel sorry for Emilia, I really do.”

  Her words make me cringe. What does Nellie think of me now? Her dark eyes examine me thoughtfully, her features neutral. “You weren’t fair to her, Jenny. She slept with you last night, so you know she still wants to be with you.” She keeps her tone neutral, too, which makes me increasingly anxious. “And since you’re still sleeping with me, you didn’t have to fly into a jealous rage when she mentioned that drummer she may or may not be seeing.”

  I bite my bottom lip as Nellie shakes her head again. “This is a side of you I haven’t seen before, Jenny. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have such a quick temper, or that you were capable of that kind of jealousy.” She becomes pensive, and doesn’t say anything more. What is she thinking about me now? Will Nellie still want me?

  Bette suddenly rises from the sofa where she’s been sitting while listening to everything that’s been said. She comes and stands right in front of me, folding her arms, and locks eyes with me. “Can I have a quick word with you, Jennifer?” She adds quietly, “Just you and me?”

  I blink at her in shock, and my heart sinks. She’s never called me ‘Jennifer’ before. My God what does that mean? The absolute seriousness of how Bette looks at me doesn’t leave me any choice, but to have the talk with her that she wants to have.

  I nod, and getting up off the sofa, my eyes briefly meet Nellie’s. She nods her head, and gives me a tight little smile. She reaches over to me and touches my arm gently. I’m too anxious to be reassured by her smile or her gesture.

  I follow Bette down the long hallway, out into the front yard, where Bette’s brother and his friends are busy putting our equipment into the band truck
for tonight’s show.

  “C’mon, Jenny,” Bette says, and I trudge behind her around the house to the backyard. Behind the farmhouse is an old orchard with cherry trees that are just starting to blossom. Spring is here, truly, and the weather has become warmer and milder. Bette sits down on an old wooden bench, lighting a cigarette. I sit down on the bench next to her, waiting for her to say something. I take a deep breath to try to calm myself, but it doesn’t work. My stomach is still in knots, and my heart keeps pounding. Is she going to fire me? ‘The Coldhearts’ are the closest thing I’ve had to a family in such a long time. I can’t lose what I have with them. I know it would kill me.

  Bette takes a deep pull on her cigarette, blowing out the smoke and flicking the ash aside. She turns to me and puts her free hand on my knee. She smiles at me tenderly.

  “Jenny,” she says, “I want you to know that we all love you. We love you with all our hearts. As far as I’m concerned you’re family to us. Okay?”

  I’m still too afraid to relax. All I can do is reply in a low voice, “It’s…really good to hear you say that, Bette.”

  She smiles again, and I can see there’s tenderness in her eyes, too. “It’s the truth, Baby Doll, and we’ll have your back, whatever happens.” Bette takes another draught from her cigarette, and exhales again. “Of course we’re not just a family, we’re also a band.” She gives me another serious look before she goes on. “And I’m the band’s leader, because I’m the oldest, and for some other reasons. Think of me as the band’s boss lady, or the family’s matriarch, or whatever.”

  Our gazes lock again, and I nod to acknowledge what she’ said, without knowing where she’s going with this.

  “Now, in a band, just like in a family everything isn’t always sweetness and light.”

  Bette makes me think of my own family, and I can’t help making a sour face, before I nod my understanding.

  “The thing is, when there’s trouble between members of a band, or when one of the members of the band doesn’t have her head in the right place, it makes it harder for the band to play together, and to give the best performance they can.”

  Bette pauses and watches me attentively. I bite my lip and nod again. I suspect I’m fidgeting, too, but I can’t be sure, because I’m too focused on Bette, and what she’s saying to me. She gives me a small smile, and there’s a sudden glint in her eyes, and also a new intensity in her voice.

  “You know that the band’s a really important part of our lives, Jenny?”

  Of course I do! Just as it’s a really important part of my life. Again, Bette can tell what I’m thinking, and she grins.

  “We’re really ambitious, and we hope that maybe one day, we’ll be able to make a living from our music alone, from doing what we love most.” Her voice softens, and she gazes into my eyes again, looking serious. “Do you understand that, Jenny?”

  I understand enough of what Bette’s said, and I blurt out, “Of course I understand that, Bette. ‘The Coldhearts’ have become an incredibly important part of my life, too. The past few months have everything I could have hoped for, everything I could have dreamed of, playing with you, writing songs for you, being with you…” I stop, not sure of how to say what I want to say, but Bette seems to understand what I want to say, anyhow. Her face lights up, and she looks at me with a hint of mischief in her sparkling blue eyes.

  “You know, it may have seemed to you that our decision to ask you to join ‘The Coldhearts’ was just a sudden whim of ours, but it wasn’t.”

  I just look at her blankly, and as she grins at me, there’s more than just a hint of mischief in her eyes. “Nellie and I knew that Caro wasn’t happy with us anymore, and that sooner or later she was going to break up with Ina and quit the band. So we started keeping an eye on you, and when Caro finally quit and you became available at the same time, we were ready.”

  I gape at her in astonishment for a moment, before I manage to say, “You were, like, stalking me?”

  Bette throws back her head and giggles. “Well not exactly, but we did go to one or two of your old band’s gigs, and we did ask a few people about you.”

  “Uh, well…that’s interesting,” I reply, pretty much at a complete loss for words.

  Bette begins to shake with suppressed laughter. She must find the wide-eyed look on my face hilarious. She takes one more drag from her cigarette before she drops the butt on the ground, and stomps on it with the heel of her Doc Martens. Looking back up at me, she gives me another one of her piercing looks.

  “Anyway, we decided that you’d be the perfect fit for us, Jenny. When Caro left we talked to Ina, and she agreed with Nellie and I right away. You were our obvious choice.” Bette leans forward and touches my arm. “Not only did we think that you were a really good bass player, we were also sure you were like us, Baby Doll, that you could become a member of our family.”

  I nod, stupefied, and Bette’s expression softens again, turning thoughtful. “We didn’t know that you’d fall for Nellie, or that she’d fall for you.” She chuckles and shrugs, giving me a wry smile. “Well, maybe Nellie did.”

  Suddenly she changes her tone and the subject abruptly. She sounds brisk and businesslike. “Like I said before, we always want to go onstage and deliver our best possible performance as a band, Baby Doll, and you know that’s only possible if everyone in the band has their shit together, right?”

  Her questioning look tells me that she means I have to get my shit together. “I know, Bette, I won’t let you or the other girls down, I swear!” I say earnestly.

  Bette nods, before she goes on. “I know you’ve gone through a lot of shit lately, but what you did this morning was really fucked up, Baby Doll.”

  Her statement makes me wince. “I know, right?”

  “Yeah.” Bette eyes me levelly. “You deliberately hurt somebody who loves you. Not only was that stupid, it was wrong. You know that too, right?”

  Shuddering, I reply, “God, yeah, I know.” I sigh, picturing the look on Emilia’s face after I said all the things I shouldn’t have said.

  Tapping on my knee Bette goes on, “Good. Knowing that what you did was wrong is where you have to start.” Lifting one finger at me admonishingly she adds, “And knowing exactly what you did wrong is the next thing you need to know.”

  I grimace. “I got jealous, right?”

  “Yeah, you sure fucking did, Baby Doll! You got crazy jealous. What Nellie said about you being jealous of this guy, this drummer…”

  “Stephen.”

  “Yeah, okay, Stephen. Anyway, if you’re fucking another girl, it doesn’t make any sense to be jealous if your girl is doing whatever she’s doing with Stephen.” Bette puts her arm around me, pulling me closer to her, and locks eyes with me again. “What you need to do, if you love someone, is for you to be happy about whatever makes them happy, which is what you’re asking of Emilia. You want her to be happy for you and Nellie?”

  I bite my lip, and nod, seeing what she’s aiming at.

  “Then you have to try to be happy for Emilia and Stephen, assuming there’s an Emilia and Stephen at all, which you aren’t even sure about.”

  Bette’s words bring it home to me how awful a mess I made of things with Emilia. I heave a heavy sigh, and look back into Bette’s eyes.

  “I wasn’t even thinking, Bette. I felt so scared, and angry and desperate at the same time…I hurt so much, somehow, I wanted to hurt Emi, too, and I wanted to run away from her, and…” I can’t even think of how to explain what I was feeling and thinking. The look in Bette’s eyes tells me I don’t need to explain anything to her, though.

  “I understand, Baby Doll,” she says softly. “Still, there’s something you need to know. If you really want that polyamory thing, you’ve got to give something up. And what’s the thing you have to give up, Jenny?” She gives me a piercing look.

  “You mean jealousy, right?” I murmur.

  “Yeah, it’s jealousy. It poisons everything. It fucked your
relationship with Emilia, and if you can’t get your jealousy under control, it could fuck your relationship with Nellie, too, sooner or later.”

  I realize I’m still biting my bottom lip hard, so hard I taste blood. I know she’s right, and the thought terrifies me. I don’t want what happened between Emilia and me to happen with Nellie and me too. I don’t want to lose her, too.

  Bette looks at me as if she knew exactly what I’m thinking. “So, if you want to be together with them, with both Emilia and Nellie,” she says softly, “you have to change, Jenny. Instead of being jealous when someone you love is with someone else, you have to learn to be happy for them.”

  What she says makes perfect sense. If I want to be together with Nellie and Emilia, I have to learn to accept that Nellie might also want to be together with Emilia. But what if I can’t?

  Bette’s eyes are full of compassion. “If that’s not something you can do, Baby Doll, you’re better off not doing that relationship thing.”

  “Like you and Ina? Or like Ina?” I’m not sure how to put that, since I don’t know what exactly is going on with Bette and Tanja. Do they have a relationship now? Or not?

  Again, Bette seems to be able to tell how confused I am.

  “Yeah, Ina and I have a lot of fun with our Crazy Bitches and the other girls we pick up from time to time.” She grins at me. “Ina’s happy with that, and I guess she’ll go on with it as long as it’s fun for her and makes her happy. Even though I believe that Kira girl might have conquered a piece of her heart already.”

  I picture that cute blonde girl with her nice Eastern European accent. “Yeah, she’s cute, isn’t she?”

  “Absolutely.” Bette pauses for a moment, staring at the cherry blossoms in the orchard.

  “What about Tanja and you?” I ask tentatively.

  Bette shrugs. “I don’t know how things are going to work out with Tanja.” She gives me a lopsided grin. “That Crazy Bitch isn’t the jealous type, though. If I picked up another girl, she’d want me to let her know straight away, so we could have a threesome!” She chuckles to herself and shakes her head in disbelief, before she becomes serious again. “The important thing is we’re happy, and that the people we care about are happy, too.”