“Whoa.”
“Beck. We are in our thirties. We are unmarried. We have no children.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Okay. You hate kids. But my biological clock is ticking the crap out of me.”
“Gail. Today isn’t about you. It’s about ME.” I wiped my mouth with my napkin.
Gail raised one beautifully waxed eyebrow, grimaced, and indicated with a manicured nail that I had something between my front teeth. “Damn, Beck! I had no idea you were in crisis mode. Your text didn’t warn me that we couldn’t even have any conversational foreplay. Okay. What does this meeting all about you concern?” Gail lifted her dill pickle out of the lunch box and crunched off a bite. She chewed and made the “go on” motion with her other hand.
“I have been in denial about this for as long as I could, but it is no longer something I can try to ignore. Diana and Bryan are having a baby, due in July.”
Gail spit out her pickle, appropriately thunderstruck. It landed on the front of my brand new Ralph Lauren polo that I paid full price for at Nordstrom in Columbus. Bright orange. A gift to me from me. I picked off the pickle piece and looked at the wet spot. “This will probably be permanent. Of course it will, because my whole life is in the dumper right now. I don’t deserve nice things.” I brushed at the spot, then held it out, fanning the shirt in a futile attempt to dry the spot off.
“D is preggers? And you have kept this to yourself for how long?”
I looked down at my sandwich. The turkey/avocado combo suddenly smelled a little off. I scrunched the whole thing up into a waxed paper ball and put the whole box lunch on the bench beside me. “Mom told me a few weeks ago. I have been in stunned disbelief. Or denial. Or both.”
Gail shrugged. “I mean, this isn’t actually a surprise, you know. D always said she wanted to have—how did she used to put it—‘Six kids and a rich husband?’ So yeah. It is just starting to pan out. You know. Married people do tend to have children eventually. But I get it that you are blown away by this, because well—Bryan. But certainly you don’t envy her being pregnant? You, the child-hater?”
I drew myself up and poked Gail in the ribs with my elbow. “I have never said I hate children. Not exactly. I just don’t think I have the talent for enduring them. You know. Patience. Being able to tolerate their turbo-charged enthusiasm levels. Arts and crafts. Row, Row, Row Your Boat. It’s a gift that I just don’t possess.”
Gail actually chortled. “So you are upset by this whole thing because you are jealous of what? You walked out on Bryan for this exact reason: kids and the white picket fence. You don’t get to have it both ways.”
I had a brief flashback to the day I left the loft in Chicago. Boxes packed, the burly Two Men and a Truck guys hefting the last of my possessions into the truck. All that was left in the center of the room was that one tarnished brass lamp that Bryan found at the estate sale around the corner for a dollar. Its moth-eaten, rose-colored shade with the tassels, and the claw footed base—we thought it must have come out of some brothel during prohibition, it was that cool looking. Bryan had one fist hooked around that lamp, white knuckled. Claiming it. I shook my head with pity and said something like “Go ahead. Keep it. They like stuff like that in suburbia. Antiques that give the home ‘character.’ I wish you well.” And as I walked out of the loft to climb into my Prius to follow the movers, I stubbed my toe on the concrete and sobbed.
“Right? Beck. Hey.” Gail put her arm around my shoulders. “You knew this was coming, eventually.”
I nodded. Jesus, I just had to buck up. “I know. And Mom is over the moon about it. It just isn’t sitting well at the moment. I will come to grips. Really.” Ha. There was a little bile stinging the back of my throat. I took a slug of water, gulped, and turned to my steadfast friend. “Enough about me. What is this about biological clocks?” There was a pause as I watched Gail’s face go gray beneath her makeup.
“I want Will back.” She sighed.
Horrid history: Gail was engaged right after college to the love of her life, Will Garnett. Will had an absolutely open face, an honest heart, dimples, and a Harley. Will was starting medical school in the fall after Gail and I graduated, and Gail planned to move to Columbus to get a job. The traditional “put him through medical school and then focus on your own career” scenario.
Will and Gail were right out of the romance novels. He finished her sentences. She and Will’s mother laughed at each other’s jokes. Mrs. Boatwright promised Gail that she could have the family silver and the wedding china. Gail and I discussed at length the pros and cons of full-length veils. Will presented her with a small but flawless emerald-cut diamond.
My phone rang at two in the morning on a Saturday in August. I struggled out of a dream to answer my phone, and heard screaming at the other end. I awoke instantly, with the crushing knowledge that something was terribly wrong.
All I could make out was Gail saying the word WRECK over and over. I dropped the phone, shoved my arms into my bathrobe, and ran barefoot from my mother’s house the three blocks to the Boatwrights’. By the time I got there, my feet were bleeding and Gail was keening on her front porch, wrapped in her mother’s arms.
He wasn’t wearing a helmet. They always say “killed instantly,” but I know it’s just a very kind lie. But I repeated it over and over to Gail, during the horrific three days before the funeral, and I whispered it to her as I stood, grasping her hand tightly, at the funeral home after the service. “He didn’t suffer. It was instant. No pain.”
Gail stayed in Framington as I moved with Bryan to Chicago. She stayed to remember. She stayed to recover, and she did. Gail knows her corbels and her columns. She can see potential in the ruins of a century-old farmhouse. Gail is a nester. So it came naturally to her to become the best realtor in Framington and the surrounding environs. I thought that Will was just a tiny little achy memory. But I looked at my friend’s face and watched it crumble. I laid my head on Gail’s shoulder.
“I am so sorry I ate the cookies.”
We both started to laugh, but you know how laughing quickly degenerates into crying—like the two emotions are packed so closely into your emotional repertoire that they spill over onto one another. We sat on the bench, Gail and I, our lunches baking in the sun, our heads together, our eyes wet and our noses running. Best friends in the midst of it all.
Gail was the first to sop up her tears with a napkin. She handed me one and I blew my nose, honking like a goose. Gail stood, gathered up all the uneaten catering, and stuffed it into the bin. It was for “BOTTLES AND CANS ONLY.” That was printed in huge white letters against the green plastic.
I looked at Gail and pointed to the lettering. “You never do things like this.”
“Dammit, kiddo! This is going to be the summer of CHANGE.” And with that, Gail leaned over and spit into the bin. She beckoned me over. I leaned over and spit into it as well. Solidarity for the two of us.
“To change!” We both walked back to work, me to make mochas, and Gail to show granite countertops to the nouveau riche. When we parted on the corner to go our respective ways, Gail whispered, “Scared of blood. So we’re spit sisters . . .”
CHAPTER THREE
A beautiful afternoon for porch sitting. In late spring, Ohio, flowering trees are in their full glory, their delicate whites and pinks a backdrop to neighborhood sounds of arfing dogs, bouncing basketballs, and lawnmowers. Ella and I sat companionably, people-watching. In our neighborhood, most of the residents know one another’s backstories so well that when somebody celebrates a wedding or a birth, we all do. Ella gently fanned her face, the ivory pleats of her fan ruffling her cloud of newly permed hair. I dangled my legs off the porch swing.
“You know that Fred Danvers has started dating. He is going out with Myra Ellson.” Ella stopped fanning and tilted her head in the direction of Mr. Danvers, in his early nineties, who had just come out of his front
door. Wearing his toupee, a white patent leather belt, and snazzy seersucker trousers, sporting his tripod cane, he looked frail but jaunty. He waved to us cheerily as he inched down his front steps carefully.
I waved back to him as he stutter-stepped towards the bus stop on the corner. He waved again, adjusted his hair, and shouted, “Lovely day, and you two are lovely women!”
“He reminds me of Robert. So courtly.” Ella’s smile dimmed slightly. “I have been a widow for twenty years, but it doesn’t get any easier.”
I hate to see Ella shrink into herself. She is already as small as a mouse, and when she mourns Robert, she diminishes even further. I always try to rush in to change the subject. “It seems like everybody is dating these days, but me.” The swing stopped moving, so I shoved my feet against the concrete to set it going again as I flipped the hair out of my face. “Not that I am begrudging Mr. Danvers, mind you.”
Ella squinted at me through her cataracts. “Dearie, is this a change of heart? You have seemed so independent since we met.”
I laughed. In one of my chapters, I would describe it as “she laughed ruefully.” I looked down at my legs, which I hadn’t shaved for a month. “Oh, Ella, not really. But it does seem like I’ve been going solo for an awfully long time. You know our friend, Gail. She keeps reminding me that we are not getting any younger. And you know all about my sister expecting. All this is”—I poked a finger into my temple—“messing with my brain a little.”
I watched a mourning dove swoop down and land gracefully in Ella’s driveway. It wobbled along, pecking for whatever doves peck for. A horn honked in the street behind us. I pressed my toes against the insides of my Vans. “I am independent. I made my choice. But Gail makes me wonder.”
Ella nodded. “So she is having a hard time? I know how much she mourns for dear Will.”
Ella, Gail, and I spend time together. I know. Three best friends, one of whom is eighty-three. I watched the dove poke around in the mulch beneath the oak tree in the tree lawn. “You know how lonely Gail is, and lately she harps on this biological clock business. Ticking, ticking. I don’t know how many times Gail has pointed out happy couples pushing strollers lately, but it is a bunch.”
Gail and I. Sitting in the window of Beth’s Bistro, having delicious cheese soufflé and talking about how much we dread swimsuit season, when suddenly, Gail’s smile disappears as she stares out the window wistfully.
It’s a vivid young family. The hottie husband pushes a jogging stroller containing a chubby, bald baby, arms waving some sort of lime-green lizard, his tubby legs churning. Somewhere along the way, he has lost a sock. His mother, auburn hair caught up on top of her head in a black chopstick, her firm thighs encased in black bike shorts, a tight red tank top accentuating her admirable biceps, laughs along beside them, bending over twice to pick up the lizard her baby tosses to the ground. The three of them absolutely gleam.
Gail stares, rapt. I watch them, wondering how soon before the baby gets a gas pain and starts to scream, and the wife tenses up, annoyed by the shrieking. I wonder how long before the husband stops smiling and hands the stroller off to his wife so he can walk ahead and pretend that he doesn’t know either one of them. Ugh. The rest of the lunch consists of me talking about current events and Gail staring off into space.
Ella cleared her throat with a croaky moistness. “Oh, goodness. Well then my news might not be exactly welcome.”
Ella straightened up in her wicker chair and adjusted her flowered housedress to cover her bony knees, smoothing out the wrinkles. She reached inside the sleeve of her pink cotton cardigan, drew out an embroidered linen handkerchief, and gently wiped her nose. Stalling.
“Ella. What is your news?”
I watched Ella fidget for a few seconds, her papery cheeks flushing. Her knotted fingers closed and unclosed her Chinese fan. She put the fan in her lap, wiped her nose once more, and leaned forward. “I am having a visitor.”
This didn’t sound like bad news. “Wonderful! Who is it?”
Ella looked at her lap and took a deep breath. “You know that my grandson, Charles, is deployed over there?” She spread her arms in two directions, but I knew what “over there” meant. The Mideast. Horrors, children slaughtered, terrorists, and blood.
“You have mentioned that, yes.”
Ella looked at me with widened eyes. “He is on his final tour. He’s due back, as I probably told you, in February.” Her forehead creases deepened. “You know he has a little girl. She’s eight.”
The visitor. A child. My head filled with visions of Ella trying to keep her delicate balance as a whirling dervish of a kid jostles into her as she tears down the stairs and out the door. I pictured devilish red hair in greasy pigtails, filthy fingernails, and a deafening howl.
“Oh, really? Your great-granddaughter is coming for a visit? How long will she be here?”
Ella once again unfurled her fan and waved it weakly. “Actually, she will be here until her father comes back from . . .” Ella waved her arms again in the direction of “over there.”
This was worrisome. “I see.” I hesitated, but then just blurted, “Why is she staying with you? Are you sure you’re up for this?”
I watched the blue veins in her temples pulse. Ella waved the fan more briskly as the color rose in her cheeks. “Rebecca, there is simply no other option.”
Ella’s explanation was long and winding. Charles Bowers, a young Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, met and fell in love with Rowena Chilton.
Think passion, a wayward and headstrong girl trying desperately to escape her abusive family. Drugs. An unwanted pregnancy and a stalwart soldier who vows to stand by his girlfriend. Tumult. A number of overseas deployments, and a mother in and out of rehab. Custody papers signed over to the father.
As Ella went on, I could see the story unfold just like a reality show. Rowena, her arms dotted with track marks, looks down at her sleeping toddler, reassures herself that all will be well for a short while. She runs her fingers through her own ratty hair, pulls on a hoodie over her sweats, grabs a fistful of bills, and snatches the house keys. She hardly notices the peeling paint around the doorframe of the squat she calls home as she locks it behind her. She needs to get some more stuff. The kid will be all right. She is always all right, even on the days when Rowena returns and the child is crying in fear. A hug will reassure. She is starting to shake as she heads down to the bus stop to meet her supplier.
“. . . So now that Roberta’s grandparents in Iowa can no longer take care of her—they are in poor health—Charles asked me if I could take Bobby.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Charles calls her Bob. Well, I guess everybody in the family does but me. She hates being called Roberta, because it sounds too much like Rowena, I guess.”
Ella began to falter. Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Rebecca, I am not sure I am up to this, but I have no choice.”
I heard myself talking from somewhere outside of my body. “Of course! You are up to it. WE are up to it! I can help you with . . . Bob, is it? Right. I am home a lot, you know, in the afternoons and on weekends. This will be fine.”
Meanwhile, my stomach churned as I thought about how much children like to shriek. I remembered my playground days, with endless games of freeze tag, hundreds of episodes of bullying, and the myriad ways that kids can injure themselves. Ginny Dawkins, for God’s sake. Sweat ran down behind my ears, and I pulled up my shirt to blot my drips.
“How soon is Bob coming?”
Ella’s fan stopped waving. Her dear, filmy eyes glistened. Her lips parted in a brave smile. “Two weeks. She will be here in two weeks.”
I stopped breathing for what seemed like a full minute. “Okay then. We need to get a move on. I’ll call Gail.”
▷◁
There was a flurry of activity. The Framington Target checkers got to k
now us by name as Gail, Ella, and I purchased a mountain of Goldfish crackers, Kool-Aid, Popsicles, and healthy stuff like whole milk, American cheese slices, apples, oranges, and broccoli florets. We also bought a new pillow and crisp white sheets for the twin bed in the spare room at Ella’s that originally belonged to Charles’ father, Robert Junior. As we perused the aisles for bubble bath and sunscreen, Ella reminded us that her son, Robert Junior, died of a heart attack when Charles was only twelve, and his mother Connie succumbed to breast cancer when Charles was fifteen. Charles had lived with Ella until he left for college. So Charles was Ella’s one and only.
That made Gail tear up, thus she insisted that we go immediately to the beauty aisle to get some nail polish for Bob, because “all girls like to get pedicures.”
I mentioned that not all girls like pedicures. I have never liked for anybody to touch my feet. Gail waved me off dismissively. “You’re an oddball. We all know that.”
Ella chuckled and pointed to the bottle of OPI Mod About You.
“This is a nice pink, don’t you think? Bobby will like this one.” Ella placed it carefully on top of her black patent leather pocketbook in the cart. “Do you think we should get her a doll?”
“Whoa!” I stopped pushing the cart and put one hand on Ella’s shoulder and one on Gail’s. “Let’s stop with all the girly things. We don’t know this child well. Maybe she isn’t the type to play mommy. Let’s just get to know Bob better before we foist any more girly stuff on her. As a matter of fact, I think what Bob needs is a SCOOTER.” My mind’s eye conjured up a little skinny sprite, knobby knees pumping as she skimmed the pavement, her arms akimbo, covered with mosquito bites and the scabs of liberation.
That day, we got the scooter. We went back four more times for other necessary equipment such as a helmet, two boxes of Band-Aids, a tube of antibiotic ointment, Shout stain remover stick, Clorox, assorted cereal (Gail vetoed anything sugary, but I snuck in a box of Honeycombs), and Children’s Tylenol. I chose the Tylenol, because naturally, there would be fevers. All kids get unexplained fevers, right?
Crossing the Street Page 2