She stood in front of the statue of Saint Joan of Arc for a while, hoping to gather courage from her. Joan was on horseback, and the statue’s arm that would have been thrust in front of her was missing. Pru stood there, looking at the statue; then she sat down on a bench to cry. Except . . . nothing happened. She tried again to conjure up the image of John and his wife. Then she tried to imagine seeing them together at McKay and Bill’s wedding, dancing, Lila’s fabulous hair spilling out everywhere, while Pru stood against the wall, her own hair pulled tightly back in its unforgiving knot. Still, nothing, no tears, not even a sniffle. What was wrong with her? She was certainly miserable, sad, lonely. Brokenhearted. For longer than she ever had been in her life, and not getting used to it, either, like everybody kept promising. The tears simply wouldn’t come. Had she lost her ability to cry? Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad. She was sick to death of it, anyway. She stood up and walked home. She didn’t cross to the other side of Columbia, but walked straight by the Korner. She’d thrown out her sandwich and still needed to eat. The souvlaki place was closed, but the Cluck-U was all lit up, outside and in. She hesitated for a second, looking at the garish bantam rooster, then pushed open the front door.
The inside was lit by strange yellow lighting, and an Indian man stood behind the counter, eager to take her order. She walked up to him, staring at the menu above his head. She could hear the sounds of bubbling oil coming from the kitchen. The only other person there was a woman in a bright turquoise sari with a baby on her lap. The baby’s ears were pierced, and she wore a frilly headband. They both had incredibly sweet, open faces, and smiled at Pru as she placed her order.
While she was waiting for her “Clucker on a Bun,” the woman with the baby and the man behind the counter began talking quietly.The man came around and picked up the baby and held her up in the air. His wife and child, Pru realized. The woman said something to him in a low tone. The man looked at Pru, shyly. They had probably put every cent they owned into the Cluck-U. To Pru, the establishment had been nothing more than an embarrassment, an affront to her satisfaction and well-being. The eyesore of her otherwise clean, upscale-tending street. To this couple, though, the Cluck-U was their entire future, the happiness and security of their child. It was her college tuition, the down payment for her house. They probably didn’t even realize that its name was a crude pun. Maybe they thought of it as a happy name, childlike, funny. Maybe, in the country they were from, cigar-chomping roosters were considered sacred.
When her sandwich was ready the man put it in a paper bag. He folded the top of the bag over neatly and handed it to her, saying, “You are owner of the peach?” Pru nodded and smiled. There were some slips of paper on the counter and the man motioned for her to take them—coupons, she saw, for a free Coke with the purchase of a “Cheese Mutha Clucker.” They looked as if he’d made them on a computer. She pictured him cutting each coupon out by hand.
“For the store,” he said, then again, “For the peach.” Then she understood. He wanted her to give out his coupons at her store. “Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling, and she took the grease-splattered coupons. “Yes, yes, of course.” The man’s wife beamed at her, from behind the baby.
She felt sorry that she had wanted to throw rocks at the sign. Once a week, she promised herself, she would come and buy something, even if she ended up tossing it in the trash. Which, she thought, seeing the pool of grease on the bottom of the bag, wouldn’t be a bad idea.
SHE DIDN’T CRY AT BILL AND MC KAY’S WEDDING, either. Her tasks as maid of honor and event coordinator kept her too busy for tears. As they spoke their vows in front of each other and the assembled group of friends and family, she kept her eyes on their faces, wanting to remember every second of this moment. They were at a B&B in Provincetown owned by three Finnish brothers, at least two of whom, Pru thought, were gay, though she couldn’t really tell them apart. The Unitarian minister performed the service in the back parlor of the house. They were going to do it outside, in the garden, but the weather had turned cloudy and cool at the last minute. Bradley Bond, the pet therapist, was there. He sang “The Wedding Song” in a man’s suit, and, later that evening, “Dim All the Lights, Sweet Darlin’” in a lovely, shimmering white dress. Somehow he looked perfectly right, both times, as at home in his linen trousers as in the three-inch platform heels.
It helped a great deal that John and Lila were no-shows. McKay, when they had a moment alone together, said that no explanation had been offered, but Pru knew why. John had decided to spare her. It gave her a bittersweet feeling, to think that he’d felt the need to protect her feelings. She still wasn’t used to them being so entirely on display.
She came home from the weekend to an in-box full of chatty, descriptive e-mails from Patsy, still at her yoga retreat. She’d found an Internet café in town that enabled her to talk to Annali via webcam. She was having what she called a “life-changing” experience. She sounded so bubbly that, if Pru didn’t know better, she’d say Patsy was getting more than her chakras realigned. If she didn’t know better, and if McKay had been around to say that to. But he was heading off with Bill for their two-week honeymoon in Italy.
Sitting at her desk, now in the new living room, Pru read the most recent e-mail from Patsy. Suddenly, an Instant Message window popped open. She saw the name on the screen: jowen32. Who is Jowen? she thought. Then her hands froze above the keyboard. Her computer pinged softly, as he sent each line of text:
The screen door slams
Mary’s dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays . . .
She couldn’t breathe. The heat was rising in her face, her blood pounded in her ears. The next lines, she knew, were “Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, Hey that’s me and I want you only.”
My friend, he wrote, where did you go? Okay, so it wasn’t going in that direction, then. She felt the heat drain from her face, and her heart rate stabilized.
Whoop, who hadn’t been more than a yard away from her since she’d gotten back, jumped up and pushed his head under her hand for a scratching. John wasn’t lonely, and he didn’t want her only. With the memory of McKay and Bill standing up in front of God and the world to declare their love for each other fresh in her mind, Pru knew what she wanted. And it wasn’t half-quoted Springsteen lyrics. She sat there for a minute longer, then closed the messaging window and turned off the machine.
Twenty-three
A week later, Patsy came home. She was, indeed, transformed.
She was mellow, glowing, flexible, serene, contemplative. Blissed out. And, she announced, holding up the margarita Pru had just poured for her, she was pregnant.
They were sitting on the balcony, at a little green table Pru had purchased at the flea market in Georgetown. It was their first night out on the deck. To celebrate, Pru had made melted cheese tortillas and the pitcher of margaritas, pretty much the full extent of her culinary expertise.
Pru had brought up her glass in preparation for a toast. It froze there, stopped cold by Patsy’s news. “You’re what?”
“I know,” Patsy said, smiling happily and leaning across the table to clink Pru’s glass. “Are we fertile or what?”
“Who’s we . . . Jimmy Roy?”
“I know, it’s crazy. We just can’t keep our hands off each other.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s a sign. He’s a sexy little bastard, that’s for sure.”
“But . . . when did you even see him?”
“The night of the opening. Just the once, can you believe it? Oh, no, wait. Three times, technically—”
“Patsy!”
“I guess it must be some kind of biological imperative. You have to admit, we make amazing kids.”
“You’ve been sleeping with him? And you didn’t tell me?”
“Yeah, well, I thought it was just a sex thing. Besides, who’s seen you to tell you anything?”
Patsy drank a huge mouthful of her margarita, and
so did Pru. “Oh, that was good,” Patsy sighed. “My last mouthful of alcohol for the next eight months.”
“So, this is good?” Pru said, when she could talk again. “It’s not just a sex thing? You’re happy?”
“Yeah,” Patsy said. “I can’t tell you what it was like, finding out I was pregnant, then doing all that yoga. I was fucking blissed out, I’ll tell you that.”
“Annali’s going to have a little sister! Or, I guess it could be a brother. Oh, she’ll love it, don’t you think?” Annali loved seeing the babies at the playground. She’d pat their heads and coo, “Oh, you cute li’l fella!”
Patsy smiled. “Let’s hope for a sister,” she said.
Pru was mentally scanning the apartment they’d just moved into, a month ago. “Oh my God, we’ve already outgrown this place!”
“And then there’s Jimmy Roy,” Patsy said, half closing her eyes.
“Him, too?”
“Yeah. We’re going to see how it goes living together. He got into one of those midwifing programs he applied to. He can live here and commute. If it’s okay with you, that is.”
“Patsy, of course.” Everything was moving so quickly. Everythingexcept for her, rooted at the center of it all, unmoving, unchanging. Good ole Pru.
From somewhere inside Patsy’s jeans came soft male voices intoning “Om.” It turned out to be her cell phone, which she pulled from a pocket. “Hi, baby,” she said into the phone, like the happy, sexy, pregnant woman that she was. “Yeah, I just told her.” Her eyes flicked up to Pru’s. “I miss you guys,” she said. “When will you get here?” She stood up and went inside the apartment.
The leaves in the trees overhead made a dappled pattern of shadows on the table in front of her. A new baby! Already, she was making plans. They could move Annali into Pru’s room, to make room for the nursery. She pictured billowy curtains, a tinkly mobile of stuffed animals, maybe an original Pooh theme. She imagined the baby’s soft, newborn smell. Large, moist, alien eyes, blinking quietly in the morning sun. She saw it reaching up to grab her nose as she changed its diaper.
She drank her margarita. Did their mother already know? She would probably want to move in with them, too. Well, why not? Pru thought. She could get her to finally sell that house, and it would be so good for the girls to have her around. She finished Patsy’s margarita, too, as Whoop came leaping through the door, followed by Jenny. Whoop took off and landed in Pru’s lap, leaving the puppy to almost skitter off the edge of the deck.
She could feel her heart pound in her chest. She thought it had dropped out of her chest and onto the floor of John’s café, but no. Here it was, pounding away to beat the band, threatening to leap out of her mouth and dance around the deck, with wild abandon and glee.
SHE WAS LOOKING UP LISTS OF BABY NAMES ON THE INTERNET (she was liking Hero, for a girl, and Gabriel, if it was a boy) when the phone rang.
She picked it up and was surprised to hear John’s voice. “I’m downstairs, outside your apartment. Can I come up?”
She was wearing cheap jeans, a stretched-out T-shirt, and underpants that rode up above the waistband of the jeans. Her glasses, of course, and she’d just taken off all her makeup. If possible, Pru looked worse than she had the first night she met him, in her bathrobe and slippers. Again, she remembered the exuberant, oversexed hair of his wife. Well, what did it matter? “Sure,” she said, and buzzed him in. She knew she couldn’t go on avoiding him forever.
As she waited for him to walk up the three flights of stairs, Patsy came out of her room.
“Was that Jimmy Roy?” she said, sleepily.
“No, John Owen. He’s on his way up.”
Patsy looked at her, suddenly wide awake. “Oh my God,” she said. “Pru.”
Suddenly, Pru felt like there was a whole farmyard inside of her body. Chickens, roosters, pigs, cows, and sheep, all braying and jostling each other, trying to find room between her liver and kidneys. She realized that her hands were shaking. For Pete’s sake, she told herself sternly, get it together!
“You don’t have to say anything,” Patsy was saying. “Just breathe. That’s all you have to do. Be in the moment, and breathe. Think of your feet. They’re rooting down into the earth. If you don’t know what to say, just think of your feet.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Pru said.
Someone tapped lightly on the front door. Patsy said, “All right, then just go for a walk with him, or something.”
Pru opened the door, and there he was. His smile was the first thing she saw. It was that big, shy, excited smile, the one that made her want to smile back. He was wearing a jacket over his T-shirt and jeans. He was holding an armful of flowers, a small, blue book—poems?—and a bottle of wine.
She backed away from the door, as if she’d opened it to a king cobra poised to strike.
“I waited a week,” he said. “I hope that was long enough.”
“I can’t be your friend,” Pru said, all in a rush. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“No,” said John, apparently confused. “I know.”
“You do?”
Patsy had started laughing. “Pru!” she said. “Don’t be so dense! Look in his arms.”
He gestured with the flowers, as if to say: For you. She opened her mouth to say something. And instead, she burst into tears.
“Oops,” he said. “Uh-oh.”
Her body shook with sobs so badly she couldn’t see. Then she heard Patsy say, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. John. Come on in.”
Pru felt a chair against the back of her legs, and Patsy said, “Sit.”
She sat. She just could not stop crying. It was insane. She was like Annali having a meltdown. She was feeling all the misery of the past few months, and—oh God, what was that? Happy, she thought. Happy, happy.
“I don’t really want to be your friend, either,” John said. He crouched down in front of her. She looked up at him, a hand covering her mouth and nose, which insisted on still crying. “It was really cool of you to try, though.”
“Really?” she gasped, in this awful, shaky voice. “Not friends?”
“Not just friends,” he said. “Not just friends.”
“Oh,” she said. “Thank God.”
He smiled at her. Then he began to laugh. He tried to take her hands.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m a mess.”
“Come on,” he said at last. “Let’s go for a walk.”
AT THE FAR END OF MALCOLM X PARK, YOU CAN SEE ALL the city lights from the top of the stairs built into the side of a sloping hill. You can see all the way down to the Potomac, and beyond. It was the same view from her old apartment. John Owen reached over and took her hand.
They walked down the hill, stopping to sit on a stone bench that was set back inside a little hedge.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“I hope I didn’t wait too long. But I didn’t want you to feel like I ran from her to you.” He gave her a sheepish look. “I made myself wait a week. One whole, horrible week.”
“What was with that IM? The ‘Thunder Road’ stuff?”
“My lame attempt at romancing you. I should have stuck to Dylan. Or Leonard Cohen.”
“Did I break up your marriage?”
He shook his head. “No. Lila and I didn’t need any help doing that.”
“Are you sad?”
He nodded. “I’m sad. I’m happy, too. And excited. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s okay.” Sad. She could work with that. She’d been sad before, too.
Suddenly there was so much to say, things she’d been wanting to tell him for so long that it didn’t seem possible to get them all out fast enough.
“Patsy’s pregnant,” she said. “And that plumber whose number you gave me ripped me off. Oh, and do I need a certificate of occupancy?”
“No. Did you tell Carl I gave you his number?”
“It w
asn’t Carl. It was Ray.”
He shook his head. “Ray’s no good. You have to see Carl. It’s not Jacob’s, is it? Patsy’s baby.”
“Jimmy Roy’s. They slept together the night of the opening, apparently. Carl’s in Antibes.”
He whistled. “You’re kidding.”
“Antibes?”
“Jimmy Roy.”
“Did you notice? She’s walking around like Eartha Kitt. All slinky and sexy. She’s practically purring. She’s happy, though. I can see it, she’s really happy.”
It was growing dark. I’m scared, she thought. “Hey,” she said, pointing. “Is that the North Star?”
“Um . . . no. You have to look over there, toward the north. Did you ask to talk to Carl?”
“You didn’t say I had to talk to Carl.”
“I most certainly did.”
“Are we dating now?”
“Well, I think we’re just together. Is that okay? If we just be together?”
In response, she squeezed his hand.
“How is she? Lila?”
“Good. Okay. We got it all figured out. I’ll have to buy her out of the business, but she’s actually being very cool about it. And listen, I want you to know—it was me who asked for the divorce.”
Pru nodded. “I’m glad to know that. Oh! I was going to tell you about these weird-but-good cookies one of our customers makes. Chocolate chip-oatmeal, but get this—salty. She brought some in for us to try one day. You should think about selling them.”
They talked about the new display she was planning for the front window, and what John would have in the pastry case tomorrow morning, and whether or not the water cooler she ordered would finally arrive. While they talked, softly, in the dusk, she thought about how, soon, they would walk back toward Columbia Road holding hands, and she wondered where they would spend the night. She thought about Kate and her new love, and if their new loves would like each other. The dark settled in around them, and she thought about Patsy’s new baby, and Fiona’s new baby, and all the new babies yet to come. Nadine had to come and live with them, now. A little shiver passed through her, and John pulled her closer to him, wrapping her arm around his back.
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