The Probable Future

by Alice Hoffman

  Will had little faith in the Unity police department, however well intended it was. And so he had taken up running. He had become the ears and eyes of the town, and by now he knew most people’s habits quite well. Henry Elliot, for instance, headed out to Boston at a quarter after six each day. Eli Hathaway was usually the first customer at the gas station on the corner of Main. Enid Frost opened up the doors to the train station at 6:30 exactly. On fair days she swept off the platform; when it rained she used a mop to clear away puddles.

  Will found he could cover most of the town in two hours, making a loop that led around the common, down Lockhart, past the library and the elementary school and the shops on Main Street, all the while looking forward to the moment when he’d pass by the porch of the tea house, where Liza Hull was often waiting to cheer him on. Lately, Will had felt as though someone had drained the poison out of him; without alcohol, without the weight of his lies, he was light-headed and light-footed, faster than he’d ever imagined possible. Another runner he’d met, Solange Gibson, the librarian’s daughter, had shown him a few stretches to prevent his legs from cramping up. Sometimes, when he was out on his appointed route, he’d meet up with one of his piano students and their families and they’d all be so pleased to see him Will had at first thought such people had mistaken him for his brother, someone else entirely, a well-respected man who cared about more than how easily something came to him or how little work he had to put in to get by.

  When he heard that Jenny had come down with the spring flu, Will was so penitent he actually picked some of the phlox in his mother’s perennial garden that always bloomed early, an unexpected burst of white in the midst of all that May greenery. He ran over to Cake House one morning while Matt stayed in bed bemoaning both his future and his past. The wisteria was blooming and the whole town smelled sweet. Even the muddy lake, best known for its drownings, had a spicy aroma, more like cinnamon than its usual muck.

  “I know you hate me,” Will said when Elinor opened the door. Elinor blinked when she saw Will, surprised to find him on her front porch. “I’m just here to visit Jenny. I won’t steal anything.”

  “You’re not planning on getting back together with Jenny, are you?” Elinor wanted to know before she allowed him inside. She eyed the flowers, pathetic stalks of half-bloomed phlox. Catherine would have been embarrassed by such a paltry bouquet from her garden.

  “Oh, no,” Will assured Elinor. “We’re through.”

  Elinor’s ability to spot a liar seemed to be failing her; either that, or Will was actually telling the truth.

  “Liza told me Jenny had the flu. I thought it was only polite to stop by.”

  “So now it’s Liza.” Elinor opened the door wide. What a relief to know he’d finally moved on. “You should have said so.”

  Will took the staircase two steps at a time, then wandered down the hall to Jenny’s room. Jenny used to sneak out her window at night to meet him, climbing down the twisted wisteria which grew along the roof so that she smelled like flowers and often made him sneeze. He was so allergic, Liza had convinced him to carry an Epi-Pen in his pocket when he went out running, in case he met up with a bee. He ran fastest when he passed that oak on Lockhart, for inside, where the wood was dead, a huge hive was nestled. Will could hear them humming as he ran past and he made sure to quicken his pace. Some people commuting to work in the city or over to North Arthur didn’t even recognize him as they drove past: he was a blur, nothing more. A man who was running from everything he’d ever been.

  “You look terrible,” he said when he found Jenny in bed. She was feverish, her nose red, wearing flannel pajamas though the day outside was fine.

  “Thanks so much.” Jenny tried to run her fingers through her knotted hair. She’d been working on a watercolor propped up on her knees. She’d taken up painting again.

  “Nice landscape,” Will said.

  Jenny laughed, then blew her nose. “There’s a tiger on the hillside. If you bother to look.”

  “‘Tiger, tiger burning bright.’ But not, I suspect, on the hillsides in Unity. I didn’t know you could paint.”

  “What did you know about me?” Jenny couldn’t resist that dig even though Will was arranging the flowers he’d brought in her water glass.

  “Not much. I didn’t know much about my mother, either. I had no idea she was a gardener, but apparently she was. This stuff is all around the house.”

  “Phlox,” Jenny informed him. In spite of herself, she had picked up stray bits of gardening lore from her own mother, though she herself had never grown so much as an avocado plant from a pit. “It naturalizes. It may even do better when there’s no one around to tend it.”

  Jenny narrowed her eyes when Will started tidying up her bedside table. He moved the bell that her mother had left so that Jenny could ring if she needed anything. A ridiculous notion, truly. Elinor herself wasn’t well and could hardly be anyone’s nursemaid, and when had she ever been so? Not when Jenny was a child, not on the day Jenny phoned Dr. Stewart herself, when her fever reached 104 and her throat felt like sandpaper, and her mother was out in the garden, heedless when it came to anything that existed beyond the gate.

  “Isn’t this from the glass case?” Will said of the bell. It made a sweet sound when he held it up and shook it. “Didn’t it belong to Rebecca?”

  Jenny took the bell from him and put it down beside her water glass filled with phlox. His fussing was making her uncomfortable. “Why are you here? What do you want? Frankly, I’m amazed that my mother let you in the house. Especially after it turns out you stole that arrowhead the very first time I brought you here.”

  “That was terrible,” Will said sadly.

  “Yes. It was. So what do you want now that you’ve returned to the scene of your crime?”

  “I want your forgiveness.”

  Jenny laughed, even though her throat hurt. Then she looked at Will. He wasn’t kidding. “And I should do this because …?”

  “Because we’ll be better parents if we’re working together.”

  Jenny stared at him, shocked. “And when exactly did you have this revelation?”

  “Actually, I didn’t come up with this idea myself,” Will admitted. “I was helped along.”

  “A woman’s influence,” Jenny guessed. “Marian Quimby?”

  Marian had always been jealous; she had wanted Will for herself. All through high school she’d called Jenny the dead-horse girl and the whore of Cake House. She’d traipsed around after Will, not that it did her the least bit of good: in the end, Marian went to law school and now had a practice in North Arthur.

  “Marian?” In point of fact, this Marian had been the first girl that Will had sex with, on a couch in her parents’ basement. The summer after eighth grade. “Good God, no.” An awful thought possessed Will. “You don’t think Stella’s fooling around with Dr. Stewart’s grandson, do you? You don’t think she’s sleeping with him?”

  “Of course I don’t think so. And we were talking about you, so don’t try to avoid it. Who’s the woman?”

  “It’s Liza.”

  “Liza Hull? My Liza?”

  Jenny pushed her watercolors away. Will was staring right at her, when usually he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He was rangy-looking; he’d lost weight, Jenny realized, and his color was better. He was drinking bottled water and wearing running shoes, not at all his style. When was the last time he’d had a Scotch, told a lie, ruined someone’s life? How had this happened without Jenny noticing?

  “It’s definitely Liza,” Will said.

  The plainest girl in their class, Jenny’s boss, a woman who gave more thought to the ingredients of a piecrust than she did to her own appearance. Until recently. Several times lately, Liza had asked Jenny what she thought of an outfit, some dated pantsuit or dull, serviceable dress, and just last week Jenny had caught Liza gazing into the mirror above the buffet table, studying her own reflection, lips pursed, as though, all of a sudden, the way she looke
d meant something.

  “And you reciprocate this …” Jenny had to search for the word. “Feeling?”

  “Liza’s an amazing woman. She knew I was innocent long before the charges against me were dropped. Did you see her on Inside Edition? She was right there with me.”

  “Well, fancy that. So now you want me to forgive you?”

  “Pretty much. We’ve been through so much together, Jen. All of our adult lives. It would mean a lot to me.”

  What had Liza Hull done to Will? Put a spell on him? Helped him find his inner self? Or had she simply believed in him?

  “Then tell me one thing. That day you and your brother came here on my birthday, you said it was your dream I was describing.”

  Will nodded. “The black angel, the bee who wouldn’t sting, the fearless woman.”

  “Yes. That’s the one.”

  “I wanted it to be my dream, but I was too scared to sleep that night. You know me, on a good night I rarely dream, but back then I was terrified that the dead horse might rise. I was biting my nails. My brother told me the horse belonged to Charles Hathaway, and that it reared when he tried to force it down the path where Rebecca Sparrow had walked. Matt was studying local history even back then, but who would have guessed he had a dream like that inside him.”

  People made mistakes all the time, and sometimes it was more than worthwhile to forgive someone, even if that person was Will. Even if the first words he’d ever spoken to her were lies.

  “Didn’t you guess it was Matt? You two even have the flu at the same time,” Will said as he was leaving. “That should tell you something.”

  Was love catching, like a common cold? Or was it more like a virus that afflicted a person gradually, until the unsuspecting individual was sick with love, consumed by it, riddled by its aftereffects? Once Will had left, Jenny Sparrow realized that her blood was so hot it felt like burned sugar inside her veins. Was it possible that her light-headedness was as much caused by thinking about Matt as it was from her fever? Why was it so difficult for her to recognize her own heart’s desire, a task not unlike stringing beads on a thread of smoke, or setting a fire to green wood, or finding her way through the dark without a lantern or a flashlight or a sliver of moon?

  There was a knock on her door. Elinor came in, dependent on her cane, but carrying a tray all the same. She had heard the bell, rung when Will lifted it from the table, and here she was with the tea she had not brought to her daughter nearly thirty years earlier, the tea that was never made but had caused so much bitterness.

  “What’s this?” Jenny said, surprised.

  “Elisabeth Sparrow’s recipe for break-a-fever tea. Mint and lemon and lavender honey. I’ve also got some of that horrible stuff I mixed up. Bird’s-nest pudding. It’s supposed to be good for you.”

  There was indeed a bowl full of some unrecognizable pudding-like stuff poured into a baked apple. The last thing Jenny wanted was food, but she forced herself to take a taste of the pudding. To please her mother, she realized. How odd, she thought. We’re trying to make each other happy. How backward. How unlike us.

  “It’s creamy,” Jenny said. “You made this?”

  Love was never a mistake, even when it wasn’t returned. It was not unlike the phlox in Catherine Avery’s garden, untended, ignored, but there all the same.

  “I’m sure it’s terrible,” Elinor said. “You don’t have to humor me.”

  “I thought you could always tell when someone was telling the truth. Or at least it always seemed that way.”

  “I knew a lie. That’s different from knowing the truth. Isn’t it funny; as far as I can tell, Will’s stopped lying.”

  “He’s in love with Liza Hull.”

  “Should we be happy for Liza or send her our sympathies?”

  “Happy.” Jenny nodded. “Definitely.”

  Elinor reached for the little watercolor of the tiger on the hillside. “How lovely. I dreamed that same image last night. That’s the hill behind the lake.”

  “But there aren’t any tigers in Unity.”

  “I know. I was dreaming of tiger lilies.”

  They both laughed at Jenny’s error; she had seen a cat instead of a flower, a liar instead of a man who’d be true.

  “I got it wrong yet again,” Jenny said.

  Elinor took Rebecca’s compass from her pocket. “Maybe you need this.”

  “Isn’t this from the case in the parlor?”

  “What good does a compass do under glass? I thought you might put it to some use.”

  Jenny thought about what her mother said all that day as her fever raged. She thought about tiger lilies and cups of tea and the strange turns love took. In the evening, Elinor came back with some vegetable broth and a cold compress for Jenny’s forehead, and not long after, Jenny’s fever broke. One minute she was burning up and the next she was cool and refreshed, probably the result of Elisabeth’s tea. Break-a-fever, break a heart, break every rule if you must.

  Jenny took off her flannel pajamas and quickly dressed; she had a frantic desire for fresh air and for something more. When she stepped outside, there was the Archer, on the western horizon. There was Pegasus, high in the east. In the dark, the house really did look like a wedding cake, layer upon layer of white paint. She walked past the laurel, past the lilacs; she kept on until she had turned the corner by the old oak, half of which had leafed out and half of which was dry as kindling. She didn’t quite know where she was going until she was almost there. She could feel the weight of the compass in her pocket, and before long, she saw the phlox, blooming like little stars in a row.

  Jenny knocked on the Averys’ back door, and when no one answered, she found the key under the mat, where it had always been stowed. The kitchen was dark—Will must be at Liza’s—but someone was home, that much was certain. Jenny could feel a person dreaming. In the dream a man was lost on a long road. It was a lane that never ended, which repeated itself just when the dreamer thought he’d reached the end. Night had begun to fall for the dreamer, but the time frame was unnaturally fast, with so many stars racing through the sky it was impossible to recognize the constellations. Even Polaris, the most constant point of all, had changed its position.

  He was lost, Jenny could feel that. She had reached the door to his bedroom, where he slept with all the curtains drawn. He was so deeply asleep he didn’t open his eyes until she lay down beside him. Jenny thought about the first moment when she’d seen him following along as if he didn’t matter, always in the background, two steps behind, but staring at her across the lawn on the morning of her thirteenth birthday, when she was too young to know any better.

  After he’d woken, she put the compass in his hand. She could feel the heat of his body, the fever he’d had for thirty years. Jenny Sparrow took off her clothes; she didn’t want anything between them. She felt cool, like a stone fished from the lake. She was so close, it was like a wave had come over him. He had convinced himself he was satisfied with his life; he’d stopped thinking about what he might have had or could have been. All the same, with Jenny in bed next to him, he was already drowning. That was what desire could do to a person. That’s what it did to him.

  “Am I dreaming?” Matt Avery said. “Did I lose my thesis? Are you really here?”

  Long ago, there were women in Unity who wore summer’s peach stones around their necks all year round, hoping for love. There were still people in town who believed it was this custom, rather than the shipwrecked saplings bound for Boston, which had caused so many peach trees to grow wild in backyards and all through the woods. Every time a new house was built, a bucket of peach stones would be found, and even children on their way to school knew that finding one meant luck, no matter the outcome: love forgotten, love gone wrong, love despite all odds, love ever after, love after all this time.

  II.

  JENNY WAS WORKING at the tea house on a Saturday afternoon. No one who saw her would have guessed that she had been a moody girl who couldn’
t wait to run away from home, unhappy most of the time, waiting for the worst to befall her. Today, she was cutting up a plum pie and thinking about Matt’s kisses. She was halfway through this task, humming a song about love, when an odd-looking girl came straggling in through the door, with Hap Stewart tagging along behind with a somewhat mystified expression. Jenny, as a matter of fact, couldn’t stop thinking about Matt. For the past two nights she had gone out walking after Elinor went to bed, only to find herself at his back door, knocking softly, so Will wouldn’t hear. She had tiptoed through the living room as though she were a teenaged girl herself, somehow transported back to the time when a kiss meant something, when it could bring her to her knees.

  Since she’d fallen for Matt, she’d been as irresponsible as a teenager, coming in late to work, failing to see her own daughter. Jenny was so distracted she paid no attention to the girl who’d come to the counter, only nodded to Hap, before going to grab a couple of menus. Liza came out with a tray of raspberry tarts as Jenny was setting the menus down on the countertop.

  “Hey, Jen. Aren’t you going to say hello to your daughter?” Liza might as well have hit Jenny over the head with a sledgehammer or tossed a handful of stinging yellow jackets into the crust of the plum pie she had recently cut into slices. Was it really possible that this outlandish girl was her wonderful child, her equinox girl, her baby, her whole world? Of all the changes in her daughter, what was the most distressing? The choppy black hair? The smudgy eye pencil she had taken to using? Was it how tall Stella was? Five-seven, a woman’s height. Or was it how pale the girl was, more so it seemed than ever in contrast to that raven hair? Or was it simply the way she was staring at Jenny, as though her own mother were a stranger who didn’t know the first thing about her? It was the exact same expression that had been on Jenny’s face when she had glared at her mother on the day she ran down the driveway and threw herself into Will’s car, ready for Cambridge and the rest of her life.