Jukebox

by Gina Noelle Daggett

  There was a cavernous depression in Cilla’s eyes. Up close, without the speckled sunlight and the dark lenses, she looked thirty years older. Almost like an old lady. “I just thought you and Grace grew apart.”

  Harper unfolded her legs and rolled her pen up and down the cover of her journal. “That happened too,” she said.

  As these words came out, Harper went back in time, wondering if Cilla even knew that one Christmas, some time ago, she’d destroyed Harper’s life.

  After this exchange, Cilla concentrated on Dean’s headstone.

  Harper, too, got lost in the words— brother, son, uncle, beloved, home— the deep etch of the stone, the grass grown up against it.

  “I can’t believe it’s been twelve years,” Cilla said, still mourning. “Everything changes, you know, when someone dies.”

  Harper leaned back onto her hands and said, “This, I know,”

  with a deep pained, empathetic sigh.

  Together, they sat with this for a long time.

  After Cilla cracked the spine of her hardback, Harper pretended to scribble in her journal for a spell. Even though she was curious, she didn’t ask Cilla that day how Grace was or what she was up to. Part of her didn’t want to know, as it was the stuff of Harper’s nightmares. Instead, she asked Cilla if she was hungry.

  “I have an extra cookie,” Harper said, opening the paper bag.

  Cilla set her book down. “What kind?”

  “Peanut butter.”

  She smiled and reached out. “Peanut butter’s my favorite.”

  Before Harper left that day, Cilla asked her why she’d come home. Like so many things, she hadn’t heard.

  Harper opened up about her parents passing, even wept in Cilla’s arms at one point, something she’d never have imagined she’d do again.

  It wasn’t the first time; it had happened once before when Harper was a little girl and had woken up in the middle of the night with a fever at one of Grace’s slumber parties. Cilla had wrapped Harper in a blanket and held her on the couch until nanny Mariana arrived.

  “Reunited”

  Peaches & Herb

  Grace’s handlebars glistened in the sun as she rode up on her bike Wednesday. It was similar to the one she had in college, a wide-handlebar cruiser they’d ridden together Laverne & Shirley-style through U of A’s campus. A head-turner, Grace didn’t realize the effect she had on passersby—her golden hair blowing in the breeze outside Starbucks at Pioneer Square commanded everyone’s attention.

  Sitting outside waiting, Harper watched Grace lock up her bike. Around her, in sharp contrast to Grace’s beauty, Portland’s

  “concrete living room” was oozing local color; students kicking Hacky Sacks, artists scribbling in their sketch books, the homeless panhandling with signs and holding pit bulls on rope leashes. On an Indian summer day, it was a far different place than the snowy night in which Harper had run after the train.

  Peppered amongst the bustling diversity were pinstriped suits, briefcases and cell phones. The square had it all, even Grace, on the far corner fussing with her lock.

  Harper and Grace sat outside on a patio above a group of hippies passing a pipe around a drum circle. Their tribal rhythms

  were hushed by the fountains, but nothing shrouded the pungent ganga floating over the bricks like mist rolling in on a lake. The scent took Harper back to the letters she wrote in Europe, the confused journal entries she’d burned months later.

  “I love this town,” Grace said, crossing her legs.

  “Me too. I’ve been here for three years and the novelty still hasn’t worn off.”

  “You haven’t told me why you left Seattle.”

  Harper used her straw to maneuver a dollop of whipped cream into her mouth. “Just needed a change. Portland felt right.”

  For a moment, while Grace and Harper sat enjoying the downtown energy—the live music below and the impromptu guitar accompaniment from across the street—it seemed no time had passed. But it certainly had.

  Grace pushed a suede satchel across the table.

  “What’s that?” Harper asked.

  “Open it.”

  Slowly, as if Harper were reaching into a bag of spiders, she stuck her hand inside the cinched sack. Wrapped in a swatch of velvet were two artifacts from their sordid past: Harper’s polished Yurman bracelet, the one Rich had given her years before, and the poesy ring Grace had slid on her finger when she pledged forever.

  “My God,” Harper said.

  As Grace told Harper where their housekeeper, Ophelia, had found them—on top of the kitchen TV, where Harper left them the night Grace threw her out—Harper remembered how it had happened, seeing herself take the jewelry off before Grace finished wiping her with a bloody washcloth. Before Harper shared her secret, before their connection was violently severed.

  “I completely forgot about these,” Harper said, putting them back on. “I didn’t forget at the time, but there was no way I was coming back to get them,” she said. “Wow, it’s amazing. The mind. How there are some things we can so easily forget and others…well, that aren’t so easy.”

  She looked up at Grace quickly, and then her eyes switched back to the ring, the words engraved on its side. A utre vous et nul.

  “Is this why you’ve been looking for me,” Harper asked, looking up once more.

  “Yeah,” Grace said as she stood. Somewhat sarcastic; it wasn’t clear whether she meant it. “Do you want anything from inside?”

  Her curvy hips rocked back and forth under her capris as she walked away. She still had a helluva figure. Minutes later, she returned with a muffin and water.

  “So,” Grace asked, sticking a chunk of blueberry in her mouth, “who’s Alex?”

  A moment of truth. Harper took the straw from her empty cup and wound it in a tight loop. “My girlfriend.”

  “Your girlfriend?”

  Harper held it up, and with her long finger, Grace popped it in one flick.

  “My girlfriend,” Harper said, grabbing Grace’s muffin, tearing off a piece.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry.”

  “I’m not.”

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  “Four years.”

  “Four years?”

  “Yep.”

  Someone was vibrating in Harper’s purse. The gallery, she thought. Harper had left her cell number on a sign in the window.

  It was Alex; Harper hit ignore and set the phone down.

  Only a few breaths were taken before it buzzed on the table again.

  “What about you?” Harper focused on the tanless halo on Grace’s finger. “Did you marry him?”

  Before Grace could respond, Alex called a third time.

  “I’m sorry,” Harper said, suddenly concerned. “I have to take it. She never calls like this.”

  Alex was frantic. “I’m on my way to the emergency room.”

  Harper looked at Grace. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sabrina’s been in an accident on her scooter.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is she?”

  “OHSU.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Harper quickly gathered her things. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m not sure. Sorry. Call me tomorrow. Maybe we can try this again or have lunch,” Harper said, leaving her card on the table and Grace alone.

  When Harper arrived at the hospital, Sabrina was in ER 8, a barren space separated by a cloth drape on an oblong track. A few feet away, a woman Harper couldn’t see moaned and called out the name Beulah.

  The cuts on Sabrina’s face had already been sutured, as had the gouge on her thigh, seven stitches long. They were waiting to set her ankle. Sabrina’s brown hair was down around her face and she still had on her golf clothes.

  “What in the world, Sabrina?” Harper said.

  “I know,
I know.”

  “What are we going to do with you?”

  Alex and Juliet were sitting on either edge of the bed. Juliet, who was still in her scrubs and had rushed to the ER from her post in the pediatric unit, was holding one hand and Harper reached for the other.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just some cuts and bruises.”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. “She means stitches and broken bones.

  You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself.”

  “Seriously,” Alex interjected. “How many times have we begged you to get rid of that thing?”

  “Come on guys,” Harper said. “Accidents happen.” She knew how much Sabrina loved her scooter.

  “I’m sorry you had to leave work,” Sabrina said, shifting the ice pack taped to her foot. “It wasn’t necessary for you and Alex to come. But I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t be silly. We wanted to be here,” Harper said.

  A nurse both of them knew approached and loaded Sabrina into a wheelchair.

  “Don’t think for a second we’re not going to the beach this weekend,” Sabrina said, swinging her leg onto the outstretched gurney. “I won’t let this stupid little spill ruin the fun.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Juliet snapped. “Stupid little spill. Can you believe her? She gets run off the road, flips upside-down in a ditch and calls it a stupid little spill?”

  “You’re not my mother,” Sabrina playfully shouted as the nurse wheeled her away.

  Juliet blew Sabrina a kiss and then rolled her eyes. In lesbian years, they were an old married couple.

  “Is your friend still planning on coming?” Juliet asked.

  “Friend?” Alex asked, confused.

  Juliet looked at Harper.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Harper said. “An old friend of mine—

  someone from a long time ago—stopped by the other day. She just moved here.”

  “I invited her,” Juliet added. “I met her when I was dropping off your casserole dish.”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s no one you know. We grew up together.”

  “That reminds me, we’re going to have to meet you at Seasmoke on Friday,” Juliet said, picking up a magazine.

  “Somehow I got the late shift. We’ll be there in time for dinner.”

  “What’s her name?” Alex asked, focused on Harper, still interested in this mystery friend.

  “Grace.”

  “She was adorable,” Juliet said, flipping through a tattered, outdated issue of Good Housekeeping. “Maybe we can hook her up with Janice.”

  Alarms went off in the room next door. Feet scrambled.

  Voices were raised. Someone yelled, “Clear.”

  “She’s straight,” Harper said. “Let’s go wait in the reception area.”

  00

  “Why”

  Annie Lennox

  The next day, Harper was at Whole Foods getting ready for First Thursday, a monthly art walk downtown, when her gallery assistant, Mona, called. Five months pregnant, Mona had been throwing up all morning and needed to go home. Standing in the frozen foods, Harper dug out the Bluehour receipt and called Grace’s number. There’d been a text message from her with a time and place for lunch.

  She called and left a message for Grace as she threw a wheel of brie and some chévre in her basket. “Listen, I’m super sorry.

  Again. But my assistant who usually manages my gallery events has gone home sick, so, I have to postpone lunch today. We’re having an open house tonight and I need to get things ready.”

  Harper grabbed a box of mini quiches and paused, making her decision. “You’re still more than welcome to come to the beach with us this weekend.” The freezer door bumped Harper’s elbow. “It would be good for you to see the Oregon coast.”

  Over a hundred people were expected that September night,

  0

  the high-season for art in Portland. At four thirty, customers started winding through her three-room gallery with exposed brick.

  While people discussed photography, balancing plates of food and glasses of wine, a stout man in a fedora played the piano.

  The yellow doors, propped open with tall baskets of black-and-white panoramics, spilled Rachmaninoff into the street through hanging wild flowers.

  The gallery drew a surge of people right before six, when a group of tourists was headed down into the historic Shanghai Tunnel. One of the access points into the dark, dank and certainly haunted underground tunnels wasn’t far from the gallery’s front door. People were always chatty before the tour, as they descended with flashlights into the 1870s, and somber when they came out, preoccupied with images never to be forgotten. Trap doors, tight holding cells and piles of dusty shoes left behind from unsuspecting Portlanders who were drugged, gagged and taken to boats headed to Shanghai.

  Alex showed up around seven, stopping in before a session at the recording studio. She brought Harper dinner, tofu tacos with guacamole. Standing on the top step of the ladder, Harper asked for help hanging a frame.

  “A little to the left,” Alex said.

  “How’s Sabrina?” Harper asked, moving it slightly.

  “A little more. Perfect. She’s fine. Getting around pretty good with just a cane.” Alex held the ladder while Harper descended each step. “She, of course, is refusing crutches, which Juliet is insistent on.”

  “Those two.”

  As Alex folded up the ladder, the pianist began the prelude to Lakme.

  Harper leaned into the counter, one hand on the roll of brown paper used to wrap prints. The memories from the song knocked Harper out—lightning reflecting off the Amstel River and Grace’s eyes, the incense, the sweet surprise of a woman’s tongue in her mouth.

  “Harper!”

  “What?”

  0

  “Where’d you go? I’ve asked you the same question three times.”

  “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

  “Do you want me to put out more food?”

  “Sure.”

  Totally immobilized, Harper stayed in the same place until the Flower Duet came to its thunderous close. Others with a similar affinity clapped and put dollars in the performer’s tip jar. Harper collected the empty bottles of syrah as Alex came out with another tray of spanakopita. With a spatula, she was dishing them onto the table when Grace walked through the door. Panicked, Harper turned and rushed into the backroom.

  At the recycle bins, Harper waited, negotiating her next move. “God damn it,” she whispered. She should’ve known Grace would show.

  “Should we put out more turnovers?” Alex asked, startling her. Harper set down the bottles. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it. You can go,” Harper said, sitting at her desk for a moment, digging for nothing in particular in the drawer.

  “I’ve got five minutes. I’ll put in another batch.”

  When Harper walked back to the gallery door, Grace was standing near the window looking at one of Blue’s books.

  “I set the timer for ten minutes.” Alex kissed Harper’s cheek.

  “Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.”

  Harper cleaned all the dishes and reapplied lipstick before returning to the gallery again. As she came out with a hot tray of turnovers, Grace was standing in front of Harper’s nature collection, transfixed on a purple poppy. Harper walked to the food table with confident, hurried strides.

  Tim, the Arts editor at The Oregonian, called Harper’s name.

  She’d received a message from him the day before; he was doing a piece on a project for which Harper had recently done pro-bono work—a series of shots of the Columbia Gorge in sepia tones.

  While he scribbled notes and Harper described the commission, Grace walked past. She made two more passes before they finished the interview.

  0

  “Nice place,” Grace said, approaching slowly as Tim excused himself. Her
timing had always been seamless.

  “Thanks. It’s a work in progress.” Harper motioned to the construction equipment stacked in the corner.

  “Your body of work is amazing,” Grace said.

  “They’re not all mine.”

  “I know. I recognize those lions and tigers,” Grace said.

  Harper watched her lips move. “I did, after all, grow up in the G Wing.”

  In Harper’s youth, an entire section of their home—playfully known as the G Wing, or Gallery Wing—was dedicated to her parents’ photography and her mother’s remarkable yet overshadowed clay sculptures. Harper’s bedroom had been at the end of the hall.

  “Your stuff is very impressive. You’ve got a great eye,” Grace added. “You got it honestly.”

  When they ascended to the rooftop deck during the tencent tour, a light breeze blew through the trees, a row of maples lining the street below. They stood at the railing, both watching the Shanghai Tunnel tour exit.

  “Look,” Grace said, turning to Harper, “I know you’re busy, but I just needed to see you. I need to tell you something before we go to the beach…if that’s still okay,” she added. “It was something I didn’t get a chance to say yesterday.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need you to know how sorry I am. I was a horrible shit and you had every right to never want to see me again. I’m sorry for all the tears, and for the blood, and for abandoning you, and for slamming the door. I just”—she shook her head, ashamed—

  “couldn’t open it back up.”

  Harper watched Grace speak words her soul had needed to hear for over a decade. In the spirit of the moment, Harper decided to make a confession of her own:

  “You know, I found everything you threw away when you left school.”

  0

  Grace was puzzled.

  “The cards, your journals, everything. Even your half of the best friend charm.”

  It was clear by her facial expression Grace suddenly remembered.

  “I’d gone to the dumpster the morning I found you in the bathtub. I was trying to dig out your moving boxes.”