Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  “I just miss home,” Emma would gasp, her voice so tight and thin she could barely speak. “I miss Mommy.”

  Why? Jessie thought to herself. Sure, home was okay, but it would still be there when they got back. And Baymont—Baymont was better. Why couldn’t Emma just enjoy it?

  Still, she never said any of those sorts of things. Instead, she would walk barefoot across the gritty floor, perch on the edge of her sister’s bed, and stroke her heaving back.

  “It’s okay. You’ll go home soon,” she would say. She never said, “We’ll go home soon,” because that would have meant that she, Jessie, was not at home at Baymont either, and she felt, almost desperately, that she was. Sitting on Emma’s bed like that, the slope of the ceiling was only centimeters above her. She would rest her head against it until Emma’s cries ceased, or until she grew so sleepy that she simply stretched out beside her sister in the narrow bed.

  CHAPTER 33

  Jessie

  Jessie went downstairs on a narrow, honey-colored staircase near the back of the house, and then found her way to the kitchen. Sue and Laurel were both there; Mrs. Weasley, Jessie noticed, was curled up on a cat bed in the corner.

  “There you are,” Laurel said, seeing her. “Want some tea?” She gestured to the steaming kettle.

  When Jessie nodded, she opened a cabinet crammed with boxes. “Take your pick,” she said. “We’re tea drinkers ourselves, as you can probably tell.”

  Jessie chose a decaf chai that looked as if its extraction would not cause an avalanche. Then she looked around the kitchen.

  “Something smells good.”

  “There’ll be banana bread to go with your tea in a minute,” Sue said.

  “Sue loves to bake,” Laurel said proudly.

  Jessie nodded and looked at Sue. She was medium-height and stocky, with strong forearms and short, unstyled hair. She was dressed as Jessie herself might dress, in thrift-store jeans and a button-down flannel shirt. In fact, Sue reminded Jessie a little of herself: sturdy and unadorned, and comfortable in her own skin.

  Had Jessie met Sue anywhere else, she might have taken her for a lesbian, just as people often mistook her for one. Jessie’s mind turned again to her mother’s unwanted confidences; according to Laurel, Sue simply wasn’t that interested in sex. Sometimes people suspected the same of Jessie, she knew—mostly other women who simply did not get how Jessie could so blatantly flaunt the norms of female sex appeal and still feel sexy.

  Oh, but she could, Jessie thought. And how! It was simply a matter of finding the right kind of man—a man who liked his woman a little burly, her strong legs around him, the great heft of her breasts in his hands. Maybe the magazines and movies could convince all those people that men wanted their women to look like prepubescent girls, with slippery legs and shaved pubes, but Jessie knew differently. Other men were out there, wanting what they wanted. Wanting her.

  Standing in the warm kitchen, Jessie felt herself grow flushed with her thoughts. She put her tea down on the cluttered kitchen island and went to stand in front of the large picture window that looked out on the river. The red and yellow kayaks that she had seen on the dock seemed almost to float in the steam rising from the water.

  Laurel followed her gaze. “You can go out in one of the boats whenever you want,” she said. “Sue goes out every morning.”

  “Not this morning,” Sue corrected. “Too wet and cold. Would you like some banana bread?”

  Jessie nodded and returned to her tea and the piece of banana bread that Sue had set down beside it on a chipped saucer. She ate it quickly, suddenly aware of how hungry she was.

  “Want another?” Sue asked. “Here, just help yourself.” She held out the wooden cutting board on which she had upturned the bread. “We don’t go much for formality around here.”

  Jessie smiled. “I’ll fit in just fine then.” Already she could tell she was going to like Sue.

  “Do you mind if I go out with you in the kayak in the morning? I mean, if you prefer to go alone, I don’t—”

  “I go alone often enough. But just to warn you, I do get up early.”

  “That’s okay. I do, too,” Jessie said.

  “I knew you two would hit it off,” Laurel said, grinning at them. “I tried to tell Sue. I just knew you would.”

  When Jessie had finished her tea and a third sliver of banana bread which she cut from the loaf directly into her hand, she investigated the kitchen. Its disorder pleased her, the clutter reminding her of her own small home. The refrigerator was covered in pictures, most curling up at the edges, as if tugging against the magnets that held them in place. There was a picture of Sue in a kayak, and another of Jim and Laurel paddling a canoe. In another, a skinny young man stood next to a woman with thick hair that fell almost to her waist.

  “Who’s that?” Jessie began, but as soon as the words were out she knew. “Oh, that’s you, Sue. Isn’t it?”

  Sue glanced over, nodding.

  “And Jim,” Laurel said. “That’s Jim, too. Didn’t you recognize him?”

  Jessie moved closer to the picture, studying the young man. In truth, she saw little resemblance between the man in the photograph and the scrawny, long-haired, middle-aged man whom she had barely seen since she’d arrived.

  “Oh, right,” she lied. “Wow, Sue, you two must have been together a long time.”

  “Twenty years this August,” Sue said. “Since grad school.”

  “And was it . . . just the two of you then?” Jessie asked.

  Sue smiled dryly. “For a while. But it didn’t really work out too well that way.”

  “So, before Laurel, there were other . . .” Jessie searched for the right word, and Sue grinned.

  “Partners?” she offered.

  Jessie nodded.

  “Just two. One while we were still in grad school. Another after we moved here.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Sue shrugged. “Nothing, really. They moved on. I still keep in touch with Beth. She got married and has a kid. I heard Jean’s a lesbian now.” She shrugged again, then grinned. “Neither one of them was as enthu . . .Well, as committed as your mom is.”

  Jessie looked at Laurel, who was watching Sue closely. She smiled broadly.

  “I’m definitely not going anywhere,” Laurel said.

  Jessie glanced surreptitiously at Sue. She had a deadpan tone that was hard to read, and Jessie couldn’t help feeling puzzled by her. She knew that her mother had told her too much about the other woman, and yet, having heard it, she couldn’t help but wonder. Why had Sue stayed—for twenty years!—with a man she didn’t want to sleep with? It seemed suddenly even more bizarre to her, that Jim and Sue had chosen to a use a third person to save their relationship, rather than simply go their separate ways. Still, twenty years was a long time. Clearly it was working; this wasn’t just a passing fad. And yet Jessie couldn’t help but wonder: what was in it for Sue? She glanced around the kitchen, as if it might hold some clue.

  On the wall next to the pantry, two calendars hung side by side. One was from the Nature Conservancy; Jessie had received the same one in the mail herself, accompanied with the usual plea for a donation. In its squares were printed regular sorts of calendar things—her arrival this morning, for instance, and, a few squares later, “Jessie leaves.” The other was printed from a computer program, and it was blank except that at the bottom of every other square was a capital letter—L or S, but mostly L. The only other writing was a series of numbers, 97.8, 97.9, 97.8, written by hand on each square. There was no number on today’s date, or on any of the squares that followed.

  “What’s this?” Jessie asked, pointing to the second calendar.

  “Oh, shoot,” Sue said suddenly. “I forgot. Laurel, write 97.8 for today, will you?”

  “What is it?” Jessie asked again.

  “Just my temperature,” Sue explained. “I mostly remember to take it. I just forget to write it down.”

  “Your tem
p . . . Oh, yeah,” Jessie said, remembering. Sue was trying to get pregnant. “Is it helping?”

  “Well, I’ve been doing it for three, four months now. Jim graphs them on the computer. They’re textbook, really. But—” She shrugged. “No luck yet.”

  Jessie nodded, suddenly uncomfortable. She turned away from the calendar, feeling as if she had been caught spying.

  Laurel’s voice stopped her. “Don’t you want to know what the letters are?”

  “What?”

  “These letters, here.” She pointed to the Ls and Ss printed in the squares.

  Jessie glanced at Sue, but her back was turned. Her mother gazed at her expectantly.

  “Sure,” she said. “What are they?”

  Laurel smiled. “Well, L is me, of course. And S is for Sue.” She paused. “We tried keeping this calendar separate from the basal body temperature one, but it just got too complicated. Especially since we have to work around Sue’s cycle now.” She looked at Jessie knowingly.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Jessie said. “I’m not following you.”

  “Oh, Jessie. This is our . . .” She smiled lopsidedly. “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, our ‘intimacy’ calendar.”

  Jessie turned back to the calendar, almost unwillingly. It was obvious to her now. Every other day, there was an L, but in the middle of the third week, Ss were printed in three squares in a row.

  “That,” Laurel said, pointing, “is when we think Sue will be ovulating. So she and Jim have to—”

  “Mom,” Jessie said, the harshness of her tone surprising her. “I told you.”

  “Oh,” Laurel said, screwing up her forehead. “What you said before, right? You don’t want—” She grimaced. “Sorry.”

  Jessie sighed. “It’s okay.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “And you just keep it in your kitchen like that? For anyone to see?” Jessie said finally.

  Sue grinned. She seemed completely unembarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken.

  “A lot of people don’t understand what it is,” Sue said. “And, anyway, most of the people who come into our kitchen . . . well, they’re friends. They’re like-minded.” She looked out the large window. “Want to go out in the canoe now? I think the rain has finally stopped.”

  Jessie glanced at her mom. Laurel nodded emphatically. “That’s a great idea. You two go have fun, and I’ll make dinner.”

  Jessie looked back to Sue, who was watching her expectantly, and suddenly, she understood. Sue got to live in this house, this beautiful log home on a river, with canoes and kayaks only steps away. She had her own lovely room, a man to sleep with occasionally, two partners to help pay the bills and cook the food and do the chores. Sue had . . . Well, she had a family. She had companionship and belonging. But she had solitude, too, and independence. She could do as she liked and yet she was not alone. Jessie smiled a little to herself. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad deal for Sue after all.

  “I’d love to,” she said.

  That night, Jessie and her mother sat on the floor in the living room, playing Scrabble. It was a tradition; they had played Scrabble together almost every evening during those summers in Baymont. When Jessie was a child and even a teenager, Laurel had beaten her without fail. Laurel knew all the obscure little words that allowed her to rack up points even on a crowded board, words Jessie had never heard of but had quickly learned not to challenge. Her sister had never liked to play Scrabble with them, and Jessie could understand why. Laurel always wore an annoyingly gleeful look whenever she used an X on a triple letter score, or arranged a word to reach one of the coveted triple word squares at the edges of the board. Their mother had never believed in going easy on them.

  She watched now as Laurel used an S to turn liver into sliver, and then laid out the letters for simile over a double word score.

  “Very nice,” Jessie said appreciatively, as Laurel counted her points aloud.

  “Thank you,” Laurel said, smiling. She reached for the score pad.

  Jessie took a sip from her water, studying her letters.

  “Mom,” she said suddenly, looking up. “You’re not drinking.”

  Jessie’s water glass was alone on the coffee table; for the first time she could remember, Laurel had no cocktail within arm’s reach.

  “No,” Laurel said.

  “Mom, that’s huge.”

  Laurel smiled. “Well, thank you.”

  “You finally realized you had a problem?”

  “Oh, I didn’t have a problem.” She narrowed her eyebrows at Jessie. “Is that what you thought? That I was an alcoholic or something?”

  “Well—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a drink or two to take the edge off.”

  Jessie shook her head, confused. “So why did you stop?”

  Laurel shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. Jim and Sue don’t drink much, and, well, I didn’t want them to think—”

  “That you had a problem?”

  Laurel shrugged again and Jessie nodded, understanding. Her mother wanted so much to fit in here that even her beloved vodka and tonic had not been too high a price to pay.

  “And, you know, since we’re going to be pregnant soon . . .”

  “Mom, it’s Sue who will be pregnant.”

  Laurel looked at her sharply. “I know. But the baby will be mine, too. And I’m planning to co-nurse.”

  Jessie startled. An old memory surfaced suddenly: Laurel’s nipple between her thumb and forefinger, a bead of yellow milk on brown skin. Surely, she didn’t still . . .

  “Mom, how? That’s not even poss—”

  “The science these days is remarkable, Jessie. I’ve already spoken with a lactation specialist. She said it might be possible, with hormone therapy, to induce lactation. Adoptive mothers sometimes try it.”

  “Oh.” Jessie’s mind churned. A woman wanting to nurse an adopted newborn—that made sense to Jessie. But this baby, if they had it, would presumably have a lactating mother already.

  “And Sue’s okay with that?” she asked skeptically.

  “Well,” Laurel said quickly. “I’m sure she will be. We’ve just been so preoccupied with getting Sue pregnant, we haven’t . . . I figure we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Oh,” Jessie said again. With an effort, she tried to refocus her attention on the board, but her mind wouldn’t settle. Quickly, she laid out the letters for lean, using the e in simile.

  “There. Four points. Your turn, Mom.”

  “Jessie, really? That’s the best you can do?”

  Jessie nodded, reaching for the silver bag of letters. For a few moments, neither of them spoke.

  “Now, Jessie,” Laurel said at last, her eyes on her tray, feigning nonchalance. “You haven’t mentioned your sister the whole time you’ve been here. How is Emma?”

  Jessie moved her letters around, not looking up. “She’s fine.”

  “Yes? And?”

  “And nothing. She seems fine.”

  “Come on, Jessie. How is Emma, really? What’s she up to these days?”

  “Mom, you know I hate being in the middle.”

  “I’m not putting you in the middle. I just want to hear a little about my other daughter. How is that putting you in the middle?”

  “I just don’t know how much she’d want me to—” Jessie paused. She glanced at her mother, who was looking at her hungrily. “Look, she’s fine, Mom. Okay? She’s living in Berkeley. I’m sure you knew that already. She got a job teaching language arts at a middle school. In Oakland, I think. She seems to like it okay.”

  “In Oakland? That must be quite tough, wouldn’t you think? And what about grad school? I thought when she moved to Berkeley, she might . . . She’s always been such a good student, you know.”

  Jessie nodded and studied her letters. Suddenly Laurel put a hand over her mouth dramatically. “Oh, I didn’t mean . . . You have, too, Jessie! You know you have. Both of you
are such smart girls. You always have been.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I wasn’t offended. I just—”

  “I suppose,” Laurel said, interrupting her. “I suppose I have to give your father at least some of the credit for that.”

  “For what?”

  “For how smart you girls are.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes. “Mom—”

  “But Emma? Is she there alone? She must have a boyfriend.”

  “No, I don’t think so. She’s actually—”

  Jessie stopped, unsure of what—or how much—to say. She tried to picture her sister as she had last seen her: her long, blonde hair cut shoulder-length, beige cargo pants hanging low on her hips. It wasn’t easy to picture her like that. Whenever Jessie thought of Emma, she imagined her as she had looked in high school: her ponytail swinging as she sprinted around the track, the way she’d smile whenever they passed each other in the halls, Emma carrying her books in a stack against her chest just like all the cool kids did. Jessie herself hadn’t seen the point in that; she had always used a backpack. She shook her head, remembering how even such a trivial thing as that had been fodder for the other kids’ teasing: “Double-strapper,” they had called her.

  Had they thought that they could shame her? By then, Jessie had begun to feel nothing but scorn for their taunts. Why did they care how she carried her books? How could they not see their own pettiness, the dumb conformity they adhered to at all costs? It was clear to her even then that their jibes were not about her backpack—not really. The backpack simply let them see it clearly: how different she was from them.

  Jessie let out a little snort of a laugh. The college kids in the classes she taught now all came to class with backpacks, the straps over both shoulders. Presumably “double strapping” was the fashion now.

  “What?” Laurel asked.

  Jessie looked up. “What what?”

  “You laughed.”

  “Oh,” Jessie said, shaking her head. “I was just thinking about something.”

  “About Emma?” Laurel busied herself laying out her word: eclat.

  “Not really. Well, sort of. High school. Doesn’t eclat have an accent mark?”