“We are so sorry. A travel nightmare that you wouldn’t believe!”
The justice smiled indulgently. “Welcome.”
Laurel directed her entourage toward some empty seats in the back of the circle, and slowly heads turned back to where Heath and Jessie stood. Now that she wasn’t waiting anymore, the tension in Jessie’s stance eased. Emma felt her own stomach soften. She leaned back in her chair a little, suddenly aware of how rigid she had been holding herself.
Emma barely made it through the reading she had prepared. She saw the tears in Jessie’s eyes as she spoke, and her own voice cracked. Then they were both crying, and laughing. The guests murmured appreciatively and laughed, too, and suddenly Jessie broke away from Heath’s side and crushed her in a hug.
As Emma found her seat, the crowd quieted politely, eyes darting, wondering who would go next. Beside her, Emma heard Jay’s chair scrape against the wooden floor as he rose. Jay was six foot two, with black wavy hair that fell artfully across his forehead. He had arrived only this morning on a red-eye from New York, where he was spending the summer doing an internship at a marketing agency, but his shirt was perfectly ironed, his khakis crisp. Beside him, Heath looked slightly rumpled and unkempt. Emma smiled up at Jay. She only saw her brother at Thanksgiving and Christmas now, and it still surprised her a little, to see him so grown up.
Jay cleared his throat. “I’m Jay, Jessie’s brother, and as you can probably tell,” he began, looking down at himself appraisingly, “Jessie and I are pretty different.”
The crowd chuckled.
“Jessie is five-years older than I am, and when we were growing up together, we weren’t really that close. In fact, back then I always sort of suspected that Jessie didn’t really think that much of me. I was just her kid brother who cared about sports and video games and other trivial stuff like that, and she could beat me at running even when she gave me a huge head start.” He met Jessie’s eye and winked, and the crowd laughed again. “Anyway, it occurred to me today that maybe my sister thought the same thing about me. So I think I’ll take this opportunity to set the record straight. Jessie, anyone who knows you at all knows what a powerhouse you are, and I am no exception.”
Jay turned to Heath.
“Heath, I hope you appreciate what a pot of gold you have found in my sister. She has aced every test she’s ever taken, she’s faster than all the boys—or she was in sixth grade anyway—and she is a hell of an arm-wrestler. That’s all. I hope you’ll be very happy together.”
Jay returned to his seat next to Emma, and she looked up at him wonderingly.
“Wow, Jay,” she whispered. “Nice job. I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Jay looked down at her. “Boys have feelings, too, you know. Sometimes we are even able to articulate some of them.”
She grinned. “Go figure,” she said. “Maybe I’ll keep that in mind if this whole lesbian thing doesn’t work out.”
The sharing came to an end, at last, and the guests murmured as they watched Heath and Jessie take the steps hand in hand and disappear together down the path that led into the woods. When they had gone, there was a restless shifting; chairs scraped the wooden floor, children whispered audibly to their parents, “Is it over now?”
The justice smiled. “Yes, the ceremony is now over. Thank you for your participation. There will be dinner and dancing in the lodge, if you’d like to make your way there and join Jessie and Heath.”
Guests soon began to trickle out of the shelter and up the trail; others stood milling about, talking, while a handful of older kids began to leap from the edge of the shelter into the wet grass below.
Emma watched as Laurel separated herself from her clan and walked toward Len and Sarah.
“Leonard,” she said, holding out her hand. “Sarah.”
“Laurel.” They each shook it. “How are you.”
It was not a question, but still Laurel rattled on.
“Oh, wonderful. Just wonderful. I’m so . . . proud? Happy? I don’t know what I am! But you must know what I mean.”
Emma watched her father glance away, her mother nod tersely.
“Jessie was worried, of course, that this might be . . . ‘weird’ I think was her word. But I told her there was nothing to worry about. We are all grown-ups, I told her. Surely we could all get along now. Surely there wouldn’t be—”
“Momma,” a tiny voice called out. “Momma!”
Laurel faltered in mid-sentence and turned. “Liza!”
Emma, Len, Sarah—all turned in the direction of the voice. A little girl, more a toddler than a child, was racing across the shelter toward them, holding out her arms.
“Momma!”
Her blond hair was in two pigtails on each side of her head, her small face round and lightly freckled, her eyes blue-green and almond-shaped. She looks familiar, Emma thought suddenly. She looks like . . .
Emma felt her heart stop for one long second, felt the color drain from her face. She looks like me, she thought. There was a photo in her bedroom at home, taken soon after their family had moved to Bakersfield. In the picture, she and Jessie sat together in the porch swing of their new house, their legs stretched out in front of them so that their faces seemed to peek out at the camera from behind the little knobs of their toes. Emma’s face was round as a cantaloupe, she had always thought, with two pig-tails sprouting like stems from either side.
Oh no, she thought now, her eyes going first to the child, still running toward Laurel, and then to Sarah. She watched her mother register the girl, watched her see the pigtails, the round face, the sea-green eyes. She didn’t know if her mother thought, then, of the same photograph that she had immediately called to mind, but she saw her mother’s face go white, watched her clutch at her father’s hand as if to steady herself.
“Len,” she said.
Len looked at her with relief. “Time to go the lodge, isn’t it?”
Laurel knelt to catch the girl in her arms. “This is my . . .” she began, then faltered. “This is our Liza. Jessie told you, I guess, that Sue had—”
Sarah frowned down at the girl. “Yes, we heard.”
“Glad you could make it, Laurel,” Len said. “We should probably—”
“Of course.” Laurel scooped the little girl awkwardly onto her hip. “We’ll all come along in a minute, too.”
In the lodge, Emma immediately found the ladies’ room. She stood in the narrow stall, taking deep breaths to steady herself. Suddenly she heard the outer door to the restroom open. There were only two stalls; she couldn’t stay inside much longer without being conspicuous. Readying herself to smile at whomever had just come in, she unlatched the stall door and pushed it open. Then she froze. Her mother stood in front of the sink, digging a tissue from her bag.
“Mom.”
Sarah looked up, saw Emma, and looked away. She blew her nose.
“That little girl.”
Emma didn’t speak. She felt herself nod.
“She looks—she looks just like you did, Emma, when you were that age.”
Emma’s chin dipped again.
“Is she—?” Sarah asked. “Did you—?”
“Mom. No.”
Her mother nodded. “I didn’t really think so,” she said. “Jessie then.”
Emma closed her eyes.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
Emma said nothing.
“Oh, Emma. It’s not fair of her. She can’t keep asking you to keep secrets like that.”
“Mom, she doesn’t keep asking.”
“Well, it’s not fair, is it? To make you carry that around.”
“I thought . . . Well, I think she meant to tell you. After the wedding, maybe.”
“Yes,” Sarah said dryly. “I could see how that would be more convenient.”
“Laurel knew it was . . . a secret. How could she not have predicted this? She must have known—”
Sarah laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, I don’t know. She didn’t
see much of you at that age. The resemblance might not be so striking to her.”
“But—”
“And even if she had realized, do you think that would have stopped her? I am absolutely certain that Laurel wouldn’t have passed up a chance like this to put her ‘family’ on display—”
“Mom.”
“It’s true, Emma. She’s thrilled to bits at having created a sensation. You just have to look at her—”
“Mom,” Emma interrupted. “I’m sorry.”
Sarah looked at Emma.
“Why?”
“For keeping it from you. I hated it.” Despite herself, Emma could feel her tears rising. God, she was so fragile these days; the slightest thing could set her off.
“Oh, Emma. This is exactly what I meant. You shouldn’t have been put in this position. It’s just not fair.”
Emma sighed. “Well, it’s over now.”
But her mother shook her head. “I doubt that, Emma. I really do.”
Emma was in line at the buffet when Laurel came to stand behind her.
“Hello, Laurel,” Emma said, turning. She looked down and saw to her surprise that Laurel was alone. “Where is—?” She hesitated. “Where’s the little one?”
“With Sue and Jim. I saw you here and just thought I’d—”
Emma nodded. “How are you?”
“Wonderful. Wonderful! You wouldn’t believe what a blessing . . . what a complete joy this baby has been. Yesterday she said the funniest—”
“I just hope you’re grateful,” Emma interrupted. The words seemed to have left her mouth before she had even thought them. “Very, very grateful.”
“Grateful? Of course. Didn’t I just say what a blessing—”
“I meant, to Jessie. I hope that you appreciate what she did. To give something like that. It’s a very big deal.” Emma heard how schoolmarmy her voice sounded; she felt strangely as if she were speaking to a child. But she couldn’t stand Laurel’s cheerful flippancy.
Now Laurel’s eyes teared up, and Emma had to look away.
“Oh yes,” Laurel said, her voice cracking. “Yes, we are very grateful. Jessie . . . Jessie was very generous.”
Emma nodded tersely, then looked toward the buffet table. They hadn’t moved any closer, and she couldn’t stand the thought of trying to make conversation with Laurel as they crept along in the slow-moving line.
“You know, I think I might wait until the line dies down,” she said. Across the room, she spotted Aunt Margie. “And there’s my aunt. I better go say hi.”
She said an awkward goodbye to Laurel and made her way across the room to where Aunt Margie stood. When the older lady saw her, she grabbed her in a fierce embrace.
“You girls are so big, I can’t believe it. It seems like just the other day when . . .”
Aunt Margie launched into reminiscing, and Emma smiled and nodded along; she felt her mind grow calmer in Aunt Margie’s steady presence. Then, suddenly, she became aware that Aunt Margie’s gaze had shifted. She was no longer looking into Emma’s eyes but two inches above them. Emma raised a hand to her forehead, self-conscious, and then immediately understood. Her hair.
“You girls used to have such beautiful, long hair.”
Emma laughed. “Yeah, well, I cut it off a couple of weeks ago.”
“For goodness’ sakes. Right before the wedding? Why on earth . . . ?”
Emma smiled grimly. She had asked herself the same question often enough over the past few weeks, staring into the mirror at her cropped hair. In truth, she didn’t know how to explain why she had cut it. It had been a bad day; all morning she had lain in bed, despondent. When she had finally gotten up, she had wielded the scissors recklessly, as if the dull blades might cut away her grief.
Later, she had wished she hadn’t. Katherine’s leaving had changed her. Emma was not the upbeat, sanguine person that she used to be, and now . . . Now she no longer even looked like herself. Even her own regret depressed her, because she sensed that there was something homophobic in it. She could feel other lesbians notice her now; she saw their infinitesimal nods as they passed her on the street, and she began to understand that in the queer community a short haircut was less a style than a subtle flag: I’m one of you. But with Katherine gone, Emma didn’t want to look like a dyke. Without Katherine, she felt dismembered, disarranged. She didn’t want to be recognized; she wanted to be invisible.
Now she forced herself to smile. “Don’t worry, Aunt Margie, it’ll grow back.”
But Aunt Margie was looking at her seriously.
“Emma,” she said earnestly. “Your father told me about you . . . I mean, about your . . .”
Emma’s stomach plunged for no reason she could have explained. “He told you about Katherine?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you, exactly? It wasn’t a secret,” she added quickly, suddenly sick of the very word. “I would have told you, if . . .” If Katherine hadn’t left, she thought. If she were here now.
“He just said that you were dating a . . . dating a girl.” She paused, and again her eyes darted upward. “Is that why you have your hair like that, Jessie? Is that lesbian hair?”
Emma laughed. “No. Well, maybe.” She paused. “Katherine . . . My girlfriend left me a few months ago. Cutting my hair was just an act of misery.”
Aunt Margie looked first startled, then concerned. “Oh dear.”
Emma shrugged. “Like I said, it’ll grow.”
But Aunt Margie was sweeping her arms around, gesturing at everything at once. “Well, surely it was for the best? I mean—don’t you want this?” she said. “Don’t you want all this?”
Emma looked around at the milling guests. She caught sight of her mother’s stony face, saw Laurel’s broad back bending over the buffet table. Still, she knew what Aunt Margie meant.
“Yeah, I guess.” She wanted to add something else, to point out that she could have “all this” with a woman, too, but Aunt Margie looked so relieved to have straightened her out that she let it go. If Katherine were here with her, there would have been a point to it. But what was the point now?
CHAPTER 48
Jessie
For weeks after the wedding, Jessie understood that her parents were punishing her. She called and left message after message on their new voicemail, but they didn’t call her back. She suspected that they had caller ID now; even when she called their land line at times they were sure to be at home, no one picked up. Each time that she heard her mother’s cheerful recorded greeting, “This is the Walters’ residence,” Jessie felt her stomach lurch and a hollowness open up inside her. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, and that only made it worse. One minute Jessie would be a happy newlywed, eager to share some small detail with Len and Sarah, the next she would be hurtled back to adolescence, plunged into her parents’ cool anger, so that even now nothing else seemed to matter but that their hearts seemed closed to her.
At fourteen, Jessie thought that she had understood it; it was easy to see how she had transgressed. When she had said she wanted to live with Laurel in Baymont, she had given voice to a dream that they would never understand. That her parents had been hurt by this was obvious at once. But it had taken Jessie years to understand the subtle distance that had come between them then.
Oh, it was such a hard thing to put her finger on. On the surface, things had proceeded as normal—her parents came to her cross country meets and signed her report cards and bid her goodnight—and yet still she had felt as if she didn’t quite belong. It had been impossible to put right, impossible to know how to respond. To feel dejected, which she did, only left her dejected with no hope of comfort or compassion, for how could she lament the awful distance she felt between them, when it had been she who had first put it there? To feel angry was out of the question, since anger meant pushing away, and what did she have to push against? To answer her parents’ anger with anger of her own was to risk an even wider gulf, and for this she didn’
t have the courage or the heart.
It was the loneliest she had ever been. Even Emma had proved little comfort, tiptoeing around her as if she were a whole new animal, unknown and not to be trusted.
It had been a raw and dismal time, a persistent ache inside her chest. And she had felt then, Jessie thought, almost exactly as she felt now. Still, Jessie found that she could not quite believe it. Would her parents truly cast her out over this? They were her eggs. A gift of compassion, not some deeper symbol of allegiance. She called home yet again, counting the five hollow rings before her mother’s voice came on the line. “This is the Walters’ residence. Please leave a message.”
This time, she didn’t. She had already left too many. She hung up the phone and sat down heavily at the kitchen table.
A moment later, Heath came in, took one look at her, and sat down across the table.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She looked up and tried to smile. “Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You never sit down, Jessie. I have never once seen you just sit down. ‘Wow,’ I said to myself, ‘Jessie’s sitting down. Something must be wrong.’ So what is it?”
Jessie laughed wryly. “You’re very perceptive.”
“Is it me?” Heath asked. “Did I put a paper napkin in the garbage instead of the compost? Oh no, it’s worse, isn’t it? I used a paper napkin in the first place.”
Jessie laughed in spite of herself. “No, Heath, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s just . . . I just called home. Again. And no one answers. I leave messages, and no one returns my calls.”
Heath looked around the kitchen. “You called here? And I didn’t answer? Oh baby, I’m sorry. I must not have heard the phone.”
He was so deadpan, Jessie didn’t realize at first that he was joking. “Not here. Home,” she began and then stopped. “Not here,” she said again. “Not this home. I meant my parents’.”
Heath sighed. “I knew what you meant. But I was trying to make a point. This is home, isn’t it? Wasn’t that why we got married? So we’d have a home together?”
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