Worry

by Jessica Westhead

  Stef holds out her arms. “Hey, hey! Calm down, everyone. Cottage Time is a magical time, when the indulgence of spirits and other substances—yes, some of them are still illegal in some parts of the world, but for how much longer?—is not only encouraged, but mandatory. We like to think of Cottage Time as a soothing balm for Real Life.”

  Sammy passes Stef the joint, grinning. “I love you, babe.”

  “Right back at you, you revolting man.” She takes a haul and passes it to Marvin, who holds it out to Ruth. “Ladies first.”

  “You should have some of that,” Stef tells her. “Seriously.”

  “Fine. Give it here.” Ruth takes the joint and finally sits down. “But I’m only having a tiny bit.”

  Stef claps her on the back and starts pulling more beer cans out of the cooler bag. “We can have some drinks too, if that makes you feel better.”

  SOME TIME LATER, not too much time but maybe a lot, Ruth realizes it’s been a while since she’s heard the happy shrieks that reassure her that Fern and the twins haven’t disappeared forever.

  Sammy and Stef aren’t worried, though, so Ruth tries not to worry either. She sits back and sips her beer, and every part of her is warm and she likes the songs that keep playing, the repetitive rhythm of them. They sound like a heartbeat.

  Every so often, random guests will pass by and wave at Marvin. Their smiles are tentative and respectful, but they never say anything. Sometimes he waves back and sometimes he doesn’t.

  Stef takes a swig of red wine from her travel mug. “Amelia punched a kid at Creative Movement last month.”

  “Yikes,” says Marvin. “What’s that?”

  “Basically a bunch of seven-year-olds bounce around on gym mats like insane people for an hour. It’s a total bullshit class but the parents get to sit on uncomfortable chairs and drink shitty coffee in peace so what the hell. Anyway, the kid punched her back and then the kid’s mother and I started shoving each other and long story short, my family is banned from Creative Movement for all eternity, which is actually a fucking blessing if you ask me, but it still doesn’t feel good, you know? Then before we left, Isabelle took a crap in the kitchen sink at the community centre, which logistically, how did she do that, it’s pretty impressive, and in my heart I know she was doing it for me, because of us being kicked out and my pride being hurt and everything. Which was sweet of her, but also really bizarre and unsettling.” She pauses to gulp some more wine. “This is why we bought the cottage. Our children are not ready for society.”

  “Nobody sets limits for their kids anymore,” says Sammy. “Kids need boundaries. If we didn’t lock the twins in a closet once in a while and turn off the light and say there was a monster in there with them, they wouldn’t listen to us at all.”

  “That’s only if they’re really being fuckers, though,” Stef adds.

  Marvin says, “Better a kid who doesn’t listen than no kid at all, right?”

  Sammy smacks himself on the forehead. “Jesus, Marvin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, it’s okay.” Marvin gives him a sad smile. “I thought Lesley might come and enjoy the fire tonight, I guess. It’s a good one.”

  His voice vibrates in Ruth’s chest, finding a home there. He and Lesley both wanted kids, she understands now, and they don’t have them.

  “It’s a great one, buddy,” says Sammy. “Your bonfires are the best.”

  Marvin gives him a sombre salute. “Thanks for saying that.”

  All around them, revellers are shouting, singing, dancing, and spearing marshmallows and hot dogs onto sharpened sticks and thrusting them into the fire.

  Ruth says, “The kids are around here somewhere, right?” Trying to sound casual.

  “Of course they are,” says Sammy.

  “They must be here. They wouldn’t have gone anywhere else, would they?”

  Stef lifts her travel mug to her lips and tilts it up high, emptying it all the way. “They know not to go into the woods or down to the water by themselves. Where else would they go?”

  “You’d be surprised,” says Marvin, and they all turn to look at him. “But I’m sure they’re fine,” he adds quickly.

  “They’re fine, right?” says Ruth. Anxiety creeping in.

  Not too far away, the pointy tips of evergreens and the thinnest branches waving from the tops of the leafy trees are spotlit by the blaze. Sometimes the dark shapes of bats will flit between them, so quickly that it’s hard to be sure that they were even there at all.

  “They’re fine.” Stef shakes her head. “They’re smart girls.”

  “Wait a minute,” says Sammy, “are you talking about our children?”

  She snorts out a laugh. “I did drink quite heavily when they were in the womb.” She catches Ruth’s eye. “Fern, on the other hand, is perfect. She’s a gift from an angel.”

  “You said that already,” says Marvin.

  Stef shrugs. Her teeth are black again, stained by the red wine this time. “Because it’s the truth.”

  He looks between her and Ruth, who isn’t smiling. “That’s nice.”

  Nobody speaks for a while. The fire crackles and the embers glow.

  Suddenly the music changes and Stef shouts, “Holy shit, they’re playing Pearl Jam! Let’s go!” She jumps up and grabs Ruth’s arm and drags her over to a group of dancing twenty-somethings, and Ruth lets herself be dragged.

  Stef twirls her around. “Goddamn, I love this song.” She throws her head back and sings along to “Better Man” at top volume, and a few of the young women around them snicker.

  Stef sneers and yells, “We were your age when this came out, skanks!”

  Ruth shakes her head. “You are totally going to get us beat up.”

  Now Stef is doing her angry dance, which involves jabbing her elbows at anybody who comes near, and Ruth does her best to run interference, shooting apologetic glances at the other dancers.

  She spins around with her friend, trying to forget about everything and sink into this music that is so perfect because it reminds her of the glorious time they spent apart.

  Ruth used to slip a homemade mix-tape into her Walkman and slip the bulky machine into the giant front pocket of her bulky overalls, and roam around the campus by herself listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana and Oasis and Sinéad O’Connor. She’d belt out the lyrics and dance as she walked, twirling and shimmying and even skipping sometimes when her glee was uncontainable, even if people could see her. Nobody cared anyway. Other students would smile and give her the thumbs-up when she grooved by. They were all far from home, away from the rules of parents and the tyranny of childhood friends. Free from limits and expectations and old, destructive patterns. Free to be someone different if they wanted to, or just free to be the person they’d been all along.

  Stef leans in, so close that her breath is warm on Ruth’s face. “I love you, you know.”

  The shaggy pine and spruce branches sway all around them, black now instead of green. The leaves on the oaks and maples and elms rustle, and the scattered white birches are ghosts in the dark.

  “Ha,” says Ruth.

  “Hey.” Stef stops grinning and crosses her arms. “You didn’t even notice my eye makeup.”

  “Oh. It looks nice.”

  Stef punches her arm. “Bitch.”

  “Ow!”

  Marvin walks over with two more beers. “Ooh, can I put you two in a cage and watch you fight to the death and then I get to keep the winner?”

  Before handing the cans over, he holds them up and jangles them exactly like the animated dog on Puppy Commander does with the owner’s leash when it’s time to go for a walk, and the owner immediately stops whatever he’s doing and puts his hands up to his face and sticks his tongue out and pants excitedly.

  Which makes Ruth wonder if Marvin has ever watched the show, but that would be silly, he doesn’t have kids, and why would anyone watch that show if they didn’t have kids? It’s terrible.

  “Marvin, I
’ll say it again—you’re a creepy man.” Stef takes a contented swig. “Mmm, delicious roofies.”

  Ruth stares at them.

  “Drink up,” says Stef. “I’m kidding, Jesus.”

  “Okay.” Ruth heads back to her chair, but on the way there, everything swims and then she’s on the ground, spilled beer foaming by her feet.

  Stef reaches for her, but Ruth waves her off and rescues her half-empty can. “I’m fine.”

  Her friend holds up her hands. “Whatever you say.” Then, “Sammy? You wanna go look for our daughters?”

  Sammy finishes off his own beer and tosses the empty can behind him. “Not really.”

  “You wanna go make out?”

  “Yes.”

  And just like that, before she really knows what’s going on, Ruth is alone with Marvin.

  “Let me help you up,” he says, and this time she doesn’t argue.

  He lifts her under her floppy arms and deposits her in an empty chair.

  “Let me do this for you. It’s something I’m good at,” Stef said, a long time ago.

  Ruth and Stef and James were in the family room of Stef and Sammy’s big house. Ruth and James were sitting together on the couch and Stef stood in front of them and took their drinks out of their hands and set them down on the coffee table next to the big bowl of chips she’d put out earlier, proclaiming this was an occasion for junk food. (“But isn’t that every occasion? Ha ha.”) She crossed her arms and said they had to listen to her, but they just leaned against each other and reached for their drinks again.

  Sammy had already gone to bed because the one-year-old twins would be awake very early in the morning. The floor was littered with their toys and there were baby gates in every doorway.

  The couch floated in the middle of the messy room, a little island for Ruth and James, and she wondered how many times he and Stef had sat together like this on the island they’d visited a few months before. They’d taken a business trip to a tropical paradise and she wondered how much work they’d gotten done.

  She wasn’t paying attention to what Stef was saying but then her friend’s voice was pleading with them, please, she really wanted to help because she loved them and they’d all known each other for so long, they were basically family already. This would just be one more adventure they had together, one more great story to tell, and it might be weird at first but who cared about that because at the end of it they’d have a child.

  And Ruth had been about to say no, that was a generous offer but no, it wasn’t a good idea. But then James started to nod. Even though Ruth kept shaking her head. Back and forth, back and forth.

  Later that night when they were alone, she told him, “I’m not giving up yet.”

  And he said, “It’s not giving up. It’s just doing things differently.”

  “No,” said Ruth. “I need one more try, before that. Just the two of us.” And she kissed him, and he kissed her back, but something was missing and she didn’t know what it was.

  Marvin lets out a low chuckle, his grin half in shadow. “Somebody should’ve warned you.”

  “What did you say?” Ruth’s thick tongue is clumsy with the words and they come out wrong. Or maybe not.

  “Sammy’s weed is pretty strong. Especially if you’re not used to it.”

  “I’m fine.” She gazes at the flames, trying to pick out animal shapes like her dad taught her to do when she was little. Her mom would head back to the cottage to sleep, and he and Ruth would sit around the campfire for hours. “How long have we been sitting here?”

  “A while.”

  There’s a horse, galloping.

  She should get up and look for Fern but the chair is so comfortable. And she’s so heavy in it.

  “You want another drink?” Marvin asks her, smiling. “You spilled most of your last one.”

  She shakes her head but the movement is very small. Unconvincing.

  At times like these when Ruth is away from her little family, it’s not so much that she misses James and Fern, but that she begins to wonder if they ever existed at all. And then that possibility grows inside her and obliterates all other possibilities, so that it becomes easy to believe, and the shock of realizing it squeezes all the breath out of her at once.

  “Where’s Fern?” Ruth strains her eyes against the darkness, feeling a surge of hope when she spots three small forms running toward them with sparklers held high. When they get closer, though, they’re somebody else’s kids.

  Did the girls come back and get their sparklers at some point? She struggles to remember. Yes, they did. When? Before. But who lit them? Not me.

  There’s a cat, burning.

  Farther back, where there isn’t so much smoke, a billion stars light up the sky. Ruth wishes she could point them out to Fern. If Fern were with her right now, that’s what she would do.

  “She’s such a lovely little girl.” Marvin’s voice floats to her from far away. “I’d worry about her too.”

  She rubs her eyes, which are stinging from the smoke.

  “Having a baby is so easy for some people. But they’re not the lucky ones.” His words are echoey, distorted. “Do you want to know why?”

  Ruth feels herself nod. Her head is a rubber ball, bouncing.

  “Because if nothing ever goes wrong along the way, you get to the end and you have your child, but you don’t appreciate them. Not in the same way.” He pauses and stares into the fire. “But when you have a hard time, you get to the end and you have your child, and you’re grateful every day.”

  “I am,” she says, even as she’s feeling sad for this kind man who has no child at all.

  “I know you are.” He gives her a big smile. “Gratitude makes life better. Without it, life is just something to get through. So hold onto it, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ruth says, and she tries to picture her daughter in a situation with the best possible outcome and does her best to direct all of the negative energy away from her. Fern is fine. She’ll be okay. She belongs to Ruth, and Ruth is so grateful.

  She has Fern now because her arms were so empty they ached, and then she didn’t have her father anymore and she was cold, and it still hurt to stand for long periods of time and she’d been standing all day, and all of the sandwiches at her dad’s funeral were so ridiculously small. Stef went to get James and the two of them returned to the reception room together and walked right over to Ruth, and for a moment, Ruth thought they were holding hands, but no, of course they weren’t. James was in love with Ruth. They were still together, even though they’d barely touched each other for two months because Ruth was still so sore. But she could tell he was losing patience with her. Stef said, “My offer still stands, you know,” and James rested his hand on Ruth’s shoulder and it was too heavy but she pretended not to notice, and this time Ruth said yes. Just the one word, out loud. It was all she could manage. She didn’t have enough strength left to even complete the sentence: Yes, carry our baby for us. I’m too tired to keep trying.

  “Don’t worry,” Marvin says. “The kids are safe. Everybody’s got their eye out.” He reaches down and opens a little cooler by his feet.

  Ruth stares at it. Where did that come from? It must’ve been there all along, though, and she just didn’t notice it. It’s easier not to notice things all the time.

  His thick fingers grip the necks of two bottles. Something red. “Here,” he says. “Live a little.”

  She takes the bottle he hands her and presses her fingertips against the cold glass.

  Marvin smiles as she unscrews the cap. “Fruit punch was his favourite.”

  “Who?” She’s already swallowed a big mouthful. It’s too sweet, but she doesn’t care.

  “Mine, I mean.” He winks. “My favourite.”

  He’s always winking, thinks Ruth. That’s a funny thing to do.

  Her bottle is half empty already. She’s guzzling it because it’s familiar. Her parents used to let her have fruit punch at the cottage. It’s
a little kid’s drink.

  All around them, pretty young women in tight pants that show off their hips are dancing with handsome young men in droopy undershirts that show off their biceps. Some of the boys are sporting furry hats shaped like animal heads, like something children would wear. It’s weird, but the girls seem to think it’s cute. They keep reaching up and petting the plush fox and lion and elephant heads and giggling.

  Marvin stands up and holds out his hand. “So, Miss Ruth, do you still think I’m the Big Bad Wolf?”

  “No,” she says, “I think you’re nice.” The words fall out of her, and she floats up and out of the chair and into his arms.

  He holds on tight, smiling down at her. “Everybody’s nice.”

  Ruth has never been this relaxed. She presses her face against Marvin’s strong, broad chest just like the girls around them are pressing their faces against the boys’ strong, skinny chests. She sways her hips that are rounder than the young women’s hips, and watches the girls rub the boys’ hard backs and the boys nip the girls’ soft ears. Sometimes the girls will say, “Stop that!” But they don’t really mean it.

  When Stef was pregnant with Fern, she once joked that instead of sending James into a room with dirty magazines, the doctor had sent him into a room with her. She and Ruth were shopping for baby clothes together, and Ruth was holding a flannel sleeper. So tiny and so soft. “You’re not helping,” she said quietly.

  And Stef rubbed the curve of her ripening belly and deadpanned, “Oh, but I am.”

  Ruth hadn’t been there when the embryo was transferred. She hadn’t wanted to leave her bed. But she knew the baby was hers. Made by Ruth and James, together. It was silly to believe anything else. James drove Stef to the clinic because he said it would be rude not to. He waited with her while she recovered. They were like brother and sister, and Stef was just a place for Fern to stay for a while. She wasn’t her home.

  Ruth pinched the tag on the sleeper and frowned at it. “I shouldn’t get the newborn size, right? Because it’ll be too small?”

  “Yep. She’ll outgrow it in a day.” Stef yanked a miniature sailor suit off the rack, making the other hangers rattle. “Sammy hates that I’m doing this, by the way,” she said, playing with the outfit’s wide, frilly collar. It looked more like a Halloween costume than actual clothes. “He says it’s not worth it.” She sneered at the sailor suit and put it back. “Only an asshole would make a baby wear this.”