“Last night when I called Rick he said he was getting it from his parents, too. He can’t call for a while.” She sighed, crossing her arms against her shirt, a long white polo ten sizes too big. I wondered if Rick had any clothes of his own left. I imagined him leaving 4-H camp naked, with Casey packing up everything he owned as a souvenir.
“It’s only till Thanksgiving,” I said, trying to be helpful. It hadn’t happened to me yet, this swirling mass of emotions that made all the women around me behave so erratically.
“Thanksgiving is forever away,” she whined as we took the corner and headed down the street parallel to our own. “I’m going nuts here and it’s been less than a week. I’ve got to find some way to get up there.”
“Get up where?”
She rolled her eyes. “Pennsylvania. God, Haven, aren’t you paying attention?”
“Not when you start talking like a crazy person. You don’t even drive yet.”
“I will, in two and a half weeks.” With the wedding so close, I’d forgotten her birthday was coming up. “Dad’s been taking me out every night to drive around and I know they’re going to give me my grandmother’s Delta 88. They think it’s a secret and I don’t know why it’s in the garage, but I know.”
“Even if you are about to get your license,” I said as a mass of kids on bikes passed us, all of them in helmets and knee pads, little punks terrorizing the neighborhood, “they’d never let you take off to Pennsylvania.”
“Of course they wouldn’t let me.” She said this matter-of-factly, as if I was slow and just not getting it. Since Casey had gone wild at 4-H camp, it seemed like we had less and less in common. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t go. I just slip out, see, in the middle of the night, and call them the next morning when I’m in, like, Maryland. By then they’re just so crazed with worry they’re just happy I’m alive, so they let me go on. Then I come back and get punished forever but it’s worth it because I get to be with Rick.”
I looked at her. “That will never work.”
She stuck out her bottom lip, something she’d gotten good at in the last week, and said, “Yes it will.”
“Oh, like Rick’s parents wouldn’t send you home the second you showed up. They’re not going to let you just hang out while your parents are sitting around here waiting for you to get home so they can kill you.”
She was staring at the sidewalk as I said this, making a point of not looking at me. After a minute she said in a tight voice, “You don’t understand, Haven. You couldn’t. You’ve never been in love.”
“Oh please,” I said, suddenly fed up. I was sick of hearing about Rick and Pennsylvania and camp stories. I couldn’t talk to anyone anymore. Sumner seemed like the only one who listened at all, the only one who asked for nothing and took nothing from me.
“You know what your problem is,” Casey began, her hand poised to shake at me, but then she stopped dead, sucking in her breath. She grabbed my shirt, tugging, and pointed across one of the yards.
It was Gwendolyn Rogers. Or at least the back of Gwendolyn Rogers. Her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and she was wearing a black string bikini top, standing there in the backyard all by herself. She had her hands on her hips and was staring off across the yard, over the wall and into the next yard. She was standing very, very still.
I heard a woman’s voice, suddenly, wafting out from the open downstairs windows of the house. “Gwendolyn? Gwennie, are you down here? Gwendolyn?” It was a mother’s voice.
Gwendolyn didn’t move, so still and tall, so much like the trees around her. She was enormous, and for the first time in so long I felt small, no bigger than a minute.
Casey was still pulling on my shirt, pointing like I hadn’t seen anything and saying, “That’s her, God, Haven, look.”
I was looking. And listening to Mrs. Rogers’s voice as it moved past one window after another, growing louder, then fading. Finally she came out on the back porch, where we could only see the top of her head over the wall, being that she was normal sized. Softly, she said, “Gwendolyn?” The top of her head moved across the yard, until it was flush with the middle of Gwendolyn’s spine. I saw a hand come up, tiny, and take one of the long, thin arms. “Let’s go in, honey, okay? Maybe you should lie down for a little while.”
Her voice was very clear and soft, the kind you hear at your bedside when you’re sick and throwing up and your mother brings cold compresses and ginger ale and oyster crackers. Mrs. Rogers rubbed her hand up and down Gwendolyn’s arm, talking now in a low voice that I couldn’t make out; but Gwendolyn didn’t move a muscle. Finally, Gwendolyn turned. I saw her face then, the same one we’d seen on all those magazine covers and on MTV. But it wasn’t the same: it wasn’t bronzed, with pink lips and lashes a mile long; no hair blowing back in the wind, framing her face; no diamonds flashing out of the wild blue of her eyes. Instead, I saw just a tall girl with a blank, plain expression, thin and angular and lost. Her cheeks were hollow and her mouth small, not luscious, more like a slit drawn hastily with a marker or a child’s crayon. I don’t know if she saw us. She was looking our way, her eyes on us, but there was no way of telling what she saw. It could have been us or the trees behind us or maybe another place or faces of other people. She only looked at us for a few moments, with that haunted, gaunt expression before her mother prodded her along and she ducked into the doorway, vanishing.
“Did you see her?” Casey was standing in their yard now, craning her head to get a look inside. “God, can you believe it? She looks horrible.”
“We should go,” I said, now aware that they could be in any of those windows, watching us. It seemed like too small a house to hold someone so big, like a doll’s house with tiny plates and newspapers.
I practically had to drag Casey down the sidewalk. She was sure Gwendolyn was going to make another appearance, or burst out the door for another hysterical walk through the neighborhood.
“Come on,” I said, then gave up trying to move her forcibly and just took off myself, much the way I always did when she was doing something that could get us both in trouble.
She came along, complaining all the way. “If we’d stayed, she might have come out and talked to us. She’s probably lonely.”
“She doesn’t even know us,” I said as we turned back onto our street. Mrs. Melvin’s flag, emblazoned with a strawberry, flapped in the breeze a few houses down. The bike gang passed again, this time in the street, yelling and shooting us the finger. They were all elementary school kids.
“She knows we feel her pain,” said Casey, who suddenly had personal insight into this herself. “I know what it feels like.”
“You do not,” I said as we came up to the Melvins’ house. “All you know is loving some dumb guy in Pennsylvania.”
“Love is love is love,” Casey said, stubborn. “We women know.”
We were passing her house anyway, so Casey stopped for the first half-hour check. Mrs. Melvin was in the kitchen, making some kind of fancy meal that required the peeling of an eggplant. Baby Ronald was at the kitchen table eating baloney slices and playing with his Star Trek action figures.
“Just to let you know I haven’t run off to Pennsylvania,” Casey said, heading straight to the fridge. The room smelled like burnt rice. I could hear Charlie Baker, news anchorman, talking about national affairs from the small TV that sat on the counter by the bananas.
“Not funny.” Mrs. Melvin put down the eggplant, which was a sickly brown color without its purple skin. “Don’t forget we have dinner at six-fifteen. It’s family night.”
Casey pulled out two cans of Diet Pepsi and made a face at me. “God, how much time do I have to spend with you guys, anyway?”
Mrs. Melvin went back to the eggplant, her mouth in that tight little line that meant she was cranky. “I’m not in the mood to answer that question.”
“Hey, baby Ronald,” I said, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from him.
He scowled, wrinkling
his nose. Freckles folded in, then out. “Shut up.”
“Ronald,” Mrs. Melvin snapped. “That’s rude.”
“I’m not a baby,” he protested.
“Yes you are,” Casey said.
“Well, you’re in trouble,” Ronald said indignantly, slapping a piece of baloney on the table and marching a Klingon across it.
“And you’re stupid,” Casey said. “So stuff it.”
“Casey,” Mrs. Melvin said in a tired voice, “please.”
I turned my attention back to the TV, where I could see the entire Action News Team paired off at their two sets of desks. Charlie Baker and Tess Phillips on one side, grimly shuffling papers as we came back from a commercial; and off to the other, my father and Lorna, smiling and whispering to each other. My father had even more hair than the last time I’d seen him. He’d never had that much, even when I was little. Lorna was beside him, hands crossed on the desk in front of her.
“And now for the weather, let’s check in with Lorna Queen’s Weather Scene,” Charlie Baker boomed in his big voice while the camera panned across to Lorna’s smiling face. She stood up, today in a hot-pink miniskirt and jacket, and strolled over to the weather map.
“Thanks, Charlie. Today was gorgeous, right, folks? I wish I could tell you there was more of the same coming, but we haven’t quite gotten over the heat yet. Let’s take a look at the national map. You’ll see that a front is moving over the mid-Atlantic states, producing some heavy showers....”
I tuned Lorna out, instead watching her gesture her way across the fifty states, sweeping her arm over the map as if she could create showers or drought on a whim. I wondered if anyone ever really listened to her at all.
Now she was standing in front of the Five Day Forecast. “... right up until Tuesday, but I’ve got to say I can’t promise much for Wednesday through Friday. Look for some high cloud cover, the normal afternoon thunderstorm, and of course high temperatures and Charlie’s favorite, lots of humidity. Right, Charlie?”
The camera panned back to Charlie, who was caught playing with his pencil and mumbled something quickly before it zoomed back to Lorna. Now she was standing in front of a video of a bunch of children chasing bunny rabbits across the grass. “And finally, I just wanted to thank all the kids at the Little Ones day-care center, where I went today to do a Weather Scene Class. We talked about rain and snow and had some fun with the bunnies they have there, as you can see. Great kids.” She waved at the camera. “A special hello to all of them. Thanks for having me!”
“Good God,” Casey said dramatically, rolling her eyes.
“Casey,” Mrs. Melvin said, throwing the peeler in the sink.
“I’m just saying.”
Lorna was done waving now and took her seat next to my father again. Charlie Baker shuffled his papers around, looking official, and then said, “Thanks, Lorna. I’m looking forward to that humidity you promised me.”
“A little late to get in on that joke,” Casey said. “He’s such a cheeseball.”
Tess Phillips leaned across Charlie Baker, smiling her newswoman smile. “And I understand you have a special report of your own over there, Lorna.”
Lorna blushed, pinkly, and I got that sinking feeling in my stomach again. “Well, yes, both Mac and I do. Right, honey?”
“That’s right,” my father said. He seemed bigger with all that hair.
“We’re expecting!” Lorna squealed. “I’m due in March!”
On the television, in the Action News newsroom, there was an explosion of congratulations, slapping of backs, and general good spirits. In the Melvins’ kitchen it was too quiet and everyone was suddenly looking at me.
“Expecting?” Casey said. “How is that possible? The wedding was less than a month ago; there’s no way she could already be pregnant. Unless it happened before, but . . .”
“Casey,” Mrs. Melvin said in a low voice. “Hush.”
I stared at my father on the screen, watching him smile proudly at the viewing public before they cut to a commercial. Suddenly I wanted to go home.
“God, Haven. Why didn’t you tell me?” Casey was standing behind me now, her hand on the back of my chair.
“Look, I better get going.” I kept my eyes on the commercial for satellite dishes. Baby Ronald stomped his figures across the table, staging a war by the sugar bowl.
“I’ll walk you,” Casey said.
“No,” I said quickly. “That’s all right. I’ll call you later.”
“You okay?”
I could feel Mrs. Melvin, mouth of the neighborhood, watching me and taking notes for the next neighborhood gossip session. “Fine. I just forgot I had to be home.”
“Okay, well, call me.” She walked me to the door, holding it open as I stepped out onto the patio. “Seriously. I’m like a prisoner here.” Mrs. Melvin still had her eyes on me, eggplant in her hand.
“I’ll call.” I started down the driveway, sucking in the thick, humid air of late summer, heavy in my lungs. It was late afternoon and all the kids were out, bike punks and Big Wheels, and mothers with strollers grouped on the corner, no doubt passing the latest about nervous breakdowns and tuna casseroles and failing marriages, the goods on the neighborhood. I made it to the end of the driveway and hit the sidewalk, feeling each step in my shins as if by the sheer force of pounding my feet on the ground I could force the world out from under me.
As I walked I kept seeing my father in my mind, with his hair and that smile, proud and bursting, father-to-be. Lorna Queen with her little ears and blond hair. A baby with my father’s round face and my last name. My father’s new life was progressing as planned, one neat step at a time. And I felt it, again, that same feeling I got whenever another change or shift in my life was announced to me—selling the house, Ashley’s tantrums, now the baby—that need to dig in my heels and prepare myself for the next shock and its aftermath. I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.
I stopped suddenly, breathless, unsure of where I was. The houses in my neighborhood all looked the same, one floor plan reversed and then back again. More kids on bikes, more mothers on corners, flags with watermelon and sunshine designs hanging from front porches. I could have lived in any of these houses. Any of these families could have been mine, once.
The tight, throbbing feeling in my throat made me want to start sobbing, to break down, right there on an unfamiliar corner in front of a house just like my own. Everything seemed so out of control, as if even running the streets wouldn’t save me. I wondered if this was how Gwendolyn felt running wild at night, this lost, loose feeling that no consequence could be so harmful as the sense of staying where you were, or of being who you are. I wanted to be somewhere else, out of the range of my mother’s voice and ears, of Ashley’s pouty looks, of the News Channel 5 viewing area. Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.
I was going to let it happen, let the tears come and the sobs rise up from my chest. I imagined crying until I was exhausted, dry, finally letting it all go.
And then I heard that blub-blub-blub puttering around the corner where I stood. Sumner was behind the wheel, so busy adjusting the stereo that he didn’t even see me at first. Just as I thought to call his name he glanced over his shoulder.
He backed up beside me, smoothly aligning with the curb. The passenger seat was filled with books, heavy black volumes with gold monograms. “Hey, Haven. What’s going on?”
Even as he spoke I was doing it, breathing in and clearing my head, swallowing until the lump in my throat disappeared. Digging my heels in again, regulating myself. “Nothing,” I said.
“Need a ride?” He started pushing books into the back.
“Sure.” I climbed in and we were off, puttering along the short distance to my house, passing the Rogerses’, familiar territory. Sumner pulled off his tie and reached across me to stuff it in the glove compartment.
“So,” he said after a while
. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just . . . my father and his new wife are going to have a baby.”
“A baby?”
“Yeah. They just got married.”
He smiled. “Wow. They didn’t waste any time, huh?”
“I guess not,” I said. “I mean, it’s like this just makes it official. My father has completely begun his life over.” We passed the Melvins’, where baby Ronald was playing on the steps.
“Well, maybe he is. And that sucks. But it doesn’t mean he’s forgetting you or anything,” he said, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. “It’ll work out, Haven. This is the worst of it.”
I knew he was probably right. It seemed like every time I saw Sumner lately I was reacting to a crisis. And every time, he said the one thing, the right thing, that no one else could say.
“So,” I asked him, “what are you doing around these parts?”
“Selling encyclopedias. It’s a new job. My first day, actually.”
“Did you sell any?”
“No, but three people invited me in for soda. One of them was really old, too old for encyclopedias, but we looked at all her photo albums and talked about the war.”
“I didn’t think you could ever be too old for encyclopedias,” I said.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but according to my marketing manual eighty-five-year-old widows with ten cats and a houseful of dusty antiques are not writing a lot of term papers. Heard some great war stories, though. There’s nothing like a good war story.”
He slowed down; we were coming to my house. Ashley was walking up the front steps, still in her work clothes. She wore that damn lab coat everywhere.
We pulled up to the curb just as she got to the door, but she was digging for her keys and didn’t notice us. She didn’t remember the sound of the car the way I did. I wondered how she could ever have forgotten, but Ashley was always good at that.
We watched her fumbling in her purse, which was balanced against her knee. She brushed her hair impatiently out of her face, then tucked it behind her ear. Under her lab coat she had on a red dress that showed off her tan and wore black sandals over her tiny little feet. I thought again of her Barbie adolescence and how I’d envied her, and I looked at Sumner, at the expression I couldn’t read on his face. I wondered how she looked to him, if she was older or fatter or just the same as that last time he saw her on the porch, when she put a door between him and herself. Finally she found her keys, opened the door, and kicked it shut behind her, rattling the glass. I still hadn’t gotten out of the car.