The Probable Future

  Today it was Elinor who was the one to stand guard there on the platform of the Unity train station. It was a small, serviceable depot, built in the Gothic Revival style out of brown granite by a work crew from out of town, ornate, with a brass clock which rang on the hour, loudly, positioned in the center of the pitched roof so that high school students on the other side of town often claimed to be disturbed by the chiming during exams. The noon train, which had left Boston’s South Station at 10:45, was late, which was no great surprise. When the train did finally pull in, there was a big rush. The passengers must be gotten off quickly so that service would continue on to Hamilton. Eli Hathaway, surely one of the oldest taxi drivers in the Commonwealth, was honking his horn, offering the services of his ancient blue station wagon that had UNITY’S BEST AND ONLY TAXI SERVICE scrawled on the side in black paint. Sissy Elliot, as old as she was mean, was slowed down by her walker—far worse than a cane, Elinor was delighted to note—and had to be helped into the coach car by her daughter, Iris, which held up the process of unloading entirely.

  Elinor recognized Sissy Elliot, her neighbor to the west to whom she hadn’t spoken in twenty years, yet on this day she didn’t recognize her own daughter. Of course, she had been expecting an obstinate girl of seventeen, a girl so foolish she had run off two months before her graduation from high school. Jenny had been accepted at Brown and at Columbia, but instead she’d gone off to Cambridge and gotten a job at Bailey’s Ice Cream Parlor, where she fixed hot fudge sundaes and raspberry lime rickeys in an effort to support Will at Harvard. Elinor was looking for that girl, the one who’d made one mistake after another, someone ruled by her own cravings who didn’t know the first thing about love. She was searching the crowded platform for an individual with long black hair, wearing jeans and a pea coat, but instead there was a woman of more than forty, her hair still dark, but shorter now and pulled back, dressed in a perfectly ordinary camel-colored raincoat over a black suit. But some things had remained the same: there were the same distrustful, luminous eyes, as dark as Rebecca Sparrow’s. There were the high cheekbones, the cool demeanor. There was her daughter, after all these many years.

  Alongside this woman was Elinor Sparrow’s granddaughter, a duffel bag in her arms, a backpack slung over her right shoulder, for her left, the one broken at birth, ached on damp days such as this. She was a blonde, and that was a surprise. The Sparrows had always been dark and moody, tragedy-prone and sorrowful, but Stella seemed cheerful as she gazed around the platform. She was tall, with fine features, and she was clearly a quick study, for she had already spotted her grandmother, though they had never before met. Right away, she began to wave wildly.

  “Gran!” Stella cried. “We’re here!”

  Perhaps fear was the reason Elinor Sparrow couldn’t move from her place on the platform, or perhaps it was the look on Jenny’s face when she turned to see her mother. It was the same exact expression of disappointment that Jenny displayed back on the day when the curse was broken and the bees returned to the garden, when she was already convinced it was too late for her mother to make things right between them.

  Luckily, Stella had no such fears. She ran to Elinor and hugged her. “I can’t believe I’m finally here.”

  “Well, you are.” Elinor appraised her granddaughter: here was a forthright girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Here was a girl who wouldn’t slink around resenting a person until it was too late to make amends.

  The woman in the raincoat approached more cautiously. She was wearing expensive leather boots and a splash of color on her lips, but in some ways she looked the same, just as worried and fretful an individual as she’d always been.

  “The train was late,” Elinor Sparrow said to Jenny. The first words she’d said to her daughter in nearly twenty-five years and they had formed as a complaint. She sounded far more put out than she’d intended.

  “Are you implying it’s somehow my fault?” Jenny was just as cold as ever, and now her hackles were raised. “I suppose I’m responsible for the train keeping to its timetable. Is that it?”

  Stella stepped between them, anxious to terminate this particular argument before it got started.

  “All she said was that the train was late. Mere statement of fact.”

  Frankly, Stella sounded far more adult than either her mother or her grandmother. Silenced, Elinor and Jenny stared at each other. It was difficult to say who was more shocked by the other’s appearance. The well-cut dark hair, the fine lines around the eyes and the mouth. The white hair twisted into a knot, the cane, the withered spine. Twenty-five years, after all. A quarter of a century. It took a toll.

  “Stella is right,” Jenny agreed. “You’re doing me a favor. I’m not going to fight with you.” She began to walk toward the parking lot. Just being in Unity gave her the chills, and Jenny buttoned her raincoat; she wished she’d worn a scarf. “I presume the dilapidated Jeep is yours?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Was she always this nasty to you?” Stella asked as she and Elinor followed Jenny through the lot. She wanted her grandmother to slow down. She wanted all the time she could get with her. Stella had that fizzy feeling in her head and she was a bit breathless in the damp air. At the moment she’d spied her grandmother on the platform, she had seen how it would end, with snow and silence on a brilliant afternoon. She had seen they only had until the winter, and that wasn’t nearly enough.

  “Not until I disappointed her.” Elinor was furious at herself for being so slow. It took ages for her to traverse the parking lot. Jenny was already getting into the front seat, and they weren’t even halfway there.

  “That’s no excuse for her behavior.” Stella liked her grandmother, and she liked their secret history, the phone calls Jenny never knew about, the times she had turned to her grandmother for support and advice. “Everybody gets disappointed.”

  When Elinor got into the Jeep, she found Jenny had rolled down the windows. “It smells like an old dog in here. I’m allergic. Not that you’d remember,” she said to her mother.

  Stella was still out back, tossing her backpack and duffel bag over the rear gate of the Jeep.

  “How was her birthday gift?” Elinor said to Jenny.

  “Her gift,” Jenny said in a clipped tone, “is to be a normal thirteen-year-old girl who has no family nonsense to ruin her future.”

  “I meant the model of Cake House I sent.”

  “And that’s another thing, you may have sent it, but that house was mine. It wasn’t yours to give.”

  “Well, if she did get anything else, some family trait, I hope it was something better than knowing other people’s dreams. That didn’t work out too well for you.”

  Elinor could tell right away, the remark had stung. Jenny glared at her with those same dark eyes Elinor remembered so well, always reproaching her for one thing or another. Well, she might as well give Jenny something to be angry about, hadn’t she? She might as well tell the truth.

  “Like knowing who’s a liar and judging them for the rest of their lives based on one or two mistakes? Would you say that’s a preferable talent, Mother?”

  Stella pulled open the back door and climbed into the backseat.

  “Fighting?”

  Immediately, Elinor and Jenny fell silent. One was the lion, one the lamb, but which was which, it was impossible to tell.

  “I’ve got a great idea,” Stella announced. “Let’s all go out to lunch together.”

  “We can’t,” Jenny was quick to respond. “I want to get you settled and get back here to catch the three o’clock train to Boston.”

  “I can settle myself. What I need is food. Gran?”

  Two against one, Jenny could see that well enough. They clearly planned to gang up on her whenever possible. There was no choice but to stop at Hull’s Tea House, where they ordered Lapsang souchong tea, egg salad sandwiches, and scones with cream and jam. Their waitress was a high school girl named Cynthia Elliot, who worked weekends and after s
chool. Cynthia was Elinor’s neighbor and the great-granddaughter of Sissy Elliot, that imperious old lady who thought nothing of holding up an entire trainful of people so that she could get onboard and make herself comfortable. Elinor, however, didn’t seem to recognize their young waitress.

  “Hey, Mrs. Sparrow, I’m Cynthia.” Cynthia Elliot had on black nail polish and her hair had been braided into dozens of tiny red braids. “I live next door to you.”

  “How nice for you,” Elinor said, cleaning a spoon that was smudged, not in the least bit interested.

  “Hey,” Cynthia said to Stella, sensing the possibility of a kindred spirit.

  “Hey,” Stella said uncertainly.

  “Do not pal around with that girl,” Jenny said when Cynthia went to place their order. Cynthia was clearly a few years older, and several years more experienced. “Do you hear me?”

  “Just because I hear you doesn’t mean I’m listening to you.” Stella turned to gaze out the window which overlooked Main Street. The linden trees were greening and the warblers were calling. Everything looked hazy and sweet and ready to bloom. The tea house lawn was filled with snowdrops, a field of what had once been sorrow.

  “I love this town,” Stella said. “It’s perfect.”

  Jenny was so startled by this announcement, and so very uncomfortable with the notion, that she shifted in her chair, and the table, perched on the uneven floorboards, was shaken. The water in Jenny’s tumbler spilled and her knife fell onto the floor with a clatter. Elinor couldn’t help but recall what her great-grandmother, Coral, had always proclaimed: Drop a knife and a woman will visit. Drop it twice, and she’s bound to stay.

  “Well, don’t get too comfortable here,” Jenny advised her daughter. “You’re only in Unity until things get straightened out with your father.”

  “Do you expect that to happen any time soon?” Elinor asked.

  “You’ll be here through the end of the school term at most,” Jenny went on, ignoring her mother, as she had hundreds of times before. “Don’t forget to tell your teachers that. This isn’t permanent. You’re just a visiting student.”

  They had their lunch without much conversation, then were waylaid by dessert.

  “Oh, look at that!” Stella had her eye on a tray of tiny iced cakes and tarts the proprietor, Liza Hull, was bringing over. “They’re so pretty.”

  “Jenny Sparrow,” Liza Hull said as she delivered the complimentary tray. “I can’t believe it! I never expected to see you back in this town. I guess all birds really do come home to roost.”

  Liza and Jenny had been in the same year at school, but they’d never been great friends, and there seemed no point in pretending to be so now. “I’m just here for the day. My daughter, Stella, will be staying a little longer.”

  “I love this place,” Stella declared for a second time, but now with even more conviction. “I love this town. I love this tea house. I love these cakes. Did you bake these?” she asked Liza, sneaking a bite of a petit four.

  “I’ll bake you more any time you’d like them.” Liza had been such a plain girl no one noticed her, but as it turned out, she had a lovely smile; she seemed far more comfortable in her own skin now. “I see your daughter has Will’s coloring and his yellow eyes. Lucky girl.” A smile played at Liza’s lips. “He used to stop by now and then when his mom was so ill. He always ordered apple pie.”

  “Did he?” Without ever once mentioning any such visits to Jenny, naturally.

  “Oh, sure. Will Avery’s a hometown boy even if he did go to Harvard and marry you.” Liza turned to Stella. “Glad you’re going to be around for a while. Want to see the kitchen?”

  “Sounds like Will was sneaking around here even while his mother was dying,” Elinor said when Stella had gone off for her tour of the bakery. “I told you he’d be nothing but trouble. He was a liar from day one.”

  “Look, Mother, I don’t have to listen to your opinion anymore. I appreciate the fact that you’re taking Stella in, but, believe me, I wouldn’t have asked if there were any other alternatives.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Elinor said. “You’d rather have her living with lions in the zoo.”

  “Why should I trust you to take good care of her? You never took care of me. You’re right, I’m not thrilled about her being here, any more than I was to learn about the phone calls you made to her. I want Stella to have more than I did.”

  “I see.” Elinor put down her teacup. She felt quite hot, really. Absolutely feverish, which wasn’t uncommon for some people at this time of year. “But you’ve been the perfect mother?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Good. Because Stella doesn’t say it either.”

  This always happened; it went too far too quickly: sticks and stones, needles and pins, words too painful to remove, like a splinter, like thorns, like slivers of glass.

  “At least I tried.”

  “And of course you were the only one who did.”

  Stella had been given a bag of scones by the ever-generous Liza Hull, and she now turned to their table and waved. Stella looked happy, even Jenny could see that. Clearly, she’d been hoodwinked by Unity; she’d been taken in by the birdsong, the pale green spring, the forsythia beginning to open, those branches of undiluted light right outside the window.

  The tea house, Stella had been informed on her tour, was the only building other than Cake House to withstand the fire of 1785, when the rest of the town had burned to ashes. Leonie Sparrow had worked at the bakery then, a lucky happenstance, for Leonie was the one who toted leather buckets of water from Hourglass Lake to pour over the roof of the tea house, thereby protecting the shingles and straw from bursting into flames. Leonie enlisted the aid of half a dozen customers, creating a brigade, then went home to Cake House, where she continued to battle the fire long after anyone else would have been overwhelmed by smoke. In doing so, Liza announced, Leonie started the Unity volunteer fire department.

  “They call the fire truck Leonie,” Liza told Stella. “They’re about to get a second truck they plan to name Leonie Two.”

  “Are you coming up to the house?” Elinor asked Jenny, as she paid the bill.

  “I don’t think there’s time.” It was nearly two. Time to go, time to find her way out of town before she, too, was drawn in by the green light and the forsythia. “I think I’ll just go on back to the station. And, Mother,” she added, in a tone that made it seem as though she were about to swallow poison, “do you think it’s possible for us to stop fighting while Stella’s staying with you? For her sake?”

  “Of course it’s possible.” It was possible for people to walk on glass, after all, to go without sleep, to judge a liar, to find what had been lost, to dream what they never could have imagined in their waking life.

  “Then it’s also possible for you to keep her away from anything to do with Rebecca Sparrow while she’s here. I don’t want her hearing all those ridiculous stories.”

  Jenny got up from the table, in a hurry to leave. If she missed the train, she’d be trapped. If she missed it, she’d have to walk up Lockhart Avenue to Cake House, making the turn by the big oak tree that some people swore was the oldest in the Commonwealth. She grabbed for her purse and her raincoat. That was when the second knife fell to the floor. Hearing it bang against the hardwood, Elinor felt her heart lift.

  Drop it twice and she’s bound to stay.

  Let Jenny do her best to avoid the path where Rebecca Sparrow pulled the arrows from her side. Let her kiss her daughter good-bye and hurry to the train station, ignoring the trill of the peepers, avoiding the snowdrops on the lawn. Let her run down Main Street, if she must, to catch the three o’clock train to Boston. Let her try to stay away, but it was clear enough now that she couldn’t run fast enough. It was absolutely certain. Birds always did come home to roost. Before too long, Jenny Sparrow would be back once more.

  II.

  THE WEEK BEGAN with warm weather, too warm for the wool sweater St
ella had chosen to wear for her first day at Unity High School. For the first time Stella wished she hadn’t skipped a grade. Perhaps if she were enrolling in the Hathaway Elementary School, grades K–8, fear would not be rising in her mouth as it was now, a black stone she couldn’t seem to spit out as she walked along the lane. This was the same route her mother had taken when she was in high school. Stella wondered if there had been blue jays swooping across the lane back then; if there had been the scent of bay laurel, planted by the colonists to protect against lightning, growing wild ever since.

  Today, there were huge cumulus clouds in the hazy sky, and Stella felt the sultry dampness in the air; it was already frizzing her hair. Everything at Cake House was faintly wet, the blankets and the carpeting. All night long, Stella had heard the peepers on the shore and the whisper of reeds. She’d remembered that her science teacher at the Rabbit School had told the class that a cloud was a floating lake. Just think of it: all that water contained above rooftops and trees, a lake above our heads. Stella had lain in her bed, with its sodden bedsheets, trying her best to sleep in her new room. She had not been given her mother’s bedroom, but instead she slept in an alcove on the second floor, dusty, closed off for years, but with a pretty view of the lake. Still, with all those peepers calling, it had been impossible to doze off. At a little after midnight, Stella had gone downstairs, to the phone in the parlor, where she’d called Juliet Aronson.

  “I can’t believe I’m here,” Stella had whispered to her friend. She was curled up on a musty love seat; the upholstery was so damp, the grosgrain fabric had turned green.

  “I can’t believe you left without telling me.” Juliet had abandonment issues on a good day; she was very up front about that. “I was in a panic looking for you the next morning. How could you leave like that?”

  “It wasn’t exactly my idea. It was my mother’s. What does she think she’s protecting me from?”