3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (19 page)

Jo smelled the sweet, sickly fragrance of it, topped off by the smell of the cranberry juice.

On the bus ride, she fell asleep for a time and dreamed about the beautiful girl, Effie’s sister, covered in -wine. She dreamed of Finn sledding -with her down Pony Hill, but she was older and he was still young. She dreamed of getting lost in her own house.

Luckily she had enough cash left to take a cab from the bus station to her house. She feared that if she walked, her fellow pedestrians might feel the need to call the police or an ambulance at the sight of her.

She rang the doorbell of her house as though she was a stranger there. Was her dad working late? Was he sleeping over at some woman’s house? Would she catch him on a date? Was that why he was in such a hurry to get unmarried?

The door opened and there he was. He didn’t look like he was on a date. He was wearing shorts and an undershirt and slippers and his bifocals on a chain around his neck. His hair -was rumpled.

“Jo,” he said, his expression evolving into alarm as he saw the red stains on her face and shirt. “What happened to you?” He grabbed hold of her like she was four and not fourteen.

“It’s okay,” she protested from the folds of his shirt. “It’s just wine.”

He let her go to look at her. “Why have you got wine all over you?”

“I spilled it.”

“Were you drinking? Did you get locked out at the beach? Where is your mom?”

Though long out of practice, he was full of parental -worry.

“No. I spilled it at my job. At the restaurant. And I got fired, so I came home.”

He nodded. He did her the kindness of acting like all of that sounded reasonable.

“Come inside. Do you want to take a shower? Have you eaten?” It was funny how he had suddenly turned into her mother hen.

“Yes. No, I haven’t eaten.”

“I’ll make you something. Go take a shower and get dressed, and then you can tell me what happened.”

•••

All the way along the death march to the dreaded cliff of no return, Noah -walked beside her. Ama mostly kept to herself, while Noah kept trying to start a conversation.

“How are your feet?”

“Better,” she said.

“Blisters?”

“Healed.”

“Wow. That’s great.”

They walked on in silence.

“Do you want some gorp? I have an extra bag.”

Gorp -was like gold by that point. Nobody had any left. She thought of the M&M’s. Her mouth began to water, but she stayed strong. “No thanks.”

They crossed a little river. Ama was surprised at how easily she stepped from stone to stone without slipping or losing her balance under her forty-pound pack. They walked up a hill and down it.

“Do you know about Model UN?” he asked after a -while.

Ama nodded. Her sister had done Model UN. Ama -wanted to do it too, but she didn’t feel like telling him so. “How come?”

“You should do it next year.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. It’s cool. We could hang out.”

She looked down and she didn’t say anything.

“It’s not until the spring, though.” He laughed selfconsciously. “So I guess maybe it would be easier if I just asked for your number.”

Ama couldn’t take it anymore. She stopped walking and he stopped too. “Hey Noah?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Okay.”

“If you want my number, then -why -were you making out with Carly?” She couldn’t hold it in.

Noah stared at her. Confusion turned to indignation. He looked as though she’d accused him of boiling rabbits. “What are you talking about? I didn’t make out with Carly.”

He was quite the actor, -wasn’t he? “Yes, you did. At least twice. Once in my own tent. That was hard to miss.”

Noah looked angry now. “No, I didn’t, Ama. Not even once. Not in your tent and not anywhere else. No offense, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His certainty made Ama step back and wonder. Had she really, really seen his face? Was she really, really sure it -was him? She tried to picture his face in her tent on that fateful night before she’d huffed out of the tent and slept on the anthill. She couldn’t. She could picture a back and hair she thought was his, but not his face. Could she have been -wrong all this time? But she was so certain of it. “Are you sure?” she said timidly.

“I think I -would know.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Carly made out -with everybody else,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, -well. Not me.”

He still looked upset, and she felt a little bit guilty, but she also felt a lightness like bubbles in her stomach.

“Maybe you forgot,” she said mischievously.

“Shut up.” He pretended to punch her arm.

She punched his back, not so pretend.

“Ow.” He tried to punch hers again, but she dodged him. She laughed.

They -walked along. Up another hill and down. She felt the soft pine needles under her boots. She looked up happily at the sky. She slapped his hand in a friendly -way. “Can I have that gorp?” she asked.

Jo heard her father in the kitchen before she saw him there. He was crashing around, opening things and dropping things.

The feel of the house was different, she thought as she walked past the living room. It was a little dustier, maybe, and more cluttered, with fewer lights on. The pillows didn’t look as pert and the violets in the window were barely hanging in.

The windows were open. That was the main thing, she realized. It was not uncomfortably hot in the house—in fact, it was a nice cool night. But the steaminess of summer, the deep August scent of ripeness, had crept into the rooms, where it was usually shut out.

That was the big difference. Her mother -was very big on climate control. The inside and outside air did not usually mix.

The house wasn’t abandoned, as she had half expected. It was the opposite. It looked surprisingly, unusually lived-in. Her dad’s newspapers and medical journals sprawled over the dining room table. His slippers were discarded in the living room; his book -was left open on the couch. Coffee mugs and glasses sat on various surfaces—and not a coaster in sight. What would her mother say?

In the kitchen, a flame burned under a pan, but the pan was empty, as far as she could tell. She hoped her dad wouldn’t burn the house down. Almost every drawer and cabinet in the place stood open. It felt so different from the way her mother occupied this room.

“What are you making?” she asked.

“Tacos,” he answered brightly.

“Wow.”

“I know. I’ve been doing some cooking this summer.”

He stood up from the under-counter cabinet in -which he had been foraging. He looked so proud it almost broke her heart.

When he poured some olive oil into the empty pan it sizzled wildly and smoked. Her father jumped back. “Will you look at that,” he said.

She tried not to wince. “Do you need help?”

He adjusted the heat under the pan. “You can grate the cheese,” he offered.

“Okay,” she said.

She dutifully grated as he opened more things and dropped more things and landed some other things in his pan.

“You probably don’t think I know my -way around the kitchen,” he said, concentrating on reading the spice jars, “but do you remember I used to make dinner for you and Finn every Tuesday and Thursday night when your mother -worked?”

“You did?” It felt like such a strange and unexpected liberation that her dad said Finn’s name like that, just throwing it into the mix along -with the chili pepper and the chopped lettuce. They couldn’t do that around her mother. Her mother became stricken and left the room, so they’d learned not to do it, but Jo yearned to. She yearned to talk about Finn, not in a hallowed or sad way, but just remembering that he had been there too, in the regular -ways.

“Yes. I didn’t make big things like tacos,” her father remembered. “But I made chicken and rice. I made a meat loaf once.”

“Did you really?”

“You don’t remember?”

She wanted to remember. “I think I do. A little.”

“You loved peas. I always made peas.”

“Finn loved peas,” Jo said.

Her father nodded. “He really did.”

“I still love them.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

He nearly bounded over to the freezer. He got out a brick of them and showed her.

She laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed.

“I’m finished with the cheese. Can I do anything else?” she asked.

She was worried about his tacos, based on the strange brew forming in his pan and the pure chaos on the counters. She realized she didn’t want him to fail. She wanted them to be good.

He set her up with a cutting board and a paring knife and an avocado. She was oddly pleased that he trusted her -with a good sharp knife.

“It’s nice to cook -with company,” he said to her after an amicable silence.

She nodded. She sensed he’d been alone as much as she had. She sensed he had enjoyed his freedom this summer about as well as she had enjoyed hers.

Usually Jo liked to keep the various items on her plate separate, but in the case of her dad’s taco dinner, that wasn’t going to be possible. Like it or not, the salsa mixed -with the sour cream and flooded the tortilla, which edged into the puddle of beans and shared a messy border -with the guacamole, and all of it sat under a thatch of melting cheese.

Her dad raised his bottle of beer to her glass of milk. She’d almost laughed when she’d seen him pouring her milk, like she was still six. She’d almost rejected it, but now as she drank it, she couldn’t imagine anything tasting better.

“Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers,” she said back. She didn’t know what else to say.

“Well, dig in,” he said.

She took a deep breath and dug in, letting the multitude of textures and temperatures heap on her fork. She took a tentative bite and then a more confident one. She took another one, with extra salsa. The smell of it all wrapped around her head and the taste blotted out most of her other senses. She was so hungry.

She ate and ate. She poured on more salsa and sprinkled more cheese. She found she could barely look up from her food or stop eating long enough to talk. But finally, she made herself pause. She looked up at her dad and said to him, “These are really, really good.” And they were.

Her stomach got fuller and fuller, but she kept eating. “Is there more?” she asked.

Her father looked pleased. “Yes. Plenty. Plenty more in the kitchen.”

He served her a second plate and watched her eat. With his glasses off, she saw his eyes.

“Jo?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m happy you came home.”

At first, Polly had exaggerated to herself a little how much -weight she’d lost. She was excited and proud of herself so she rounded up. If the scale said she’d lost 4.6 pounds, she called it 5.

But now that she’d lost more than she’d planned, she’d started to exaggerate the other -way. She’d lost 13.8 pounds, but she told herself it was 12, figuring she’d -weighed herself a little -wrong -when she started.

Now, instead of -weighing herself first thing in the morning after she’d peed, she’d begun -weighing herself later in the day, after she’d eaten something and had a big glass of -water. She didn’t -want to have to stop yet.

I am small, she thought, losing herself in the volume of her red cotton pants as she dressed in the bathroom. She -was used to growing out of clothes, but now she -was going the other -way, almost like she -was turning back the clock. It -was consoling to think you could do that. The past -was a lot easier to imagine than the future. She pictured herself going to a clothing store and getting a smaller size. Even her bras had finally gotten too big. Yesterday she’d gone into the back of her drawer and fished out the first bra she’d gotten, in sixth grade.

Maybe I really could be a model, she thought, shivering a little in the sunshine coming through the bathroom window. The skin of her arms looked mottled sticking out of her T-shirt. The dark hair on her arms seemed more plentiful and longer than before. Her favorite silver bracelet, the one Dia had bought for her at an antiques shop in Philadelphia, sagged on her thin -wrist.

She did her arm-swinging, calorie-burning -walk back to her bedroom. Burning. That was a strange word for it, wasn’t it?

She had to get ready in a hurry because she had the Rollins kids at ten-thirty and then a toddler named Ryan at four. Ryan’s mom -was a new customer, referred to her by Mrs. Rollins, and she wanted to make a good impression.

Dia said Polly didn’t have to earn any more money, that she would cover the rest, but Polly liked -working and having places to go all day.

Polly bought the train tickets to New York online, one for her, one for Dia. Dia didn’t -want to hang around the modeling convention, but she said they could have a nice time together in New York and go to the Metropolitan Museum. Dia planned to meet -with the people from her art gallery at the same time as the big runway show, but Polly didn’t really mind.

The trip -wasn’t for a few more days, but Polly had already started packing. She left her suitcase open on the floor. At various times of the day she’d put things in and take them out and put different things in. She put in her research report on models and then she took it out again. She didn’t know if she’d find anyone at the IMTA -who would be interested in it. She felt a little silly looking at the cover she’d drawn for it, though she’d felt proud of it at the time.

She missed Ama and Jo. She couldn’t help it. She had gone a long time without them. So long that she feared she was losing the knack of having friends or being one. Ama and Jo always knew her best and helped her know herself. They knew the shape of who she was, and helped keep her in it. Without them she felt like she drifted and lost her outlines.

It was painful to think of ninth grade without being close to them, but she had forced herself to do it. The e-mail from Jo had given her hope, but she was afraid to hope very much. It was probably good for her to practice being alone.

Jo couldn’t fall asleep that night. She walked downstairs, enjoying the shafts of moonlight sliding in through the glass on either side of the big front door. In her T-shirt and boxer shorts she floated into the living room and sat on the couch. It was nicer in here with her dad’s stuff all around it. She hated coasters. It was nicer in here with the heady, green summer air.