Juno's Daughters (10 page)

She lurched toward Frankie, who, seeing her mother, stumbled forward and fell into her. Frankie's sadness spread like an electric charge from her body to her mother's. Jenny took the current like a tree in a thunderstorm. For long minutes they stood locked together, startled by the bright light of surprise. The inevitability of it did not lessen the pain.

Jenny did not tell her daughter,
Shshhh
. She held her until Frankie, gulping, found the ability to speak.

“Phoenix is moving to Mount Vernon. In
three weeks
.” The looming deadline brought forth a new round of sobbing. “Theresa wants her to go to high school in Mount Vernon, with her cousins. She wants her to
get to know all kinds of people
.” This last part was singsonged with an acidity born out of pure bitter rejection.

“Oh, baby. Sweetheart.” Her arm firm around Frankie's shoulder, Jenny turned her toward the harbor. “Let's go sit down.”

Frankie let herself be led to a bench by the playground on Tucker Avenue.

“Theresa's already rented out their house to someone,” wailed Frankie, “so she can't even change her mind. They have a
lease
.” She pronounced the word with the dread a condemned man might use to refer to the noose.

“Poor Phoenix,” whispered Jenny. She tried to smile reassuringly at a small boy who had stopped swinging in order to rubberneck.

Frankie lifted her damp, splotched face up to look her mother in the eyes. It was at that moment that Jenny realized that the deeper pain had not yet been revealed, the pain that so far, alone, Frankie had been afraid to even glance at. Jenny wrapped both her hands around her daughter's bony fingers to warm them. She did not need to ask herself what she would do to protect this child from harm. In the real world you did what you could and the harm came anyway.

Frankie could do no more than whisper, “She
wants
to go.”

Jenny's eyes filled with tears. She pulled Frankie close and pressed her head against her chest so that she would not see her mother cry.

Frankie's words spilled out wetly against Jenny's shirt. “She says she's sad about moving but she's
lying
. I can tell. All she wanted to talk about was the Appaloosa that her cousin rides and the high school gymnastics team that she's going to join. She even bragged about the fucking
Tulip Festival
that they have in Mount Vernon. As if I could care.”

Jenny allowed herself a brief, wry smile and a glimmer of hope at that
fucking
. It was that fighting spirit that might get Frankie through to the other side, if she could hold on to it. If Jenny had been able to muster more fight herself, she might not have stayed with Monroe as long as she had.

“I would never drop a friend I'd known since I was a baby for some dumb Appaloosa and a chance to do gymnastics,” said Frankie, hiccupping. She was bent forward over herself like a busted hyacinth, dripping tears and snot into her lap.

“I know, honey. And I know that Phoenix loves you. But people are different. They want different things.”

“I would
never
do this. I never would.”

“I know, baby. I know you wouldn't.”

T
he tables in the barn were arranged in a square with a hole in the center. Dale and Peg sat at one end with their heads together, whispering furiously, only pausing in their talk to refill their coffee cups from a large carafe that sat in front of them. The binder in Peg's lap was open to the middle, and from years previous Jenny knew that the bag at her feet was packed with a variety of items she or anyone else might need during the two-hour reading of the play, including tissues, Sharpies, safety pins, paper clips, eyedrops, and Advil.

For the past three years Jenny had been present at the table reading as an assistant costume designer (with a strong emphasis on the assistant part, since the ideas were mostly Peg's), but this was her first time as one of the actors. And it was also the first time attending with her daughters, one of whom stood red-eyed at her side. The other was nowhere to be seen, though it was already past the time they were to assemble. So far Dale and Peg had not noticed Lilly's absence, however, and Jenny had to restrain herself from slipping out the door to call her on her cell. It was important for her oldest daughter to have an opportunity to make her own mistakes, she reminded herself, and suffer the consequences. She imaged her sister, Sue, saying something similar about letting Lilly go to Marin and she felt a twinge of discomfort. All she was risking here, she imagined replying, was getting yelled at by Dale. She continued the argument in her mind until Peg stood abruptly and began clapping her hands for their attention. An elf-size woman, she had the voice of a giant.

“Okay, people! Take your seats. It's time to begin.”

Jenny pulled out a chair for herself and one for Frankie, as silent and still as a photograph. Mary Ann smiled at Jenny from across the room and began heading toward the chair on her other side. She had gained some weight in the past few years and her body now had the round, rolling heaviness of a country cook. She and Jenny had gotten used to conspiring on the costumes and set pieces and they had learned to mix gossip and speculation and planning seamlessly into the details of running the store and setting out inventory. The chair next to Jenny scraped against the concrete floor and Trinculo, rather than Mary Ann, dropped into it with a nod.

Mary Ann paused and took in the scene with an appraising glance, then found a chair next to Ariel, who appeared to be wearing a bodysuit made out of plum-colored velour.

Trinculo leaned in to Jenny. “Hi again.”

“Hey.”

She looked down at her hands and then glanced up again, quickly, when Frankie shifted beside her. Peg was shuffling her notes and preparing to speak. There was no time to explain to Trinculo that since they'd seen each other at lunch she'd become preoccupied by what was happening with Frankie. If she seemed distracted, she wanted to say, then that was the reason. Trinculo had worn a canvas shoulder bag to the reading, and bending to pull a notebook from it, he brushed against Jenny with his arm. Skin to skin. She flushed, and looking around the table at all the people packed into the old barn, both familiar and unfamiliar, realized that the problem was, she was not distracted
enough
.

Caliban was seated directly across from Jenny and Trinculo, wearing dark sunglasses, though the light in the barn was dim. As soon as Peg spoke, he began unloading his own small supply cabinet's worth of stuff onto the table: colored pencils, throat spritzer, small Post-it notes, and a bag of peppermints. Ferdinand chose the seat closest to the door. The rest of the chairs were filled with the handful of island people who were either musicians or had been chosen for one of the smaller parts, including Chad, who had indeed won the role of Stephano. With a look of undisguised delight, he sat next to Miranda, who wore a low-cut T-shirt and bicycle shorts. Still no Lilly.

An owl hooted in the eaves. Frankie breathed softly through her mouth, her nose plugged from nearly an hour of solid crying. Peg laid her hands palms-down on the table and leaned toward the company, scanning people's faces with all the intensity she could muster. If she noticed Frankie's distraught state, she did not reveal it.

“This is what I see.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back toward the ceiling. “Darkness. A howling wind. Thunder like big bass drums.” She opened her eyes and turned her face toward David, who jotted something down in a notebook. “The spirits in black costumes, but layered.” Here she turned her attention to Jenny and Frankie. She frowned. “Where the fuck is Lillian?”

“Here I am.”

The barn door swung open and Lilly appeared in her trademark long underwear, under a short skirt this time and topped with a tie-dyed University of Washington sweatshirt. Jenny hoped that for Lilly's sake Peg would not notice the cookie crumbs on her chin. She would have bet anything that Lilly had commanded her chariot, driven by Elliot, to stop at the Roche Harbor ice cream shop on the way, for snacks.

Peg narrowed her eyes in a look that would have made Frankie cry. Lilly simply dragged a chair from the back of the room and began pushing it into the narrow space between Jenny and Trinculo. There was not enough room for both mother and daughter in that spot. Conscious of Peg's glaring, Jenny moved her chair toward Frankie's and let Lilly in.

“Five o'clock, Lillian. I said five o'clock.”

“I'm so sorry everybody, really, but the thing is, the Edisons, you know, who live out on Wold, are having this complicated irrigation system put in, to, you know, water their. . . .”

In a matter of seconds Lilly had buried the entire company under a blizzard of teenage excuse-speak.

Even Peg looked cowed. “Okay,” she said. “Enough. Take your seat and close your mouth.”

Lilly shifted toward Trinculo and grinned. Jenny turned to give her daughter an admonishing glance and instead found herself watching Trinculo watching Lilly. He seemed unable to avert his eyes from her, no doubt finding Lilly in the flesh a hundred times more compelling than the hash-fueled Lilly of memory. He gaped and then, without noticing Jenny's eyes upon him, he blushed a deep, crimson red. Jenny quickly turned away. Somehow, on the bench that afternoon with the salt breezes and the circling gulls, she had managed to convince herself that whatever had happened between her daughter and this man that night was unimportant. What, she asked herself now, had she been thinking?

Caliban gazed at Lilly also for a long moment over the top of his sunglasses and then carefully selected one of his colored pencils. He scribbled something in his notebook, applied a Post-it note to the same spot, and then unwrapped a peppermint and placed it on his tongue as if he were giving himself communion, or more likely, thought Jenny, taking a hit of LSD.

Peg took a draft of her coffee. “Act one. Scene one,” she said. “A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard. Enter a Ship-Master and a Boatswain.”

Sally Muller had been chosen as the Ship-Master. “Boatswain!” she called.

“Here, master,” called back Stu Barnes. “What cheer?”

“Good' speak to th' mariners. Fall to't yarely, or we run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir. Exit.”

Everyone laughed at Sally's inclusion of that “
exit.
” Everyone except for Frankie, who sat bowed over her copy of the play, her hair falling forward, abject misery still visible on her face. Jenny placed her hand reassuringly on Frankie's leg, but she did not stir. From the corner of her eye she saw Ariel reach into Caliban's bag of peppermints and pluck one out. Caliban glowered and Ariel crossed his eyes at him in response. Then, with remarkable accuracy, he shot the peppermint over the table to Frankie. She sat up straight, gave him a grateful, puppyish look, and put the candy in her mouth.

On Jenny's other side, Lilly turned her face in Ariel's direction and smiled winningly. He stared back and then, without changing his expression or reaching for another peppermint, he looked down at the play on the table in front of him and began to read.

Within a week all of their lives had been reordered to correspond to Peg's call sheets. Scene stagings, costume design and fittings, music and transitions were all central to their existence. Everything else became secondary. Work, outside friends, and spouses receded into their shadow lives. As a group they began to develop habits (the nonsmokers kicked a Hacky Sack while the smokers smoked), favorite snacks (sunflower seeds and Mary Ann's home-baked intergalactic bars), and self-referential in-jokes that circled back in various permutations (Miranda's cleavage at the table reading, Lilly's tendency to disappear when needed—did she have a studio apartment hidden somewhere? Did she hold office hours?). Still, by the second week of rehearsals, not all mysteries had been solved.

One morning Frankie stirred her oatmeal carefully, watching the brown sugar dissolve with intense concentration, and mused aloud, “What if the naked rehearsal is really, you know,
without any clothes on
?”

“It is.” Lilly scooped up a handful of raisins from the box and shoved a chair back from the table with a foot that sported, to Jenny's horror, toenails so long they curled.

“No, it's not, Franks. Don't worry,” said Jenny, wishing she were sure. “Lilly, your
toenails
. If you don't trim them this instant, I'm going to lose my breakfast.”

“I'm eating.” Lilly lifted her spoon by way of demonstration. “And by the way, I don't know why you are telling your own offspring things that aren't true.” She raised her eyebrows in reproach.