Juno's Daughters (13 page)

Someone banged on the door. “Hel
lo
?”

“Coming.”

Jenny tucked her hair behind her ears and dried her hands. She smiled at the woman in the hallway, an impatient-looking tourist in a killer whale T-shirt, and stepped back into the light and sound of the bar. The band was taking a break and, as she made her way back to the table, she saw Dale and Mary Ann laughing at something Ariel had said. Trinculo was talking to the waitress and gesturing at the menu. The curator from the sculpture park, along with her husband who was, like Lilly, a landscaper, had joined them and there were two empty chairs at the table. One, she assumed, was for David, who would be smoking on the patio. The other was for her.

“Speak of the devil,” said Ariel sweetly, as Jenny sat down.

Trinculo's eyes flicked to her from the menu and he finished his order.

“Hardly,” said Jenny, giving Ariel a whack on the shoulder. “I thought you were in the big city this weekend.”

“Seattle is
not
the big city.”

Trinculo patted Ariel's hand. “Ariel here decided to stay and keep me company.”

“Seattle is a bore.” Ariel yawned elaborately and allowed his leg to fall casually against Trinculo's. “And
I
decided not to go first, by the way. Trink here is keeping
me
company.”

“What
ever
,” said Trinculo.

“You would have had fun,” said Mary Ann. “There's a big farmers' market on the weekend in Pioneer Square.”

“The tacos at Aqua Verde are worth the trip alone,” said Dale, returning with a couple of extra wineglasses.

Ariel glanced around the table and Jenny could have sworn that his gaze lingered extra-long on her. “Our friend Trink isn't interested in having fun. He thinks he's going to burn in hell.”

Trinculo laughed and reached for a glass. “I don't
think
I'm going to burn in hell, sweetheart. I
know
it.” He drank and set the glass down again, and without meeting her eyes, he let his hand trail briefly along Jenny's elbow.

She started and then glanced around to see if anyone had noticed him do that. All Trinculo had to do was brush against her and her skin rose up to meet his touch like yeast dough in a bowl.

“So are we all,” said Dale, draining his glass. “In the meantime, what if we take this bunch of mainlanders over to Roche Harbor for the colors ceremony?”

“Oh, no. Not really!” Mary Ann laughed. “It's so
corny
.”

“It's perfect. Everyone loves it when they come.”

“The first five times, perhaps,” said Jenny.

“I'm game,” said Trinculo. “Do you dance around a fire and roast mainlanders on a spit?”

Mary Ann shook her head. “It's the lowering of the flag at Roche Harbor, is all. With a little pomp and circumstance.”

“Sounds charming,” drawled Ariel.

“I'll drive then,” said Mary Ann.

“Jenny and I will ride with you,” said Dale. “I get to sit next to Jenny.”

“You can sit in the back,” said Mary Ann, with a stern look. She glanced at Trinculo. “Do you want to follow us?”

“Sure.” He drained his glass and stood up.

They arrived at Roche Harbor as the sun was lowering itself toward the water. Tourists, boaters, diners, and strollers were all assembling on the dock and the hillside. The crowd shifted and suddenly there was Lilly running up the hill to meet them, her dreads bouncing against her back, her bright smile and slightly overlapping front teeth on full and glorious display. The sight of her stopped Jenny in her tracks. Sometimes it took her glimpsing her older daughter from a distance to see how grown and beautiful and
ready
she was. Keeping Lilly on the island would be like trying to hold back the tide, Jenny realized. This was Lilly's moment, and before the night was through she knew she would give her permission to go to California. She would give her blessing. In her mind she could already hear her daughter's yelp of delight and feel her arms, stronger and browner but not so very different than when she was a little girl, flung around her neck.

Still, how had she known to meet them there, wondered Jenny. She cast glances at Ariel and Trinculo, who were unfolding themselves from the Mini Cooper that they had borrowed for the summer. Had Trinculo called her? In any case, there she was, coming toward them. Jenny spied Elliot at the bottom of the hill standing shyly with his hands in his pockets, and she waved. He waved back. In minutes, they had all joined up into one boisterous group and were headed down the hill together.

The islanders knew what came next. There would be the lowering of the flag, the playing of national anthems from the boats in the harbor, and the hilarious finale, in which color guards and honored guests jumped from the pier into the water. Meanwhile, the harbor master would be reminding the swimmers of incoming tide drifts and pointing out the fact that Canadian boats seldom had holding tanks for their waste, so keep your mouth closed in the water.

They passed Our Lady of Good Voyage Chapel and continued down toward the glittering bay. The sun set. The flag fell like a fainting woman into the arms of the color guard. The color guard jumped. Ariel jumped. Lilly and Jenny were pushed. Trinculo leaped after, and in just a few moments they were all treading salt water among the anchored boats.

J
enny, Lilly, Frankie, and Phoenix rode their bikes to American Camp and back for a picnic. They arrived at Jenny's turn-off sweating and red-faced. Their legs, after working the pedals hard, were slick and itchy. Each passing car—and there were relatively many of them at this time of the year—had left a cloud of exhaust that lingered in the air just long enough for them to ride through it single file.

They dropped their bikes onto the yellow grass and looked up to see Ariel sitting comfortably on the front step, reading a novel in a patch of shade by the flowerpot. A plastic shopping bag was tucked up next to him. He was wearing a tank top, shorts made out of some extremely high-tech-looking material, and gladiator sandals that Jenny immediately coveted. He smiled pleasantly and waited until they were close enough so that he did not have to raise his voice to speak.

“Ladies.”

Frankie was less cool by a mile. “Ariel!” She ran forward and plopped down next to him.

Phoenix approached warily, her face displaying equal parts of curiosity and envy. The truce, Jenny suspected, was now officially over.

Jenny stepped forward. “Would you like a glass of iced tea? We've got some chamomile in the fridge.”

“That would be lovely.” Ariel lifted himself from the step and fanned at his face with his book. “It's scorching.”

Frankie tugged him into the house by the arm. “What's in the bag?”

He smiled down at her. “A present for you, actually. But don't peek.”

Phoenix followed behind, momentarily forgotten.

Jenny scooped the pile of yarn off the table and tossed it into the basket on the floor. She pulled the pitcher from the fridge and surreptitiously swept a trail of crumbs into the sink with a frayed towel. Then she tucked the towel in her back pocket.

Ariel pulled out a chair. Jenny kept a collection of chop-sticks in a mug in the center of the table. Ariel plucked one out and used it to stir his tea.

Frankie perched beside him. “Do you want some sugar? It's just raw sugar, unfortunately,” she said, giving her mother a disapproving look.

“Raw is fine.”

She leaped up. “Lemon?”

“Absolutely.”

Phoenix was on the phone by the window, calling her mother to come pick her up.

Lilly, who was foraging in the fridge, had her back to them all. She emerged with a package of tortillas and a jar of peanut butter. She pulled a chair back at the other end of the table, and before sitting she held them up in her hands. “Peanut butter wrap?”

Ariel wrinkled his nose. “Thank you. But no.”

Jenny poured herself a glass of tea. “Have you been enjoying the day off?”

“It's been incredibly boring, to tell the truth. Trinculo is in a sulk, and the last thing I want to do is hang around the apartment with his mooning.” He swung the plastic bag in front of Frankie's face like a ball of yarn before a kitten. “So I went shopping.”

Jenny looked up sharply. Wasn't mooning a word that necessarily carried an object with it? Kind of like, well, lusting? The private thoughts she'd been having about Trinculo brought heat to her cheeks. How pathetic to think that her imagination provided the most intimacy she'd experienced in months.

Lilly brightened. “He's mooning?”

“Perhaps he was just waiting around for an invitation to a tea party,” said Ariel. He looked at Lilly, who was smearing bits of tortilla with peanut butter and folding them into little packets before popping them in her mouth, with distaste. “Foolish to wait around,” he continued. “If you want something,” he lifted his glass, “you should just go get it.”

“What do you mean?” Lilly stopped chewing.

“Well, like I was saying to a friend just this morning,” he glanced over at Jenny. “Where would Romeo be if he'd never declared himself to Juliet?”

Jenny narrowed her eyes. Was this friend he was talking about Trinculo? And why, for heaven's sake, was he telling this to
Lilly
? And had he really just winked at her? She stabbed at the ice in her glass with a chopstick. “Well, he might be alive, for one thing.”

Lilly groaned. “God, Mom.” She looked at Ariel. “My mother does not have a romantic bone in her body. She is the original buzz kill for romance.”

Jenny sat back in her chair, stung. “I quit school to follow a rock and roll band, Lilly. If that isn't romantic, then I don't know what is. And look where it got me.”

Frankie glanced up. “It got you us,” she said.

Jenny softened. She reached across the table to touch Frankie's cheek. “Yes it did, sweetie. It got me you.” She turned to Ariel, eager to change the subject. “Why don't you show us what's in the bag?”

Ariel pulled the bag back and rested it on his lap just as Frankie reached for it. “You all know what's coming up on Tuesday, don't you? Peg's famous rehearsal au naturelle.”

Frankie covered her face with both hands and groaned. Phoenix hovered in the doorway, watching from a distance.

Jenny's forehead wrinkled as she looked at Frankie. “Peg seems to feel it's very important, though I don't know why. The other day she went on and on about stripping off your id and blah de blah.” She looked at Frankie with sympathy. “But you know you don't have to do it if you don't want to.”

Lilly pressed the tortilla bag against the table with her palm to reseal the zip-locking edge. “
You'll
only be naked for like thirty seconds,” she said. “Peg just wants the nude-o-rama for when you're on stage. When you're not acting you can wear your clothes.”

Ariel leaned forward. “What our illustrious director said was, and here I quote,
I want to look at the stage and see flesh, not T-shirts and tank tops and modern waterproof sandals
. He reached into the bag and pulled out a piece of fabric. He shook it so that they could see what it was: a flesh-colored bodysuit made out of a very thin material. It was the size a slender thirteen-year-old girl might wear. It had two bright red dots drawn on it where the nipples would be.

Frankie clapped her hand over her mouth.

Lilly reached for the suit and shook it out before all their eyes. She peered at the nipples and then her eyes traveled farther south. “What about the pubes? Frankie has pubes, you know.”

Frankie and Phoenix locked eyes. Their shared horror overcame the distance between them.

Ariel gazed coolly at Lilly for several heartbeats before saying, “Pubes aren't really in fashion now, darling, are they? I would expect you're bald down there. Or am I wrong about that?”

Lilly turned bright red and hopped up from the table. “I'm going to go take a shower.”

Jenny watched her bend to put the tortillas back in the fridge and thought, not without admiration, that it was quite a feat to have made Lilly blush. She turned back to Ariel. “Can I get you something to eat? We have some tabbouleh in the fridge. It's nice and cool on a hot day.”

Ariel put his hands on his thighs as if prepared to hoist himself up from the chair with great effort. It was a funny gesture, thought Jenny, for a man so unusually light on his feet.

“I should really get back to town,” he said. “Trink will eventually stop sulking and want to begin drinking. I should be there to support him.”

“Did you walk?” she asked, trying to picture him trudging alongside the hot shoulder of the road.

“I do what I have to do, sugar.” The look that he gave her then, half-mocking and half-sympathetic, seemed to imply that he knew all she had been thinking and more. It was odd. They were so different in so many ways, and yet it had been a long time since anyone on that island, with the exception of Mary Ann, had seemed able to read Jenny so easily.

She turned. “Phoenix, honey? Did you call your mom?”

“Yeah. She's coming to get me.” Phoenix's reply was unusually soft for such a bold girl. Bold, perhaps, only in comparison to Frankie.

“You might want to walk back,” she said, turning to look at Ariel once more. “But if not, we can ask Theresa to give you a ride.” Jenny was curious to see what Theresa would make of Ariel.

He sipped his tea. “I wouldn't turn down a ride back to town.”