Juno's Daughters (22 page)

“Oh, I'm not worried about Lilly. Frankie's the one I was asking about. Have you told her yet that her sister's leaving?”

Jenny shook her head. “It just never seems to be the right time. Maybe I'll do it when Phoenix arrives on the island for the show. She's scheduled to come Wednesday night. Frankie's been counting the days.”

“Do you think she'd like to work in the store?”

“After school in the fall?”

“Whenever.”

“Can you afford to pay her?”

“Sure. Well, not-full time or anything. But a few hours a week.”

Jenny tilted herself off the stool and wrapped her arms around Mary Ann. The skin on the older woman's neck and cheek was a bit damp from the warmth of the store. Hardly anyone had air-conditioning on the island and hot days like this were rare, even in summer. “That is so sweet of you. Really. I think she'd love it.”

“And speaking of full-time.” Mary Ann patted Jenny gently on the back. “Not much trade in antiques this afternoon, apparently. I think you should go home.”

“I told Frankie I'd show her how to make succotash.”

“Then go.”

“We'll bring you some.”

“I'll look forward to it.”

Jenny hopped in the truck, tied her hair back with a rubber band she pulled off a bag of peaches from the farmers' market, and turned the key. As she had more often than usual lately, she found herself thinking of her mother. Jenny had fled from Sacramento when she was just a little bit older than Lilly. She had rarely given her parents, her mother with her meat loaf and taco nights and her carefully packed Easter baskets, a second thought. She had run and run and only now, when she was a mother herself, did she understand how often she still needed one. San Juan Island in the Puget Sound was a thousand miles from where she'd been raised. More than twenty years had passed and she was a world away from being able to talk to Helen Phillips, of Sacramento, California, the way she talked to Mary Ann.

The roads were as clogged as they got on the island. Tourists in rental cars inched along, reading signs from their car windows and hunting for parking spaces, and others on mopeds and rented bicycles risked their lives darting past the slow-moving traffic. When she reached Cattle Point Road and an open lane, Jenny hit the gas and the truck filled with lavender-scented wind. God how she hoped that this fight with Lilly wouldn't last long and that they would be able to talk and laugh with each other as they had since Lilly was small. She hoped they would, but if they couldn't, and Lilly in a few years' time was even further away from her than she was now, well, she hoped that she would meet someone like Mary Ann.

The counter was scattered with eggshells and the paprika was out, but the deviled eggs themselves, as well as the deviled-egg-eater, were nowhere in sight. Jenny glanced at the mess and the message light blinking on the answering machine and was tempted to ignore both and go sit at her loom. She had finished the wall-hanging and had begun something new, a scarf to go along with Lilly for when the weather turned cool, and imagined she could get a lot done in the quiet moments before Frankie returned from the pond, or the woods, or wherever she was. Her stomach rumbled and she glanced at her watch. Four-thirty. If they were going to have the succotash that night, as planned, they'd have to start pretty soon. Frankie had wanted to try it out once before Phoenix came, and if it worked well, she would cook it for her by herself.

Jenny stood for long moments in the center of the room, suspended between the gravitational pull of the loom and the kitchen. Finally, she decided that at least she should listen to the message on the machine. The phone sat on a table near an old walnut coat tree that was heavy with coats they wore daily and some they had not worn in years. Jenny pushed the Play button and lifted the sleeve of one of Lilly's old hoodies to her face. She smashed it against her nose and filled her lungs with the scent of patchouli and cloves.

The clicks and humming of the ancient machine were followed by a familiar voice.

“Hello, Jenny? This is Theresa. I won't keep you long because I know you're busy with the play and all, but I did want to call you and let you know that Phoenix won't be able to make it up to the island this week, after all. It turns out she'll be going with one of her cousins to Lake Chelan. I hope it won't be too much of an inconvenience for you. Okay, well, I wanted to get that message to you as soon as possible. Hope you're doing great. Bye.”

Jenny, her blood running cold, stared at the speaker from which the disembodied voice had come. Get that message to
you
, Theresa had said. She hadn't even mentioned Frankie. She hadn't even said her name. It was clear that Theresa wanted to get the message to Jenny so that Jenny, at a safe distance, could break her daughter's heart.

Jenny twisted the fabric of Lilly's jacket in her fist. “The
coward
.”

It was all she could do not to yank the machine from the wall and hurl it across the room. Instead, she picked up the phone and punched in Theresa's number. Her cell.

“Hello.”

“Theresa, this is Jenny.”

“Oh, hi. I just left a message on your machine, I . . .”

“Please, Theresa. Please let her come.”

If Jenny had intended to yell at her, to say the thing to her directly that she had said to the empty room, the moment she heard the other woman's voice she realized that the main thing, the only thing, was that Phoenix come to the show.

“It's not a question of me
letting
her,” said Theresa, defensive. “I gave her the choice, and it's Phoenix who wants to go to Chelan. I can't
make
her go to San Juan.”

“Yes, you can, Theresa. You can tell her that her friend is counting on her coming, that it will . . .” Jenny's voice cracked here, and she brought her fist to her mouth, “that it will hurt her terribly if she doesn't come. You can make her.”

“That sounds a little extreme, Jenny. It's just one show, after all.”

“I'm begging you.” Tears were running down Jenny's face now. She wiped at them with her sleeve. “I don't know what to do besides beg.”

Theresa sighed. “You're making this so hard.”

“Maybe if I talk to Phoenix myself,” said Jenny. “Is she there?”

“No.” Theresa's voice grew sharp. “She's not. And that's enough. It really is. I'm sorry.” The phone went dead.

There was a noise behind Jenny. She turned. Frankie stood just inside the front door holding a piece of driftwood the size of her arm. Her hair was coming out of its braids, spilling around the collar of a jacket that looked like it had been thrown down on the sand and then put on again without a shaking.

She said, “Who was on the phone? Why do you look like that? Is Lilly okay?”

“That was Theresa.” Jenny walked forward with one hand outstretched, as if trying to keep a deer from bolting. “Phoenix isn't coming, sweetheart. She can't . . .”

Frankie's face crumpled. It simply collapsed in on itself like a sand castle while Jenny watched. Jenny couldn't finish the sentence, and from the look in Frankie's eyes it was clear she didn't have to. They might never know whether it was Theresa who had proposed the trip to Lake Chelan or whether it was something Phoenix came up with free and clear. Either way, it wasn't that she
couldn't
come, it was that she
wouldn't
.

Frankie gasped and then sobbed. Jenny wrapped herself around her and rocked, trying to contain the storm of the girl's anguish within the bounds of her own ordinary arms. She writhed as if the air itself burned her skin. It seemed unlikely that such rage and grief could come from this small, compact package. It always had. Two, three, four times a day it used to happen like this. When first Lilly and then Frankie were small, any broken toy or squashed finger or bee sting would send them careening onto their mother's lap, shaking and wailing as if the one thing they truly loved, the only thing they could not live without, had vanished from the earth. Just weeks before Jenny had pitched herself against Frankie's sorrow near the downtown playground. After years of mostly blue skies, now here she was again, steeling herself for another storm.

Jenny pressed her lips against Frankie's wet cheek. The very core of her body ached. She contracted her muscles around her fear, fighting the long-forgotten sense that she could split straight down the center into two jagged pieces. Don't shrink from the pain, she could remember the midwife saying when Frankie was born. You won't break. This time she was not so sure. Back then when they were small enough to cradle and her children howled this way, she could not have predicted how their anguish would sound in her ears when they grew to almost her own size. She had not understood that, years later, when they cried as if their hearts were breaking, it would be because it was true.

The kettle whistled and Jenny took it off the stove and grabbed a mug from the cupboard. She carried a cup of chamomile tea into Frankie's room, where she found her lying on her stomach on the bed, staring at the wall. “Tea?”

“No, thanks.”

Jenny set down her cup. “I'm getting ready to do a fringe on this scarf. Do you want to help?”

“No, thanks.”

“What about tying up some yarn butterflies from the new alpaca? You're so good at that.”

“No, thanks.”

“Want to talk?”

Frankie shook her head.

“Okay, well, I'll be right out here in case you change your mind.”

The phone on the table vibrated and Jenny lunged for it before it rang. She closed her eyes and said a little prayer that the caller was Phoenix, phoning to say that she had changed her mind.

“Jenny?”

Her eyes flew open and she felt a zip of electricity in her spine. The voice was Trinculo's.

“Yes. Hi.”

He said, “You three sound surprisingly alike. And it would be just my luck to call and think it was you and ask how the most beautiful woman on the island was doing and to get, say, Lilly.” Trinculo waited for a laugh, and when none came he said, “Everything okay?”

“Frankie's best friend backed out of coming to the show. She's crushed.”

And here Jenny's own heart was fluttering. It was an organ that was capable of such betrayal. She slipped her hand under the loose linen blouse she was wearing and pressed her palm against her bare chest. It was as if she had caught a frightened bird in her hand.

“I could bring over some dinner, if you wanted,” he said. “If you don't feel like cooking this evening, I mean. Maybe a barbecued chicken from the market? Do you think Lilly would let me cross the threshold if I brought a chicken?”