Juno's Daughters (26 page)

Jenny had been mentally preparing herself for this moment for days. She had been reminding herself that it would be hard on both Frankie and Lilly and that she would need to be attentive to them. What she had not anticipated was how her heart would constrict to the size of a walnut as she watched Andre go. Mary Ann, who was standing next to her, had tucked her arm through Jenny's. Before Andre reached the open mouth of the ferry, Jenny broke away from her friend and ran. She reached him just as the ferry workers were starting to give the all clear for the vehicles to board. They stood near where the bicycles were bungeed to the railing and clung to each other like teenagers.

Jenny was panting from the sprint. “Take me with you.”

Andre tilted her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Really? Do you want to come?”

The boat would soon push off from the slip and Jenny, hearing the hope in Andre's voice, came quickly to her senses.

“I wish I could,” she said. “But I can't.”

Andre gave her the long, sad look of a kicked puppy. “Just what I thought.”

She kissed him again. “Come back soon.”

Just before stepping onto land, Jenny turned to look and saw him standing there still, his suitcase at his feet.

“Well, well,” said Dale, as Jenny joined the islanders on the pier. “I believe that's the first time I've seen Jennifer Alexander chase after anyone.”

“Except for Lilly,” added Peg.

Jenny shot her a wry glance. “Well, I've certainly done a whole lot of that.” She waved to her friends and gave the ferry one last, lingering look before she climbed into her truck and started the engine.

The road was dense with fog and Jenny slowed to let a covey of California quail cross in front of her. Mist clung to the trees alongside the road, and each solitary house she passed, some with hay in round bales dotting a nearby pasture, seemed to exist on its own shrouded island. When she reached the break in the trees and the reflectors that marked their road, she suddenly decided not to turn. Frankie was sleeping. She could go out to San Juan County Park, just for a few moments, and look at the sea. A few children from the campground were playing on the beach in spite of the cold. She perched on the picnic table and watched them climb over the lichen-covered rocks for a while before lifting her eyes to the horizon. The water was as calm as a fishbowl. In the mist beyond, Vancouver Island seemed to waver and then appear as if it had been created that morning for her alone.

Jenny returned to find Frankie sitting on Lilly's bed.

“Feeling better?” She brushed the top of her daughter's head with her palm and then, catching the expression on Frankie's face asked, “Is your sister around?”

“She took her stuff.”

“Which stuff?”

Frankie's gaze traveled to the spot in the corner of the room where Lilly's backpack had stood for more than a week. Jenny's followed. The spot was empty. Jenny cast her eyes over the piles of clothes on the floor and the food wrappers on the night table. Lilly's room always looked like she had packed and departed in a hurry. “Did she leave a note?”

Frankie nodded and lifted her favorite article of Lilly's clothing, a beaded peasant blouse, from her lap. “She gave me this.”

Jenny took the blouse, and saw the note attached to it.
Tell Mom not to worry cause I have bus fare. You can have this shirt as a going away present.
How Lilly, she thought then. Generous, but within limits. Even as she grieved, the implicit message would not be lost on Frankie,
but keep your paws off the rest of my stuff
.

Jenny was shaking, she realized, as she dialed Lilly's number. Furious. How like her also to leave before the actors did. To stage a mysterious departure of her own. How like her in both its drama and its thoughtlessness. Jenny's message was brief and to the point.
Call me now
.

The next number she dialed was Sue's. Jenny's sister had not heard from Lilly yet that morning, which didn't mean she hadn't heard plenty nonetheless.

“So who is this new guy, Jenny?” she asked. “The one that Lilly liked and that you got instead? Is he going to last, do you think?”

“I didn't
get
him, Sue. We're in a
relationship
.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don't, Sue. Not really,” Jenny said, walking farther away from Frankie's door. “It's not important, anyway. What matters is that Lilly is on her way. I need her to call me as soon as you hear from her.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“It's important to Lilly, clearly. And what about Frankie? How is she with all this?”

All what? Jenny wanted to ask. The events of the last twenty-four hours or my whole, entire life? Our lives?

“Frankie is fine,” said Jenny, but even as she said so she found her eyes searching anxiously for Frankie's form in the next room. She wished that she were more confident that it was true.

Sue said, “What if Lilly doesn't want to talk to you? Do you want me to phone and tell you that she's arrived?”

“Thank you, yes. That would be nice of you.” Why, oh why, she wondered, did she always have to sound like Lilly herself when she talked to her sister?

“Okaaay. Well, talk to you soon.”

Jenny stood for a moment longer with the phone in her hand, willing it to ring or for a text to scroll across the screen. She could hear Frankie shuffling around Lilly's room, conducting an inventory of all the things that were missing. She could hear her neighbor mowing a path through the tall yellow grass with a bush hog. It was eleven on an otherwise perfectly ordinary day in August and she was scheduled to work at noon. She thought she ought to make Frankie something to eat before she left for the store. She cradled the phone in her hand like a polished stone. Then she dialed a number she knew by heart but did not call nearly as frequently as she ought to.

“Mom?”

“Jennifer!” Her mother set the phone down. “Arthur! It's Jennifer on the phone.” She spoke back into the receiver. “Is something wrong?”

Jenny flinched. “No. Everything's fine.” Less than ten words had been spoken and she was already feeling guilty and defensive. “You know, I'm actually dating someone for a change. A very nice man.” How strange, she thought, that she still wanted their approval. Even—no,
especially
—now.

“That's wonderful, dear. What does he do?”

“I'm on, Jennifer. Your father's on the phone.”

“Hi, Dad.”

“What does who do?” asked her father. “Who are we talking about?”

“Jenny's new boyfriend. He is new, isn't he? Or have you been seeing him for a while now?”

Jenny considered the best way to describe Andre to her parents. It struck her that she had allowed so many gaps to develop in their understanding of her life that it would require more explanation than she had energy. Back when she was a girl living at home, they might have failed to grasp what things
meant
to her, her friends, the music that she liked, how she did in school, but at least they knew something about them. They had known the contours of her life if not the center. The very things, she realized, that she knew about Lilly now. For Jenny and her parents the balance had shifted when she moved away. And so it would for her and her daughter. Once Lilly was gone, the only details Jenny would know about her life would be the ones she chose to share.

“He was out here for the summer. He lives in New York.”

“Oh, that's too bad.” She could hear her mother's enthusiasm draining away.

“It's okay. Really. We plan to visit each other.”

Her father cleared his throat. “Can you afford that?”

“Sure. Oh, hey, there was one thing I did want to mention.” She had so longed to hear her mother's voice, but now all she wanted to do was get off the phone. “Lilly is on her way down to Sue's on the Greyhound. She might call, you know, if she gets stuck.”

Her father said, “The
Grey
hound?”

“She can always call us,” said her mother. “And, you know, so can you.”

“I
do
know,” said Jenny. She was about to hang up.

“So how's my little Fritzie girl?” said her dad. “Is she there? Can we talk to her?”

Jenny carried the phone toward Lilly's room. “Oh, yes. It might cheer her up.”

“She needs cheering up?” asked both her parents at once.

Jenny backpedaled fast. “It's always a bit sad when actors that were here for the Shakespeare play leave. That's all. No biggie.”

Business was brisk that afternoon and in spite of how distracted she was, Jenny managed to sell a dozen glass figurines to a Canadian couple on their honeymoon. Even as she rang up their purchase, her mind was traveling south on Highway 5, past Shasta and Redding and Weed, following the route of a particular Greyhound bus. She could almost feel the road under the tires. Jenny was a forty-two-year-old mother of two, but somewhere deep inside she was still the girl who had left home to marry a rock and roll musician. When a message from Lilly finally scrolled across her phone, Jenny found she understood both its contours and its melancholy center.
Goin2CA
. Jenny read the message and then, in her mind, she heard the familiar guitar chords that followed. Just as Lilly had known she would. She flipped the phone shut and wiped her eyes. “Going to California,” she sang out loud to herself, “with an aching in my heart.”

She wandered through the store for the rest of the afternoon without a clear purpose, unable to settle on dusting or inventory or any of the million other things she needed to do. She remembered the burst of adrenaline that sent her charging toward the boat after Andre and realized that that was nothing next to what she was feeling now. She tried to ignore the urgent voice that whispered in her ear,
go, go, go
.
Go get her back
. Peg was right; she had been chasing after Lilly for years. Was she just supposed to stop now? Could she? What an old liar that Prospero was, she thought as she traded her dust rag for a handful of peppermints. She unwrapped the first and popped it in her mouth. Prospero could have just stepped off-stage at the first scene and let Miranda and Ferdinand be together if he'd wanted to. It could have been a very short play. But he didn't. He made up this big long story about how the obstacles he placed in their path would make them
appreciate
each other more, yada yada yada. She bit down hard and the candy split in half with a satisfying crack. She knew the truth, though. He just didn't want to admit to himself that letting your daughter go, even when the time was right, was too damn hard.

T
wo weeks later, Lilly was a full-blown California girl and Frankie was a diligent, if glum, part-time employee at the antique store. Jenny lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the early evening glare. It was hard to believe that the days were slowly growing shorter. In early August the sun still didn't set until after eight p.m.

She said to Mary Ann, “I tried to arrange for her to spend an afternoon with Megan Bermann—you know Erica has a daughter that's in Frankie's grade—and she practically begged me not to call. I offered her ballet lessons and she asked me if she could have the money instead.”

Mary Ann looked at Jenny with interest. “I think she's probably earned, what? A hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars by now. What's she saving for?”

“She says she's saving to go visit her sister.”

Jenny tucked her arm through Mary Ann's. Their old routine had kicked in now that the play days were behind them: They would walk downtown for quick glass of wine together before splitting up to go their separate ways. The only difference was that now they visited the wine bar Swirl instead of their old haunt on Second Street and they had a whole new collection of memories to flip through like snapshots when they got there.