Megan's Way (13 page)

Megan closed her eyes and relished the pain
of her only daughter’s weight on top of her. She reached up and
brushed Olivia’s hair off of her forehead.

“Livi, you know how special this is to me,
right?” Megan asked.

“Yes! Yes!” Olivia said, her words burst with
excitement.

“Okay. This is something we have done since
we were kids, your age. So I need time to figure out if it’s okay
right now, for me, I mean. This is important. It is what centers
us, what brings us each to the same place within ourselves, our own
little world.” She smiled, wondering how Olivia could possibly
understand what she had just said.

“Mom, I’ve watched you guys out my window
ever since I can remember. I know what it means to be part of
this.” She closed her eyes, willing the tears to stay at bay. “I
want this so much, to be part of your world. Can’t you please let
me in?” Olivia kissed her mother’s cheek and lay on top of her for
a minute longer. A tear dropped onto her mother’s hair.

“Livi,” Megan said, her voice strained. She
tried to move under Olivia’s weight, and cringed with pain.
“Livi?”

Olivia’s head popped up, her eyes bright, her
dimples made her appear even more youthful than her fourteen years.
“Yeah?” She noticed the cringe on her mother’s face and quickly
jumped off of her. “Oh! Sorry, Mom!” she said. “Are you okay?”

Holly put her arm around Olivia’s shoulder
and squeezed, whispering in her ear, “You’re a good egg, kiddo.
Hang in there, we’ll work on her.”

Olivia’s disappointment faded quickly. She
beamed at Holly, taking her compliment and tucking it away with the
others that she had held dear for so many years.

“Megan,” Peter said, “why don’t Livi, Holly,
and I go set up while you relax here, inside?” He looked to the
others for support.

“Great idea!” Holly said, busy tying a knot
in her skirt so it fell just above her knee.

“Oh, great idea!” Olivia bent over and rolled
up her jeans.

“You know,” Peter said, “Only someone like
you could bend at the waist to roll up their pants! For god’s sake,
I have to bend my knees! I can’t remember the last time I could
actually reach my feet without bending my knees!”

The women exchanged a cynical glance, raised
their eyebrows, and then looked toward Olivia.

“Whatever! Are you going to be okay, Meg?”
Holly tucked the afghan around Megan and pushed the table with her
drink close enough for her to reach. She put her hands on her hips
as she surveyed Megan’s perch.

Megan shooed them out of the room, “Go, go
already. I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m dying!” The words stung
her heart as they left her lips, and her smile was lost among the
shocked faces of her friends, who looked to one and other for
support. “Come on you guys, go already, really!” once they left the
room, Megan took a long deep breath and closed her eyes.
Alone—finally
. The music calmed her. She opened her eyes and
realized how much she loved her living room. She smirked at the
thought,
living room
—the room where people do their
living.

She eased off of the couch and made her way
slowly up the stairs and down the long hallway to her bedroom. As
she walked past her dresser, littered with scarves, papers she’d
meant to go through, her hairbrush, strewn with hair gone from her
head, she sighed. She’d had a happy life. She had lived her life
just as she had wished to. Megan had cherished every day and hadn’t
let herself get wrapped up in the little things in life, like
having a spotless house. She was comfortable. She had Olivia, and
she was happy.

She pulled her hippie bag, as she liked to
call it, from the bottom of her closet, where it lay safely tucked
behind the few pairs of shoes and boots that she owned. She ran her
hands around the outline of the multi-colored patches, the swatches
of gold, orange, and red. She fingered the threads which clung for
dear life, ran her fingers along the drawstring and the bottom, and
finally across the fine gold threads that weaved their way in and
out of the surrounding colors. She remembered finding the bag in
Provincetown, the summer before Olivia was born. She reached inside
the bag, unzipped the secret pocket that was stitched deep inside,
near the bottom, and she withdrew her Yin necklace. As she fastened
the clasp around her neck, she finally allowed herself to think of
Jack.

At twenty-four, she had made a successful
career out of painting murals, and had triumphantly tangled up her
personal life. She had been dating Lawrence for many months, and
they had discovered an intensity within each other that Megan had
never before experienced—but had looked forward to. She may have
even felt some kind of love for Lawrence—yet she had known she
wasn’t waiting to become his wife, which was why her reaction to
the call from Jack Townsend had surprised her. Jack’s desire to
spend the weekend together, “ To see what might be,” enticed and
confused her. She didn’t know how to react to her own flittering
heartbeat, or what to do with the excitement that grew within her
as he revealed his plans. Having remained constant in each other’s
lives since childhood, years of camaraderie had taken place without
a single meaningful kiss.
Why now?
Their history together
had been just enough to tantalize her.

Megan had tried to think of Jack in
that
way. She had imagined his golden hair and finely-toned
muscular body, his loose jeans hanging off of his perfect hips, his
luscious chest muscles pressing against a slightly snug t-shirt,
and Birkenstocks barely covering his strong, tanned feet. A chill
had run down her spine while heat had found its way up her chest
and settled in her cheeks.
This is silly
, she had thought.
I’ll probably feel like he’s my brother when we’re together.
It’ll be awkward
. Eventually Jack’s pleading wore her down,
“It’s only two short days,” he said.

“But we were together all the time through
college, Jack. Wouldn’t something have happened between us then? I
don’t know.” Megan’s hand covered her heart, which beat a little
faster with every excuse she devised, challenging her own
desires.

“We were distracted in college, Meg. I
have
to know. Every date I go on leads me back to you. Every
face I see, I’m looking for your smile. Every time i—”

“Okay, okay,” she cut him off with a quiet
laugh and a silent blush, “I get it, Jack. I think I sort of know,
too. I think that might be what’s always happened with me, too. I
am comfortable with you. I know you will always be there.”

They spent a wonderful weekend knocking
around Provincetown, enjoying the arts and the ease of being
together. They climbed to the top of the Pilgrim’s Tower, where
Jack covered Megan’s eyes as they passed each window because the
height of the tower scared her. They ate too much ice cream and
laughed as they had as children. They sat side by side, sated and
happy, on a park bench watching the tide roll out behind the
Provincetown Theater. What they hadn’t done was share any sensual
intimacy. It hadn’t seemed to be a conscious thought by either
party. In the evening, within the confines of their quiet motel
room, Megan fell asleep in Jack’s arms while they watched
Young
Frankenstein
.

Saturday moved seamlessly into Sunday. Megan
shopped at Shop Therapy and Freak Street, buying Jack a cool hippie
hoodie and picking up a few cotton skirts and the patchwork hippie
bag for herself. Jack bought cheap silver Yin and Yang necklaces,
presenting the Yin to Megan, “For what might be,” and keeping the
Yang for himself.

As the sun fell from the sky, casting a
purplish glow from above, they took a lazy drive into orleans,
eventually finding themselves eating cheese and crackers on nauset
Beach and making their way to the bottom of a bottle of White
Zinfandel. Megan lay on her back, counting the stars and trying to
ignore the growing pull in her center. She gazed at Jack, who
leaned on his side, his head propped up in his large hand. He
looked back at her sensually, expectantly.

Silently, they reached for each other. Their
lips molded together with the ease of years of practice, although
it was only their first real kiss. Jack’s hands slid under Megan’s
blouse and a tingling sensation shot through her stomach and ran
down her limbs to the ends of her toes. A soft moan escaped her
lips. Her hands snuck under Jack’s shirt. She became lost in his
smell, his taste, the feel of his tongue in her mouth. She clawed
at his muscular back. Under the cover of the night sky, they
slipped out of their clothes and into each other. The waves played
off the sand like a musical. Megan felt as though Jack somehow
already knew every inch of her skin, yet at the same time,
guiltily, her mind drifted to Lawrence.

Megan ran her right hand along the chain that
now hung around her neck, and fingered the Yin necklace, pushing
the memories aside. With her left, she swiped at the tears that
fell down her cheeks. She then laid both hands across her emaciated
stomach, trying to remember the feel of her swollen, pregnant
belly, and the overwhelming emotions which had grown within her
heart for her unborn child. She’d never forget the day when she
finally gave birth: the excitement, the fear, and the
exhaustion—the shock of Holly going into early labor while she
recovered from her own delivery, the happiness of rooming in with
Holly and the babies—and the sadness when Alissa Mae, Holly’s baby,
had died.

Megan realized that there was a certain fear
when one brought life into the world, and a completely different
type of fear when one prepared to die. She wiped the tears and the
memories away and took a deep breath. She held her Winnie-the-Pooh
stuffed bear against her chest, resting her head upon its worn fur.
She thought of all the nights that Pooh made her feel safe, as if
she weren’t alone. She’d slept with the bear every night of her
life, with rare exception: the nights with Lawrence, the night
Olivia was conceived, the night Olivia was born, and of course the
night of each of her birthdays when they held their rituals. She
carefully placed the bear into her hippie bag and thought,
After
fourteen and a half years, this ten-dollar bag has many secrets
woven into the seams
.

She opened her wicker bedside cabinet and
withdrew her meditation candles and incense, which she placed
gently in the bag on top of the bear. Megan walked slowly across
her room toward her closet, stopping at the doorway and turning
again to survey her room. The plush blankets, textured wall
hangings, and earthy tones comforted her. She turned and walked to
the back of the closet, stood on her tiptoes and reached up,
confirming its existence. The sides of her mahogany chest were
smooth on her fingertips. She sighed as tears found their way, once
again, to her eyes, and pain shot up through her bones. She reached
behind her sweaters and grabbed her pink, lime, and tan chenille
scarf, also from Provincetown, and wound it gently around her neck.
She slipped on her favorite thick brown sweater, slung her bag over
her shoulder, and walked with purpose toward her elegantly carved,
cherry-wood bureau, which she had acquired by swapping one of her
canvases of the eastham Windmill during one of her summers vending
at the Wellfleet Flea Market.

She made no effort to conceal the tears that
streaked her cheeks. Deep inside her top right bureau drawer was a
photo of Olivia sleeping when she was three years old. She
remembered how Olivia had said she wanted to be a princess, and how
she had taken careful measures to set up the house perfectly for
her.

Megan had put up streamers and set candles in
every nook and cranny, draped a red cloth down the stairs and into
the living room, and made a tiara out of cardboard, fake jewels,
and feathers, painted it white, and set it on Olivia’s nightstand.
She had bought Olivia a princess dress, the kind little girls wear
on Halloween, and little gold sparkly dress shoes, which she had
placed next to the tiara. When Olivia had awakened on that special
morning, her world had been transformed. She had become Princess
Olivia Taylor, ruler of girl Land, and her mother had been dubbed
her Lady in Waiting, available to satisfy her every whim.

They had eaten chocolate chip cookies for
breakfast, marshmallows with chocolate sauce dribbled on them for
snacks, and had surrounded themselves with peanut butter bananas
and marshmallow fluff for lunch. Princess Olivia had demanded, in
her tender little voice, to dine on spaghetti and marshmallows for
dinner, complete with chocolate sauce. After that magical day,
Princess Olivia’s love of chocolate and marshmallows had withered
out, as had her little bucket of energy. Megan had snapped the
picture of Olivia when she had pooped out on the couch at seven
o’clock in her princess dress, her shoes strewn on the floor, and
her tiara toppled crooked on her head.

Megan tucked the photo inside her bra and
picked up a framed photo from the top of her bureau, the one of
her, Peter, Holly, and Jack standing in front of the Women’s nest.
Four young, beautiful people, arm-in-arm, full of life and free of
disease stared back at Megan. She ran her finger along each of her
friend’s faces. She tucked the photo next to the Princess picture
and close to her heart.

Megan sat in the window seat of her bedroom
and looked out the window. Holly and Olivia gathered twigs for the
bonfire, while Peter organized the pit. She watched the leaves blow
in the gentle breeze, the tall pines bent with age, and she wished
she didn’t have to leave such a beautiful earth. Her gaze turned
toward the sound of laughter, and she smiled as she watched
Olivia’s lips curl up, just at the edges, as she joked with Holly.
A laugh escaped Megan’s lips at the sight of Peter, hands on hips,
pointing to sticks and trying to focus Olivia and Holly, which
Megan knew was a losing battle. Peter’s desperate attempts to make
the sticks stay upright, like a teepee, were comical. Megan covered
her mouth.
God, I’ll miss them
. She giggled when Olivia
walked right into Holly and toppled them over, tumbling both to the
ground in fits of laughter. Those were the images she wanted to
take with her, the images of life as it unfolded, and the images of
her daughter surrounded by her friends, safe and loved.