It Happened One Night (8 page)

He felt that after all these years of being her friend, he should know more precisely what was going on in her mind. A new
distance lingered between them lately, a distance that he knew he’d caused. He’d been trying desperately to make his feelings
for her recede back into whatever place they’d come from—Kelly had proven to be a good distraction from time to time—but the
longing that he’d felt for her while he was away was still as strong now as it had been then. Even though he’d been home for
weeks, he still had the odd feeling that he
missed
her somehow.

He stole a look at her while she gazed out toward the dark water. She’d always been beautiful. Something about her high cheekbones
gave her face an openness, an eagerness that made people interested in her even before she said hello. Children threw their
arms around her knees just moments after meeting her and dogs rolled belly-up before her, begging to be petted. She might
tell a total stranger the most intimate details of a trip to the dentist, or offer up a play-by-play description of a first
date. But she rarely offered information that was more than superficial fact. Part of her outgoing, carpe diem attitude was
protective: Her good manners and cheerful spirit were actually like a barrier that she’d drawn around herself.

If he wanted answers, he had to tread lightly. To tell her, in not so many words, that he would listen if she wanted to talk.
“I might go for a bike ride this weekend,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I don’t know yet. I was hoping to do something a little different. I thought Ron might know a trail to recommend.”

Lana said nothing.

“Maybe you could ask him for me?” He held his breath. He hoped, in the silence that followed, that Lana would say, “Ron and
I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

But instead she said, “I could ask him. If he stops by. But I never really know when that will be.” A moment passed. When
Lana spoke again there was a hard, sharp edge to her voice. “Why do you think Karin wants a baby so badly?”

Eli plucked up a bit of grass growing from a crack in the rock and then tossed it away. He could have answered her question.
Like Karin, he too worried he was running out of time. But instead he said, “You tell me.”

She got to her feet and brushed off the folds of her blue cotton sundress. “A baby just… ties you down. Keeps you from doing
things. Things you want to do.”

“You don’t think Karin might be worried that if she doesn’t have a baby, Gene will leave her?”

“He’d never leave her. And she’d never leave him. Neither one of them will ever leave each other, or the Barn, or Vermont,
or anything else.”

Eli watched her carefully, the muscle tightening beneath the delicate skin of her neck, the quickened rise and fall of her
chest. The time for subtleties was over. He asked her, point-blank, “What’s on your mind?”

She stood at the edge of the cliff and gazed into the darkness. During the day high school boys liked to moon the tourists
on passing ferries. They also liked to jump and dive into the deep, cold waters below. Lana hung her toes off the rock, and
Eli bit back a warning:
Be careful, please.

There was no way he could have been prepared for what happened next even if she’d spontaneously launched herself off the cliff.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

His heart dropped, hit the bottom of his chest like an anchor hitting sand. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because maybe it’s
just… false symptoms. Did you take a test?”

“Not yet. I’ll do it tomorrow after work… if you want to be there.”

“Of course I’ll be there. It might all turn out to be nothing.”

“Maybe.” She turned to face him, her eyes glinting madly in the moonlight. “But all signs point to yes.”

“That’s why you’ve been sick.”

She nodded.

He got up and stood beside her. He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. “Does Ron know?”

“How could he? I haven’t seen him,” Lana said, laughing with a kind of hysteria now. “I don’t even know Ron’s last name. Isn’t
that funny? I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know anything about him. And I don’t think he’s going to look me up again
anytime soon.”

“How do you know?”

“He hasn’t been by in a while. That’s all.”

Eli was not an angry man. But now he couldn’t remember a time in his life that he’d felt so furious. His fingernails dug crescents
into his skin. “We’ll find him.”

“He doesn’t want me to find him.”

Neither do I
, he thought. In the most secret corner of his mind, he worried not only for Lana, but for himself. What if she got married?
He would lose her forever.

“I can’t have a baby,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I have… I
had
… plans.”

“Costa Rica?”

“I can’t live in a jungle if I’m changing diapers and breast-feeding,” she said.

“Would you… I mean, would you consider…?”

“Abortion?” She shook her head. “I don’t think that will work for me. I mean, I’ve been a vegetarian for half my life. I can’t
even eat a hamburger without feeling like I committed a mortal sin.”

Eli nodded.

“Adoption is probably the answer.” She looked at him, her gaze seeking his, looking for confirmation of how she felt. “I want
to do something with my life. To not be pinned down. I’m not cut out for motherhood, so I see no choice but adoption.”

She still had her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers curled around her shoulders. He wanted nothing more than to unfold
those crossed arms and embrace her and rock her and tell her wordlessly that he loved her, that she had him—no matter what.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “And yes, we did use a condom.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Eli said.

“You know I don’t take anything,” she continued, toying with a wooden bead of the bracelet on her thin wrist. “I’m not on
the pill. Something just… went wrong.”

“What exactly happened?”

“I don’t know. There must have been some kind of a tear.”

He ran a hand through his hair and didn’t care if it looked a mess. He tried to ignore the anger, but it was there, a pinching,
twisting pain. “I just don’t get it, Lana. Why were you with him?”

“He’s an interesting person.”

“They’re all
interesting
people. Every single time.”

“Please,” she said, her voice pleading. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

He drew in a deep breath. The air was scented by the lake and something sweetly powdery on Lana’s skin. His heart was pounding
and his mind reeled. He stepped toward her, to put a hand on her shoulder, to give what comfort he could. But the moment his
hand was close enough that he could feel the warmth rising from her bare arm, she slipped away.

She kicked off her sandals with a fury that sent them flying toward the trees.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” With her back turned toward him, she pulled her dress over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra; she rarely
did. He saw the long bony curve of her backbone, the flexible strength of her shoulder blades, the trim column of her waist
and hips.

All at once he was struck by the strangeness of the evening, of his relationship with her. She could take off all her clothes
and stand entirely naked before him, and he still felt as if there were a hundred layers between them, as if the air itself
obscured them one from the other.

She didn’t hesitate. She ran off the edge of the cliff into the dark, where she hung suspended for a brief moment like a slant
of moonlight before she fell into the blackness, into the water far below.

Eli sat down on a rock at the top of the cliff and waited. He’d swallowed his own desires so deeply and efficiently that he’d
once believed them to be gone. And he’d suffered rejection—humiliation even—when he’d offered everything in his heart to her
all those years ago, and she’d turned him down. He’d allowed himself to be relegated to the sidelines, and he told himself
he could be content. But the plain fact was, he wasn’t.

He heard Lana swimming in the water at the bottom of the cliffs. The rocks weren’t impossible to climb, but they were treacherous
even during the day. He could picture her down there in the darkness, her skin pebbling in the cool air, her hair ropy and
clumped about her shoulders like some Grecian naiad as she began to hunt among the rocks for the best route.

He stood to peer over the edge, wondering if this time she would let him help her climb back up.

Queen Anne’s lace (also known as wild carrot):
Some say the white flower was named because the purple center represents when Queen Anne pricked her finger while making
lace. Some say that purple mole is the queen and the “lace” is her collar. Some say Queen Anne challenged her ladies to see
who could make lace as lovely as the wild carrot; the queen won.

Queen Anne’s lace has reportedly been used as an abortifacient.

July 4

L
ana stood with her hands on the railing overlooking the lake from the vista of Battery Park. On the grass far behind her,
Karin, Gene, Eli, and Kelly were sitting together on a picnic blanket. The twilight sky was a deep, wide azure, and the horizon
had been tinged a yellow so soft a baby might grab a corner and use it like a blanket.

She could remember the exact moment she first thought she didn’t want children. Karin was downstairs preparing a meal for
the boarders, and Lana was sitting cross-legged in the locked attic, a consignment-store baby doll in her arms. The doll had
a smooth bald head like a newborn and a soft cotton body that was stained yellow in spots. She had been cooing and cuddling
the baby in a way that made love bubble up in her heart, when she heard her father come into the house. His footsteps were
as heavy as an executioner’s. She paused a moment to listen. Then she returned to the doll on her lap, searching out that
feeling of love once again.

But it was too late. The feeling was gone. Unrecoverable. Eventually, she put the doll back in a milk crate in the corner
and didn’t take it out again.

Of course back then she’d been only vaguely aware of the connection between the sound of her father’s return and the doll.
And certainly the change hadn’t been instantaneous—probably, it had been building up for some time, and that moment in the
attic was the last straw. But whatever the chronology was, from that moment on she knew she would never want a baby of her
own. She wanted an adventure—to come and go as she pleased just like the boarders did. The stories all those men told her
had fired her imagination. She had no patience for just sitting home.

A handful of skinny, elementary-school kids ran past her, cackling and playing tag. Children were everywhere, flailing and
wiggling and squealing. Parents pushed strollers, chased down wayward toddlers, and wiped dirt from their children’s hands.
Some of the families looked happy, but some did not.

Lana dropped her head in her hands.

“What are you doing over here by yourself?” Karin asked.

“Huh?” Lana looked up, startled. “Oh. I’m just enjoying the view.”

“You’ve got to come back. No offense, but I can’t stand Eli’s new girlfriend. I mean, good for him for
finally
getting in the game. But she’s driving me nuts!”

“Oh, come on. They’re not that bad,” Lana said, laughing and looking toward the couple. All evening long, Kelly had clung
to Eli’s arm when they walked, kissed him at every possible opportunity, put her hand in his back pocket, and played with
his hair. Lana turned in time to see Kelly sit back against Eli’s chest—and an emotion she couldn’t quite define made her
chest go tight.

At one point in the very beginning of her friendship with Eli, she’d been attracted to him. Even now she remembered the first
moment she heard his voice, so warm and fervent, when he’d raised his hand in biology class to question something their teacher
had said. She’d noticed him, not in a passing way but on a deep, meaningful level. And she realized she was drawn to him.
They meant something to each other.

With other men—boys who plied her with cheap beer and who only pretended to understand her fascination with flowers—she sometimes
gave in easily, because it meant so little deep down. But Eli was different. He too was fascinated by everything, always asking
questions, always reading. He understood her then and he still did now. They had slipped once, taking their relationship beyond
friendship, and it had almost ruined everything. She certainly wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

But now, as she forced herself to watch Kelly running her fingers through his hair, possessiveness spiked hot and fierce in
her heart—not appropriate feelings for a casual friend. She dismissed them and turned away. “Well, Eli must have a reason
to like her. We just have to figure out what it is.”

“When I left, she was trying to make him lick the Doritos powder off her fingers.”

“Okay,
that’s
pretty bad.”

“I think she feels threatened by you. I’m good at reading people. I think she suspects you and Eli are a thing.”

“But we’re not,” she said.

For a moment they listened to the seagulls, to the children yelling behind them, to the college students playing Ultimate
Frisbee on the lawn. The tension in the air was palpable. The whole town was wound up, waiting for the fireworks to start.

“Lana? Do you want to talk about Calvert?”

Lana rolled her eyes playfully. “Do I ever?”

“No. But now might be a good time. Given that he’s back in town.”

“He might have left.”

“You mean you don’t know?” Karin asked, something sly in her question.

“How would I know?”

Karin grabbed the thick metal railing in front of her, her knuckles going white. Lana saw that she wasn’t even attempting
eye contact. She was staring at the lush peaks of the Adirondacks with intense focus. Something was definitely wrong.

“I just want to know the truth,” Karin said, steel in her voice.