Juno's Daughters (4 page)

“What is wrong with him?” she had asked Jenny, exasperated, after the two of them had broken up.

“Nothing's
wrong
with him exactly.”

“
Exactly?
What then?”

Jenny had sprayed vinegar onto a rag and used it to wipe down the window sills, the desk, and the cash register. Each of the old things they brought in to sell carried a lifetime of dust with it. “It's stupid. I don't want to say.”

“Oh, come on. Spill it.” Mary Ann ripped open a cardboard box that had come in the mail from an estate sale in Bellingham.

“He started fixing things around the cabin.”

Mary Ann paused in her work and looked at the younger woman with incredulity. “You mean like leaky faucets?”

Jenny lifted a pile of out-of-print books from the older woman's arms. “Faucets, the catch on the front door, other stuff.” Mary Ann was still staring at her in disbelief, so she set the books down and put her hands on her hips. “He put shelves up in the shed. Without asking!”

“Why didn't you tell him to stop?”

“I didn't want to hurt his feelings.”

“So you started sleeping with Phinneas? Because you didn't want to hurt David's feelings?”

“That just proves that he's better off without me.”

Mary Ann shook her head. “If I were a psychoanalyst, I might wonder if you didn't think you
deserved
a nice guy,” she muttered.

“That's why you're an antique dealer, sweetie,” Jenny had said, softening the words with a smile.

David would be at the party, of course, with his harmonica and green chile enchiladas. Phinneas would be there, and Mary Ann, and Lilly and Frankie's teachers (first through fourth grade), and the postmaster, and just about everyone else on the island who wasn't out of town or a recluse.

Dale and Peg's welcome for the professional actors had become a beloved tradition. Old friends played guitars and banjos and even a washtub bass (brought by Phinneas). Dale dragged logs and tree limbs into the pasture for a raging bonfire. In addition to the casseroles, muffins, and home-brewed beer, they would feast on potatoes in foil, marshmallows, chestnuts, and all manner of other things you could throw into and roast over a fire. One year they had arrived to find a small pig turning over a spit.

Chad, the chef at the Hotel de Haro, made a wild duck ragout that people traveled miles to try, but in certain circles what he was most famous for were his batches of “enhanced” brownies. During the long months of winter a hash brownie or two could often be a welcome addition, and everyone who'd been on the island for a while knew what the green toothpicks meant. To a party like tonight's, where there would be outsiders and children, he would likely bring something tasty but harmless, like wild mushroom risotto or poached halibut salad on bruschetta.

The party lasted until the smaller children fell fast asleep under layers of coats on Dale and Peg's bed and at least a few lifelong friendships, surreptitious love affairs, and seething enmities had either been rekindled or begun. Frankie occasionally joined in the singing, but mostly she lurked around the edges of the party with a mysterious, pleased smile on her face, taking everything in.

Jenny slowed the car and turned off Beaverton Valley onto her own dirt road. The mailbox door was open and she could see from the truck that Frankie must have carried whatever bills or school correspondence there had been to the house. There was a breeze picking up, enough to cause the line of firs to sway on the top of the ridge. Pulling up to the bleached driftwood log that marked her “parking space” in the front of the house, she made a mental note to bring a couple of blankets to Dale and Peg's, along with the lasagna.

She saw something glitter in the grass. Frankie's silver dolphin pendant. She turned it in her hand and then tucked it into the pocket of her jeans and went into the house. Frankie's backpack was splayed open near the door and her sketches were all over the table. The kitchen counter was littered with tiny pieces of egg white, and the bowl with the yolks, mayonnaise, and paprika was teetering on the edge of the sink. There was a thin film of steam in the air. Jenny heard splashing from the bathroom.

She scooped the last of the egg filling into her mouth with the fork and placed the bowl in the sink. She called out, “Honey?”

“I'm taking a bath.”

“Of course you are.”

Frankie could lounge for hours in the claw-footed tub that David had given them the previous Christmas. Jenny dropped into a chair and listened to the splashing. David. There really was nothing wrong with him, she had been quite honest with her friend, at least about that. She thought about what Mary Ann had said about Jenny not feeling like she deserved a nice guy. The real problem was that she longed for something a little more exciting than
nice
. Jenny could barely admit it to herself, much less to Mary Ann, who had been there to pick up the pieces after Monroe.

The water started to drain from the tub, and before long Frankie appeared, steaming from her pores like a just-cooked dumpling. Jenny gave an exaggerated look at the skinny legs emerging from the bottom of her terry-cloth robe.

“From all that noise I expected to see flippers. Or a mermaid's tail.”

“I wish.” Frankie's eyes widened at the picture.

“You're perfect.”

Frankie flopped onto her mother's lap. The damp ends of her hair flicked water onto Jenny's face.

“Ack. But you're too big for this.”

“Phoenix
hates
going to Anacortes.” Frankie laid her head against Jenny's shoulder. “And it's not even a real doctor her mother goes to see. He's some kind of
healer
.”

Jenny tightened the knot on Frankie's bathrobe. “What does she need to be healed of?”

Frankie sighed. “Boredom.”

Jenny couldn't help but smile. If you could divide children into observers and doers, Frankie would definitely be the first kind and Lilly the second. It seemed Jenny had once been like Lilly, at least that's what her mother and Sue reported. She could barely remember it. In any case, she had learned to be more like Frankie over time, but her watchfulness had been acquired the hard way, through experience. Frankie was observant out of sheer curiosity and often had the insights to match. Oddly, she had never asked much about her father. And Jenny, leaving well enough alone, had never volunteered. There would be a time for that, she had told herself often. The time did not ever seem to be right.

Jenny rested her chin against Frankie's damp back. “What kinds of things do you remember from when you were little, anyway?”

Frankie chewed her lip. “Like kindergarten?”

“Before.”

“Didn't I used to sleep with one of those plastic trolls? With long blue hair?”

“You did.” Jenny smiled. It had been years since she remembered Frankie's troll. Ludmilla. “Anything else?”

“I remember Lil making pills for me out of that white bread we got at the discount store. She'd line them up on the counter and watch until I'd swallowed each and every one.”

Lilly. Of course. Frankie had been born into a world that had always had Lilly in it.

“What's she going to do next, do you think?” asked Frankie, as if she could read Jenny's thoughts. She tilted her head to look her mother in the eyes.

“Do you mean the next time she gets into trouble?”

So far there had been failing grades in high school, a shop-lifting episode in Seattle, and more than one pregnancy scare. Jenny helped Lilly secure the landscaping job and made sure she was up on time in the morning. She grounded her after Seattle and got her put on the pill (the two things were unfortunately related), and mostly she told herself that Lilly would be fine if she avoided falling into one of the bigger holes over the next few years or so. She had managed to fall into every one she could find on their small island already. Jenny comforted herself with the idea that at least where they lived, the holes were not as deep as they could be on the mainland.

“No. I mean when she grows up. She's going to stay here, right? Stay with us?”

“Well, probably not forever,” said Jenny, realizing both that it was true and how assiduously she had avoided reflecting on that fact until just then.

Frankie wrenched her head and shoulders free from Jenny's loose embrace and gave her a sudden scowl. “You're too strict with her, Mom. You know that, right? I mean, she's almost eighteen years old. She should be able to do what she wants.”

The last part of Frankie's argument remained unspoken, but they both knew what it was:
You
change and s
he'll
stay.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Too strict? Is this Lilly Alexander we're talking about?”

“Well, you're too critical.” Frankie made this last observation with her arms crossed over her bathrobed chest, peering down on Jenny in the chair with the air of a produce buyer sizing up a crate of tomatoes.

Jenny stared her down. “When was the last time I said something critical about
you
?”

Frankie appeared to think about that for a moment and apparently, finding no examples, tried a different tack. “I'll die if she leaves,” she said fiercely. “I'll cry every single day.”

Jenny refrained from pointing out that those threats were mutually exclusive.

Just six months before, Frankie would hold Jenny's hand walking down Spring Street. Now her younger daughter watched her carefully in public and from a distance, the way a bride might keep an eye on a drunk uncle. It shouldn't have surprised her that Frankie seemed to be approaching an adolescence that Lilly only now hinted at emerging from in one piece, but it did. Frankie had never been in any trouble. Jenny shifted under the girl's weight. Even at thirteen, she was the kind of child who would crawl in her mother's lap. In private, maybe, but still. Lilly hadn't sought refuge there since she was six.

“Remember how Lilly used to talk about being a teacher?”

“She would be a terrible teacher,” said Frankie. “The kids would learn all the wrong things.”

“Probably so.” Jenny tugged at her T-shirt.

The front it had a wet spot on it the size of a grapefruit from Frankie's hair. Now she definitely had to change her clothes before the party. Her white tie blouse might look good on her tonight, she mused, wondering also if Lilly had replaced the hammered silver earrings she had borrowed. She wanted to look good but had to walk a delicate line. If she appeared too dressed up, for example if she dug through her things for that old black eyeliner pencil, someone who saw her daily in her Tevas and canvas shorts might notice. If it were Phinneas, he would wonder aloud who the makeup was for and tease her mercilessly until he figured it out. The fact was, she had no good explanation.

A lingering look from a stranger who might or might not be gay did not mean much after all. She sighed. Still, this was a stranger who traveled on jets rather than in the cab of old trucks, who ate in restaurants where he did not know both the kitchen and the waitstaff, who leaped at the chance of a summer adventure in a place he had presumably never been before. These were all things she had once done herself, with relish. Besides, she had always liked a man with the confidence to get up on stage.

“She's very good at landscaping, though,” said Frankie. “I heard Mr. Edison say that she was better than anybody at grafting.”

“Grifting?” said Jenny, and then when she saw that Frankie had never heard the word, she tapped her lightly on the nose. “It won't be long before
you're
seventeen. I wonder what you'll be like.”

Frankie's eyes wandered past Jenny's face, to her future self, projected like a hologram in the narrow hallway. “Oh, probably like Lilly. Or the lead singer in a band.” She looked back at her mother's face and added, “With big boobs.”

Jenny raised her eyebrows, unsure as to which of those things seemed the least likely for her shy, flat-chested daughter. “I wonder if you'll be in love?”

“I hope so,” answered Frankie.

Jenny had done her best to fill Lilly's ears with advice about the complicated dance between men and women, often braving the clear implication from Lilly that her own romantic track record disqualified her from giving any. She had told her how to recognize a respectful partner and impressed on her the importance of having enough cash to be able to leave if necessary. She wondered if she should say something to Frankie now but decided to wait. There was lots of time yet, and besides, the party was starting in just a few minutes.

She heaved Frankie's body off her own. “Get some clothes on, or we'll be late.”

“And they're soooo punctual at Dale and Peg's,” said her daughter, disappearing into her sister's room.

So, Frankie hoped she would be in love at seventeen, did she? Jenny didn't know why that should surprise her. Perhaps because it was the first time Frankie had betrayed any interest in the subject where she herself was concerned. She chewed the bottom of her lip in thought. Frankie, it seemed, was growing up.

Jenny began to look through the kitchen drawers for her big spatula until she remembered that she had left it at Dale and Peg's, along with her salad bowl and tongs, the last time she was there. Her stomach growled and she realized that, except for an apple around one, she had failed to eat lunch.

Frankie emerged from the back room in several layers of clothing that included at least two of her sister's T-shirts, a midcalf flowered dress, and a pair of faded jeans.

“Ready?” asked Jenny, lifting the lasagna.