Practical Jean (21 page)

“Um, no,” said Jean, swallowing. “No, that's yours. That's yours to keep.”

“Well,” said Fran, relaxing, “I mean that's just . . .” She seemed not to k
now what to feel, what emotion to display for Jean's benefit. She opted for a small, relieved smile. “What a nice surprise.”

For a moment the two women stood at the fringe of the Activity Zone with a darkening sky overhead and the air around them thick and alive and close to trembling.

“I should say . . .” began Fran. “Before, that wasn't very . . .” She stopped when Jean glanced around behind her. “I guess I'm boring you.”

“Oh, no, Fran. That's not it.” Jean touched the woman's wrist. “I'm sorry, it's just . . . Milt, my husband. He's . . . he's here, somewhere, and I don't want to see him. Or him to see me.”

“Is that why you were rushing?”

“Yes.”

Fran became alert. Her eyes sharpened, her features firmed, her whole bearing shifted, as if somewhere inside her a hidden switch had been flicked from
standby
to
on
. “Is something wrong? Has something happened?”

Jean hesitated. The problem was she was made a particular way, with a fundamental makeup—the way wood has a grain, with all its fibers laid and arranged in a certain direction—and that makeup insisted that only friends were told personal details about one's life. And friends were not acquaintances or people you met at a gathering, and they were not someone who came into your shop on a regular basis and seemed to want to intrude into your existence, they were not a woman who drove a Cadillac SUV and traveled frequently to Las Vegas, or who wore brooches to the supermarket and disparaged the town that had always been your home. They were not Fran. But just now it seemed too difficult, too much work, to resist Fran's desire to be involved. Jean had other needs for her energy, other purposes for her time. So she found herself nodding.

“Recently Milt told me that he was having an affair.”

Fran recoiled. “No!”

“Yes.”

“I can't believe it. He seems like the
last
person, other than my Jim. I mean, the two of them, I would have put them in the same pea pod.”

“I didn't know you knew Milt.”

“Well, people have pointed him out to me,” said Fran. “And we chatted that one time, remember?” Fran gave a tug to her sweater and shook her head at the unfathomability of Milt, who had been pointed out to her, having an affair. “It's so sad. I always imagined you two having great conversations.”

Jean made an effort to keep her gaze steady and her expression neutral. She admired newscasters for their ability not to look horrified at the crimes they reported.

“So, Fran, I think it's going to rain. You should probably get that lily home.”

“Who was it with? This affair.”

“Oh, I don't think that's important.” She began to back away as Fran shook her head in apparent agreement;
no, it wasn't important
. “Have fun with that lily. And I'm sorry about the jack of clubs before.”

Fran held up her coin-stuffed fist and gave it a triumphant waggle. “We're winners!”

“Yay,” said Jean.

A sudden seriousness overtook Fran's face as the ground spread between her and Jean. “Do you want me to say anything to him? If I see him?”

Jean tried to gather this in. “Do I want you to say anything to . . . my husband?”

“Yes, the bastard.”

“No.” Jean shook her head. “Thank you.”

She heard thunder, or sensed it, as she wandered past the petting zoo toward the picnic tables looking for Natalie. The skinny girl and bedraggled boys of Swamp Fire made it difficult to hear anything but the screech of children (evolution clearly intending for that sound to pierce any other). But the air itself was a warm body embracing her, and she felt it shudder. She had an image in her mind of Milt and Louise running through the coming downpour, laughing, getting soaked, pulling off their wet clothes in the shelter of the living room she had decorated, standing naked on the carpet she had vacuumed, drying themselves with the towels she had bought on sale at Sears.

Her mother had always made her believe that in choosing Milt she had failed. Marjorie's measure of a man, a husband, stood the height and width of Drew, tackled tasks in the same direct, unimaginative fashion, charted his course by the same unblinking stars. And perhaps that had contributed to Jean's choice not to take Milt's name, which lingered for years as a small hurt for him. But in the face of what she'd believed to be her mother's disappointment and disdain, she had always held to the certainty that Milt was a man she could grow old with. Their experiences together had been investments in the memories of their infirmity.
Someday we'll laugh at this
—that had been their motto. Twenty-two years ago, when Milt's stuffy Aunt Agnes was visiting and Milkweed showed her his pink, pencil-thin erection . . . sixteen years ago, when Jean had done a terrible job tying Milt's father's canoe to the roof of the car and it went flying into a roadside cucumber stand . . . eleven years ago, when they were eating marinated octopus on a bench in Athens and someone snatched Jean's purse with all their credit cards . . . six years ago, when Jean collapsed from low blood pressure and awoke to Milt giving panicky directions for the ambulance and heard in his voice how much he loved her . . . two years ago, when Milt put Styrofoam Chinese food containers in the hot oven . . . every one of these experiences and dozens more were securities meant to bring returns later, a kind of pension of reminiscence. But the investments had turned out to be worthless.

Where was Natalie? Natalie would understand, thought Jean. Natalie was divorced. Natalie had her own failed portfolio of recollection. She too faced the prospect of a desolate old age.

Standing in the middle of Corkin Park, Jean realized that she and Natalie were closer to kindred spirits now than they had ever been. And she saw, with a fresh slap of horror, how she had wronged Natalie. How she had abandoned her own duty by not thinking the best of her friend, by not forgiving her immediately for her lie of omission, by which she had probably only meant to protect her, and even if not, no one was perfect! There were degrees of betrayal, shadings from light to dark, and compared to the hard, black mark against Louise, Natalie's was barely a smudge! And Jean knew with a ferocious clarity, the conviction of someone reborn into her beliefs, that Natalie deserved her gift. Of course she did. If anyone was worthy of the sacrifice, it was her.

“Jean!”

It was Welland, running up behind her. As she waited for him she felt the first drop of rain on her cheek and held her hand out for more.

“Welland, I have to find Natalie before it opens up on us.”

Her brother was red in the face from running and couldn't speak just yet. He put a hand on his chest and bent over as he pointed to another part of the park. “I saw her,” he wheezed. “When I was looking for you.”

It was a good thing Welland was in Community Services and not doing actual police work, Jean thought; imagine if he ever had to run to catch a jewelery thief, or a murderer. But of course, as a sister, she would never actually say that. She loved Welland. It was crazy to her that he had never found a woman to really appreciate him and care for him. Because he was handsome and big, and wore a uniform, there was never any shortage of floozies at bars who wanted to drape themselves on him like a Roman toga. But he was too nice for that type, too gentle-souled. As she watched Welland trying to catch his breath she had an image of him becoming like their father before he died, silent and isolated, sunk into a chair in the basement, waiting for the inevitable. That was no way for someone to live.

“Welland,” she said, “are you getting enough exercise?”

Her brother nodded and heaved with his hands on his knees, and he made a little racquet motion with his arm.

“Well, if you can walk I'd like to go find Natalie.”

“Sure,” he breathed, “no problem.”

They made it past the Animal Zone and the Ferris wheel and approached the chip wagon selling cardboard containers of greasy French fries—there was still no sign of Natalie, and Jean had felt half a dozen more drops—before Welland seemed able to string a sentence together. When he did he became a very somber presence beside her. Jean thought perhaps he had some advice regarding Milt, but that wasn't it.

“Adele Farbridge,” said Welland. “She's your friend, right?”

Jean stumbled slightly at hearing Adele's name and she had to reach to catch Welland's elbow. She looked back at the ground they'd just passed as if she'd been tripped up by some unevenness. “Yes,” she said, finally. “I saw her just the other day.”

“I have something bad to tell you.”

Could it have made the news already? Jean didn't see how that was possible. She walked along with Welland, through air that carried the scent of malt vinegar from the chip wagon, trying to fathom the logistics of how the information about Adele could already have been discovered and reported—it was only yesterday morning that she had left her. Had the news simply wafted out on a breeze? Beside her Welland was slowing, stopping, his hand on her arm, as if he needed to tell her face to face. A boy passed with a pile of salty, golden fries heaped like kindling on his plate. She heard a man sneeze and looked around.

“Maybe we should sit down,” Welland was saying.

It was Milt. He was twenty feet away, wearing his green-checked shirt and his khaki shorts and his brown shoes with brown socks pulled high on his calves, something Jean had never been able to get him to stop doing. “Wear your sandals with shorts, Milt,” she would say. But no, he wouldn't. He had no regard for her opinions. Her feelings. He did what he wanted, no matter who he hurt. For years she had asked him to apply for a full-time teaching position and he wouldn't. He
wouldn't
. He liked his freedom, he said. She understood that now. As he walked from the chip wagon toward the Picnic Basket Zone with his own plate of French fries, he stopped and sneezed again, burying his face in the crook of his arm while holding the plate high above his head.

“Milt?” she called out, embarrassing herself with the febrility in her voice.

He continued on, apparently unable to hear her over the squeals and laughter of roaming children, the distant frenetic clamor of Swamp Fire, and, wafting toward them from the Activity Zone, the bossy, blaring voices of the librarians' husbands.

“Jean,” said Welland, laying his hand on her shoulder. “We really need to talk.”

Kotemeeans, at least the ones who came to the annual picnic, were very messy eaters, it seemed to Jean. They produced a lot of garbage—paper cups and cardboard plates and plastic straws and tissuey napkins and waxed paper wrappers and bags of every known material. And suddenly the garbage wasn't confined to waste receptacles or corralled on top of picnic tables or even dropped discreetly underneath, it was everywhere. Because as the thunder and darkness of a rolling deluge advanced over Corkin Park the Kotemeeans began to scatter, and they left their garbage behind. And when the rain truly came, it came in thick, heavy dollops that thumped the ground and the picnic tables and the awnings of the Activity Zone and the roofs of the snack trucks like falling bits of flesh. And soon it was sluicing the garbage off the picnic tables and out of its hiding spaces and lodging it in the mud underfoot. And Jean ran through it. She ran to find Natalie. After her talk with Welland, she ran as fast as she could.

Her brother knew that something had happened to Adele, but not because it had been reported in the news. He was checking the police systems regularly now: the CPIC, the RMS, the PIP, and the NCIC. It was all part of his daily routine, thanks to Jean. It seemed to Welland that he was finally doing real police work. He expressed that to Jean with a combination of relief, and pride, and nervous elation. Without any orders to go by, or any real purpose, he roamed the networks and the databases looking for names he recognized, crimes he found intriguing. He had slipped into the station early that morning, he told Jean, before coming to the park. And as he'd scrolled through the identities of victims, he'd seen one he thought he knew. He'd clicked on it, and learned that Adele Farbridge, the finance executive, had been found in her apartment by her cleaning lady, discovered face down on the bed. There was a picture included, a driver's license photo, and when he studied the face he knew this was someone he had met . . . this was Jean's friend.

Telling her all of this, Welland seemed the image of torment. Oh, he was such a sweet man, Jean thought. Such a good brother. It broke her heart to think that Welland would be distraught at having to deliver this news about Adele.
The last thing my poor sister needs
. . . that's what he'd be thinking.

To the south, a pulse of lightning flashed and lit the sky beyond the scrub brush, and a count of two later the thunder barreled over them. Perched on the bench of a picnic table, Jean tipped back her head as Welland spoke and stared up at the blackening sky. She caught a few lucky raindrops on her cheeks, breathed with a hoarseness she hoped would signal distress, and asked the questions she thought someone hearing this news would ask.

“How did she die, Welland?” Jean asked. “Do they know who killed her?”

Welland's face bloomed with horror. “Oh, no, she didn't die.”

Jean blinked
at her brother as another drop glanced off her che
ekbone. She was quite sure she hadn't heard that correctly.

“But—”

“Oh, gosh. I'm sorry, Jean. I didn't mean to—”

“Welland, what are you talking about?” Jean swip
ed the rain from her lashes. “Didn't you say her body had been discovered?”

“She
was
discovered, thank goodness. Before it was too late. She's in a coma,” said Welland. “They found some heavy drugs in he
r system.” He touched Jean's arm in a way that she knew was meant to be encouraging. “There's still a chance she'll come around.”