Witches Bitches & Sluts

It was October in 2007 and an autumn wind was kicking spirals of leaves into the night’s sky, captured by the yellow glow of the streetlights. The odd lighting of the building made it float above the corner, dwarfing the other buildings at the intersection. As Jen pulled up, two cops were wrestling a naked woman out of the back of a paddy wagon. She was screaming something about her legal right to bare her breasts. She was baring more than her breasts, Jen saw, as the standard-issue wool blanket fell to the ground in her struggle. The moon was full, heavy, tinged with red and low to the ground.

Only today had Jen made it home, unpacked, done her laundry. She’d nestled into the couch to watch some foreign films she’d rented. She’d turned on the gas fireplace to take the chill off the leather upholstery. Saint always kept it cold in the house. Jen could see that she hadn’t even bothered to start the furnace, despite the unseasonal autumn cold snap.

Jen figured she must have fallen asleep because it was hours later when she awoke to the ringing phone. Through the haze, she said yes, she knew Anne St. Croix, yes, this was her address. She’d be there right away.

Now she pushed through the heavy glass doors into the glaring fluorescent light. The lobby rose three stories to a skylight; the stairs and floors facing like a cutaway gallery. Such majesty for a police headquarters. Such a waste of money, Jen thought. She walked up to the reception area and told them why she was there. She was directed up to the first floor. When she entered the anteroom, the atmosphere shattered. The stench of barely metabolized alcohol, that next-day-homeless smell, the undertone of disinfectant slammed her. Suddenly, she felt extremely nauseous. At the time, Jen didn’t know why she was suddenly so sensitive to smell.

A cop with a leathery but kind face led her back to the cell. Saint was sitting on the floor in the corner, head in hands. There was blood on her sweatshirt.

“Ms. St. Croix, you’re a lucky woman. Someone has come to collect you,” he said.

Saint looked up, eyes red, pupils large pools, and shrugged. “Fuck youuuu,” she slurred.

He turned to Jen. “Are you sure you don’t want us to keep her overnight?”

“Hmm. Tempting, but no. If you think she’s fine, that is.”

“Well, as fine as someone can be with that blood-alcohol level and cocaine in her system,” he said.

“I don’t believe it,” Jen said. “She’s never done that in her life. I swear.”

“I believe you. An experienced coke head wouldn’t run for 10 miles and collapse into a pile of leaves,” he said.

That was where they’d found her, hours after she’d disappeared from a pig roast. She’d told Gary she felt like a run. He was hammered, but after a while, drove around the country concession looking for her, assuming for some reason she couldn’t possibly be very far away. Finally, they’d called the police.
A call had come in from a farm in the next township, reporting a woman running wildly, screaming angrily at the top of her lungs, down the country lane. The caller noted no one in pursuit, and felt the police might better manage such a creature than they.
How right they were.

“Has her nosebleed stopped?” Jen asked, wondering if she should take her to the hospital once she posted bail.

“Seems to have,” he nodded in her direction.

“Okay, bring her out. I’ll go sign the paperwork,” Jen said, uneasy that it would all be that simple. She walked back out to the antechamber and hear the clatter of struggle. She was beginning to regret having come.

“I’m not fucking going anywhere with that bitch,” Saint screamed.

“Okay, have it your way,” the cop said, slamming the iron gate shut again.

He came through the door, smirking. “She does not appear to want to go with you either,” he said.

“Either?”

“Yup. Her boyfriend came with us when we brought her in. She sent him home. She certainly has a mad on.”

“So what happens if I just leave her?” Jen asked.

“She’ll be allowed to leave under her own recognizance when she sobers up, which will hopefully be some time tomorrow.

“I have to leave tomorrow night again for work. Tell her to call me before 7 p.m. if she wants me to pick her up,” Jen said. Then she realized that she’d posted bail for someone she wouldn’t be around to watch. She wasn’t sure what to do.

“Listen, between you and me, I don’t think the charges will stick anyway,” the cop said. “She didn’t have anything on her, so it’s not a major charge. She has a totally clean record. The only reason we needed you tonight was if she was going to go in this condition. We may consider dropping the narcotics charge tomorrow if she manages to get herself together. If it’s reduced to a misdemeanor, she can pay the fine and go. Legal aid will help her do this. So don’t worry. There’s nothing really that you need to do. You are a good friend, though, for coming,” he said.

Jen wasn’t feeling especially like a good friend at that moment, but it was kind of him to say. How the hell was he to know? As she drove home the sky began to lighten. Drearily, she realized that her one and only free day this week was about to turn into either a sleep fest or a stormy Saint scene. Neither appealed. Jen had no idea what was up with Saint. She’d always been so straight, never tried any of the harder drugs when they were in high school. There were just some things their group never did, some lines we never crossed, and coke was one of them.

In Toronto, Jen had watched the affluent clubbers snort thousands of dollars over the chain of late nights and revelry. La Dolce via. She noticed the surge of infallibility they would experience, the crazed invincibility. It was the drug of choice for alpha dogs. It always turned her off. It seemed that most folks had enough trouble dealing real without an inflated and misplaced sense of importance.

The truth was Jen was scared of it; scared of losing control. She was no stranger to the concept of party, and she’d had enough trouble with the inevitable crashed feeling after a late night of boozing, pot, and possibly black beauties to fuel the debauch. The wild galleries, clubs, house parties, the eclectic group of highly unique humans were her drug of choice. Jen couldn’t resist the fascination with their lives, whether lived out in warehouse communes or in the bevy of wealth and influence that were Rosedale (Goy) and Forest Hills (Jew). Venture capitalists and performance artists populated her bed, each contributing to her sense that her life was a patchwork quilt, an emerging artwork. But there was only one she loved. And he was too close, too familiar, to risk losing.

Marty was depressing the fuck out of her at that moment. Friday night he’d called the Best Western; Saint must have given him the number despite Jen’s request that she not. Coming here had been an act of defiance, an ending, she’d thought, to the painful and unrequited addiction to her notion of him. So when she heard his voice from faraway, so real, all the feeling flooded back like the blood rush of a handstand. At the same time, Jen felt almost unbearably unable to speak, suddenly drained of all energy, of any desire to utter a word.

His girlfriend from up north wanted to move in with him.

Congratulations, Jen had said.

He managed to say he had wanted to talk to Jen first, wasn’t sure he should do it.

She suggested he should be concerned that he was asking permission. That it was all bullshit, the relationship, if he wasn’t willing to move to the next level.
That she thought it’d be good for him. An interesting experiment.

When Jen hung up, she was clear that she had not given the response he was looking for, whether to confront it, overcome, or just have the candor land. What he hadn’t realized was that she was way past the ability to give him that. What Saint wrote was true, except even more so for Jen than for her: freedom was her wilderness, and she was losing her wrestle with the devil pride that led her there.

So there she was, in their home that was supposed to be a refuge, with an angry Saint caged a mere few miles away, with no clue as to what had really been going on in Saint’s life the last several months that drove her to a coke-fueled binge. She was awash in the seeping dread of another week on the road teaching welfare moms and high school dropouts how to be capitalists, all the while exploiting them all to hell to make her residuals. In retrospect, it amazes Jen that she lasted another month before trying to meet her maker. Her heart was sinking fast and she’d never felt so completely alone in her life. She sat in the kitchen and smoked, drank coffee. She decided she’d just stay up. She opened her sketchbook and doodled, dark horror emerging, Marty’s spirit seeping across the page.

Who was she being inside this life, this quiet part of her? Marty’s girl? She remembered him in his Caledonia sunroom, dust motes in the ethereal shafts of second-story light that flowed through the tree canopy. She could see him, black leather pants, buckles, book, wristband; hair that was a hybrid of punk and wild Italian construction worker…his deep chocolaty eyes and the brilliance shining through them. With Marty, words were extraneous. Most things lived in those eyes. The words would tumble out of her, create a blanket to cover her terror of his stillness. Something smoldered in him, something that might vaporize her and her impatient words. She began crying, located firmly in the knowledge that she never wanted anything so badly in her life – so instead of longing for what she couldn’t have, she turned into someone who wanted nothing. She closed shop on her pain.

Marty was all her girlfriends rolled into one, smart, witty, compassionate, humane, artsy, dangerous, tortured, controlled. He was Saint and Janet; he was a bit of her Mom. And yet he was awash in extraordinary maleness that seeped through her senses and set off a system of warring and warning alerts through her body. Which, she was certain, was why the young fashionista was hell bent for leather on moving in. He’d kept her just slightly aloof for more than a year. Who could blame her? It must have driven her nuts.

Jen realized that she’d pictured a different ending. One where after her banishment to southern Ontario she’d return to the vibrant Mother Toronto, triumphant in her work and her wisdom. Somehow they’d see that they were always meant to be together; that in fact, they were terrified; terrified because they counted to one another. But now she had proof this fantasy was vapor, a fleeting dream. Marty, always so alone, so firm in his singularity, would now be compromising, part of a couple. And he didn’t have it in him to do it halfway. That paternal streak, that nurturing. No, he never entered lightly into anything. She’d missed her last chance.

She ripped the page from the sketchbook and tore it to pieces. She rummaged in the pantry to make toast. She watched the sun burn off the autumn fog, and decided that if she showered now, right this minute, she could make it to Toronto by noon. It felt like a small desperate act, but it was honest.

Jen stirs her hot chai tea, marveling that they let Rosemary keep a drip coffee and tea maker in her room at all. She must be charming them, Jen thinks. The sickly fluorescent lights are abuzz in a syncopated rhythm with the sound of slippers shuffling down the hall.

“Would you like some honey?” Jen asks, pouring a second cup for Rosemary. She is sitting up in the bed, wearing her quilt like a cocoon. Her dark eyes sparkle and her lips are painted red again. Though Jen once mocked a doctor for such an observation, she takes the makeup as a sign Rosemary is feeling more herself, doing well. It’s been two weeks.

“Mmmm. Please,” she says.

Jen brings Rosemary’s cup to her and settles into the lounge chair beside her bed.
“So, m’am, how are we doing today,” Jen asks.

“We are pretty fine,” she says, “Sybil and I. We’ve decided to be well. We intend to take turns. One of us will wallow in guilt a spell and wail, while the other drinks tea and gossips with friends. This way, we’re each making an appropriate contribution,” she grins.

“Well, I sure am glad the good doctors have you all sorted out,” Jen teases.

“Yes, they have learned not to taunt happy fun ball,” Rosemary smirks.

“Oooh, not happy fun ball. I’m afraid of happy fun ball…”

“Yes, we all are, it seems. So tell me, what’s been happening out there while I impress the good docs with my Virginia Wolf impersonation? Have you forgiven Jace?” she stares hard at me.

“Forgiven him? For what?” Jen asks.

“Well, I thought the shit had hit the fan. His not coming home, your fight, his role in all the stories…You just, you haven’t mentioned him, that’s all. And I guess, buried in woe, I never asked…”

“Well, he didn’t do the stories. Rob did, for starters,” Jen says, feeling a little confused.

“With a little help from his friend, I’m sure. Not that I mind. While the world may be wondering what’s up with the naughty teacher, in all, the coverage has been fair. As fair as I can expect,” Rosemary says, seeming truly complacent about it all. Water under the bridge. Perhaps she’s taking the meds.

Despite the media frenzy, the school board had ruled the day before that they could find no criminal wrong-doing on her part, and as a result, would not terminate Rosemary. The journal, it turned out, plotted the story of a mostly unrequited teen-to-teacher love, and despite early appearances, it seemed that Rosemary did nothing more serious than aborting kisses he initiated, and pulling away from ill-conceived embraces. In fact, toward the end of the journal, much of her conversation with him about her lack of availability and gentle handling was repeated in heartbreaking detail. These details, cited in the transcript, were alluded to in today’s article, deflating the theory that this was the kind of bizarre student-teacher love triangle popular with mass imaginations.

Nonetheless, she was disciplined and suspended for her “inappropriate” conduct outside of class. There was no logical explanation, to the board’s mind, for their movie-going, cooking sessions, or other instances of extra-curricular conduct that could be misconstrued by a smitten teen. And there were some texts that bordered on flirtatious, though not obscene. Rosemary agreed to counseling in a deal brokered by the union.

“I guess things have been fine,” Jen says slowly. “I mean, it’s like, the whole time you’ve been in here I’ve been in some dream. The night we brought you here brought up a lot of memories I wasn’t even exactly conscious that I had. And then the journal just opened all this other stuff. I’m a little lost in it.”

“What journal. You never said anything about a journal,” Rosemary says.

“Sure I did. It’s what’s had me talking about old times so much every time I see you. The journal that was left in the mailbox.”

“Whose journal? I swear you never mentioned a journal.”

“Saint’s journal,” Jen says, now feeling really confused. She’d thought she’d told her, but she must have glossed over it. That was the first day after Rosemary was admitted.

“Holy shit, Saint’s journal ended up in your mailbox?” Rosemary is looking concerned, alarmed even, and it’s alarming to Jen. “Why the hell would she do that? Throw it out! Don’t read it!”

“Oh, for heaven sake, Rosemary, it’s not contagious. Actually, it’s interesting, to see what was going on in her head during that time. It covers the Gary infidelity through my suicide attempt and the following year when my art started getting noticed. It feels good, putting it all together, like now I can put it away,” Jen says, not entirely sure she sounds convincing.

“Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark,” Rosemary declares. “Just be careful. I don’t trust her motives.”

“Well, neither do I. I’m not even sure who put it in my mailbox, whether it was Gary on his way out east, or Saint herself. I keep going over the passages, wondering what the hell might have prompted her to lay herself bare that way, now, after all these years. If it even was her who left it there, I’m torn between viewing it as a peace offering and a punishment. But if punishment is her goal, it isn’t working. I’m actually grateful to see things clearly,” Jen says.

“Clearly? Through her eyes? Jen, she’s nuts. And I hate to say it because I know you never believe me, but I think deep down she’s gay or something and frankly, obsessed with you. I just don’t get a good vibe off the whole deal,” she says.

Jen peers into her tea, flushing a little. It’s not the first time Rosemary has presented her Saint-is-gay-and-doesn’t-know-it theory. Maybe somewhere back there Jen was so hungry for an audience, a foil, that she never looked past the surface to examine what would inspire Saint to play the role she did in her life.
Jen remembers that autumn day in 2007 when she came back off the road, a week after her ill-fated Sunday trip to Toronto to make a last effort with Marty. She hadn’t seen Saint since the jail cell episode. But in that week, her whole world shifted. Jen’s depressive spiral was well underway. Saint had all the storm windows lined up against the garage and was power-washing them within an inch of their lives. Jen wasn’t sure how to greet her, she’d seemed to have a mad on.

“Well look who decided to grace us with her presence,” Saint spat as Jen gathered her luggage out of the car. She set her bags down in the foyer.

“Hi,” Jen said. “Did everything work out okay last week?” she ventured.

“What do you care,” Saint said, pulling the trigger on the power washer and spraying a forceful stream across the windows.

Jen didn’t feel like getting into it. She’d had a terrible week. She’d shattered the lives of five single mothers, one of whom balled like a baby and wouldn’t leave her office when she fired her. Jen had told her she was doing her a favor. That if she couldn’t close enough sales to bonus, she’d never make enough money to survive. That she was freeing her to find something she was truly good at. That when one door closed another opened, and all that Zig Ziggler bullshit that does nothing but obscure the rampant exploitation of low earners who can’t turn a high-enough volume for a fat margin.

“I’m sorry. I tried to take you home. I waited around for a while and didn’t sleep all night. But I had stuff to deal with in Toronto, not that you give a shit about any of that,” Jen said, standing akimbo in the laneway.

“Frankly, I don’t,” Saint said, now scrubbing the row of glass with a soft, sudsy brush. “What I do give a shit about is that you do fuck all around here. Winter’s coming and things have to be cleaned and sealed and you’re off fucking strangers in hotel rooms and pouting about Marty. Meanwhile, I’m back here at this house, OUR house, that we leased together, working 40-plus hours and any overtime I can get on the line, looking after everything, doing all the work, only to get a call from my bank telling me your fucking rent check bounced. I am really sick of this,” she spat.

Jen flushed. She’d been certain she’d left enough in the account, but her company was always late with her expense reimbursements and she had six nights of hotel rooms and meals to pay for. Sometimes she barely had enough for gas to get home.

“I’ll get you the cash today,” Jen said. “I’m sorry, I wish they would have called me if there was a problem.”

“As if they could find you. It’s not even the cash, Jones. It’s the fucking sense that you’re just not really here.”

“Anne, I’m just not really here, for chrissakes. I work six days a week, split shifts, in other cities. I live in hotel rooms all week. I spend one night a week here at home and without fail I walk into a love nest in which I don’t belong. Gary spends 6 nights or more a week here and doesn’t pay one fucking cent. I doubt he does anything either. Are you sure it’s me you’re really pissed at?” she said, crossing her arms, ready for Saint’s rage. Their voices were rising to that pitch the neighbors could hear and Jen began feeling that there was nowhere safe in her life to retreat. Gary was probably in the house right now, sprawled on the couch, watching sports and into his third beer. It was 2 p.m., after all.

“Leave Gary out of this. Gary wasn’t the one who agreed to share this house. You were,” she said.

“I have an idea,” Jen seethed. “How be instead of playing the heavy you just fucking ask me to do whatever it is you want done on the 24 fucking hours I have to spend with you, and I’ll do it. It’d be a little cleaner that way,” Jen said.

“I shouldn’t fucking have to ask and you know it. Forget I said anything. Just go sulk in your room,” she said.
Jen opened the door to the house and kicked her luggage from the foyer into the hall closet lest Saint bitch about that too. She walked back out to the car and drove off. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but it was a beautiful day, her only day, and it was being poisoned. Jen thought about going to see Janet, but she was in new-mommy land and it was a terrain foreign to Jen. Instead, she drove the sweeping curves out to her favorite beach, and walked the paths through the dappled scrub along the sand dunes. The light was that kind of warm, buttery sun that is like the last hurrah of autumn before grey drains the warmth, the life, from everything. The wind coming off the lake had a hint of chill to it. Jen wrapped her shawl tighter and nestled into the side of a sand dune, scanning the frothy wave caps as if some kind of salvation were hiding in the foam peaks.

That was when the surprising thought bubbled up. To end it.

There was nothing to look forward to. She’d never in her entire life thought of suicide. Probably because she’d been the golden girl, smart, going somewhere. She’d had her share of trials, her shards of trust, but she’d just never felt so black, or blank. Sitting there looking out across the vast blue, Jen felt no bigger than a grain of sand. She felt the meaninglessness collect around her and press on her chest so hard she could barely breathe. She felt her heart skip, patter, flutter. She felt the panic ooze like ripe infection, traveling throughout her cells. She tried to breathe deeply, to catch her breath. So-doing caused a bloody throbbing at the back of her head, the sides of her neck.

She took inventory. Life: she hated her job. Check. She hated her virtually nonexistent or occasionally debauched and vacuous social life. Check. Her best friend hated her and suddenly looked like a complete asshole. Check. The one man she loved stood resolutely before her the week prior, surprised at her arrival, arm protectively draped around his still-pajama-clad girlfriend, and told her it was a bad time for a visit. Neverfuckingmind his call the week before. So love? Love sucked. Check. Her financial prospects, while promising on paper, were in actual fact in complete disarray. People assumed because she was a manager running a district that covered three states and a province that she made a lot of money on residuals. But Jen never fired enough of the dead wood in the call centers. At heart she was a sucker who gave too many second chances. And being on the road, the many bedtime drinks, the fancy meals designed to cheer her desolation, cost far more than the per diems her company allowed. She was clear she was being used. The higher they promoted her, the more money the lifestyle cost her and the less she actually had when all the dust cleared. So, young and debt-trodden. Check.

In fact, she’d thought with sudden alarm, had she paid her cell bill? That one critical connection to the rest of the world? She realized that she was nearing cutoff mode on several bills, bills that were easy enough to forget when you were on the road and just trying to get the rooms to bonus. So that she could bonus.

She saw no way out. She thought about walking out into the water, the cold, churning water, breathing deeply as her lungs filled with foamy death. The idea was lurid but freeing. Also, terrifying.

Instead, she stood up, dusted the sand off her jeans, walked slowly back to the car. Maybe Robert could save her today. Once her high school teacher, now part friend, occasional almost-lover, Robert could be counted on for good wine, good conversation, and heavily loaded innuendo. Jen didn’t care if he got off on it. She got off on it too. Robert might be the thread that could somehow mend her back to wholeness when life was draining away faster than the color from the leaves.

Jen marveled as she pulled into his wide driveway. Robert also had the power washer bug today. Only in his case, he was lovingly cutting wide swaths of sudsy foam off his beloved BMW with high-pressure pinging of relentless rain. ADAPT, his license plate read. He looked up, happy, she thought, to see her.

“Hey,” he shouted over the vacuum sound of the power washer motor. He leaned over to switch it off. “I was just thinking about you. I was going to call you and invite you for dinner when I finished washing the car,” he said, wiping his wet hands on his jeans and striding over to Jen.

“Ooooh, dinner. Whatcha cookin’,” Jen asks, deciding that if she acted cheery, maybe she’d actually feel cheery.

“My famous pepper steak.” He reached forward and gave Jen a hug. “Let me get you a drink, then I’ve gotta finish the car. It’ll only take me a few more minutes.”
“Go ahead – I’ll go get my own drink, if you like.”
“Okay. The house is open,” he said. The power washer hummed back to life.

Inside, Jen saw he’d been cleaning. All the glass tables shone. His self-sufficiency always amazed her. If she didn’t already know what a hetero pervert he was, she’d suspect him of being gay. She poured herself a chardonnay – Wolf Blass, Robert’s favorite – and ran her hand along the shiny marble counters. She noticed a new painting on the living room wall, beautifully framed. It was gorgeous, air brushed, more real than real. The subject is a woman, naked in thigh-height black boots, her upper body is arched back and her legs are spread. She is clearly pleasuring herself. Sarayama, it read. A 1/150 limited edition print. Only Robert would put this kind of high-end erotica in his living room. Jen wondered what it set him back. She stood there, musing on the interesting life that could be had here, with him. But they’re too much alike. They talk and eat and dance; he checks on her when he’s sick. But somehow there’s just no chemistry between them. Not to mention the 20-year gulf. She marveled, though, that no one else has nabbed him.

She was starting to feel better. She did have friends. She was just never here to enjoy them. She walked back out to the driveway, feeling oddly relieved, and sat on the Adirondack he’d placed in the driveway for her. She was enjoying the wine while she watched him dry the car with loving strokes, blending away the beads of water glistening on the candy apple red finish. Watching him, she realized that he and Saint had something in common. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. The love of the power-washer. The insular self-sufficiency. The clear space they create around them, and the sense of infinite solitude. Then she began to wonder. What on earth was it they wanted from the likes of her, a ketchup stain on the gleaming glass?

Later in bed that night, Robert is heavy on Jen’s mind as she lies awake, listening to Jace wheeze. It’s like there’s an energy field wobbling around her, sparking and crackling in the moon-sliced dark of the room, as if she’s traveling through the time warp that increasingly surrounds her, blending her past and her present. She pulls the sheets up to her chin and snuggles down, and feels an almost delicious delight at having the quiet and the privacy to let her mind wander back to those days she’s held down so long, with Jace sound asleep to not notice tears or prod about her faraway gaze. Her mind is almost bouncy. She thinks back to that night after the power washing and pepper steak, of how a few glasses of wine, the exhilaration of frank discussions, wore her down.

“What I don’t understand,” Robert said, leaning forward to pour what must have been her sixth glass of chardonnay, “Is why we can’t be ‘friends with benefits’.”
Suddenly, the Robert she thought she knew sounded different, earnest, vulnerable. There was a small part of her that was alarmed. The alarm bled into full alert when he placed his hand on her inner thigh. She mustered reason through the fog, although she was surprised to find how much she was throbbing, how much her body agreed with his assessment.

“Robert, if I fuck you, then I’ll objectify you. I’d hate to lose our honest friendship. But I know I’ll start to lie. It will start with little things, like, why I can’t come over for dinner. Then it will creep into bigger things, like, yes, I came. Then it will get all gooey. Trust me. We don’t want to fuck,” Jen said, convinced she spoke the truth.

Robert responded with a kiss. Not an unwelcome one. There was a part of her that was pulled way back, watching with interest what their bodies would do. There was another part of her in the now of it. Now was winning. So when he led her to his bedroom and began to slowly undress her, she started with the realization that she was the only one who would save their friendship from a certain and untimely death. Stark naked and still standing, she placed both her hands on his chest and slid her elbows between them. They were shy with each other the way long-time friends who suddenly find themselves naked can be, but not as shy as they should have been.

“Please wait, Robert. This is not a good idea,” she pleaded.

“I’m not certain you honestly feel that way, Jen. I think that’s what your brain says. Your body has a different opinion.”

Of course, Robert was smart. He’d read Jen’s own mind. This is why they could have been good, or dangerous, depending on your viewpoint. This fact is why Jen didn’t want to go there. The dangerous part. Love with an equal was a luxury Jen did not believe she could afford.

“My brain gets to have a say too,” Jen pouted. He stepped back a foot, and Jen could feel his awkwardness. He walked around to the other side of the bed and slid under the covers. She was still standing.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s lie here and think about it. Really. We’ll just touch. Is there anything so wrong with that?”

She could not think of a single objection. She needed to be touched more than she could imagine. It was almost not fair. She climbed into bed. He pulled her toward him until her head was resting on his chest. He was stroking her hair. She started to cry.

“Shhh. It’s okay. Let’s just lie like this. Let’s just be connected. Let’s just not be alone.” He continued to whisper, while she cried like there was no tomorrow.

Two Sundays later, he called her cell. Could she pick him up from the airport, he wanted to know. His friend was stoned out of his head and Robert won’t get into the car with him unless he agreed to let him drive. The friend told Robert unequivocally to fuck himself and drove off, leaving him stranded an hour and a half from home.

Sure, Jen told him. She’d leave right away. It was her only day off and despite the fact that at the time, she spent most of her days on the road, she somehow didn’t mind this trip. It was like there was this part of them that had agreed to be surrogate significant others. Robert had been in Key West all week, but had called her every night for phone sex. Somehow the distance has made it possible, non-consequential.

On the drive down, Jen pondered her apparent inability to fathom intercourse. Was it Robert? Was it everyone? Should she just bite the bullet and get back in the saddle? And how much of Marty is in this equation. Marty, who may be having sex at this precise moment with his new live-in girlfriend. She hadn’t quite realized that these thoughts were causing a building sadness, a blackness that was eating her hope. Were she aware at the moment, she might not have been teetering on the brink, dancing along the edge, oblivious to the imminent crash.

Robert was waiting patiently, parrot-head hat canted on his mop of curls, tropical shirt unbuttoned to reveal a sunburnt swatch of hairy chest. Some of the hairs, Jen noticed, were turning grey. He rushed up to her as she exited the car to open the truck.

“Wow, am I glad to see you! I’ve about had it with the great unwashed humanity and their snarling drama!” He threw his arms around her. He still smelled like coconut.

“You look Key Wested,” Jen grinned.

“The only thing I’m missing is a margarita,” he said. “Let’s go find one while we’re in Detroit.”

“Okay, so you pissed Steve off because he was driving under the influence and you call me to get you and now you want to stop and put me under the influence?”

“Pretty much. I trust you. You’re a good driver and you hold your liquor. Steve is a shitty driver to begin with, and never knows how stoned he is. Besides, I wanted to see you. I have something for you.”
They were navigating the riot of lanes leaving Metro while Robert rummaged through one of his bags in the back seat. Jen noticed he’d unbuckled his seat belt.

“Put your seatbelt back on,” she said.

“Just a sec,” he said, still rummaging.

Jen sighed, merging onto the highway. She could not stand people not having their seatbelts on. Strange, considering all the other risks she’d been known to take. It made her feel very on edge.

Maybe that is why she failed to see the SUV swinging into her lane. Apparently, the SUV also failed to see her. She swerved and heard the rumble strip, the gravel, the deep purchase of earth. They swung around in an arc at the edge of the road as Jen struggled for control. The SUV, which had also lost control, was careening toward them, black glint of looming metal. It clipped their arcing back quarter and then rolled. Jen’s car skidded a few more yards, but she’d managed to both straighten and avoid reentering the lane. This was why she was alive.

Robert was unconscious, blood oozing from his mouth like a thick slimy creature in an alien movie. Jen was shaking and outside herself. She could barely function, trembling uncontrollably, screaming or saying something but she could not hear herself. It was an animal instinct, keening. A man was holding her by the shoulder, his car parked behind them. The man checked Robert’s pulse. He’s alive, the man told Jen. Help was on the way. Jen collapsed to the soggy autumn ground beyond the roadside, sobbing with both relief and guilt. Guilt for thinking “buckle your damned seatbelt.” As if she called it to them. As if she wrote the script.

She saw other people gathered around the SUV, which was on its side after rolling several times. Three young men climbed out. The driver didn’t. Jen could see a crumpled body against the windshield. Suddenly, she felt death all around her. She moved away, back over to her car, to Robert. Two men were applying pressure to open wounds. Move him out of the car, she told them. No, they said, he’s bleeding from the mouth. Internal injuries. The paramedics would know the best way to move him. Approaching sirens grew louder. Hang on, Robert, she prayed. Still in his hand was a necklace with a black coral pendant carved beautifully with some kind of symbol. Luck, she learned later. The symbol was Luck.

A week later, Robert was transported to a hospital near home. Jen stayed in Detroit, despite her bruised, stiff body and shuddering sense of disconnection. There were three of her studios in the area where she could work. Her superiors at HQ thought she was nuts. Go home, they said. Recuperate. A hotel room was no place to recover. But Jen didn’t feel her home was any place she could recover either, and she didn’t want to leave Robert alone in Detroit. So she worked in the mornings to get the sales staff going, and then took liberal time between her two shifts, spent in ICU with a semi-conscious Robert. One of his ribs had punctured his spleen, and he’d had a splenectomy as a result. He’d never be able to drink again.

He had also suffered a concussion, which meant they couldn’t risk putting him under while they removed his spleen on arrival at the hospital. The screaming was unbelievable, piercing the haze of the emergency ward where Jen sat in a shocked fog with a motley crew of desperate Detroiters. Two more ribs were fractured. His left tibia was shattered. His clutch leg. Driving would be an issue. Jen could not fathom how he would manage all alone. She felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility. She also felt angry. Angry at the world, at the college-bound drivers who couldn’t mind the road, at Robert for being stupid enough to sacrifice his safety to find a damned pendant he’d bought her, angry at herself for even being there, for failing to see it coming. Part of her wanted to put it right, to nurse Robert back to health, to help him. An equal part of her resented this impulse. How could she do that and make a living? He chose to be alone. It wasn’t her fault.

In the weeks after the accident, the nightmares and searing headaches would not relent. The panic attack that had first gripped her on her favorite beach after the fight with Saint returned in unpredictable multiples that would squeeze the breath from her lungs. It all would have been easier had she died, she’d taken to thinking. Instead, she was without serious injury, just a swollen knee and some defensive bruises. No occasion for nursing, healing. And no one to administer healing. Yet she felt literally beside herself, unable to get grounded or focus. An empty husk.

The last time she saw Robert, she was visiting him in the hospital, holding his hand. He was still heavily medicated, barely knew he had changed hospitals. She’d be back next week, she had promised. She explained she had to hit the road to get her sales teams whipped back into shape, but she’d be back. In response, Robert squeezed her hand and slowly opened his eyes. He looked right through her.

Jen is standing as straight as she can, sucking in that sad post-partum sack that once housed six-pack-abs, while Marita kneels on the plush eggplant carpet and struggles with the zipper, pinching uncomfortably close to her bare bottom. The far wall looks like an explosion of a Barbie glamour trunk; wall-to-wall taffeta, crinoline, sequined shimmering sheaths. Svelte mannequins put on airs near the far end of the shop window, veils and tiaras a glitter, empire waists and A-lines suggesting a romantic deus ex sewing machina.

Jen meant to wear underwear. Jen meant to be thinner.

“You suppose to lose belly after baby, not get bigger belly,” Marita warbles through the fan of pins in her mouth. “Ughn, take deep breath” she grunts, while trying to tug the fuschia bodice to a close. It just isn’t happening.

It’s not that Jen’s really horrifically fat. It’s just that she lied when she told Alby what size to order; that Marita already had her measurements on file. She’d had it in her head she would be down 10 pounds in a month. But somehow between Jace’s silent treatment and her surreptitious days contemplating Saint’s journal and the ensuing cravings for sweets to beat the ennui these readings produce, she’s added five more pounds to her personal larder of woe. Succulent wild woman indeed. In pink. Taffeta. With rhinestones.

Jen had forgotten just how antagonistic a seamstress Marita could be. She’d been the one who recommended Marita to Alby for the wedding. Marita is accustomed to clothing a thinner and swankier version of Jen. In truth, lying to Alby about her dress size was more about saving face with Marita than any real desire to forfeit her indulgence in the chocolate covered cashews or key lime pie that seemed to be her new sex surrogate. Somehow in a single season she’d alienated both a lover and a husband and replaced them with a reckless yearning for treats. She was beginning to dread what fresh hell autumn might bring.

Rosemary is playing a game of peekaboo with Chris, and he seems to find it uproariously funny. Ack, he squawks in mock surprise, and feigns to waddle away until she swoops down and swings him up into the air. Eeeeeee, he squeals. The morning sunlight glints off his soft blond curls through the huge plate glass window that lets curious passersby witness Jen’s dilemma and Chris’s delight. Jen can smell Marita starting to sweat, a gentle waft of baby powder mixed on a deeper tone of Shalimar, with just a hint of ‘not fresh.’

“Hokay. I haft let dress out. Is no good.”

“No good,” Jen echoes.

“Go,” she says, waving her hand and wiping her brow and giving a dramatically sad sigh. “Go change.”

Indeed, were it that easy, Jen thinks.

Just as she is slinking back to her suffocating curtained corner, Alby peeks out of her much more spacious and elegantly appointed dressing room. Jen realizes she is suffering Bride envy, but really, everything about this wedding makes her feel like her ship has already sailed – and sunk.

“Pssst. Are you ready?” Alby asks them, revealing a nude and gartered thigh against a backdrop of gathered crinoline.

Marita makes a beeline for her and tugs the dress down, nearly pulling her from the dressing room. The shimmering champagne sateen catches the light and they all breathe it in. Alby, chest pushed up in a diving sweetheart neckline, glows like a hot fairy godmother in a renaissance movie.

“Beautiful! Beautiful! No one can see you haf baby! Look, a perfect hiding line,” Marita flourishes, sweeping her hands in an arc to present them with the pregnant-but-you-can’t-tell bride as if it’s her signature artwork.

At just that moment, Chris, in his newfound, unsteady gait, takes a tumble and whacks his head against the corner of the cashier counter. Like a siren ramping up for a three alarm fire, he wails with increasing intensity. Holding the unzipped dress bodice to her chest, Jen rushes over to pick him up, bending forward, then worries her butt is almost bare to the window. Rosemary sees the problem and sweeps Chris up into her arms. Exposure for naught.

“There there, shhhh,” she coos. She turns to Jen as Chris reaches for Jen. “You go change because I have a hunch I just won’t do.”

Jen now has one hand holding the fabric to her chest and one hand holding the lower part of the zipper closed. She wants to let go and hold Chris because she can see a red welt forming on the side of his upper cheek, perilously close to his right eye. Marita waves her off and she wades back to the dressing room. Chris wails even louder as she fumbles out of her constricting dress and pulls up her jeans, as if he can feel Jen’s own heart breaking.

When she returns, he fairly leaps for her from Rosemary’s arms, twisting out of her control. They always want you when the chips are down, Jen thinks as his little body shudders with sobs, his head nestled into the crook of her increasingly wet neck. She murmurs comfort noises into his silky hair, now damp from the heat and exertion of his crying.

Alby is making commiserating sounds and is moving toward Chris, whose face is now snot-laden and tear stained. I see Marita tense as Alby moves closer.

“No no, the dress, wait til baby done crying,” she mutters, thrusting out her hand as if to protect Alby from imminent contamination.

Alby pecks Chris on the forehead and he settles down to a whimper. She stays frozen, slightly bent over, for just a beat too long.

“Hey Jen, who’s that guy staring at you,” she says, looking beyond her out the plate glass window.

“No, don’t turn around!” says Rosemary, who’s already turned.

But it’s too late, Jen turns, and blanches. It’s Robert. Robert in a wheel chair. Robert, to whom until last month and Saint’s journal, Jen had barely given a thought to in seven years. Jen makes her way to the door but he wheels away with demon speed. The bells on the door jingle as she open them, Chris still in her arms, and shouts after him. He weaves around surprised pedestrians on the sidewalk in front of the quaint, turn-of-the-century reclaimed shops that line the street. He turns a corner and is gone. This city is lousy with ghosts, Jen thinks.

She turns to Rosemary. “How the hell did YOU know who that was?” she asks, half whispering because she doesn’t want to upset Chris, who has now moved into the last stages of his grief – sporadic deep sighs.

“Story for another time,” Rosemary says rather abruptly.

“I think now’s a good time,” Jen says. She’s livid. Rosemary has been her confidant for years. She knows all the guilt Jen used to tote around over Robert. She knows how Jen has wondered and wondered what became of him. Never once did she give Jen the slightest clue she had any idea who he was.

“Let’s talk about it over lunch, when Alby’s done here,” Rosemary says, glaring at Jen.

Right. Here’s Alby at her one dress fitting, one of those moments that is supposed to be some kind of sisterhood milestone, and here Jen is, infusing her moment with a bruised baby, a full-size lie and the ghost of broken lovers past. She accepts the glare with a nod and drops the subject.
They turn to Alby and simultaneously start to gush.

But they don’t talk about it at lunch, because by lunch time, Chris’s welt looks swollen and Jen feels like he’s had enough adventure for the day, and she just wants to go home and get him fed and have some quiet time to herself. So Rosemary offers to drive her home while Alby runs some errands and the two of them agree to meet up for the tastings at the caterer after she’s dropped Jen off. Jen feels bad on two fronts, the first being that she could not convince Jace to give her the car this morning, so now she’s messed up the day; the second being she knows Alby wanted her to do the tastings with them, since she knows her way around a canapé. But she just can’t concentrate on these things when Chris is with her – it’s like she doesn’t have the attention span to divide her focus.

Rosemary hates driving, so Jen’s mindful of the fact that it would not be wise to start an argument while she’s taking them home. Jen waits until she pulls into the lane.

“Okay, I’m sorry, but I really have to know how you know Robert.”

Rosemary sighs and turns off the engine. She chews her lip a little, then turns toward Jen.

“I can’t stay and talk this out. You and I are all Alby’s really got in this marriage deal, you know. George has been conspicuously absent,” Rosemary says.

“I know. Just the short strokes. Please,” Jen says.

“We hired him to teach theatre arts two years ago when Lynda left,” she said.

“He lost his job at Central? Because of the accident?”

“Not exactly. He was on disability for a while, but eventually went back. I think he had some run-ins with the new principal. When Lynda’s job opened, he put in for it.”

“And what, you hired him out of some kind of misguided sympathy?”

Rosemary flushes and clenches her jaw. Jen can almost hear her count to ten.

“No Jen, I recommended him for hire because he had the most seniority and he’s the best director a high school drama club can get, even if he’s slightly nuts. Unlike Lynda, he can also actually TEACH English. I also have a boatload of affluent parents in my district whose precious little snowflakes have designs on Broadway, you know. We have the best-funded drama club in the county. The department needed someone with Robert’s cache.”

“So, why didn’t you tell me,” Jen says, although as soon as the words are out of her mouth she realizes it’s a stupid question. She wouldn’t have told her either.

“You weren’t even living here when it happened. I just decided you didn’t need to worry about it and I didn’t need to be a go between. It’s just business. I’m his department head. I need to keep the relationship professional. He doesn’t even know I know you. At least, he didn’t until today.”

“So the wheelchair…They had said he’d likely recover…”

“He did recover. But he’d scheduled surgery as soon as the school year ended, for a spinal fusion and disc replacement. He’s had a lot of back problems and finally decided to do it. He’s hoping to be back in September, but that will depend on how his rehab goes. I suspect that’s why he’s using the chair. They gave him a 50/50 chance for improvement. At least, he hasn’t told me any differently. Listen, can we not talk about this for right now?”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” Jen says, though she feels like crying. She gets Chris out of the car and heads for the house, increasingly her cocoon, her refuge, her hideaway. But her river haven is peopled with the same ghosts. They flow from Saint’s journal just like the river flows past her house, sparkling blue jewels on top, turbid undertow below.

It’s true Jen had been maudlin the night she tried to kill herself. She still flushes when she remembers the Russian poem by Blok that rippled through her mind that night years ago when the dark waves of the river shimmered before her, sliced with strikes of lights. She’d tried to speak through the poem to her therapist, later, in 3 East. All he’d said was that literature students had the highest suicide rate.

But that night she could hear it – hear Blok in her head – his dystopian Russian musings on failed ideals like a child’s cautionary nursery rhyme:

Night, a streetlight, a street, a chemist’s,
All in a dim and useless light.
In the next twenty-five years
They’ll still prevail, against one’s plight.

And you may die but then, returning,
You’ll see again the same old night,
The icy canal waters running,
The street, the chemist’s, the streetlight.

At the time, Jen was certain she understood what he meant. No solace in death. No escape. That’s exactly how she felt, sitting on the rocky bank of the river, too stuck to move forward, too far gone to go back.

Today, she sits in her sunroom, watching that same river flow by, and decides to remember. Decides to take a closer look at that young woman on the shore, at her pain and and her sorrow. She wants to connect with her. To bring her back into the fold.

In hindsight, maybe it was the shock of the accident, the shame of betraying Saint, or maybe deep down she knew she was pregnant and not fit to be a mother. Maybe it was simply a great wave of pity, a tsunami of grief for the future that had somehow slipped through her fingers, the friendships and true loves that had somehow drifted away.

When she closes her eyes now she can return to her—that girl on the shore — she can hear the circuitous pattern of half-thought amongst the internal wailing. She can see the moment she decided – the moment from which she could not turn back.

There she was, watching the hypnotic rhythm of the black waves on the river. The bridge traffic roared overhead, the thunk of tires keeping time on the span connectors. She sees herself pull the identification from her wallet and begin to slice it to ribbons. It is an awkward task and before long she is cut and bleeding. The slivers fluttered down the rocks to the lapping waves. Next, she tears up the night deposit. Then she hurls her license plate, as if skipping a stone. She leaps up and throws her briefcase overhand, watching its contents catch and swirl in the wind before settling into the water where the saturated leather is slowly submerging. She removes the ring she was given as a child. It is still not enough erasure for her. Slowly, she razors her long locks of hair with the utility knife, until she looks like the crazy clockwork doll from Blade Runner. It is still not enough. She is working without a net, and she is falling.

Jen tries in her mind to go back and sit beside that girl, to hold her hand. To tell her she’s not really alone, that there are a thousand future Jens calling out to her. Then she starts to wonder if there are still more future Jens calling out to the Jen-of-now. Who’s going to hold her hand, she wonders. Who will come and sit beside her now?

The phone rings, and jolts Jen from her lurid thoughts. It’s Jace with another excuse, another working-late-grabbing-a-bite-in-town story. It’s like that journal is her ambrosia, nursing her back to health—or at least to memory—but somehow for him it’s a bitter pill. She thinks maybe he senses the ghosts: the ghost of Saint, of Marty, of Robert; the ghost of herself.

Jen reminds Jace that she is supposed to go to Alby’s after dinner for drinks and to make the centerpieces. Take Chris, take a cab, he tells her. She doesn’t have the energy to argue with him. She realizes this is not a good thing. She realizes that in the last few months their marriage has wound down like a mechanical toy. She hangs up and calls Sherry, the babysitter, praying she’s free.

A few hours later, after they’ve eaten and Jen has given Chris a bath, Alby calls to see where the hell Jen’s gotten to.

“I’ll be out on the scooter after Sherry gets here because Jace is working late again,” Jen says.

“I think the scooter is a bad plan, Jen. We intend to drink. Those wheels are too small for these gravel roads out here,” Alby says.

“Don’t worry,” Jen assures her. “I’ll be fine. I’ll take the 40 and I’ll only have a few drinks.”

Drinks don’t turn out to be the problem, though. Halfway down Alby’s concession, lightning rips open the twilight and the rain starts coming down in sheets. At first it’s kind of exhilarating – Jen loves the energy of a late summer storm. But then it gets scary, when the scooter starts to slide left and right in the muddy patches on the dirt road. The rain is so heavy Jen can barely see through her visor, and the wind feels like it could just push her over sideways. She keeps dropping speed, but still she finds it hard to keep the bike upright. The unpredictable crosswinds make her stomach lurch every time she loses control. She almost misses Alby’s long laneway in the blinding rain, and as a result, brakes too hard and too fast. She topples over on the right side and the bike slides out from under her to the left and slams into a fencepost.

Her arm from wrist to her elbow and outer thigh sting from road burn, but it’s more Jen’s pride that’s hurt. It suddenly occurs to her that she needs grown up wheels of her own. Meaning a car. And a job. And maybe a life.

She limps up the long lane to Alby’s historic two-story Arts & Crafts home, walking the bike. The tungsten light from the windows casts a warm yellow glow against the black swirling storm. The glow of the house, with its detailed dormers and neat contrasting teal and cream paint makes the scene look like something from Architectural Digest. Jen hears the voices and music wafting from the screened-in back room that juts out 20 feet from the original home and must have started out in life as a back porch. There’s a low, rumbling male voice she doesn’t recognize; it makes her think ‘East Coast.’ She puts the bike on its stand and walks over to the slider door.

“Oh my God Jen!” Alby gasps, the first to see her. Jen looks down at herself and realizes she is covered in mud and blood.

“I knew it. I knew you shouldn’t ride that thing tonight! God, come in, let me see you! Rosemary, grab some towels.”

Sheepishly, Jen enters the room, pulling the slider closed behind her. She stands on the entry matt because she realizes she’s dripping everywhere. Worse, there is a beautiful man sitting on the rattan loveseat in front of her. And here she stands, dripping sad muddy bloody sack of aging woman. No fair, she wants to wail.
Once Alby discerns that her wounds are not fatal, she giggles a bit and turns to the man.

“Mikolaj, this is my friend, Jen Jones. Jen, this is Mikolaj, my new neighbor. He’s a fan of yours,” she grins.

Rosemary appears with a stack of towels while Jen babbles about her travails like the idiot species to which she presently belongs. Alby peels off Jen’s torn cotton jacket to reveal the bloody scrape that runs from her wrist to her elbow. Rosemary wraps another towel around her shoulders like a cape, realizing Jen is now unwittingly doing the wet-t-shirt-contest thing. Jen is trembling from either the post-crash adrenalin or the fact that beautiful Mikolaj is like a genetically-modified version of Marty, smoldering but kind and wise brown eyes that make you think of the thrill of Belgian chocolate. Creamy, subtle, and highly addictive.

His hair is thick and shiny black, pulled back in a soft ponytail like a medicine man or a native warrior. His feet are beautiful too, elegant, balanced, tanned just enough to look commanding in his worn Naot sandals. He bears the markings of a hip, well-traveled guy: unusual wrist bands, a Kokopelle ring, a subtle ear stud, the hint of a necklace showing from beneath the collar of his designer-distressed t-shirt and khaki traveler vest. And good god, he’s wearing Perry Ellis, a scent that always makes Jen swoon.

He stands up slowly, deliberately, like a careful, friendly bear, and crosses the room. He takes Jen’s arm while saying “Do you mind if I take a look?”
His fingernails are glossy with health, neatly trimmed and perfectly formed. His hands are broad and long at the same time, and look somehow capable. Of what, Jen is not sure, but the thought causes her to flush.

“Go ahead,” say Alby. “I’ll go get some cotton and bactine.”

“Can you get me some tweezers and a cloth and a bowl of warm water too,” he asks. He looks down at Jen’s dripping face and smiles, nodding toward her arm in his hand, which he now has slightly raised to better see it in the light.

“You have bits of gravel in your scrape. I can clean it up, but you’ll really want to watch for infection.”

“Are you a doctor?” Jen asks.

“No,” he laughs. “I just take a lot of spills.”

“Yeah, but I am betting it’s not because your wheels are too small. I bet it’s because you ride too fast,” she ventures.

“Very true. But not the way you think. I rode motocross as a kid – still do now and then. But I’m pretty tame on a street bike.”

“No choice, right, if you want to live,” Jen says.

“Oh, there’s always a choice. About living.”

Suddenly, the distance between them feels no more than a millimeter wide. It’s like the way ozone raises the hair on your arm right before a thunderstorm. Jen can feel the quivering force field of his energy touching her skin. Everything hangs in the air in stop motion. The unbearable silence even stymies Rosemary, who begins to fluster about getting them drinks. Ably returns and sets the bowl on the end table, while Mikolaj leads Jen to the loveseat to get to work. But she doesn’t want to sit on the couch and ruin it.

“My jeans are soaked,” she says.

“Why don’t you go grab a robe from upstairs and I’ll put your clothes in the dryer,” says Alby.

“I’ll get blood all over your robe,” she says. “My thigh is scraped up too.”

“Just wrap a towel around your waist underneath,” Alby says, leading her out of the porch, through the kitchen and up her stairs.

In her room, Alby finds Jen a pair of stretchy short shorts that she swears she doesn’t care about. She brings more towels to dry off with and they are warm and scented against Jen’s goose pimpled flesh. She produces a terry robe with kimono-style sleeves. Jen slides her arm in, trying not to touch the fabric. Alby rolls up the sleeve and pins it to the shoulder with a safety pin.

“That’s some neighbor you have,” Jen says while Alby fusses.

“Isn’t he a doll? He’s going to rebuild my outbuilding for me. You know what that means, right?”

“That you’ll watch him all day from your window and never want to leave the house?”

She laughs. “No silly. He’ll only be doing it on the weekends and during his vacation. It means you’ll have a place to sculpt and pot again when he’s done. I’ve got it all worked out. You’ll bring Chris over to play with my baby and I’ll put you to work in the barn. Then you can make me some money again while I look after the kids! Is your kiln still at your mom’s?”

Jen feels tears stinging her eyes. Alby’s five months pregnant, planning an unlikely wedding, running a business all day while Jen sits around and watches the river go by with nothing but time on her hands. Yet Alby seems more able to plan Jen’s comeback than she herself.

“That’s so sweet of you,” Jen chokes out.

Alby wraps her arms around Jen and hugs her.
“It’s entirely self-serving of me. I’m exploiting you for fun and profit,” she teases. “But seriously, I think it would be good for you.”

Jen thinks Alby has no idea how right she is.

“What does George think of this plan?” Jen asks.

“It’s not any of George’s business,” she says.

The way she says it tells Jen to drop it, so she does. They go back down the gleaming wood stairs with the intricately carved banister. Alby’s house is one of the most beautiful restorations Jen has seen. From the wainscoting to the heritage paint, every detail is like a museum exhibit of the perfect Arts and Crafts period country estate. Jen is having a hard time picturing George, with his pipe-fitter tools and greasy clothes or his drunken Jim Morrison act blending in. She’s never been able to get George.

Jen follows Alby into the back room.

“The patient is ready,” she says.

“Don’t you clean up well,” says Mikolaj.

Jen flushes. She had pulled her soaking hair into a chignon and wiped the mud off her face. That was about the extent of her work. She sits down slowly on the couch with her right arm closest to him, and he twists the table lamp to cast light on her arm. He takes her hand and bends her elbow gently. He presses a warm, wet towel against the scrape, blotting off whatever dirt will come. He rinses it out and does it again. Soon, Jen can see more skin and scrape than mud, but he’s right, there are tiny bits of gravel ground in. Gently, he begins to pluck them out.

Jen can feel his heat every time he exhales, brushing her arms like a hot Chinook wind. It makes the pain bearable. Rosemary and Alby sit on the floor on the other side of the coffee table, drinking their wine and watching Mikolaj concentrate.

“Should she go to the hospital?” Rosemary asks.

“Naw, she’ll be fine once we get it cleaned up and dressed.”

Jen reaches for the wine Rosemary has poured for her and lets the heat warm her core. It is empty before long. Rosemary is quick to pour her another.

“Okay, so let me show you guys the centerpiece containers,” Alby says, getting up to walk over to a large stack of boxes on the far side of the room.
She pulls a beautiful clear glass blown half-bowl from its wrapping. Rosemary reaches for it.

“Oh, that’s gorgeous,” she says.

And it is, Jen thinks. Mikolaj looks up and smiles.

“My friend in Toronto made them for Alby. She has a glass studio on the Quay,” he says.

A sudden pang hits Jen. She. Who’s she? Jen wonders. Even as she realizes how insane it is, she feels a pang of jealousy and disappointment. But it only heightens the electrical charge she feels pulsing through Mikolaj’s hand like some kind of reanimating force.

“She did an awesome job,” Alby says. “I can sell her stuff all day long at the gallery. I can’t wait to get it in!”

Alby’s plan was to give her wedding guests a thank you gift to take home instead of spending thousands on a florist. Tonight they were to assemble the sand, candles, glass beads and pebbles to create miniature Zen gardens. In true Alby style, glass bowls from Wal-Mart just wouldn’t do. They had to be art. The girls went to work assembling them.

“Is this how you want them,” Rosemary asks. Her creation is lovely: three staggered candles in the center of a bed of white sand, small smooth pebbles and glass stones scattered artfully in designs around the edge, and a miniature wooden rake.
“Perfect. Each one can be however we make it,” Alby says.
Jen drinks in the scent of rose and lavender as she sprinkles her candle tops with essential oil. Suddenly, the room feels like a salon and together with Mikolaj’s gentle ministrations she feels the pre-massage excitement that has her hooked on pampering.

“Can I see one of the candles?” Jen asks. Alby hands her one. It’s squat rolled beeswax that’s been dyed. She holds it up to her nose to inhale it. She loves the smell and texture of beeswax.

Mikolaj pulls back and takes a drink of his wine. He looks at Jen for a minute.

“I take it you need a break,” he says.

“Sorry,” Jen flushes, realizing her movement messed him up. “Maybe for a minute,” she says.
Now that he’s not touching her, she realizes her arm is burning and tender. It also dawns on her that she will have a huge ugly scab for the wedding.

“Alby, do you think I could get Marita to make me a long-sleeve shrug of some kind? You know, something gauzy. I mean, would you mind if my dress is different from Rosemary’s?” Jen asks.

“No, I don’t mind, but why? It will likely be hot and humid – why do you want a shrug?”

Jen raises the bloody mess that is her arm for Alby to see.

“Oh, God, right. Well, we still have three weeks. Maybe it will be better by then.”

Mikolaj chews his lip and shakes his head slowly. Not better enough, he must be thinking.

“She already has to remake the bodice anyway. There’s no way she’d have left enough seam to let it out enough for my newfound fat,” Jen says.

“Aw, Jen, you’re having such a shitty day,” Alby says. “I’m sorry. Don’t worry about the dress. It’s no big deal.”

“You’re not fat,” Mikolaj says, turning to her. “You’re just right.”

“Thank you,” Jen says, “But the dress doesn’t lie.”
The girls laugh.

“So what else is making your day shitty?” he asks, training those wise brown eyes on hers.

She can see he means it. He actually wants to know. It feels a little foreign to her: man plus listening to her as something other than a sexual device. As hot as Jen finds him, he also has that feel that Marty did, like he could be a best girlfriend too. The most dangerous friend ever.

Hours later, Jen’s new best friend is hauling her scooter up into the bed of his F-150 SuperCrew, while Jen debates explanations to Jace. The rain has softened to a steady beat of fat drops and the band of clouds lightens the starless sky to an inky indigo. Jen stands under the awning, victim to stray drops, watching Mikolaj grow progressively soaked as he strains under the exertion. She is glad for the rain, because it’s causing wisps of his hair to escape the elastic and curl slightly, making him somehow seem less smooth and together; less dangerous. She offers to help but he refuses, and truthfully, her scrapes are burning despite the bountiful wine and tender ministrations.

She is dreading their arrival at her river retreat, because Jace has been out drinking, and will make far too much of it all. If he’s even home when they get there. If she knew he’d be home soon, she would stay at Alby’s and claim inebriation—which would be true, to a point. But then he’d make a big deal about it and come out to get her and make her leave the scooter there because it wouldn’t fit in the car. And the next time she’d want to go out to Alby’s, he’d make a remark about whether she could control herself enough to make it home and give her a million reasons not to go. And Chris would miss her in the morning.

But if Jen shows up with this gorgeous guy who’s a dead ringer for Marty—the guy Jace is the most jealous of in the world—well, there’ll be a grand inquisition. Either way, she’s feeling a little sick. Sick of confrontation. Part of her also knows it sucks to be the guy who she is prejudicing with predictions of asshole behavior; that it’s not fair at all, but it seems to be how she rolls these days.

Mikolaj closes the truck gate and walks up to Jen, pulling the shawl Alby has lent her more tightly around her shoulders to ready her for the rain. She feels like a child, but it’s a nice feeling; one she can’t exactly recall from her own childhood. Alby and Rosemary come out to the stoop to send Jen off with hugs, and she thanks the creator or whoever for the friends she doesn’t deserve.

When she attempts to climb into the giant truck, she grimaces as she tries to lift her leg for momentum. Mikolaj comes over to give her a boost. Then he hops into the other side of the cab and cranks the engine to life. Jen has a flash thought that she doesn’t even really know this guy as he peels out of Alby’s driveway, but since she also feels like she’s known him forever, she’s not sure she’d mind an abduction about now.

Keith Jarret flows through the premium speakers, and Jen marvels at the combination of big truck and experimental jazz. This guy seems to house all the gods and goddesses within. A terrifying concept. She sinks into the rhythm of the wipers as the countryside oozes by, punctuated by piano flourishes, and feels high. They are silent, except for the low throaty tones of Mikolaj humming to the song, or rather, in some kind of riff-ish counterpoint to the song. Death and the Flower indeed. Normally, the silence would be unnerving to Jen. Somehow with Mikolaj, it’s just right, and she is able to banish the impulse for small talk.

They’ve talked enough tonight. He has extracted more from her over a few bottles of wine with the girls than she’s likely uttered to Jace in the entire last year—possibly the lifespan of their marriage. She marvels at how easy that seemed for him, and how easy it was for her to tell a stranger all the secrets of her soul.
When he gets to the River Road, he turns left instead of right and pulls into the little park that overlooks the river. Jen tenses, but doesn’t protest. The idea of a surreptitious make out session at one of her teen haunts is both surreal and exciting. But Mikolaj has something entirely different in mind.

“So, we need to get this Robert thing sorted out before I drop you off,” he rumbles, killing the engine.
Jen is a little stunned by both his boldness and the tact he’s taking.

“Why,” she asks.

“Because you need to get straight with yourself,” he says, turning to her to smile, as if the smile would soften the verdict.

“What do you know about Robert?” Jen says.

“I gathered from tonight enough about Robert to say that in the morning I want you to pick up the phone and call him and apologize for being a self-absorbed asshole seven years ago and to own that fact that you were scared and clinically depressed and that you hadn’t yet learned how to be a good friend. I want you to do this so that you stop mentally beating the shit out of yourself every time you see a guy in a wheelchair.”

“What’s it to you, anyway. Leave me be with my ghosts and my guilt,” Jen shoots back, flushed, furious and deeply embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t ask you if you would take the coaching. Will you take the coaching?” he says, leaning forward to hold her face in his hands. Tears flood down her face and she wonders if this is what he was after as he folds her into his arms like a lost little lamb. His clothes are wet but she can feel the warmth beneath, the waves of trembling energy soaking into her skin like an infusion. There’s a tingling feeling as if their ions are exchanging information, and also a sense of deep release. She could float in this embrace forever. But he pulls away, and holds her face again, just staring at her, as if she already knows whatever his words are. He won’t let her look away.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I’ll take the coaching.”

He smiles and turns to start the engine. Jen is left trying to figure out what just happened. She has, it appears, become a project.

They pull into the lane mere seconds before Jace, and Jen sighs and prays he won’t make a scene. Mikolaj is helping her down out of the truck cab as Jace’s headlights hit them. She’s sure it must look like he’s just being chivalrous, and as if she’s too drunk to extract herself from the truck.

Jace turns the car off and gets out, looking a little unsteady himself. Before Jen even has a chance to gather her thoughts and introduce them, Mikolaj steps forward and extends his hand.

“Jace, I’m Mikolaj, Alby’s neighbor. Your wife had a spill on her scooter earlier tonight, so I am bringing the patient and offending vehicle home. Would you mind helping me get it off the truck?”

Jace looks at Jen and she nods so he follows Mikolaj to the truck gate and the pair lower the bike to the ground. It seems to involve more struggle than Jen recalls when Mikolaj loaded it himself, but she suspects the invitation is the “man way” of saying “I’m not screwing your wife; I mean you no harm.”

“So what happened, are you okay?” Jace asks her, somehow sounding a little phony or off-center. Like he has an audience.

“I wiped out turning into Alby’s lane. I’ve got a few patches of road burn, but they cleaned me up,” Jen says.

“Those damned wheels are too small, I keep telling you!” He turns to Mikolaj and thanks him.

“No worries. I’m sure you’d do the same for me,” Mikolaj says, getting into the truck and giving me a nod and a salute.

It hits Jen that in a million years, Jace would never do the same for him. That it is his essential weakness in the face of trouble, his constant refusal to get involved, his relentless blame and shifting of responsibility, that has eaten up all Jen’s love for him. And in the same instant she realizes that he holds within him this incredible and all-consuming fear that, as his father always told him, he will never be good enough. From this well of anxiety flows all of his false bravado and meanness in the guise of humor and concern about looking good instead of being good. But what’s Jen’s excuse?

So she gets it, finally, like the skies parting above her to allow a sliver of moon through the clearing night. She looks over at him, standing, wavering a little, seeming slightly stunned, hair damp and glasses fogged—he leans toward the bike, as if to walk it into the garage ¬ but then straightens and sputters:
“He looks just like Marty.”

And Jen’s heart breaks for him, even as she nods and takes his hand and pulls him toward her for a long overdue embrace that carries none of the ionic exchange of Mikolaj but that nonetheless is ripe with sex.

Jen does not believe herself to be a drunk or an addict, at least in the traditional sense, but here she is, making her amends list like the good student Mikolaj must believe her to be. She admits she has no clue where these twelve steps are leading her, but she likes the idea of movement. Wait, no, that’s not honest enough. To be honest, which is what people always say when they’re not, she is taking these steps in the joyful hope that the sexy man with the chocolate voice who just phoned her half-an-hour ago will respect her.

Wait, strike that. Respect and fuck her.

No wait, strike that too. Love her. See how easily she turns it all into sex? Sex is easy. Love and Respect, not so much.

Jace left for work this morning, whistling a tune and apparently feeling that all is right in his world. Jen is trying to make it so, and a little sex and sympathy go a long way for Jace. Deep down the most candid part of her knows it might be for the wrong reasons, for safe harbor from the exhilaration she feels. But she will put that energy into the task at hand. Who cares what inspires the deed? Outcomes are the measure.

The reason she has to start with Robert is because he’s a minor character in the drama. A throwaway part. A mutual mind fuck that distracted her from the more seriously dysfunctional relationships that were dying like flies in winter’s attic.

Jen opens Google and begins the great hunt for Robert the Perv. Pictures of Robert as his drama club wins the provincial drama festival. Robert quoted in an article about a former student who now stars in a hot TV program about a Glee club. Robert protesting cuts to the arts during a school board meeting. No glaring evidence of the Perv, but Robert appears to have been having some semblance of a normal life all these years while Jen’s avoided the mere thought of him, made him fester like an anaerobic wound in a private part.

The sunlight streaming into the aptly named sunroom agrees it’s time for sunlight and fresh air to heal the Robert of her nightmares. The breeze off the river today carries the scent of a thousand drowning worms; the birds are wheeling joyfully at the feast, and the scent of soil makes Jen feel somehow sated. Chris is painstakingly transferring every single colored block from the jumble on the floor to the seat of the wicker loveseat beside her, showing off his fledgling ability to hold himself upright by the cushion while bending now to pick up another block with one hand. The feat seems to amuse him enormously, and he doesn’t seem to mind her absorption in the laptop beside him as she scans Facebook to see who all Robert’s friends are.

The phone rings and Jen answers it.

“So how’d it go,” Mikolaj rumbles.

“Jeez, don’t you have anything better to do? I haven’t called him yet. I’m doing a little research,” Jen says, realizing she is busted.

“You mean a little procrastination?” Mikolaj chuckles.

“Yes, a little procrastination by way of Google,” she says.

“So stop it now and phone him. I’ll call you back in a few, and then I’ll pick you up to take you to see him. I have to run into town to pick up a load at the hardware store anyway, so see if he’s free for lunch.”

The line goes dead. This guy is a hard ass. Jen had already found Robert’s number and had it written down on a notepad in front of her. She takes a deep breath and dials the number. He answers on the first ring. Just her luck.

“Hi Robert. It’s Jen Jones, a blast from the past. Was that you wheeling down Front Street yesterday by Marita’s?” she says, trying to sound breezy and light, although she feels faint with anxiety and can hardly breathe.

Silence. Followed by more silence. “Robert?” she says. “Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m just deciding how to tell you off, frankly. I don’t know why you’re calling but I’m not even sure I want to find out,” he says.

“I can understand that,” Jen says, just as Mikolaj coached her. “But I’d like to see you for a few moments today to apologize, and to give you a chance to clear the air if you’d like.”

“Why the fuck would I waste my time helping you feel better about yourself, exactly?” Robert wants to know.

“Good question, Robert. See, we do have a few things to talk about. I’ll have my son in tow, so it will be short, but can I please stop by around noon?” This is way harder than it was in rehearsal. The fact that Jen rehearsed it is not lost on Robert.

“Will you be bringing your therapist?” he mocks.

“No, I’m a big girl. I’ll fly solo,” she says.

“Solo with an innocent child in tow,” Robert points out.

“I can’t get a sitter and I don’t have my own car so…” Jen says as the tears start. She is choking up. It’s not a ploy, she can’t get the words out or pull off breezy and light. Nonetheless, Robert relents. Even he can recognize genuine emotion.

“Okay, noon. I’m not seeing the point. But if you need it, I will do it,” he says and hangs up. Jen feels a foot tall. She is suddenly not so sure about this coaching plan, this whole amends project. It’s beginning to seem crazy.

Like clockwork, the phone rings again—coach Mikolaj checking in—and Jen confirms her humiliation and reluctance, but agrees to be ready in half an hour.
Chris babbles away in the back seat of the SuperCrew cab, trying out his new words in a Tourette’s-style burst of patter: cat, mommy, tree! Weee! It took Mikolaj mere minutes to anchor the car seat, which seemed wholly uncharacteristic for the hip bachelor persona Jen had fixed in her mind last night.

“Your son is gifted, you know,” he now says as they drive along the river road into town, past the smokestacks and pipeline sprawl and the pungent scent of Monsanto.

“What do you mean?” Jen asks.

“You said he was 11 months old. He can walk using furniture and he’s terrifically articulate for his age. Those are signs of accelerated development,” he says.

“I walked and talked when I was a year old. My mom says it’s genetic with Chris—I teethed early too.”

“Is your mom a child psychologist?” he asks.

“No. I’m just saying it doesn’t make him a genius because he’s an early walker/talker.”

“Most parents would be delighted at the thought their child might be a genius, and would have the flash cards out by now at the mere suggestion of talent,” he says.

“I don’t want that for him! I want him to be normal!” Jen says, betraying more emotion than she meant to. She’s on edge as they draw nearer to Robert’s house.

“Unlike you?” he asks.

“Okay. Unlike me. You happy now?”

“Yes, but the question is, are you?” he says, stealing a glance.

“At this moment in time, space and dimension, no,” she admits.

“Is this Robert’s street up here on the right?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“We’re early. Let’s drive along Lakeshore to kill a few moments,” he offers.

“That would be great,” she sighs.

“So how many grades did you skip,” he asks, unwilling to let the whole gifted topic drop.

“Who says I skipped any?” she says. “As a matter of fact, my mom wouldn’t let me, because I’d already started school a year early. At the first new school after she left my dad, they didn’t know what to do with me so they made me sit in the library for a year in “self-study.” Needless to say, it was not a great social experiment,” Jen says.

“And you would do the same to Chris? If I’m right, that is. You would let your desire for him to “be normal” get in the way of giving him what he needs?” Mikolaj steals another sidelong glance at her.

“Since you put it that way, no, I wouldn’t do that to him. Where is this coming from?”

“My own baggage, I guess. And what I do all day. And the fact that I have a son with Asperger’s Syndrome,” he says, just like that, all matter of fact.

“You have a son?” Jen’s shocked because she never even picked up on the wife part.

“I do,” he says, pulling into the beach access road, the very same scene of the near-drowning with Saint, John and Ger all those years before, the same place Jen sat that day she’d decided to end it all, before heading to Robert’s to distract herself.

It makes Jen wonder what things would look like run through a time lapse camera in the sky trained on this beach. Teenage Jen with boys, booze and a bonfire. Early 20s Jen with Saint and boys, booze and a bonfire. Sad mid-20s Jen feeling sick of her life and ready to check out. Early 30s Jen with a strange new man and another’s child somehow trying to rake the Zen garden of these dunes. If there’s a God, she is giggling.

“Do you want to talk about it,” she asks.

“No need. Charlie lives with his mother, and I do not. But he’s why I go to Toronto so much, and why I hesitated moving here. But I can live well for a lot less and have more to give him in a way, so for now, it’s working.”

“What did you mean about what you do all day?” Jen asks, realizing she had somehow assumed he was in construction since he’s rebuilding Alby’s outbuilding. Things really never are as they seem.

“That’s how I know Alby. I’m the director at The Child’s Place. We do neuropsych and psychometric evaluations of our wee clients and work with the school systems to accommodate them. Gifted kids need as much accommodation as kids with developmental disabilities, in my biased opinion,” he says.

“Hence the “coach Jen” program?” I ask.

“No. The “coach Jen” program is because I like you, and I identify with you, and I’ve known a lot of smart girls who didn’t socialize well as children, and who find themselves a bit adrift later on. So, I have the training, and right now, you seem to have the need,” he smiles.

“Isn’t that like a bus man’s holiday,” Jen asks, a little embarrassed to learn there’s a professional angle to all this “help” she’s receiving. It’s irrational, because who cares why? She should be grateful for the friendship.

“As a matter of fact, I am on holiday, which is why I’m building you a new studio, and as I heard Alby mention it, you already know I’m a big fan of your art. And since you’re not five years old, no, it’s not like work for me. So, it’s almost noon. Are you ready for your first assignment?” he asks, restarting the engine.

“Yes I am,” she says, suddenly determined to put on a brave face while sweat rolls down her sides.

Robert’s house remains almost exactly as Jen recalls it, just a bit more worn, a bit less manicured. He still has the Corvette but has swapped the BMW for an Audi A6 sedan. Mikolaj comes around to help ease her down from the truck. She turns to open the second door to retrieve Chris and he stops her.

“No way. Chris is coming to the hardware store with me. You don’t get to make nice and hide behind your kid,” Mikolaj smiles and touches her nose with his index finger.

Jen starts to protest but realizes it is futile to resist and not exactly logical to argue that Chris shouldn’t be off with a stranger when said stranger is the director of the agency designed to protect and serve children. So she just lets it go and tells Chris that he’s going to have fun with Mikolaj for a spell while Mommy makes a quick visit. Chris, who has taken to Mikolaj almost as quickly as Jen has, doesn’t even reach out for her or cry. Instead, he just waves: “Bye bye, mommy! Bye bye!”

Jen closes the truck door and turns to Mikolaj.

“You promise not to sell him on the black market or to Russian eugenicists while you’re gone?” she quips.

“Scouts honor,” he says, hopping into the truck and backing slowly out of the laneway.

Robert is at the door watching them, standing upright and leaning on a cane. Jen is shocked at first because as she walks closer to the door, she can see how much he’s aged, his grey dominating his hair and beard. He could almost pass for her father. Then she realizes he’s likely old enough to be her father.

He opens the door and stands aside for her to enter. It’s awkward, but less so, as if time is erasing with each step she takes toward the couch. She sits down and decides to wait for him to sit down too before she speaks.

But he doesn’t; he just stands there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He’s successful in making her feel even stupider and more vulnerable for sitting, if that was his intent. Jen takes a deep breath. “So, I’m here to make amends, not excuses. I don’t mean about the accident, although I’m truly sorry it happened. I mean about the way I just let you rot in the hospital all alone because I was too fucked up to deal with it. And how I’ve just avoided you ever since.” she pauses, because in a nutshell, she actually thinks that’s all there is to say.

He just stares at her for a minute and seems to flush a little. He hobbles slowly back and forth across the room, just like when he used to pace when he’d work up to a lecture in drama class, but slower, and more careful because of the cane and the pain. Jen sort of feels like it’s all acting now too, but she waits.

“So that’s it? You feel better now? You think I’m mad at you because you didn’t visit me in the hospital? You don’t think I have friends or anyone else who cares about me? You are so fucking self-absorbed!” he sputters. “How did you think I felt, to find out that YOU were in the hospital, that YOU had tried to kill yourself? That somehow my meager romantic overtures and your fucking pity about my situation were enough to send you off the deep end! What kind of shit do you think I’VE been grappling with all these years, you fucking moron? I was your goddamned TEACHER. And then your FRIEND. And yes, for a brief spell, maybe almost your LOVER…but I’m 20 fucking years older than you and supposed to be in a position of trust. So how do you think your little Sylvia Plath act landed over here, exactly?”

Jen is speechless. Oh my god, she thinks. It’s Robert who feels guilty.

“It wasn’t your fault!” she says, standing up to cross the room. “God, how could you think that? It was so many other things! I was pregnant; I think I was clinically depressed,” she reaches out to hug him, but he keeps his free arm straight by his side while the other rests on the cane. She keeps hugging him anyway. She feels so sorry that he’s been walking around thinking these things. Finally, he relents, and hugs her back with his free arm, and says, sotto, “I think it’s safe to say a suicide indicates depression.”

Jen chuckles because for once, it’s funny.

The heat shimmers off the pallet of shingles in the midday sun, the sharp tar smells oddly pleasant when mixed with the scent of freshly sawn lumber. Mikolaj wears his tool belt like a knight’s scabbard, hair escaping his loose ponytail and sweat staining his ill-chosen black t-shirt. He disappears back into the outbuilding and Jen hears the saw wind up like a turbine, reaching a squealing pitch. It’s only supposed to be 90 degrees out but it feels like 110, and the only thing saving Jen from the overwhelming urge to nap right now is the gin and tonic Alby has kindly conjured for Jen while Alby sips iced chai tea on the patio. Chris is asleep inside the cool confines of the house while Alby and Jen let the heat settle over them like a wet, warm blanket.

They’re both enjoying watching Mikolaj work, perhaps more than either of them should. Alby is now five months pregnant and two weeks away from marrying George. The wedding is being held at the house, and all manner of vendor has been by for pre-flight meetings this morning. The only conspicuous absence from the full press wedding court in recent days has been the groom.

“Maybe I should just cancel the tent,” Alby muses. “Mikolaj thinks he’ll be finished the studio by next weekend. It would be so cool to just put the reception in there and have the dancing under the stars…”

“Unless it rains,” Jen says, “Besides, the studio is really not large enough. Maybe put the bar area in there if he’s done, but it’s just too much pressure to count on it. What if he finds rotten wood under the shingles? That’ll slow him down.”.

In part, Jen is the one who doesn’t want the deadline because she’d hate to ruin the wedding or cause any stress. She’d volunteered to paint the interior and help Mikolaj lay the floor tile, which was the least she felt she could do since the studio is for all intents and purposes, hers. Alby was dead serious about putting Jen back to work, and she loved the idea of having Chris right nearby and getting her hands in the clay again. Jen hasn’t felt this much excitement since before she had Chris.

Right now, Mikolaj is finishing up a long work counter on the west wall, but in truth, Jen knows she could be starting to prime the opposite wall already since he’s sanded the drywall super smooth. But the heat is paralyzing her at the moment, that and dread of discussion of her next “amends” assignment.

“I don’t know, I just have a bad vibe about the tent for some reason,” Alby says, pensively twirling a strand of her jet black hair that has somehow stayed glossy despite the alien depleting her vitamin stores. Normally, Alby’s bad vibes are dead on, witch that she is. But ditching the tent at the 11th hour sounds crazy to Jen.

“I wish I’d thought this through better. All the prep people are going to be underfoot when we’re getting ready,” she sighs and looks off to the distant fields of late corn, now full height, that border her property to the east. To the west is Mikolaj’s house, land dotted with prim white bee keeps. South of Alby’s generous yard is a beautiful woodlot. The yard itself is home to her labor of love, an intricate collection of perennial beds, climbing roses and oriental shrubs, with an ornamental dogwood and magnolia trees. In the far west corner is a small pond and manmade rock waterfall, visible from the vantage of the patio, but directly behind the studio, which now has a back slider door to access a seating area beside the pond. It’s a gorgeous setting for a wedding, though perhaps the tent is not ideal for her lawn. Jen doesn’t think the tent is what’s bothering Alby.

“Okay, so, don’t get upset with me, but is there any chance you’re getting cold feet, just a little?” Jen ventures.

“No, but as you can imagine, George is. I don’t really view the wedding as changing much and I’m not really expecting a transformation to a conventional relationship. He’s always been a free agent and always will be, and I’m usually too busy to notice,” she grins. “In his mind, however, he’s making a blood sacrifice to the great gods!”

“But you never really wanted to live together before,” Jen says, treading gently. Alby is one of the most generous women she knows, in every respect, and Jen’s worried. But she also knows that hormones can make you emotionally frail.

“Well that’s still true, but we’ve gone on this way for years now. Sooner or later you just have to bite the bullet. If I can’t learn to live with George, would I really learn to live with anyone? It just seems it will be better for the baby,” she says, consciously or unconsciously rubbing her stomach in a circular motion.

Jen holds her tongue, but something deep inside her fears it will NOT be better for the baby. She and Jace have had a rough go this last year, but George makes Jace look like a saint and their troubles minor. Alby, however, has been loyal to George for more than a decade, despite his serious issues with alcohol, bar fights, bosses, and authority. Jen has never been able to figure out what’s in it for her. Alby always just says the heart wants what the heart wants.

“Okay, just checkin. It still all seems a little unreal to me,” Jen says.

“Me too!” Alby laughs. “And speaking of unreal, what’s your next amends project? Or am I allowed to know?”

“The master thinks it’s time I have a heart to heart with Saint, right after I burn her journal,” Jen says, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

“Do you feel better from doing all this, or is it just a placebo effect? Or do you just like spending time with Mikolaj, not that I’d blame you,” Alby wants to know.

“Something’s shifting, and yes,” Jen says, sotto, not wanting to be overheard. Mikolaj has reemerged from the studio to get the shop vac off the truck bed. “But since I don’t want to have to make amends with Jace too, I’m behaving,” she whispers and winks.

“No fun,” Alby mouths.

It’s true, but not likely entirely by choice. Somehow Mikolaj has telegraphed that their friendship is to be on the up and up. That he’ll have no part in any drama. Which of course, makes him all the more attractive to Jen. Somehow he has telegraphed this to Jace too because Jen’s gotten no flack about his constant picking her up and dropping her off every day this last week to work on the studio, dead ringer for Marty or not. Jace barely seems to notice her comings and goings, which in itself is odd. Either everything’s out-of-kilter right now, or Jen’s perspective has shifted. But as Mikolaj says, she has to just let it unfold.

“So, are you going to do it?” Alby asks, taking a sip of her tea.

“Perhaps,” Jen says. She doesn’t really know if she’s ready for Saint. It’s one thing to talk to Robert, and apologize to her mom and friends about her suicide attempt, and chew on the things Mikolaj would have her do to be pure of heart and mind. It’s another when it comes to reconciling with Saint. She feels too manipulated, and the sense of injustice is somehow still raw. Mikolaj says this just gives Saint power, and that if Jen looks closely, she’ll see that she was “100 percent responsible.” In his world, there are no victims; only what you choose to allow in your life. Jen sees the sense in it and has seen first-hand how liberating this idea can be. No fuss, no muss, accept your responsibility and move on. Make the life you want. Live the life you want. Get down to it. She likes the matter-of-factness about it and can see that in the past, every single time instead of making the simple choice, she’s instead walked her own monster and allowed intrigue through the door. Which is the second part of why she will not be sleeping with Mikolaj. It takes 25 days to break a habit. Jen is on day 10.

“I didn’t take Mikolaj for someone who took ‘perhaps’ for an answer,” Alby giggles.

“You’ve got that right,” Jen says. “Fortunately, we’ve kept him sufficiently busy to not notice I am not one with the path on the Saint front.”

Jen can still hear the shop vac in the distance, a signal that pretty soon she needs to get off her duff and get some painting done. It feels so good to be purposeful that for once she doesn’t procrastinate. She drains her drink and stands up, putting my hands on Alby’s shoulders and leaning forward to give her a hug.

“Thank you so much for the drink, m’am. However, it’s time I go change my clothes and earn my keep around here with my mad paint prowess. You sure you’re good with Chris when he wakes?”

“Positive. I actually might go join him for a nap,” she says, stretching languidly, then slowly rising from her deck chair. Jen thinks she may have misjudged how well Alby will adjust to staying at home with a newborn. She seems pretty relaxed and hasn’t even looked at her cell or email all day. Her new manager at the gallery seems utterly more competent than the last, who would hound her all day.

Mikolaj walks out of the studio again, shop vac in hand, and throws it back up onto the truck bed.

“It’s all yours, Jen, have at!” he calls, walking toward them, smiling despite his dishevelment. He’s sweaty but is using a small hand towel to mop his brow. Little bits of sawdust cling to strands of his hair, which have gone wavy with the damp of sweat. Even his eyebrows are dotted with sawdust.

“I’m just going to go change my clothes,” Jen says. “Are you going to keep me company after you take a break?”

“Nope, I am going to drink a lemonade and climb that wicked hot roof to scrape off those rotten shingles so we can get the dumpster outta here before the wedding,” he says. “And when this is all done, you’re going to design a really interesting and highly valuable sculpture for my great room, gratis,” he says, snapping his towel toward Jen’s retreating butt.

“What will the subject be?” she turns to ask.

“Redemption,” he grins.

Painting alone is both a blessing and a curse, Jen thinks. On one hand, it can distract you from your woes; you can just be absorbed in the cut lines and the roller strokes, lost in the smell that spells “new” and the act of transformation when you stand back to inspect your work. Hours melt away, and the look Jen’s going for is beginning to emerge in the studio. Weeping Willow, they call the mid-tone green she’s spreading. She is aiming for that Zen feeling of light, air, water, reed when you look through the windows, and it seemed the walls should match the fresh feeling of the yard. The sounds of Mikolaj scraping the roof above her take on a rhythm of their own.

The curse of painting alone is much like the blessing. In Jen’s case, she is slow without help; lost in the process. When she is painting with someone else, she’s fast, efficient, eager to get the job done and get sociable. So for her, the real danger of painting solo is that after a few hours of quiet concentration, she feels lost in space, like she’ll never emerge and talk to another human again; or worse, never want to. It is an effort almost beyond her to speak. She is the same way with the clay. Which is likely why it was so easy to walk away when she married Jace. She could just never shift back from art mode to wife mode. She still doesn’t know if she knows how, but she has to learn.

Jen is at her makeup table, curling her hair to get ready, when Jace sidles up behind her and slides his arms around to the front, pulling open her silk kimono.

“Careful, I’m wielding a hot curling iron,” Jen says, releasing the ringlet to hold the iron a little further away. The scabs on her arms are healing nicely, but she doesn’t need further injuries for Alby’s wedding, which is now just a week away. He nuzzles Jen’s neck and looks up at their reflection in the mirror.

“I thought it was a good time for a pre-game-girls-night-out warm-up,” he said, tracing lines down her now-exposed chest.

“You’re supposed to be watching Chris,” she reminds him, half sighing, and not really wanting to be even later than she already is.

“He’s watching the news,” Jace says, intent on luring her to bed.

Jen shakes her head and removes his hands gently, getting up to go check on Chris.

“Come back, I’m just kidding, he’s watching Baby Einstein, I know he’s not allowed to watch the news,” Jace follows her out of the room and down the stairs.

When Jen gets to the living room, she sees that Chris is truly watching Baby Einstein, of which she’s not especially fond, but if Jace is minding him, she usually doesn’t pitch a fit over it. Her goal has been to let Chris’s personality fully form before he watches ANYTHING, but not everyone can stand having the TV off the way Jen can. She thinks the silence gets to Jace.

“Hey pumpkin!” she says, catching him mash the candle he’s playing with further into the tiled coffee table while holding himself up with the other hand. He turns his head and grins. Jen sees he’s actually been trying to EAT the candle. It’s natural beeswax, not fatal, but not to be encouraged either.

“No no, give mommy the candle. That’s a ‘no touch,’” Jen says, taking it out of his hand. His little face crumples as if he’s going to cry but after Jen sets the candle back she sweeps him up for a hug and he doesn’t actually cry. He’s getting better at taking the ‘no.’His father, on the other hand, joins their embrace, and it’s pretty clear to Jen he’s hell-bent for leather.

He leans in toward Chris and says “Your mommy won’t make any more Chrises with Daddy! Bad mommy!”

Jen half laughs, though Chris is getting pretty good with words and she’d prefer he not repeat this statement at some inopportune time.

“Not true, Daddy is exaggerating,” she says, kissing Chris’s cheek. He squeals and squirms a little and seems like he might be equally content unraveling the contents of the living room, so Jen sets him back down on the floor. He immediately pulls himself up and does the “couch-walk” over to his basket of toys. There, he plucks a fabric book out of the basket and scoots up onto the couch, opening it and babbling to himself as if he can actually read it.

“He is truly his mother’s son,” says Jace.

“Yes, he’s also equally clever, so mind your comments about not making Chrises and the like. He’s apt to take that the wrong way,” Jen says.

“I was half-kidding,” Jace says, “Although it’s true,” he says, lowering his voice to a whisper.

Jen steps back toward the kitchen, hoping to be out of earshot, and pulls Jace with her.

“What do you mean,” she says. She thinks she knows where this is going, but she’d like to hear him own it.

“Well, I mentioned it the other night, about having a brother or sister for him, and you said with the studio opening, it wasn’t the right time. I’m just wondering when will be the right time and still have them close enough together in age to have a good relationship,” Jace said. He’s flushing a little, which is strange.

“I don’t know the right time, but I know it’s not now, when Alby has created this fantastic studio and environment for me to work in AND still be near Chris. I just really need to work for a while until going through it all again,” Jen says.

It’s true. She has so barely begun to feel herself again. The idea of having another, the hormones, the raw irrationality, the inability to focus, frankly, it horrifies her.

“There’s no reason you can’t work pregnant,” Jace says

“That’s not true. Do you know what kind of chemicals I work with when I’m sculpting? If I’m in clay, glaze is full of lead. When I’m working metal, I’m soldering all damned day. I use two-part epoxy by the gallon. The fumes alone would make me retch when I’m pregnant. Trust me. This is not suitable work for the pregnant!”

“If it’s bad for you when you’re pregnant, then it’s bad for you period,” Jace says.

“I get it, okay? I get that you’re worried about me going back to work. But you have it backwards. The time to worry was when I didn’t feel like working. Trust me on this, okay? I need you in my court,” she says, leaning into him. He mumbles an ascent and she breaks away to finish getting ready.

The girls are well into their cups by the time Jen get to the ENC Club. They’ve taken over a section of the pub that’s on risers about two feet higher than the surrounding area and overlooks the adjacent dance floor. Everyone is wearing silly tiaras, and Alby is wearing a short veil. The waiter is en route with a tray laden with shooters. There’s a blur of faces that are half-familiar to Jen from the art scene days, and she’s feeling far too quiet to have to talk to so many half-strangers. At the far end of the table is Alice, who’d been with Saint that first day back at Comfy’s. Of course, she’d be here; she’s one of Alby’s employees. Jen just doesn’t like the Saint connection, the notion that Alice will report back. She realizes it is irrational.

“Ooooh, hey, look who finally made it, my matron-in-waiting,” Alby says, jumping up to give Jen a hug.

It’s great to see her having fun. Jen thought she was nuts to have her girl’s night here when she herself can’t drink, but as usual, Alby’s energy doesn’t seem to require the degree of alcoholic fueling that Jen’s sometimes does.

“You must have a tiara!” Alby says, crowning Jen with a fake kiddie hair accouterment. “Because we are all Wild Succulent Princesses tonight!’ A cheer goes up from the table.

Alby and Rosemary have saved Jen a seat between them and she is grateful because she’s feeling strangely shy and would like to just fade into the background tonight. Alby shouts over the music in an attempt to introduce Jen to the various associates and employee gal pals who’ve collected to help her celebrate her farewell to single life. Jen nods and waves and can’t really hear a thing being said to her. She orders a rusty nail, puts her arm around Rosemary, and settles in.

“It is so good to see you, woman,” she says to Rosemary, and it is. She too looks happy and whole tonight. A few weeks ago, Rosemary and Paul started talking things out, and took a little sail together last weekend between two of his charters. Rosemary was now sporting the freshly-fucked glow that suited her much better than the ‘spinster strain.’

“So what is this I hear about a boy,” Jen says, leaning in.

“Mhmmm, got me a lovely boy. You know, the 35-year-old kind, not the pining student kind,” she whispers.

“And will this boy be accompanying you to the nuptials?” Jen asks.

“Indeed, he will, not that we want him getting any ideas,” she says.

“Then keep him away from Jace,” Jen says.

Rosemary has a funny look on her face. Jen realizes that Paul has never met Jace, but of course knows she had an affair with his pal Peter. Jen chews on this for a minute but decides it will be fine so long as she doesn’t mentally implode.

“This will be kind of weird, won’t it,” she says.

“Naw, Paul will be fine. He’d never say a word, you know. I’m more worried about Jace trying to marry us off than anything else,” she laughs.

“Oh, he’s onto advocating other life milestones these days, such as keeping one’s woman barefoot and pregnant, it would seem,” Jen says.

“Really? Chris is hardly a year old! When did this start?” Rosemary wants to know.

“Just the last few weeks. It’s kind of odd to me,” Jen says.

“You mean, just since Mikolaj’s been hanging around, and just since the studio was being renovated, and just since it dawned on him that you might have a life again?”

“Pretty much,” Jen says, grinning since she put it like that.

“I propose a toast to the inexhaustible and inimitable machinations of chest-thumping, mating men,” says Rosemary, raising her glass.

Alby hears her and loves the toast so much she stands up and shouts it to her entire gal posse, who meet the toast with hoots and cheers.

To the rest of the people in the bar, the cheer back of “to Men” causes them to look their way, to drink in their glittery and highly hormonal, sexualized selves against the heavy bass backdrop and throbbing lights. At least, it causes the men to look their way. Jen realizes you could divide the room up into two camps in terms of the types of men: those who will now fear them or will follow them all night.

Before the crowd is finished drinking them in, Alby leads her posse to the dance floor to go tribal to a favorite song. As the beat thrums through Jen she thinks back to so many nights, seemingly long ago, that she lost herself to the frenzy, the music, the clubs, the drink, and she realizes it is the act of celebration she has always craved. Not destruction. Celebration.
And tonight, even though she’s quiet inside, she will join the dance, because the dance is all there is.

It’s Alby’s wedding day, and Jen’s so nervous for her she’s up at the crack of dawn, nursing a coffee on the back porch. Both Jace and Chris are still in bed. The weeks have flown by, and while she’s enjoying the excitement of getting the studio ready, she’s also enjoying this rare, quiet moment, with nothing to do until Mikolaj picks her up to help Alby get ready.

The dawn is unfurling low ribbons of dusty orange across the lawn, through the trees, sending bands of soft light to catch the ripples of the river. The indigo sky is slowly fading with smudges of light, as if a giant is wiping away the night. The birds welcome the show with sweet, enthusiastic arias. It’s a precious, beautiful day. Jen remembers that she used to always feel this way in the morning, and doesn’t know how that ever got away from her.

She picks up Saint’s tome and pages through it randomly. Saint’s handwriting is so small, so inward, as if the thoughts will run away from her if she let’s them loose. Jen remembers getting her letters in school. Provocative. Funny. She was a good friend back then, a kindred spirit. For all her amends, she still doesn’t know what the fuck happened.
Maybe they became themselves.

She pulls a Manila envelope out of the steel file cabinet, and grabs a sticky note and a pen.

“Thanks for the read,” she scrawls. She adds a smiley face as an afterthought. There’s nothing more she feels like saying. So she bundles it up and seals the envelope. She is almost surprised that she still remembers the address on Bertrand. It’s been seven years since she lived there, and she’d only stayed a while.
She slides the package into her bag, and pads back into the kitchen. Life is stirring.

Alby floats to the door to let Jen in, sporting a gorgeous teal kimono that parts slightly with the baby bump. Up close, she looks tired, as if she hasn’t slept a wink.

“Sweetie, what’s up,” Jen asks as Alby throws her arms around her and just holds tight in a hug.

“George never came home from his stag,” she says, lips trembling, face struggling for composure.

Jen gasps, then realizes neither of them should be surprised. Who the hell has a stag the night before the wedding? Don’t those guys watch the movies? Everybody knows it’s a recipe for trouble. These are the thoughts running through Jen’s head while she puts on a brave face and decides to instead distract the bride with makeup and curls.

Rosemary shows up half an hour later, and half an hour late, which is uncharacteristic enough to cause Alby further distress. Finally, Jen opens a bottle of champagne and makes mimosas. What the hell, she thinks, this could be a wild day, with or without the groom. Little did she know then that some would say it would have been a better day sans groom.
At 1 p.m., Rosemary pulled Jen aside while Alby was having a word with the officiator.

“Does Paul have any fucking clue where George is?” she asks.

“Paul was home by 3 a.m. But he said the rest of the guys were going to get something to eat, and that Alby’s PR girl had shown up at Comfy’s,” Rosemary says, sotto so Alby can’t hear.

“You mean Alice? Holy shit, not good,” Jen says. There was a little history over Alice. They never understood why Alby didn’t fire her.

“You don’t think the jackass spent his last free night at her place, do you?” Rosemary asks.

“They don’t call him Georgie Porgy for nothin’. Call Paul and ask him to swing by her place. We’re t-minus one hour.”

Rosemary disappears to make the call and Mikolaj slides in the back door. He’s been the point man (her “man of honor” as Alby’s taken to calling him) for the florist, the tent people, the musicians and the caterers. He looks it too, hair disheveled and still in sweatpants.

“Hey there, you look like you could use a mimosa,” Jen says, pouring him one.

“Thanks, but what I really need is five minutes to go home and shower,” he says, gulping it down anyway.

He gasps and then leans in and whispers “Any ignsay of the roomgay?”

Jen tells him Rosemary is following a lead. He looks at his watch and makes a face, walking backward toward the door. Elsa, the officiant, gives Alby a hug and glides over toward Jen. Jen doesn’t know a lot about hand-fasting rituals and has never been to a Wiccan wedding, but Alby has already explained the ceremony to her. Jen has the honor of holding the rope and passing it to Elsa when instructed to do so. At the moment, she’d rather wrap the rope around George’s neck and sully the sacred circle. But she doesn’t say this to Elsa, who is flooding her with minutiae about the ceremony, most of which she can’t quite absorb because she is preoccupied with wondering whether or not Rosemary has reached Paul and whether or not someone will locate the errant groom. The minutes are flying by, and soon enough, sixty will have passed and people will be showing up to be seated in the makeshift garden cathedral.

Jen thanks Elsa and takes the rope and wanders over to Alby, convinced she needs to get the bride out of the plane of increasing action.

“Darling, shall we retire to your chambers and enjoy some beverages,” Jen says, doing her best to lighten the mood.

Alby, for all her trademark poise and strength, looks like a little girl about to cry. She’s quite beautiful in her luscious cream gown, flowers woven into her raven hair, blending with the glittering net of the veil. Jen has tried to hide the dark circles under her eyes with concealer. If she cries now, they’ll need to start over, but if she doesn’t cry, Jen’s afraid shell explode. Gently, Jen leads her back to her bedroom, where they’ve made a makeshift salon.

“Why is he doing this to me,” she wails once Jen closes the door.

Jen pulls her into her arms and the floodgates open Alby’s warm tears are rolling down Jen’s neck and onto the damned bridesmaid dress. Better mine than hers, Jen thinks.

“Because he’s a scared little boy, Alby. They all are, and it sucks. But he’ll show up,” Jen says, not entirely certain that’s the truth of it.

Just then Alby’s cell rings. She takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes. The phone keeps on ringing, so Jen knows it is George, who has decided to grace them with his presence.

“Thank god you’re alive, I am so going to kill you,” Alby answers.

Jen decides this is a good time to leave the room. On her way out, she sees Rosemary coming up the stairs, resplendent in her hot-pink-goth-maiden gown. It becomes her.

“She’s talking to him now” Jen whispers.

“I know. Paul called me back. He was passed out at Alice’s and the idiot slut didn’t know what to do or who to call,” Rosemary whispers back, voice thick with disdain.

“Is he coming?” Jen asks.

“Of course, if she lets him.”

They sigh. She’ll let him. And not because all her friends and clients will be standing around eating hors d’ouevres on her dime, but because love is a sickness for which there’s no cure, except to step back outside the logic of love, disoriented and wondering where the hell you’ve been.