Jenna
Yearning: an intense or overpowering longing
Not pregnant.
Were there two more depressing words in the English language?
In the small bathroom of their two-bedroom cottage on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Jenna dropped the remains of the pregnancy test onto the bathroom floor and resisted the temptation to grind it under her heel.
She wanted to swear, but she tried never to do that even in the privacy of her own bathroom in case one day it slipped out in front of her class of impressionable six-year-olds. Imagine that.
Mrs. Sullivan said fuck, Mommy. FUCK. It was her word of the day. First we had to spell it, and then we had to use it in a sentence.
No, swearing was out of the question and she refused to cry. She already had to contend with freckles. She didn’t want blotches, too.
“Jenna?” Greg’s voice came through the door. “Are you okay, honey?”
“I’m good. I’ll be out in a moment.”
She stared at herself in the mirror, daring her eyes to spill even a single drop of the tears that gathered there.
She was not okay.
Her body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. What it was supposed to do was get pregnant on the first attempt, or at least the second, nurture a baby carefully for nine months and then deliver it with no crisis or drama.
All those times she’d peed on the stick in the grip of panic, hoping and praying that it wouldn’t be positive. The first time she’d had sex with Greg, both of them fumbling and inept on the beach, she’d been more terrified than turned on. Please don’t let me get pregnant.
Now she badly wanted it to be positive and it wasn’t happening.
They’d been having sex all winter, although to be fair there wasn’t much else to do on the Vineyard once the temperature dropped. Sex was a reasonable alternative to burning fossil fuels. Maybe she should teach it in class. Hey, kids, there is solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy and sex. Ask your parents about that one.
She was burning more calories in her bedroom than she ever had on a treadmill.
She was thirty-two.
By thirty-two, her mother already had Lauren.
Jenna’s sister, Lauren, had been pregnant at eighteen. She’d barely said “I do” to Ed before announcing she was expecting. It seemed to Jenna that her sister had gotten pregnant by simply brushing against him.
And yes, that made her envious. She loved her sister, but she’d discovered that love wasn’t enough to keep those uncomfortable feelings at bay.
She’d wanted to be a teacher since her sixth birthday when her mother had bought her a chalkboard, and she’d forced her sister to play school.
Everyone knew it was only a matter of time until she had her own family.
At first she’d been relaxed about it, but as each month passed she was growing more and more desperate.
She’d tried everything to maximize her chances, from taking her temperature every day to making Greg wear loose boxer shorts. They’d had sex in every conceivable position and a few inconceivable positions, which had caused one broken lamp and Greg to mutter that he felt like a circus performer. Nothing had worked.
The injustice made her heart hurt, but worse was the sense of total emptiness. It embarrassed her a little because she knew she was lucky. She had so much. She had Greg, for goodness’ sake. Greg Sullivan, who was loved by every single person on the island including Jenna. Greg, who had graduated top of his year and had excelled at everything he’d ever tried.
She’d loved him since she was five years old and he’d pulled her out of the ditch where she’d fallen in an ungainly heap. He was her hero. They’d sat next to each other in senior year and run the school newspaper together. People talked about them as if they were one person. They were Jenna-and-Greg.
Until recently, being with Greg was all she’d ever wanted.
Suddenly it didn’t seem like enough.
The worst thing was that she couldn’t talk about it with anyone, which had led to some almost awkward moments because she didn’t find keeping things to herself easy. Chatty, her school reports had said, much to her mother’s irritation. You’re there to learn, Jenna.
She might be chatty, but even Jenna drew the line at talking about her sex life while browsing the aisles at the local store.
Hi, Mary, good to see you. By the way, how many times did you and Pete have sex before you got pregnant?
Hi, Kelly, I’d love to stop and chat but I’m ovulating and I need to rush home and get naked with Greg. See you soon!
“Jenna?” He rattled the handle. “I know you’re not okay, so open the door and we can talk.”
What was there to talk about?
She was desperate for a baby and talking wasn’t going to fix that.
She opened the door. She was Jolly Jenna. The girl who always smiled. The girl who had always tried to accept things she couldn’t change. She had freckles on her nose, hair that curled no matter what she did to it and a body that refused to make babies.
Greg stood there, wearing what she thought of as his listening face. “Negative?”
She nodded and pressed her face against his chest. He smelled good. Like lemons and fresh air. “Don’t say anything.” Greg was a therapist. He’d always been good with people, but right now there was nothing he could say that would make her feel better and she was afraid sympathy might tip her over the edge.
She felt his arms come round her.
“How about ‘I love you.’”
“That always works.” She loved the way he hugged. Tightly, holding her close, as if he meant it. As if nothing was ever going to come between them.
“We’re young and we haven’t been trying that long, Jenna.”
“Seventeen months, one week and two days. Don’t you think it’s time we talked to a doctor?”
“We don’t need to do that.” He eased away. “Think of all the great sex we can have while we’re making this baby.”
But it’s not working.
“I’d like to talk to someone.”
He sighed. “You’re very tense all the time.”
She couldn’t get pregnant. What did he expect?
“If you’re about to tell me to relax, I’ll injure you.”
He pulled her back into his arms. “You work so hard. You give everything you have to those kids in your class—”
“I love my job.”
“Maybe you could go to yoga or something.”
“I can’t sit still long enough to do yoga.”
“Something else then. I don’t know—”
This time she was the one who pulled away. “Don’t you dare buy me a book on mindfulness.”
“Damn, there goes my Christmas gift.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth. “Hang in there, honey.” The look in his eyes made her want to cry.
“We’re going to be late for work.”
Twenty hyperactive six-year-olds were waiting for her. Other people’s six-year-olds. She adjudicated arguments, mopped tears, educated them and tried not to imagine how it would be if one of those kids was hers.
Every day at school she taught the children a new word. Definitions had a way of flashing through her head even when she didn’t want them to. Like now.
Disappointed: saddened by the failing of an expectation.
Frustrated: having feelings of dissatisfaction or lack of fulfilment.
“It would be easier if people didn’t keep asking when we’re going to have a baby.”
“They do that?”
“All the time.” She grabbed her makeup from the bathroom. “It must be a woman thing. Maybe I should stop being evasive. Next time someone asks me I should tell them we’re having nonstop sex.”
“They already know.”
“How?”
He grinned. “A couple of weeks ago you texted me at work.”
“Plenty of wives text their husbands at work.”
“But generally those texts don’t say Hey, hot stuff, I’m naked and ready for sex.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, except Pamela had my phone.”
“No!” She felt a rush of mortification. “Why?”
“She’s my receptionist. I was with a client. I left it with her in case someone had an emergency. I wasn’t to know you would be having a sex emergency.”
“I don’t know whether to laugh or hide.” Jenna covered her mouth with her hand. “Pamela was my babysitter. She still treats me as if I’m six years old.”
“We can rest assured she now knows you’re all grown up.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She handed me my phone back, but I have no doubt that our sex life will be the topic of discussion at the knitting group, the book group and the conservation commission meeting. If we’re lucky, it might not be on the agenda for the annual town meeting.”
“Do you think she’ll mention it to my mother?”
“Given that your mother is a member of both the book group and the conservation commission, not to mention numerous other committees on this island, I think the answer to that is yes. But so what?”
“It will be another transgression to add to a very long list.”
Jenna had once overheard her mother say Lauren never gave me any trouble, but Jenna—She’d paused at that point, as if to confirm that there were no words to describe Jenna’s wayward nature.
“Whenever I’m with my mother I still feel as if I should be sitting in the naughty corner.”
Greg gave a slow smile. “What happens in this naughty corner? Is there room for two?”
“She thinks you’re perfect. The only thing I’ve ever done that has won the approval of my mother is marry you! It drives me batshit crazy.”
“Batshit—” Greg arched an eyebrow. “Is that today’s word?”
“If you’re not careful I’ll tell her what a bad influence you are.”
“We’re married, Jenna. We are allowed to have sex wherever and whenever we like as long as we don’t get arrested for public indecency.”
“I know, but—you know my mother. She’ll sigh the way she does when she despairs of me. She’ll be wishing I was more like my sister.” Although Jenna adored Lauren, she had never wanted to be her. “My mother is the beating heart of this island. If anyone is in trouble she’s there with her flaky double-crusted pies and endless support. She’s closer to Betty at the store than she is to me.” And it was a never-ending source of frustration and hurt that she and her mother didn’t have a better relationship.
Jenna considered herself easygoing. She got along well with pretty much everyone.
Why did it feel so hard to talk to her mother?
“Parent-child relationships are complicated.”
Dysfunctional: relationships or behavior which are different from what is considered to be normal.
“I get that. What I don’t get is why it still bothers me so much. Why can’t I accept things the way they are? It’s exhausting.”
“Mmm.” Greg glanced at his watch. “Happy to deliver a lecture on the latest research into mother-daughter relationships, but I charge by the half hour and you can’t afford me.” He kissed her again. “Get dressed, or the next thing they’ll be discussing at the annual town meeting is the fact that their first-grade teacher was standing in front of the class wearing her dinosaur pajamas. Want me to cook tonight?”
“It’s my turn. And speaking of my mother, I’m visiting her later.”
“Thanks for the warning. Better pick up a bottle of something strong when you pass the store.”
“Visits were so much easier when my dad was alive.”
Greg raised an eyebrow. “He was always on the golf course.”
“But he usually wandered in at some point and he was always pleased to see me. Mom still thinks I’m a wild child.”
“It’s the reason I married you. I’ll see you tonight, and you can be as wild as you like.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Text me later to let me know how you are?”
“Only if you promise not to give Pamela your phone.”
“Or you could stop sexting.” He pulled her against him. “On second thoughts, don’t stop sexting. I like it and it’s great for my reputation.”
“Oh please—your island approval ratings are already through the roof.” She shoved at his chest. “Go.”
“I’ll see you later.” He scooped up his coat and car keys and made for the door. “Oh and, Jenna—”
“What?”
“Try to relax.” He winked at her and was gone before she could throw something.
Shivering in the blast of cold air he’d let into the house, she walked back into the bedroom and glanced out of the window.
Despite everything, he’d made her smile. He always made her smile.
Then she noticed him standing by the car, his shoulders slumped, and her smile faded.
He was always so upbeat about everything, but right now he didn’t look upbeat. Was he putting on an act for her sake?
She waited until he drove away, then swapped pajamas for her smart black pants. Last year they’d fitted perfectly but now they were tight around the waist and she knew that had nothing to do with being pregnant and everything to do with the fact she’d started using food as a comfort.
Greg had left coffee for her and she poured herself a cup, reached for the oatmeal and then changed her mind and took a cupcake from the tin instead. She’d made them the day before and decorated them with sugar icing. They were supposed to be a peace offering for her mother, something she could take to her book group, but she wasn’t going to miss one, was she?
Not the healthiest breakfast, but the negative pregnancy test was enough to make her want to fall face-first into the nearest source of sugar.
She sank her teeth into the softness of the cake and closed her eyes.
Baking soothed her.
If she’d had a child, she would have baked with them. She would have had the softest buttercream, the lightest sponge cakes and her cookies would have been the envy of everyone. She could imagine all the kids saying I wish my mom could cook as well as yours.
As Jenna didn’t have any kids to eat the cupcakes, she ate most of them herself. She ate to fill a big hole in her soul, but unfortunately it filled other things, too, including her fat cells.
She stared at the crumbs on her plate, drenched with regret and self-loathing.
Why had she done that? It wasn’t as if she didn’t understand what was going on here. She was married to a therapist. She felt a rush of frustration that she didn’t have more control. She knew that smothering her emotions with sugar wasn’t going to solve anything, but she didn’t seem able to stop it. Her desperation for a baby had snapped something inside her.
She felt as if her life was slipping out of her grip and it was terrifying.
She had a sudden urge to call her sister, but that would make her late for work.
Would her sister even understand? Lauren had the perfect life. She had a beautiful house, no money worries, a great husband and a beautiful daughter.
And she couldn’t exactly talk to her mother.
Nancy Stewart was the sort of person who had time and sympathy enough for everyone. Unless you happened to be her daughter.
Jenna drove to school along empty roads. In the summer months, her journey took at least twice as long. From late May through to early September, the Vineyard hummed with visitors, both summer residents and day trippers. They came to savor the “escapist” feel of the island, but did so in such large numbers that they inadvertently turned it into a copy of the places they’d left behind.
Jenna parked in the school parking lot and was caught at the gate by Mrs. Corren, who was anxious about Daisy, her daughter.
Andrea Corren gave her a wobbly smile. “Hi, Jenna. How was your weekend?”
I found out I’m not pregnant. “Good, thanks, Andrea. You?”
“Not good.” The wobble in her smile moved to her voice. “Do you have a minute?”
She didn’t. She had twenty hyperactive children waiting for her and she needed to keep them busy, occupied and entertained. That, she’d discovered, was the way to achieve a happy, harmonious classroom.
What she didn’t need was to arrive late.
But she was also a little worried about Daisy.
“Of course.” She saw Andrea Corren’s eyes fill. “Let’s find somewhere more private.” She opted for the gym, which would be quiet for at least another half hour.
“How can I help, Andrea?”
She sat down on one of the small chairs. It forced her knees up at a strange angle, one of the reasons she rarely wore skirts or dresses to work. Dignity went out of the window when you taught six-year-olds. Sitting in this awkward position, she was horribly aware of the waistband of her pants biting into her stomach.
Why had she eaten that cupcake?
Andrea sat down next to her. “Things have been unsettled at home. Tense. We—Things are a little—rough—right now between Daisy’s father and me. Our marriage isn’t great.”
Jenna stopped thinking about cupcakes. By “rough” did she mean something physical? This was a small community. Everyone knew Todd Corren had lost his job before Christmas and been out of work since. And everyone knew he’d punched Lyle Carpenter in an altercation on New Year’s Eve.
“Do you think the problems in your marriage are having an impact on Daisy?”
“He’s having an affair.” Andrea blurted out the words. “He denies it, but I know it’s true.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was. A fractured marriage was an injury to the whole family. Children limped wounded into her classroom, trying to make sense of the change in their world and she did what she could to create an environment that felt safe and secure.
“I haven’t said anything to the children, and I’m trying hard not to show how upset I am because I don’t want to confuse them. They don’t know what’s going on, and I’m afraid if I say something he’ll make me seem like the bad guy. Mom is having one of her moods again, that kind of thing. I don’t want to bring the kids into this. How does Daisy seem to you?”
“She’s been a little quieter than usual, but she hasn’t said anything specific.” Jenna made some suggestions, careful to keep the conversation focused on the child. It wasn’t her job to fix their marriage or pass comment, although invariably when you were a teacher, you became involved with the whole family. The fact that she’d been at school with the mothers of half the kids in her class, and some of the fathers, occasionally complicated matters.
Andrea pulled a tissue out of her bag. “I don’t want this to harm my kids. If he stops right now, maybe we can fix this. Maybe they never have to know. But I’m not good at keeping secrets. I’m an honest person and I’ve raised them to be honest, too, so by making me do this, he’s tainted our family. It isn’t just his deception, it’s mine, too, because now I’m lying to my kids.”
Jenna understood how heavy a secret could be, especially when you carried it for a long time. “I really hope you manage to work out your problems, Andrea.”
“We used to be so close. Known each other since we were kids, like you and Greg. Maybe that’s the problem. We’ve been together so long, he never sowed his wild oats.”
Jenna had never sowed wild oats either. Neither, to the best of her knowledge, had Greg.
“Have you thought about talking to someone?”
Andrea’s eyes filled again. “I’ve been seeing Greg.”
That didn’t come as a surprise. Half the island had seen Greg at one time or another. The other half had seen his partner in the practice, Alison.
“I’m glad you’re talking to someone.”
“Greg is wonderful. You’re lucky being married to him.” Andrea reached for her purse. “He has this way of talking, sort of quiet but firm. Makes you think there’s hope and that you’re going to be able to fix whatever the problem is.”
That voice hadn’t managed to fix the fact that she couldn’t get pregnant.
“He’s good at what he does.” That was true. Greg made a difference to the island. And so did she. Community was important to both of them. Jenna often wondered how her sister could live in a big anonymous city. She knew she wouldn’t be happy doing that. With the exception of a few vacations and her time at college, Jenna had lived her whole life here. She’d married Greg in the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown in the presence of half the community. Her oldest friend had made the cake and Lauren had done her makeup. She’d known most of the guests her whole life.
Jenna stood up. “I’ll keep an eye on Daisy.”
“Thank you. Daisy adores you. You’re all she talks about. Mrs. Sullivan said this, Mrs. Sullivan said that.”
Thank goodness Mrs. Sullivan hadn’t said the F word.
“Daisy is smart.”
“Too smart sometimes. I’m worried she’ll see things I don’t want her seeing.” Andrea stood up, too. “You’re very good at your job, Jenna. You’re going to be a wonderful mother when you eventually decide to have children.”
Jenna managed to keep her smile in place.
She walked Andrea back to the school gates, promised to keep an eye on Daisy and then made her way back to the classroom.
The wind was biting and most of the islanders were longing for spring. Not Jenna. Spring meant buds on the trees and lambs playing in the fields. Everywhere you looked there was new life. This time last year she’d been sure that by now she’d be pushing a stroller along the streets. Instead she was back in her classroom teaching other people’s kids.
Of course it was still possible that spring might be lucky for her, too.
If she and Greg had nonstop sex over the next few weeks she could potentially be pregnant by April or May. That would mean a Christmas baby.
She allowed herself a moment of dreaming, and then snapped out of it.
All she thought about was babies.
Obsess: to worry neurotically or obsessively.
Her obsession had even entered the bedroom. When she and Greg made love she found herself thinking, Please let me get pregnant.
Maybe she’d cook a special meal tonight. Open a bottle of wine. Try to relax a little. She could greet him at the door wearing nothing but a smile and hope Mrs. Pardew across the road wasn’t looking out the window.
She reached the door of her classroom and winced at the noise that came from inside.
Bracing herself, she pushed open the door and the noise dimmed to a hum.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sullivan.” The chorus of voices lifted the cloud that had been hanging over her.
Maybe she didn’t have her own children, but she had them. She loved their spontaneity and their innocence, their bright eyes and smiles. She even loved the naughty kids. Like Billy Grant, who was currently standing on his desk, waiting for her reaction.
He was a rebel with a strong sense of adventure and a cavalier attitude to risk. Fortunately no one knew more about that instinct than Jenna.
“Billy, our classroom rule is that we don’t stand on desks.”
Billy folded his arms but didn’t move. “You’re not the boss of me.”
Jenna arched an eyebrow.
He lasted two seconds and then scrambled off the desk and plopped onto his chair.
Everyone knew that when Mrs. Sullivan gave you that look you did what you were supposed to do or you’d be in serious trouble. He made another attempt to deflect blame. “Bradley told me to do it.”
“If he told you to jump off a bridge would you do that?” She straightened her shoulders and addressed the whole class. “One of our classroom rules is that we don’t stand on the desks.”
“Rules are boring,” Bradley muttered. “Why do we have to have them?”
So we can break them.
“Bradley wants to know why we have rules,” she said. “Who can tell him the answer?”
A sea of hands shot into the air and she picked the girl in the front. Little Stacy Adams, whose dad had recently run off with another man, giving the island enough gossip to feast on for a decade.
“To keep us safe.”
“That’s right.” Jenna smiled. “Some rules are there to protect us.” And if you ignored the rules you could be left with a secret and a guilty conscience.
Maybe it was her fault that she wasn’t closer to her mother, she thought. She knew things she wasn’t supposed to know and that made things awkward.
Keeping that thought to herself, she moved to the front of the class. “Everyone sit in a circle.”
There was a mass scramble as they found their places on the floor.
“Will you tell us a story, Mrs. Sullivan?”
“One of your special made-up ones.”
As they sat round watching her expectantly, she felt a rush of pride and affection. Winter would soon give way to spring, and spring to summer and then this group of children would be leaving her classroom for the last time.
When they’d arrived in her class, they’d been a raggedy, unruly bunch but now they were a team. Friendships had formed. Some friendships might even last through to adulthood, as hers and Greg had. Some might fracture.
Not all relationships were easy.
She threw herself into her day, moving from story time to math. Unlike some of her colleagues, she loved teaching first graders. They were curious and enthusiastic. They loved coming to school and they loved her. From the moment she stepped into the classroom, she was wrapped in warmth and affection.
Most of all she enjoyed seeing the progress they made. They experienced so many firsts.
Usually she lingered in the classroom after the children had gone, tidying up and preparing for the following day, but today she drove straight to her mother’s house.
On a cold January day it was foggy and cold and the roads were quiet.
Her mother lived down-island in Edgartown. Ridiculously picturesque with its waterfront and harbor, Edgartown was one of the more populated areas of the island, which was one of the reasons Jenna had chosen to live up-island with its beautiful beaches and spectacular sunsets.
Even in winter when the town was quiet, Jenna preferred the wildness of her part of the island. Her drive took her past rolling farmland, stone fences and beaches. Wherever you were on the Vineyard, you were never far from the beach. And when you couldn’t see the sea, chances were that you could still smell it.
At this time of year she drove easily through Edgartown’s narrow streets.
The Captain’s House where her mother lived was set right on the waterfront, close to the harbor and the lighthouse. The house had been in her family forever, since Captain William Stewart had seen fit to build his home on what was arguably the best plot of land in the whole of Martha’s Vineyard. When her mother’s parents had died in an accident, leaving Nancy an orphan at the age of eight, she’d continued to live in the house with her grandmother.
Money had been tight and they’d rented out rooms to cover their costs.
The house was considered historic, and occasionally Nancy would give a private tour to students or history buffs, and talk about the Vineyard’s place in the whaling industry. Jenna’s father had been heard to say on many an occasion, usually when huddled in his coat in front of a blazing log fire, that because a person was interested in history didn’t mean they wanted to experience it firsthand. The antiquated heating system of The Captain’s House counted as history as far as Tom was concerned. In the middle of winter there had been many nights when Jenna had crawled into bed with her sister for warmth.
Two years previously the heating and wiring had been replaced as part of an upgrade and modernization.
Jenna had wondered at the time why her mother had waited until after her father had died to do it.
The door was open and Jenna walked through the entryway with its wood paneling and wide-planked floor. There were bookshelves stuffed with books, and more books piled next to them on the floor. Every surface was covered in the possessions and purchases of previous generations.
Her mother was a hoarder. Jenna had never seen her throw a single thing away.
There were items in the house that had belonged to her great-grandmother and were never used. Some of those things were ugly, but still Nancy wouldn’t hear of disposing of them.
She considered herself the custodian of the family’s heritage.
Jenna knew that an entire bedroom upstairs was filled with her father’s things. Trophies he’d won playing golf, his model boat collection, his clothes. Did her mother ever go in there? Did she cry over his things?
She found Nancy in the kitchen, opening mail. “Hi, Mom. I made cakes for your book group. Cute, don’t you think?” She removed the lid with a flourish.
“So pretty! Thank you.” Nancy took the tin from her and placed it on the table next to the papers. “How was your day?”
For a wild moment Jenna contemplated telling her the truth.
Not pregnant. Feel crap about it. Any chance of a hug?
She couldn’t remember when her mother had last hugged her.
“My day was fine.” Holding her feelings inside, she walked to the window and stared out across the lawn to the sea. “It’s cold out today. Windy.” Were they really reduced to talking about the weather?
“How’s Greg?”
“He’s great.” She turned. Was it her imagination or was her mother looking older? The lines around her eyes were more pronounced and her hair seemed to have lost its shine.
Jenna had seen photos of her mother as a young woman. Her features were too bold to qualify as pretty, but she’d been striking and had her own individual style. That style seemed to have deserted her years before. Gone were the colorful outfits that had raised eyebrows on the few occasions she’d picked Jenna up from school. These days she dressed mostly in black and navy, as if life had drained the brightness from her.
Nancy signed a letter and slipped it into an envelope. “He’s a special man. It’s good to see you settled and happy, Jenna.”
The comment struck her as odd. It bordered on the personal, and personal was a land her mother rarely visited.
She almost asked if something was wrong, but decided there was no point, so instead they had a neutral conversation about a plan to build affordable housing and the challenges of maintaining the rural character of the island while managing the increase in summer visitors.
“The school is at capacity. We can’t take any more kids without compromising educational standards.” Jenna sat down at the table. It had belonged to her great-grandmother and there were scars and gouges in the wood to prove it. Somewhere underneath Jenna knew she would find her name scratched into the wood.
“Any funny classroom stories for me? I could use some light entertainment.”
Jenna often regaled her with stories, although she’d learned to talk about her day without mentioning anything personal about the kids.
Most of the parents would have been horrified to learn how much their six-year-olds could divulge to their first-grade teacher.
She told her mother about the school trip they had planned to the nature reserve, and about the lesson she’d taught on states of matter where the children had made ice cream in the classroom. The idea had been to demonstrate that a liquid could become a solid, but two of the children had managed to cover themselves in cream.
“And Lily Baker made me a gorgeous card.” She pulled it out of her bag and passed it across the table. “Don’t shake it. It’s heavy on the glitter.”
“She’s back at school?” Her mother slipped her glasses back on so she could look at the card. “I saw her when she was in hospital. Took her a copy of Paint with Nancy and some pencils.”
Back in the day when her mother had been something of a global name in the art world and there had been much demand for her work, someone had suggested producing upmarket educational material—In other words a coloring book, Jenna had said to Lauren—designed to encourage budding artists. The idea was that children would feel they had been given the opportunity to paint with Nancy.
The project had never taken off and boxes of the coloring books had gathered dust in one of the unused rooms in The Captain’s House.
“How did you know Lily was in hospital?”
“Her grandmother is in my book group.”
“Of course. Yes, Lily had a few days in hospital with a fever. Fully recovered, thank goodness.”
They talked for a while and then Jenna went to use the bathroom, but on the way something caught her eye.
“Hey, Mom.” She paused and called out to her mother. “What happened to the painting on this wall?” It was a beautiful seascape, painted by her mother early in her career and one of the few that had never been offered for sale. Her mother’s career as an artist could be divided into two distinct phases. Her earlier work was light and bright and her later work was stormy and dark. Lauren called it her depressing phase. The missing painting was one of her early works, painted before her mother had hit the big time. Jenna loved the wild swirls of blues and greens.
Surely her mother hadn’t sold it?
Her mother emerged from the kitchen. “I—” She stared at the faded space on the wall as if she’d forgotten about it. “I took it down. I thought I might...redecorate.”
“Do you want help? I could come over on the weekend.”
Her mother didn’t hide her alarm. “I don’t think so. I still remember the mess you made of the rug when you decided to paint Lauren’s room bright blue. I came back from a day at the studio and spent the next two days painting my own house instead of a canvas.”
Jenna remembered that incident, too.
Lauren had redecorated her bedroom at least once every three months. Any money she had, she’d spent on interior design magazines. She’d study them, and then use the ideas she liked best, enlisting Jenna to help transform her room to match her latest vision. They’d dragged furniture from one side of the room to another, painted walls and changed fabrics.
On one occasion Jenna, as dreamy as she was clumsy, had tripped over a tin of blue paint and sent it flowing over the floor.
With her usual artistic flourish, their mother had turned the streaked floor into a smooth surface of ocean blue. Then she’d diluted the color for the walls until the room looked like an aquarium complete with small fish and plants.
Jenna had loved the newly painted room so much she’d taken to sneaking in and sleeping on Lauren’s floor, settling herself between a friendly-looking octopus and a seahorse. She and Lauren had giggled and talked long into the night cocooned in their underwater paradise and when her sister had changed her room three months later, Jenna had felt bereft.
It was at least twenty years since the paint spill episode and yet her mother still talked about it as if it had happened yesterday.
“I’ve improved since then,” Jenna said. “I did most of the decorating in my house.” But her mother had already walked back into the kitchen and wasn’t listening.
Irritated, Jenna used the bathroom and walked back to the kitchen.
Her mother was staring at another set of papers but she quickly pushed them to one side.
“Have you spoken to your sister lately?”
“Last week. I thought I might call tonight, but then I remembered it’s Ed’s fortieth birthday party. She’s booked caterers and a string quartet.” Jenna tried to read the papers, but they were upside down. “If she still lived on island I could have loaned her my recorder group. That would have blown everyone’s eardrums.” She realized her mother wasn’t listening. “Mom?”
Her mother gave a start. “Sorry? What did you say?”
“I was talking about Lauren’s party. She was nervous something might go wrong.”
“Knowing Lauren, it will be perfect. I don’t know how she does it all.”
Jenna refrained from pointing out that Ed was seriously wealthy and that they could buy in whatever help they needed.
For the past couple of years Lauren had been studying for an interior design qualification, but study was a bed of roses compared with hauling yourself out of bed every day to deal with a bunch of kids with runny noses.
Her sister’s life seemed effortless.
“Mack has big exams this summer.”
“She’ll fly through them, as Lauren did.”
“I guess she will.” Did her sister have to be so perfect? Much as she loved Lauren, there were days when Jenna could happily kill her. And then she felt guilty feeling that way because as well as being perfect at everything else, Lauren was the perfect sister and always had been.
It wasn’t Lauren’s fault that her sister couldn’t get pregnant.
Feeling empty, Jenna reached for the tin on the table. The book group wasn’t going to miss one cake, were they?
She fought an internal battle between want and willpower.
Willpower might have won, but as she went to pull her hand back her mother frowned.
“Are you sure you need that?”
No, she didn’t need it. But she wanted it. And dammit if she wanted it, she was going to have it. She was thirty-two years old. She didn’t need her mother’s permission to eat.
She took a cake from the tin, so annoyed she took a bigger bite than she intended to. Too big. Damn. Her teeth were jammed together so now she couldn’t even speak. Instead she chewed slowly, feeling like a python that had swallowed its prey whole.
Her mother went back to sorting papers. “Mack is doing well. Like Lauren, she is very disciplined.”
The implication being that she, Jenna, showed no self-discipline at all.
She swallowed.
Finally. In the battle of woman against cupcake she was the victor.
“Good to know.”
“Lauren is lucky Mack hasn’t turned out to be a wild child like—” her mother waved her hand vaguely “—some people.”
“You mean me.” Jenna kept her tone light. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You have to admit you didn’t sit round waiting for trouble to find you. You went out looking for it and you dragged your poor sister into it with you. You, Jenna Elizabeth Stewart, were enough to give any mother gray hairs.”
“I’ve been Sullivan for more than a decade, Mom.”
“I know.” Nancy’s expression softened. “And you are lucky to have that man.”
Annoyed: irritated or displeased.
“He’s lucky to have me, too.”
“I know. But let’s be honest—you stopped getting into trouble the day you married Greg.” She glanced at the clock. “It will be dark soon. You should probably leave.”
“I can drive in the dark, Mom. There’s this amazing invention called headlights.”
“I don’t like you driving in the dark. Remember when you drove the car into the ditch?”
She did remember, but even smashing her head against the windshield hadn’t been as uncomfortable as this stroll down memory lane. “I was twenty-one. My driving has improved since then.” Jenna stood up. “But you’re right. I should go. I need to stop at the store to pick up some things for dinner. Take care, Mom. Enjoy your book group.”
“I will. Thanks for dropping by.”
As if she was a stranger, not family.
There were days when Jenna wondered whether the only way to get closer to her mother was to join the book group.