Sisterhood Everlasting 30

 Brian joined Bridget on the screened porch of her little house after he put Bailey to bed. He sat on one of the new kitchen chairs he’d brought out and she sat on the creaky iron daybed. They listened to the stream under the floor.

As the light was fading, the rain started. You could hear it drumming against the skylight and see it tap ping the surface of the stream. It turned the trees into liquid green. It gave the air on the porch a texture and a taste. This little house was sunny, all right, but it was never more beautiful than in the rain.

“I know it might not feel like it,” Brian said, “but we are rejoining the world here.”

“Are we?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“It will.”

“When?”

“Couple of days.”

“Really. How?”

“You wait. You’ll see.”

“Okay.”

“Enjoy the quiet while you have it.” Brian sounded like he was talking to himself.

“Okay.”

He gave her a hug before he started back to the main house. “Oh, one other thing.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “You want to borrow this?”

“Your phone?” He tossed it and she caught it. “Why?”

“In case you want to call anybody.”

Bridget sat on the porch with the phone for a long time, but she didn’t call anybody. She dragged the new floor lamp onto the porch with her, glad the cord reached far enough, and turned it on. She sat cross-legged on the daybed and finally opened Tibby’s other letter. She was still two days early, but she wasn’t afraid of it in the same way anymore.

Dear Bee,

I put an address at the bottom of this page, and I want you to go there. It’s kind of demanding of me, I know, and you don’t have to if you don’t want. It sounds crazy, because I haven’t even been to the place myself, but I feel like you belong there. I have this fantasy that you’ll see it and you’ll want to stay. You laugh, my persistently moving friend, but there’s a little house on the property that is meant for you. Seriously. As soon as you see it, you’ll know what I mean.

There are a couple of important things waiting for you there, if you decide to go. One of them is my daughter. She’ll be two in June. That’s a big one to drop on you, I know. I may have already told you about her in Greece. The second is Brian. He’s been through a lot.

When I try to fall asleep at night, and I’m full of thoughts and fears for the people I love most, I have this recurring image of you holding my  

daughter’s hand. My fantasy is that all three of you will help grow her up, but it’s you I seem to picture in the nitty-gritty of it. Who knows why—maybe it’s just an odd fancy of mine. I know kids aren’t your thing. And yet I cling to the thought that you will teach her the way you are—your independence, your toughness, your joy. I’d love it if she got an ounce of your bravery, Bee. I really would. Maybe that’s the root of my wish. I want you to give her things I couldn’t, no matter how long I lived. I feel like she could give you something too, though I can’t quite grasp what it would be. I don’t know. Forgive the meanderings of your old pal.

One other thing I wanted to say. As I think of you—and I do more often than you could imagine—I think of your many beautiful traits, but also your fitfulness. I’ve watched you go through dozens of jobs, apartments, phones, plants, and obsessions. You would think that such a voracious girl as yourself would have gone through dozens of boyfriends, dozens of lovers, but it occurred to me the other day that you haven’t. You’ve only had one. You told  

me once that Eric was your touchstone, and I’ve thought of it many times.

It’s natural to overlook and even sacrifice the things that belong to us most easily, most gracefully. So here’s me asking you to please not make that mistake.

Really, Carmen couldn’t say exactly what happened at the audition—er, meeting. She couldn’t honestly say if it was a complete failure or a weird kind of success.

She knew she walked into the meeting room in a snazzy mansion in the Garden District. She recognized Grantley Arden from his picture. There were several producers and a couple of executives, about half of whom she’d met at various industry functions, usually on the arm of Jones, who would wear socks with sandals before he’d forget any of their names. Carmen couldn’t remember one of them. Arden was wearing a baseball cap and jeans while the rest wore suits. There were airy clasps and kisses all around.

She vaguely recalled sitting down. She didn’t have the script, so somebody handed her one. She’d made a mad dash through it that morning but hadn’t learned any of the lines.

The producers talked for a while about the concept of the film, the vision and so forth. There was a lot of hyperbole thrown around—“stunning,” “groundbreaking,” “astonishing”—but none of it really sank in. Nobody expected it to, she realized.

Then they asked her to read a character, the floozy named Fiona. Carmen surprised herself by not skittering right over the top of the lines with all the obvious moves, as she expected to do, but walking down into them.

Fiona was a mess, really. Carmen knew she was supposed to do it funny, but as she read the lines, one struck her as more tragic than the next. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. She was very emotional lately.

There was a bit of silence. “Carmen, can you come over here for a minute?” Arden asked her. He drew her into the corner and walked her close, almost like they were in a huddle.

“Honey, I can see your veins,” Arden said in a low voice.

“You can?”

“Yes, I think all of them.”

Carmen’s hands felt a certain fluttering responsibility, but how could you cover up every vein?

“I’m sorry,” she said. She was sure it was a breech to show up with all your veins sticking out to the “most important meeting of your life.”

“No, don’t be sorry.”

“Why not?” Even as she said it, she felt that what few veins perhaps weren’t showing before were probably popping out now.

“Because that’s how it is. Unfortunately, this role is comedy. The rest of the big roles are cast. I brought you here for comedy, but the comedy I’m getting from you could tear us all to pieces. This particular audience is not ready for it, I regret to say.”

“Okay,” she said. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s all right.”

“So I guess I go, then.”

“Yeah. I’ll call you when I’m back in New York.”

She gave him a steady, honest look. “Why?” She was not in the mood for bullshit, it turned out.

“Because I’ve got to do something with you,” he said. He gave her a kiss, not a fake air one but a real hard one on the side of her head, and sent her on her way. “Make sure Wanda has your cell.”

“I don’t have a cell,” she lied.

He stood in the hallway and watched her go. “Don’t try to cover them up,” he called after her as she walked to the elevator. “What a waste that would be.”

Carmen knew, walking down the street away from the snazzy mansion, that she probably shouldn’t be relieved. Her reps would be crushed. Jones would blow a gasket. But she wasn’t planning to marry Jones.

She now knew what the most important meeting of your life probably felt like, and it wasn’t this.

The sessions with Arden and the rest of them were supposed to go on and on for days; they were supposed to want to get her on film, and she was not supposed to leave New Orleans without a contract. Oops. She’d been in there for less than fifteen minutes and now she was being sent home.

Home. That was tricky. Where was home? Where was she going?

And then she knew where she needed to go—to Pennsylvania, on April 2—and she felt not scared but hopeful.

London was the place you got stranded, Lena decided. Heathrow airport was the place where you slept by the window and brushed your teeth in the restroom and felt like a complete asshole.

She couldn’t just go back after all this, could she? It was now Thursday, and April 2, the appointed day, was Sunday. Did that mean Kostos was going to Pennsylvania? He wouldn’t have left so early, though. He was traveling somewhere else, entirely unrelated. Maybe that was it.

By Friday morning she felt lost and sad. It was tiring, carrying a thunderbolt around this long. Sometime between the time she cried in the magazine shop and the time she threw up her lunch in the restroom, her cellphone rang.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lena?”

“Yes.” All the blood in her body seemed to drain to her feet. “Who is this?”

“It’s Kostos. I’m standing outside your apartment building. I’ve been ringing your bell for hours. Where are you?”

She closed her eyes and put the phone down for a moment while her whole body shook, trying to stave off spasms of laughing and tears.

“I’m in London, looking for you.”

He was stunned to silence. “Why? Why London? Why aren’t you here? We’re supposed to meet in the States!”

It was a raw sound she made. Maybe like laughing. He spoke of their meeting as if there had never been a question of his intent.

“Because I couldn’t wait,” she said. “I wanted to come more than halfway.”

Kostos was quiet for a second. His voice was full when he spoke again. “Oh, Lena. I couldn’t wait either.” He laughed. “I wanted to go all the way.”

She was still shaking. “I want to too.” Her face was burning hot. She was laughing and shaking too much to talk.

“I want to see you so badly. I can’t wait anymore.”

She let out a little sobbish noise, much more like crying. She couldn’t make up her mind. She couldn’t say a single word.

“Lena, do you want to stay still and I’ll get on the next plane and come to you? Or do you want to come to me?”

Lena sucked back tears, and though her voice was a mess she answered with confidence. “You stay. I’ll come to you.”

Bridget used Brian’s phone to call Eric just after midnight, nine o’clock his time. She felt semi-delirious when he answered.

“It’s Bee,” she said sheepishly, eagerly.

“Where are you?”

She was so glad to hear his voice. “I’m in Pennsylvania. Bucks County, south of a town in New Jersey called Belvidere,” she said. “I have so much to tell you.” A sob escaped her chest unexpectedly.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. Do you think you could come here?”

“To Pennsylvania?”

“If you fly to New York, it’s only an hour and twenty minutes by car.”

“When?”

She realized she was being absurdly presumptuous. She had no business asking him for anything. He was the one who’d been left, and her misery didn’t make it any nicer for him.

She tried to calm herself down and step into his shoes. “I know you have work. You can’t get carried away. When do you think you can come?”

“I can get carried away,” he said. “When do you want me to come?”

“Now? Tomorrow?”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I have something important to tell you.”

Eric was quiet. She couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t the same as her coming back. She’d never made it easy on him, not from the very beginning. “Bridget, is this something I’m going to like?”

She closed her eyes. “I really hope so.”

Eric called from the rental car to say he was an hour away, and Bridget couldn’t stand waiting. For the entire hour, she stood in the middle of the road, watching for a car she would not even recognize. She hated waiting.

Her heart surged when she finally saw his face through the windshield. When he slowed way down to turn she screamed moronically and jumped on the hood of the car. He laughed and drove the last twenty-five feet with her sitting on the hood. It was a testament to his love that he always let her happiness sweep him along and make him happy.

The moment he got out of the car she mowed him down. She clobbered him on the grass and rolled him around. This was perhaps the downside of a tall girlfriend. He laughed as she kissed him all over the face. She stuck her hands under his shirt. His joy was unstinting, even after all this.

At last she let him sit up. Eventually she even let him stand and look around. “This place is beautiful. Where are we?”

“This is the farm Brian and Tibby bought before she died.” She shook her head, letting some of the sadness in, keeping most of it out for now. “I have so much to tell you.”

“Please tell me.”

She led him toward the icehouse. She would have wanted to introduce him to Bailey first, but Bailey was napping, so she led him directly through the tiny house to her porch. This was where she thought such a talk should take place.

They sat down on the creaky daybed. “I will tell you everything, and it will take a while. But first I have to tell you one thing that won’t.”

“Okay.” He looked a little nervous and unbelievably dear to her. She’d thought she knew how much she missed him starting after she’d hung up the phone last night, but looking at him now, she realized she’d missed him even more than that.

“Okay.” She was nervous too. “Okay, the thing is …”

He looked terrified. She prayed he wouldn’t look more terrified after she finally got the news out. She touched the ends of her hair, wishing it weren’t in disastrous condition. She squeezed her eyes shut. She swallowed down a vast amount of saliva. “I am, we are, having a baby.”

“What?” For a moment his face was unreadable, and then it all started to open up. “What?”

“I’m pregnant. Around twenty weeks, I think. More, even. It must have happened the night before I went to Greece.” She was talking quickly.

He seemed to be following her lips as though he were hard of hearing and not quite getting all of it. “You are pregnant?”

“If I stand, you can sort of see it.” She demonstrated and put his hand to her belly.

He seemed to regard her belly and his hand as though they were both deeply unfamiliar.

“That ring I had on my cervix must have worn out and I forgot to get a new one. That’s what the nurse thought happened.”

“The nurse?”

“At Planned Parenthood. In Sacramento. That’s where I found out.”

Eric nodded slowly. He was staring not at her stomach, but at her face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before this. I really am. I should have, but I couldn’t. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do.” She felt teary and suddenly unsure of him. “Even now it’s not too late to … not do it,” she said quickly. No, that wasn’t true. It was far too late for her not to do it. “Or I guess I should say, I won’t put any pressure on you to be part of it if you don’t feel—I mean, I would understand if you aren’t ready for something like this—”

The way he watched her face, he knew her. He knew this hadn’t been easy. She realized he was being careful. So careful he barely swallowed, barely moved. He was easier with his feelings, but he was like any other person in not wanting to see them get destroyed. “How do you feel about it?” he asked soberly.

“I feel like we are its parents.”

“And is this something you are sure you want?”

Tears had been building up and she let them fall. “Yes. It really is.” She couldn’t remember not wanting it. The person who hadn’t wanted it was a stranger. “I’ve had a while to think about this, and I admit I didn’t take to it right away. But I know, I know it’s what I want.” She wiped her eyes and gathered her hair in a bunch. “The question is, is this something you want?”

He moved toward her on the creaky daybed. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. He pressed her hard against his chest. He put his face in her neck.

“This is something I want,” he said, and she could hear the emotion in his voice. “This is something I’ve always wanted.”

When Lena stepped off the plane from London in JFK airport in New York City, the first face she saw was his. He’d somehow managed to talk, bribe, or wrestle his way all the way up to the gate to wait for her.

She saw Kostos walking toward her in long slow-motion strides, his gray tweed coat flapping open. His eyes were steady on her face. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look sorry. He looked serious, like a serious man would look doing a serious thing.

Here we go. She walked toward him and he toward her, as far as he could come, into the throng of the departing passengers and past the gate attendant, who seemed to be annoyed with him and calling out to him. But he didn’t say anything back or even turn his head. He kept his eyes on her and she didn’t look away. She didn’t feel self-conscious or nervous. She didn’t need to smile or ask silently for reassurance. She was sure.

She didn’t see any of the people around her as she went. She saw the determination in his face and she felt it too. She found herself thinking, Well, this is it, and knew she was walking into the rest of her life without another pause or question or even a glance to either side. I choose you, she thought. Come what may, you are what I choose.

She didn’t stop until he was right in front of her. They just stood there staring at each other for a moment. She wasn’t sure what happened after that. He put his arms around her, she put hers around him, she was up off her feet and he was squeezing her against him as hard as he could have without knocking the wind out of her.

People streamed around them and the gate attendant continued carping at them and he put her back on her feet and they kissed like they had been waiting to do that and only that for a dozen years.

At some time after the people were gone and the gate attendant had given up and moved to straightening the desk, they broke apart and looked at each other again.

He took her hand and they started walking toward the baggage claim. They didn’t say anything to each other. They swung their held hands like little kids, like they believed anything could happen, like they might take off soaring into the air. All the things you wanted to happen could happen. Why not?

She looked over at him and he was smiling. How she loved the British Airways terminal.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s someday.” He said the last word in Greek.