CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jill
Friday
Jill stretched her legs in front of her, the hospital waiting-room chair shrinking in size and hardening with every passing hour.
Jocelyn looked at her watch. “Didn’t they say they’d be done like an hour ago? Longer is bad, right?”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. Not yet.” Jill hugged her arms to her chest. Exhaustion had brought her to an altered state of consciousness, one where she could actually hear her brain crackle. And if she had another night of insomnia, she might as well welcome its sidekicks: snap and pop. She watched as Fee walked back into the waiting room after getting “the air” she had claimed she needed. Jill hoped she was in a better mood.
“If everything goes okay with Booboo, can I have a sleepover at Cass’s tonight? I haven’t seen her all week.” Fee could have sweetened tea with the voice she was affecting.
“I don’t think so,” Jill said. “I’m sorry, but there’s just too much going on right now. For a little while longer, I want you close by.”
“Figures,” Fee said, all the syrup tapped from her voice. She reached down and opened her backpack to drop in her cell phone, when the corner of an envelope caught Jill’s eye.
“Fee!” Jill said, already feeling her voice screech with panic. “Are those the letters I asked you to mail when you ran errands with Borka?”
Fee looked down. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“That was Tuesday. Three days ago.”
“I said I was sorry.”
Jill stood and paced in front of the chairs. “Do you think the bank is going to care when I say you’re sorry our mortgage is late?” Jill had a meeting with the bank next week. She hoped to renegotiate the interest rate. Should that fail, she would request a reduced monthly payment made possible by an extension to the payment schedule. She certainly didn’t want to start off the negotiations with another late payment to address. “I thought I could trust you.”
“Come on, Jill. Lighten up,” Jocelyn said. “It’s been crazy these past couple of days. It’s a wonder we’ve all remembered to piss.”
“Easy for you to say. You took a sick day at the worst possible time.” She turned and pointed at Fee. “And I told you how important those letters were. How could you forget?”
“She’s human, for God’s sake,” Jocelyn said. “We all screw up from time to time.”
Just as Jill was about to respond, the door to the waiting room pushed open and Dr. O’Connor stood before them in his blue scrubs with a mask still dangling from strings tied around his neck. They stood and gathered in front of him. He seemed to sense the tension in the room and took a long look at the three of them before speaking.
“Your mother’s a very strong woman.” He squared his shoulders. “She came through surgery better than I had hoped.”
“That’s good, right?” Jocelyn said.
“For the immediate future, yes, that’s good,” he said. “We were able to remove a large portion of the tumor. This should allow your mother some relief from the symptoms that have been plaguing her.”
“A large portion?” Jill asked. “Not all of it?”
“As I had explained prior, its shape and location rendered a clean resection virtually impossible.”
“So it will likely regrow, then?” Jill said.
“Radiation and chemotherapy are still options. We’ll just have to see how strong she is.” Dr. O’Connor looked old and tired. Everything about him appeared gray—his hair, his eyes, even the chalkiness of his skin. It was almost eight P.M. and he had accommodated Ruby into an already full operating schedule.
“Thank you,” Jill said. “Thank you for everything.” Her head pitched from side to side with questions and concerns, but for now she was relieved Ruby had made it.
It was nine P.M. by the time they got back to the house. Borka had everything clean as a monk’s soul and had served wine and cheese to that night’s crowd, though parlor games had been canceled. She also left three messages from guests requiring concierge services for the next day. Jill phoned in a Saturday dinner reservation for one of the parties before she even had her purse off her shoulder. She’d have to wait until the morning to set another couple off on a hike with a bird-watching book and picnic lunch. The third request was puzzling. The message, scribbled in Borka’s cramped hand, stated, “Jepsen—Room 209—anniversary cake—Fee.”
Jill quickly changed into her favorite pj’s, silky lilac drawstring bottoms with a matching button-up tank, and slid her aching arches into pink fuzzy slippers. She walked through to their private family room and dropped into the chair next to the old Shaker sideboard. Jocelyn was watching TV. “Did Fee go to bed?”
“She’s getting ready to go on that sleepover,” Jocelyn said.
“What?”
“You were on the phone.” Jocelyn turned the volume up with the remote. “I told her to go ahead and scram while she could.”
“You did what?” Jill asked.
“She said if she asked you, you’d say no again.”
“Oh, did she?”
“And you would have,” Jocelyn said with a shrug. “Probably still will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.”
“Really? What else do you know?”
“I know we’ve all been through a lot,” Jocelyn said. “And that you were pretty tough on her before.”
“I was tough on her because she screwed up.”
“She’s been helping out a lot. And is just as worried as the rest of us. She needs to get out, let loose a little. Just let her go.”
“You have no right.”
“No right to what?” Jocelyn asked. “Is she grounded? Why can’t she have a night off?”
“She’s not grounded, but like I said, I want her close by for now. Anyway, it seems there’s something regarding a cake she must know about.”
Jocelyn waved her hand dismissively. “It can wait till morning.”
“We’re all going back to the hospital in the morning.”
“She can take care of the cake thing when we get back.”
“Like she took care of the mortgage check?”
Jocelyn powered off the TV. “What the hell is going on with this place anyway? Are you in some kind of money trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“What was that phone call from the bank about? And that was a real-estate agent looking at the place. I know one when I see one.”
“I’m just having it appraised,” Jill said.
“Appraised for what?”
“None of your business.” Jill instantly regretted the remark. Her recent insomnia had her temper idling high.
“It is my business. It’s all of our business. The place still belongs to Mom. And as far as I know, I’m still an equal to you and Fee in her will. This place is my inheritance, too.”
The word inheritance was the final gust that blew Jill away. She had inherited all of it. The house. Fee. And the history between Keith’s family and hers. Not one piece of what currently constituted her life had been a real choice. It had all been dumped on her like a load of gravel.
“You’re right,” Jill said. “You should be an equal, so it’s about time you stepped up, because, you know what, it’s overdue. And yes, I fucked up. I’m behind on some loans and in deep shit.” Jill knew she was gesturing wildly with her arms. With an orange vest and a whistle, she probably could have directed traffic. “And the more I think about it, the more I say, have at it. Have it all, for that matter.” She gestured a full loop of the room. Her imaginary intersection would have been a multicar pileup by now. “Mom. Fee. She was never mine to rightfully claim. So if you think you can do better—”
There was a crash in the doorway and Jill looked up to see Fee staring at the two of them with shards of a water glass and a puddle at her feet.
“How is it that I’m not really yours? And what does that mean—it’s Jocelyn’s turn? You two must think I’m some sort of idiot, like I wouldn’t figure this out.” Fee’s face was puffy and tears pooled in her eyes. “I’m Jocelyn’s, aren’t I? That’s what those two old ladies were talking about at the wake. That’s why they called me a mystery child.”
Jill’s stomach lurched as if in free fall. “Fee.” She took a step toward her. “It’s not what you think.”
“Yeah. Right.” Fee flicked her hair over her shoulder. “What is it, then? More lies? Mom? Why would you do this to me?” She looked from one sister to the other. “Jocelyn, why wouldn’t you tell me?”
Jocelyn lifted her hands in supplication. “Oh God. This is a mess.” She turned to Jill. “You gotta help me out here.”
Fee kicked her foot back, slamming the open door back against the wall. Picture frames rattled. “Just tell me the truth. How hard can it be?”
“Fee, it’s complicated,” Jill said.
“No, it’s not,” Fee shouted.
Jill and Jocelyn exchanged looks.
“Just answer the question!” Fee yelled. “Who had me?”
“Now’s not the time for this conversation,” Jill replied. “I’m sorry for what you heard. It was said in the heat of the moment. We all just need to calm down.”
Drops streamed down Fee’s face. “Too late for that. You’ve basically told me, anyway.”
“No. I didn’t. Honey, it’s honestly not what you think.”
“So, for once and for all, then, tell me,” Fee said through tear-soaked words. “Am I your biological child?”
There was a long pause, Jill scrambling for a loophole or deferment. Finding none, she said, expressing the words like steam, “Will you sit down, at least?”
Fee, a knob of hard angles, sat on the arm of the sofa.
“I never wanted to tell you like this,” Jill began.
“Tell me what?”
“It was a difficult time. Dad had just passed away and she wasn’t well, detached and out of touch with reality. She simply wasn’t capable of taking care of you.”
“Who wasn’t?” Fee asked.
Jill took a deep breath. “Booboo.”
The room went boneyard still.
Fee rounded on Jill. “You’re a liar. And that’s sick.”
“She was fifty, and you were the result of an affair.” Jill’s head was screaming at her to stop, that it was enough for now, yet words kept falling around her. “She was not in her right mind. The guilt of it all triggered some sort of breakdown. She wasn’t competent.”
Fee tossed her head violently from side to side. “It’s not true.”
Jocelyn stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Fee. It is. It’s true. But no one ever meant to hurt you.”
“I don’t believe it,” Fee repeated.
“It was a terrible situation,” Jocelyn said. “Your mom did what needed to be done. She did the right thing.”
“The right thing.” Fee brought both hands to her head. “How is lying to me the right thing? How is keeping me in the dark about something as important as my own birth the right thing?”
The eyes that turned on Jill weren’t Fee’s, weren’t—more to the point—her daughter Fee’s.
“I promised my dad I’d take care of my mom, of everything. And I kept that promise. But it was at a cost, and for that, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough,” Fee said. “Sorry is bullshit as far as I’m concerned. What about me? Where did I fit into that promise?”
“Fee,” Jill said. “It was so complicated. It still is.”
Fee took two steps backward. “No one thought about me. Did they?”
“I know it’s hard right now to think of it in this way, but, honey, it was all for you.”
“Bullshit!”
“Fee, lower your voice.”
“No,” she said, louder still. “And you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, because you’re not my mom. You’re my sister. And that’s all you’ll ever be to me from here on. My older sister. My bitchy older sister.” Fee turned and ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.
There was a long silence. Jill heard only the clock on the wall and her own labored breathing.
“Well, we fucked that one up,” Jocelyn finally said. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
Speech wouldn’t come. Her vocal cords were in knots, permanent damage likely. It couldn’t have gone any worse. Everything was ruined. There was not one thing, not one fucking thing, in her life that was not ruined. Jill spied Jocelyn’s car keys lying on top of the sideboard and grabbed them. “She’s all yours.” Tears washed makeup, mascara, and the day’s grime into her eyes as she stormed through the kitchen, out the back-door, and across the path to the Hummer. The last thing she remembered seeing was Jocelyn waving frantically in her rear-view mirror, and then she was barreling down the long driveway, gunning for the road.
She drove for about an hour with the darkest of reels looping through her mind. All she’d said was wrong. All she hadn’t said, also wrong. There was a tugging sensation at the back of her head. Some sort of border war had been declared between her lack of sleep and the adrenaline of fleeing, an east-versuswest battle for control of her two hemispheres. And from the south came marching in the emotions, a million strong and growing. She finally pulled over to the shoulder of the road, thinking she couldn’t even run away without screwing up. She’d taken Jocelyn’s keys, but nothing else.
When she had squealed out of the driveway, the gas had been half full. Now at a quarter tank, she could either turn back or continue and face the consequences. She levered back the seat and stared straight ahead. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, to drive through life without the hindrance of a rear-view mirror? The joy of an open road and clear mind without ever having to look back. Jocelyn had that gift, the ability to shed people and places.
After their father’s death and Fee’s birth, Jill had been rent open by Jocelyn’s decision to leave and had always harbored a secret hope that Jocelyn lived with regret. She remembered those first few weeks with newborn Fee, after the breakup with Keith and Jocelyn’s departure. Fee had been colicky, as if sensing the grift perpetrated against her. It had taken Jill a long time to establish a bond, after which it seemed they both clung desperately to each other, aware of the tenuousness of the claim. Jocelyn had called only once during those weeks, keeping the conversation brief and pretending a bad connection. She wondered now if Jocelyn—and her mother, for that matter—had ever paused, even momentarily, to question their direction. Interesting how often choices were represented as a fork in the road. Jill thought it more often came down to the decision she now faced: go forward or go back. What if Jocelyn had stayed to help? What if her mother had remained faithful?
She glanced down at her father’s watch. Stopped. She lifted it to her ear. No little tick-tick. She tapped it. Nothing. She tapped it harder. Nothing. She stared at it again. The sub–second hand frozen midtock just past the three-quarters marker. She fingered its leather strap for a moment. It had always been loose, a man’s watch, after all. Of all moments, she thought, and then resigned herself to operating without it.
She had instinctively turned left out of the driveway, which meant that the sun would rise behind her. She hoped she had enough gas to get her to daylight, though doubted it. She then uprighted the seat and put the car in drive. “To hell with it,” she said, and continued straight ahead.