| |
Kate
––––––––
EVER SINCE HER mother-in-law dubbed the new dining set “Contemporary Vague” Kate has not served a meal on it. The kids are busy nowadays and Erik is often late, finalizing Taken4Granite contracts. It’s been down to her, Chuck, and a Lean Cuisine in front of Law & Order reruns and quilt patterns.
But tonight is a special occasion. Ever since Erik mentioned having Lucy over, Samantha hasn’t let it go and now here they sit, uncomfortably upright in the walnut straight backs—which are vaguely Asian, vaguely Shaker-style—trying desperately to make Lucy feel more at home than they do.
Kate turns her shoulders to Lucy as if it is possible to shield the empty chair where Brace should be. “So how is that quilt working for you?” She immediately wants to ram her forehead down onto the two-inch thick trestle table. Who, but a complete asshole would remind someone of a gift?
“Well, you know it’s been really warm out.”
“I know. Isn’t it weird?” Kate snaps her fingers. “Global warming.”
Samantha nudges Kate’s foot. As the first to talk about the weather, Kate’s out twenty dollars.
“Hey, Erik,” Lucy asks. “Do me a favor and tell your daughter to back off singing around the house, okay? She needs to save it for the play.”
“Done.” Erik fakes a stern look at Samantha.
“Seriously, all she needs to do is nail that solo. She could whisper the rest; we have too many sopranos as it is.” She points at Samantha. “If I can so much as hear you over Barbara, I’m going to bust you in front of the whole congregation.”
“What?” Samantha raises hands, giggling. “Me? I would never.”
Erik stands with the wine carafe, his tie dragging through the salad greens and leans over to Lucy’s setting. Chardonnay glub-glubs into the bowl of what Kate now realizes in horror is a noncommittally-shaped wine glass. To someone well-traveled it won’t be broad enough for red nor narrow enough for white. And does she even drink anymore? What. Have. I. Done?
Lucy’s gaze wanders up to the bronze, square-lamped chandelier and down to the bamboo-green rug. “I love mission style in a home. It’s like church.” She lifts her glass. “Cheers.”
Sigh. Chuckle. Erik and Kate meet her glass with theirs. Samantha insists on offering her water glass for the clink.
“It’s only box wine, I’m sorry,” Kate admits. “I didn’t have time—”
“Box wines are big in France right now.”
“Really?”
Lucy takes a small sip and sets down her glass. “Oh, yeah, and screw tops too. You’d be surprised.”
Thank God.
“Hon, the—uh?” Erik tilts his head to the kitchen. Little puffs of steam roll from the sides of the oven.
“Oh, yes. Excuse me.” Kate jumps up to rescue the main course.
Lucy scoots out her chair. “Can I—?”
“Sit.” Kate shoots a piercing glare at her. In the kitchen, she catches a glimpse of her own desperate face in the oven window and exhales. “Sam, you want to get the bread, honey?”
Halfway through the meal, Brace ambles in and flickers a look at Lucy. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she says and extends her graceful hand across the table. “I don’t think we’ve formally met.”
He moves to shake it without meeting her eyes. But she holds him there, across the table, long enough that he would normally consider it a challenge to thumb wrestle.
“Nicetameecha,” he says in a softer voice. He finally meets her eyes, letting a smile slip and then lowly, “Sorry I’m late.”
She lets him go. “I hear you nearly won the playoffs.” If his family had mentioned that game again he would have left the table. But she actually makes it sound like the accomplishment it is.
He sits down. “Something like that.”
“Missing your tenor in the choir this season.”
“Brace is trying to make up his schoolwork. A geography report on the Great Lakes,” Kate says with a solid stare at him.
Lucy nods slowly. “My entire senior year was make-up work.”
He piles his plate with long grain and wild rice, then chicken, then more rice.
“Don’t just print out the satellite photo,” Erik says. “Draw it. Show some effort.”
“Like I have time for effort.”
Kate dabs her mouth with a napkin, so delicately, so snootily, Erik’s eyebrows gather. “Sam will help you, won’t you, Sam?”
“The lakes are mostly blobs,” she responds. “You can draw Lake Superior as an angry sock puppet.”
Erik sits back. “And you could ask Lucy about the Bonnie Saint wreck.”
Kate nudges him.
“Oh, no, it’s okay,” Lucy says, “it’s a fascinating story.”
No one speaks.
“I guess the Bonnie was there one minute”—she stays silent until Brace looks up—“gone the next.” She lays down her fork. “My brother was a ship watchman, the youngest crewmember. Wanted to be a sailor ever since I can remember. He could read the sky like an ancient mariner.” She combs her fingers through her hair. “Wasted most of his summers wrestling a sunfish up and down the river. Left home soon as he turned eighteen, got work in Duluth.”
“Oh, man,” Brace says.
Erik sighs. “That freighter was way too full of taconite.”
“Yep.” Lucy sets her elbows on the table and laces her fingers, sets her chin on the bridge. “And hit the worst storm of the season.”
“I was just reading that the lakes can get as rough as the ocean,” Brace says. His knife and fork lower to the table in his loose fists. He sits back.
“Well, close enough.” She raises a half-hearted smile, a grimace. “They say she probably rose up on the largest wave of the squall, a freak wave, maybe—three stories tall.” She ramps her hand up, lets it hover for a moment. “Rode it like a rollercoaster—up, over, and down to the bottom of the lake.” Then her hand dives to the table. “Engine going full steam? Augered in, just like that.” Her fingertips bunch the tablecloth, like a hull into sand, until her short fingernails whiten. “What must it have been like when it parted the waters, for those eternal seconds, to see the lake bottom exposed? That’s a grand way to go, don’t you think?”
Kate stares from Samantha to Brace. Samantha’s mint blue eyes have dilated; she seems to not be breathing. Brace slowly blinks, lips parted.
Dammit, Luce, don’t drag my children down there with you.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Erik says.
“It’s okay. It’s very interesting to me now. I hope I haven’t put you off the research, Brace.”
“No way. Not at all.” Brace scoops in more food. “Wow,” he mumbles around it.
“But they don’t really know what happened though, do they?” Kate asks. “Since no one survived.”
Lucy keeps her eyes on Brace. “Nah, there’s a half dozen theories. We’ve got the reports at our house if you want to read them. ‘Course you can find some of that online now too. You got my number.” She pulls her napkin out of her lap and sets it on the table. “Well, that was delicious.” Only the hum of the refrigerator fills the room.
Chuck Norris ambles in, sits, and stares statue-like at Lucy. She places her hand on his skull and his ears go droopy, his tail swishes.
“You feed him from the table?” she asks.
“Never,” Erik says. “Ignore him and he’ll go away.”
“Easy to say.” She gazes down at the dog and cups his chin. “Not so easy to do. Right, loverboy?”
Chucks falls over onto his back and exposes himself, tail wagging.
Samantha cackles.
Kate stands. “Dessert.”
––––––––
IF KATE COULD find another mulberry tree somewhere, she would whack it down with an axe all by herself. Everyone and everything seems determined to piss her off. When she sees Lucy at Northern Roast that next week, she slaps the latest Valley Dispatch down in front of her. Senator Claudia Larson stares up from the front page, frozen in mid-speech. The headline reads: SENATOR THREATENED.
“Uh-oh,” Lucy says, “that’s not good.”
“Well, she’s done everything in her power to keep gays and lesbians second class citizens. People don’t tend to take that very well.” Kate sighs. “God knows, I love my mother-in-law—the Larsons have been good to me—but if it were up to her, Mark and Ray wouldn’t be allowed to even adopt. Forget marriage.”
“That doesn’t mean she should get death threats.”
“Well, of course it doesn’t, but she’s not the victim here. She brought this on herself. Gah. Can’t believe I’m arguing this with you of all people.” Kate turns toward the door.
“Hey, whoa. C’mere. Sit with me.” Lucy pushes the paper aside. “I’m buying. Got a royalty check this morning.” She pulls out a large, blue bank check and accordions it with a snap. “Twenty five dollars and six cents.”
“Hoo-wee.” Kate leans against the booth. How easy it would be to just slide in. Start this friendship over on better footing. But what if she just kept sliding?
A stitch pulls Lucy’s cheek. “Yeah. That band thing really paid off.”
“Come on, it must have been so cool up in front of thousands of people, rockin’ out.”
“That was the payment in the beginning. But it’s all the sound of beige after a while.” Lucy’s smirk seems deeper today; light from the blue sky ices her cheeks. “I promise you, living well is not the best revenge. I’ve tried it.”
“Guess it depends upon your definition of living well.” Kate’s voice breaks to a whisper. “Definitely not Sojourn. I picture toothless people speaking in tongues and dancing with snakes.” She removes the lid of her coffee and takes a sip.
“No. Nothing like that,” Lucy says. “They opened their arms to me.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Ten grand.”
“And your conversion statistic. Which is worth a lot.” Kate straightens and clears her throat. Her face takes on parental sternness. She pokes a finger on the table. This induces a tightlipped grin from Lucy. But Kate digs in, emboldened by this flippancy. “Places like Sojourn make it harder to prove that Mark and Ray deserve the right to marry and have kids.”
“I wasn’t trying to take anything away from anyone. I just wanted peace.”
“Mmm, well, guess what, your peace has repercussions.”
“Everything we do has repercussions.” Lucy gazes out the window toward the bluffs. Two eagles circle, black against the blue, like ashes rising from a bonfire. “I’ve lost plenty of sleep over my actions. I just want to call it even.”
“No such thing as even,” Kate says quietly. “I can’t help but wonder if I hadn’t let you down in high school, maybe things wouldn’t have been so bad. Maybe you wouldn’t have ended up in Sojourn.”
“Yeah, that’s a funny thing about control freaks. They even want to take blame for the horrible stuff.” Lucy shakes her head, belligerence returning. “You had a healthy dose of self-preservation, pure and simple. You actually think I’ve spent this whole time worrying about all that stupid high school drama? Skkk.”
Kate raises an eyebrow. Ah, there’s the girl I remember. “We were my kids’ age. We were real people with difficult choices. How nice would it have been to have the adults’ support?”
Lucy manages to shrug and nod at the same time. “Why are you standing? Just sit with me. Or are you still afraid to be seen with me?”
Kate rolls her eyes. “Please don’t with that. I have ice cream in the car. Luce, why don’t you come with us to St. Paul for the counter-demonstration? It’s the first time I’ve gone against Claudia and I need backup.”
Lucy’s eyes widen. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that, Katie.”
Kate grumbles, turns toward the door. Again with the name. She turns back. “You’re at least coming to the play, right?”
Lucy brightens. “Oh, yeah! Of course.”
“Um, Sam was . . . mentioning the other day that you girls were looking at the stars.”
Lucy sits up. “Yep. She knows a ton more about astronomy than I did at her age.”
“Erik and I really don’t want her up on the Leap.”
“Not to worry. It’s actually too bright up there anyway. They installed so many streetlamps you can’t see anything but Venus and the Moon.” Lucy slowly cringes. “So, um, we walked back—to my yard.”
“Oh. Well. That’s okay then.”
Lucy glowers at the table. “I’d never hurt Sam or Jamie, you know. I’d never touch them. Or even think about them that way.”
Kate slaps her chest. “I know that. Oh, Luce. Did you think—? Ah, jeez. I wasn’t even going there. Honestly.” She laughs, sticks out her tongue a little, and clamps her teeth on it. She hopes Lucy will laugh too but she has that defensive mask she gets around the older folks, the ones that for all their talk of religious rebirth don’t honestly believe she’s been fixed. “So, what do you think of Jamie?”
“She needs help,” Lucy says.
“Please tell me you’re not suggesting she go through Sojourn.”
“Of course not. We’re talking gender here, not sexuality. And not for me to judge.”
“See that’s your problem. You’ve stopped judging. She could really use some guidance.”
“Hey, I’m there as much as I can be. They showed me their poetry after all. That’s an honor at my age.” Lucy blinks. “What—you haven’t seen it?”
“No. She hasn’t volunteered and I would never invade Sam’s privacy like my parents did.”
Lucy shrugs. “Well, it’s kinda good. Short stuff. I still remember one.”
“Enlighten me.” Kate’s stomach burns. After only a couple months of being home, Lucy’s already brandishing insider information.
Lucy recites slowly, halting between each line,
––––––––
Little comet
Off course
Sun-bound
Of course
––––––––
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Say it again.”
Lucy does, looking deeply into Kate. The cruelty in her eyes softens.
“Hmm. Guess it is kinda good.” Kate stares into the last of her coffee, full of sugar granules and grounds. “Do you think Jamie is off course?”
“I dunno. I’m no gender dysphoria expert,” Lucy says. “Women are frontiers. And Jamie’s got a lot of traveling to do.”
“Yeah. We are, aren’t we? You know, as much as Claudia drives me nuts, there’s something about her I really admire. Sometimes I wish I could look at things as directly as she does. To just pick up a book and live by it. She’s so sure about everything. I wish I could be that sure.”
“You are. Have you listened to yourself in the past five minutes?”
Kate scrunches her nose a bit. “I am so happy you came back, Luce. It feels like, like I found a part of me that I’d forgot was missing.”
Lucy smiles softly and the smirk, the weariness, dissipates. “Me too. You’re all through my songs.” And then she cringes.
“I know.” Kate keeps peering into her empty cup. “We had you for dinner because you do mean that much. Sam thinks the world of you. And I’m sorry I’ve been so intense, but you don’t know what it’s been like here.” She looks up. “Mark and Ray—and Jamie? You’ve seen the world, Lucy. They could use your help.”
Through this speech, Lucy returns to a smirk. Her lips redden and her stare does not waver.
“Oh, you think I’m playing activist mom,” Kate says. Her shoulder is getting a bit sore leaning on the booth like this.
“I wasn’t thinking anything like that. I’m just surprised by how you’ve turned out. I really didn’t expect you to be so . . . open-minded.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“No, it’s good to see you, so”—Lucy balls her hand into a fist and lays it on her heart—“so conscious and aware. You’re not a robot like the rest.”
“I’m nobody, Lucy. I was never as brave as you.”
Lucy looks wounded by this. “You’re ten times braver,” she whispers. “You walked out into the dark with me. I was all talk. Still am. Choke in the clinch. I was a little shit.”
“Are you kidding?” Kate asks full of good humor. “I loved knowing you in high school. Samantha is so much like you. So much more philosophical than I was at that age. Heck, she was even born the day before your birthday, Luce.” She lays a hand to her heart too; it feels so good to finally have the chance to say it. “Everything you taught me, I taught Sam. Even the stuff you didn’t mean to teach. Even stuff I didn’t know I learned. Without what happened between us, I don’t know what kind of mother I’d be.”
“Really?” Lucy’s cheek twitches and her eyebrows gather.
“Really.” Kate reaches out for Lucy’s hand. Lucy draws back. Kate tries to ignore it, but it stings. “Yeah, I never once hit my kids. Or let Erik either.”
“Well, that’s a nice thing to say. Still, the fact is, I—I tried to recruit you.”
“Pfff. Then everyone recruits, everybody wants to be loved. Hey, this Sojourn place recruits, doesn’t it?” Kate crosses her arms, glows proudly. Who knew she could be this brave?
“You know, she isn’t really like me, Katie. She’s much more sincere. Like you.”
“Well, she’s smart like you were.”
“You were smart.”
“I meant wise. You were wise.”
“Okay. Yeah, that’s true.”
“Then again,” Kate chuckles, “’member that last time on the Leap? When you played your guitar?”
Lucy sinks into the booth. “Isn’t your ice cream melted by now?”
“I never got a chance to tell you I was there.” Kate looks around and says quietly, “That I heard it.”
Lucy’s forehead gathers. “I wasn’t even sure you knew about that.”
“Um, hello. That graffiti didn’t come off for ten years.”
Lucy begins to say something but then closes her mouth. No safe words left. She turns to the eagles again, which a smaller bird is harrying; perhaps it’s the owner of the nest the eagles are circling. The blue of the sky has deepened. It’s so sapphire Kate can sense the night behind it. Time to start dinner. At least she said what needed to be said without screwing it up too badly. She could get run over by the big yellow Schwann’s truck tomorrow and at least Lucy would finally know the score.