THE RIDE HOME felt so long. It was four in the morning. Gray light. Sunday morning, and the rain had stopped, and the world was slumbering. A season was turning.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ruthie said. “Adeline is right.”
“Doe jumped in to save me,” Jem said. “She saw what was happening and she jumped in.”
Ruthie knew what every parent knew. She was in the perfect place to have this conversation: the car. It was the place teenagers told their secrets, because it was the place they did not have to meet their parents’ eyes.
“What was happening?” she asked. “I mean, before.”
Jem jerked her head and looked out the window. “I liked Lucas,” she said.
“So he was the boy.”
“Yeah. I know he was too old, okay?”
Ruthie’s hands tightened on the wheel. She was grateful for the past tense, but she would kill him anyway. She had a whole list of crimes on her sorry docket, why not add one more?
“Were you…seeing him?”
“No! He came to the farm stand to see me. And I saw him a few times. Not a date or anything! Just, like, walks around Greenport. He’d buy me ice cream or whatever. We texted a lot. Tonight I just wanted…I thought…I don’t know what I thought. But I started it. I said, Let’s go into the castle before they take it down. I just wanted to be alone with him. We went in together and we just sort of fell, the way you do in a bouncy castle. He said it was like a waterbed. And so we kissed and stuff.”
And stuff. What a wide load of possibility in that. Ruthie thought of the bra, revolving in the wind.
“He doesn’t care about me,” Jem said. “He didn’t even try to help. He pushed past me, Mom. He jumped out. And then when Doe fell, did you see? He just took off. He didn’t check to see if I was okay or if she was okay. He just left! How could he do that, Mommy? How could somebody do that?”
Should she drop off Jem, drive directly to Adeline’s, and kill him now?
She thought of the wild turkeys in Orient. Those prehistoric creatures, noble and hulky. They took their own time. They meandered across the road with majesty and purpose, with elastic, nodding necks. They did not scurry, they did not hesitate, no matter how many cars honked. They owned their own road. Squirrels were common roadkill. Deer. Turkeys? Never.
The secret was to let the monster bearing down on you know that you had a path and you were sticking to it. The secret was to take your time.
She parked the car by the playhouse. The pool glinted an unreal blue.
Jem got out, hugging herself. There was a slight chill in the air, the first chill of fall. Ruthie’s phone buzzed. It was Joe.
Doe?
She’s ok. Staying overnight at hospital.
She waited, her fingers in the air.
Thank you.
She stared hard at the ellipses on the phone that told her he was typing. They weren’t even a mile apart. Holding their phones and not knowing what to say. The dots disappeared—he erased something. Appeared again.
I’m so glad. Btw I delivered your pizza.
…
Sleep tight.
She didn’t know what that meant but it seemed he was telling her to go to sleep. Which was good, because now they were so exhausted that they could barely walk. They changed into pajamas. They were reckless and did not floss.
“Will you sleep in my bed?” Jem asked. Blue smudges under her eyes.
Ruthie drew up Carole’s fine cotton blanket. In the dimness she saw the streak of tears on Jem’s face, steady, silver, dripping down cheek, rolling off chin, down her neck.
“I had sex with him, Mommy,” she said.
The softness of Carole’s blanket. The exquisite comfort of the sheet under her hand as she smoothed it over Jem. Ruthie was wide awake now.
“Okay,” she said.
“I just wanted to connect with somebody,” Jem said. “I wanted a boyfriend. I know that’s stupid.”
“Not stupid. Did he force you?”
“No. I wanted to.”
Ruthie let out her breath slowly, so Jem wouldn’t hear it.
“I figured okay, this is my time. Then years from now, even if I’m being a total idiot, even if I regret it, even if he’s way too old, it will just become part of my story, like what hospital I was born in or what age I was when I got my ears pierced.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I sort of let him think I wasn’t a virgin.”
“Mmm.”
“But it was so wrong!” Jem began to sob.
Ruthie got out of bed for the tissue box. It took effort not to rend it asunder. She got back in bed and handed Jem a tissue.
“Did you ask him to stop?”
“No. It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m sorry, I have to ask this, did you use—”
“Yeah. He had one. But I don’t think he…um, finished. I just didn’t think there would be so much pushing involved. To you know, get it done, I guess? I just waited for it to be over. All of a sudden I wasn’t into it at all. And that was the worst. And that’s when I noticed the castle really tilting. I could feel the wind underneath it. He didn’t notice at first, because…you know. And I got panicky and he told me to be quiet.” Jem put her hands over her face. “He told me to be quiet! Like I didn’t matter!”
The story came out in shuddered bursts now. Ruthie handed her one tissue after another. “Then he realized what was happening and he got scared. We felt it lift. And the next thing I knew he was pulling up his pants and running for the door. He kept slipping and falling, it was almost funny. Only it wasn’t. I think that’s when Doe crawled in. She smacked him really hard. Right in the face.”
Score one for Doe. She owed her Jem’s life, and now this. Flowers weren’t enough, a basket from Locavoracious, nothing was enough except a trunk full of gold.
“And he just jumped out and left us! I was hanging on so hard, and Doe told me I had to time a jump and I would have to let go. I said I couldn’t and she said I could. I looked down and saw you yelling jump, and Doe yelled now, and I jumped. And then she blew away. I was on the ground and she was in the air. And he…was running for his car.”
Ruthie held her, rocking her, but Jem sat up straight.
“You have to promise not to tell Daddy.”
“I can’t promise that, honey.”
“Mom, just listen. It will break up him and Adeline. You know it will.”
Of course it would.
“It just feels like…with everything…somebody should be happy. If I was the reason they broke up, that would be just sort of awful, you know?”
“But you aren’t the reason, Lucas is,” Ruthie said.
Jem gave her a look through her tears that clearly said Give me a break.
“But if they do get married, you’re going to have to see him, at least sometimes. You’ll be sort of…family.”
A look came over Jem’s face then that gave Ruthie a different picture of her daughter. The strong person she would become. No. Already was. “Not family.”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
“Please, Mom!”
“Let me sleep on it. It’s time for bed now. It’s time for sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”
Murmuring, she drew up the covers again. In the moonlight she placed her head close on the same pillow. She whispered in Jem’s hair. Not your fault, baby, not your fault, Doe is fine, everything will be okay. Still whispering, she felt the moment Jem slid into sleep. She lifted on one elbow to watch her. The moon was so bright.
Despite all of it, this terrible, terrible night, she felt the bright presence of hope.
Pool toys and fortunate landings and the light of the moon. Miracles abounding.