I’d never wanted to make a good impression before. I never normally cared. But now I was terrified I was going to do something stupid and let Jason down.
In the week since he’d suggested this, my anxiety had been spreading through my veins like a drug, and Jason knew it, he’d kept me busy all the time, we’d gone for dinner a week ago on the Monday, rather than go to the club, it was as if he’d sensed I couldn’t have faced the noise. Though he’d never said it and I still hadn’t explained it. Most of the other nights were absorbed with playing his Xbox games. But the Xbox had been left behind in New York and now I was left with nothing to escape the crushing emotion inside me. I didn’t know how I was going to cope with this, but I was determined to try––for Jason’s sake.
“Dad!” Jason shouted in greeting.
His dad waved, waiting for us to come over.
I’d been shaking for the whole flight. Jason had gripped my hand for most of it, but then my legs had just trembled instead.
I felt physically sick as I watched his father come toward us. His eyes were on Jason. He looked like he was a good dad, like he cared about Jason.
“It’s good to see you, son” his dad said, as they met.
Jason put down the cases and hugged him.
I felt awkward, and I wanted to shrink into oblivion.
Jason turned back and looked at me. “Dad, this is Rachel.”
His dad’s eyes shifted to me, but the look was dismissive, like he really didn’t want me here. “Rachel,” he said, bluntly, already looking away from me.
“Mr. Macinlay.”
His rejection felt like a knife cut and tears pricked my eyes. I was trying to be normal, but these people didn’t want me to be here. Jason grasped my hand and squeezed it for a moment before he picked up the cases.
The look in his eyes said,
sorry.
It wasn’t Jason’s fault.
I smiled.
“The truck’s over there.”
We followed his dad, me trailing behind Jason, my stiletto boots crunching in the salted, half melted, ice. I felt like an interloper, like I shouldn’t be here. But my brain said loudly that I should. Jason wanted me here. He’d spent a week proving it and overriding my doubts so many times, that now, I could actually do it for myself.
They were gonna be mad as hell, when they found out about the baby though.
“Put the cases in the back of the truck, Jason.”
The truck was huge. It was so big it had front and back seats, as well as an open space for carrying stuff behind.
His dad went round to the driver’s seat.
Jason hauled the cases over the side of the open back and smiled reassuringly at me.
“You get in the back seat, I’ll get in the front,” he whispered.
I nodded, but I was shaking again. I felt like I wanted to run all the way back to New York. Oh to be alone with Jason in the dark, in Brooklyn Bridge Park or lounging on the beanbag beside him racing cars on his Xbox.
I climbed up on to black leather upholstery.
The truck smelt of polish. I bet his dad liked things clean and ordered. He wouldn’t like the disorder in me. Jason and his dad chatted as we drove away from the airport.
They talked of the hardware store Jason’s dad owned, and about their family, and local people. The conversation never stopped. But it was nothing I could add anything to.
I looked out the window, watching the countryside fly by, mountains and woodland, then fields, all covered in a coat of snow.
I hadn’t, ever, seen countryside, but it was a long time since I’d left New York. It was beautiful and peaceful to the eye of a city girl who was used to concrete and noise. But I wondered if, in a couple of days, I’d just be bored with all the quiet. Maybe my head needed noise? Maybe the quiet would drive me totally insane. I glanced forward, to look at Jason, but all I could see was his ear behind the headrest. Sighing, I looked back out of the window. But maybe I wouldn’t get bored. I had Jason around; I hadn’t been bored with him yet.
Finally a sign saying,
Welcome, Drive Carefully
, greeted us.
We were driving past houses, they were spread out, but they still lined the road, all decked out with Christmas lights. Cul-de-sacs of properties began stretching off the main road too. The houses had Santas, reindeer and snowmen standing on their lawns, and the snowmen were real as well as plastic. I’d never built a snowman in my life. It was all very weird to me, especially in daylight when it just looked a bit odd. I’d never seen anything like this before.
I imagined what these streets would be like in darkness, crazy with the glow of a multitude of colored lights, shining and twinkling exuberantly. It was like the scene was mocking me. My colors shone when there was light inside me. In darkness? Well darkness was just dark…
I sighed; my mood hadn’t lightened for a week, but maybe that wasn’t only because I’d feared coming to his parents. For most of my life I’d feared Christmas too. It had never been a festival to me. Mom had been too drunk and too poor to care. She’d never decorated or bought presents and since I’d left home, I’d generally avoided doing Christmas. But this year I was doing my best not to obey my urge to run, and hoping things might be different with Jason. I’d bought him some presents. They were in my case. I’d bought his parents presents too. They were the first presents I’d bought anyone.
When we drove into the center of town, I saw a signpost for the high school he must have gone to with Lindy, as well as various stores and places.
“That’s Dad’s hardware store, Rach…” Jason said, pointing to the side of the road ahead, as we were coming out the other side of the town. He sounded proud as he announced it. I looked out the window and saw a big square, squat store, with a large sign on the front saying, Macinlay’s Hardware.
This was where Jason belonged, where he’d grown up, amongst the people who’d made him the nice guy he was.
He faced forward, and his dad was talking again.
They must hate me coming here, intruding on them. They were only tolerating me so Jason would come back, and now he was here––they’d do all they could to persuade him to leave me. I knew it.
Tears burned in my eyes as his dad drove into a cul-de-sac on the far side of town and then turned the truck up onto a long drive. A lifesize Santa Claus sat in a sleigh on the grass beside me when we parked up. I looked toward the house.
His family home was pretty big. His dad’s hardware store obviously did okay.
“Your aunt Helen and uncle Mike are here, Jason, and the boys, and Uncle Peter and Aunt Karen and the girls too.”
“Now?” Jason said.
“Yeah, they wanted to come round to welcome you home.” His dad’s expression was hard and his movements stiff as he got out and lifted the cases from the back.
Jason got out, opened my door, and held a hand out to help me down.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“That’s, okay. Just relax.”
“That’s easily
said
.”
He laughed, and his dad threw me a suspicious look.
These people hated me.
“Rach.” Jason grabbed my hand again after he’d picked up one of the cases, calling my thoughts back to him.
His dad carried the other case. He’d only said one word to me so far; my name. This was going to be awful.
I gripped Jason’s hand hard as we walked up to the porch which was adorned with fake icicle lights in front of the real icicles. Lord, I didn’t even know which parts of me were real or fake and these people were never going to be able to understand me if I didn’t even understand myself.
I was terrified my heels might slip on the ice at the edge of the drive, and my heart was thumping. I didn’t know this type of life. I’d never lived it.
The door was painted light blue, like the shutters on the house, and it swung wide as his dad neared it, but the woman who came out looked beyond his father, at Jason.
“Oh, Jason, you made it. How wonderful!” I thought it was his mom, but then she said. “Your mother’s in the kitchen, Katie’s just gone to get her.”
This must be one of his aunts then.
In a moment Jason was swamped in an overwhelming hug and he had to let my hand go.
I stood awkwardly next to them as his father went on into the house, and then finally she let Jason go.
Immediately he turned to me and took up my hand again, lifting it a little as if to put me forward.
“This is Rachel, Aunt Helen.” Then he looked at me. “Aunt Helen is Mom’s sister.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say. Then I looked at her. “Hello.” I didn’t like to call her Aunt Helen, and I didn’t know her second name.
She gave me an odd, assessing smile like she was measuring me up. I guessed she’d only come out here to be the first to look at me. “Hi, honey,” was all she said, before she turned back to Jason. Then she put her arm through Jason’s and pulled him toward the door, taking him from me once more. Three of us couldn’t walk through the door. I entered behind them.
Dammit, this was war. They were going to fight me at every turn. This was a close family, and they didn’t want some cow from New York stealing their beloved Jason.
There were two young men in the living room. They were younger than us. They greeted Jason first. His cousins, Richard and Kirk. Then his other aunt, Karen, hugged him. Next his uncles came forward and his other cousins, Kristen and Katie, who were younger than his boy cousins. Katie was the only one who smiled at me, but she did it in a sort of apologetic way, like she wanted to say something but didn’t know how, and she glanced at Jason a few times as if she wanted to catch his attention, but he didn’t notice.
All the men held beers. It was already three past midday.
I’d be counting the hours until it was time we could retire to bed and be alone again. Then I’d be counting the hours until we could get out of here and go back to New York.
I heard his cousin Richard saying to his brother, “She’s pretty ‘ain’t she? I can see what all the fuss is about.”
They’d probably all been talking about us before we got here, or rather, about me.
“Jason?”
Another woman, who looked like his aunt, appeared from a door at the far end of the living room. Jason’s mom. She had dark blonde hair and gray-blue eyes, and she looked nice and normal, dressed in an A-line skirt with a jumper over a pussybow blouse.
She looked nothing like my mom. But then I’d not seen my mom in years; how was I to know what my mom looked like now?
Jason moved away from me and crossed the room in long strides.
I felt stranded, like I was left in a pond of circling sharks, treading water. I felt like I was gonna hyperventilate or faint. I didn’t know whether to follow him or not. But then I caught Katie’s eye and she gave me that odd sort of smile, but not a smile, again, her lips lifting like she wanted to smile at me but felt too awkward.
Jason hugged his mom, and she shut her eyes as she hugged him back, as if she was saying some kind of thank you prayer.
When she greeted me she would probably be chanting a curse. She probably had a little wax doll somewhere of me she’d been sticking pins into.
“It’s wonderful to have you home, darling,” she said to Jason as she let him go, and I almost heard her unspoken words,
now we can talk some sense into you.
Jason would say I was being foolish, thinking they had it in for me, but I really didn’t think so.
He looked back and saw me by myself across the room and gave me a funny sideways smile that suggested he was asking,
why didn’t you follow
? Then he held out his hand.
My heart leapt in a silly flutter at the gesture. I loved him so much. He looked really handsome today, too, in his leather jacket and his skinny jeans. A broad reassuring smile broke his face and I smiled back, drawn forward like a magnet to metal. In this room full of people who must be wishing for daggers to stab me in the back, I felt fine suddenly, just because he was smiling at me. I didn’t care about any of them, just him.
I clasped his hand when I reached him, and he turned back to his mom. The proud note I’d heard in his voice when he’d pointed out the hardware store was back, and his smile glowed with pride too. “Mom,
this
is Rach.” It was like he thought she would approve of me the instant she saw me.
She didn’t; her eyes looked down at my stiletto boots, totally inappropriate for the weather here, and then ran up my body as though every inch of me was lacking. Then her gaze met mine and she looked right into me, like she was thinking––why on earth was I here? What right did I have to come into her house and steal her son?
I had an urge to say sorry. I didn’t. “Hello, Mrs. Macinlay.” What rubbish words.
Please like me.
“Rachel.” Just the same as his dad, my name was spoken in a blunt uncaring voice. Then she looked at Jason, dismissing me.
In answer, Jason let go of my hand and put an arm about my shoulders, hugging me into him, defending me, sheltering me, just like he always did when we’d gone into busy bars or clubs––his kindness was instinctive. But the gesture made his mom turn away and rush back into the kitchen, and I saw the tears flood her eyes before she did. She’d been holding a dishcloth in her hand; as she left it was held to her face.
Did she hate me that much? My stomach plummeted to my heels and I felt really sick, as Jason’s arm slipped from my shoulders and he followed her. I didn’t follow him. I felt too out of place.
I’d not suffered with morning sickness at all, but I felt really ill now. She still didn’t know I was pregnant yet. My heart raced as I looked back at the others in the room. His family. Kristen stepped forward. “You know he only got engaged to Lindy six months ago…”
Yeah, I knew. I took a deep breath I didn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t lie and say I didn’t feel guilty. I did feel guilty.
“He drove her right out to the beach to propose,” Kristen added. She was probably Lindy’s friend, no wonder she didn’t like me.
She turned away then, turning her back on me. I glanced at the others, they’d all gone back to their own conversations, ignoring me. But then someone touched my arm. I turned. “Katie, isn’t it?” She nodded. She looked the youngest of his cousins.