The Things We Wish Were True (5 page)

BRYTE

She held Christopher’s hand as she led him over to the pool, barely listening to his chatter about the ducks on the lake and the clouds in the sky. Instead, she tried to watch Jencey without appearing to. Jencey’s girls were playing with another girl, all three running from the girl’s brother whenever he came near them. Jencey, seemingly oblivious to their shrieks, was reading a
People
magazine on a chaise lounge.

She helped Christopher into the pool and glanced longingly in her old friend’s direction, looking away too late when Jencey unexpectedly looked up from her magazine. Busted, she raised her hand in greeting as if she’d meant to catch Jencey’s eye the whole time. “I thought that was you!” she said, her voice too loud and excited. As kids, she’d always been the awkward one, the tagalong just trying to match her steps to Jencey’s. It was funny how lightning fast she could fall back into her old, awkward ways. She wished some of her friends were around—friends who only knew her now—but the overcast day had kept them away.

Jencey returned her wave and went back to reading her magazine as Bryte, disappointed, focused on her son and took her designated seat on the hot concrete, the heat radiating through her swimsuit. She talked to Christopher, cheered his continued attempts to submerge his face underwater, and did her best not to look back over at Jencey, who, finished with her magazine, had closed her eyes and appeared to be sleeping.

Bored, Bryte’s mind wandered to the e-mail she’d received that morning from her former boss, the one marked “Urgent,” asking her to come in for a meeting regarding her return to work. Minutes later, according to the time stamp, she’d received another e-mail from a coworker begging her to come back.

The place isn’t the same without you! We miss you! We NEED you!

While it was nice to be wanted, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back there. She wasn’t sure she could get excited about selling technical training to Fortune 500 companies again. And yet, returning to work would stop the second-child discussion in its tracks, at least for a while.

“Ouch!” Jencey said as her backside made contact with the hot concrete, jarring Bryte from her internal debate.

Bryte gave her a welcoming smile, glad for the distraction. “Hi,” she said.

“I’d tell you that I used to have to do this when mine were little, but I mostly had help with this part of motherhood,” Jencey said, gesturing to the shallow end and to Christopher donned in water wings.

“You were lucky,” Bryte said, even though she didn’t really feel that way. Tiring as it was, she wanted to experience every moment with her only child. Because he would be their only child, if only she could figure out how to make Everett understand that. Using a return to work as an excuse to put the debate off was sounding even more appealing.

“Mom, when can Lilah and I have a sleepover?” Jencey’s oldest ran over to ask, breathless from running. Her name was Pilar. The youngest was Zara. As girls, Jencey and Bryte had dreamed up baby names. Neither Pilar nor Zara had, so far as Bryte could recall, ever been on Jencey’s list. But then again, Christopher hadn’t been on Bryte’s.

“We can talk about it later,” Jencey said, her voice kind and patient in front of Bryte.

“But, Mom, Lilah wants to.” Pilar was relentless, which was expected, seeing as who her mother was. But Pilar didn’t look like Jencey. Bryte guessed she looked like the father, whose name, Bryte knew, was Archer, Arch for short. This name so suited the man who would marry Jencey that Bryte had laughed when she read it on the wedding announcement tacked to her parents’ refrigerator. Bryte had been certain the marriage meant Jencey would never return to Sycamore Glen. At the time, she’d been relieved at the thought. Yet here she was, sitting beside Jencey on the edge of the same pool where they’d played Marco Polo as children, Bryte feeling around blindly for Jencey as she listened for “Polo” in reply to her “Marco.”

“I’m sure she does, and we will,” Jencey said, her voice firm, with an edge that hadn’t been there before. “But we’re not going to discuss it anymore today.”

Pilar turned and, grumbling, marched back over to her friend. The two girls took their spots in line to jump off the diving board, waiting behind the little boy who made Bryte nervous. She’d taken to keeping an eye on him whenever she and Christopher were there. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, and there was never a parent with him. He had an older sister who usually looked out for him, but the sister seemed to be caught in Pilar and Zara’s orbit. Bryte remembered the feeling, how strong that pull could be.

With Pilar gone, Jencey turned back to her. “Sorry about that,” she said.

“No problem,” Bryte said. Christopher had grown tired of the pool and was hanging on her legs. She moved them up and down in the water, giving him a ride. It was the closest thing to exercise she got these days. If she went back to work, she could use her lunch hour to go to the gym like she used to.

She and Jencey lapsed into silence again, both of them watching Christopher ride up and down in the water, his little face filled with a smile. “He’s really cute,” Jencey mused aloud. The comment felt weighted with unsaid words. This was not just Bryte’s son; this was Everett’s son, too.

Would they ever talk about what had happened after Jencey left? Part of Bryte wanted to just say it already, get it all out in the open. But part of her didn’t want to broach the subject of Everett and her, because that would mean she’d have to talk about Jencey and Everett, which was not something she liked remembering, even years later.

“He’s a good baby,” was all Bryte said in response.

Jencey patted her arm and started to stand. “I hate to tell you this, but he’s hardly a baby anymore.”

Bryte looked up. “You sound just like Everett,” she said, the name slipping from her lips without meaning for it to. There was no avoiding him. In the end, they’d have to acknowledge his existence. It was there between them, as obvious as the child hanging on her legs.

“He’s right,” Jencey said, and shrugged. She turned her attention to Zara on the diving board and clapped her hands loudly. “Come on, Zara, let’s see a flip!” she called.

Zara, from the diving board, tried to get her mother to be quiet. “Mo-om,” she intoned before making a polite, unobtrusive jump into the deep end. The little boy came after her, his eyes on his sister. But she wasn’t looking. She was helping Zara out of the water with effusive praise.

“That kid makes me nervous,” Bryte said to Jencey. She pulled Christopher from the water and stood him beside her before standing up herself.

“Why?” Jencey asked.

Bryte took Christopher’s hand and pulled him closer to her side, as if by keeping him safe, she could vicariously keep the little boy safe, too. “Watch him,” she said, and pointed.

The two women watched as the boy leaped from the diving board, sank under the water, and disappeared from sight for several seconds. Bryte held her breath, as did Jencey. She felt Jencey’s hand reach for her forearm. Her fingernails, painted the color pink a child might choose, dug into her skin as she strained forward. Together, they willed the boy to the surface. When he finally did rise, he was sputtering and coughing up water, his hands flailing. In unison, their eyes went to the male lifeguard, who was talking to the gorgeous blonde female lifeguard and not watching the scene in the deep end at all.

“Should we do something?” Jencey asked.

“No, look,” Bryte said, directing her attention to the struggling child, who had, once again, made it to the side. But his sister wasn’t there to help him out of the water this time.

“My heart is going ninety miles an hour!” Jencey said, grabbing for her chest. “I need a drink after that!” She pretended to check her nonexistent watch. “Is it five yet?”

The two laughed as Bryte led Christopher over to where her bag of tricks was. She had a juice box and animal crackers ready for him. She opened the box and took a handful for herself, then offered it to Jencey.

“Oh, what the hell,” Jencey said, and reached into the box, taking a handful. Bryte wondered if the taste reminded her of her childhood.

“You should come for dinner tonight,” Bryte said, her mouth still full of crackers. It was an impulse, but she didn’t regret saying it once it was out. She wanted to bring Jencey into her life, the one she had now. She wanted her to see how it had all turned out. And perhaps with a few drinks in her, Jencey would spill the details of what had brought her back. Bryte listened as her old friend accepted the invitation, made plans even as she tried not to think of what Everett would say.

ZELL

The sound of Zell’s name being called interrupted her attempt to eavesdrop on Jencey and Bryte’s conversation. She never learned. Guilty, she looked over to see Lance walking toward her. She was glad to see him even if she had been the one to encourage him to take a break from the children. Lord knew he needed it. Sometimes when she got up in the middle of the night to get some water after being awakened by one of her hot flashes, she saw his light on, knew he was burning the midnight oil as the kids slept. Without his wife, the man was running pillar to post.

“I can’t believe you came up here!” she called out to him, her guilt complex mostly forgotten.

He gave her a bashful smile. She saw the other mothers’ heads turning as they noticed a new man in their midst, a very nice-looking man. She was older than all of them, but she wasn’t blind.

“Well, I felt bad,” he said. “I mean if I have time to goof off, I guess I should use that time to spend with the kids.”

“I know they’ll be glad to see you.” She returned his smile and called out to the kids, “Lilah! Alec! Look who’s here!”

Alec had spent the last hour following the head lifeguard around, peppering him with questions about the chemicals they put in the pool and begging to let him help take measurements of the samples they pulled from the water. Lilah had become thick as thieves with Jencey Cabot’s girls in the weeks since the pool’s opening, the three of them moving in a tight cluster. They’d picked up a stray today, that little girl who usually hovered on the edges looking anxious.

Both kids broke away from what they were doing and scampered over to their father with big, grateful grins on their faces. “Daddy!” they said in unison, forgetting they were too cool to call him that. He hugged them both, and they told him what they were up to as Zell looked on proudly.

“They’re having a good time,” Zell said. It felt good to be part of something, but Lilah gave her a look that told her she’d gone too far. Sometimes when Lilah looked at her, she thought that the child knew the truth even though she couldn’t possibly. Zell saw the scar on Lilah’s pencil-thin leg, forever white against her tanned skin, and remembered the day the girl had gotten it. That had been the beginning.

Lilah turned to Jencey’s girls to introduce them to her father. “These are my friends Pilar and Zara,” she said, waving her hands at them. The two girls giggled and waved, but the third girl—the one who’d been tagging along just today—stood silent and overlooked. Zell’s heart went out to her.

“Nice to meet you,” Lance said, his tone formal as he shifted his weight and looked around the pool, perhaps wondering why he’d come, where he fit.

“Will you throw me, Dad?” Alec asked, his voice husky and reserved in front of the girls.

“Sure, buddy,” Lance said, looking relieved to have something to do. He glanced over at Zell. “Thanks,” he said to her, and then he let Alec lead him away. She tried to catch the other little girl’s eye, to give her a smile of encouragement. But she turned away too quickly, intent on following the other girls, her eyes focused on staying in step with them, her legs hurrying to keep up.

JENCEY

She hurried back to her chair, fuming internally over her stupid mistake. She straightened her towel and threw herself down. What was she thinking, saying yes to Bryte’s invitation? She’d been caught up in nostalgia, maybe, her resolve weakened by the heat. She had no business attempting a social engagement of any sort, much less a social engagement with her old best friend and her first love, now married to each other and living in the same neighborhood they’d all grown up in.

She was in no shape to see Everett again, much less Everett flanked by his wife and son. She had enough on her plate without adding that stressor. Her therapist back in New Canaan would have had a fit. Of course, therapists were a luxury from the past. Ironic that now that she had real, actual problems, she could no longer afford one. Of course her parents would help pay for a therapist if she really needed one, but to ask for that was to admit she needed help both financially and mentally. She was loath to admit either.

From the opposite side of the pool, she watched as Bryte fed Christopher sections of apple, smiling like a woman who had the world by the tail. Through slitted eyes (she’d forgotten her sunglasses), Jencey studied her former friend, marveling anew at just how lovely she’d become. Gone was the awkward uncertainty that used to characterize Bryte. In its place was a glow that radiated from within, as if that inner beauty people used to talk about when referring to Bryte had finally, over time, worked its way out.

When they were friends, she used to tell Bryte she was pretty, reassure her that, even though her chest was flat and she had thick glasses, she still had a lot of good attributes. But she was mostly just trying to make Bryte feel better, and they both knew it. Bryte, Jencey had believed, would always be the sidekick. But something had changed. Bryte had gone from looking like Velma in
Scooby-Doo
to looking like Audrey Hepburn. Jencey’s reassuring little lies had come true: Bryte had come into her own.

Old friends or not, Jencey didn’t want to see more of Bryte and her idyllic existence than she had to. Not when her own life had turned to shit. She could be happy for her friend without having to witness the happiness. She had to come up with an excuse to get out of the evening, and fast. The little boy was crying and probably getting tired, ready for his nap. She would get Bryte’s phone number before she left, then take the chickenshit way out and text her regrets. It wasn’t a very grown-up way to handle things, but it would get the job done.

She stood up and hurried back over to catch Bryte before she disappeared and left Jencey with no other option but to show up at the address Bryte had enthusiastically rattled off. “It used to be the piano teacher’s house. Remember? You could always hear music when you walked by?”

Jencey nodded. She remembered the house well: a white two-story with black shutters and a front porch much like the other houses in the neighborhood—not big but not small, just right for the middle-class neighborhood they’d all called home.

“Seven!” Bryte had said. “See you then!” Then she’d scurried away, leaving Jencey to feel the regret whoosh through her veins.

At seven she was usually preparing for her nightly walk. At seven she was still promising herself she wouldn’t end up in the hideaway as darkness fell, playing remember when. Last night she’d heard twigs snap as if someone was walking around, someone who’d also come to those woods. She’d sat quietly until the sounds disappeared, then bolted out of the woods, running nearly all the way home, the bad memories nipping at her heels.

Now she moved almost as quickly to get to Bryte before she left, her eyes locked on her and not much else. Which is how she ran smack into the man she’d noticed earlier. He was handsome, in a dad sort of way, a way Arch had never succumbed to. She’d once been proud of this, the way Arch had remained distinctly “Arch,” without giving himself over to the domesticated look that seemed to seize most of the men she knew. And yet, in hindsight, maybe that hadn’t been for the best. Maybe a surrendered man was a trustworthy one.

“I’m so sorry!” she apologized as she steadied herself, using his forearms to stop the force of their impact from knocking them both to the ground.

He stepped back, gazing down at her with a look that was half amusement, half confusion. “It’s OK,” he said, looking embarrassed even though he’d done nothing except wander into her path.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again.

He laughed. “So you said.”

She glanced over at Bryte, who was obliviously gathering her things. She wasn’t gone yet. That was good. “I was rushing to speak to my friend.” She pointed in Bryte’s direction. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“No worries,” he said. The little girl who’d been playing with her daughters for the past several weeks sauntered over to them.

“Dad,” she said, addressing the man, “I thought you were going to play with us.” She looked up at the two adults. A giddy look crossed her face. “Are you two talking about the sleepover?”

“What sleepover?” they both asked at the same time, with the same degree of alarm in their voices. Then they both laughed.

“We want to have a sleepover. All three of us.” The girl said it in a huff as if they, the adults, were just so slow.

“Well, uh, now might not be the best time,” the man said, shifting uncomfortably as he spoke. He looked over at Jencey with a pained expression. “I’m, um, a newly single dad and not really ready to host an, um, event for the kids.”

Jencey waved her hand, dismissing his apology. “Oh, gosh, sure. I don’t blame you. I get it.” She refrained from explaining just how much she got it.

She looked over. Bryte was on her way out. She was going to miss her. She needed to get away from him, yet her southern manners prevailed. Her friends in Connecticut used to tease her about her accent, her sense of decorum, her general southernness. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake it.

She spoke quickly. “We’re just in town visiting my parents for a bit this summer, so I can’t really, um, host guests, either.” She patted his daughter’s wet head. “You guys can see each other here at the pool, OK?”

The girl sighed deeply. “OK,” she said. Deflated, she slumped away with heavy, dramatic footsteps.

“Well, nice to meet you,” Jencey said, offering parting words.

He turned to her with that same amused/confused look on his face. “But we didn’t really meet, did we?”

She looked up at him and blinked, then glanced over at Bryte again. Thankfully, she had stopped to talk to someone. “Oh, I guess not.” Obliged, she thrust her hand out. “I’m Jencey.”

He shook her hand briefly, then squinted at her. She noticed that his eyes were exactly the same color as his hair. She liked the uniformity of it, how utterly congruent he was.

“Jencey?” he questioned. “That’s different.”

She rolled her eyes. The name was a relic of her childhood. In school she’d been one of several Jennifers. She was Jennifer C, or, as her second-grade teacher coined it, “Jen C.” There had also been “Jen L.” As second grade went on, the teacher ran the abbreviations together so fast that they came out as one word. So “Jen C” became Jencey, and “Jen L” became Jennelle. As far as Jencey knew, Jennelle also went by that name to this day.

“It’s an old nickname,” she explained hastily to him now. “My real name is Jennifer, but no one calls me that.”

“I like it,” he said, nodding as if he’d considered it and found it acceptable. “My name’s Lance, short for Lancelot.” He grinned. “My mom had a thing for Camelot.”

She laughed. “Seriously?”

He raised his eyebrows, held her gaze for a second, looking totally serious. But he couldn’t hold the look for long, as his smile broke through. “No, my name’s just Lance. But I had to come up with a story to keep up with yours.”

She laughed along with him, then noticed Bryte swinging her bag over her shoulder and sliding on her flip-flops as she wrapped up her conversation. She quickly clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, Lancelot, it was nice to meet you, but I’ve got to catch my friend over there.” She hitched her thumb in Bryte’s direction. “Good luck finding Camelot.”

She walked away, shaking her head.
Good luck finding Camelot?
She was clearly out of practice at this whole opposite-sex thing. She’d once been so
good
at it. But that was a long time ago, before the hearts had started arriving, before Arch had claimed her as his own.

She got to Bryte in the nick of time, reaching for her in order to stop her from walking away. Bryte turned around with a startled look. But her face immediately relaxed when she saw it was just Jencey. “Oh, Jencey! Hey!” she said, her face filling with a grin that lived up to her name. “Everything OK?” she asked. But then her smile faded and her eyes strayed to the pool as a whistle erupted and someone screamed and, all around them, people started running.