At Hilltop Jeanne parked the van in the transportation shed and the boys ran off, yelling, to change their clothes and meet in the dining hall for a baked ham dinner. Sunday was a free day for the older ones; but after a quiet hour following dinner, the younger boys were required to play organized games. According to the Hilltop Method this encouraged cooperation and healthy competition. Late in the afternoon there would be study hall and story hour followed by cheese on toast and tomato soup.
A memory smacked her.
Billy Phillips’s mother, when she was cook at Hilltop School, had instigated the Sunday night tomato soup and cheese on toast. It had been a year for tomatoes, the plants drooped from the weight of them. Jeanne had been sent into the garden with a bushel basket, hauling it back into the kitchen and stopping every few yards along the way because it was heavy and she was—what?—eight or nine, no more than that. Mrs. Phillips had shown her how to blanch the tomatoes and slip off the leathery skin and moosh the fruit with the potato smasher, simmer the pulp with a little chicken broth and then push it through the ricer. Mooshed, smashed and riced tomatoes, evaporated milk, salt and pepper; the cooks still used Mrs. Phillips’s recipe. She had been finishing her kitchen shift on the day her son died. Jeanne, out of breath from running, had passed her coming out of the kitchen on her way home, clutching her straw bag filled with leftovers.
Slow down, Jeannie. There’s fresh cobbler in the pantry.
Jeanne could have told her then.
Coulda, shoulda. Damn Liz for bringing it all up again.
Hard to believe, but Jeanne was older now than Mrs. Phillips had been back then. She thought how the burden of being a war widow with a young son, a problem child, must have burdened her. And then he was dead and she was alone and Jeanne supposed her widow’s pension was enough to live on alone. In some ways her life was probably better without him. She had stopped working at Hilltop and from Hannah’s bedroom window the girls often saw her sitting in a canvas chair in her backyard knitting. Even in summer she knitted.
Jeanne locked the van and slipped the keys into her purse. Her fingers touched Teddy’s Waterman. Ahead she saw a trash can. She dropped it in and gave the can a kick so the pen dropped to the bottom.
Jeanne detoured around the administration building, and crossed the lawn to the rose cloister where she stopped a moment to sit on the lion-footed bench, postponing. Dawdling, her mother would have said.
The glory season was over. Tomorrow Mr. Ashizawa would spend the day pruning the plants back to the wood. Few blossoms remained from Saturday morning’s cutting and those that clung were sadly overblown. Petals carpeted the ground beneath the plants. In some places the covering looked inches deep. She had read that Cleopatra and Antony made love in a chamber filled with rose petals. The lovers waded to one another through rose petals and fell upon them like silken sheets.
Jeanne wondered if Teddy would ever make love to her again. And if he didn’t, how much did she care. She imagined making love with Simon Weed. He would have a small penis, she guessed. But capable.
When she passed through the oleander hedge a few minutes later, she found Teddy on the patio drinking a gin fizz and reading a paperback.
“Hair of the dog?” he asked, holding up his glass.
“I’m having brunch with Liz and Hannah.”
“Lucky you to be so popular.”
“Do you have a headache?”
He shook his head. “You?”
“I feel great,” she said.
Jeanne walked past him into the house. When she emerged thirty minutes later she had changed into a peach-colored pantsuit with a bright scarf at the neck. Her hair was loose and curling about her shoulders. Teddy raised his glass.
“I see there’s life in the old girl yet.”
“Do I look okay?”
“Do you care what I think?”
Her spine stiffened. “Teddy, can’t you just answer me straight? Does everything have to be a punch line? Do I look all right? Maybe I’m too old to wear my hair down. What do you think?”
“I think you’re showing off for Liz.”
Jeanne walked away.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
That gave her a lot of options.
The restaurant was called La Vache and it tried for the French country look. On the second floor dining terrace, round tables covered in rough cotton cloths and shaded by green-and-white umbrellas overlooked the dusty oaks and shedding sycamores of the town park. Potted flowers, artificially crumbled stonework: the effect was pleasant but not like any France Liz knew. Dress at La Vache was casual for which Liz was grateful. She wore a black tunic over pants with an elastic waistband. This would not be an easy meal. She had to be able to breathe.
Liz and Hannah ordered sparkling water from a waitress in a pushup bra and talked about Jeanne while they waited for her to arrive.
“Have you ever told her she drinks too much?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “A couple of years ago.”
“And?”
“What you’d expect. She got that arch superior look, lifted her eyebrow, the whole thing.”
“What did she say?”
“Something like,
‘I can handle it
.’ Very cool. Made me sorry I cared.”
“She’s formidable.”
“Sometimes we go for a walk in the morning and I can smell it on her breath.”
“She told me she never drinks during the day.”
“I think she tries not to and she can be super-controlled—”
“What else is new?”
“—and then something happens and she loses it.”
“Sounds like her mother.”
“Did you know they drank?”
Liz nodded. “My mother used to talk about everybody in the neighborhood. Being superior gave her permission to be a gossip.”
Hannah tore a morsel from her French roll. “I’ve thought about suggesting an intervention but I don’t have the guts to do it alone and Teddy wouldn’t help. He loves it that she has a weakness.” She brushed bread crumbs into her palm and dumped them in a potted plant. “Her parents died drunk. You weren’t here but by then everyone in town knew. If Jeanne and Teddy weren’t running the school they would have lost it.”
“And now she’s headed the same way. How’d she get like this, Hannah?”
“How did any of us get to be the way we are?” Hannah spoke as if first causes were of no interest to her, as if their conversation the night before had not taken place. They were back to “making” conversation, twirling and pirouetting over Billy Phillips’s grave.
Liz said she had seen Mitzi Sandler that morning. “I’m going to go into that house. I’m going to force myself.”
“Your parents did the best they could.”
“It isn’t just them, Hannah. You know that. The house, the creek, Billy Phillips, they’re all part of the knot I’ve got in my stomach.”
Hannah looked wary. “You’re not going to start on Bluegang again, are you? Wasn’t last night enough?”
“It’s the elephant in the living room, Hannah.”
“If there’s an elephant in anyone’s living room, it’s in Teddy and Jeanne’s.” Before Liz could respond Hannah went on. “Over the years I’ve given a lot of thought to those two and I’ll tell you, Liz, I’m sure there’s a secret there. A nasty little secret our Jeanne’s too ashamed to talk about.”
Liz had sometimes thought the same thing. “What do you think it is?”
“Haven’t a clue. But it’s there. Buried way back probably. I’ll bet Teddy knows.”
“Whatever it is, he probably holds it over her.”
“Such a jerk,” Hannah said, shaking her head.
“But he’s still handsome.”
Hannah laughed. “For a scumbag.”
“That was a beautiful shirt.”
“He spends more on himself in a month than Jeanne does in a year. Two years.” Hannah glimpsed Jeanne talking to the hostess and waved. “Here she is.”
Jeanne’s hair was loose around her ears, shiny in the autumn sunlight and the peach pantsuit brightened her complexion or, Liz thought, she might have brushed on a little color. For some reason, this effort, which in another woman would have been unremarkable, made Liz terribly sad; and there were tears in her eyes when she stood up and hugged Jeanne.
“What’s that for?”
Liz shrugged. “I guess I love you.”
Jeanne looked as if she expected to hear a qualification. After a beat she smiled and hugged Liz back.
“Sorry I’m late.” Jeanne dropped into the chair next to Hannah. “The kids had to get their God-fix.” She poked Hannah. “Did you make it to eight o’clock?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been up since five.”
“You’re a better woman than I.”
“No argument there,” Hannah said.
The exquisite La Vache buffet scarcely tempted Liz.
Jeanne eyed the sparse fare arranged on Liz’s plate. “You dieting?” Her own plate was segregated into neat vegetarian piles. “Try the crepes.”
Hannah said, “You know at our age, it really isn’t a good idea to diet. I read an article that said there’s estrogen in our fat cells. God knows, we need all of that we can get.” Hannah put her elbows on the table—her about-to-tell-a-story position. “Last summer I was in Nordstrom buying a shirt for Dan. It was the middle of summer, heat wave outside and the air conditioning going like crazy, and right then, while I was talking to the sales boy, I felt myself begin to flush. Like mercury rising in a thermometer? And these great rivers of sweat started to pour down my face.” She rolled her eyes. “Cataracts.”
Liz laughed sympathetically; though she had not had the experience herself, it would come. “At least in the tropics you can blame the humidity.”
“I don’t want to blame the humidity. I’m not ashamed of being middle-aged.” Hannah sat back, straightening the lapel of her lemon-colored blazer.
“Hannah’s a bit of a zealot on this subject,” Jeanne said.
“I just refuse to be humiliated because I have a normal, healthy, fifty-year-old body.” Hannah wagged her fork at them. “I went through puberty, now I’m going through this. So?”
Methinks she doth . . .
“You on HRT, Liz?”
Just at the moment she seemed to have all the hormones she needed, quite naturally.
“What kind of doctor do you have?”
“Regular,” Liz said. “Nose to toes.”
Jeanne said, “I read in the paper about how writers of a sex education curriculum had to change all references to vagina to ‘down there.’ Penis stayed penis, but vagina became ‘down there.’ ”
“One of Ingrid’s friends used to call it her Christmas purse.” Hannah was the only person Liz knew who could eat and talk and laugh at the same time and not look disgusting. “Before you go back, you should go in and see my doctor.” She put down her fork and added with forced carelessness, “I forget, the doctor you saw on Friday, was it a woman? What was that all about, anyway? Hormones and stuff?” Hannah pushed her plate away and put her elbows on the table again, ready to dish. “Why were you so secretive? You told me not to worry but it’s hard, you know? Don’t tell me you were embarrassed to talk about it.” She looked at Jeanne and barreled on. “See, this is what I mean. It doesn’t matter how much education a woman has, there’s this kind of shame—”
Stop talking, Hannah. Breathe, Hannah.
Quiet and distracted last night. Wound up like a spring doll today.
What’s the matter, Hannah?
“So who was this doctor?” Jeanne asked.
“A clinic in Miami recommended him. It’s not about menopause. And it’s not cancer.” Liz felt the beat of her heart, the flick of a feather up under her ribs and imagined she could feel another below it, keeping time. “I was going to tell you both today. I’m pregnant.”
“Oh. My. God,” Hannah said.
Jeanne sat back and stared. “I can’t believe you’d be so careless. After all these years . . .”
“Shut up, Jeanne. She’s going to have a baby.” Hannah sounded like an announcer declaring a lottery winner. “I’m so happy for you, Lizzie.”
“Don’t rush out and buy me a layette, Hannah. That’s why I came home. I’m having an abortion while I’m here. Friday.”
Silence. Liz watched a hummingbird pierce the heart of a potted fuchsia on the railing behind Hannah.
“You can’t do that. Why would you do that?”
“Hannah? I thought you approved of abortion. In fact, it seems to me you had one yourself.”
“I was a college student. I wasn’t married. I hadn’t even met Dan. It’s a totally different thing. You’re fifty years old and you’re going to be a mother.” A light had gone on beneath Hannah’s skin. Liz recognized the glow from peace marches and campaigns to save whales and polar bears and wolves. “It’s a miracle, Liz. You can’t abort a miracle.”