4. Jo
CHAPTER 4
Jo
Jo and Frankie have wandered down to the park in their neighborhood, and they’re sitting side-by-side on the swings, gently swaying back and forth in the waning evening light.
"Here," Frankie says, passing Jo the cigarette in her hand. Jo takes it, puts it to her lips, and inhales with squinted eyes. "You doing okay, Joey-girl?"
Jo exhales and passes the cigarette back. She wraps both hands around the chains that hold her swing to its bar above and leans back, kicking up her feet so that the swing will gain some momentum.
"I'm alright," Jo says noncommittally.
"You know, I want to believe you, but I don't."
"It's because you know me too well." Jo leans her head back as she swings higher, looking up at the stars that are emerging overhead. She and Frankie have been taking evening walks a few times a week now for the past couple of years, and these walks have become a cornerstone of Jo's life. It means everything to her to leave her life behind for thirty minutes here and there, and to walk around talking to her closest friend in Stardust Beach. The things they've shared on these walks have been invaluable for Jo.
"So what's eating you?" Frankie is swaying slightly, her feet touching the ground as she smokes. With an amused smile, she watches Jo swing with the abandon of a child on a playground.
"I'm stuck with my writing," Jo says as she pumps her legs. "I ended my story about Maxine and Winston, and I didn't like how I wrapped that up."
"You didn't like how you wrapped it up, or that Bill forced you to?"
Jo stops swinging so hard and lets herself coast to a near stop before she answers. "You know Bill didn't make me stop," she says. "He just felt I'd included too many personal details. It made him uncomfortable." Jo can't help it: she's defensive of Bill. Sure, his initial lack of interest in her writing and his subsequent disapproval of what she'd written had stung, but he wasn't wrong; she had included a lot of personal detail. She couldn't fault him for his discomfort.
Frankie hangs on to the chain of her swing as she leans over to put her cigarette out on the ground. When she sits upright, she looks at Jo again, who is now back to just swaying lightly, like the fronds of the palm trees in the park. The sky has gone a shade of pastel indigo, and there are more stars out.
"Listen. If he isn't supportive enough, then you just need to make a choice, Jo: either do things the way he wants you to, or do things your way."
"But there has to be a happy medium, doesn't there?" Jo turns her head toward Frankie.
Frankie shrugs. She's never been one for happy mediums. "I guess it's possible. What would it be in this scenario?"
"Well," Jo sniffs. "I think Bill would prefer it if I just focused on the children, the house, and on my work at the hospital, because even that was a tough sell in the beginning. I'm pretty sure he'd be happier if I wasn't adding one more thing to my life."
"But is that his decision to make?"
Jo wants to say no to that question, but she isn't sure that it's not at least partially Bill's call. After all, they're a team, and they make decisions together. "Not entirely," she says after some thought. "And honestly, I think I'm a better wife and mother when I have some things of my own going on."
"I think we all are." It's Frankie's turn to grip the swing and to kick up her feet to pick up speed. "I feel like a different woman now that I have the dance school to run. Before that, all I did was sit around the house, feeling sorry for myself. I know men want to believe that we're completely satisfied by getting a hot meal on the table for them when they walk in the door each day, but most of us need more. Even if it's just a time during the day when we can read, or go for a walk alone, or do something that is only interesting to us."
"True," Jo says. "Look how good it's been for Jude to put her energy toward finding her friend. I don't know if she's quit drinking entirely, but she seems really different now. Happier. More focused."
"Exactly! When we put our energy toward something that makes us feel complete, we get even more done. We're happier." Frankie pauses. "So what makes you happy? What makes you feel complete?"
"Writing," Jo says quickly and without thinking. The realization of that statement sits between them. "Taking out my typewriter after everyone has gone to bed, and just sitting down with my characters and living out a story in my head… nothing beats that. Even doing the research about writing fueled my imagination. Going to the library, checking out books about the writing process. All of it."
"I can hear the passion in your voice, Joey-girl. I see it. And the fact that you got your work published in a magazine right out of the gate--it's impressive. All of it. So now you just need to think about how you can convince Bill that you need to keep doing it." Frankie pulls her pack of cigarettes and her lighter out of the pocket of her cardigan sweater and taps it against her open palm, pulling out the cigarette that emerges with two fingers and putting it between her lips.
"Easier said than done," Jo says glumly. "He's been a little hard to deal with lately."
Frankie laughs. “I bet,” she says with the cigarette in her mouth. She flicks her lighter and holds the flame in her cupped hand. “Ed doesn’t say too much about work, but I get the impression that things are tense.”
Jo nods and lets her eyes focus on the slide and the climbing structure in the middle of the playground. The metal glints silver in the emerging moonlight.
“He got in a lot of trouble for New Year’s Eve,” Jo says. Wisely, Frankie just inhales and exhales, blowing smoke up to the stars as she waits for Jo to go on. “I don’t know what set him off, but that fight he got into with Barbie’s brother was totally not like Bill.”
“Not much of a fighter, huh?”
“No,” Jo says emphatically. “I’ve never known him to get physical with anyone, ever.” Her eyes go wide. “I mean, I guess when he was in the military, but he certainly won’t talk about that. He’s so mild-mannered. He doesn’t yell at me or the kids, he thinks before he speaks, and I’ve never once felt like he was so mad that he was going to punch a wall—or another man.”
“Something must have pushed his buttons.” Frankie holds out the second cigarette for Jo to take, but Jo waves it off with a shake of her head. One is her limit.
“I think it was Barbie’s brother, if I’m being totally honest.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Truly.” Jo narrows her eyes. “I have thoughts, but I don’t have facts.”
“And your thoughts are?” Frankie stands up suddenly, motioning with her head that they should keep walking, so they do.
“My thoughts are,” Jo says, putting her hands into the pockets of her lightweight sweater, “that this all has something to do with Jeanie Florence. I don’t know why, I just think that it does.”
Frankie keeps a steady pace and steers them around the corner at the end of the street, which puts them on Jo’s block. “If that’s what you think, then you’re probably right,” she says. “They don’t call it ‘women’s intuition’ for nothing.”
“I hate that I like her,” Jo says. She holds her hands up as she walks, then lets them fall to her sides. “It would be so much easier if she was this gorgeous villain who I could despise and feel jealous about. But she’s a really smart, nice woman.”
“Hmm,” Frankie says. She sounds dubious. “Smart and nice are potentially more dangerous than just one-dimensional and sexy.”
“You think?”
“I know.” Frankie stops walking at the foot of Jo’s driveway and Jo pauses two feet away from her. “I once dated a boy in high school, and I thought he was the love of my life.”
Jo tilts her head to one side. “Well, we all think our high school boyfriends are the loves of our lives.”
“But Raymond was something—he really was,” Frankie says. “Anyway, his family had this group of church friends, like a bunch of families, and they were always together. He’d been friends with May since they were kids, and I heard alllll about her. ‘May this, May that,’” she says, using a slightly mocking voice, “and then one day I met her. I’d always been most jealous of girls who I thought were prettier than I was, but I’d sort of written May off as this nice, bookish girl who went to church with Ray. Wrong. She was all those things, but she was also pretty in this way that was just… simple. Even I could see it.”
“Uh oh.”
“Exactly. Ray invited me to a big dinner with all the families, and I picked her out right away. But it wasn’t her beauty that clued me in to which girl was May. Do you know what it was?”
Jo shakes her head slowly.
“It was the way Ray looked at her. I knew immediately. There was something in his eyes, and I knew he’d never look at me that way.” She drops her cigarette on the pavement and crushes it beneath her foot.
“Okay, this story does not make me feel any better.” Jo presses her lips together.
“Do you think Bill looks at Jeanie the way Ray looked at May? And for the record, yes, ‘Ray and May.’ And they got married and had five kids. But I digress. Do you think he looks at Jeanie like that?”
Jo doesn’t answer—at least not out loud. For Frankie’s benefit, she pretends to consider this as they stand there, but with spotless timing, Bill opens the front door and turns on the porch light.
“I should go,” Jo says in a near-whisper. “Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Sure thing. Talk to you tomorrow, babe.” Frankie leans in and gives her a quick peck on the cheek and a look of concern as they part. “Sleep well.”