15. Jo
CHAPTER 15
Jo
A door slams loudly at the end of the hall. Nancy, who is reading a book on the couch in the front room, startles.
“Mom?” she asks Jo with wide eyes. “Is everything okay?”
Jo walks over to the counter in the kitchen and opens her purse. She fishes around for her small wallet and opens it with a click. “Honey,” she says to Nancy. “Can you take your brother and sister with you to get ice cream?”
Jo walks into the front room with a dollar bill in hand, which she holds out for Nancy.
Nancy frowns at her. “But we haven’t even eaten dinner yet,” she says, still sitting, long legs tucked up under her as the book she’s been reading sits open on the cushion next to her. “You never tell us to have dessert before dinner.”
“Well, today is a special occasion.” Jo waves the money at Nancy, at the same time motioning for her to hurry and stand. Nancy closes the book and gets up, still looking confused.
“What’s the occasion?”
Jo sighs. “I don’t know—pick one. Make one up.” Jo glances at the book Nancy has just set on the coffee table. “It’s International Nancy Drew Mystery Day.”
“It is?” Nancy laughs, but it’s not a genuine laugh—she’s absolutely confused by this turn of events.
“Jimmy should be outside tossing a ball around, and Kate is in her room playing dolls, I think. Kate!” Jo shouts frantically, turning to the hallway. “Come on, sweetie. Nancy needs you to go with her to the store!”
In under five minutes, Jo has her girls up and moving, shoes on their feet, the money folded and tucked into Nancy’s hip pocket.
“So we should go and… get ice cream? You want us to get some for after dinner for everyone?”
“No. Stay there and eat a cone, please,” Jo says at the door, waving for the girls to get a move on. She can see Jimmy out in the street, throwing a long, steady pitch to Edwin Marks, his school friend. She closes the door hurriedly, trusting that the kids will do as they’ve been told.
“Bill?” Jo calls out hesitantly once the house is silent. She smooths down the front of her dress and takes a tentative step into the hallway. The smell of pot roast fills the house, and she glances at her watch: the meat still needs to cook for another forty minutes.
“Honey?” Jo stops at the closed door of their bedroom, wringing her hands. Bill had stormed into the house with an angry cloud hanging over his head, and it was clear to Jo in an instant that something had gone terribly wrong. “Can I come in?”
There is no response. Jo raps lightly on the door with her knuckles.
“Jo,” Bill rasps. “I need some time here.”
Her first inclination is to honor her husband’s wish and walk away, but something in Jo snaps, and she puts her hand on the doorknob. “I’m coming in,” she says with a force that she normally reserves for the children.
Jo pushes open the door to find Bill sitting on the floor, back to the wall beneath the window. The curtains have been yanked shut, and one of them overlaps the other haphazardly. Bill’s elbows are on his knees, his head in his hands. He does not look up at Jo, but instead makes an angry noise.
“I asked you to give me some time.”
“Bill,” Jo says, forcing herself to cross the room and sit on the floor next to him. She places her back against the wall and looks in the same direction they’re facing, which is at the sliding closet door. “We’re a team,” she whispers, willing herself not to touch him. If Jo knows anything, it’s that putting a hand on Bill when he isn’t expecting it and doesn’t want it will only result in some sort of negative response. She’s had her feelings hurt in the past by the way he likes to keep to himself and solve his own things without involving her. “I’m here for you,” she adds, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs.
Bill gives a single shake of his head and keeps his face buried in his hands. “We are a team, but on some things, we aren’t.”
His words chill Jo to the bone. “Oh?” she says, trying to sound curious and not hurt. “Is that how you see it? Because I see it differently.” Jo waits, hoping to choose her next words carefully. “I’m here every single day, supporting you. I take care of the house and the kids, and when you come home, all I want to do is hear how your day was. I want to talk to you, but you shut me out. Not always like this,” she says, waving a hand around at the darkened bedroom and at the fact that they’re sitting on the floor, “but you keep your work life and your inner thoughts to yourself. I want to hear you, Bill. I want to see you. I want to know you.”
This finally gets a response from Bill. He lifts his head and turns it so that he’s looking at Jo with wounded eyes. “You want to know me? You want to know me, Josephine?”
Jo forces herself not to look away. “Yes,” she says. “I do. I sometimes feel like your coworkers know you better than I do.”
“Hardly,” Bill huffs.
Jo doesn’t take the bait. She holds firm. “So, if I picked up the phone and called Ed Maxwell right now and asked what happened today at the Cape, he wouldn’t be able to give me some clue as to why you were acting this way?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Bill says in a clipped tone.
Jo softens her tone. “No, of course I wouldn’t! I’m just saying that I bet Ed knows more about what’s going on with you right now than I do. I’m making a point, which is that you share more with everyone else during your day than you do with me.” And the real point she’s making is that he shares more of his day with Jeanie Florence than he does with her, but the words won’t come out of her mouth, nor does she think they should.
Bill puts his head in his hands again. “Jo,” he says in a tight voice. “Of course they know more about my day than you do. Those are my coworkers. That’s my job. We have the same goals and missions, and we have to share the intricacies of our days and our work. When I come home, sometimes I don’t want to talk about anything.”
“What about now?” Jo presses. “What’s going on with you now? Why are you back here with the curtains closed?”
“Are you going to interrogate me every time I need to shut out the world for a little while?”
“No, but I’m going to ask questions if you’re going to a therapist but still isolating yourself in the dark without giving me any clue as to why.”
“Seeing a therapist isn’t like waving a magic wand over your life, Jo.”
She tries not to sound as hurt as she feels by Bill’s condescending tone. “I never thought it was. But I did think that we were making progress. Now I feel like maybe I was mistaken.”
Something about her words pushes Bill’s buttons, because he stands up quickly, startling Jo. She looks up at her angry, looming husband as he stands there in the darkened bedroom, his figure hulking and leering down at her.
“Any progress I make with Dr. Sheinbaum is my progress,” Bill says defensively, jabbing a finger at his own chest as he speaks. “The work I do there is for me , and if it ultimately benefits all of you, then great. But I’m the one who has to share my deepest, darkest feelings, and I’m the one who has to take directions from some woman I don’t even know.”
Jo is torn between staying small and shrunken there on the floor, and standing up to hold her head high and let Bill know that his quickly changing moods won’t intimidate her. She chooses the latter, pushing herself to her knees and then standing. Though he’s several inches taller than she is, Jo steps close to him and looks right up into her husband’s face.
“And I’m the one who has to tiptoe around here like you’re made of glass,” she says tersely, not letting her eyes shift away from him. “I’m the one who has to tell the kids that everything is okay with Daddy, and I’m the one who keeps a positive smile on the face of this family so that no one knows that you’re just as likely to come home and slam our bedroom door in my face as you are to sit in the kitchen and actually talk to me.” Jo takes a few steps toward the door of the bedroom and then stops, turning back to Bill. “Actually, that’s not true: you’re far more likely to shut me out than you are to talk to me.”
She holds his eyes for a long, meaningful moment and then walks the rest of the way to the door, yanking it open and then slamming it shut behind her as she heads back to the kitchen to finish making dinner.
Bill Booker can take his dark moods and go get stuffed, as far as Jo is concerned.
* * *
Frankie isn’t even hugely pregnant yet, but she’s already walking with a slight sway to her lower back, one hand rubbing her barely bulging belly.
“Wow,” she says, awed. “You really stormed out on him?”
Jo is the one smoking a cigarette on this evening walk; Frankie had handed her the pack and her lighter as soon as they’d met on the street, telling Jo that she didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. “The baby hates cigarettes,” she’d said, waving a hand in front of her face as she stuck out her tongue. “They’re all yours.”
Now, walking around the edge of the little park in their neighborhood, Jo’s cigarette tip glows orange in the encroaching darkness. She exhales. “I stormed right out,” she confirms, slipping her free hand into the pocket of her skirt. “I’m tired of it, Frank. I’m a patient woman, and I want to help my husband, but how much am I expected to tolerate, you know? He comes in and ignores me completely, then slams a door? Seriously?”
Frankie is watching Jo’s profile as they stroll at a slower pace than normal. “Well,” she says carefully. “There is a certain amount of tolerance that we have to have in order to make marriage work, right?”
“And do they have to exhibit the same amount of tolerance when it comes to us?” Jo asks, looking at Frankie with hot eyes. “Am I allowed to storm around the house like a teenage girl and just shut people out while he manages everything? If I acted like him, no one would get fed. Nothing would get done.”
Frankie nods as she examines the back of her upper arm, slapping at a mosquito and then scratching her tanned skin. “That’s true. And I am on your side here, Joey-girl—I’m always on your side—but the guys do have fairly challenging jobs, you know.”
Jo stops walking. “Of course I know. I’m not allowed to live a single day without being reminded that Bill’s career is the most important thing in the world.”
“Ouch,” Frankie says, wincing at Jo’s sarcastic tone. “Your work is important, too.”
“Not to Bill.” Jo takes another drag on the cigarette. “You know, I never even bothered to tell him about the literary agent.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“No.” Jo shrugs. “He’s always somewhere else. He lives in his head. The most we talk about it stuff that comes up about the kids.”
“It wasn’t always like this, was it? When you guys still lived in Minnesota?”
Jo looks incredulous. “God. No. Bill was a different man. We laughed all the time. He was fully present, and he loved spending time with me and the kids.” She drops the cigarette butt on the pavement and grinds it out. “Don’t get me wrong—I know he’s under a lot of pressure and stress, but have things really changed so much? I’m still the same woman. The kids are the same, but they’re growing up fast and changing in their own ways… I don’t want him to miss everything.”
Frankie is looking at her with a probing stare. “And there are things you don’t want to miss, either, right?”
Jo blinks at her as she folds her bare arms across her chest. “Yeah,” she finally admits, feeling exposed. “I don’t want to miss what’s going on right under my nose. I don't want to lose my husband while I’m looking the other way. No amount of hospital volunteering and no amount of writing accolades are worth losing Bill.”
Frankie puts a hand on Jo’s arm and holds her gaze. “Keep trying,” she says gently. “I’ve been there.” Her eyes search Jo’s. “I’ve been in the place where you think you’re losing everything and like you can’t get it back, but you can. You just have to stay the course.”
Jo sighs heavily, looking up at the first stars in the evening sky. “I know,” she says, sounding as defeated as she feels. “But I really need him to make it worth the effort of hanging on when it gets hard. I need to see a glimpse of the old Bill and not have any more dinner dates where I storm out of a restaurant and start walking home.”
Frankie winces at the memory of this. “Tell him that,” she urges Jo. “Tell him how you feel.”
They start the walk back to Jo’s house, where Frankie says goodbye at the edge of the driveway as she always does. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Joey-girl,” she says, blowing a kiss as she walks on. “Go in there and talk to him, okay?” she says encouragingly.
Jo nods and waves back. And she does mean to go inside and talk to Bill. She checks each of the kids’ rooms and finds them in their beds, but Bill is nowhere to be found.
Puzzled, Jo opens the door from the kitchen to the garage, flipping on the light.
The garage is empty; Bill’s car is gone.