Chapter 17
Claire doesn’t hear from Martha for the rest of the month.
It’s not a surprise given their last conversation, and Martha will need time to recover from childbirth, but it’s still strange not to hear from her for such a long stretch.
Not even a phone call. Martha’s curtains stay closed in the weeks after she returns from the hospital.
Claire learns through Pete’s occasional chats with Walter that they’ve named the baby Daniel.
Jackie also disappears for a week around the same time.
She has a high-paying extended gig in San Jose, and she’s opted to get a hotel rather than driving for hours every day.
It leaves Claire with nothing to do outside of the household chores, which she’s gotten down to an art at this point to make time in her day for other things.
If only to fill the time, Claire finally sets up the paints Jackie gifted her in the sunniest corner of her kitchen table. She sits in front of the mini-easel, a brush in her hand, poised to start.
Nothing comes to mind. Claire has so many colors to choose from, and yet she can’t call to mind a single image that she wants to commit to paper. She flips through her sketchbook, but none of her drawings call to her.
After a whole fruitless hour, Claire dials Anita’s number.
“Cozy Corner Arts and Crafts, how can I help you?” Anita says cheerfully. There’s a pottery wheel working in the background of the call.
“It’s me. Claire, I mean. Davis,” Claire says, wincing at her own stammering. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”
The pottery wheel stops abruptly, followed by the thunk of what Claire can only assume is a large hunk of clay hitting the floor. “Damn—no, not interrupting. Or if you are, I welcome it. I can’t get this goddamn bowl to shape up the way I want.”
“I know the feeling,” Claire says.
“Happy to hear from you either way,” Anita says cheerfully. “I was hoping you’d be in touch after Jacqueline came to buy you those paints.”
“I tried to use them today,” Claire says. Everything is still set up at the other end of the table, the unused water cup taunting her in the sunlight. “I couldn’t do it. I stared at the paper for an hour and nothing came. This used to be easy, didn’t it?”
“You’re rusty. It’ll take time to get back in the saddle. We all change over time, dear.”
“I suppose we do,” Claire says. “When you knew me—I mean, before I married Pete. What was your impression of me?”
“My impression?”
“Your memory of who I was. Lately I’ve been feeling…strange,” Claire admits. “Like I don’t know myself anymore.”
Anita makes a thoughtful noise. “My impression of you…you were whip-smart. Honest. Shy, but when someone got you on about art, you’d talk their ear off,” Anita says. “And…lonely, I’d say.”
“Lonely?”
“Different. You had friends, and eventually you started seeing that boy,” Anita says, apparently determined to continue her tradition of not using Pete’s name, “but I always felt you only shared the surface with everyone. The rest came out in your art.”
“I’m not sure what the rest is,” Claire says. Based on the blank white paper she’s staring at, the answer is nothing. “I saw myself as not much at all, then. A nobody. Waiting to bloom, like my mother always said. I want to think I’ve gotten past that, but sometimes I think I’m still waiting.”
“You were always bloomed then, chickadee,” Anita says. “Your petals just looked different than the rest. I think you were waiting to…” Anita pauses. Claire can hear her tapping her fingers against a surface. “To be, maybe.”
Claire rolls a paintbrush between her fingers. “Waiting to be what, exactly?”
“Whatever you were meant to be,” Anita says simply. “Find it, and the art will come.”
Claire sits with that, after hanging up the phone.
She has no idea what she’s meant to be. Being around Jackie has brought out new things in her—is that what Anita means?
Under Jackie’s camera lens she felt herself became something worthy of being photographed, like one of Jackie’s impossible flowers.
Claire had put it down to Jackie’s talent in finding beauty in the unremarkable, but maybe Jackie was just finding something that was already there. Something interesting on its own.
Claire gathers her supplies and carries everything out to the backyard, setting the mini easel up on the grass and kneeling in front of it. The breeze ruffles her hair. She breathes in the fresh air, and for the first time in years she puts brush to paper.
She ends up with something abstract. It’s all shades of blue, ripples and waves interspersed with white. She’s not sure what it is, exactly, but looking at it gives her a sense of comfort.
~ ~ ~
August has turned to a warm September when Jackie returns.
A mere hour after the Mustang pulls into the drive after her week away, Claire is knocking on her door. It’s a hot day for early autumn, and Claire can hear movement inside—the back door sliding open and closed, footsteps through the house.
And then Jackie is answering the door in a yellow bikini.
Claire had seen Jackie in a bathing suit that afternoon by the pool with Theo, but this time is different.
There’s no sarong. It’s not a one-piece with cutout sides.
It’s nothing but skin, warm dark tones against the yellow fabric, and there’s just so much of it.
It’s like someone drew her up in a laboratory in the quest to make a perfect specimen of womanhood.
Claire isn’t sure she truly understood the term hourglass figure until this moment.
Jackie’s bust seems more generous than ever with so little fabric covering it up.
There’s a lovely dip between Jackie’s ribs and her hips, a spot that seems to beg for a hand to be resting there, and another between hip and thigh.
There’s a scattering of dark moles across her torso.
There’s a thin line of dark hair that trails down the middle of her belly, over the swell under her bellybutton, and disappears under her bikini bottoms.
At the very edges of Jackie’s bikini line, Claire can see more dark, curly hair.
“Great timing. I was just thinking of calling you,” Jackie says, leaning against the doorframe. She doesn’t seem to notice Claire’s eyeline, but that doesn’t make Claire any less ashamed of it. “I missed you this week. Come on in.”
“You’re swimming,” Claire says loudly, already spinning around to head back towards her own house. Her face is so hot that she’s sure her blush must be visible from the moon. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jackie calls after her. “Why would that stop you from visiting?”
Claire stops, but doesn’t yet turn around.
“I…don’t know,” Claire says, still staring resolutely at Jackie’s mailbox. Her heart is beating so hard that she’s sure the fluttering can be seen under her dress. “It feels rude to impose?”
“Just go get your suit. We’ll swim together,” Jackie says.
“I don’t have a suit,” Claire says, finally daring to look directly at Jackie again. It’s a lie, of course, but Claire would rather not swim at all than have Jackie see her in that shabby homemade number.
“Not even one? Do you not like to swim?”
Claire rubs her arms self-consciously. “I don’t often have the chance.”
Jackie hums. She shifts her weight, cocking a hip, and Claire stares very carefully at a spot on the side of Jackie’s house. “At least come sit with me?”
Claire trails Jackie through the kitchen, avoiding the wet footprints all over the linoleum.
She’s wearing her regular clothes today, rather than the ones Jackie bought, a brown dress with yellow flowers and a low bun, and she kicks off her shoes before taking a seat on a lounge.
For once, she lays back comfortably rather than sitting up straight.
“I do like to swim,” Claire finally admits when they’re settled, staring up at the rainbow pattern on the deck umbrella. She feels a bit like she’s in a therapist’s office, reclined on one of those couches while she confesses her sins. “I think.”
“I thought so. Didn’t I see a bunch of cabin photos in your house?” Jackie asks. Her hair is gathered on top of her head in a loose updo, and Claire can’t stop looking at the seldom-seen column of her neck.
“Oh, yes. Pete’s family owns it,” Claire says, looking up at the canopy above to keep from staring at Jackie’s neck. “But I don’t usually swim there. He goes hunting, and I get to spend the weekend with his mother.” Claire can’t quite keep a leash on the resentment in that sentence.
Jackie snorts. “There’s a story behind that tone.”
“She and Pete are very close,” Claire says, clasping her hands hard over her stomach. “Rita always has something to say about how I’m doing as a wife.”
Jackie hums. “Sounds like my mother.”
“Does she also critique your cooking and your body and the fact that you haven’t had children yet?” Claire says. She tries to raise an eyebrow—one of Jackie’s trademark expressions, and one Claire isn’t sure her face can fully manage.
Jackie laughs. “The last point, definitely. Along with every other life choice I make.”
“You don’t deserve that,” Claire says, much more softly.
“Neither do you.”
Claire hums. She leans back, turning her face towards the sky again and closing her eyes. “I lied, earlier. I do have a bathing suit. Just one. But it’s…” Claire pauses, choosing her words carefully. “Rita made it for me. It doesn’t fit very well.”
“So she made you wear her wedding dress, and she controls what you swim in?” Jackie asks, not bothering to hide her incredulity.
“She makes most of my clothes. Pete says it saves us money.” Claire toys with her pearls. Maybe she’s getting too honest now, a little too comfortable in revealing the more embarrassing parts of her life. But if she can’t share everything with Jackie, who can she share with?
“Why don’t you borrow one of mine instead?” Jackie says suddenly.
Claire’s eyes fly open.