Overheard over Ice Cream
The children and I were at the Caboose, getting our ice creams after sailing lessons.
We had just settled into our usual spot at one of the picnic tables, with our bikes leaned up against the side of the building.
I’d long since given up my one-cone-a-week vow, along with the idea of sticking to lower calorie sherbet, though thanks to tennis I had trimmed down anyway.
Each of us had gotten two scoops, with jimmies.
A few tables over from us, a couple of women were eating fried clams. I didn’t recognize the one whose face I could see. The other one had her back to me, but her voice was instantly recognizable, as was her hair. Hurricane Brenda.
She didn’t see me. Maybe she wouldn’t even have recognized me if she had.
Brenda was not the sort of person who paid attention to people like me—someone else’s teenage babysitter.
Never mind that I was babysitting the kids of the man she was having sex with.
I was pretty sure she didn’t recognize Jilly and Hayward either.
Brenda struck me as the kind of person who mostly paid attention to herself.
She leaned in to speak with her friend, though she seemed to make no effort to lower her voice. It was almost as if she wanted to be overheard. She was probably accustomed to getting attention, and liked it.
“I’m telling you, Lorraine. Nobody ever touched me the way he does,” she said. “It’s like his tongue wants to reach into the depths of my soul.”
That didn’t sound particularly appealing to me. But the friend seemed fascinated.
“I haven’t said anything to Kyle yet,” Brenda told her friend. “But it’s over between us. It’s going to break his heart. But I have to be true to myself. I can’t live a lie anymore.”
This was Brenda for you. She never stopped spewing soap opera dialogue.
“This guy’s married, huh?” the friend asked Brenda.
“In a way,” she said. “His wife’s a nutcase.”
“But it’s her house, right? Her family’s got a ton of money. The great-grandfather invented Scotch tape or Wite-Out or something.”
“It’s all pretty complicated,” Brenda said. “Only it’s not, really. It’s like . . . we’re two bodies with one soul. Once you understand that, all that other stuff doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just details.”
I looked across the table to where Jilly sat.
She was feeding ice cream to Molly, her favorite American Girl.
For a moment, the picture came to me of how it would be for her if her father said he was moving out of the house and marrying Brenda.
This was what Brenda meant when she talked about “details.”
I remembered that, back in New Jersey, my father was going to be moving out too.
Only that was different. My father’s departure from our apartment would probably feel like a relief.
For Jilly and Hayward—and for Regina—the possibility of Forrest running off with Brenda would bring about the end to any possibility of future happiness or joy at Wonderland.