Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
I WAKE UP AT SIX, WHICH IS THREE AM. IN LA. I SHOULD be tired, but that first adrenal rush of waking up and not knowing where I am has me overly alert. The sun is up but barely, which is the best part of the day. My mom texted in the middle of the night: Great, have fun!
I check my Instagram, and there is a reply from Jack: Thanks for reaching out. If you are interested in upcoming tour information, please visit my website.
There is nothing less satisfying than a reply from a bot. It took all of my courage to send a message he’ll never see. In the story of Jack and me, this tracks.
Dan is just across from me, an arm’s length away in the bottom bunk. He’s on his back, still in the white T-shirt he traveled in. He looks younger when he sleeps, and his face is monochrome without the flash of his blue eyes. His black eyebrows look penciled in, like he’s an ink drawing. The straight line of his nose makes me think of the statue of David. His lips are at rest; they’re not preparing to debate me. They’re just resting there, soft. He turns toward me, and the thing I want more than anything is to not be caught staring at him while he sleeps. I slam my eyes shut and count to thirty. Then I stretch a little in my sleep and make a big show of just having awakened. It’s a waste of perfectly good acting because he’s still sound asleep.
I will the bed not to creak and beg my body to be light as I peel off my covers, stand, and grab my suitcase. I cannot risk the sound of a zipper unzipping in this tiny space, so I take my whole suitcase into the bathroom with me. When my teeth are brushed, I rinse with a tiny, silent stream of water and get dressed. Unfortunately, the toilet has to be flushed, and the sound roars throughout the house. She’s up! She’s peed! the toilet screams.
I carry my running shoes as I tiptoe by the kitchen to the front door.
“Coffee?” Cormack is at the kitchen table with the New York Post and a big mug.
“Good morning. No, thank you. I’m going to go for a quick run first.”
“Where?”
It’s a great question. I’m not really sure where I am. “Maybe I’ll run twenty minutes in one direction and then turn around.”
Cormack tears off a corner of the newspaper and scribbles something on it. “That sounds like a terrible plan. Call me if you get lost.” He holds out the paper to me without getting up. He’s written “Dad” and his phone number. Maybe it’s because I’ve just woken up and I’m still tangentially close to that dreamlike state where anything is possible, maybe it’s because I am on the hell path of memory lane and I’ve been transformed back into Janey Jakes, but looking at that word makes my throat burn with prickly tears. It’s a noun that’s magically transformed into a name just by capitalizing the first letter, like “dawn” or “rose.” It’s a name that could have been on the bottom of so many birthday cards but wasn’t. I tuck it into the back of my phone case, and leave without saying anything.
It’s a cool morning and perfectly quiet. I normally run to the melody of the cars on San Vicente Boulevard, but here I don’t hear anything. Potatoes grow in complete silence. I run alongside a mile of fields until I get to the left turn that takes me to town. On Main Street I start to smell the salt in the air. There’s a faint crunch of sand on the sidewalk as I run, left by yesterday’s kids coming straight from the beach for ice cream. It’s hard to imagine this town overrun for a week with concertgoers and rock stars. I pass a gift shop called Sundries with a rainbow of Oak Shore T-shirts in the window.
When I’ve reached the edge of town, houses line the road, and beyond them is the ocean. The sun is low still, dappling pink light on the water. I turn around at the end of a big park and head back to town. Chippy’s Diner is the only place open. I order a black coffee to go, and the man behind the counter asks me if that will be all. Without thinking, I take the little scrap of paper out of my phone case and text Cormack: It’s Jane. I’m at Chippy’s, want anything?
Cormack: Yes! Can you get me a blueberry muffin? The kind without the flaxseeds and stuff
I ask for six of them, and while I wait, I add Cormack to my contacts. Where it says name, I type: Dad. I don’t know why I do this, though I do know why.
*
CORMACK’S SITTING OUT on the patio with a little blackhaired girl, maybe six, at his feet. She’s Aidan’s, I think. I stop before I get to them because the view has changed. Instead of the old shed blocking the rows of bushes, there’s an arbor covered in ivy that perfectly frames a bit of the potato field. It’s the thing you’d stand under to recite your wedding vows. The lines of crops converge in the distance, brown stripes of dirt alternating with green rows of bushes.
“What is this?” I ask, handing him the bag of muffins.
“It’s art or some nonsense,” he says and hands one to the little girl. “Top secret,” he tells her. There’s steam coming out of the bag, and he lets it touch every part of his face. He smiles at me. “Thank you.”
I take a muffin and settle in next to him. “Hi,” I say to the little girl. She’s arranging pebbles on the deck.
“I’m Ruby,” she says and looks up at me with Dan’s eyes. It’s astounding, the resemblance, and also her mass of loose black curls.
“I’m Jane,” I say.
“I know,” she says and goes back to work.
“Aidan’s,” Cormack says. “The rest of them will swarm this place soon. They’ve all taken some time off this week. I don’t know why. It’s August, not Christmas.”
“Where did this arbor come from?” I ask him. “Wasn’t there an old shed there?”
“It’s Danny. An old project of his. You know he’s a little . . .” He moves his hand like he means Dan’s so-so. “It wasn’t a shed. It’s the frame of their old swing set. When he was about thirteen, he moved it to that spot, removed the swings, and then trained all that ivy crap to grow up the sides.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“I suppose,” he says. “He comes home and trims it, and then he takes pictures and stares at them like the potatoes are Greta Garbo.”
I laugh.
“It is nice to have Dan back,” Cormack says. I feel that old ache for that simple thing—a dad who would be happy to see me.
“It must be hard having a child live so far away.”
“Well, yes, I guess. We always thought he’d come home, get a real job.”
“In LA, working in movies is a pretty real job.”
“Artsy jobs end in homelessness. No offense. It’s just a fact.” He looks at me sideways. “I work in heating and cooling. Done it my whole life. And let me tell you, it always gets hot and then cold. People always need their systems serviced and fixed. I always have work.”
Regular work does sound oddly relaxing at this point in my life. “And Connor’s a dentist,” I say.
“People are always going to have teeth.”
“Finn’s an electrician.”
“Someone’s gotta keep the lights on.”
“What does Aidan do?”
“Plumber,” he says.
“Everybody poops,” I say. Cormack laughs, and I feel a disproportionate amount of joy at having caused it. His laugh has fingers that wrap around my heart.
I polish off the rest of my muffin, still warm. The sun is all the way up over the potato fields and the straight brown lines between the green bushes seem brighter. There’s noise in the kitchen, and Paula comes out with baby Katie and pulls a chair from the table so that we are all in a row.
“Who got muffins?” Paula asks.
“Jane,” says Cormack. He hands her the bag. “You’re sworn to silence.”
“The calm before the storm,” she says.
“Is there going to be a storm?” I sort of like the idea of it. We don’t really get weather in Los Angeles, and it would be exciting to see dark clouds roll in over the Atlantic, like in the movies.
Cormack laughs. “No, she just means breakfast. Reenie’s going all out this week because everyone’s around for the anniversary party. It’s like a diner for a couple of hours and then she throws everyone out.”
“Did I sleep late?” It’s Dan, behind us. He walks out with coffee. His hair is wild and his sweatpants are low on his hips. I have a quick thought that he looks like a bed you’d want to climb back into on a Sunday. Because it’s raining outside, and your body just wants to sink back into the warmth. I look away from him and shake off the thought before he sees it on my face.
“No, but we ate all the muffins,” Cormack says.
“Muffins? Who smuggled those in?”
Ruby gets to her feet, arms up to be lifted and swung onto his shoulders. No one seems to blush about the way his shirt rides up when he does this, revealing the low ridges of his stomach. I raise my gaze to the safety of their matching sets of eyes.
“I got some on my way back from my run,” I say. Cormack gives me a sideways glance and then looks away, innocent.
“Where’s the bag?” Dan’s voice seems kind of intense for a man with a six-year-old balancing on his head.
I pick up the bag from where it’s sitting by my feet and hand it to him. He shoves it under his shirt as his mom comes through the door. “Good morning! Who’s hungry?”
“Starving,” says Cormack, who’s eaten two muffins already. He gets up and gives her a quick squeeze.
Paula shakes her head. “You’ll get used to it.”
*
brEAKFAST IS A circus. We spin the lazy Susan and pass plates of bacon and sliced grapefruit. The pancakes are thin and crispy on the outside; Dan rolls his up and eats it like a crepe. When everyone leaves, I can still feel the hum of their conversation. Who’s going where, who’s grabbing whose kids. Who needs to chew with their mouth closed.
“So you’ve already been to town and won over my dad?” Dan asks when we’re loading the dishwasher.
“Yes, but it was early, everything but the diner was closed. What’s our plan today? Stake out the town? Hang around the Owl Barn?”
“Jack’s definitely here, and he stopped by the Owl Barn yesterday afternoon. I told Finn we’d go around four, but he’ll text us if Jack shows up earlier. So we sort of have the whole day till then.”
“I should work,” I say. I cannot imagine how Dan and I would spend a whole day together.
He’s drying his mother’s cast-iron skillet and is a million miles away.
“The library,” I say. “Maybe I’ll go there today to work.” He doesn’t reply until he’s placed the skillet back on the stove.
“I love pancakes,” he says. “Did you like them?”
“I did. But tomorrow I’ll remember not to have a muffin before . . .”
He reaches out and covers my mouth with his hand. He seems as surprised as I am that he’s done this, but he leaves it there for a second. I take in the smooth feel of his palm on my lips, and he watches me. His hand smells faintly of lemony dish soap, and for a quick second I think that lemony dish soap on smooth warm skin might be sexy. When he finally removes his hand, I force my lips into a hard line to squeeze away the tingle he’s left there.
“Sorry,” he says and hides the offending hand in his pocket.
“Yes,” I say, though he didn’t ask me a question. I’m nonsensical now that his palm has been on my lips. I don’t know what that was, but it is unsettling. Dan has plenty of ways to get under my skin; we don’t need another one.
“She cannot know about the muffins,” he says. “She’d kill a man for less.”
I smile at that, the fierceness with which his mother runs her kitchen. He smiles back.
“So the library today?” I ask, folding a dish towel and hanging it on the oven.
“Jane. Janey—I still can’t believe that. We’re on Long Island. In August. You have no projects going and are probably going to get fired. Let’s go to the beach.”