9. Jeanie
CHAPTER 9
Jeanie
It all comes back to her: the phone call. The tears. The shock. The silence. Everything about this moment gives Jeanie a shiver of familiarity, and a dark cloud falls over her as she’s thrown back in time, remembering the day she and her mother found out that her father had been killed in action.
Also familiar to Jeanie is Bill's reaction to the news that Jo delivers to him quietly near the pool: he falls to his knees; he makes a keening sound like an animal in pain; he looks like a man who has been wounded and may not recover.
They all watch in horror as Jo tries to pull her husband to his feet and bring him into the house. She clearly wants to get him to safety.
After Bill goes inside, the backyard remains silent. Everyone looks at one another to decide what they should be doing. Even the kids have picked up on the change in the atmosphere. Vicki’s smile vanishes, and her wide, made-up eyes flit from face to face; as the biggest outsider at the event, she has no context, no idea what to do with herself, no clue as to who the players are in this scenario.
In the end, everyone gathers their things and their children and leaves through the side gate.
Jeanie looks around now at the mess and thinks that perhaps she should stay and clean things up. After all, whatever trauma is going on inside the Booker home shouldn’t be amplified by what looks like a party that ended in some sort of kidnapping or disappearance of the humans.
“Hey, Vicki,” she says to her friend, who is sipping a beer at the picnic table as the first fireworks go off in the distance. The sky is still somewhat light. “Let’s pick up a bit and then get out of here, huh?”
Vicki shrugs. “I mean, the party does appear to be over.” She looks around at the paper plates, empty cups and bottles, and the inflatable ball floating in the pool like a lonely beacon of hope drifting across the water. “And the lady of the manor will be the one to clean all this up. That won’t do.” She pats the table with both hands and stands up decisively. “Yep. Let’s whip this into shape for her.”
Jeanie takes the barbecue, turning it off and removing the steaks that Bill had left cooking. She sets them on a tray and covers the whole thing with a piece of crinkled aluminum foil. Vicki walks around the yard collecting empty cans, bottles, and cups, tossing them all in a paper grocery bag that she found near the sliding door. Jeanie stacks the empty plates and cutlery into a pile, and then walks around gathering napkins that have blown away, as well as anything else that she can find that doesn’t belong in a backyard. She puts it all in the center of the picnic table on top of the tablecloth, then folds the ends up around it so that it makes a neat pile of picnic trash.
Jeanie looks around, surveying the yard. It’s the best they can do without going into the house, which is something she does not want to do. But hopefully Jo will come out later and appreciate the fact that the entire mess hasn’t been left for her.
“Let’s get out of here, princess,” Vicki says, slinging an arm around Jeanie’s shoulders as the fireworks begin to go off in earnest.
They drive home in Jeanie’s yellow VW Bug together with the windows down. Dionne Warwick is singing “Walk on By” on the radio, and the sky has suddenly dropped off into darkness, providing the perfect backdrop for the bright bursts of light that go off intermittently.
“The Fourth of July is magical,” Vicki says. “Hot and sultry, with the added punch of explosives, a bit of alcohol, and the feeling that you’re celebrating something real, but still completely intangible. I’ve always loved it.”
It’s such a Vicki thing to say that Jeanie laughs. “I always think of it as hotdogs and scraped knees and falling to sleep on a blanket in the grass because I can’t stay up late enough to watch all the fireworks.”
“Well, it isn’t over yet, darlin’,” Vicki says. “Pull over here.” She points at a spot on the street that runs parallel to the beach. “Let’s get out and watch the big show from the sand, shall we?”
The women park and then look both ways, crossing the street hand-in-hand as they hurry across the pavement and down onto the sand. They both immediately kick off their shoes and find a spot on the hard-packed sand where they can see the lights of the fireworks shooting up into the sky all around them. Jeanie sits down and digs her toes into the cool sand.
“Tell me about it, princess.”
“Tell you about what?” Jeanie asks, letting her head fall back as she plants her hands in the sand behind her and trains her gaze on the sky.
“Tell me why you looked white as a sheet when your friend Bill got that phone call.”
Jeanie stays silent for a long time. When she finally speaks, she doesn’t look at Vicki. “It was my dad. He died in the war. I was just a kid, but I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when she got the call. It came just minutes before we got a knock on the door, so that was unfortunate. The military apparently prefers to let a woman know to her face that she’s just become a widow, but somehow the timing was off.”
“That is unfortunate,” Vicki says softly.
“It was.” Jeanie chews on the inside of her cheek. “And I understand that Jo Booker wasn’t getting that kind of call tonight, but I think the shock of finding out that anyone has died kind of casts a pall over a party, doesn’t it?”
“Well sure.” Vicki blows out a long breath. “It’s a bit of a wet blanket.”
“And Bill’s face once he finally looked at Jo…it was like he knew instantly that she was going to tell him something horrible.” She shudders now at the memory of Jo standing there, stunned, and no one hearing her as she’d called out for her husband.
“Marriage will do that,” Vicki says. “You get to where you know someone so well that they barely need to speak, and sometimes they don’t need to at all. My husband and I were like that, once upon a time. He could glance at my face and know in an instant whether one of the kids was hurt, whether I needed him to stop what he was doing and just listen, or if something serious was going on. It’s just like that.”
Jeanie is quiet. She has no real clue what marriage is like, but she’d watched Jo and Bill this evening and the way they moved together in a dance that seemed almost coordinated, and all she could feel was…like an outsider.
“I remember my parents being like that,” Jeanie says. “But it feels like so long ago. I can hardly remember. Anyway, the whole thing just took me back to that time, and all I could remember was that palpable feeling of horror. Just knowing that someone was dead and that the news had arrived completely unexpected.”
Vicki puts an arm around Jeanie’s shoulders. “Hey, I get it. It brings back bad memories. I could see it all over your face.”
Jeanie leans her head on Vicki’s shoulder. “I’m okay, I just hated that for them.”
The women sit there for a moment as the people closest to them clap and cheer for a particularly bright and impressive fireworks display. Once it quiets down, Vicki jostles Jeanie slightly. “And what about you and the Lieutenant Colonel?” she asks softly. “You gonna tell me what’s going on there?”
Jeanie pulls away and looks at Vicki with wide eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, Jeanette,” Vicki scoffs. “Anyone with eyes can see that the two of you have some sort of interest in one another.”
Jeanie does all the things that a person who is both surprised and caught red-handed might do: she blinks, she looks away, and she turns pink. “No…it’s not like that. I swear.”
Vicki tilts her head to one side, looking at Jeanie with amusement. “Honey, don’t swear too loudly to that, because it’s clear as day that you’ve got eyes for that man. Does he know? Have you told him?”
Jeanie puts a hand to her cheek. “No, of course not.” She turns to face the water, staring straight ahead. Had she ever thought about Bill in that kind of straightforward manner? Has she thought to herself I’m in love with Bill Booker ? No, certainly not, because she isn’t in love with Bill. But is she interested in him as more than a friend? Is there a part of her that thinks about him as a man and not just a coworker? Jeanie thinks about this for a long, hard minute. And when she’s done contemplating it, she knows that Vicki is right.
“Oh, princess,” Vicki says softly. “You got it bad.”
Jeanie turns to look at her. “You think so?”
“I think so.”
Jeanie scoots in closer and puts her head on Vicki’s shoulder again. She sighs. “That can’t happen.”
There isn’t much to say to that, so the women stay quiet and watch the fireworks together until the show dies down and they make their way back across the street with their shoes in hand. They drive back to their condo barefoot and Jeanie falls asleep almost the second her head hits the pillow.