21. Jeanie
CHAPTER 21
Jeanie
Miranda jumps from her perch on top of the refrigerator the minute Jeanie closes the front door. The condo is quiet for the moment, and Jeanie takes advantage of it to slip her feet out of her shoes and pick up her cat.
There's a screened-in lanai off the living room, and Jeanie carries Miranda out there with her, inhaling the still-humid air of mid-September. She sits in a chair that overlooks the green grounds two floors below, watching as two older men in golf carts stop driving past one another in order to have a chat from behind the respective wheels of their carts.
"Hon? You here?" Vicki calls out, her keys jingling as she drops them on the coffee table.
"Outside," Jeanie calls back. She's got Miranda curled in her lap, and her bare feet up on the glass table where they normally sip their drinks while enjoying the lanai.
Vicki is breathless. "Hey, princess. How was work?"
Jeanie shrugs. "Work was work. I'm tired."
"I'm worried about you." Vicki flops down in the chair across from Jeanie and shoots her a look of concern. "It's not that I mind mothering you a little, hon, and I don't mind that you're still recuperating from the accident, but I'm still worried that you're in a funk."
Jeanie tries to laugh it off, but it comes out sounding false. "Yeah," she finally admits. "I guess I am in a funk."
Vicki takes off her own sandals and curls her feet up under her. "So what can we do to fix that?"
"Not The Hungry Pelican," Jeanie says quickly. "Please, not that. I'm not in the mood."
It's Vicki's turn to laugh, but hers is real, and she flips her hair off her face with one hand. "Okay, sweetheart. I promise I won't try to drag you out for drinks at a bar where all the men were born around the turn of the century."
"Or before," Jeanie adds.
This makes Vicki laugh again. "Right. Or before." She folds her arms over her chest and looks at the golf carts below as the men finish talking and drive on. "But how about we go out to dinner with my son? Steven and his friend are here from New Orleans for a few days, and they asked me to go out for seafood tonight. Come with. It'll do you some good to be around other young people." Vicki leans over and slaps Jeanie's thigh lightly, teasingly. "And Steven is a handsome boy, if I do say so myself."
"But that's exactly what I don't want," Jeanie says. "I'm not looking to be fixed up with anyone, especially, and I mean no offense, a college boy."
Vicki holds up both hands in surrender. "No offense taken. I know you're a successful, grown woman, but being around cute young men and letting them fawn over you a little might do you some good.”
Jeanie is less convinced about this, but she grudgingly lets herself be guided through an after-work cup of coffee, a quick makeup session at Vicki’s hands, and a change into a pale blue sundress with one-inch thick straps that zips up the back.
By the time Steven and his friend, Dale, arrive, Jeanie has the buzz of caffeine flowing through her veins and a game smile plastered on her face. She runs her hands down the sides of the dress nervously.
“You look gorgeous, princess,” Vicki says, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. She holds out her arms and does a quick spin for Jeanie’s approval. “How do I look? Gotta be sure I’m making my boy proud.”
Jeanie eyes her from head to toe, and, as usual, Vicki is color-coordinated and dressed for a good time. “You look beautiful,” she says honestly. For the first time in quite a while, Jeanie actually feels a little burst of energy. It’s Thursday night, she’s dressed in something other than a nightgown with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and she’s saying goodbye to Miranda rather than letting the cat curl up next to her on the couch at six-thirty in the evening.
Steven and Dale are waiting for them at a charming restaurant known for its crab cakes and fettuccini with lobster. Dale is short and freckled with a face that makes him look a bit like an overgrown Boy Scout, and Steven is tall, dark, and handsome. But young , Jeanie reminds herself. Oh. So. Young .
The guys pull out the chairs for Jeanie and Vicki, and the evening gets off to a good start as Vicki tells them all stories about raising Steven on her own after her divorce when her son was ten. It sounds to Jeanie like Vicki is exactly the sort of mom she would have imagined her to be: fun, great sense of humor, and always the one showing up places on the wrong day or at the wrong time or wearing the wrong dress.
“But I love her,” Steven says, looking at his mom with open adoration and the kind of love that makes Jeanie stop in her tracks. There’s a bond between them that’s enviable, and every time Steven says something that makes his mother throw back her head and give a throaty laugh, Jeanie thinks of her own mother—she can’t help it.
The waiter drops off plates of shrimp and scallops and fried grouper for the table to share, and Jeanie’s mind wanders. When her dad had died, rather than becoming a ballsy, “let’s get this done” kind of single mom, Melva had retreated into a shell that had forced Jeanie to grow up quickly. She’d checked out piles of books at the library and brought them home so that she could entertain herself while her mom slept or cried, and she’d learned how to cook basic meals at an age where most children weren’t allowed to even touch the stove.
When Melva met Wendell at Elmwood Country Day School, making Jeanie the ridicule of all her classmates who accused her of making her mom marry a teacher so she could get good grades, Melva had slowly come out of her shell-shocked state, then quickly given birth to Angela and Patrick and refocused her attentions on raising twins. Her hands had certainly been full, but as Jeanie watches Steven and Vicki, she feels a pang of envy that she’d never really gotten her mother to herself. Would they have become friends like this? Would they have a million stories to share about the way they’d plowed through life together, as a team?
“So your aunt Penny is my mom’s good friend,” Steven says to Jeanie from across the table. He’s sitting next to Dale, and she’s seated on the same side as Vicki. “That’s wild. Penny is great.”
Jeanie snaps out of her private thoughts about her mother and comes back to the present. “Aunt Penny,” she says, nodding. Jeanie reaches for a scallop and sets it on her appetizer plate. “Yeah, she’s a kick.” In truth, it’s been several years since she’s seen Penny, but she always has been fun and carefree.
“When I was a kid,” Steven says, as if childhood were so far in the rearview mirror that he can barely remember it, “Penny and my mom took me to Coney Island.”
“And you ate all those hot dogs and threw up,” Vicki says, laughing at the memory.
“Penny told me that if I rode the Wonder Wheel ten times in a row, she’d give me a dollar.”
Jeanie is listening as she cuts into her fried scallop. “And did you do it?”
“I did,” Steven says, grinning. “And she paid up. Unfortunately, I took that dollar and spent it all on cotton candy and popcorn, which did not help the stomach situation whatsoever.”
Dale is laughing along with them, and he talks for a while about his own childhood. There’s a moment for Jeanie as Dale talks where she feels like she’s actually inside the moment, appreciating it all: the flickering candles in hurricane lamps; the way the white wine Vicki has ordered sparkles in the clear glasses; the rosy glow of everyone’s cheeks against the warmth of their laughter. It’s like she’s committing the whole thing to memory so that she doesn’t forget how nice it is to be out with people. She wants to pull this memory from her pocket the next time she rolls up in an afghan and turns on the television instead of going for a walk to watch the sun set behind the palm trees and the mangroves.
After dinner, Vicki sees a man she knows at the bar. He’s sitting with his back to the restaurant, shoulders hunched as he works his way to the bottom of a glass of bourbon.
“Will you young people excuse me for a bit? Why don’t you go out and take a walk on the pier and I’ll meet you out there in an hour?” Vicki says.
By this point, Jeanie has had at least half the bottle of wine that Vicki ordered, and she’s feeling warm and relaxed. Her limbs are loose, and when the evening air hits her, it feels like stepping into a warm bath. She sighs with pleasure.
“I love Florida,” she says to Dale and Steven. “I really do. I thought I’d miss Chicago, but I’m never cold here, you know? And everything is just so sunny and pleasant.”
“Sure,” Dale says agreeably, hands in his pockets as they walk away from the restaurant and its weathered exterior. Like The Black Hole and The Hungry Pelican, they’re situated near water, and can easily listen to it lap against the wooden planks of the dock as they stroll.
The guys keep Jeanie between them, but neither walks close enough to touch her.
“Want a sip?” Steven asks, pulling a flask from the inner pocket of his sport coat. He uncaps it and hands it to Jeanie to sip from first.
“Chivalry is not dead,” she declares, taking it with a smile. It’s not like her to drink half a bottle of wine on a work night and then to follow it with drinks of some unknown alcohol from someone she’s just met. She feels like a whole new Jeanie. She tips her head back, and the liquid slides down her throat.
Well, first it slides, and then it burns.
Jeanie passes the flask on to Dale as she cringes and tries not to gag. “What is that? Ethylene glycol?”
The boys laugh and Dale wrinkles his nose at her. “So you really are a scientist.”
Jeanie hadn’t talked much about herself at dinner, preferring to just listen as everyone else told stories about their lives. The closest she got to sharing anything personal was when she talked about her aunt Penny.
“Sure. I am,” she says now, accepting the flask as Dale passes it back in the other direction. Without thinking, she sips it again, and this time it goes down easier. She hands it on to Steven. “I work at NASA. I’m an engineer.”
Dale gives a low whistle. “Impressive.”
Jeanie turns on him unexpectedly. “Is it though? Would you ever want to date a woman who had a master’s degree and worked for NASA? Because, to be perfectly honest, I’m finding it quite difficult to get out there and meet someone who doesn’t think that I’ll want to ‘settle down’ and raise kids as soon as I possibly can.”
Steven and Dale stay quiet as Jeanie reaches for the flask that’s in Steven’s hand and sips from it again. She’s starting to feel like her thoughts are coming out of her mouth without pausing to get her permission, and that’s a feeling she’s entirely unfamiliar with.
“I mean, I want to find love,” Jeanie goes on, gesturing wildly at the sky and its varying shades of lavender, gold, and carnation pink. It’s so beautiful that her eyes tear up unexpectedly. “I want to settle down and get married, too. But I also want to travel, and I want to go to space, and I want a career. I don’t think I can sit at home all day and push babies around the block in a pram,” she says, feeling a strangling desperation to be understood. Jeanie nearly reaches over and grabs Dale’s arm to shake him, but she doesn’t. “Do you want to marry someone who can’t even imagine herself staying home with children all day?”
Dale’s eyes are wide, and he lifts one shoulder helplessly. “I mean…I’m only twenty. I’m not sure.”
“That’s it exactly!” Jeanie says, turning back and forth between the boys to see who’s holding the flask. Steven wisely caps it and slides it back into his pocket as they stroll. “When men are young, they think they want a woman who is strong and smart and can keep up with them, but then when they get old enough that they feel like settling down, they realize that all they really want is a woman who will take the place of their mother. Someone to cook, to make the house nice, and to put the babies to bed while they read the paper.”
“Can't they want both?” Steven asks innocently.
Jeanie whips her head in his direction and realizes immediately that fast head movements make her feel like the world is spinning. She reaches out and grabs Steven’s elbow, which he fashions into a crook so that she can hang onto it for stability.
“Well, that’s novel, isn’t it?” Jeanie says indignantly. “You want a woman who can do it all and compete in a man’s world, but then you want her to come home and turn into a soft, nurturing mother-type? In what universe are there enough hours in the day for that?”
Steven’s eyes flick to Dale and they exchange a look that Jeanie registers, but doesn’t parse for meaning.
“I think Steven is just saying that some guys might like a woman who is smart and driven, but also feels the urge to have children?” It comes out like a question and Dale shrugs helplessly as he raises his eyebrows. The boys have obviously fallen down a rabbit hole and are now escorting a more-than-mildly inebriated female engineer down a dock as the sun sets.
"Maybe," Jeanie scoffs. "But I never get asked out! Not by men my age, anyway." She turns to Steven. "Your mom took me to a bar here and the only guy who talked to me was about seventy years old," she says, remembering the evening at The Hungry Pelican. "How come guys my age don't ask me out?" Jeanie looks back and forth between the two twenty-year-olds imploringly. "Am I ugly?" she asks them. "Am I?"
"No," Steven says quickly.
"No, ma'am," Dale says when Jeanie turns to him. "You're the prettiest girl I've seen on this whole trip."
Jeanie would argue with his statement, but the sincerity on his face is so sweet that it cuts through her drunkenness and touches her heart.
"Thank you, Davy," she says.
"Dale," Dale corrects her.
For some reason, this makes Jeanie break into a giggly laugh that's like champagne bubbles in her throat. "Right!" she says, slapping his bicep playfully. "Dale. I'm sorry." Jeanie grows serious again, the laughter quickly forgotten.
They walk on in silence for a bit, and then Jeanie stops, forcing Steven, whose elbow she's still hanging onto, to stop as well. Dale follows suit.
"It's just...I feel like one of those 'always the bridesmaid, never the bride' kind of girls, you know?" Steven and Dale shoot each other confused looks. "I mean, I once loved a guy--his name was Leonard Pickles, if you can believe that--and he ended up marrying my best friend. They're having their third baby together, and I'm alone. And my best friend was also the girl who tormented me so much when were kids that I could hardly take it. But that's another story." Jeanie frowns at her own jumbled thought process before picking up a different thread. "And my sister almost died last month," she says seriously, looking out at the dark water as it bobs and waves under the sky that's turning from plum to indigo.
Her eyes suddenly feel heavy, and she lets go of Steven's arm, swaying slightly as though they're standing on a boat and not a pier.
"Should we sit?" Dale suggests, putting a hand on Jeanie's lower back. He guides her to the edge of the dock, where she sinks down, legs dangling over the edge and hanging towards the water. Dale and Steven sit on either side of her, watching her closely to make sure she doesn't pitch forward and fall into the water.
"My brother was driving us and I didn't even know that he'd been drinking--oh, Lord! Look at me now, drinking here like an idiot!" Jeanie's face flames red and she puts one hand to her cheek, looking around as if someone might be watching her and taking notes on her behavior. "This is so irresponsible. I shouldn't be drinking at all."
"Hey, you're out to dinner with friends, and we're looking out for you. We'll make sure you get home safely, just as soon as my mom comes out to meet us," Steven promises her earnestly. "But please, go on. Your brother was driving."
"Yeah," Jeanie says, remembering the accident in full detail, which she hasn't really allowed herself to do for weeks. She's tried her best not to wade into the murky waters of her mind and to remember what Angela had looked like, tossed into the field, the overhead light winking at them incessantly. It's been easier to sleep and to function by forgetting the whole thing as much as she can. "We collided with a truck and my sister and I were thrown from the car. She's still not walking," Jeanie admits solemnly. "But she's still getting married. Is it wrong that it makes me jealous?"
"Of which part?" Steven asks.
"That she can't even walk, but her boyfriend is so excited to marry her that he came and proposed while she was still in the hospital. They're only eighteen."
Jeanie is making herself feel worse with every word she's saying. She really is. Of course it's terrible to be jealous of Angela, whose whole life has been flipped upside down. It's not good at all to feel anything but concern and empathy for her baby sister, and she really needs to put all of her own selfish, immature, ridiculous thoughts aside. She knows this, and yet here she is, a few drinks in and spilling her guts to two boys who probably figured that dinner out with Steven’s mom just meant a free meal and the chance to possibly meet a cute, slightly older girl. There’s no way they’d bargained for spending their evening babysitting a drunk woman whose emotions are a mess.
“Eighteen is young,” Dale agrees. “But if they’re happy…”
“They are!” Jeanie says, wiping at her nose, which has started to run. She’s now crying and there’s no way it’s anything less than ugly. “They’re happy, and so are Leonard Pickles and my best friend Carol.” Jeanie gives a shaky exhale as she tries to fight off the onslaught of tears. “Even Bill and Jo seem happy, but he does—or he did—spend a lot of time talking to me.”
Dale sounds almost afraid to ask, but he does anyway: “Who are Bill and Jo?”
“Bill is the guy I think I might be in love with.” She pauses, sobering up as the words hang in the air. “We work together.”
“At NASA?” Dale prods. “Is he an astronaut?”
“He is. And he’s married.”
Steven lets out a low whistle. “To Jo? Or maybe Josephine?”
“Yep,” Jeanie says. She nods and as she does, her head drops lower and tears fill her eyes, spilling over. A few escape and land on her bare knees. Her feet are hanging into the darkness over the water, but she can see the pale skin of her knees and thighs in the emerging moonlight, and she tugs at the hem of her light blue dress as she nods some more. “That’s right. I’m in love with a married man.”
“Seems risky,” Dale ventures. “Has his wife caught on yet?”
“Oh!” Jeanie looks up abruptly. The tears halt. “Oh, no. No no no. Jo doesn’t know anything because there’s nothing to know.”
When Jeanie looks at Steven, he’s frowning like he’s trying to understand. “You mean nothing has happened between you?”
“Of course not!” Jeanie says, sounding as outraged as she feels. “I would never. No way. I mean, feeling something for him is one thing, but acting on it is another. It’s just—why can’t I find someone who likes me? Someone who wants to be with me and no one else? And why is it that the only real feelings I have are for someone who isn’t and can never be mine?”
The boys are quiet for so long that Jeanie knows they’re treating her questions as rhetorical ones—which they are. But then Steven speaks up, clasping his hands together in his lap as he swings his legs out over the water.
“Maybe it’s easier to like guys you can’t have right now,” he says hesitantly. “Sometimes what we think we want isn’t actually what we do want. Do you know what I’m saying?”
Jeanie is just drunk enough that she doesn’t really see where he’s going with this. She shakes her head as the streaks of tears dry on her cheeks. “No.”
“Okay, what if what you’re supposed to want right now is a husband and kids? Everyone else does, and you probably feel some pressure to settle down, right?”
Jeanie tilts her head to one side; he’s not entirely wrong. “Go on.”
“But what if what you really want is to be an engineer? What if you don’t want the things that everyone expects you to want? I mean, maybe you do love this Bill guy—I’m sure he’s great. But he’s also a safe person to love, because you can’t have him right now. Or, if you can, it won’t be in the way you’re supposed to have him. So it’s easy to focus your attentions and your feelings like this. It’s safe. At least, relatively speaking. Are you getting what I’m saying now?”
Jeanie nods slowly; she is picking up on his message, and it’s absolutely worth considering. “I think so. And there are certainly parts that you’re right about: I love being an engineer. I don’t want to be alone, and I do want love, but I don’t know that I want to give up the things I’m passionate about in order to get that love. I think I want children at some point, but I don’t want them now, so it’s far easier to love a man who isn’t asking me for that than to love one whose expectation will be to move rapidly in that direction. You’re not wrong about any of that.”
“Steven is the emotional wizard of our group,” Dale says with a chuckle. “At school, whenever someone is going through something, he’s the one you want to listen and offer advice.”
Steven puts his palms together and closes his eyes, bowing his head slightly with a beatific smile on his face. “At your service,” he says jokingly.
“No, you’re really onto something here,” Jeanie says, pushing herself up to a standing position. She wobbles a bit and both boys reach up to steady her, jumping to their feet immediately in order to escort her back down the pier and to the restaurant, where Vicki will most likely be emerging soon.
“I appreciate you guys listening to me,” Jeanie says as she loops her arms through both boys’ elbows this time, letting them guide her back over the wooden planks. “I don’t know what I’d do without friends like you.” Her eyes fill with tears again and she realizes that she’s being unnecessarily sentimental with two young men who she’ll most likely never see again. But in that moment, she does appreciate them. Steven has crystallized so many of her thoughts and feelings in just a few statements, and she can’t thank him enough for his unvarnished opinions and wisdom.
“Everybody needs friends,” Dale says.
“I just—“ Jeanie is about to go on, but as she’s walking, her stomach clenches and a wave of nausea overtakes her. “Oh no,” she says, lurching towards the edge of the dock.
The boys are right behind her and they each grab an arm as she leans over the water and retches. Jeanie empties her stomach repeatedly and the hot bile mixes with tears as she chokes and splutters. When she’s done, Steven pulls a clean, white handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to her.
“You can keep it,” he says generously.
“Thanks.” Jeanie’s throat is raw from the acid in her stomach and she wipes her mouth with a shaking hand. She’s suddenly feeling almost entirely sober and wishes desperately that she could just blink her eyes and be in her own bed rather than on a dock at night in the middle of September with two college boys.
“Let’s get you back to Vicki,” Dale says, taking her arm again the way he might take his grandmother’s arm to help her cross a street. Jeanie can feel the pity radiating from both boys, but it doesn’t even offend her. In fact, it feels nice to have them looking after her when she’s messed everything up so badly.
“I’m sorry,” Jeanie says as she starts to cry. Her tears come out in little hiccups. “I’m so sorry that I ruined your night.”
“Nah,” Steven says, rubbing her back in slow circles as they walk at about half-pace. “Don’t even worry about it, Jeanie. You’re a nice girl.”
Jeanie starts to cry more at these words, because they hold so much meaning for her. She is a nice girl in the sense that she’s made all the right choices, and that she holds herself to a high standard. She loves her family, and she even loves Vicki, who has come to feel as much like an aunt to her as her own Aunt Penny. But she’s not nice because she’s been coveting another woman’s husband now for months. It’s time to remedy that, and as soon as she sobers up, she will.
She’s ready to put Bill Booker behind her and move on.
“You’re a nice girl, Jeanie,” Steven says again soothingly. “And you deserve all the good things that life has to offer.”
Dale walks along quietly on her other side, and when the two young man deliver Jeanie to Vicki, they do so without a word about Jeanie being drunk or her vomiting.
They all say their goodbyes at Vicki’s car in the lot and Jeanie climbs in, resting her head against the headrest.
Outside the car, in the parking lot, Steven and Dale wave at them before getting into their own car to head back to the house where they’re staying with a friend whose family lives in town. Jeanie is happy for them that they’re so young and carefree.
It must be nice to just live and to not worry about anything, which is kind of an unfair thing for her to think, because how is she to know whether Steven or Dale have any troubles of their own. They probably do—everyone does.
As she drifts off to sleep in her bed an hour later, Jeanie counts the hours in her head until her alarm will go off in the morning. She rolls over in her sheets, winding them around her body like a cocoon. If she falls asleep now, she’ll get five and a half hours of sleep before she needs to be up for work, at which point she’ll confront everything and put herself on a straight path forward.
No more begrudging anyone their happiness—even silently. No more envy of Carol and Leonard and their three kids; no worry that Angela is marrying too young or that her kid sister is showing her up by getting engaged so early; no daydreaming about Bill Booker in any way.
Starting first thing in the morning, Jeanie is ready to look at everything with fresh eyes.