Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Jesse came into the bedroom while Sophie was taking off her earrings. “She’s called four times since we left,” he said. “Now Dad’s calling.”
“Answer him.” Sophie put the earrings beside the bed. “Tell him what we were all looking at.”
“He was in the room.” Jesse silenced the phone. “You knew she’d lose it when she opened your present. That’s why you brought it.”
“Yes.” Sophie stood in front of him. She had enjoyed giving Lorraine that photograph, and she wasn’t going to spend the night apologizing for it.
He looked past her toward the door. “I asked you to come for dinner,” he said. “I thought we could have one evening without this.”
“So did I.” Sophie could still hear him asking why she hadn’t warned him about the parcel. “When you call her later, will you tell her I didn’t mean it?”
Jesse didn’t answer. His phone began vibrating again, and he switched it off before putting it on the bed.
“Have you said that before?” she asked. “After I’ve asked her to leave me alone?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. He lifted a hand when she drew breath. “To get her off the phone. Because she won’t stop crying, and it’s midnight, and I have to work.”
Lorraine had asked at dinner whether Sophie was feeling better. Sophie had thanked her, believing she’d remembered the headache, and now she tried to recall Jesse’s face while they spoke.
“What did you tell her about the key?” she asked. Jesse said he’d told his mother they needed privacy, then added that Sophie had been upset about the kitchen.
“We needed privacy, or I was upset?”
“Both,” he said. He sounded tired of the distinction. “Sophie, I got it back.”
She watched a car pass the window and turn at the corner. Jesse stayed behind her.
“When I was a kid, she’d sit in my room after they fought,” Jesse said behind her. His voice had changed. “Dad would go out to the garage. She’d stay until I told her everything was okay.”
She turned. He was looking at the bed, his hands hanging at his sides.
“She’d say I was the only one who listened,” he continued. “I was twelve. What was I supposed to do?”
Sophie loosened her grip on the curtain. She had seen photographs of him at twelve, grinning through braces with a fish held out in front of him. Lorraine kept one on the landing, and had once told Sophie it was the happiest summer of their lives.
“Did Hank know she was up there?” she asked. Jesse sat on the bed and answered without looking at her.
“He must have,” Jesse said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “He could stay out in that garage for hours.”
“Did you ever tell him to come in?” Sophie asked. Jesse shook his head, then stopped.
“Once. I went out there in my pajamas.” He was looking at the bedroom door. “He said he’d be in when he was finished. He was taking an engine apart. I waited while he showed me something.”
“And then?” Sophie asked. He had told her stories about that garage before, about holding a lamp for his father and being allowed to use tools his friends couldn’t touch.
“I went back upstairs.” Jesse rubbed his face. “She wanted to know what he’d said. I told her he was coming.”
Sophie waited, but he said nothing more.
Downstairs a car horn sounded outside the neighboring house, and Jesse looked toward the window.
She wanted to ask whether Hank had ever come in.
She couldn’t make herself ask it while Jesse was sitting there waiting for whatever she would say about his mother.
Sophie sat beside him, leaving the width of a pillow between them. She reached toward his shoulder before remembering the photograph at Lorraine’s house.
“You could have told me about that,” she said. She drew her hand back into her lap. “Instead you tell her I’ve got a headache.”
“I didn’t say that.” He lifted his head. “I said you were tired. You had a headache.”
Sophie had told him about the headache in bed, with her face against his shoulder while he rubbed the tight place at the back of her neck. She remembered thanking him before she fell asleep. Now she looked at the pillow and wondered what else had traveled from that room to Lorraine’s kitchen.
“What else do you tell her?” Sophie stood. “Does she need to know everything?”
“Sophie, come on,” he said. He stood as she came toward him. “Don’t start imagining things.”
She waited for him to finish telling her she was making too much of it.
“She did a good job,” Sophie said. “She raised herself the husband she wanted.”
Jesse went still. When he looked up, his face was so shocked that Sophie almost took it back.
“Don’t say that,” he said. He turned away from her. “That’s disgusting.”
“I think it’s disgusting when she tells me no woman will ever know you like she does,” Sophie said. “I think it’s disgusting when she touches your chest and calls herself your first love. But somehow I’m the one making it ugly.”
“She’s my mother,” Jesse said. He spoke slowly, moving away from Sophie before she could answer.
“I know who she is,” Sophie said. “I’m your wife.”
He left the room. A minute later the front door closed, and Sophie stood at the window while his truck pulled away from the curb.
She waited for the familiar panic that would make her call him, apologize for the wording, ask him to come home.
It arrived, but she sat on the bed and let the phone remain on the dresser.
Kelly answered on the second ring when Sophie finally called someone. She listened without interrupting, then asked whether Sophie had eaten enough dinner.
“I don’t want food.” Sophie lay back on the bed, still dressed.
“I didn’t ask what you wanted,” Kelly said. There was a cupboard opening in the background. “I’m coming over.”
She arrived with bread, ham, and a bottle of soda. They sat on the kitchen floor because Sophie had crouched to get plates from a low cupboard and hadn’t wanted to stand again. Kelly made sandwiches on a cutting board between them while Sophie described the evening in uneven pieces.
“I can still hear her saying it,” Sophie said. She picked at a crust until Kelly took the sandwich away and put ham between two softer pieces. “My first love. Right in front of Hank.”
“Eat before you tell me again,” Kelly said. She handed back the sandwich and began wrapping the rest of the bread.
Jesse returned after ten. He stopped inside the kitchen door when he saw Kelly putting the cutting board away, then asked whether she wanted coffee. She said no and kept drying the board until Sophie took it from her.
After Kelly left, he sat across from Sophie at the kitchen table. His hair was damp from the rain, and he had a coffee stain on his cuff.
“I drove around,” he said. “I didn’t go to her.”
“I didn’t ask,” Sophie said, though she had wanted to.
“I know.” He leaned forward. “I’m sorry I left like that.”
Sophie waited while he pulled up his sleeve to check the time. He had put on the old watch, the one she’d bought him a replacement strap for last spring.
“She doesn’t get to come here without asking,” he said. “She doesn’t get a key. And I won’t talk to her about us.”
“What does asking mean? Because she thinks ringing the bell counts.”
“Calling us and waiting for an answer,” Jesse said. He met her eyes. “A yes.”
“And when she cries?”
“I don’t know.” Jesse said it quickly, then looked at her. “I’ll probably sit there feeling like a bastard. I’ll still have to hang up.”
Sophie listened to the rain against the kitchen window. She had wanted that answer all evening, and he was sitting close enough for her to reach him, but she kept her hands in her lap.
“Don’t make me find out you said something different to her.” Her eyes filled. “Please don’t do that to me.”
He came around the table and knelt beside her chair. “I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”
She put her hand against his cheek, then let it fall. “I don’t want to go upstairs yet.”
He pulled the other chair beside hers. They sat listening to the rain. Once Sophie began to ask him something, then stopped; Jesse waited, but she couldn’t find a way to say it that she hadn’t already tried.