Chapter 23 #2
brands that took the market by storm overnight and will fizzle out just as fast. She probably paid nine dollars for it.
“So you’re too good for Trader Joe’s wine now?” I ask Jenni.
“No, it’s not that.” Her face screws up. She bobs up and down as she sits on the picnic blanket. “I’m pregnant.”
We stare and stare. It’s almost like the moment when she told us she was married. Like then, Tara is the first to regain her
composure. “Jenni!” she says. “Congrats, that’s huge.”
“Life-changing,” Hal says, catching my gaze, snagging on the prickers and adding her own.
“We only just found out, so don’t tell anyone yet,” Jenni says. “It only made sense to start trying, really,” she goes on,
like she feels the need to explain herself. Like we asked any questions about it. “Fertility isn’t something you can take
for granted, especially as we get older.” She says it like we’re approaching forty, not thirty. “I’m not trying to scare you
girls,” she adds quickly. “Since I know you probably don’t want kids.”
“Right,” Tara says, but there’s a whiff of something wistful. It hits me squarely in the chest, like it’s trying to trick me into introspection. But I know better than to go there.
“So that’s why we might be moving to Connecticut,” Jenni goes on. “Get more space for the little one, be close to Peter’s
parents.”
The image of Jenni sipping a detox smoothie, suntanning by the pool of a Connecticut country club, infiltrates my mind like
a parody with none of the solace of comedy.
“But enough about me,” Jenni says, though she looks like she’d be delighted to keep gabbing on about her own charmed life,
chained life, for hours more. “What about you ladies? I need all the love life updates.”
I’m annoyed that this is the first question she asks. It reinforces the societal view that women are only as successful as
their romantic relationships. When Jenni lived with us, she used to know better, used to spit in the face of convention, flick
it off with her feral fingers. Now, all pious and manicured, she’s melted right into it.
“Astrid’s still perfect,” Hal says with a fluttery sigh. “It’s actually frustrating because my life was great without her.
But now that she’s in it, I don’t think I could ever go back.” She scoops a whole handful of Oreos from the sleeve, stuffs
them in her mouth to distract from the confession.
This is the first time I’ve heard Hal say something so serious-sounding about Astrid, or maybe just the first time I’ve listened.
Either way, it’s not exactly music to my ears.
“Well said.” Jenni applauds. She and Hal share a look that feels like it’s intentionally leaving me out. Tara too.
“Nothing to report from my end,” Tara says, and I can feel her heart pinching at Hal’s words. “I just play other people’s
romances onstage and then have zero leads in real life.” She smiles in a self-effacing way that belies the bruises underneath.
“That’s objectively false,” Jenni says. “Every person in the audience falls in love with you. You’re just too humble to notice.”
“Exactly,” Hal seconds, and Tara blinks twice.
“Maybe a few fall in love with my character,” Tara replies after a beat. “But not with the real me. The Redstockings are the
only ones who embrace my offstage awkwardness.” She gives a goopy, thanks-for-sticking-by-me sort of smile until we’re all
piled into one big group hug.
I’m the first to duck out of the ring. “Alright, enough with the sap, it’s not maple syrup season yet.”
“How I’ve missed that biting wit,” Jenni says, giving me a playful nudge as I slurp wine straight from the bottle.
“What?” I say, watching Jenni judge my manners. “No need to create more trash by using a plastic cup too.”
“There’s this thing called recycling,” Jenni says.
“Recycling is a scam,” Hal says. “Haven’t you seen the documentaries? It’s all just wasted, sent to landfills anyway.”
“It is pretty wild,” Tara says. “That we’ve sent rovers to Mars and yet can’t figure out how to set up functional recycling
systems.”
“An abomination,” I agree, liking how I’ve won the argument, how Hal and Tara have got my back even for the little things
like this.
“Well,” Jenni says, moving on. “Guess there’s no point in asking for an update on your love life, EJ.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“If there’s anyone I can count on not to change, it’s you,” Jenni says.
What once might have felt like a compliment now lands as an insult and detonates. I don’t like the implication that I’m static,
predictable.
“I’ve changed,” I say, chin jutting out defiantly. “I’ve changed the most out of anyone.”
Jenni looks skeptical as she sips on her seltzer, expensive lipstick residue smudging the rim. “Is that so?”
She looks to Hal and Tara to disprove my comment.
“It’s true, actually,” Hal says, and I feel a surge of affection for her, though it dissipates upon her next words. “EJ is in love,” Hal tells the group, with even more drama than Jenni’s pregnancy announcement.
“I’m not in love,” I sneer. “I just don’t really do short-lived flings anymore, that’s all.”
“Right, because you’re in love with Chris,” Hal says. “So no one else lives up.”
“I’m with Hal on this one,” Tara says. The betrayal stings, but their assumptions feel oddly welcome too, like I have a permission
slip to admit what they’ve already accepted as fact.
“Chris even came by the Inn the other day to look for EJ after a fight,” Tara tells Jenni, as if this clinches things.
Jenni looks like she’s unsure if we’re scamming her, orchestrating a prearranged stunt. “Who’s Chris?” she asks. “Wait a second . . .”
The gears in her head are turning, and I don’t like the direction. “This isn’t the guy you met at the art gallery way back
when? The one you dogsit for?”
“We’ve developed a friendship,” I say. “That’s all.” Usually I’d embellish nothing into something, but now I’m trying to fold something back into nothing.
“That’s how Peter and I started too,” Jenni says. “Innocuous chats at the coffee maker in the office, and now look at us.”
She pats her stomach affectionately.
“Chris and I would never work,” I say. “I’m an artist and he’s an accountant. Have you ever heard of a more ludicrous match?”
“You balance each other out,” Jenni says. “Like Peter and me. The men are the steady shores, we’re the waves.”
“You do realize how misogyny is baked into that entire statement, don’t you?” I say.
“I disagree,” Jenni says. “Everyone’s trying to say there are no differences between women and men, but there are and those should be celebrated. Our femininity is getting stamped out of us in the name of feminism, which is trying to mold us into little men in the name of equality.”
This is the proof we all didn’t need that Jenni has officially crossed to the dark side. “So you’re not a feminist?” Hal asks.
“Of course I am,” Jenni says. “I just think some strands of feminism have gotten distorted, that’s all.”
“Go easy on her,” Tara says. “She’s pregnant.”
“Pregnancy hormones have nothing to do with this,” Jenni refutes.
The conversation somehow sloshes back to Chris and me. “Like I said, we’re polar opposites,” I say. “A different species,
really. And besides, he has a serious girlfriend.”
Jenni raises a laminated eyebrow. “Since when has that stopped you?”
“Since now,” I sling back. “Chris is a good person. He doesn’t deserve the EJ tornado ruining his life.”
“Damn,” Jenni whispers, as Hal and Tara give her an I-told-you-so sort of look. “You do love him.”
I try to laugh at the words, but I’m closer to crying instead.
“It’s okay,” Tara says. “Loving people is a good thing.”
“Not when they don’t love you back,” I mumble.
“But Chris does love you back,” Hal says, making my stomach lurch with a hopeful sort of fear, or a fearful sort of hope. “You should’ve
seen how nervous he looked ringing the doorbell at the Inn the other day. He was completely torn up.”
Jenni asks what happened, so I fill her in on how Chris’s brother died in a car crash a few years ago and he never talks about
it, and I pushed too far but he realized he was the one in the wrong after all.
“Men,” Jenni says, as if that single word explains it all. “Sometimes it’s like knocking my head against a brick wall when
I’m trying to get Peter to open up. I love him so much, of course, but sometimes I just miss my girls.”
“We’re still here,” Tara says.
“Yeah, you’re the one who left,” I point out. Even when I want to be nice, I can’t help the venom that slips out.
It just makes Jenni laugh, and the others too. “If only you could be this blunt with Chris,” Jenni says. “You’d be the next
one breaking the Anti-Marriage Pact.”
“Never,” I say, spine pricking with surprise. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jenni says. “But you’re a pretty ridiculous person.”
I grin at that, and the four of us fall into laughter. It feels like landing on a soft trampoline and springing up together
into the air.
“You’re not wrong about that,” I say.
It’s true that I’m not someone who follows patterns, so maybe the most authentic thing I could do is something opposite to
what everyone expects. And what I expect. I don’t mean marriage or anything that extreme. Lifelong commitment still feels
far too confining. But perhaps I could fall in love with someone who might love me back, not just in the darkness of the night
but in the brightness of the day.
My gut gives a nudge, like I’m on the right track. I prefer not to be on a track because I’d rather blaze my own trail, but
this feels like a pretty good one, still wild and overgrown and riddled with venomous snakes.