| Sure by Jane Strekalovsky |
| SURE is Jane Strekalovsky's
second short story featured on our site. Jane lives and writes in
southeastern Massachusetts. When the phone rings during breakfast on Saturday, Win gets up to answer it, because Phoebe’s still nursing the baby at the table across from him. “Hello?” he says, his eyes on the baby in her lap, but he swings around where he’s standing at the wall phone, one hand jammed in his back pocket, before he speaks again. “Hey.” She watches the back he’s turned to her. “Well,” he says in a voice almost lost to her, “well, thanks. Maybe - wait a minute.” Turning back to the table, he catches her eyes, holds the receiver against his chest. “Nell,” he mouths. Her lips mirror his. “Nell?” Her eyes snap shut, then open, flat blue. “She wants to know if we’ll be around this morning – she has a birthday present for me, wants to drop it off.” There’s a little smile around his mouth as her eyes widen, and then as if the two of them are sharing a joke, her expression reflects his, and the baby stirs as she straightens slightly in her chair. “Well,” she says, and her face goes bland. “How about –” with a glance down at the baby, she clears her throat. “How about lunch?” Now he looks startled. He mouths again – “Really?” – and when she nods, he shrugs and says into the phone, “We’ll be around.” He pauses. “How about lunch?” After a minute he says, “Really. Sure I’m sure. Wait a minute.” He covers the mouthpiece again, looks at her. “What time?” She looks down at the baby, up at the clock on the wall. “Noon, maybe? Twelve-thirty – he’ll be sleeping by then,” and she lifts the baby to her shoulder and snuggles her face in its neck. A few more words and he hangs up the phone and turning back to her, begins to pick up the dishes from his place at the table. “You through?” he says, reaching for her plate. “Yes, birthday boy,” she says, “I’m through.” With the baby on her shoulder she gets up, goes to open the fridge, takes stock of the shelves. “You’d better pick up some extra bread, maybe some lettuce. And fruit. Whatever you like.” “Sure,” he says, watching her move around the kitchen putting things away, the baby on her hip. “You sure you want to do this?” His eyes narrow on her as she finishes, tucks a yellow blanket around the baby and heads for the pantry. “I’m sure,” she says from the doorway. She crosses the room back to where he stands by the table, reaches up and pats his cheek with her free hand. “Really.” “It could be hard,” he starts. Her mouth is a firm line. “Look,” she says. “We agreed to make this work.” They’re so close the baby squirms between them. “It won’t work if she keeps pretending things aren’t the way they are. So let her come – she needs to see.” There is the sound of running feet overhead and laughter. “You.” Her index finger jabs his chest. “Here.” A door slams in a room above. Behind him, sun streams through the open kitchen door making bright patches on the linoleum. “You could take the girls when you get the bread,” she says, turning to go upstairs. “It’s too nice for them to be inside.” Upstairs, she bathes the baby, dresses him, and tucks him neatly on his side in the bassinet before pulling the shades and winding the music box that turns on a mobile over his head. On the threshold of his room she hesitates, as if gauging the importance of the cries emanating from the basket, and when they subside, goes out, shutting the door softly behind her. In their room, she checks her watch, pulls the bed together, gathers laundry and drops it into the hamper in the bathroom. Then she goes back to her closet, pulls out one thing and then another, finally settles on a pair of khaki pants and a white shirt. When she is dressed, she sits in front of the mirror, rummages in the drawer for make-up, applies blush and lipstick. She changes her plain gold studs for pearls, studies the effect, and gets up. The clock on the wall says eleven-thirty when she comes back down to empty the brown bags he’s left on the table. She dumps strawberries into a blue colander, shakes them under running water in the sink. On a board, she slices the bread, spreads peanut butter and jelly, trims the sandwiches into animal shapes and wraps them in waxed paper. Taking a small basket from the pantry, she lines it with a yellow paper napkin, tucks in two more, adds the sandwiches and a handful of berries before pushing open the screen door to look for the little girls, who are playing under white arches of bridal wreath flowering at the end of the driveway. “Who’s hungry?” she calls. “We are, we are!” they squeal, scrambling up, clambering onto the porch, racing to see what she’s got to offer. They are six and eight, skinny and grinning, and they hang on her arm to peer into the yellow-lined basket. “No milk!” cries Cassie with surprise. “Can I have juice?” “You may have juice,” Phoebe says. “Hands first.” “Strawberries!” Sara pokes a tentative finger into the basket. “Is it a party?” “Daddy’s friend Nell is coming for lunch. But people with clean hands can have a picnic – so scoot!” They scoot, in to wash, back out with the basket and bottles of juice, and when they have disappeared down the hill behind the house, she goes back in through the bright kitchen to the pantry, where she pulls out a tray, covers it with a linen cloth, adds three knives and spoons from the silver drawer, three green linen napkins. She sets out plates, cups and saucers, and a small fat flowered teapot, barely big enough for three. A round mirror hangs by the door into the kitchen. The pantry is dim, gloomy because of the dark wood of the cabinets and windows overhung by the porch roof outside, and the mirror is old, its worn silver unreliable, but she stops to check her reflection, steps back, squints to see how she looks from a distance. There are circles under her eyes, but when she smiles, they disappear. “I thought we’d eat outside,” she says when he comes into the kitchen as she’s layering chicken salad, lettuce, and seven grain bread, halving the sandwiches neatly, arranging them on a platter. “A picnic, sort of. The children have theirs, and the baby’s window is open – I’ll hear him, he won’t wake up anyway – I thought it would be simpler.” With her back to him, she bites her lip as if to stop the rush of words. “Right,” he says. “Something’s boiling.” He hovers by the stove, ready to turn it off. “Of course something’s boiling, it has to boil. Leave it alone, it’s tea water.” Outside, a car door slams. “Early,” he says. “That’s fine,” she says. “That’s fine.” He pushes out through the screen door, and a rush of warm air flushes inside as it wheezes behind him. She steps swiftly back to the pantry doorway, darts another glance into the mirror, tucks back a lock of pale hair. Smiles. As they cross the back porch, she is at the sink, scalding the teapot, measuring tea leaves, her back to the door. He holds the door for Nell, who hesitates, either unused to such formality, or so she won’t be the first one in, and they exchange a look and then a laugh. When Nell comes in, Phoebe turns as if on cue. “Hi,” they say, the three of them almost in unison, and Phoebe smiles, too, and wipes her fingers, wet from the teapot, on her khaki pants. Win holds a cassette and a wad of purple tissue, and in Nell’s arms is a large teddy bear, brown, with a red gingham ribbon around its neck. “Well,” says Phoebe. “Is that your present, Win?” Nell sets the bear on the kitchen table. She is just about Phoebe’s size, a little more compact in build, muscular, and her long brown hair is pulled back and looped up at her neck. She has on shorts under a loose embroidered shirt and sandals that slap the linoleum lightly as she steps back beside Win. He waves the tape. “Nope. This is mine,” he says. “Bonnie Raitt.” Nell pats the bear’s head. “This is for the baby,” she says. “Well,” says Phoebe. “Thanks. We’ll have to keep it away from the girls.” She lifts the top from the teapot, checks the color of the water, replaces it. “We should go ahead and eat,” she says, “before he wakes up. You know how hard it is,” she says to Nell, “to get a little quiet time.” “Right,” says Nell, looking around the kitchen, which is darker now that the angle of sun has risen above its windows. The bear sits solidly on the butcher block table, its bulk dwarfing the pottery jug of daisies near its rump. Phoebe loads the tray. “I thought we’d have a sort of picnic,” she says to the room at large. “Under the baby’s window, so I can hear if he wakes up.” She nods at the tray. “Could you take that, Win?” She carries the teapot, and he hoists the tray and the three of them parade through the dark pantry, across the dining room, and out onto a grassy terrace at the top of a long roll of lawn that slopes away from the house. From where they settle on the stone steps at the edge of the terrace, they can’t see the little girls, whose light voices float from wherever they’ve hidden themselves in the bushes along the edge of the grass. Phoebe sits on the bottom step, Win just above her on the second, and Nell makes a space for herself beside him. “Now,” says Phoebe, busying herself passing plates and sandwiches and pouring tea. She casts a glance down the hill and tilting her face to the sun, says, “It’s great to have the weather finally nice enough to be out here. What an unbelievable winter. Well –” she amends, “not so bad for Win, he’d be happy on the slopes all year round – you, too, I guess.” She hands Win a cup. She waits to offer sugar and milk, because Nell’s begun telling Win about a woman she knows who recently married a ski pal of Nell’s, a second marriage for both, and what a success it is. “They went to Davos on their honeymoon,” she’s saying, shaking out the green napkin on her lap, “because skiing is his big thing.” She takes a bite of chicken salad, chews quickly, swallows, and goes on, her mouth still half full. “Like you,” she says to Win. “And you know, she’d never skied, not once, and there she is, right beside him all the way.” She shakes her head in obvious admiration, looks down at Phoebe. “I think that’s so neat! I mean, I think it’s really great, learning something from scratch, so to speak, so they could do it together!” Her brown eyes are shining. “Mmm.” Phoebe leans to pull a clump of grass from the dark earth of the flower bed that flanks the steps. Last week when she raked this bed, an infant snake startled her in the leaves at the edge of the stone step. “God,” she’d shuddered, telling Win that night, “I hate snakes – especially the way they always look like something else – like nothing – until you have your hand out or your foot in mid-air!” Now she tenses, edging slightly away from the step above her, from the dark crannies between the stones that support it. Only her eyes move, casing the area. Nell is asking about the girls and Win is telling her about the recital Cassie will be in next week and the hassle she’s been giving Phoebe about wearing an old dress from the school swap-it sale instead of what Phoebe’s picked out. Phoebe stares at him, and then turns to squint at something in the milky distance at the foot of the hill. “Oh, let her wear the dress,” Nell is advising Win, as if he’s the one hampering Cassie. “Kids need to do their own thing, don’t you think?” Phoebe twists around to catch his response to this, and he meets her eyes and scratches his blond head as if pondering this theory. “You should see what Venus wears,” Nell says, referring to her own daughter. “Well,” she checks herself, nodding at Win, “I guess you probably have,” and looking back at Phoebe, goes on. “Anyway, even at four, she has a mind of her own, and I say, go for it, baby! She loves these wild socks,” she continues, “but she won’t wear them as a pair, she has to mix them up.” Her sandwich is finished, but she runs a finger around the plate, licks crumbs off its tip. “We have kind of an understanding about things like that,” she says. “We’re very close, you know, being just the two of us.” She sucks her finger. “They just have to express themselves.” Phoebe holds out a hand for Nell’s plate, puts it on the tray, passes the blue bowl of strawberries. For a while they sit in silence, eating the fruit with their fingers, tossing the hulls into the flower bed, where they lie on the bare earth like new green sprouts. Phoebe listens for the baby, but there is no sound from the open window. Nell runs a thumbnail between her two front teeth and stretches out her long bare legs. “I think you’ll like the tape,” she says to Win. “I have a real soft spot for her stuff. Didn’t you love the last one?” Before he can answer, a wail from the house brings Phoebe to her feet. Win looks up at her, squinting against the sun. “Don’t worry about this,” he says, indicating the tray. “We’ll bring it in.” “Right,” seconds Nell. “I have to go pretty soon, anyway, I left Venus with my mother.” Phoebe glances at the window, at the tray with her flowered china balanced on the step, at the two of them stretched out now on the grass. “I’d better get him,” she says. “Hate to eat and run,” she says, “but you know how babies are.” She takes off for the house, calls over her shoulder. “I’ll be back.” It doesn’t take long to get upstairs, change the baby and bring him back down, but the terrace is deserted when she looks out, and the kitchen is empty. The tray piled with dishes is on the counter next to the sink. There are voices in the driveway, and a car door slams. Motionless in the center of the kitchen, she cocks her head, as if there is more to hear than the dripping faucet and the tick of the clock on the wall. An engine turns over, tires spin on gravel, and then footsteps crunch along the drive and across the porch. His shadow precedes him through the screen door. “Well,” she says, as he comes in, “that was quick.” He drops the tape he’s been holding onto the table next to the bear. “It’s hard,” he begins, and she jumps in, relief in her voice. “It really is, I guess I shouldn’t have –” she starts, patting the baby’s back. “For her,” he’s saying, “to see you with everything she wants.” “Thought I could deal –” She stops openmouthed, as if she’s lost her place. His hands are in his pockets, he’s rocking on his heels, thoughtful, as her words trail under his. The baby begins to fuss, and he reaches out, cups its fuzzy head, pats her shoulder. “I better get some work done,” he says. “I’ll be upstairs.” Still in the middle of the room, she listens as he heads up the back stairs to the third floor studio where he does his painting, where she and the children are careful not to intrude, though it’s got the best view in the house. “Everything she wants?” she snaps. “So?” And louder – “so?” – but not so loud she’ll be heard three floors up. Yanking a chair from beside the table, she sits and feeds the baby, and when he’s finished, settles him into an infant seat on the counter while she unloads the tray and puts dishes into the dishwasher. “Venus!” she snorts out loud. “Give me a break!” Her eyes fasten on the bear still hunkered on the table, and she glowers. Crossing the room, she hooks a finger through the gingham ribbon around its neck, jerks it from the table, and trails it across the floor to the pantry, where she heaves it up toward the empty top shelf. In the cupboards, dishes rattle as it falls, bounces on the counter, hits the floor, and she has to drag a chair in from the dining room so she can climb up and stuff it securely back on the shelf, almost out of sight in the shadows. She is folding laundry at the kitchen table a little later, when Cassie thumps down the back stairs and poses at the bottom, her thin frame visible through the folds of a limp pink organdy dress that frays in a ruffle at the tops of her sneakers. With one hand, she bunches it behind her at the waist, her freckled face alight. She looks at Phoebe, down at the dress, at Phoebe again, hopeful. “It fits, Mommy,” she trills, “it’s perfect!” “Perfect,” echoes Phoebe. “Sure.” Cassie twirls and teeters to a stop. “Daddy says I can wear it next week,” Cassie proclaims. “Can I?”
|
| Top |
|
