Story 14: Last Chance

It was the first time Natalie had been to the Country Club Plaza since the lights had been lit that Thanksgiving, and as she got out of the car, the effect of the more distant lights seeming to hang on air filled her with happiness. Surely good things could happen on such a magical night.

She had agreed to meet Chris at a French restaurant on a side street, a quiet place where they could have a conversation without shouting. He was sitting at a smallish booth when she walked in, and she settled in next to him. The waiter brought bread, and Natalie ordered a bottle of wine. When she reached for a piece of bread, he took her hand and held it. Her eyes began to well up.

“Jennifer and I are not together anymore,” he told her. “We broke up before we left Chicago in August. My problem is, I don’t know if we are either.”

“I think we’re hanging on for the sake of the past,” Natalie said.

“So over this Christmas vacation,” he said, “we need to make a future.”

The waiter came back, and Natalie ordered a lobster bisque. Chris ordered a salad.

“I’d agree to that,” Natalie said, “if there wasn’t so much from the past hanging over us.”

“Like the death of your uncle?” he asked.

“Like the death of my uncle,” she repeated. “And the fact that you met someone else.”

“That too,” he acknowledged.

“Let’s not worry about a future,” Natalie said. “Let’s concentrate on getting comfortable with each other again.”

This Christmas was the last they would celebrate as college students, which gave it a certain bittersweet quality, and the reminder of her uncle’s death only strengthened that feeling. Just after Tom had died, she had withdrawn from Chris to dwell on her grief, and now she could see how that had wounded him. But in the eighteen months since then, Chris had been the only comfort for the loss of her uncle. She moved closer to him, so that their shoulders touched when they reached for bread or picked up a fork. They sat there with their hands on each other’s thighs and kissed for the first time since last Christmas, during their junior year. When their food arrived, they ate mostly in silence, breaking it only to comment on the meal or offer each other a taste.

After dinner, they walked the Plaza until they came to the fountain outside Woolf Brothers. The store was dark inside and the fountain dry, but they sat down by it nevertheless, listening to the voices of holiday shoppers and the rush of cars down Ward Parkway. For Natalie, it recalled the sound of voices that she could hear sitting at night on the dock at Lake Tapawingo. In winter, of course, those voices moved inside, or perhaps, she thought, moved here. Kansas City had become a place of voices caught on the wind, heard for only a moment before she could decipher what they were saying. It was a place of words without context. She and Chris huddled there for almost an hour, comparing notes on school and talking about family and mutual friends. When they could stand it no longer, they walked down to Houlihan’s and warmed up at the bar by drinking Irish coffees.

The next day, Natalie found a poem in her mailbox, hand-written on thick paper. She walked down to the dock to read it and sat at the top of the ladder, cracking the lake’s semi-frozen surface with her heel.


“Hero-Worship”
by Amy Lowell

A face seen passing in a crowded street,
A voice heard singing music, large and free;
And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete.
Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero! No deceit,
No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
Can quench this fierce, untamable desire.
We know that what we long for once achieved
Will cease to satisfy. Be still our fears;
If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.

There was no name on it, but she recognized Chris’s handwriting. He had never given her a poem before. She read the poem again, noting how it fit their relationship: they had met more than two years ago, when he had seen her walking down the street around the lake and had stopped her. That he had found a poem so appropriate for them delighted her. Was he saying that she had made him a man complete? That he still believed in the two of them? And if he didn’t, how could she criticize him? She didn’t believe in a future for them, but she still dreamed of one every night before she fell asleep.

Natalie eye fell on these lines:

We know that what we long for once achieved
Will cease to satisfy.

She shivered and ran back to the house, where she rummaged through her father’s desk. Using his best pen, she calligraphed that line on the nicest piece of paper she could scrounge up. Underneath, she added, “But first we must achieve it.” And below that, she added these lines from “Sappho” by James Wright:

Love is a cliff,
a clear, cold curve of stone, mottled by stars,
smirched by the morning, carved by the dark sea
till stars and dawn and waves can slash no more,
till the rock’s heart is found and shaped again.

It was an austere view of love, but one that had always seemed true to her. She wanted a love that would reshape her, but instead she had one that was always receding from her. She feared that their future might never arrive. If she wasn’t careful, Natalie thought, she might wait forever.

She punched holes in both pieces of paper and tied them with a scrap of ribbon, pulling the sides of the green bow out until they were exactly the same length. Then she replaced them in the original envelope. Late that night, when she was certain Chris’s entire family would be in bed, she left her room to deliver the original and the response back to him. As she tripped going down the dark stairs, she heard murmurs in her parents’ bedroom. Her father called after her, “Natalie?”

“Yes?”

“Is something the matter?”

“No, I’m just going for a walk.”

“At this time of night?”

“Just a short one, Dad. I’ll be right back.”

Chris’s house was completely dark. Natalie knew no one around the lake locked their doors much. She amused herself with the idea of sneaking in, creeping up the stairs to Chris’s room, and sliding into bed with him. She still wanted him, but it was hard to find privacy at Christmastime. Their sex life had always been freer in the summers. But she didn’t feel courageous enough to actually try to get that close to him that night, in the dark, without permission. She left the poems in his mailbox.

Chris stopped by the next day to thank her for the poems and invited her to take a walk around the lake. As they walked, she told him about her fantasy of the night before and how she’d lost her nerve.

“I want to show you something,” he said as they rounded the other side of the lake. Two streets up from the houses on the lake proper, a new house was being built on an oversized lot. It had all its walls, but past the holes where windows would go, construction workers moved, carrying tools and pieces of wood.

“See that path?” he asked her, indicating a driveway that dwindled to a single track. “The people in the houses on either side can’t see anyone walking there because of the garage and fence in the way. And the house itself is far away from all the other houses.”

Natalie thought her entire body might be blushing. “It is isolated,” she said softly.

“Let’s pretend to go out for a movie Christmas night.”

“And we’ll come here,” she responded.

“Yes,” he said, and kissed her.

**

At least they had this brief season of being together, Natalie thought on Christmas Day, when Chris and his parents walked in the door. All of them remarked on how long it had been since they had gathered in one room, and then they sat down to the serious business of opening presents, eating dessert (Christmas dinner would come later), and drinking holiday punch.

Natalie and Chris sat on the floor, between their two sets of parents, and smiled at each other underneath all that scrutiny. Their presents for each other were singular and simple: books. Natalie gave Chris the autobiography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the journalist who had exposed the economics of lynching, and he gave her clothbound copies of all four of Toni Morrison’s books.

“Thank you,” Natalie said. “I always need more books.”

“Always,” Chris said, laughing.

Natalie discovered that all four copies were signed. “Where did you get these?” she asked, impressed.

“In a used bookstore in Chicago,” he said. The comment hung in the air, pleasing Natalie because he had thought of her last summer, but reminding them of what had come between them.

Chris began reading the first paragraph of Tar Baby to her: “He believed he was safe…” His parents exchanged glances and sighed about the high school classes they would resume teaching in the new year. Natalie’s father mentioned how he was looking forward to his spring semester class at CU on American politics. “I’m going to recruit every last one of them to work on defeating Reagan in the 1984 election,” he declared, laughing. And her mother kept passing boxes of chocolates and plates of cookies to her left and her right.

After dinner, Natalie and Chris left, ostensibly to get his car and go to a movie, but instead they circled stealthily around her house, listening to the voices of their parents inside, and then walked around the lake to the house under construction. Once they started up the driveway, Natalie’s fears stopped her. The two of them stood furtively where the track began.

“Let’s make sure the coast is clear,” Chris whispered. They looked around and saw no one. The lit rooms of houses around them held little but Christmas trees and the remains of dinners. They crept across the lot and took off their shoes before entering the house. They had nothing with them except their coats, which they made into their bed, their hats and gloves for pillows, and their desire to forget they’d been apart or ever would be separated again. Once inside the inner rooms of the house, there was no light; all they could see was their eyes and the occasional flash of teeth.

“I want to make up for all the time we’ve spent apart this last year,” Chris told her, pulling her down onto her coat. “I loved every minute of the internship at the Chicago Tribune last summer, but I missed you. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to be here with you.” But Natalie wasn’t quite convinced yet.

“I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Are you going to wear a condom?”

But he shook his head. “I don’t need to,” he said. “I never slept with Jen. Just you for the past two years.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

For the first time this Christmas season, Natalie felt happy. “Why not?” she asked.

“I thought one long-distance relationship was enough. I didn’t want two,” he answered. “And I couldn’t imagine how I would tell you.”

He slid his hands under her clothes. “I’ll keep you warm,” he said, and covered them with his coat. It was so silent where they were, except for the occasional slam of a door and a burst of Christmas music into the night. They said very little to each other, and that only in whispers. The first time they had ever admitted loving each other had been over Christmas break of their sophomore year, two years ago. On Natalie’s last night of vacation, she had rushed the words out. Tonight, she was glad she’d said them, glad she hadn’t waited to be sure, because here they were two years later, and she felt that she would never be certain of him.

Afterward they lay together, shivering a little, for as long as they could stand the cold. Natalie felt oddly light. Then it came to her: she hadn’t thought about Tom all evening. In fact, she hadn’t thought about her uncle much since Chris had taken her out to dinner several nights ago. Maybe, she told herself, Tom’s loss had blended with Chris’s absence, so that when she was away from Chris, she thought she was mourning her uncle. Natalie wondered what she had been grieving these last few months.

As she tiptoed up the stairs that night, she saw that her parents had left their door ajar. They lay entwined, her father’s head on her mother’s shoulder, and Natalie felt desperately tender toward them but also jealous. She’d loved this entire day, spent with Chris and their families, but she wanted the two of them to be able to go about openly. She was tired of sneaking around. She and Chris had not been able to spend a night together since their sophomore year of college.

The next morning, Natalie stayed in bed and daydreamed. Chris had always been a good lover, but the night before she had felt closer to him than she ever had. For the two hours they had lain together on the plywood subfloor of that halfway-constructed house, she had felt like he was the only person in the world. One thing seemed clear: she had at least the possibility of a future with Chris.

She was wondering how soon they could find their way to that house again when the phone rang, and she picked it up. It was her best friend Debbie.

“Merry Christmas a day late!” Debbie said. “I was so busy yesterday, I forgot to call.”

“Merry Christmas to you too,” Natalie said.

“How’s it going?” Debbie asked, too casually. Natalie knew what she meant.

“We spent two hours last night in a new house that’s being built on the other side of the lake,” Natalie told her, laughing. “It was great.”

“I guess you’re getting along then,” Debbie said. “That’s good.”

Something in her tone resurrected a feeling in Natalie that she’d been pressing down all week, ever since their dinner. A feeling of doubt that what was happening with Chris was any more permanent that anything that had ever happened between them. A fear that her heart might be broken for a second time—her uncle’s death being the first. Natalie curled up under the covers and listened to Debbie.

Debbie was saying, “Is he still going out with the woman he met in Chicago?”

“No, he isn’t. And he said they never slept together.”

“Did you think he was telling the truth?”

“Yes,” Natalie said, realizing that she had never even questioned him. That made her feel happy again, briefly. She still had some faith in him left.

“Be careful, Natalie,” Debbie said. “Don’t rush into thinking everything’s OK. You have time to figure things out.”

“Do I?” Natalie challenged her. “How am I ever going to figure this out when he and I are apart so much?”

Debbie didn’t have an answer for that.

**

It was the last night of Christmas vacation. Natalie’s parents were out with friends, and she found herself waiting for Chris. What would they say to each other tonight? He came in with a cold breeze and a bag of cheese, fruit, and chocolate. “Leftovers,” he explained. He sat down and fed her some strawberries and Russell Stover chocolates. Then he turned serious.

“We need to make a plan,” he told her.

“A plan for what?”

“Us,” he said.

“How can I plan anything with you?” Natalie said. “I have no say in your decisions. You proved that by going to Chicago last summer.”

“You could,” he said. “If we planned our future together.”

Natalie thought of her conversation with Debbie. “Don’t rush,” Debbie had said. Now more than ever, it sounded like good advice.

“You think now is the right time?” she asked him.

“I do,” he said.

“I haven’t even started looking for a job, though I always assumed I’d stay in Boulder.”

He was silent for a minute. “I’ll apply for a job at the Denver Post, but obviously, the place where I have the best connection is at the Tribune.”

“I know,” she said, thinking she should just break up with him then. It would make things so much easier.

“Why am I always the one doing this, Natalie?” he asked.

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Keeping us together. You’re were reluctant to get involved when we met, and it seems like that’s never really changed.”

She stared at him. He was curled up in a corner of the couch, eating one chocolate after another.

“Because there’s so much against us,” she said.

“Yes, there is,” he agreed with her. “I’m asking you to disregard all that and try one more time. We’ll give it six months from graduation. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll break up.”

“I’m happy when I’m with you, but my doubts keep returning,” Natalie said. “I need time to think.”

“Will you promise to make a decision by this summer?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“All right, Natalie,” Chris said, very quietly. “Think all you want. Just be careful you don’t think yourself out of a relationship that might work if you gave it a chance.” He moved closer to her and kissed her. “I’ll call you this week,” he said, and left.

Natalie sat by herself for a long time, finishing off the fruit and chocolates. Then she went upstairs to pack.
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What's Coming

I've got three stories left to post. I've been debating whether to post the next two, and I've decided to go ahead. They're relationship stories that wrap things up between various characters in the book, and therein lies my problem with them. The Natalie-Chris story, especially, seems too methodical, even repetitive of the other stories. It's my least favorite story in this collection. But I've referenced it in the last story, so I'm going to include it.

Disregard the "Read More"--that's all of this post. Read more

Meme from sex

Sort of fits, doesn't it?

I'll try to keep this Tag! You're It! post relevant. Here are six random facts about me.

1. I have two born-again sisters who are, obviously, pro-life.

2. My mother and grandmother both had hysterectomies, my mother sometime shortly after I was born (never gotten quite clear on that one). How's that for Catholic birth control?

3. I was in the Legion of Mary when I was about 12.

4. My sister is the only one of six children who has children--and she has six.

5. I've been in love six times.

6. I had my tubes tied in November 2003. Before that, I was on the pill for 20 years, give or take. Something like 90 percent of American women use birth control at some point in their lives. (There. I snuck in a statistic, even if it is undocumented.)

Not sure this is really about me...hmm. On the plus side, the six entries contain a lot of even numbers.

Whatever. Here are the rules:

I was tagged by SexScenesatStarbucks.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

And I tag:

Todd
Bernard
Jer

I know it's only three...but I had to break the even-number thing that was going on. Plus, I felt shy.

(Disregard the "Read More" on this post--there is no more.) Read more

Story 13: What About the Way You Look

They sat across from each other at Tom’s Tavern in Boulder, both eating burgers. Becky wiped some mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth, and Natalie wondered how such a common gesture could seem so graceful. But Becky was always turned out. Whenever they met, Natalie came away inspired to do more with her appearance. Too bad she didn’t hang around Becky often enough for her example to have a permanent effect.

Becky said she had just come from her hairdresser in Denver. Her hair was combed back behind her ears and turned up at the ends. It smelled a little of chemicals. Natalie wished her fine hair could hold a curl that way. Some days she still wanted a head full of auburn curls, like Anne of Green Gables after she dyed her hair with “fast dye” and then had to cut it off.

“Your hair looks nice,” Natalie said.

“She’s trying to get me to go natural, but I don’t want to cut all my hair off.”

“What if you cut it at chin length and let it grow out?”

“I could do that,” Becky said. “I have some pretty headbands. But at some point I’ll have a head of hair that’s half relaxed and half frizzy. I don’t know.”

Even though it was 80 degrees outside, Becky was wearing baggy jeans. Natalie had put on shorts that morning. As she shifted, her thighs peeled reluctantly, painfully away from the vinyl seats. Tom’s was full; all the students were getting their last hamburgers before leaving for the summer. In a week, Natalie would be at Lake Tapawingo, without Chris. Becky noticed her faraway expression.

“Dreaming of your boyfriend?”

“That’s all it’s gonna be this summer. He’s doing an internship in Chicago.”

“So you didn’t break up?”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Do you still talk to him?”

“Yeah, we talk at least once a month,” Natalie said. “We’re very close. I just don’t know if we’re still together.”

“Well, he seemed like a really nice guy. But I talked to him for only an hour.”

“That’s the way it’s beginning to feel to me too.”

“Mike and I had some problems around the two-year point,” Becky said, dipping three French fries at a time in ketchup and then mayonnaise. She’d gotten Natalie hooked on having a little mayo with her fries. She said it was a Dutch thing that her parents had picked up on one of their volunteer work trips. “Maybe there’s a two-year itch.”

Mayo was not the only thing that Becky passed on. Natalie liked to spend time with her—even if she always had to fit into Becky’s schedule—because she learned something new every time. And Becky seemed to like teaching her things. In fact, if Becky hadn’t always told her she was going to be a journalist, Natalie would have expected her to go for teaching. She never missed an opportunity.

But Natalie wanted to resolve something today, not simply play the eager student. She said to Becky, “You must not be too mad at me, or you wouldn’t have come to lunch, right?”

Becky made a small face and kept on eating her French fries. Finally she said, “It comes and goes.”

“You were right about Susan B. Anthony,” Natalie said. “She did let southern feminists segregate …”

“Stop!” Becky said, annoyed. “Can’t we ever talk about anything besides black history?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Natalie answered, remembering how they had become friends one Saturday night at a freshman year party. Scanning the living room of a frat house for Debbie, from whom she had become mysteriously separated, she recognized Becky from government class. The only student in class who had the courage to argue with their sexist, usually drunk teacher. Right now she appeared to be having another argument, this time with a fraternity brother named Jason whom Natalie knew slightly. Natalie abandoned the search for Debbie.

“So you’re just turning me down flat?” Jason was saying in amazement as Natalie walked up to them. He glanced at her as if he hoped she would go away.

“I’m seeing someone else right now,” Becky answered, also looking at Natalie quizzically.

“Do you not date white guys?” Jason asked, in a desperate search for logic in the midst of rejection.

“I have …” Becky began.

Natalie interrupted. “You know, Jason, you’re a really cute guy, but that doesn’t mean everyone wants to go out with you.”

“Well, thanks for letting me know,” he said, now truly offended. He looked at Becky and said, “You can call off the troops. I’m leaving.” He crossed the living room and went downstairs.

Natalie felt very pleased with herself. She introduced herself to Becky and said, “I like the way you take on our government teacher. He needs somebody to snap him out of his fog.”

“Like Jason,” Becky said, smiling in a resigned way.

“Yeah. He didn’t have any right to ask that.”

“Maybe not, but this is Boulder. It happens all the time.”

“Well, not any more tonight. You want a beer?”

Walking onto the porch with Becky, Natalie felt like the escort for a VIP. Becky’s outfit was all elegance, from the Benetton sweater down to her Papagallo shoes. They stood on the back lawn and chatted about classes until Debbie found them. Natalie introduced them, pleased that her circle was expanding. Diversifying.

“Wake up, Natalie,” Becky said, startling her. Across the aisle, a couple got up and left the restaurant, holding hands. “Daydreaming about Chris again?”

“I was remembering how we became friends.”

“That’s the thing, Natalie,” Becky said. Now she was picking up the small, extremely crisp fries one by one and eating them, ignoring the half of her burger that was left. “I want us to be friends. I don’t want you to try to save me anymore, and I don’t want to be teaching and preaching all the time.”

“You’re right, Becky. It’s just that you know something about everything, and asking you is easier than looking things up,” Natalie babbled, feeling that she had unwittingly stepped to the edge of a cliff and was about to measure the drop.

“You know why I know so much?”

“Uh, books? College?”

“Because that’s how I protect myself. I can always shut up some redneck with the right fact.”

“Really?” Natalie asked, thinking of rednecks—from Boulder and Lake Tapawingo both—that she couldn’t imagine stopping for facts. But surely Becky had more experience in that area.

“But with my friends,” Becky said, “I don’t always want to be the professor.”

“Then just stop,” Natalie said. “You’re always teaching. I’m not the only one bringing it on.”

“You know, you’re not the only person who’s said that to me,” Becky said, soaking her last French fry in ketchup and chewing slowly. “My mother has told me that once or twice.”

“Maybe it’s easier to talk about race in terms of facts,” Natalie speculated. “Because that way I won’t say something that might make you angry or hurt you.”

“Like what?” Becky asked, giving her an even look that seemed like a dare.

Natalie picked up her burger, which she’d been neglecting, and took a big bite. She didn’t want to lose Becky as a friend. But then again, she didn’t want to be in a tug of war with her every time they met or tiptoe around her for fear of giving offense.

“You have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“You have to promise that if you don’t like what I say to you, you won’t just leave. Promise that you’ll … say something like it back.”

“Say something like what?”

“Oh come on, Becky,” Natalie snapped. “You must say things about white people sometimes.”

“Fine,” Becky agreed, holding her hands up as if she were facing a gun. “Talk away.”

“When I was in ninth grade,” Natalie began, “there was a black guy in my English class. It was the first time I’d ever had a black student in one of my classes. He started dating a girl in the class.”

“And this bothered you?” Becky asked.

“I remember wondering why he couldn’t date someone black. It was years later before it occurred to me that there weren’t any black girls for him to date. At least not at school.”

“Not to mention that it was none of your business.”

“That too,” Natalie said, feeling that she had got her comeuppance. But Becky wasn’t finished.

“I know just how you feel,” she said very softly. “A guy I know brought his new white girlfriend to church one day. It was Palm Sunday, and every other woman in that church wore a dress and a hat, but she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. And she was there to meet his family!”

“Does everyone at your church dress up?” Natalie asked feebly, trying to remember if she had ever worn jeans to Mass. Her family hadn’t attended all that often since they had moved to Boulder.

“Yes, women at my church always look good. This girlfriend looked like a big mess. That must be why she didn’t last long.”

The waitress came by to take their plates and leave the check. Natalie ate at Tom’s every so often because the food was so basic and correct. It was simply what it was. Her friendship with Becky had always held an element of the unknown. The two had seemed like a good fit two days ago, when they had made plans. Now Natalie peeled her thighs from the vinyl again and sighed, remembering that the only shorts she had ever seen Becky wearing were linen shorts, long and pressed. Conversations were beginning to come into her head that she didn’t want to hear.

“Are we OK now?” she asked Becky.

“You made your confession.”

“Yeah,” Natalie said, thinking how the wooden confessionals at Catholic churches always resembled coffins stood on one end.

“But I’m not a priest. I can’t absolve you.”

“No,” Natalie agreed.

“That’s why I don’t have these conversations too often. They never turn out.”

“You just have arguments or silence.”

“I argue to protect myself,” Becky said, “but I don’t like arguing with my friends.” She put ten dollars down on the table.

Glancing at the check, Natalie pulled her wallet out of her backpack and began counting ones. She put seven down on top of Becky’s ten. “Like I said, silence.”

Becky nodded thoughtfully. “With white friends, about certain subjects, yes.”

“Doesn’t that limit those friendships?”

“Yes, it does. You’re beginning to get it now.”

It was the end of another school year, Natalie told herself. Time to close certain doors and try to open others.

“Maybe this friendship does more for me than it does for you,” she said to Becky, hoping she wouldn’t rush to agree. “But I like it.”

“I do too, most of the time,” Becky said quietly. “Sometimes I think I should invite you to dinner with my family or to a party with some of my other friends, but then I never do.”

“We can see what happens next year,” Natalie said. Becky took two of her ones, and they left. Tom’s had been so well air-conditioned that at first they didn’t feel the dry heat as they walked down the Pearl Street Mall together. When they got to Broadway, Natalie said she wanted to sit down and look at the tulips for a while. Becky had to go to class. Natalie watched her disappear down Broadway. As usual, people turned to look at her.

Natalie hoped that they smiled. A year ago, she had read a magazine article about black men. They said they felt invisible at times, too visible at others. When she finished reading the article, she had made a resolution to smile at any black man she walked past on the street. Becky had noticed when they were in downtown Denver for dinner one night.

“You certainly are smiley tonight,” she said to Natalie. They walked on for another block or two. Then she asked, “Are you smiling at black men because you’re with me?” Natalie mentioned the article. Becky laughed a little and gave her a look she used to convey how strange white people could be. Natalie had the impression, however, that she wasn’t really angry. Just a little bemused.

As usual, Natalie ended her visit to the Pearl Street Mall by visiting the Boulder Bookstore. She found herself in the ethnic studies section, looking at a copy of Go Tell It on the Mountain. She decided to buy it and read it. It would be a good way to bridge the school year, when she worked and studied, with the lazy rhythms of summer, without Chris, without Becky or Debbie or her other Boulder friends, but with sun, wind, warmth, and water. She didn’t know where any of them would be next summer, after they graduated. This summer might be her last at the lake, her last summer to read, listen, and learn.
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Story 12: Deirdre, in Xeriscape: A Cake of Her Own

Sometimes when I give parties I like to stand on the stairs and watch the people who’ve come to my house. For a moment I feel honored and remind myself to call them or write them thank-you notes the next day, but then, I have to be honest, I eavesdrop a little and see who needs what. For me, a party is a chance to take care of people. Everyone else may be relaxing and catching up with friends, but the hostess is the one who makes that possible. No time to relax for me.

A little bit about my apartment now. When Jodi first told me she wasn’t going to live with me, two years ago this spring, I was devastated. I was so mad I couldn’t go look for my own apartment. And then one summer night at dinner, when I was complaining to my parents, my father pointed out to me that Jodi was my best friend. Actually, he said, “Jodi loves you more than anyone else.” I was startled that he had even noticed, though she has been my friend since before we were in two digits. My mother just stared at her food after he said that. We eat at eight because they’re doctors and they work late at the same hospital. After dinner I went out and sat on my bench in the yard. When I got cold enough, I came inside, said goodnight to my parents, and went upstairs. At midnight, I was still thinking. What if he meant, “Jodi loves you more than anyone else loves you”? The next day, I rented this apartment, even though it was a two-bedroom, and got a roommate by the time school started. Natalie and Debbie could barely conceal their amazement. Once I was moved in, I didn’t mind talking to Jodi anymore. And my roommate is a graduate student in philosophy. That’s so sophisticated.

This is a small party for Natalie’s twenty-first birthday. She’s the oldest of our group. Yes, I am part of this group, and it was my turn to have a party. Debbie is here, of course, sitting on one side of Josh on my roommate’s ratty couch. She wouldn’t let me buy a new one. “I want to contribute,” she told me. On the other side of Josh—Jodi. They’ve been friends since the beginning of freshman year. One time, they were lovers. One time, Josh and I slept together, but I still don’t feel I’ve had love. Jodi gets up and goes to the keg, followed by Josh’s beautiful blue eyes. I wish mine were his color. I come down the stairs and sit beside him, waiting until he stops staring after Jodi and notices me.

“Here we all are, still friends,” he shouts near my ear, over the music.

“Does that surprise you?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve seen so many people come and go, but we’re still hangin’.”

It’s true. Things shift among us, but no one has split off yet. Then he stands up and shouts: “A toast!”

Nobody notices ’cause the music is so loud. He shouts “Toast! Toast! Toast!” until everyone hears him. Becky lifts up the needle on the turntable. The Police are still singing somewhere, I suppose, but we can’t hear them.

“Toast,” he says, quietly. All seven of us crowd into the living room, between the couch and the entertainment center and my rocking chair. It’s cozy. “To Natalie, who is the only adult in this group and will have to set an example for all of us.”

We laugh, and then he continues: “I want to tell you how I met her. I was standing in line outside the UMC waiting to buy a poster, and I saw her in front of me in line. All I could see was her profile. She had the unhappiest profile I had ever seen. I said to myself, “‘I’ve got to make that girl smile!’ So I went and said hi.”

“You just wanted to move up in line,” Becky says, and everyone laughs. We all know what an operator Josh is. And he’s shameless. He doesn’t even care.

“That’s how we met. We bought our posters and sat by the fountain and talked. And then Jodi walked by, and I introduced myself to her too. That’s how this group began.”

“Good thing you were there to gather us all in, like a hen herding a flock of chicks,” Jodi says mockingly.

He smiles at her. Then he looks at Debbie. “Your turn.”

Natalie and Debbie laugh their superfriend laugh. “Eighth-grade science class,” Debbie recalls. “Frogs in formaldehyde!”

“Yeah!” Natalie shouts, gesturing with a stirrer as if she wanted to dissect something. They’re both really drunk, and I guess they don’t get Absolut too often because they’re drinking all of mine. My parents let me take whatever liquor I want. I wonder if there’s a shot left for me, but getting it right now would be rude. Now Josh is prompting me.

“I met Natalie in government class,” I tell him, smiling at both of them. If Josh had never seen Jodi at the fountain and introduced her to Natalie, would Jodi and I be roommates now? At least I wouldn’t have lowered her opinion of me by sleeping with him.

“And I met Natalie through you guys. I don’t remember when,” my roommate Robin adds. Thank you, I think. Not everybody has to worship at their shrine.

Becky is last, and as usual she brings us down to a serious level. “Natalie saved me from a racist frat boy at a party,” she says, sounding world-weary. When she says such things I always secretly wonder if I’ve ever thought as that frat boy did. Or acted. I hope not. And then there was the odd way she said the word saved. There is less of a silence than sometimes follows Becky’s pronouncements. Natalie gets some shot glasses and the bottle of Absolut and pours everyone a glass. We down them. Then she asks Robin, “Hey, can you put your stereo out on the porch so we can go out and dance on the lawn? It is just so crowded and hot in here.”

My apartment is the one closest to Goss, so at least we won’t be blasting music past people in my building. After Natalie pours me a couple more shots, I don’t worry about it anymore. We’re dancing to the Talking Heads; some people walking down Goss even joined in for a while, though they were kind of gross. I hate dreadlocks, especially on pasty-faced Boulder hippies. Or Mohawks, for that matter. You should be able to get a comb through your hair, and if your hair is standing straight up, it should be because it grows that way.

So we dance off some of the alcohol, and then Natalie starts her favorite game: truth or dare. I don’t know why she likes it so much. She asks me if I’m in love with Josh, I guess because it was just too interesting to her that I sat down next to him. I am, but I won’t admit it to her. While I say no Jodi stares at me, which just exasperates me further: she doesn’t love Josh, but apparently nobody else can either. Josh stands there staring at his beer bottle. When it’s my turn, I try to embarrass Natalie.

“Have you ever been pregnant?”

She glares at me. I’m pleased that I’ve hit a nerve. The silence grows really uncomfortable, and finally I say, “You have to answer!”

She says, really sarcastically, “Ye-ah!”

“Really? When?”

Jodi looks at me. I say, “I can ask a follow-up question.”

“It’s Josh’s turn,” Debbie says.

We go around and around, Natalie trying to upset me, but nothing she asks gets under my skin. Then my favorite song comes on: “Over My Head” by Fleetwood Mac. Every time that song comes on, I can’t help myself. I have to dance, and I do, away from these people who may or may not be my friends and into the street. The music is really loud. Even when I dance down the street to the corner, I can still hear it. I’m so into it that I don’t stop dancing and open my eyes until the music stops, and then I discover I’m standing in front of a cop car and since I’ve been flipping my skirt around, I’ve probably flashed the cop. Luckily, the officer is female. She gets out of the car and surveys me and my friends. She gestures that we should walk back to the group, so I do.

“We received a noise complaint,” she says. Big surprise. Then she asks for our driver’s licenses, which we have to go back to the house to get. Becky turns off the music. Of course, only Natalie is old enough to drink. The cop stands there in the doorway to the kitchen, surveying the bottles on the counter and the cakes covering the table.

“Do you want some cake?” I ask, pointing. “This one’s mine.”

She stares at me while Natalie and Debbie snicker. Then she pours out my Absolut and the rest of the bottles but doesn’t look any further.

“Keep the music down,” she says as she leaves. “And don’t take open containers outside.”

I pretend I don’t feel stupid. This is my house, after all. I can offer cake to whomever I please. I get myself a piece of cake, made especially for me by Natalie’s aunt, and sit down to listen to the rest of the Fleetwood Mac album. Debbie and Natalie try to smirk it up, but cake wins. Everyone has a piece of their very own cake, and then we sample each other’s. That’s how the party ends, quietly, with everyone eating. Becky told me later that on her way home she saw that cop again, accosting some frat boys. Maybe she was on her way back to check on us and bothered them instead.

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This Title

I thought "The Price of Silence" was so cool when I picked it for a title. Didn't bother to research it; just settled on it. In fact, I may have had it in mind from the beginning--I can't remember now.

When I searched for it on the Internet, I found out how popular it was. There are several books with that title, a movie from 1959, and even a movie from 1916 with Lon Chaney. A band called Discharge has a song by that name.

But in the early part of this millennium (Isn't it so cool that we can say that?) I was thinking about how Natalie didn't make any efforts to use birth control on that night she got pregnant. That's the most obvious meaning of the title. But it could also refer to her reaction to her rape, or the way she concealed both rape and pregnancy from her family, only revealing them well after they occurred.

In an even broader sense, "silence" encapsulates the way Ashley and Natalie deal with problems in their lives (when Ashley learns of Natalie's abortion, she doesn't tell her parents, saying to her sister, "It would only cause problems"), and silence is the opposite of the strategies Teddy, Natalie's father, uses when confronted with something he doesn't like. In fact, as a professor, he can't afford silence--he has to talk to eat.

Anyway, I could go on, but I think I'm over the title now. I think I'd like to change it to "The Northern End of My Heart," which doesn't seem to be popular on Google. And it's a line from the title story. I've always liked happening upon the title of a book, buried in a paragraph somewhere. It's like a little secret.


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Story 11: Birthday Cakes

My niece came over one afternoon on Christmas break of her junior year in college, a warm day for January. Sometimes when Natalie’s back in Kansas City for the summer or Christmas, she just shows up. I figured she wanted to talk about the party for her twenty-first birthday in February. She was having two: one with her family and one the next night with her friends, both in Boulder. I had promised to drive to Boulder a few days beforehand and make her the best cake a girl ever had for a party. I hadn’t told her that I planned to make special individual cakes for her friends, based on what she’d said about them over the years and what they’d said to me whenever I saw them. They were all turning twenty-one this year. But she didn’t say anything about cakes or birthdays, just dithered around for a while, then turned to me and raised her chin to me, the way she does sometimes—she got that from her mother. Whenever my sister has finally reached her limit with a person, which takes her about twice as long as it does anyone else, she raises her chin just that way and tells that person to stop. It always works. I try to get her to do this more often, but she never takes my advice. So up came that chin, my sister’s bones imprinted on a twenty-year-old, and she said plaintively, “Aunt Jennie? There’s something I need to tell you.”

Anyone could tell from that tone that something big and hairy was coming down the road. I got us both a coke and sat down at the round table in my kitchen, where walls, ceiling, furniture, and appliances are shades of light blue or cream. A room so open and airy that every morning when I come down here to have breakfast, drink coffee, and read the paper, I swear that I could just fly out like the birds in the trees beyond the windows. I made her sit down with me. It’s good to be close when you say important things.

“What is it, honey?”

She twisted her fingers around each other for a while. “Two years ago about this time, I had an abortion.” She didn’t look at me.

The room didn’t seem so airy anymore. It had imploded and filled with all sorts of dangerous edges. And I felt immediately guilty, as if my life had somehow moved the two of us toward this moment. Was it because everyone thinks I’m the wild one? Was that why Natalie told me, instead of her mother?

“Michael got you pregnant?” I asked and then berated myself. I didn’t know why I phrased it that way. Despite how fast I’d kept moving all my life, my old-fashioned upbringing could still catch up to me.

But she was nodding. “Yes.” She didn’t say anything for a minute, then took a deep breath.

“Did you tell him?”

“I told Debbie first.”

I was getting the picture here, and it wasn’t pretty. I had always prided myself on being honest with men, but Natalie obviously had different standards. I got up and paced around the room. I found myself at the refrigerator, took out the potato salad, and ate from the bowl.

She straightened up and caught my stare. “I did eventually tell Michael,” she said.

“That’s good,” I told her. I tried to think of the correct thing to say at this juncture, but then Natalie started looking at me expectantly, and I thought to myself, Oh, no. She wants me to tell Ashley.

“I want to get this out in the open, Aunt Jennie,” she said. “I want to tell Mom and Dad; I just don’t know how.”

I stared at her. “The same way you’ve told me, I guess.”

“No.” She turned pale. “I can’t tell Mom all by myself.”

She had a point. My big sister Ashley had been bounded all her life by desires for what she couldn’t have, the principal desire being for a large family, wild and loud. The complete opposite of our family and something I decided against when I was in my twenties—when I was young enough to think that relationships might last long enough to raise a child but old enough to understand the difficulty women in my family had in conceiving.

All my knowledge of Ashley warned me against telling her myself. She’d be terribly wounded that Natalie, her only child, had told me first. But another part of me felt flattered that Natalie had come to me first, and that part of me wanted to make this situation a success.

“Let me think about it,” I told Natalie. “Then I’ll give you a call.”

She sat there for a while afterward, drinking her coke, but I felt desperate to be alone. Finally I sent her on her way. She walked out to her car in a daze. I hoped the traffic was light for her drive home. Why did she want to tell us this? I would never have dreamed of telling my parents, but that was another time, when abortion was illegal. After I sat in the kitchen and ate all the potato salad, I got up and checked the orders I’d brought home from my bakery last night. I began to bake some cupcakes. Then I made three braids of bread from the dough that had been rising since that morning. It felt good to mix things and twist them and pound them down until they were a manageable size. In the middle of all this, Mom called with a question about the party. All Natalie’s grandparents were going to be there; Mom had forgotten where we were all staying, and a friend of hers in Boulder wanted to know. I told her we were staying at Gold Hill Inn and having the party there, since in February it might be troublesome to drive from Boulder to the party and back on account of snow. Talking to her gave me an idea.

I thought it best that Natalie air this issue before the party, so that she could use that occasion to smooth over any hurt feelings. I called Ashley and told her that Natalie and I needed to discuss something with her, something important. She said two days from now would be best. Then I called Natalie and told her that I had talked to Ashley and that the three of us would meet in two days. She agreed, not that she had any choice.

**

I’ve always loved triangles. My favorite cakes have been shaped that way, and I always like my relationships triangular too. Especially with men. If I have someone waiting in the wings, it helps to keep my main man on his toes until he makes his inevitable exit. So when Natalie and Ashley and I were sitting in my living room two days later—each of us in one chair, each by herself—I knew I could make this explanation go smoothly. It was just a matter of playing my sister off my niece.

Natalie eyed me as if she wanted to protest. Or bolt.

Ashley said, “You two have a very mysterious air about you. What did you want to tell me?”

“It’s about Natalie,” I told her. She glanced at her daughter.

“About your party?”

“No, Mom,” Natalie said.

“Natalie has something to tell you that’s really hard to say,” I said. “She asked for my help.” I tried to keep too much pride out of my voice.

“Two years ago…” Natalie began. Then her voice caught.

“Yes?” Ashley said.

Natalie coughed a little. “I had an abortion.”

There, the words were out. And so was my sister. She leapt up and advanced toward Natalie, saying, “You were pregnant and you didn’t tell me?”

At first Natalie shrank back into her chair. Then she stared up at her mother, tears in her eyes. “I was afraid to.”

That comment stopped Ashley. She began to cry too. Soon there was a regular tearfest drowning my living room—three women with cutesy names crying their eyes out. I knew I would feel disgusted with myself later, but I could never resist crying when everyone else was doing it.

Finally I got up and fetched Kleenex and some mint cookies. Ashley sat on the floor by Natalie’s chair, eating cookies and asking her questions. I returned to my chair, maintaining the triangle, but congratulating myself that I had brought them closer.

“Was it Michael’s?” Ashley asked. I already knew the answer, but I had no intention of volunteering any more information. It was Natalie’s show now. I would stay in the background.

“Yes,” Natalie said.

“He would have helped you,” Ashley said. “He would have been a good father. Why didn’t you keep it?”

Natalie shifted impatiently. “I didn’t want to marry him,” she said softly. Then more firmly: “I won’t have a child with a man I don’t want to marry.” From the tone in her voice, I knew she wasn’t just talking about Michael. In saying those words, Natalie had just exorcised the family demon of infertility. She had just as much as said to her mother, “Unlike you, I can get pregnant whenever I want to.” She knew she had more choices than her mother, and she intended to use them any way she saw fit. For a moment, I felt jealous.

Ashley persisted. “One of us could have taken care of the baby.”

I couldn’t see the point of this discussion, since we were talking about events two years in the past, so I tried to steer my sister in another direction. “Natalie always talks about having children,” I told Ashley. “She wasn’t ready. And how could it work anyway, for one of us to take the baby? A child can’t just be passed around.”

Ashley glared at me, even while she was nibbling at one of my mint cookies. I wanted to shove it right down her throat, make her swallow something whole, gorge herself for once. But she wasn’t willing to move on from this subject. She turned back to Natalie. “Just for a few years. Until you were settled enough to make a home for a child.”

“No,” Natalie said. I silently cheered her on. “Nobody but me will raise my children.”

My living room fell silent for a moment, and I noticed most of the cookies were gone. Had I eaten that many? I was mentally searching my refrigerator for another snack, when Ashley changed the subject, asking Natalie, “When you found out you were pregnant, why didn’t you tell us then?”

Natalie stared ahead blindly, searching for an answer to that question but finding none. I’d never been able to explain my own silences; why should a college girl do any better? Finally, she said, “I knew how much you wanted a big family, Mom. I was afraid of that.”

“I did,” Ashley said. “I wanted to have four children, maybe more. But then I got cervical cancer and had to have a hysterectomy.”

I could tell, watching Natalie’s face, that my sister’s grief had become my niece’s guilt. Myself, I thought it was time for Ashley to leave that grief behind. But then, I had chosen not to have children—her choice had been made for her.

Ashley continued, “What you mean by ‘afraid’ is, you were afraid we’d make the decision for you.”

Natalie nodded, a look of relief on her face. “Growing up,” she said, “I heard so often how women in my family had a difficult time getting pregnant. Being pregnant in college was hard enough—I didn’t want to take on family history too.”

Ashley combed her auburn hair back with her fingers, something she did when she couldn’t immediately think of an answer. Unconsciously, Natalie did the same thing. Again, I felt envious, but I wasn’t sure of what: of having a daughter that might as well be your mirror image, except that she had her father’s hair color? Or of the inability to escape family when they’re your children?

“Just one more thing,” Ashley said, glancing at me and then back at her daughter. “You went to Jennie in this case. Not to me or your father. Why?”

All of a sudden, my triangle fell apart. I had been excluded, by my own sister. I wanted Ashley to pay for that remark about telling me first; I wanted Natalie to come down hard on her. But of course she didn’t. Natalie tried to put everything back together. “I wanted to ask her advice,” she told her mother. “She’s known you longer than I have, after all.” She smiled at me.

“Promise me,” Ashley said, putting her hand on Natalie’s, “that you’ll come to us for help in the future.”

“Of course,” Natalie said. I was secretly pleased that she had avoided the word “promise.”

**

Picture two sets of grandparents, two parents, and an aunt, all surrounding Natalie, standing in front of the fire. She was saying that this would be the cold spell for the year, and she was having a hard time getting through it. Outside, it was snowing again. I hoped that next time I went outside I wouldn’t see mysterious tracks in the snow. They were smaller than my hand, so they couldn’t have been left by a mountain lion, right? Or so I assured myself. My sister and our parents gave one toast, and then Teddy and his parents stood up to perform theirs. Ceremonies like this always made me sad. My parents never threw us parties, but Ashley and Teddy were insistent to a fault about them. I think Natalie was enjoying the occasion.

Teddy mentioned that Natalie had never had a sweet sixteen party because they had had to go to his uncle Theo’s funeral, but “she never complained.” I stood there, drink hoisted, thinking of those, like me, who didn’t get more than one present on any birthday and who had complained, vociferously. My parents told me they held back to build our characters. I’d always thought they were cheap. Only later in life had I met people whose families couldn’t afford any presents at all. I should have gained more perspective from them, but I still had regrets. Oh well. I could always throw a humdinger of a birthday party for myself when I turned fifty.

My mother spoke of how Natalie reminded her of her mother. I could see that. My grandma was a character, always saying the silliest, funniest things. I could listen to her for hours. She loved to make fun of human foibles. Sometimes people in our family seem to alternate through the generations: Grandma, sweet and tolerant, Mom and Dad, restrictive and quick to judge.

Then Dad took his turn. Not much of a talker, he simply held up his large wine glass and said to Natalie, “You’re an adult in the family now. Here’s to family far and near, close and scattered, the family that was, the family that is, and the family you’ll have.” He said it with such resonance that we all cheered.

But later, after I had served everyone a piece of Natalie’s cake, I wondered if Ashley had told him. I caught her eye across the room, and she picked up her empty plate and came over to the cake table, where I was standing, debating whether to have seconds then or wait until someone else did first. Ashley closed her hand over mine, the one holding the cake knife.

“Feeling a little sentimental?” I asked her.

“No, grateful,” she said. “To you.”

I frowned at her.

“I was so angry at first,” she confessed. “It felt like things kept getting taken away.” She took some Kleenex out of her pocket and wiped her face. “First I had a hysterectomy. Then I had to leave my family because of my husband’s job. Then my daughter didn’t even tell me when she got pregnant.”

“If you had gotten pregnant in college, would you have told our parents?” I asked her.

She considered that. “Mom told me she had friends who had abortions. I might have.”

“But friends having abortions—that’s different from your own daughter,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ashley said, lifting my hand, cake knife and all, and cutting a piece of cake. Then she lifted the plate and popped a piece of cake in her mouth, eyeing me.

“I didn’t tell Mom or Dad,” she said. “I didn’t see why they needed to know.”

“I didn’t think you would,” I told her.

She raised her eyebrows. “Why say something that might cause trouble?”

I laughed at her. “You’re asking me? You know I like to cause trouble.”

“I didn’t get that impression last month,” she said.

Just then I realized how much I wanted her to apologize for thinking me unfit to be her daughter’s confidante. I turned away and helped myself to seconds too. I figured if I cried into the cake, she might not notice.

“Thank you,” Ashley said.

“For the cake?” I asked her.

“For being there when Natalie told me. It stopped me from saying things I’d be regretting now.”

It wasn’t really an apology. But then, Ashley was seldom direct.

“I’m your sister,” I said simply. “I know what you need.”

She nodded and rejoined the group by the fire.

I put down my plate and tidied up the table, admiring the small cakes that I had made for Debbie, Deirdre, Josh, Jodi, and Becky. All Natalie’s friends with whom I’d spent many an afternoon when I visited Boulder. Sometimes I showed up without calling first, just to give Natalie a dose of her own medicine. She never minded. I had put all my heart into making those cakes. I’d mixed Debbie’s cake extra rich because I’ve had friends like her, but then they’ve moved away and we’ve let the distance matter. Deirdre’s cake had a pattern like grass and flowers in a meadow and some aspen leaves. She was always going on about plants. I covered Josh’s with faces made of marzipan; they were all talking to each other. That man could charm anyone. If only I were younger … Becky’s was shaped like a fedora because she was wearing a hat every time I saw her, and Jodi got a cat face. She might not be a cat person, but she always struck me that way. And then my niece. Who was my only niece by blood and would have been my favorite even if she weren’t. I dotted Natalie’s pale yellow cake with white flowers. Hovering over them, hummingbirds and moths and bumblebees, all in shimmering shades of silver or green. Everyone could have a piece with a flower and a pollinator. Whether they got the point or not, I don’t know. It was my way of saying that there are many ways to be fertile. I knew Natalie had always wanted children. I just wanted her to remember what I could make.


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