The storm drummed on Corkin Park, and the lakeshore, and the pretty avenues of Kotemee for another half an hour or so. While it did the gutters coursed and the sidewalks danced, and hissing cars along Howell Road carved plumes through puddles big as lawns. One of those cars, Jean saw as she walked toward home with Natalie, was Jeff Birdy’s orange Barracuda, and the sight of it disappearing into the downpour was almost nostalgic for her, although she gave the boy inside little thought. She concentrated instead on the problem ahead of her. Because the terrible news of Adele’s survival brought with it the prospect of detectives at her door at any moment, and the chance that she might never be able to give another friend her beautiful, practical gift. If that happened, she didn’t see how she could live with herself. So she walked through the rain, hardly saying a word to Natalie, hardly lifting her gaze from the grass encroaching the limits of the sidewalk, and felt the pressures of her obligation building with each soggy step.
Natalie wasn’t like her other friends. Jean couldn’t help but dwell on that fact. The whole foundation of her gift was a last moment of joy, and yet Natalie was someone who seemed to reject joy, to refuse it and its consolations on principle. How could such a person ever be fulfilled?
As she walked, Jean riffled through the easy options like someone thumbing through paint chips. Sex? No, that one was easily dismissed. Unlike for Dorothy and Adele, sex didn’t appear to be a priority for Natalie. She snickered with contempt whenever other women ogled a handsome man, or leaned in during pairs figure skating as the male skater lifted his partner and clenched. Perhaps that was a camouflage, a way of protecting herself from disappointment. But even so, it seemed clear to Jean that sex was not the thing Natalie needed. For the same reason she rejected any ideas relating to food that wanted to push into her brain. The notion of some kind of grand last supper for a woman who occasionally liked to indulge; it was just too cheap.
A spa treatment, glorious and relaxing? Hot stones? Pedicure? Mud bath? No, no, no, thought Jean. These were paltry, make-do ideas. They showed no imagination, no specificity, no truth. The beauty of the moments she’d made for Dorothy and Adele was that they had just happened. They were real, and so the joys were authentic.
She sensed she was searching in the wrong place, for the wrong thing. For this friend, Jean reasoned, the experience of complete, immersive happiness took an entirely different form. To anyone else, it wouldn’t even look like happiness; that’s how different Natalie was. If she needed a reminder of that, she got it on the walk home. By the time the two women had reached the north end of Calendar Street the storm had largely abated, the grand elms and beech trees were shaking off more rain than the clouds, and light filtered into the sky like an afternoon dawn. Jean’s feet were squishing in her running shoes and she stopped to take them off so that she might pour the excess water out. As she stood barefoot on the cold, wet sidewalk, she looked back where the sky was brightest and saw an immense rainbow arching over the outskirts of Kotemee.
“Look, Natalie!” she said, pointing. “Isn’t it exquisite?”
Natalie squinted up at the arc of color. “Sandeep used to go gaga over rainbows. Something about Allah and His Holy Last Messengers.” Her upper lip kinked into a sneer. “He kind of ruined them for me.”
Who on earth didn’t like rainbows? What kind of person sneered cynically at something so magical? She almost chided Natalie until she seized on the answer. Someone who pushed against the world. Someone for whom everything was fraught and complicated and sharp-edged. Someone who called timid old ladies terrible names and stood in the teeming rain firing baseballs to feed a lust for revenge. Someone who relished conflict.
In that moment, Jean realized what she needed to do. She needed to give Natalie something to struggle against, something to fight. And for it to be worthy of Jean’s goal, and of Natalie, it couldn’t be just anything . . . it had to be the ultimate thing.
The rest of the walk toward Natalie’s house felt much lighter to Jean. There was a moment when she saw a police car coming along Calendar and froze. But then she saw it was Bill Courtly behind the wheel; Bill was just an ordinary constable and sort of dopey, and Jean thought if they were going to send somebody to arrest her it wouldn’t be him. But she didn’t wave or attract any attention to herself just in case.
With not far to go, she announced to Natalie that she needed to make a quick stop at her shop. So they turned at the corner of Main, passed under the ornamental street lamp, its wrought-iron curlicue still dripping, and walked up the street past the pots of flattened geraniums. When they arrived at the shop, Jean paused as she put the key in the front door, and wondered out loud whether Dilman’s was open.
“I’d say they’d better be,” said Natalie. And off she went to buy an assortment of cupcakes, which gave Jean time to stand before her wall of tools, consider the array of options, and make the very best choice.
At Natalie’s, each of the women spent a while under the spray in her tiny shower, where turning around meant being careful not to hit your head on the little metal shelf of shampoos, and Jean no longer wondered why her friend had chosen such a small house to live in after her divorce. It was the sort of house that made everything—bathing, cooking, entertaining guests—much more difficult than it needed to be, and it was clear now that was just how Natalie liked it.
When they were done it was about three in the afternoon, and bundled warm in their terry-cloth robes they met downstairs in the little kitchen. Natalie had already set out the cupcakes on a plate and was in the middle of making coffee when Jean joined her. For a brief moment Natalie struggled sliding in the basket that held the grounds, and when she swore at the coffee maker and gave it a whack with her hand, Jean smiled to herself.
As she sat at the kitchen island, she set a small paper bag by the foot of her stool.
“What’s that?” asked Natalie.
“It’s what I wanted to get at the shop,” said Jean. “A little surprise for you.”
“A ceramic?”
Jean shook her head and gave Natalie an admonishing look. “No guessing.” She passed her gaze over the assorted cupcakes. Was there chocolate? Yes, but only one, and she knew that was Natalie’s favorite. On another day, she might have invoked guest’s privilege and taken it, but not today. Instead, she took a lemon with white icing and sprinkles, which she didn’t mind.
“Natalie, I want to thank you again for being there for me and letting me sleep here during this whole stupid Milt thing.”
Natalie was reaching up to grab two mugs from the cupboard. “That’s what friends are for, kiddo.” She set the cups on the counter and tugged open the fridge. As she brought out a carton of milk, she giggled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I just think it’s pretty hilarious you’re going to dinner at Fran Knubel’s.”
“Yes, and thank you so much for your support,” said Jean. “That’s one instance where you were not there for me.”
“You could have just said no, like I did.”
Jean tore off a piece of cupcake with her fingers and held it like a cotton ball ready to dab a puncture wound. “But that’s your way. I’m not like you. I accept invitations that I don’t particularly want, because I can’t bear to hurt someone’s feelings, even someone like Fran. You’re different. You do things and say things that most people would never do or say.”
Natalie batted her eyes. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“It makes you a challenge.” Jean popped the pinch of cupcake in her mouth. She pointed down at the plate and joggled her eyebrows expectantly. “I left the chocolate one for you.”
Natalie made the face of someone quite unimpressed. “You can have it. I’m off chocolate.”
Jean just looked at her friend, saying nothing but invisibly shaking her head. Because wasn’t that typical? That was so typical. Really, Natalie Skilbeck was the most difficult, most challenging person Jean had ever known. She thought to herself that it was amazing they had remained friends for so long, because, looked at objectively, Natalie’s personality could be very off-putting.
“Well, which one do you want?” said Jean. “Which one are you craving?”
Natalie sighed. “I dunno, maybe the carrot.”
“Then have the carrot. Have the one you want. This is your chance.”
“I’m not sure I even want it.”
“Then why did you buy it?”
“Why are you pushing me?”
“I’m not.”
Jean held up her hands and let out a big breath, because suddenly they were both in a bad mood and this was not how she wanted things to go. Natalie turned to face the counter and began pouring coffee into the mugs, and Jean adjusted her robe and cinched the belt. It was, perhaps, a subconscious action but she caught herself doing it, and that focused her mind.
“Natalie,” said Jean, “do you have any gloves?”
“What kind of gloves?”
“Any kind, it doesn’t matter. But probably not little knit ones.”
Natalie handed Jean her coffee. “What do you want gloves for?”
“They’re for you, to put on.”
Natalie brought her coffee mug to her mouth and took a careful sip, looking the whole time at Jean with a furrow across her forehead.
“Why, though?”
Jean made a sound of mock exasperation, which really wasn’t so mock. “It’s for the surprise!”
The crease in Natalie’s forehead eased a little. “So you are giving me a ceramic. It’s one of those prickly ones with the thorns.”
Natalie meant the Bramble Berry series of ceramics Jean had done a few years before: one each of Raspberry, Dewberry, Blackberry, Loganberry, and Tayberry, in which a single bright berry glazed in purple or red or blue was surrounded by a thatch of spiny branches and leaves. Even though Jean had used these dabs of vivid color, which was rare for her, the series had not sold well. One visitor to the shop had actually called them “wicked,” and not as a compliment.
Jean looked off noncommittally and smiled.
“I probably have some leather ones somewhere,” said Natalie. “I usually pack all my winter stuff away.” She set down her coffee and left to go rummaging in her front closet. Within a few minutes she came back flapping a pair of brown lambskin gloves.
“Good,” said Jean. “Now put them on.”
“Is it really necessary?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
Natalie sighed and pulled on first the left glove and then the right. Standing in her bathrobe, she held up her hands to show that she was ready. “You know, Jean,” she said, “you don’t have to give me something just because I’m giving you a place to stay. I’m your friend. That’s what friends do.”
“I know,” said Jean. She found her voice going strangely hoarse and had to clear her throat. “I know you’re my friend. It’s not a thank-you present.” She felt flushed. She looked at Natalie holding up her gloved hands and a wave of emotion that was quite unexpected washed through her. For twenty-three years she had known this woman, and she could see all of that time, all those shared memories, all those spent days spread through every inch of Natalie’s face, every slight discoloration, every crease and fold of skin and every coarse gray hair sneaking past the battlements of tint and curl. For Jean, looking at dear Natalie was like seeing her own hand clutching the ledge that kept her from falling into the abyss, and watching it lose its grip, finger by finger.
She patted the stool next to her. “Sit here,” she said. And when Natalie sat, facing her, Jean made a twirling motion. “The other way.”
“Do you want me to close my eyes?”
“Good idea.”
Natalie repositioned herself with her hands in her lap. “This is actually kind of exciting.”
“I know. Now the next part is going to seem odd, but no arguing. I want you to hold your hands a little higher, and together, kind of like you’re praying. Even though neither of us believe in that.”
Natalie glanced back at Jean. “Who says I don’t?”
“Oh,” said Jean. “Do you?”
For a second, even two, it seemed as if the answer to that question should make a difference. But even before Natalie gave her answer, which was squishy and equivocal, Jean had decided that, no, it didn’t really. Age and pain affected everyone, regardless of their beliefs. And with Natalie’s hypertension and penchant for sweets, it was only a matter of time.
“Ready? Eyes closed?”
“Ready.”
Jean bent and picked up the paper bag she had placed by her stool. She opened it and took out a coiled wire. This was her heavy-duty cutting wire, a strand of thin stainless-steel cable, which she used to slice her twenty-kilo blocks of clay into manageable one-kilo hunks. Uncoiled, the wire was less than a meter long and secured at each end to a sturdy hardwood handle. At a cost of about four dollars, it was one of Jean’s least expensive tools. And yet, after the storm, when she’d made her side trip into the shop to look at her wall of cutters and shapers, she’d known immediately that it was the perfect choice. Because it gave Natalie a fighting chance.
She stood up and pushed away her stool, unwound the wire, and got a firm hold of each of the wooden handles. After a delay to make sure Natalie was still holding her hands in a prayerful position, she reached out and eased the wire over her friend’s head.
“Now you can look.”
Jean didn’t give Natalie time to gather the full significance of the situation before her—the shining gray wire twisting across her field of view, Jean holding it from behind the way she might have held a ribbon she intended to wrap around a present, the fact that the wire was vibrating an inch from her gloved hands, the gloves themselves and their greater meaning. Jean said, “Now you can look,” and then she pulled the wire tight and cinched hard, hard as she could, as if Natalie were an old and very difficult block of clay.
As sure as she had been that this was the right choice for her friend . . . as sure as she was still . . . Jean found it very hard. Unbearably hard. Not the physical struggle, that was only to be expected. Indeed, it was the point. And she was strong, after all those years of working with clay, hauling the twenty-kilo blocks from the car to the back of the shop with no help from Milt, dividing them up into chunks, pressing and pounding and molding the lumps into something unique, something worthwhile, and doing it over and over again after each failed attempt. Working in ceramics was an odd amalgam of artistry and dumb manual labor, and Jean was inured to it. So no, her muscles weren’t the issue.
It was just that she would not have chosen this end for herself, and it was upsetting. Violence had never formed any part of the picture she’d imagined in that first ecstatic moment of inspiration. Thanks to her mother she was not afraid of blood, and it didn’t bother her now, except that it suggested pain and pain had always been the very thing she’d wanted to avoid. But she knew that her own expectations and sensibilities were beside the point, and that her notion of joy and Natalie’s were very different. She believed that with this deeply important, deeply Natalie-affirming conflict, she was honoring the true essence of her friend. And Jean knew too, so vividly, that there was no fighting a disease like the one that had taken her mother. There was no fighting age. It claimed you and pulled you and there were no ledges to grab, no wires to fend off. So you had to give in. And for someone like Natalie, that would just be a terrible way to die.
“This is better, Natalie,” she said as she heaved on the wire. “I promise you, this is so much better.”
When it was finally over, when she was done and sure there would be no Adele-like surprises, Jean collapsed back on the kitchen floor, wholly spent. She stared up at the ceiling, sucking for air, letting the muscles of her hands and arms release and unclench, enjoying the cold, unyielding compression of the tiles beneath her, absorbing the stillness around her, the utter silence. She lay back for the longest time, eyes on the stucco above, feeling the weight of Natalie’s head in her lap, but most conscious, most appreciative, of the silence. It was a lovely silence, complete and clean and weightless. It was uncluttered by the distraction of misgiving or apprehension, the disquiet of expectation, of anger or guilt. It was nothing like the silence that surrounded her those three months of nights in her mother’s house, when she lay awake in the spare room waiting for her mother to die. It was a silence without pain. It was a silence without hope. It was rare and full and perfect.
But after some time, as Jean lay quiet, she became aware of a sound pressing at the edges of this stillness. It knocked at the shell of the hush, tentatively, and gradually grew louder and more insistent. At first it was a sound without context, it agitated the air she breathed but had no connection to her. She was annoyed by this spoiling sound, and she tried to push it away. As far as Jean was concerned, the sound had no business being there and she refused to decode its meaning. Until suddenly she realized: someone was knocking at the door.
She raised her head off the tiles and looked. From where she lay, she could see the edge of the front door and a shadow coming through its beveled glass window. Someone was there. And as she took hold of this fact, like plucking a grape from a vine, another few facts tumbled with it. The person had a voice. The person was calling her. The person was Milt.
“Jean!” he was saying. “Jean! Please, come to the door. I know you’re there.”
She sat up and pulled her robe tight to her chest. It was Milt, hammering on the door! Milt had come, and she didn’t know why, but it thrilled her!
“Milt?” she called. The hammering continued. “Milt!” she called again, and it stopped.
There was a second’s pause and then her husband—her husband—called out, “Jean?” He rattled the doorknob and began to knock even harder. “Jean? Are you there?”
“Milt, stop!” Jean called from the kitchen floor. She put a hand to her forehead. “Stop banging!”
Milt did as he was told, and the reverberations shimmered off through the house. “Jean,” he shouted, “can I come in?”
Jean looked down at Natalie’s body, her head still heavy in her lap. She touched Natalie’s hair, the dark curls at her temple. “No,” she said. She tried to lift Natalie’s head and shift her body so that she could get out from beneath it.
“What?”
“No!” she yelled. “You can’t come in!” Natalie’s head was like a great, packed bag of bread flour, a brick, a bowling ball—already weighty in itself. But it wasn’t just itself; it was joined to another, greater weight. It was a bowling ball yoked to a sofa, and so it was almost impossible to move. And from her position on the floor, Jean had no leverage. The only way she could get herself free was to set her hands on the bloody tiles around her and shift herself backward until eventually Natalie’s head was between her knees, and when Jean tugged her robe free, Natalie’s head skipped over the hem and hit the tile with a musical thunk.
“Please, Jean,” Milt was saying. “I want to talk to you! Don’t you want to talk?”
The pools of blood on the floor were turning sticky. As Jean moved away her palms made smacking noises on the tiles.
“Milt, this is not a good time.”
The blood stretched from the far kitchen wall to the fridge and speckled the hallway beyond. Once Jean got to her feet she did her best, in her slippers, to step around and over it. Once in the hallway she could see Milt’s fuzzy silhouette on the other side of a sheer fabric panel that covered the leaded glass of the front door. She stood back, at the edge of the shadow he cast on the floor.
“Milt,” she called, “you have to go away.”
Milt’s fuzzy hand pressed against the glass. “I was wrong, Jean. I was wrong and I’m sorry. I saw you at the picnic today, talking to Welland, and right there I knew I was making a mistake. It wouldn’t work with Louise. It was just a fantasy. It was stupid and I love you and I’m sorry.”
Jean pulled her blood-damp robe tight. There were things she wanted in the world and a husband was one of them, and her husband was Milt, Milt who knew her, Milt who had confessed his sins, Milt who had come back. She knew that it was weak, and she hated her weakness, but after all she had been through she needed some comfort and she wanted this man. She didn’t want to grow old, and she didn’t want to die in pain, but worse than either of those was to die alone. Even her mother had not died alone. Even Marjorie had had someone. She’d had her. And now here, Jean saw, was her own answer, here was her own practical solution. Here was her Milt.
“Jean?”
She looked back at Natalie’s body on the kitchen floor, the coils of the cutting wire looped lazily under her chin, the steel strand embedded here and there in the blood-glazed skin of her neck. She looked down the hall toward the door where Milt stood waiting. Was it even possible, Jean wondered, for a woman ever to be purely happy?
“Milt,” she said as she went toward the door, “I’m afraid I’ve made a bit of a mess.”
Some hours later, shortly after seven o’clock, Jean was sitting with her hands folded in her lap in the champagne-carpeted ostentation of Fran Knubel’s living room. Fran was carrying in a silver tray bearing glasses of Chablis she’d bought at the liquor outlet on Primrose Street—or, as Fran had put it, “the best white wine I could find at that dinky little store.” She ferried the tray to a mahogany tea table, which stood ready between a turquoise-upholstered wingback chair and a burgundy, flock settee, and with a free hand pulled out a sliding shelf on which to set it.
“Well,” said Fran as she handed Jean her glass of wine, “wasn’t this an eventful day?”
Jean, reaching for the wine, flinched.
“Arthritis?” asked Fran.
“No,” said Jean. “I must have pulled a muscle somehow.”