Mrs. Everything Page 12

  Lynnette rolled onto her back, lifting her arms over her head in a way that made her breasts rise enticingly. “Remind me again why you care.”

  “Because,” Jo said, bending to plant a row of kisses from Lynnie’s shoulder to her neck, “I believe in fairness.” She kissed one cheek. “I believe in equality.” She kissed the other. “And I think that people should be able to eat, or swim, or go to school wherever they want to.” She pulled down the sheet and blew a raspberry on Lynnette’s belly. Lynnette shrieked, then tried to push Jo’s head away.

  “You know what I think?” Lynnette said, once she’d caught her breath. “I think you just like making your mom see red.”

  “It’s a nice side effect.” Lynnette knew the story of Mae and Mae’s daughter Frieda. She also knew about the time Jo and Bethie had gone to the public swimming pool on Belle Isle on Memorial Day weekend the previous summer. The pool was scheduled to open at ten o’clock, and families had gotten there early to stand in line, mothers laden with tote bags and snacks and towels wrapped in rubber bands, fishbelly-pale kids running around in swimsuits that had gotten too small over the winter, or in ones that had been handed down from an older brother or sister and flopped around their legs or gaped loose at their chests. On the opposite side of the fence, four black boys had stood, with their fingers hooked through the chain link, watching quietly as the gates opened and the white kids whooped and cannonballed into the water, ignoring the lifeguard’s shouts and their parents’ pleas to slow down and be careful and watch where they were jumping. The kids hadn’t said anything, and of course they hadn’t tried to get into the pool, but the look of longing on their faces had stayed with Jo all through the summer. When she’d told Lynnette about it, Lynnette had shrugged, asking, “They’ve got their own places, right?”

  “Come on,” Jo said. She set her feet on the pale-pink carpet that was a few shades lighter than the pink-patterned wallpaper and bent down to collect her clothes. “Time to cook.”

  Lynnette groaned, but got to her feet, pulled on her robe, and rummaged around until she found a magazine on her desk. “I have a plan. Your mother thinks you’re incapable, right?”

  “You know she does,” said Jo.

  “Well.” Lynnette was smiling, visibly pleased with herself. “Sarah’s not going to think you’re a failure as a woman if you come home with . . .” She opened the magazine to a page she’d marked, and beamed. “Strawberry Pineapple Ring!”

  “Mmm,” said Jo, because “Mmm” was part of the recipe’s official name. She and Lynnette read it out loud, together: “Strawberry Pineapple Ring! Mmm!”

  “I don’t have any pineapple,” said Jo.

  “Well, today must be your lucky day,” said Lynnette, skipping downstairs to the kitchen and producing a can of pineapple from her mother’s pantry. Jo studied the label, thinking that this did not sound like a good idea. Experimentation was not her strong suit. “Maybe we should just keep it simple? Besides, I bought cherry Jell-O, not strawberry.”

  Lynnette shook her head. “You’re overthinking. It’s red, isn’t it?” When Jo nodded, Lynnette pulled the magazine out of her robe’s pocket and continued to read. “Fresh strawberries. Got ’em. Pineapple syrup.” She frowned, then shrugged. “I’ll bet we can just use maple.” Quickly, she and Jo assembled the dish, adding hot water to the powdered Jell-O, pouring it into a plastic mixing bowl, and mixing in the canned fruit and the cut-up strawberries, as well as the lemon juice the recipe called for. Jo stirred and poured at Lynnie’s direction. After she slid the pan into the refrigerator, Lynnette looked at the clock and gave her a slow, saucy smile. “So now it’s got to thicken. Want to take a shower?”

  Jo did. They stayed in the bathroom until the hot water ran out. When Jo flicked at Lynnette’s bottom with a rolled-up towel, Lynnette squealed and went racing out of the bathroom naked, with only a shower cap on her head, and Jo, wearing only a towel, in pursuit. Laughing, Jo rounded the corner to Lynnette’s bedroom and almost slammed into Randy Bobeck, who’d just come up the stairs. Randy held up both of his hands in front of his chest in a warding-off gesture. His eyes and his mouth were both opened wide as his gaze moved from Jo to his sister and bounced back to Jo again.

  Lynnette screamed—for real, that time. She put one arm over her breasts and stuck the other hand between her legs. “Randy, you fink!” she shrieked, before slamming her bedroom door. “ ’Scuse me,” Jo muttered, hurrying back to the bathroom, hoping that Randy wasn’t looking, imagining that probably he was.

  A few minutes later, Lynnette knocked on the bathroom door. She was dressed in her new Jonathan Logan double-knit dress, dark brown, scattered with red and pink flowers, along with hose and shoes. “Did he see anything?” she whispered, stepping inside. Her face was pale; her eyes were enormous.

  “No.” Jo tried to sound confident, when the truth was that she didn’t know what Randy saw, or what he might be thinking. Two girls, mostly naked, laughing and chasing each other. Would Randy think it was just the kind of thing girls did if they were very good friends? Jo swallowed hard. “Don’t worry,” she told Lynnette. “We weren’t doing anything. He didn’t see anything. It’s fine.”

  Lynnette shook her head. She still looked terrified. “If he says something to my parents . . . if this gets out at school . . .”

  “It won’t. Because we weren’t doing anything. It’s fine,” Jo repeated. Lynnette gave a single, tight-lipped nod, and she barely looked at Jo as she handed over the button-down shirt and dungarees that Jo had worn over.

  Downstairs, Jo took the Bundt pan out of the refrigerator while Lynnette called her brothers.

  “Randy! Gary! We have to go now!”

  The whole way back to Alhambra Street, Jo could barely breathe. She listened to the boys in the back seat talking about the prospects of the Detroit hockey team, as opposed to how Randy had seen their big sister cavorting naked with her best friend.

  “Bye,” she said to Lynnette, who’d gotten the car moving again almost before Jo had slammed the trunk shut. Jo rolled her bike into the garage, went to the kitchen, and slid the pan into the refrigerator, noticing, as she did, that the Jell-O seemed to be a little watery, wishing there was a way to check and see if it had set, knowing that all she could do was hope.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jo said. The house smelled delicious. The wineglasses sparkled, the flowers brightened the room, but Jo still felt sick, her chest so tight she could barely manage a full inhalation.

  “You’re late,” Sarah said. Her tone was clipped, her mouth compressed. She was still in her work clothes, with a frilly pink apron tied at her waist. The turkey, now cooked, was cooling on a cutting board next to the oven. “Go change.”

  Jo waited until her mom was in the living room, then transferred her Jell-O from the refrigerator into the freezer, reasoning that colder temperatures would help it to set more quickly. In the bedroom, she pulled on a dark-gray wool shirtdress with white trim on the long sleeves and the collar, and slipped her feet into a pair of black flats, shoes her mother only deemed acceptable because, in heels, Jo towered over almost every man she knew. She did what she could with her hair, back-combing and spraying, in an effort that would at least show her mother that she’d tried, before pulling it back with a plastic tortoiseshell headband.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Sarah was in front of the stove, whisking cornstarch into the gravy. “Fill the water glasses,” she told Jo without lifting her eyes from the pot. Jo was carrying a pitcher of water to the table when Bethie hurried through the door.

  “I’m sorry!” she said. “I went to Denise’s house.” She sounded a little out of breath, but Jo’s quick glance did not reveal anything immediately amiss. Underneath her cardigan, Bethie’s light-blue blouse was buttoned correctly, tucked into her blue-and-green kilt. Her hair was neat and her lipstick was freshly applied. Jo looked at her sister and felt an ugly flare of jealousy, knowing that Denise’s older brother was home from college and that it was poss
ible Bethie had spent her afternoon with him. Knowing, too, that even if Bethie had looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, she wouldn’t have gotten in the kind of trouble Jo and Lynnette were facing, because she’d have been in that bed with a boy.

  By five o’clock twilight was gathering, the sky deepening from blue to indigo outside the windows. All down the block, Jo could see lights shining through doorways and spilling onto the street, could hear the sounds of car doors closing and welcoming calls of “Glad you made it!” and “Come on in!” and “Happy Thanksgiving!” “Let’s turn the lights off,” said Bethie, and the darkness made the room look even more elegant, with the candlelight sparkling off the crystal and silver and the glass flower jars, making the white tablecloth seem to glow.

  “You did a nice job on the table,” Sarah said, giving Jo a rare compliment, as Bethie pulled a tray of rolls out of the oven and used tongs to put them into a napkin-lined wicker basket.

  Henry Sheshevsky, still short and heavyset and light on his feet, arrived first. He ushered Bubbe and Zayde into the house, took Bubbe’s coat with a courtly bow, and with great ceremony, handed Sarah two bottles of Lancers wine. “For a special occasion! I’m so glad you’re inviting me to your luffly home!” The Simoneaux came next. Henry helped Barbara and Mrs. Simoneaux with their coats—“Such beauties!” he exclaimed. “I’m surrounded by beauties!,” while Jo put the heralded cheese ball and cut-up carrots and celery and dip on the coffee table, along with a stack of small plates and forks. The Steins came trooping across the street, with each boy carrying a pie and Mrs. Stein wanting to know if she could put the metal bowl and the beaters into the freezer, so they’d be cold when it was time to whip the cream. The house was warm and crowded and noisy, full of overlapping voices and laughter.

  Mr. Stein took the boys out back to throw a football around, and Mr. Simoneaux and Andy joined them. Henry Sheshevsky poured Sarah a glass of wine, and when she waved him away, he cajoled her, eventually pressing the glass into her hand. Mrs. Stein and Mrs. Simoneaux complained about the Krinskys at the end of the block, who didn’t keep their grass cut, and about the Perrinaults, whose new basset hound howled at five in the morning when the milkman came, and Mr. Simoneaux went back down the street to get his new electric carving knife. Jo watched quietly from the kitchen, wishing that her father could have been there. He would have bantered with Henry, and flattered Sarah’s mother, and made Barbara blush by telling her how grown-up she looked, and made sure Jo got the drumstick, and not minded if Jo ate it with her hands.

  Finally, Sarah called everyone to the table. When the guests were seated, Sarah stood and said, “Thank you all for coming. I’m so glad to have friends around us today. And I’m grateful to my daughters.” The candlelight smoothed out the lines around her eyes and softened the grooves that descended from her nose to the corners of her lips that had deepened since her husband’s death. In the flickering dimness, with her wineglass in her hand and a tentative expression on her face, her mother looked almost young and almost pretty.

  “Mazel tov! Now let’s eat!” said Henry, clapping his hands and bouncing up from his chair to fill the wineglasses. Sarah beckoned Jo and Bethie close, and surprised Jo by taking their hands.

  “I know this hasn’t been easy,” she said. “Losing your dad, and having me working.” She looked up. “Bethie, I wish I could come to all of your performances.”

  Bethie murmured a demurral.

  “And, Jo, I’d like to see more of your games.”

  I doubt it, Jo thought. Sarah would occasionally come to Jo’s tennis matches—probably because I have to wear a skirt to play, Jo thought—but had skipped every volleyball and basketball game, even the ones on Mondays and Tuesdays that she theoretically could have attended. Jo suspected her mother hated the sight of her racing up and down the court, or crouching in front of the net; that she hated the knee pads and the mouthguards, the uniforms that left her sweaty limbs bare. It’s so rough, Sarah had said once, shuddering, after enduring the sight of Jo exchanging hand-slaps with her teammates after they’d won a tough match.

  “So thank you,” Sarah said. Her eyes seemed to glitter. “Thank you both.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jo said, and Bethie added, “There’s nothing you need to thank us for.”

  “No. I’m grateful. You did a wonderful job.”

  Jo thought of the Jell-O and shuddered, wondering if her mother would notice if she just never brought it to the table.

  Mr. Simoneaux and Mr. Stein went to the kitchen to carve the turkey. “Jo, get the cranberry sauce,” said Bethie. Up close, Jo could see a suck mark on the side of her sister’s neck. Sarah passed around the side dishes, the green beans and the rolls, the mashed potatoes and the sweet potatoes that Bethie had baked and run through a ricer with heavy cream, nutmeg, and real butter and a pinch of orange rind before spooning them into a baking dish and decorating the top with an intricate, spiraling pattern made of bits of glazed pecans and miniature marshmallows. That was Bethie, Jo thought. Everything she touched came out perfectly.

  Jo helped herself to stuffing, reached for a drumstick, saw her mother’s face, and took a slice of white meat instead.

  “Jo,” Sarah said brightly, “don’t forget your Jell-O!”

  “The famous Jell-O!” said Henry Sheshevsky as he clapped his hands.

  Slowly, Jo got to her feet, sending up a silent prayer to whatever god guarded careless teenage lesbian sex fiends. She carried the Bundt pan to the table and turned it upside down on a clean plate. She tapped it gently. Nothing happened. Feeling everyone’s eyes on her, Jo gave the pan a little shake. Still nothing. Jo raised the pan, shaking harder. There was a horrible slooping sound, and a flood of half-liquefied Jell-O and chunks of fruit poured out of the mold and flooded the plate, pouring onto the white tablecloth, and directly into Mrs. Stein’s lap.

  Mrs. Stein shrieked and shoved her chair back, out of the path of the deluge. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry!” Jo said, as she tried to scoop up as much of the fruit and solid Jell-O as she could, but it was clear that Mrs. Stein’s dress was ruined, and the tablecloth, and maybe the carpeting, too. She bent to shove napkins over the worst of the damage while Bethie ran to the kitchen for seltzer water and baking soda and paper towels. At the head of the table, Jo heard her mother pull in a slow breath and let it hiss out of her nostrils. Jo bent back down, scooping up the fruit, scrubbing at the stains, listening to her mother breathing, postponing the inevitable as long as she could, until finally she straightened up so that Sarah could see her. “I think this is as good as it’s going to get right now.”

  Her mother said nothing.

  “I can try putting vinegar on the stains . . .” Jo’s voice trailed off. Sarah still did not speak.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jo said. “I don’t know what happened!” She felt laughter, like poison gas, bubbling up in her chest—had it been just a few hours ago, at Lynnette’s, where she’d thought things couldn’t get worse?—and she had to bite her lip to keep it inside.

  “Not to worry,” said Henry Sheshevsky. He patted Jo’s back. “It’s a little spill, not the end of the world!”

  Sarah ignored him and kept her eyes on her daughter. “You have to make a real effort to ruin Jell-O, so maybe I should be impressed that you found a way,” Sarah said. Her voice was calm. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Jo said. She was telling the truth. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, or why she was different, or how to make it right. “I really don’t.”

  “Well, whatever it is, you’d better fix it. Because, you have my word, no man is going to want a wife who can’t even manage Jell-O.” She sighed, the weary exhalation of a woman who had burdens too heavy to carry, and who knew she’d never be able to set them down, and lifted her fork to cut a sliver of white meat from the slice of turkey she’d set on her plate. Jo picked up her own fork and knife. Bethie was still in the bathroom, trying to save Mrs. Stein’s dress. The Stein boys
were all eating quietly. At the far end of the table, Bubbe and Zayde had their heads together and were murmuring in Yiddish, and Barbara Simoneaux seemed too shocked to even breathe.

  Across the table, Henry Sheshevsky, her father’s old friend, gave Jo a sympathetic look. Jo missed her father so much in that moment, she felt such a deep, sorrowful ache that she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to breathe. Gently, she set down her own silverware and looked at her mother.

  “Why don’t you just be honest,” Jo said. “Say you hate me. That’s the truth, right?”

  “Hey, so who thinks the Tigers could go all the way this year?” asked Henry Sheshevsky, his voice loud and hearty. Jo kept talking.

  “I can’t cook. I won’t do my hair. I hate wearing dresses. I’d rather hit a ball or shoot a basket than prance around a stage and sing. I’m not the daughter of your dreams, but I’m the only one in this family who even misses him.” Jo knew it wasn’t true, knew that Bethie, at least, missed their father, but it was as if some demon had taken possession of her tongue. She couldn’t have stopped talking if she’d wanted to.

  “That’s a lie!” Sarah’s voice was high and trembling.

  Jo stood up, hands clenched. “I’ll bet you wish I was the one who died. Or maybe both of us. That way, it’d just be you and your perfect little princess.”

  Bethie, who was just coming back to the living room, gasped. Jo saw her mother stand up, pulling her hand back. She felt time slowing down as she saw her mother’s lips press together until they’d all but disappeared. As Sarah’s body turned, Jo could have leaned back, or run, or even turned her face away, but she didn’t. She just stood there, frozen and immobile, knowing what was coming and unable to avoid it.