It Happened One Night (10 page)

“Just go to sleep,” he said.

July 11

In the evening, Lana sat at the kitchen table in her house, her queasy stomach just beginning to settle down as she flipped
through the pages of a landscaping catalog. Across from her, Karin was venting while they worked, huffing like a steam engine
with her face turning purple-red.
How were she and Gene supposed to get pregnant if she couldn’t even remember the last time they’d had sex? Karin had said.
And what was she supposed to think of her own attractiveness when he acted like sex was a chore?

In the meantime Lana’s whole body ached down to her bones, as if her guilt over being pregnant had manifested itself as physical
pain. The room was a thousand degrees too hot.

She had to tell Karin the truth. But Karin didn’t always take bad news very well. Her reactions were strong and visceral.
In high school she and Karin had both tried out for the field hockey team. Lana made the cut, Karin did not. And even though
Lana tried to explain—to apologize even—Karin had been so mad that she’d all but stopped speaking to her. Lana didn’t get
the feeling that she was being malicious; rather, she thought Karin was learning to stomach the lot she was dealt in the best
way she knew how. Three days later, Lana quit the team.

Of course Karin was much better now than she used to be. But telling Karin that she was pregnant was a much bigger deal than
telling her she’d made the field hockey team—and she dreaded it for Karin’s sake and her own.

The other hindrance to telling Karin she was pregnant was that she’d yet to
feel
pregnant. For all the changes that were happening to her body, she had no sense that she was going to have a child. How could
she own up to a truth that she’d yet to accept as true?

Well, whether she felt pregnant or not was irrelevant. If she didn’t tell the secret, it was only a matter of time before
the secret told itself. “Karin…”

“What?”

Lana kept her eyes on the catalogs, gathering courage.

“And did I tell you that he thinks I’m obsessing about Calvert?”

Lana shook her head.

“Obsessing!” Karin said, half laughing. “The man shows up after how many years, he may or may not be lurking around any corner,
and Gene thinks I’m
obsessing
.”

Lana nodded and rubbed at her temples with both hands. She felt as if her brain didn’t have the capacity to hold the hugeness
of her worry about the baby and the mire of her anxiety about Calvert’s return. Her nerve was failing. Maybe now wasn’t the
right time.

The pregnancy had made her incapable of making decisions, of taking action. She was certain that she wanted to give the baby
up for adoption, but she wasn’t the only person involved in the decision. She’d yet to decide how hard she should work to
get in touch with Ron. The man had abandoned her—she wasn’t so naive as to think that he would be pleased to learn about his
child. Also, some part of her felt guilty about getting pregnant, as if she’d got pregnant alone—and so she alone deserved
whatever hardship the pregnancy entailed.

The other part of her wanted to stomp her feet, point her finger, and scream, “You did this!” And yet, she knew she and Ron
were equally to blame.

Last night she’d dreamed that her feet were sprouting roots, and that if she didn’t keep running, the roots would take hold
in the earth and she would never move again. She remembered an old myth from her college Flowers and Fiction class, about
how Apollo was chasing a woman because he wanted to have sex with her—rape her—and one of the other gods had taken pity on
the girl and turned her into a tree. And yet Lana had always wondered who had actually been punished in the story: Apollo,
who was left with the freedom to roam the earth and slake his lust with other women? Or the girl, fastened to that one spot
of dirt for all time?

If only… if only she could talk to someone about how she was feeling. The one time in her life she wanted to open up about
something important… and Karin was a basket case, and Eli… Eli was off-limits. She couldn’t go to him. She couldn’t give in
to that need. He deserved a chance at happiness. And that meant she had to stay out of the way.

But still, she wondered if he’d realized that she’d stopped calling. If he thought of her.

No—that was stupid to consider. Lana had forfeited her claim on his heart many years ago. She had no right to expect anything
from him now.

The doorbell rang. She and Karin looked up from their catalogs like mirror images.

“Ron?” Karin speculated.

Lana’s heart bottomed out. “I don’t think so. I’ll be right back.”

She rubbed the back of her neck as she walked through the living room, past the couch with its beaded throw pillows, past
the shelves with little figurines from all over the world. If it was Ron, she would deal with him head-on. She could handle
his reaction, whatever it might be. She gathered up her courage and opened the door.

“Hi,” Eli said.

The breath went out of her. Eli. She gripped the doorknob tight, but it was no substitute for what she wanted to do. Tonight
he wore trim khaki pants and a green-striped polo shirt. His hair was between cuts, and he’d done something to make it sort
of spiky and messy. Through his glasses, his eyes were the same dark-rimmed brown that so often haunted her dreams.

“Hi,” she said, not trusting herself to say more.

“Lana.”

She heard a door slam and saw that Kelly had gotten out of the car that was idling near the curb. She was wearing fat heels
and a fluffy black skirt. She came around to the passenger side, waved, and leaned against the window. Lana got the message:
They were being watched.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

She tried to smile. “Around.”

“I left you two messages.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Just… stuff.”

He shook his head, a sardonic smile tugging the corner of his mouth. “That’s what I thought you’d say. Anyway, I can’t talk
to you now. But I wanted to tell you something. You’re not going to like it.”

She didn’t move. “Okay?”

“I saw Calvert here this afternoon when I drove by. He was on the porch ringing the doorbell. I guess you weren’t home.”

Lana began to tremble. “Are you sure? Couldn’t it have been someone else?”

“Lana. Come on. It was him.”

She leaned hard against the doorjamb. Calvert had been here. On her property. At her house. The place where she was supposed
to feel safe. She turned and pressed her forehead into the wood of the doorframe, as if that were any substitute for leaning
all the heaviness inside her against a man she could not touch.

“I came by,” Eli said, his voice caustic, “because I wanted to tell you in person. I know stuff like that upsets you.”

She nodded, not quite sure how to respond. She wanted to invite him in. But Kelly was at the foot of the front yard, glaring.
Lana
had
to keep her distance. She’d brought this on herself.

“Is there anything else?” she asked, as lightly as she could.

He looked at her for a long, long moment. There was something new in his gaze, something angrier and more heated than she’d
ever seen before. And she felt a strange and unexpected echo of it in herself, a dark ember coming to life deep within.

“No,” he said. “There’s nothing else.”

Then he crossed the yard in what seemed a matter of seconds, and Kelly was there waiting for him, to raise herself up on tiptoe,
to touch his face with her hands, and to receive his kiss with a kind of operatic intensity that would have been funny if
it didn’t hurt so bad to see. Lana didn’t watch the kiss’s ending, whether it was a slow unraveling or a breathless full stop.
She closed the door. But what she didn’t see was already burned into her imagination, trailing her as she made her way back
to the kitchen to share with her sister their mutual bad news.

July 12

By the next morning, Karin had made a decision. She wasn’t going to let a fear of bumping into Calvert drive her or Lana to
paranoia. She couldn’t have him lurking around her sister’s house. And she was tired of feeling like she was becoming a smaller
and smaller person, one who worried only about her ovaries, her father, and her sister, but did little else. She used to have
a life. She used to have fun. Maybe Gene was right to suggest she was obsessing. It was time to take a more proactive approach.

Karin had put Meggie in charge of the store for the morning. Then she picked up Lana from her house so they could run errands
together. They were only a block away before Karin divulged their alternate destination.

Lana turned pale at the news. “Take me back.”

“There’s no going back,” Karin said. “That’s why we have to do this. That’s why we have to get him out of here.”

Karin looked at her sister, her long neck gently bent and her eyelids drooping so low Karin thought they might be closed.
Karin wished there were some way to spare her sister this ordeal. She’d been just a child when Ellen died, so young and hopeful.
She’d believed they would get to Wisconsin, fresh from their mother’s funeral, and be welcomed into Calvert’s home and his
heart. It hadn’t taken more than two seconds for Karin to realize that Calvert didn’t want them. And for the most part, she
gave up on him quickly, focusing all her energies on being there for her sister.

But Lana hadn’t been able to cut Calvert immediately out of her heart. The more Calvert ignored her, the more Lana struggled
for his attention. “Daddy, do you think I’m pretty? Do you want to hear me sing? Am I your favorite youngest daughter?” Lana
flirted and preened and pranced before her father, and Karin’s heart broke.

Eventually Lana began to understand that her efforts were useless. Calvert barely acknowledged her, except to tell her to
go outside, to go to her room, to just go away. As a result Lana had transferred all her bright-eyed affection to the boarders—the
itinerant and lonely-eyed men who let her amuse them for a few days or weeks before they moved on. Once she got into the rhythms
of their comings and goings, once she learned to accept that they would go, she stopped being let down when they did.

Karin sighed, hating herself momentarily for dragging Lana along with her. What if she’d acted more out of her own need for
Lana’s support than out of her wish to get their lives back to normal? She wanted to keep Lana out of it, she really did.
But sitting at home and cowering while Calvert prowled the streets was out of the question. Neither one of them could rest
until they knew what he wanted.

“I don’t see why we can’t just leave him alone,” Lana said. “He’ll go away if we ignore him long enough.”

“Do you want him to just show up at your house again when you least expect it?”

“No. But I don’t want to do this.”

“Neither do I,” Karin said gently.

Lana looked at her for a long minute. “Okay,” she said at last. “You’re right. I’ll do what I can.”

Karin parked the minivan in front of the Madison and got out. As they walked down the weedy and crooked path to the front
door, Karin had to slow her pace to keep Lana by her side. It felt too much like the old days, when they’d walked home together
from school. The walks were nice, a time of possibility and a glimpse of freedom, but at the end of their walk, the wide,
flat face of the boardinghouse was always the same: not pleased to see them—just resigned that they were there.

The gray paint on the door was chipped and peeling. Karin knocked, but no reply came.

“Let’s just go,” Lana said.

“Wait.” She banged her fist hard against the wooden slats. Paint crackled and fell. Finally the door swung open, and Calvert
was there, slouching and rubbing his eye.

“Hello, girls.”

He was wearing faded jeans that were just a little too baggy and a T-shirt that read “Glendale, 1985.” It shocked Karin to
see him again. Lana had mentioned that he looked tired. But the circles under his eyes suggested the kind of exhaustion that
no amount of sleep could fix.

“Well, come on in.”

The common area of the boardinghouse was dusty and dark, with low ceilings and a big, boxy television on a card table in the
corner. Cup circles the exact white of bird poop were splattered across the scratched-up wood of the coffee table. Calvert
gestured for them to sit on the faded and dusty red couch cushions, but they remained on their feet.

“Nice to see you both,” he said. “I was hoping you’d come find me.”

Karin squared her shoulders. “We want to know why you’re here.”

“Why I’m here…” His voice was like truck tires on gravel. He sat down slowly in a worn brown armchair. “It’s been a long time.”

Karin crossed her arms. “Tell us why you came here.”

“I told you, my house got taken away,” Calvert said, looking at Lana. “I got nowhere else to go.”

Karin redirected his attention back to her. “When will you leave?”

“We’re all leaving one day or another.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“When am I leaving Vermont? Don’t know. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how long it takes me to figure out why I came here in the first place.”

Karin looked at Lana now, willing her sister to speak. Calvert always had a way of backing Karin into a corner, making her
doubt herself. Part of the trouble with him was that he’d always been exceptionally smart. Not that he was formally educated—he
hadn’t graduated from high school. But there was a glint in his eyes that hinted he was always two steps ahead of the game.

“We want you to leave,” Karin said.

“We? As in,
both
of you?”

Karin looked at her sister. In the dim light, she seemed almost otherworldly, haunted.

“If you have no reason to stay,” Lana said, “then why should you?”

He sucked briefly at his front teeth. “I thought maybe I’d like to see you.”

Karin snorted. “We’re not giving you any money.”

“I don’t want money.”

“And we’re not going to just turn into your
adoring
daughters, or something.”