It Happened One Night (4 page)

The last two times they’d stood in this doorway, Eli had kissed her—not quite real kisses, but more of a courteous brushing
of lips. Now the moment had come for him to either kiss her for real or put an end to it all.

He stalled. “I’m sorry about the museum.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “I want to do things you enjoy.”

Oh, man
. She was going to invite him upstairs. Any second now. He cleared his throat, a little nervous. He’d been out of practice
with women for a long time. But that was exactly why he was doing this, he reminded himself. Why he was dating. He couldn’t
expect it to feel perfectly comfortable right off the bat.

Kelly smiled, her lips shiny and parted, waiting for him.

Don’t think of her
, he warned himself.
Don’t.

For a long time, he’d believed the best way to have a relationship with Lana was as her friend. She’d rejected the idea that
they could be more, and gradually he’d come to agree. Friendship meant he could hold on to everything he loved most about
Lana, but he could shirk the responsibilities and commitments of being a lover. For a long time, he was happy that way.

At least, he thought he was.

There had been no single moment that made him realize he loved her. Wanted her. Over the years he’d told himself that occasional
“blips” of attraction to her didn’t mean he was
actually
attracted to her: Those moments were merely the natural and meaningless biological result of a man having a woman for a close
friend. But over the last eight months, what had started as a whisper had become a four-part orchestra playing at full blast
in his mind. And now he was here, on Kelly’s front stoop, trying to get that terrible music to stop.

He looked down into Kelly’s face. And he kissed her. Not gently. He put his hands in her hair and tipped her head to the side
and did what he had to until Lana faded into the background of his mind. When he pulled away, Kelly had whole galaxies swirling
in her eyes.

“Nobody’s ever kissed me like that.”

He said nothing.

“Do you want to come inside?”

“You want me to?”

“I want you to,” she said.

He didn’t mean to hesitate. But she saw.

“I’m not angling for something serious, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said, a smile on her lips. “No strings. Just…
fun.”

He stood still.

She unzipped his jacket an inch. “Well?”

So he didn’t have to answer, he kissed her again. He wrapped his arms around her waist. He dragged her up close to him and
felt her large, soft breasts pillowing low on his chest. Finally his body responded. Like he’d hoped it would.

She drew away. “Can I take that as a
yes
?”

He’d pulled off her cardigan before the door slammed shut behind them.

June 13

“Oh my gosh. You’re
pregnant
, aren’t you?” Karin asked.

It was evening, and she stood at the stove in Lana’s house, stirring a simple soup of vegetarian broth and orzo that she hoped
Lana could keep down. Lana lived near the south end of Burlington, where she rented a small Cape Cod–style house with white
siding and navy trim. Everything about the house was small—the rooms, the windows, the yard, and the amount of furniture.
But it was perfect for Lana since she didn’t want a family of her own.

When Lana didn’t answer, Karin turned around. Her sister was sitting with the flat of her cheek squished hard against the
wooden tabletop. Her skin was ashen and dull. “Well?”

“I
don’t
think I’m pregnant.” She sighed.

“Are you sure?” Karin asked. She’d been teasing before. But the question that had been a joke just moments ago suddenly took
on more serious possibilities. “You use condoms or something, right?”

“Why are we even talking about this?” Lana asked, lifting her head. “Yes, we used a condom. But even if we didn’t, I got my
period on… the day the mulch came. That was, like, three weeks ago or something.”

Karin snickered. “You mean you got it
after
your visit with Ron.”

“I just have some kind of stomach thing,” she said, and she put her head back down. “Plus I didn’t sleep that great.”

Karin nodded. She didn’t really think her sister was pregnant. The odds were far against it. No one knew that better than
Karin. Under good conditions a couple had only a 25 percent chance of a successful pregnancy, give or take. Add in real-life
factors like stress and timing, and the odds plummeted from there.

She stirred the soup one last time, then opened the old wooden cabinet where Lana kept the bowls. She supposed she was a little
preoccupied with pregnancy these days. She and Gene had had sex twice in the last forty-eight hours. She would have slept
with him tonight as well, but he’d left on business. Her house—so gloomy and quiet—was unbearable without him.

She ladled the soup out of the pot; the broth was so weak she could see the daisies painted on the bottom of the bowl. She
crossed the little kitchen and set the bowl on the table with a
clunk
.

“I can’t eat,” Lana said.

“Try.”

“Okay,
Mom
.”

They shared a smile. Karin made herself a bowl of soup and sat down. “So tell me. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I got a letter. Yesterday.”

Karin cringed at the sound of her sister’s voice. Lana stood, walked to her junk drawer, then dropped a yellowed and beat-up
greeting card on the table when she sat. The front showed a picture of a watercolor lily; the background was striated purple
and orange smears. Karin opened the cover.

Dear Lana. Happy Birthday. From Cal.

Karin frowned. With one finger, she slid the card as far away from her as the table edge allowed.
Calvert
. She and Lana hadn’t seen their father since Lana had graduated from high school. As soon as she could manage, Karin had
packed up with her baby sister and returned to their home state of Vermont—away from their father’s Wisconsin boardinghouse.
From that day to this, Karin had never looked back. And she’d assumed Calvert hadn’t either. Until now.

“He’s a little late,” Karin said.

Lana shrugged—a gesture Karin was intimately familiar with, Lana’s left shoulder always rising a touch higher than the right.
“He must have forgotten the real date.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Karin said.

Lana shrugged again.

Karin searched her brain for an explanation, for the reason that Calvert would suddenly want to get in touch with them after
so many years. “Maybe he’s dying.”

“You think?”

“If he was, would it matter?”

“I don’t know. I guess not,” Lana said.

Karin tapped a fingernail against the table. “It could just be that he wants money.”

“Or maybe he was thinking of us.”

“After he ruined our lives?”

Lana shook her head. “He didn’t
ruin
our lives.”

“He killed Mom!”

“Not really.”

“Son of a—
Lana
! How can you defend him?” Karin said, and only after the words had flown from her mouth did she realize that she’d stood
up, was looming over her wan-faced sister, and was talking a few decibels too high.

Long ago she used to have a temper.
Anger issues
, her high school teachers had said. Moving away from Calvert had helped her get her fury under control—that and an excellent
therapist. Years had passed since she’d had the kind of flare-up that threatened to get the best of her now. She walked to
the window, taking long, deep breaths. “Sorry. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. But I
wasn’t
defending him,” Lana said.

Karin nodded, but she wasn’t so sure. While Karin had a tendency to fly off the handle, Lana bottled things up inside. In
middle school she’d once been brutally bullied by a handful of mean girls. They sneered at her secondhand clothes, “accidentally”
spilled milk on her in the cafeteria, aimed for her during dodgeball, and more than once made her leave class in tears.

After the girls finally moved on to torment someone else, Lana maintained that the girls were actually good, kind human beings
deep down. Some people thought Lana said those kinds of things because she was angelic. But Karin knew better. Kindness was
Lana’s way of re-arranging reality so it became more bearable. It was always sunny in Lana-land.

Karin crossed the room, plucked the card from the table, and threw it in the garbage can.

“You should have recycled,” Lana said.

Karin ignored her. “Listen. I don’t want you to get upset about this. If for some reason we hear from him again, I’ll take
care of it. For now let’s just focus on getting some food in you, okay?”

Lana frowned into her bowl while Karin sat back down. “It’s not that.”

“What’s wrong?”

Lana stirred her soup but didn’t eat or speak. She’d always been reluctant about opening up to Karin. Karin suspected the
root of her silence went back to their childhood, when Karin was more like a mother than a sister in Calvert’s house. They’d
hadn’t quite figured out how to find equal footing yet. But that didn’t stop Karin from trying.

“Is it Ron? Did you meet someone else?”

She shook her head.

“Did he?”

Again Lana shook her head.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I think I need to go lie down,” Lana said.

Karin’s heart sank. She didn’t want to go home. Her dark living room, the upstairs bedrooms that were meant for children but
instead stood full of storage bins and unused exercise equipment—she couldn’t bear it.

“Fine.” She pushed out her chair and stood.

“Karin, wait. That’s not what I mean. You don’t have to leave.”

“Look. I get it. It’s fine.”

“Just… please. Calm down for a second. If you want to hang out here, that’s okay. I’m just really tired. I’ve never felt so
tired. I should probably sleep.”

Karin took a deep breath and counted to ten. She was angry. And as usual, Lana was the closest target in sight. She hadn’t
meant to be so curt. When she spoke, her voice was back under control. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I mean, you
should
sleep.”

“I don’t mind if you hang out.”

“It’s okay.”

“Well. Thank you for making dinner.”

“Don’t thank me. Just finish it.”

“I will.”

“And if you start to feel feverish, give me a call.”

“Okay. But I’m sure I’m fine.”

Karin picked up her purse from the counter and looked around. There was nothing more to do. “Good night,” she said. Then she
grabbed her jacket, went outside to her minivan, and drove out of the city, heading as slowly as she could toward home.

Later, Lana woke from a nightmare for the second night in a row. She was lost in a fun house, crooked windows, slanty floors,
and doors everywhere. So many doors. People rushed around her—men coming and going, their pupils dilated, their smiles as
wide and floppy as clowns’ mouths. When she woke she was sweating and afraid and smothered by her bedroom walls. She had to
get out.

In her favorite pajamas—boxers and an old T-shirt of Eli’s worn to near translucence—she padded barefoot downstairs, opened
the screen door, and sat on the warm concrete of the front stoop. She dropped her house phone beside her. The neighbors’ windows
were dark. Cars were lined up front to back all along the curbs. The air smelled like asphalt and earth.

She ran her fingers through her hair and covered her face with her hands. It had been years since the dream had come back
to her, so many years that she’d thought whatever cells in her brain had once stored the information must have died off and
taken the memories with them. But that wasn’t the case.

Unlike Karin—who could remember every detail of their years with Calvert—Lana remembered things in stops and starts. She suspected
the fragments were better left scattered to the four corners than brought together. The pieces, she could handle. The whole,
she could not.

She fingered a bit of chicory growing up around the front walk; its stalk was tough and strong, its short-lived petals cool
against her skin. She tried to focus on the positive. She supposed if there was one thing to thank her father for, it was
her love of flowers.

Calvert had made money by opening up his creaky old Victorian to cash-only boarders, mostly men. Lana never knew who would
be standing behind the door of any given room. The house seemed to breathe transients: truckers, construction workers, addicts,
recovering addicts, and the endless parade of girlfriends—women who smoked, drank, and swore with the same ribald fervor as
the men. Calvert had made it clear from the get-go that his daughters weren’t to ask too many questions. They were to lie
low, to leave him and his tenants alone.

He’d never given them anything beautiful or indulgent, never owned anything that was brand-new. But once she’d seen him pause
at the edge of the yard in front of a bright orange bush to pick a flower. And when he’d passed her where she sat on the front
step, he’d dropped the flower beside her and said, “Here.”

It wasn’t poetry. But how Lana’s heart leaped to see the jewelweed in her palm, its petals folded like the most complicated
and elegant origami. And what breathlessness, to discover that the spatterings of purple at the edge of the lawn were actually
the most heartbreakingly delicate heal-all, each pinprick of a flower like a universe of its own.

And now even as an adult who lived every day among flowers, she still felt humbled to think that a wildflower could coax the
most iridescent purples or fierce magentas from the most inhospitable soils. She wanted her own life to be like that, to grow
something worthy from hardship and strife.

Somewhere a mockingbird was singing in the darkness. The phone dangled heavy in her hand. She stood and sank her bare toes
into the damp grass of the lawn, and above, the sky was peppered with stars.

Calling Eli was practically instinctive. He calmed her. He made things right. She put the phone to her ear and listened to
the static breath between rings.