Sweet Jiminy (8 page)

“It is!” Suze squealed. “Who is he? Someone from here?”

Jiminy mentally kicked herself. She stalled, weighing her options. Should she lie? Downplay? Flaunt? She didn't feel ready for this.

“I don't know if you know him,” she hedged.

“We'll find you on our way out,” Suze exclaimed, winking and squeezing Jiminy's arm before lumbering off to join her mom at the counter.

As Jiminy walked back, armed with napkins and a fresh uncertainty, she pondered her options. She wasn't sure how Suze would react to her and Bo being together. Perhaps she'd be as mellow and accepting as Cole, but perhaps she wouldn't. Jiminy wondered if she should warn Bo. He was staring at her.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

It bothered her that she was so transparent.

“Nothing,” she replied, quickly bending her frown smileward as she brainstormed innocuous explanations. She'd act completely normal with him, no matter what came their way. “I was just thinking of my mom. She used to take me to Dairy Queen for breakfast.”

“Sounds like a fantasy mom,” Bo replied. “Are you guys close?”

Jiminy shook her head.

“Not really. She sort of checked out when I was still a kid.”

“I'm sorry,” Bo said sincerely. “Does it bother you to talk about it?”

Before Jiminy could answer, Suze and her mother ambled out into the parking lot. Suze spotted Jiminy and stopped abruptly, looking bewildered. Her mother looked unambiguously disapproving. There were no slug teeth in sight. Just grim, set lip lines.

“I guess that's a yes,” Bo said.

Jiminy redirected her attention to him.

“What? No, I don't mind,” Jiminy said, a little flustered. “Sorry, I just got distracted by some friends. Do you know Suze Connors?”

Jiminy gestured to where Suze and her mom had been standing, but they were already in their car, pulling out onto the road. Apparently, they didn't always move so slowly.

“Huh,” Jiminy said.

“Guess they've got somewhere to be,” Bo said wryly.

Jiminy stayed silent, and pained.

“Don't worry about it,” Bo continued. “I'm much more interested in you. So what happened with your mom?”

“More like what didn't happen with her,” Jiminy replied, still staring at the road. “Not to be dramatic,” she continued, shifting her gaze back toward Bo. “It's not a big deal. She had a car accident when I was six. Nothing serious, but she suffered whiplash, so she was given painkillers, and then she got a little too into those.”

Bo nodded. It was understandable; he wasn't judging. Jiminy appreciated this.

The accident had at first seemed relatively innocuous—the sort of thing that disrupted a morning but was mainly forgotten by evening, except for lingering insurance implications. But as the painkillers overstayed their welcome, a lot of things began slipping and fraying, sneaking their way toward a permanent shift. Jiminy noticed her mother's dependency on the pills, and was forced to weather the mood swings and the ensuing marital discord. She knew that the day she was sent to the Paint-Your-Own-Pot store at the mall to make something nice for her grandmother was a day of reckoning. Knew when she returned and her father was gone that the day hadn't gone well. Naturally shy to begin with, Jiminy retreated into the role of the awkward, self-absorbed child to avoid having to admit all that she knew to people who would feel obliged to counsel her through it. She learned to be quiet and small, to disappear into backgrounds, to suffocate her sentences before they could betray her. She learned to bottle herself up.

As she folded inward, Jiminy tried to hold fast to her mother. She convinced herself that what her father and everyone else failed to understand was that her mother was finally having fun. A life without pain was a life worth celebrating, with spontaneous dancing and all-night games and endless, shifting plans. It was childhood rediscovered. It was being young at heart. Jiminy understood this. Consistency was a virtue adults overrated so they didn't have to focus on how utterly boring everyday existence was. To gulp all that away and embrace a new reality—how fresh! How rejuvenating! Jiminy opted to go along for the ride, so as not to be left behind.

Eventually, of course, it got even more bumpy and chaotic and unreasonable, and Jiminy was forced to become the adult in the relationship, at far too young an age.

Back in the present day, she wrenched herself away from these tumultuous memories to focus on the moments at hand.

“It wasn't awful,” she concluded with a shrug. “My mom and I just kind of switched roles, so I felt like I was taking care of her.”

Bo nodded.

“And who was taking care of you?”

“I was taking care of me, too,” Jiminy replied. “And luckily, all of that turned me into the confident, take-charge person you see before you today.”

Bo laughed, but not unkindly. Jiminy looked directly into his eyes.

“Hey,” she said, touching his hand. “Can I ask you something? How big a problem are we going to be?”

Bo stared back at her a moment.

“Tough to tell just yet,” he answered slowly. “You game to find out?”

Jiminy nodded.

“You?”

In answer, Bo put his arms around her and pulled her close.

Jiminy remembered what it felt like when her mother had hugged her: like she was a life preserver being clobbered by a drowning woman. Her mom would clutch her tightly, turning her entire world into nothing but dark, fragrant hair. Jiminy and her mother had the same hair, actually, and as Jiminy would breathe in mouthfuls of it, she'd experience the strange sensation of the two of them being tangled up together—unsure of who was who. She'd always had to work to not feel panicked by this.

In contrast, being held by Bo made her feel calm and safe. And as Jiminy looked up at him—into his smooth, handsome face—she was surprised by the sudden instinctive realization that despite everything, this was the happiest she'd ever felt.

 

Lyn remembered the first time she'd laid eyes on Edward, in the fall of 1948, when they were all of sixteen years old. She was visiting relatives a few towns over from Fayeville, walking through an outdoor market, searching for something pretty and cheap for her sister's birthday.

So far, she hadn't found a thing. But rounding the corner of a table full of lucky buckeyes, Lyn stopped suddenly in front of a small booth that she had to lean over to inspect. There were only a few items, but they were gorgeous. Tiny, smooth, impeccable wooden figurines. A horse on its hind legs. A frog mid-leap. A bird taking flight. Little animals in motion, carved out of trees.

Lyn touched them gently with her fingertips. Something about miniatures had always attracted her, perhaps because they belonged to a world she was guaranteed to dominate.

Edward had appeared behind the booth. She hadn't known it was Edward yet, she only knew that he was a tall, serene boy with a lake of a face. One look and she wanted to jump in and drink him up.

She wasn't accustomed to such feelings. She'd never experienced them before. So they scared her, and she stepped back.

“Hello,” he'd said.

His voice was clear and friendly, which confused Lyn further. She was more familiar with grumbled asides and downcast eyes.

“You make these?” she'd asked.

She knew that if he said yes, she would have to marry him. She awaited her fate with one arm twisted behind her back, held in place by her other hand.

“I do,” he said.

By the time Lyn returned home to St. Louis two weeks later, she had a wooden bird for her sister and a fiancé for herself.

As happened whenever Lyn thought of Edward, the sharp sting of losing him was bound up with the guilt over not being good enough for him when he was alive. She thought of this now, punished herself with it, as she polished Willa's silver, putting each utensil carefully away in the velvet-lined drawer.

Sometimes Lyn thought that Edward knew everything now. That his eternal perch had granted omniscience and he was able to peer around all the corners of their marriage, into all the cracks of their lives. In those moments, she could only hope that he was forgiving. She only hoped that he understood her love. These last many decades, she'd been doing penance to make sure he knew.

And what about their Jiminy? Could she see all, know all, too? Lyn didn't let herself picture this, because her daughter had died too young to understand all the choices that had had to be made, and the necessity of labeling some mistakes “choices.”

Jiminy's eyes had been silver-colored. Not the hue of silver that was ripped from the earth and sluiced and smelted and leached and hammered into cold objects that required regular polishing; rather, the tint that revealed itself more naturally: the silver of fish scales flashing, or of the edges of clouds between dusk and dark. Edward used to tell Jiminy that her eyes had dripped from the sky onto her face the night she was born, when the delighted moon had laughed so hard she'd cried. So Jiminy's eyes were moon tears, Edward had declared, as precious and special as her.

Those silver eyes had shimmered with an enthusiasm for life that still made Lyn catch her breath. When she thought of her daughter, and of all the joy she'd embodied, Lyn felt her heart fill. She lost herself in that sensation now, as she wiped a cloth gently along the curve of a serving spoon like it was a tiny brow being soothed.

 

When Willa came home from poker with Jean, Lyn was still polishing, which surprised both of them.

“Lyn? Are you all right?” Willa called as soon as she walked in the door. “Lyn?”

Lyn rubbed harder on a stain as she realized how late it was. Too late to reasonably still be there. She'd been completely lost in memories of Edward and Jiminy, but now here was Willa, to force her back into the present moment.

“I'm in here,” Lyn replied.

She didn't stop polishing when Willa entered the room.

“Just trying to get this silver all clean,” Lyn said, keeping her head bent over her task.

“It's past ten o'clock,” Willa replied. “I was worried when I saw your car. I thought you might've fallen and hurt yourself.”

That had happened once, a long time ago, when Lyn had first become old. Carrying some sheets up the stairs, she'd turned her ankle, tumbled, and ended up unconscious at the bottom. Her ankle had recovered, but her back had never been the same.

But there'd been no such accidents this night. To the untrained eye, Lyn appeared to be in one piece.

“Sorry to make you worry,” she said.

“Well, no matter,” Willa replied. “But why don't you leave this and pick up with it next time. It'll still be here.”

Lyn paused but kept her gaze focused downward, on her old, worn-out hands.

“I don't like leaving things unfinished,” she said simply.

Willa eyed her carefully, her forehead furrowed in concern.

“Are you all right, Lyn? What's going on?”

Lyn sighed and resumed polishing.

“Just these water stains. But I'm getting 'em. I'm gonna get every last one of 'em.”

“I'll get this soon, I swear,” Jiminy informed Bo as she struggled to shift the truck into gear.

“I have no doubt,” Bo replied. “And then you can drive us to pick up a new transmission.”

“Shut up,” Jiminy said, smiling. “You're supposed to be helping me. Am I making any improvement?”

“You're showing signs of potential competence,” Bo answered.

“I'll try not to let that go to my head.”

Bo grinned.

“You're getting better, definitely.”

It was true. She'd been able to stutter and glide a little in the high school parking lot. She just needed practice. For Bo's part, he was happy to help her practice all night. Even in light of all the stop-and-start jerking, he couldn't think of a single thing he'd rather be doing.

Which he knew was something his aunt Lyn considered a problem. She hadn't actually said anything to him about his relationship with Jiminy, and Bo hadn't offered an opening for commentary. But he could sense the warning in the way she mentioned the weather turning, or the gas price fluctuation, or his need for a haircut. “You're going places,” she seemed to be saying to him beneath these other words. “Don't mess that up.”

Abruptly, Bo noticed he was going someplace with considerably fewer jerks and stutters. They were leaving the parking lot, pulling off into the night.

 

After Lyn finally left, Willa opened all the silverware drawers to take stock. Everything was gleaming. There wasn't a water stain in sight.

Willa hadn't brought any silver into her marriage or received any as wedding presents. She'd never been wealthy enough to afford such things. It had all come after Henry's death, over time, and only because Willa had sifted through hundreds of antique malls over fifty-plus years to procure it. Jean would accompany her on her searches for that one affordable pitcher or ashtray or spoon engraved with someone else's initials, that she'd scoop up and add to her collection.

Willa now owned drawers full of silver. And when it was polished, it didn't matter that it was mismatched and marked by others. It shone, and it was hers.

The only obstacle to her enjoyment of her hard-won silver collection had been Lyn's strong dislike of cleaning it. The polish Willa insisted she use had a powerful chemical stench and gave Lyn a red, painful rash that she'd complained about from the beginning. So for Lyn to voluntarily clean Willa's entire silver collection meant that something was fundamentally wrong. Or, rather, it meant that the thing that was fundamentally wrong had surfaced and announced itself. Willa wondered what it could all lead to as she picked up a cake knife and studied her reflection. In the glare of the overhead light, the whites of her eyes burned back at her.