First Frost (18 page)

“Don't jinx it,” Claire said.

“Don't go looking for it, either,” Sydney said pointedly, handing the photo back to her sister as she left the kitchen.

*   *   *

That next day at the salon, Violet still hadn't turned up as noon approached, which irritated the stylists because they had to take turns answering the phone and making appointments, which took forever, keeping their clients with wet hair dripping in sinks or in foils that needed to be checked.

“You said Violet would be in today,” Janey said, as she checked out her client at the reception desk.

Sydney walked into the sunlit reception area where Bea McConnell was waiting on the white couch next to the windows. “You can go on back, Bea. I'll be with you in a minute,” Sydney said to her. Then she turned to Janey. “I went to see her yesterday, to make sure everything was all right. She said she'd be here.”

“She's trouble,” Janey said, sitting back in the swivel chair at the reception desk. “My little sister was in school with her, before Violet dropped out. She was rough. She would steal. And not just other girls' boyfriends, although she did plenty of that.”

“Those Turnbulls breed like bunnies and steal like magpies,” Bea McConnell said. Sydney turned to see that Bea was still in the reception area, not wanting to miss out on this piece of gossip.

“She's only eighteen,” Sydney said, guiding Bea to the back. “No one is set in stone at eighteen.”

An hour later, Sydney was trimming Bea's newly touched up and highlighted hair when Violet walked in. It made Sydney feel triumphant, because it meant she'd been right about her.

“Violet,” Sydney said, wanting to draw everyone's attention to her. “Would you mind changing out the coffeepot before you sit down? Where's Charlie today? At the babysitter's?”

“He's in the car. I'm not staying.” Violet was wearing tight, dirty jeans and a sweater so big it fell off one shoulder, revealing her bra strap. She stood there and nervously chewed on a fingernail.

“Excuse me for a moment, Bea,” Sydney said, palming her scissors and walking to the reception area. “What car?”

“I bought Roy's old Toyota. I told you. I just need a little more money. I told him I'd give the rest to him today.”

“I don't understand.” Sydney went to the window. “Is Charlie out there alone?”

Violet stood beside her and pointed. “I'm parked at the hydrant. I can see him from here. Can I have an advance on my paycheck?”

Janey was still at the reception desk, since her next appointment wasn't until three. She was listening with interest. “I can't do that, Violet,” Sydney said.

“At least give me the money from the days I've worked.”

“You got your check on Friday. You've only worked Saturday so far.”

“Then give me that!”

Sydney paused for a moment, using silence the way she did with her daughter, as a reset button. “What's going on?” Sydney finally asked her.

“I'm leaving. I'm tired of this place. I'm tired of everything. I'm tired of Roy and Florence. I wake up almost every night and Roy is watching me. It's creepy.” Violet started chewing her nail again. “I'm not putting up with that shit. Not again.”

Again? Sydney thought, feeling a shiver. “If it's that bad out there and you need a place to stay, you and Charlie can stay with me.”

Janey, who had been taking a sip out of her water bottle, choked when Sydney said that.

“I'm not staying with you,” Violet said, as if Sydney had suggested something farcical. “I know where you live. I'm not staying at a
dairy farm.
I want to be someplace where there are lights and
people.
”

“So you're leaving town, just like that?” Sydney asked.

“If you give me my money, yes!”

“Does Charlie even have a car seat?”

Violet rolled her eyes. “Pay me for Saturday, plus my tip. Then I'll go. That's my money.”

Sydney managed to look confused. “What tip?”

“Everyone here gets a tip. I always give myself one at the end of the day. From the cash register. It's only fair.”

“Can I say good-bye to Charlie?” Sydney asked, hoping to take this outside. The entire salon was watching now.

But Violet wouldn't budge. “He's sleeping.”

Without another word, Sydney gave Violet some money out of her hip apron and Violet left.

“She was stealing from you?” Janey asked.

“I don't want to talk about it,” Sydney said, not turning to her. She didn't want to talk about the fact that she'd known for weeks now, but she'd been hoping that her persistence, her unfailing belief in Violet, would turn things around.

But Violet really was set in stone, deep down, where Sydney couldn't see. Sydney could only see the outer layer, which was young and malleable. And even that would harden with age.

As much as that upset her, the fact that Violet was taking Charlie hurt even more. Charlie, that sweet, innocent boy. Sydney stood at the window and watched Violet pull away from the curb in a beat-up gray Toyota Corolla.

And she felt an ache, a hollow, so large it brought tears to her eyes.

*   *   *

That evening, Sydney came home to a quiet house. She'd been hoping for a distraction: Henry in the kitchen burning corn cakes, which he would make at least once a month, because his grandfather used to; or Bay, ready to do battle over her grounding.

But there was nothing. The house was so quiet that the silence actually hummed.

Sydney walked to the staircase and called up to Bay, asking what she wanted for dinner. Claire had taken her home because Sydney had been slammed at work today, thanks to Violet. Bay called back flatly, “I ate at Claire's.”

They hadn't talked much, or at all, since the dance Saturday. Bay seemed to be taking her grounding well, too well, as if her compliance was just another way of making Sydney feel like she was getting it all wrong.

Sydney walked into the kitchen. There was a small grease board by the refrigerator, so old that years of messages scribbled and erased still made faint impressions under the surface, like words deep underwater. Henry had written that he was still at the dairy, working late on some machinery that had broken down that day. Like Bay, he never used his phone. She was living with a couple of Luddites.

Still in her coat, her purse still over her shoulder, forgotten, she opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. She wasn't hungry.

She closed the door and reached for the kitchen phone.

“Am I interrupting?” she asked when Claire answered.

“No,” Claire said. She always said no. “How was your day?”

“Horrible. Bay is in her room and Henry isn't home yet and I'm feeling…”
Barren,
she wanted to say.

“Have you talked to Bay?”

“No.”

“Have you talked to Henry?”

“No.”

“If you don't explain things to them, they're not going to understand,” Claire said, even though Claire herself was never one to explain anything to anyone, sometimes not even Tyler. Tyler was so often lost in his own thoughts. But that was what Claire needed, someone to float around in her life, to tease her and make her look up and out of her own world. Sydney had always needed someone to settle her down, someone grounding. Henry.

“I know.”

Sydney stared out the window above the kitchen sink, listening to the busyness of Claire's house. It sounded like Claire was in her kitchen, too. She thought she heard the rattle of some dishes, the spray of water. Mariah's laughter somewhere in the background. The sound of Tyler's footsteps.

“You know if you ever need me, I'm here for you, too,” Sydney finally said.

“I know you are. I love you.”

“Love you, too.” Sydney hung up and went out the kitchen door to the back porch. She sat in one of the two old cane-back chairs there.

The back fields were so dark she couldn't tell where the fields stopped and the night sky began. It had been hard to get used to a world without streetlights, but she liked how it made her and Henry closer. They used to sit out here every evening when they were first married. Henry said his grandfather and grandmother used to do the same, which is why he'd kept the chairs. He said sometimes he could still see them here, see the way his grandmother used to drop her hand to her side and his grandfather would pick it up and hold it.

She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but her cheeks were starting to tingle from the chill when she heard Henry's footsteps in the kitchen. The kitchen door opened and he called, “Sydney?”

“Yes.”

He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, taking a seat in the chair beside her. The rope seat creaked with the cold. He was still in his work clothes. She knew she should go in and fix him something to eat. He worked so hard. It was the least she could do. But she couldn't make herself move.

“I don't know,” she said. “Thinking.”

“What's wrong?” he asked, stuffing his hands into his barn coat.

“My receptionist Violet quit today. She's leaving town and taking Charlie with her. She's been stealing money from work.”

He was silent, processing it, knowing all that she'd been trying to do for Violet, knowing how much Charlie meant to her. “I'm sorry,” he finally said.

“I want to go back and be that age again, knowing everything I know now.”

Henry shook his head. “Being young is overrated.”

“I don't want Bay to make the mistakes I made,” Sydney said. “Bay. Violet. I want to help
someone.
”

“You can't fix things that aren't broken yet. You're only making yourself miserable. What's going on, really?” Henry asked. “Talk to me.”

“It's been on my mind lately, why I can't … I mean, we've been trying for a while.” Sydney stopped. Her eyes were suddenly blurry with tears. “I think it's my fault. I lived a hard life before I came back. I was with a hard man who did hard things to me.” Henry knew about David, of course, but Sydney never mentioned him by name anymore, as if that might finally erase the memory of him. Yet somehow he was still there, like an accident she'd had long ago for which there would always be a scar. “Sometimes I wonder if that's the reason I can't have more children.”

She heard, more than saw, him turn to her. “Is that what this has been about? The red hair and the visits to me in my office?” he asked. There was an undeniable relief in his voice, now that he understood. “
The kitchen floor?”

“I want to give you a son.” Her voice faded to almost nothing, just a thready hush. “You deserve a son. Maybe I don't deserve it, but I know you do.”

“You gave me Bay,” he said, without missing a beat. “I don't care if we can't have more children. I've never cared about that. Sydney, sweetheart, you've been holding on to this for too long. It's time to forgive yourself. It's long overdue.”

Sydney nodded in the darkness, licking the tears where they were resting at the corners of her mouth. He was right, of course. There had always been a small part of her that didn't think she deserved the life she had with him, that she deserved to be happy.

Silence settled over them. Sydney realized, oddly, that her purse was still over her shoulder, like she was ready to leave instead of coming home.

Henry broke the quiet by saying, “This feels like a good time for one of my granddad stories.”

Sydney gave a snort of laughter.

“I remember how devastated my granddad was when my grandmother passed away. He wouldn't get out of bed for weeks. When he finally did show up for breakfast one morning, he was so thin I could see right through him. He sat down at the kitchen table and said, ‘Nothing will ever be the same because she isn't in the world anymore.'” Sydney turned to look at his silhouette. “That's how I know, how I've always known, that losing what you have is worse than getting anything new. You're my world, Sydney.”

When she smiled, she felt the tightness of her tears, freezing on her skin.

She dropped her hand to the side of the chair and it dangled in the air between them. And, like it had been perfectly choreographed, Henry reached over and took it.

 

10

“So how do you know exactly where things belong?” Josh asked on the steps after school Wednesday afternoon. He was peeling an orange and a fine mist of citrus dusted the air around them.

She shrugged. “I just do.”

“So if I point to a person, any person, you'd be able to tell me where they belong?” Josh pointed to a redheaded junior sitting on his trombone case on the sidewalk, waiting for the late buses. “Tim Brown.”

Bay laughed. “It doesn't work like that.”

“Then how does it work?”

“I don't know. It just comes to me. I walked into my friend Kennedy's house for a play date in third grade, and her mother said Kennedy had to put away the laundry before we went to her room. While Kennedy argued with her mom, I just picked up the towels and went right to the linen closet upstairs. I knew where they belonged. That play date didn't last long,” Bay said wryly. “With people, I can sometimes pinpoint where they're supposed to be or who they're supposed to be with. Sometimes it's a very clear picture in my head. Dakota Olsen belongs at Princeton. I know it, just like that.” Bay snapped her fingers. “But with Tim Brown, I can't see anything. It's easier to tell where people
don't
belong, because it's an uneasy feeling, like when you lose your balance and you're about to fall.”

“That's pretty amazing,” Josh said, setting the orange peel in a neat pile beside him on the step, then breaking the orange in two. He gave her half, which she took like he was giving her gold.