Together Alone

H
E WASN’T GOING TO LIKE IT. HE HATED THE RITUAL
of the formal family picture, but the time was right. In four short days, his only child was leaving the nest, breaking out of her chrysalis into an exciting new world. If ever there was an occasion to mark, this was it.

Starting college was a rite of passage, a beginning.

It was also an ending, one Emily Arkin had been dreading for years. Prior to kindergarten, Jill had been all hers. Then she was gone three hours a day. Then six. Then seven, then eight.

College was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was a springboard to adulthood and total independence.

“How do I look?” Jill asked, joining Emily’s reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Emily lost a moment’s breath. She always did when Jill came upon her unexpectedly. That this striking young woman was her daughter never failed to amaze her. She had Emily’s dark hair and fair skin and Doug’s height, but the features came from earlier generations, and what was inside was pure Jill. She was sweet, sensitive, and smart. She was innocent, yet sophisticated, the product of growing up in a small town, in a shrinking world.

Emily didn’t want the innocence lost. She didn’t want the sophistication honed. She didn’t want Jill hurt.
Ever
.

“Mom,” Jill pleaded softly.

Emily made a helpless sound and reached for a tissue. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“If you cry, I will, too, and then we’ll
both
look a mess. Dad’s on the phone.” She paused, cautious. “Is he going to be angry?”

Emily forced a bright smile. “What’s to be angry about? He’s already dressed for the cook-out. In ten minutes, the pictures will be done and we’ll be on our way.” The doorbell rang, in old age more a clang than a chime. “There’s the photographer,” she said and took Jill’s face in her hands. “You look beautiful. Come.”

The sun was falling in the west, gilding the edges of the broad-leafed maples that stood on the front lawn, and the peaks of the white picket fence beyond. Leaving Jill there, Emily went to the door of the small den that was Doug’s home office and caught his eye.

He held up a finger and continued to talk.

Stomach jangling, as always when she couldn’t gauge his mood, she waited, watching him. At forty-four, he was even more athletic of build than he had been at twenty-two. Then, sheer physical labor had kept his body in shape. Now, daily workouts at a health club did it. His stomach was flat, his back straight, his shoulders broad. He wore his clothes well.

They were fine clothes. He shopped when he traveled, and he looked it. The pleated slacks and open-neck shirt that he wore today spoke more of Europe than of a small town in the northwest corner of Massachusetts.

Emily half-wished she had bought something new to wear for the pictures, to look more sophisticated beside Doug. But she hated spending money on herself, when there were other bills to pay. Better a new muffler for the wagon than a silk something she would never wear again.

Doug hung up the phone. “Who rang the bell?”

She slipped a cajoling arm through his. “Larry Johnson. He’s new with the
Sun
. A photographer. He’s good, and very cheap. I asked him to take a few pictures before we leave.”

“Emily.”

“I know. You hate having pictures taken, but Jill’s leaving in four days,
four days
, and then our lives will be changed forever.”

“Maybe, if she’d been going to D.C. like Marilee. But Boston? It’s barely three hours away.”

“She won’t be our little girl anymore.”

“She hasn’t been that for a long time.”

“You know what I mean,” Emily coaxed, but more anxiously now. “This is a milestone, Doug. Besides, she needs a picture of the three of us for her dorm room. Smile for her? Please?”

If he said no, she would send Larry home. A scowling Doug defeated the purpose. But he sighed and produced a vapid smile. Relieved, she led him out of the house.

Jill sat on the swing that hung from the largest of the front maples. With the light dappled by leaves, and a backdrop of rhododendron and white fencing, the setting was bucolic.

Emily was remembering the hours and hours Jill had spent on that swing, the pumping and soaring and spills, when a muted ring came from the house. Doug took off before she could protest. She stared after him in dismay, then resignation. He was home, at least. He had promised to stay the week. It was a concession that didn’t come without strings. Taking phone calls was one.

Refusing to be discouraged, she turned back to Jill. “I want a picture of you here,” she said and when several shots had been taken, she moved in beside Jill for several of them together.

She covered Jill’s hands on the chains of the swing and leaned in close. Cheeks touching, she smiled at the feel of Jill’s smile, laughed to the sound of Jill’s laugh. History was suddenly pleated, the years juxtaposed, and the laughter was that of childhood again. Emily loved its sound. She couldn’t bear to think of the day it would be gone.

Leaving the swing, they went to the backyard and posed on an outcropping of rock by the pond. From slightly above her, Jill draped her arms over Emily’s shoulder. Emily held her hands. They leaned against one another, lost their balance and laughed, then tried again, while the photographer snapped away.

“Doug!” Emily yelled toward the window that marked his den, but Jill had another idea.

“One of my mom alone,” she announced.

Emily jumped out of camera-range. “Uh-uh. This is your day.”

“But I want one of
you
.”

“I want ones of
us
.” She looked toward the house. “
Doug?
”

His face appeared at the screen, again a finger raised.

Emily tempered her frustration with a short sigh and the knowledge that he would eventually come. He might be grumpy, but he would accommodate her. It wasn’t often that she asked for anything. He knew that.

Returning to the front of the house, they posed on the steps, Emily above, Jill below, then shifted places at the photographer’s direction. Emily wore an easy smile. She was good at easy smiles, even when less easy things ate at her mind. Some might call it dishonesty. Emily called it making the best of the situation.

“Hard to tell mother from daughter,” the photographer remarked, to which Emily gave a doubtful snort.

“It’s true,” Jill said. “They’ll think you’re my sister.”

Emily fixated on the “they,” strangers in a dorm room three hours away, and felt a hollowness inside.

“Mom,” Jill growled, squeezing the fingers laced through hers.

“I’m okay,” Emily vowed.

“I’ll only be in Boston. We’ll talk all the time.”

“I know.”

“You can drive in and take me to lunch.”

“I know.”

“We can go shopping.”

“I know.” But it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.

Fighting the knot in her throat, Emily gave Jill a hug and held on until she was recomposed. Then, staying close, she faced the camera again.

When the screen door opened behind them, she felt she’d been granted a reprieve. Doug was a distraction from empty thoughts. He was her husband. He had been her world before children had come, and he would be again, once Jill was gone.

“Where do you want me?” he grunted in a way that set her stomach off again.

“Problems?” she asked. He was a business consultant, a troubleshooter hired by small companies to right things gone wrong. At a time of economic anemia, he was state-of-the-art medicine. He had never been more in demand.

He shot her a tired look. “Always.”

“Where?”

“Pittsburgh.”

Her heart fell. Concord or Manchester, even Boston he might do in a day. Pittsburgh was always longer. “Do you have to go?”

“I don’t have to, but if I want to keep the account, I’d better.”

“Oh, Doug.” He had
promised
her this week. Her heart broke for Jill. Her heart broke for
herself.

More sharply, he said, “Hell, I can’t say no. Money is tight, and universities cost money. I’m still gagging over that check I wrote last week.”

“It’s okay,” Jill said quickly. “We still have stuff to do that Dad can’t help us with at all. We’ll be busy, Mom. Will you be back before I leave, Dad?”

He softened, touching her head. “Sure, I will. I’ll only be gone two days.”

The photographer took several shots of them there, with Emily and Jill on the front steps and Doug leaning over the rail. Then he sat Doug on the steps and arranged Emily and Jill nearby, and when he was done with that pose, Jill jumped up.

“I want one of my parents alone,” she said, and this time Emily didn’t argue. She slid onto the step below Doug and sat between his legs with her elbows on his knees.

It should have been the most comfortable pose in the world. They had sat that way dozens of times, back when they had first met, when life had been simpler.

Emily’s life was still simple. It revolved around Jill and Doug, around the small house that needed repairs they couldn’t afford, the small group of friends whose loyalty money couldn’t buy, and the small town whose wealth lay in its warmth.

Doug’s life was the one that had changed. He traveled constantly, power-lunched with power brokers, immersed himself so deeply in innovative management techniques that Emily was hard put to associate him with the unassuming organic farmer she had married. Maybe that was why she felt odd now, sitting between his legs with her elbows on his knees.

“Mother!” Jill cried. “
Smile!
”

Emily smiled. For Jill, anything.

And it wasn’t all that hard. Of the many things motherhood had taught her over the years, hiding heartache was one.

Brian Stasek strode into the drugstore with a whimpering Julia on his hip. She wasn’t happy, but then, neither was he. He was hungry, tired, and hot. She was hungry, tired, and wet. He had used the last of the Pampers at a rest stop five hours before. They were badly in need.

He found the aisle, found the size, found the sex. Gathering an armload of boxes, he found the cash register. The boxes clattered onto the counter. Julia began to wail.

He jiggled her on his hip while he reached for his wallet. “Almost there. Almost there. Almost there.”

“She’s a cute baby,” said the girl at the register.

Brian grunted. “I thought so, too. Then she became all mine, and things changed. Let me tell you, taking care of kids isn’t for the weak of heart. Remember
that
, if you’re planning on having one in the near future.”

The girl took a step back. Julia cried louder.

“Since Chicago,” he muttered.

“Maybe she’s sick,” came the timid suggestion.

He sighed. “No. Just tired.” There was more to it than that, but Brian didn’t have the strength or inclination to share the rest, certainly not with a teenaged stranger. He needed dry diapers, warm food, and a solid bed, in that order. So he tucked the change back in his pocket, gathered up the boxes, and returned to the Jeep.

The diaper was changed in no time. After three days, Brian was experienced enough to know that striving for perfection, where an unhappy child was concerned, was absurd. As long as the diaper was in the general vicinity, it would do its thing, give or take.

Give or take was what it had done. So he fished a dry jumpsuit from the depleted clean bag, stuffed the soggy one in the bulging dirty bag, and lifted his repaired daughter.

“Pretty Julia,” he said with a grin and gave her a hug.

She began to whimper.

The grin left. “Right. Food.” Pausing only to stick an empty baby bottle in the wasteband of his jeans, he backed out of the Jeep with Julia in his arms and straightened.

She began to squirm.

He held her still and looked her in the eye. “If I let you walk, it’ll take twice as long to get where we’re going.”

She looked back at him with pale blue, unblinking eyes. They were laced with silver, iridescent, almost unearthly—which was how people often described his. They said that his eyes were his deadliest weapon, that one long hard look gave even the meanest man pause. For the first time in his life, he knew what they meant. When Julia looked at him with those eyes that way, it was like she knew something he didn’t, like she knew
lots of things
he didn’t.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said in an attempt to show her that he knew something, too, “you’ve been stuck in the car for the better part of three days, and you’re dying to move.”

The eyes held his.

He sighed. “So if you’re hungry, you’ll make a beeline for the food.” He set her down.

She made a beeline for the street.

He caught up her hand with an “Oh, no, you don’t, toots,” but it was a minute of tugging and vehement, if unintelligible, complaints from Julia before she accepted the sidewalk.

Brian thought of Gayle. She had been the one wanting children, even when he said they should wait. They were both workaholics, he said. They couldn’t do a child justice, he said.

She said that they had waited long enough, and that much longer and her ovaries would rot. She said she could do it all, wife, mother, and job.

Then she died, and he was left holding the bag.

And a sweet, sorry, sad little bag she was, he mused, looking down at the bobbing brown curls, the padded bottom, the toddling legs. Julia was used to Gayle being gone days, but the nights were tough, especially now, with four weeks’ worth piled one on top of another, and then there was the matter of breast milk, which Gayle had offered morning and night, right up to the end.

He was out of his league on that one.

Maybe on this one, too, he thought, looking on down the street. Then again, maybe not. He dragged in a long breath, then let it out, and when something inside him eased, he inhaled again.

Grannick wasn’t bad, if its main street was anything to go by. It was clean. It had the kind of new-old New England charm that was stereotypical of a college town. People strolled in the early evening glow. They looked intelligent and peaceful. They looked casual. They looked countrified. Some of them looked just like him.