Page 44 of The Space Between

When Melva met Wendell at Elmwood Country Day School, making Jeanie the ridicule of all her classmates who accused her of making her mom marry a teacher so she could get good grades, Melva had slowly come out of her shell-shocked state, then quickly given birth to Angela and Patrick and refocused her attentions on raising twins. Her hands had certainly been full, but as Jeanie watches Steven and Vicki, she feels a pang of envy that she’d never really gotten her mother to herself. Would they have become friends like this? Would they have a million stories to share about the way they’d plowed through life together, as a team?

“So your aunt Penny is my mom’s good friend,” Steven says to Jeanie from across the table. He’s sitting next to Dale, and she’s seated on the same side as Vicki. “That’s wild. Penny is great.”

Jeanie snaps out of her private thoughts about her mother and comes back to the present. “Aunt Penny,” she says, nodding. Jeanie reaches for a scallop and sets it on her appetizer plate. “Yeah, she’s a kick.” In truth, it’s been several years since she’s seen Penny, but she always has been fun and carefree.

“When I was a kid,” Steven says, as if childhood were so far in the rearview mirror that he can barely remember it, “Penny and my mom took me to Coney Island.”

“And you ate all those hot dogs and threw up,” Vicki says, laughing at the memory.

“Penny told me that if I rode the Wonder Wheel ten times in a row, she’d give me a dollar.”

Jeanie is listening as she cuts into her fried scallop. “And did you do it?”

“I did,” Steven says, grinning. “And she paid up. Unfortunately, I took that dollar and spent it all on cotton candy and popcorn, which did not help the stomach situation whatsoever.”

Dale is laughing along with them, and he talks for a while about his own childhood. There’s a moment for Jeanie as Dale talks where she feels like she’s actually inside the moment, appreciating it all: the flickering candles in hurricane lamps; the way the white wine Vicki has ordered sparkles in the clear glasses; the rosy glow of everyone’s cheeks against the warmth of their laughter. It’s like she’s committing the whole thing to memory so that she doesn’t forget how nice it is to be out with people. She wants to pull this memory from her pocket the next time she rolls up in an afghan and turns on the television instead of going for a walk to watch the sun set behind the palm trees and the mangroves.

After dinner, Vicki sees a man she knows at the bar. He’s sitting with his back to the restaurant, shoulders hunched as he works his way to the bottom of a glass of bourbon.

“Will you young people excuse me for a bit? Why don’t you go out and take a walk on the pier and I’ll meet you out there in an hour?” Vicki says.

By this point, Jeanie has had at least half the bottle of wine that Vicki ordered, and she’s feeling warm and relaxed. Herlimbs are loose, and when the evening air hits her, it feels like stepping into a warm bath. She sighs with pleasure.

“I love Florida,” she says to Dale and Steven. “I really do. I thought I’d miss Chicago, but I’m never cold here, you know? And everything is just so sunny and pleasant.”

“Sure,” Dale says agreeably, hands in his pockets as they walk away from the restaurant and its weathered exterior. Like The Black Hole and The Hungry Pelican, they’re situated near water, and can easily listen to it lap against the wooden planks of the dock as they stroll.

The guys keep Jeanie between them, but neither walks close enough to touch her.

“Want a sip?” Steven asks, pulling a flask from the inner pocket of his sport coat. He uncaps it and hands it to Jeanie to sip from first.

“Chivalry is not dead,” she declares, taking it with a smile. It’s not like her to drink half a bottle of wine on a work night and then to follow it with drinks of some unknown alcohol from someone she’s just met. She feels like a whole new Jeanie. She tips her head back, and the liquid slides down her throat.

Well, first it slides, and then it burns.

Jeanie passes the flask on to Dale as she cringes and tries not to gag. “What is that? Ethylene glycol?”

The boys laugh and Dale wrinkles his nose at her. “So you really are a scientist.”

Jeanie hadn’t talked much about herself at dinner, preferring to just listen as everyone else told stories about their lives. The closest she got to sharing anything personal was when she talked about her aunt Penny.

“Sure. I am,” she says now, accepting the flask as Dale passes it back in the other direction. Without thinking, she sips it again, and this time it goes down easier. She hands it on to Steven. “I work at NASA. I’m an engineer.”

Dale gives a low whistle. “Impressive.”

Jeanie turns on him unexpectedly. “Is it though? Would you ever want to date a woman who had a master’s degree and worked for NASA? Because, to be perfectly honest, I’m finding it quite difficult to get out there and meet someone who doesn’t think that I’ll want to ‘settle down’ and raise kids as soon as I possibly can.”

Steven and Dale stay quiet as Jeanie reaches for the flask that’s in Steven’s hand and sips from it again. She’s starting to feel like her thoughts are coming out of her mouth without pausing to get her permission, and that’s a feeling she’s entirely unfamiliar with.

“I mean, I want to find love,” Jeanie goes on, gesturing wildly at the sky and its varying shades of lavender, gold, and carnation pink. It’s so beautiful that her eyes tear up unexpectedly. “I want to settle down and get married, too. But I also want to travel, and I want to go to space, and I want a career. I don’t think I can sit at home all day and push babies around the block in a pram,” she says, feeling a strangling desperation to be understood. Jeanie nearly reaches over and grabs Dale’s arm to shake him, but she doesn’t. “Do you want to marry someone who can’t even imagine herself staying home with children all day?”

Dale’s eyes are wide, and he lifts one shoulder helplessly. “I mean…I’m only twenty. I’m not sure.”

“That’s it exactly!” Jeanie says, turning back and forth between the boys to see who’s holding the flask. Steven wisely caps it and slides it back into his pocket as they stroll. “When men are young, they think they want a woman who is strong and smart and can keep up with them, but then when they get old enough that they feel like settling down, they realize that all they really want is a woman who will take the place of their mother. Someone to cook, to make the house nice, and to put the babies to bed while they read the paper.”

“Can't they want both?” Steven asks innocently.

Jeanie whips her head in his direction and realizes immediately that fast head movements make her feel like the world is spinning. She reaches out and grabs Steven’s elbow, which he fashions into a crook so that she can hang onto it for stability.

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