Page 38 of The Space Between

"Sit. Please," Jeanie says, fluffing a small pillow for Carol's back and then holding her hand as she sinks into the chair with a loud exhale. "You look glorious, but I don't want you to get overheated. Let me pour you a drink."

Despite the fact that she hasn't slept more than four hours a night since the car accident, and ignoring the fact that her own back and neck have been giving her constant trouble, Jeanie feels okay. She'd gotten a gash on her forehead in the crash which she feels a little self-conscious about, but this is her old friend Carol--she can put aside her feelings and not worry about that for the moment.

"How are you?" Carol asks, accepting the cold glass of lemonade and taking a sip immediately. She slips her swollenfeet out of her sandals. "And how is your sister? My mother heard about the accident at church, and she was beside herself."

Jeanie takes a deep breath as she pours her own glass of lemonade. There's a jade plant in a pot on the railing of the front porch, and a wind chime on the house next door tinkles gaily in the light afternoon breeze.

"Angela is awake, and she's doing fine. We're hoping to find out more about when she might get the feeling back in her feet, but...I don't know, Carol." Jeanie bites on her lower lip and narrows her eyes for a moment, willing the tears to stay put. "She's so young. She has her whole life ahead of her, and to think that she might not walk again."

Carol leans across the tiny round table between them and puts her hand on Jeanie's arm. "She will, Jeanie. She'll walk," she says so fervently that Jeanie almost believes her conviction. "God wouldn't do that to a girl like Angela."

Jeanie nods and pats Carol's hand, but she isn't so sure that she can buy into that idea as readily as Carol does. After all, she's a woman of science now, and while believing in the stars and the planets doesn't mean a person can't believe in God, it has made Jeanie question life and existence and meaning far more than she ever has before.

"I have all the faith that she'll be fine," Jeanie says as a compromise. "Now tell me about you. When is this baby due? And are you sure it's only one?"

Carol laughs. "Only one heartbeat, so far as we know. And I'm due on September second, but I'm ready now."

Jeanie steels herself; she's never ready to say his name, but over the years, she's been forced to whenever she speaks to Carol. "And how about Leonard?" she asks, trying to keep her voice neutral. "Is he ready for baby number three?"

"Oh, Leonard," she sighs, waving a hand. "He's as ready as any man ever is, I suppose." Carol smiles and looks out at theyard as a man walks by with a large dog on a leash. "He loves the older two, but they're boys, so that's easy. I have a sneaking suspicion that this one is a girl."

"That would be fun," Jeanie says, imagining what it would be like to have three kids at twenty-seven. She can't even picture herself with children at all, much less with three of them. "And how is work going for Leonard?" She sips her lemonade, willing her face not to turn red each time she says his name.

Carol shrugs. "Fine, I guess. He always wanted to be a police officer, but it's so dangerous, you know?" She wrinkles her nose. "I kind of wish he worked in an office somewhere."

Jeanie smiles, but her mind goes back to the Leonard Pickles she'd known in high school. The one who'd played basketball and walked home from school with her. The boy whose named she'd doodled all over her diaries.Mrs. Leonard Pickles, she'd written, not knowing then that Carol would be the one to walk down the aisle at the church in their neighborhood and accept the ring that would makeherMrs. Leonard Pickles, and not Jeanie.

But by all accounts, Carol and Leonard have been happy. And they have two little boys with another baby on the way. How can Jeanie fault that or question the rightness of how things have turned out? She can't. She most definitely can’t.

Jeanie looks at Carol with tenderness, remembering all the years where she thought this woman was her nemesis—when this womanwasher nemesis. Mean little Carol Fairchild on the playground, who’d tormented her about her dead father, who’d made fun of her for her mother marrying Mr. Macklin, who’d secretly been suffering at the hands of her own cruel, abusive mother, had turned into a whole other Carol Fairchild. By middle school, she’d become the kind of girl who reached out to other girls and offered a hand, and by high school, she was able to catch the eye of Leonard Pickles and keep it. Jeanie hadseen her whole evolution, and although she’d knowingly stepped away from Leonard to let Carol flourish under his attention, she harbors no bad feelings about it. After all, maybe Carol and Leonard were always meant to be, and she, Jeanie, had just been a nice girl for Leonard to walk home with occasionally. That wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Jeanie leans back slightly in her chair and watches as a station wagon full of kids drives slowly past her parents’ house. Maybe all she’s ever been destined for is to be the nice girl that guys sometimes talk to while they’re waiting for someone else. Maybe she’ll spend her whole life working at NASA and never get to the moon herself. Maybe she’ll end up living with Vicki and they’ll just be a couple of old gals who accept free drinks from old geezers at The Hungry Pelican on a Saturday night. She has no idea, but she has to accept that life has its own way of working out.

Jeanie reaches over and tenderly puts a hand on her old friend’s stomach, looking into her eyes. “I’m so happy for you guys,” she says to Carol, feeling the baby roll inside of Carol’s stomach like a tiny gymnast. “Everything is working out just perfectly.”

CHAPTER 18

Jo

It’s big and ugly,and it doesnotmatch her living room. From the corner of her eye, Jo glares at the ornate vase that rests on her bookshelf as she runs the vacuum across the rug. Her sweeps back and forth on the carpet get angrier the more she stares at the damn thing until finally, she stops, switches off the vacuum, and leaves it plugged in and sitting upright.

“Why do I need to be looking at this every day?” she mutters to herself, standing in front of the vase with her fists on both hips. She shakes her head as she reaches out one tentative hand and lets her fingertips rest on the cool ceramic. The swirls and lines of the gold artwork on the vase feel like veins as she traces them with her fingers. “You’re never going to truly be gone, are you?” she asks the vase in a whisper.

“Mommy?” Jo spins around to find Nancy standing there, looking at her with concern. “Who are you talking to?”

Jo’s face snaps into an automatic smile. She feels like an idiot. “No one, honey. I was just cleaning, and I stopped for a minute. I was lost in thought.” She walks over to Nancy and puts a hand on her middle child’s shoulder, steering her towards the kitchen. “Doesn’t that ever happen to you?”

Nancy is still frowning. “Sometimes. Like, when I’m reading, sometimes I say things out loud to myself.” She holds up the book in her hand as proof.

“Well, it’s like that,” Jo says, pointing at Nancy’s seat at the table. Without asking Nancy whether she wants it or not, Jo pulls the glass bottle of milk from her refrigerator and pours some for Nancy, which she sets on the table with three Fig Newtons. “Sometimes I talk out loud to myself, too. Now,” Jo says, leaning against the back of one chair, “why don’t you keep reading here for a bit and have a snack, and I’ll finish my cleaning.”

Back in the living room, Jo eyes the vase again, but turns the vacuum on and resumes her chore with just one shake of her head. Bill had flown to Arizona and back in twenty-four hours on a weekend to retrieve his ex-wife’s ashes, and now they sit in a maroon vessel lined with gold etching, watching over the house and—at least in Jo’s mind—glowing like a nightlight while they all sleep. When Jo is home alone, she feels Margaret’s presence, and though the kids have no idea what’s in the vase, she imagines Margaret sitting on the couch in the middle of her house, watching them as they run past, listening to their squabbles, and clicking her tongue disapprovingly as Jo carries out all of her motherly and wifely duties.

Why, in her mind, has this woman become such a phantom? Why does Margaret, who, by all accounts, wasn’t well enough to ever run a household, get to haunt her this way? Jo is still sad for the way the woman’s life turned out, and she does have empathy and sympathy for her, but why does she now have to incorporate Margaret into the decor of her home? Margaret gets to be there when Jo is awake late at night writing, and Margaret gets to stand sentry as Bill sips his morning coffee and kisses Jo on his way out the door.

She gets to be there, front and center, for everything now, and Margaret doesnotmatch the couches or the drapes.

Jo sighs and yanks the vacuum’s plug from the wall. Bill could haveat leastasked her what her opinion was on the urn so that she could have chosen something that fit the rest of the room. This thought stops her in her tracks and Jo actually laughs out loud to herself as she’s winding up the vacuum’s cord. Because, honestly, she’s Jo Booker from Minnesota! Jo, who loved to can her own peaches, to fall asleep beneath the stars on camping trips, and Jo, who never gave one thought to whether her summer dresses were in fashion or not.

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