39. Some Forgotten Corner

“We live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” —Carl Sagan

“Do you see somebody?”

“Where?” Becky asked. They were standing in the backyard, shivering in their winter coats. Although the temperature had risen considerably since last week, Jen had warned Becky that it would still be too cold to stand around outside.

“I want to see the lake,” Becky said. “I’ll feel stupid if I spend two weeks at a lake house and don’t even visit the lake once.”

Jen pointed out that Becky had already seen the lake during the summer, and on this trip through the window, but Becky wanted to walk right up to it. They were standing at its edge now, right where the frozen ground turned sludgy with melted ice.

“He’s way on the other side,” Jen said, pointing. “On the balcony of the green house.”

The melting ice of the lake had cast a gray haze over everything, and Jen wasn’t sure if the distant figure was there. She thought she might be able to see his face, so stoic and unmoving, as though he were deep in meditation—or was that just a leaf? It seemed implausible that he would be outside on days as cold as this, sitting stoically on his balcony, staring out over the icy water. He might be a statue, she thought, and not a person at all. After all, though she could barely see him, he always seemed so still, his gaze so steady. But her intuition told her that this was not the case, that the figure was not only alive, but watching her specifically, not in a scary way, but with a kind of benevolent interest in her daily activities.

“I don’t see anyone,” Becky said.

“Look,” Jen said, tracing the figure’s outline with her finger. “See, his head is there, under that tree branch.” She could see him now, coming into focus, the straight back, the serene face staring right back at her from across the water.

“Maybe,” said Becky. “Yeah, I think that might be somebody.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Jen. “It’s okay if you can’t see him.” She turned to face her friend and realized she was shivering again, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, her jaw clenched to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Jen asked. The cold wasn’t bothering her at all. I must have toughened up over the winter, she thought, remembering how the wind had felt like it was blowing straight through her skin when the temperatures had first started falling in October.

“No, I really want to see him,” Becky said, though Jen could hear her teeth knocking together now as she spoke. “Where did you say he is?”

“There,” said Jen, pointing again. “But maybe he’s not there today.” Suddenly, she remembered Marie, who was sleeping in her carrier just inside, in the kitchen. Becky had said it would be okay to leave her for a few minutes, but it had been at least ten by now.

“The baby,” said Jen.

“Oh, right,” said Becky, her tone suggesting that she knew she had forgotten something important. She stared for a moment longer before turning back towards the house. As she reached the back door, she turned to look one last time at the lake. “I really want to see him,” she said again. “The man across the lake. Is he good luck or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Jen, pulling the door open for Becky so she would not have to unclench her arms from her waist. She tried to explain what she thought about the man, what he meant to her, but she couldn’t come up with words to describe her fascination. “I don’t know what he is,” she said.

Inside, Jen heated up water for tea while Becky nursed Marie. It had only been two weeks, and already they had established a comfortable little routine together, like a family. On the days that Becky didn’t follow her to taekwondo, Jen loved coming home to the sounds of Becky cooking in the kitchen. “Hold Marie,” she would say, and Jen would sit on a blanket on the floor near the heating vent, Marie cuddled against her chest like a puppy, watching Becky chop vegetables and pour steaming pasta into a strainer. This house will be strange without a family, Jen thought.

Before dawn tomorrow, Jen would drive them to the airport. By the time the sun rose in the rear view mirror of Jen’s car, Becky and Marie would be on an airplane and Jen would be returning to North Middleton alone.

Becky hadn’t mentioned her offer to move to Michigan explicitly during the rest of her trip, but she had begun to treat Cone and North Middleton as her new home. She had been taking an ongoing verbal inventory of items Jen would need if she moved out of the lake house: “And you don’t have any blankets or sheets,” she would say, or, “You’ll need some dishes.” When they ran out to Jen’s regular small market for groceries, Jen noticed her sizing up the produce section, checking to see if the slim winter offerings, kale and hothouse tomatoes and imported cantaloupe, were organic. “Let’s look at the vitamin section,” she had said, even though she was not buying any vitamins. Yesterday had been Becky’s last day at the taekwondo school—Jen was skipping training today so they could spend the entire day together—and when she left, she had hugged both Rob and Olivia warmly: “I’ll see you soon,” she had said.

“I don’t want to go back,” Becky said, blowing absent-mindedly on her steaming cup of tea. She was staring out the window at the lake, as though still hoping to see the figure on the other side, though Jen was pretty sure that it would be impossible from this distance.

“You used to love LA,” Jen said. “Remember when you first moved out there? That was the happiest I had ever seen you. You’d come home every day saying, ‘Everyone here does yoga!’ or ‘Everyone here is a movie star!’”

“Young love,” said Becky. “I’m tired of it now. I just want to be a grown-up. I want to live in a grown-up place.”

She took a short, cautious sip of her tea, wrapping her both hands tightly around the hot surface of the cup for warmth.

“You’ll think about it, won’t you?” she said. “That’s all you have to do right now, think about it.”

Jen nodded. But truthfully, thinking about it was exactly what Jen didn’t want to do. She wished she could fast-forward through all the thinking and just find out what happens, like reading the last page of a novel first. Though she couldn’t imagine leaving here, she also couldn’t imagine the moment when she would make a decision to stay. The only other place she had ever decided to move to was Los Angeles, and that was to work in television and then movies, and if she wanted to keep working, she couldn't leave. But now, she could live anywhere she wanted. Anywhere. How does it happen, Jen wondered, that someone chooses a place to live, a place no different than any other place, and decides that this particular anyplace is home?

“I’ll figure something out soon,” said Jen.

She waited for Becky to respond, but Marie had started her hunger-dance, stretching her arms and legs as far from her body as she could, her fists clenched, toes curled into her tiny feet, and her face looking like she was crying, though she hadn’t made a noise yet.

“Time to eat,” Becky said, picking Marie up to nurse her. Jen didn’t even notice anymore. Several times, Jen had thought that people in the store or the coffee shop had been gawking at her, before remembering that they were simply surprised to see Becky feeding her baby in public.

“Speaking of LA,” Becky said, once Marie was comfortably situated, “I thought I should tell you. I saw Bradley.”

“Oh,” said Jen. “Bradley. I forgot about him.” It was the truth, she realized. She didn’t watch TV, had no access to the internet, and it had been months since she had seen the cover of a tabloid. She felt reluctant to allow him back into her consciousness now, but it seemed rude not to ask about him.

“How is he?” she asked.

“He seems good,” said Becky. Good, thought Jen. I’m glad he seems good. She wondered if she had completed her socially-mandated duty to ask polite questions. But Becky was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for more. I could just change the subject, Jen thought. But she didn’t want to be rude or make Becky feel bad for mentioning her ex-husband. One more question, she thought, and that will be enough.

“Where did you see him?” she asked.

“At a yoga class for parents with babies.”

Jen couldn’t help it; she sucked in breath through her teeth.

“Oh,” Becky said, slapping her hand across her mouth, then dropping it to her chin. “Crap.”

“It’s okay,” said Jen.

“You didn’t know?” Becky asked.

“No, but that’s all right,” Jen said. She realized that she felt worse about making Becky feel bad than about Bradley having a child with his new girlfriend.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you,” Becky said. “I feel horrible.” Jen watched as she tried to reach out, maybe to touch Jen’s arm, but couldn’t figure out how to balance Marie with one hand while keeping her in position to nurse.

“It’s okay,” said Jen. “I had heard a rumor.”

“So you really didn’t know they had a baby?” Becky asked, now sounding impressed instead of guilty. “That’s incredible.”

“It’s been everywhere?” Jen asked.

“Everywhere,” said Becky. “It’s like you can’t get away from it.”

Jen thought back to what it was like living in Los Angeles, surrounded by tabloids and televisions and billboards and gossip. She remembered, even before her own name was well-known, how she would know everything about all the big movie stars, every relationship, every break-up, every triumphant and tragic and embarrassing event. She would call them by first name, just like the tabloids did—Jen’s heartbreak, Jen’s new fling—as though they were her closest friends instead of people she had never met. Yes, if Bradley had a baby, everyone would know, she realized. If Bradley’s girlfriend had a baby, she corrected herself.

“So they’re still together?” Jen asked, now asking questions out of true curiosity rather than politeness.

“Yeah, so far,” said Becky. “At least the magazines haven’t said anything about them breaking up. We only talked for a few minutes, but he didn’t say much about her, so maybe that’s good.”

Jen knew what Becky meant, but in fact, she didn’t agree that it was good. In fact, she realized, she didn’t care whether or not Bradley was happy. She couldn’t quite say that she wanted him to be happy, because really, she didn’t want anything for him; she had no feeling about him at all. She tried making herself be happy for him, but it was like trying to be happy for King Arthur or Napoleon. She couldn’t get any real sense of who Bradley was, or what his life was about.

She knew that it used to be her life, too—the film sets, the photographers, the nice clothes and fancy restaurants and exclusive clubs—but looking back, it seemed to belong to some other person. She couldn’t imagine a life like that now, being followed everywhere, everyone knowing every detail of your personal life. If that can make him happy, she thought, then I’m glad. But the main happiness she felt was for herself, that she had escaped it, that she was not ever going to allow her life to become someone else’s entertainment again.

“That reminds me,” said Jen. “I have news for you. I can’t believe I haven’t told you this already.” She had been meaning to surprise Becky with her gossip early in the trip, but each day she kept remembering only after Becky had gone to bed. I can’t believe she almost left without me telling her, Jen thought.

“Guess who I almost saw?”

“I don’t know,” said Becky. “What do you mean, almost saw?”

“Well, Master Park took me to the Snail Plant to play chess, and I ended up replacing another player who was supposed to be there, and it was—you are not going to believe this—Vanto Hatch.”

“Oh,” said Becky. She looked down at Marie, determined that she had finished nursing, and straightened her shirt out, now balancing the baby more easily with one hand.

“Isn’t that crazy?” said Jen. “He comes here about once a month to play chess. There’s a good chance I’ll play against him some day if I go back there. I wonder if he’ll remember me. Probably not—I mean, I’m just some girl he sort of dated in middle school, right? ”

“I quit Groundbreakers,” Becky said.

“What?” Jen asked. “Wait. Why?”

Becky picked up her tea, now cool enough that she could take a large gulp of it while she considered how to answer. Marie was falling asleep again after her meal; Becky lifted her gently into the carrier, which sat in the middle of the kitchen table as though it were a serving platter and Marie was the main course.

“Do you remember that book Paula gave me, The Deliberate Family?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Jen, thinking back to her trip to Los Angeles. “It was all about using chess strategy to raise your kids, right? I guess that makes a little more sense to me now—at least we know where Vanto Hatch is getting his chess strategy from.” She laughed, pleased to have made this connection.

“That book is horrible,” Becky said.

“I thought you liked it,” Jen said, remembering how delighted Becky had been to receive an advance copy of the Groundbreaker’s guide to parenting.

“How could I like it?” Becky asked. “That book all about how to terrorize your children into doing what you want them to, treating them like your enemy. It calls them your ‘opponent.’”

Becky paused and took a long breath, and then another long sip of her tea. When she spoke again, she was more composed.

“I guess I was kind of excited about it at first,” Becky admitted. “Before Marie was born. I mean, it’s kind of an interesting idea in theory, to run your family like a war or something, but once you actually have a family…” Becky paused and looked at Marie, sleeping in her carrier.

“It’s kind of sick,” Jen said, finishing her sentence.

“It is,” said Becky, holding Marie’s tiny foot and using it to rock her gently in the carrier. “But you know, it wasn’t just the parenting strategies. Everything in Groundbreakers was starting to get that way.”

“What way?” Jen asked. She had a pretty strong guess what Becky meant, but she wanted to hear how she would put it into words. It was something dark that Becky was alluding to, something that had been bothering Jen as well, and Jen was still struggling with how to understand it.

“The idea that every part of life is a battle,” Becky said, her lack of hesitation suggesting that she was having no difficulty describing the thing Jen was thinking of. “This you-versus-the-world mentality. It just seems really egotistical and selfish.”

Yes, that was it, Jen thought. That’s what The New Aggressive Male was all about. The ideas had troubled her, and yet they had seemed so logical the way the book had presented them, so difficult to argue against.

She thought of what Fred Fawls would say in response to Becky. “But isn’t our job as individuals to advocate for ourselves? I mean, obviously there are other people in our lives who we take care of, like our families. But aren’t there lots of people who are our adversaries?”

“That’s one way to think about it,” said Becky, wrinkling her eyebrows at Jen like she was trying to see her better. “Did they teach you that in taekwondo or something?”

“Sort of,” said Jen. “Maybe.”

“It’s very male,” said Becky. “The whole having-to-be-better-than-everyone-else thing. It was starting to infuse all the parts of Groundbreakers. My coach started to talking to me about making game plans instead of blueprints, like it was football or something. He said I needed a plan for Marie to help her get ahead in life, to give her a competitive advantage. It was just making me tired.”

Before now, Jen had never appreciated the positivity of the building metaphor; it had always annoyed her with its phony blue-collaredness. At least building was—she grimaced at the pun even though she had not said it aloud—constructive.

“It’s good you left,” said Jen, grabbing Marie’s other foot, the one that Becky wasn’t holding. It felt warm and solid in her hand, and after a moment, she could feel the pulsing rhythm of Marie’s blood being pumped through her tiny veins. It’s traveling up her leg, and into her heart, and back down into her other foot, under Becky’s hand, Jen thought.

“I’m never going to be in a group like that again,” Becky said. “I’m never going to let somebody tell me what to think.”

Jen nodded. She wondered if she was herself currently in a group like that, and if so, how she had let it happen, and whether she needed to get out.

Chapter 40