Patrick sounds like he’s just going to roll over and accept his fate rather than fight it. He has been in jail too long; he’s become submissive. Where is her take-charge, fix-everything husband?
“Have you called Hollis?” Jennifer asks.
“I called him, he knows, but there’s nothing he can do about it, and even if there were something he could do about it, it would likely take the same amount of time I have to wait anyway. It’s only three more weeks,” Patrick says. “I’ve gotten through eighteen months. I can wait three more weeks.”
Maybe he can, but Jennifer can’t. June 1 is decorated with a pink heart on her calendar. In her mind, the day is a starburst. She has rationed her energy and her patience to make it to June 1—not a day longer. And certainly not three weeks longer. She has already planned a family dinner for Patrick’s first night home—poached salmon with mustard-dill sauce and the crispy potato croquettes that Patrick loves. And then the following two nights, Jennifer has farmed the boys out on sleepovers so that she and Patrick can have the house to themselves. She has bought new lingerie and new sheets; she has ordered a tin of osetra caviar and chilled a vintage bottle of Veuve. She has told Jaime, their youngest, that Patrick will make it to his final lacrosse game of the season. The plans are so embedded in Jennifer’s mind that she can’t shift them forward three weeks. She just can’t!
“It sounds like you want to stay in jail,” Jennifer says. “Maybe you have a little romance going on with Janine from Processing.”
“Jennifer,” Patrick says. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please try to understand. This isn’t my fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault. It was a misunderstanding. A scheduling glitch.”
Jennifer nods into the phone but she can’t speak. She knows it’s not Patrick’s fault. She knows she should accept this news gracefully and adjust her expectations. She’s an interior designer. She, of all people, understands delays. It happens all the time in her business—carpets from India get stuck in Customs, quarries run out of a particular kind of granite, her son Barrett gets walking pneumonia and Jennifer has to postpone an installation by a week.
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll see you on the twenty-first.”
“That’s my girl,” Patrick says.
Jennifer hangs up the phone. Immediately, she calls Norah Vale.
It’s June 20, the first day of summer, when Jennifer drives out to Shirley, Massachusetts, to pick Patrick up. She can’t seem to control her nerves, despite eating two Ativan for breakfast. Her heart is slamming in her chest, almost as if she’s afraid. Afraid of what? She went to visit Patrick a week ago Thursday and talked to him yesterday afternoon, but this is different. He’s coming home. He’s coming home!
Patrick is standing by the gate with his favorite guard, Becker, a man even Jennifer has come to know and appreciate. Jennifer barely remembers to put the car in park. She jumps out and runs into Patrick’s arms. He picks her up and they kiss like crazy teenagers until Becker clears his throat and says, “You all need to get a room.”
Patrick shakes Becker’s hand and says, “Thanks for having my back, man. I’m gonna miss you.”
“No, you won’t,” Becker says with a smile. “Now get out of here.”
Patrick drives them home. He says, “It’s like the world is brand-new. I missed driving.”
“You hate driving,” Jennifer says.
“I’ll never complain about it again,” Patrick says. “I’ll never complain about anything again.”
It’s a good lesson about the things we take for granted, Jennifer thinks. Patrick reenters the free world with the enthusiasm of a child.
Jennifer says, “What do you want to do first?”
He gives her a look as if to say Do you even have to ask that?
She swats his arm. “After that.”
“I want to hug my children,” he says.
“Obviously,” Jennifer says. “After that.”
“I want to stop at the store and get a cold six-pack,” he says. “I want to smell a flower. I want to take a bath. I want to get into a bed with my head on three fluffy pillows. I want to swim in the ocean. I want to go to the movies and get popcorn with too much butter. I want a glass of water filled with ice. You have no idea how much I’ve missed ice. I want to walk across Boston Common and smell the marijuana smoke and get asked for spare change. I want to wear my watch. I want to download music. I want to watch the sun go down. I want to throw the lacrosse ball with Jaime. I want to meet my new niece. I want my electric toothbrush. I want to wear my shirts, my boxers, my loafers.” He pauses. He seems overcome. “There are so many things.”
“There will be time,” Jennifer says. “I promise.” She knows what he means. He’s here, right here next to her. She puts her hand on the back of his head. She never wants to stop touching him.
“And you,” Patrick says. “You are amazing. You held everything together. You were so strong. You deserve a medal. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left me, Jenny.”
“I would never leave you,” she says.
“I don’t know how you did it,” he says. “I don’t know how you got through the days. It must have been so hard on you and yet you never complained. You are my hero, Jennifer Barrett Quinn.”
She longs to confess: I’m addicted to pills. Completely, pathetically addicted.
But instead she says, “Stop. You’re embarrassing me.”
AVA
June 20 is the first day of summer and the last day of school. Ava can remember only one other year when the two converged, but everyone finds it fitting: a seasonal passing of the baton.
The day is sweltering, and naturally, tradition dictates that the majority of the last day be spent with the entire school packed together in the gymnasium, the one room in the building that defies even the most powerful air-conditioning. Ava has begged Principal Kubisch to keep the two back doors propped open for ventilation, despite the fact that, in this day and age, it’s a security violation.
There is a pint-size version of pomp and circumstance for the departing fifth-graders, and Ava is overcome with nostalgia. She remembers Ryan Papsycki and Topher Fotea and the clique now headed by Sophie Fairbairn back when they were tiny kindergartners. Today, Sophie has seen fit to wear a lace bustier and show off her double-pierced ears. She’ll be a big hit in middle school.
Ava herds the fourth-graders into rows of chairs for their three minutes of fame. They have been practicing “Annie’s Song,” by John Denver, on their recorders ever since they got back from Christmas break and they’ve gotten proficient enough that Ava doesn’t have to put in earplugs when they play it. She and Scott have an ongoing debate about how teaching the recorder should have been banned back in 1974 after the first class of students learned to play “Annie’s Song.” The recorder is such a lame instrument! Ava would far prefer teaching something the kids might actually use later in life—the harmonica, say, or the ukulele, the xylophone or the bongo drums. Anything but the recorder.
Ava raises her arms and imagines for a moment that she is Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops. Ha! That’s funny enough that Ava nearly breaks into a grin. D’laney Rodenbough still has her recorder swaddled in a striped kneesock, but Ava can’t wait for D’laney. It’s too hot and everyone wants to get out of there.
You fill up my senses…
The song is over in two minutes and thirty-six seconds and as Ava zips her hands over her head, like she’s closing up the school year and all the laughter, learning, rule-breaking, and scolding that went with it, she sees, standing by the open back door, the tall, authoritative figure of the assistant principal, Scott Skyler, and, next to him, Roxanne Oliveria.
The assembled crowd applauds. Ava takes a shallow bow. The person inside Ava shakes her head in disgust. What is Mz. Ohhhhhh doing here?
Ava’s best friend, Shelby, the school librarian, grabs Ava’s arm as they’re walking out of the gym. “She’s shameless.”