It’s not like Jamie and I want to be here with all these moms, but the park is close enough that I can be back at the hospital in ninety minutes. We meander to nowhere in particular and end up under an old dome that’s been repurposed into a rotunda. She holds on to a wrought iron pole and lets gravity swing her down to the stone step below with a plop.
“I just didn’t want to be there, you know?” she says. “I’m tired of it. The drivel.”
“I hear you.” It’s crisp without the threat of rain, and I lift my face to the sun. My eyes might be closed, but I can see her clearly through the blistering red and yellow leaves. Jamie stands in my mind like a figure cut from different layers of stone. Strong and unexpected. As nervous as I am to be here, and I am beyond nervous, I’m happy.
I hope she is too.
Jamie gets up and takes some scattered pictures of the park. “I decided I don’t need therapy anymore,” she announces.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
She shrugs. “Because I’m the most normal person I know.”
“I don’t think I need it either. Big waste of time.”
“Hooray for us, we’re cured.”
“I’d rather be here.”
She shuffles lightly with laughter. “Me too.”
Jamie’s leaning on a pole and watching the kids play. Not taking pictures, but hugging the camera like she’s wistful. Pining. “Penny for your thoughts,” I say.
“Cheapskate.” She grins. “I was just thinking about what it was like when I was little. Like, I knew exactly what I wanted to be, but I didn’t know how to get there.”
“What did you want to be?”
She looks me right in the eye. “I think I wanted to be a mommy, but I didn’t understand it yet. Does that make sense?”
“Uh…” I glance at the kids and then back to her. “So have some babies ten years from now when you’re ancient, like almost thirty. Not that hard.”
“For me it is,” she says. “I can’t have kids.”
The diabetes. I’ve heard about this. My mom always cries at Steel Magnolias. “Adoption. Surrogacy. There’s a million ways around it; you can still be a mom.”
“I know, I know.” Jamie swings her camera to the trees and takes some shots of dappled sunlight and listing leaves. “And I will be. Just adjusting to the idea now.” She stops shooting long enough to send me a small smile. “You don’t think it’s weird I want to be a mom?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Why would I? Don’t lots of girls want to be moms?”
She sighs, her smile curling like an idle leaf. Carefree. “I like being out with you.”
Uh, duh, being at the park on one of the most glorious days of the year with her is amazing. “I like being out with you too.”
“This is why you’re so cool, Dylan, I’m telling you. Points for humanity right here.”
“Can I cash in my points and ask you something?”
Jamie shifts and stands straight. “Okay.”
“It’s something I’ve been dying to know.”
Her spine stiffens. “Go ahead.”
“The daisies,” I say. I was too mortified to mention them before. It’d be like I would go to text so those daisies, huh? coolest flowers ever! and it felt so stupid, I just deleted it and talked about favorite movies, music, books…everything but daisies.
“Oh my god, the daisies! I forgot all about them!”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Sorry,” she quickly says. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Fine. How did you know I had surgery?”
“I have eyes everywhere.”
“Can’t you just tell me?” JP says girls play games. This must be one of them.
“I’m at the hospital like a billion times a week. I know people.”
“But how did you find me?”
“It’s embarrassing.” Jamie’s fingers sweep the side of her face, but they’re jumpy and she ends up tugging on her earring like it’s an anchor. “But I might have told a certain person who works at the food court next to the orthopedic suites about a cup of coffee I bought for a guy on the bus. And we might have chatted at length about it. And she might have seen or heard about someone matching your description being wheeled into surgery. And she might have violated all the HIPAA confidentiality laws by telling me this, so don’t breathe a word to anyone. I don’t want her to get fired.”
“You talked to someone about me?”
Jamie aims her camera at her face and grimaces a hideous shape with her mouth, pulling it down at the corners and grinding her teeth so they buck as the button goes click-click-click. She cracks one awful face after another, wincing sneers and scowling underbites. It looks like someone’s branding her with a red-hot tire iron. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“Self-portraits,” she says.
“Why are you screwing up your face like that?”
“Because it’s how I feel right now.”
She goes to make another monstrous face and I push the camera down. “Stop.”
“Excuse me?” She whisks the camera away.
Her stare makes me feel like I’ve been dipped in boiling water. Stripped and raw. “I don’t want to see you like that.”
“What if it’s the true me? Can you handle it?”
I blink. Maybe that’s Jamie’s beast bubbling up. “Yes. I can.”
She puts the camera down and scrolls through her recent photos, deleting some and keeping others.
“Why are you at the hospital so much?” I ask.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me,” she says, not looking up.