Had that woman been in her bed? Impossible? Thank god for her mother. Even Henry wouldn’t risk running into her mother at the house. Though she couldn’t help but torture herself with the image of their little one who had probably crept between them in the early morning, snuggled warm against his chest. That was supposed to have been her life. Ava folded her arms over her chest, closed her eyes. That’s it, she thought, keep hating him, cauterize the wound as quickly as possible.
Ava entered Devon’s old room beside her own on the second floor. She’d moved the few wire hangers of sloop-shouldered button-down shirts, the picture of sartorial disappointment, that their mother had bought for him to wear to church during one of her many tries at religion. A couple pairs of shiny polyester dress pants lurked with the shirts in a box somewhere. Devon was a private boy and a private man, and all of them had given him his space. She had understood that he was a boy with collections, for the art he found and claimed, for strangely shaped rocks, bent pieces of metal, including an iridescent sliver of silver plate he kept on his dresser. Nothing else would wiggle back into her thinking. Ava sat down on Devon’s bed. If she closed her eyes she was sure that she could picture what the walls had looked like back then, but no image appeared. But the disco glitter ceiling looked the same. Devon had wanted to paint over the dirty cloud places where water had leaked and stained. A teacher had told him that Michelangelo had taken years to finish the Sistine Chapel. “You got to be joking if you think you’ll be under my roof wasting time painting,” their mother had joked. But she hadn’t meant it.
The room now said little about the boy who had lived there. An old painting of a clipper ship Devon drew when he was in eighth grade, a WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDPA mug he’d loved was still somewhere. Years ago she’d found several of his notebooks under the bed, full of drawings of cars, airplanes, caricatures of people they all knew in the opening pages. She’d leafed into the notebook and had come upon drawings of young women, topless with strange expressions, like they weren’t aware of their naked selves but were instead doing ordinary things like picking apples or watching television, topless girls as wholesome as the farmer’s daughter. And every girl was the same girl, the sad little white girl he worked with, the puny little thing he brought around the house a few times. Devon was a loner but hadn’t seemed lonely. She’d had no idea he had longed for her. Joy, that was her name! Never had a child looked less like a Joy. Of course he had loved her. Ava said the first prayer she’d uttered in a long time, maybe since she was a child beside her grandmother on her knees. Please let her have loved him back.
Ava took the drawing of the ship off of the wall, a good one for a boy his age, what had he been, about twelve, thirteen? to straighten the frame. On the back of it Devon (who else?) had drawn a cartoon sheep with a thought bubble above the sheep’s head. The caption said, IT AIN’T SO BAAAD. Ava laughed. “It ain’t so baaad,” Ava said aloud. She would get on with it. She was going to work.
19
“Ava Bailey, how may I help you?”
“Is this Ava?”
Ava drew in her breath. She knew he would call, it was just a matter of time, but hearing his voice startled her anyway. Her office had glass walls, a glass-topped door. She could be seen by the tellers in the front of the bank, by the customers in line if they decided to look around for anything of interest as they waited to make their deposits and withdrawals. Ava shifted in her chair and rested her head in her hand. She glanced up quickly and sat up straight. For the thousandth time since she started the job she wondered what the tellers or the customers had seen. She quickly adjusted, and erased the expression from her face.
“Ava? Are you there?”
Ava knew the voice from the first word, even after all this time. She had slept with two men in her life, her husband and the man on the phone. “This is Ava,” she said.
“Ava?”
Ava cleared her voice to try to keep it steady. JJ Ferguson had finally called.
“This is Jay Ferguson. How are you?”
“I know who you are, JJ,” Ava said and held the phone, not sure what to say next.
“Are you still there? Can you talk now?”
“It’s about damn time, JJ.” Ava paused on the line. She felt a glad rush like her body was taking in light except it was a stinging like she’d just released a long-held breath. This was nothing like her feelings for asinine Henry. For him, for Henry, she was overwhelmed, like walking in the ordinary world and suddenly and inexplicably falling in a hole. She’d wanted Henry, her body reacted to him, with an aggressive hum that surprised even her. She ached for Henry, but not like hunger—hunger is unpleasant, not hunger at all more like the tingle of bicycle bells bright and insistent and impossible to unhear. Her feeling for JJ was pleasure, the warmth of real pleasure. A feeling that bounced back to her through the detritus of almost twenty years. She had chosen Henry all those years ago and JJ had disappeared from her life. She had not known that she would lose JJ entirely. How could she have known that? “How are you?”
“I’m going to be your neighbor,” JJ said.
“Everybody in town knows that, JJ.”
“I forgot about the grapevine around here.”
“Did you?” Ava asked, but she was sure the grapevine was the last thing JJ forgot.
“You’re right. I was hoping you’d know.” JJ laughed. “You sound the same.”
“Ha! I’m not even close. You wouldn’t believe what’s happened even if I told you,” Ava said. Ava and JJ paused on the line.
“Can we meet? Can I see you?” JJ said.
“Why not? This is my week for crazy. Why not?” JJ hesitated unsure what Ava might know about what had happened with Henry.
“Okay then, that sounds like close to yes.” He laughed. “I’ll take yes any way I can get it. How about today? We can eat somewhere, get a drink maybe.”
“Not in this town we can’t. Still dry.”
“I heard that. Unbelievable. You know we don’t have to stay in Pinewood. I can take you anywhere you want, girl.”
“Your rap is still weak, JJ.”
“I’m the king of weak raps.”
Ava laughed and imagined the grown man on the other end of the telephone line. He was not fat and he had hair and teeth from all reports, but he couldn’t look exactly the same. No one ventures into middle age the same as he started. She was different too in ways that she felt more than saw with her own eyes. Though she was sure other people could tell. A woman, sixty years old at least, had asked her if they’d gone to high school together. That moment had ruined a few days in a row for Ava. “I’ll get some lemonade with you, but I’ll be here until late. Besides, I’m pregnant, JJ.”
“Well, I’ll come by the bank.”
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“You’re only the second person I’ve told. You and the Goodwill woman.”
“What, Ava?”
“I’m pregnant. Knocked up. I’ll see you later.”
“What else did you say?”
“It doesn’t matter, JJ. I’m just talking.”