Free Juno's Daughters by Lise Saffran Page B

of the house. She could feel the chill coming up through the wool of her socks, but the sun was bright on her face. She shaded her eyes with her hand so that she could see her daughter bending to get in the passenger side of the truck. “When did she say you could come?”
    â€œNot to visit. To stay. She said maybe I could go to that community college that they have there. College of Marin? Marin College? Whatever it’s called.” Lilly’s voice faded as she hopped in next to Elliot.
    â€œShe invited you to live with them? Lilly? What did she say exactly?”
    Elliot began backing the truck toward the road and Lilly stuck her head through the window and yelled over the sound of the engine, “We’ll talk about it later, Mom. Okay?”
    In a moment they were already too far to hear from Jenny whether or not it was okay. Lilly go to Marin? To live ? She had known that Lilly would probably go somewhere, sometime, but this was too soon. Barely two weeks had passed since her high school graduation. And to Jenny’s sister’s, of all places?
    She went back into the house with a sigh. The top was off the sugar bowl, the dishes were still in the sink, and a handful of tried-on and rejected garments lay draped over the backs of chairs and on doorknobs like the limp forms of exhausted ghosts. In the mornings after the girls had gone, the house always seemed doubly empty. Triply so.
    Jenny began humming to break the quiet.
    Cornbread and butter beans and you across the table. Eating beans and making love as long as I am able . She finished the verse and then headed toward the four-harness jack loom in the corner of the porch, determined not to spend the hour or so she had before work on petty chores like straightening up the house. This was a simple weave she was working on, a tapestry for a baby that was due in the fall, and as she pushed the treadles she knew she ought to take a few moments and phone her sister. A chickadee called outside the window ( chickadee-dee-dee, chickadee-dee-dee ) and the angled sunlight coming through the glass scattered rainbow fragments on the wall. She decided she would call from work in an hour, enough time to compose herself so that she would be able to discuss Sue’s offer without sounding defensive and ungrateful.
    As girls, the best Jenny and Sue could muster was tolerance. At worst, they fought. In the pacifist, nuclear-power-no-thank-you days after leaving home Jenny preferred to pretend that the hair-pulling and shoving parts of their fights never happened. Sue, however, with her French-manicured fingernails and perfectly applied Estée Lauder makeup, was not above claiming over a glass of Chardonnay that she could still kick Jenny’s butt if it came to it. Jenny beat the weft with the shuttle, drew it across the warp, and beat it again.

    By lunchtime Jenny had sold two fifty-dollar hand-painted canoe paddles, new but made to look old by an island resident who claimed to have a sliver of Skagit in his otherwise German background, and a genuinely antique silver tea set. She popped a sign on the door and headed out to pick up some lunch. It was warm enough to walk down to the market in just her tank top. There was couscous salad on special, one of her favorites. She lingered at the counter deciding whether or not she wanted a roll. In the end she grabbed her carton without the roll but with a boysenberry soda sweating in her hand. The cashier offered her a bag, which she politely refused, and a fork, which she accepted. She turned toward the sun and headed straight through the door into Trinculo.
    â€œOh, shoot. Sorry. Did I . . .”
    â€œNo. Ooops. I . . .”
    They looked into each other’s eyes and laughed.
    Trinculo was wearing khaki shorts with lots of pockets and a T-shirt that said, Save the Drama for Your Mama . Jenny looked at his shirt and then at his face.
    â€œIt’s from a show I was in, it . . .”
    She stepped out