It’s that time, another fiction Monday, with a little short story to share with you all. But this post also has roots in something else, it has roots in answering Tamara’s question about what a girl is worth. As I reflected on that this past week, this little story walked into my head. Tamara asked us to share and it took me a while to decide what to write, but somehow fiction helped me make sense of it better. This isn’t my best turn of words yet, but there’s something true in it, from me to you …
A Seed of Discontent
A ghostly shiver from the exposed metal of a railing against the Parish Hall wall trailed its way up Jane’s right leg and caressed her thigh. Immediately she was taken back, half-drunk, slumped in his arms, pressed against the hallway wall, their mouths hungry and certain. He had collided with one of the hanging pictures when she had pushed herself against him, keeping their bodies close together. It had swung on its small nail before teetering forward and falling onto the wood floor, shattering the glass with a deafening chaos.
It was the crash that had brought Jane’s husband running, even though he was supposed to be working late. It was the chaos that had brought the dissolution of their marriage, though they had been swinging on their small nail of stability for years. It was the shattering that made Jane stand alone at the charity auction for St. John the Divine’s Day School, where their daughter Gina attended.
She had worn black, something that stopped right at her knee and was slit midway down her back. It felt pathetic in a way, considering her age, but it was the only formal dress she had thought to pack when she had made her hasty exit from their house a week earlier. Jane’s blonde strands were pulled back into a loose bun, her golden earrings bouncing as she walked, heels gently clicking against the floor. Her evening bag, golden and sparkling, remained firmly clutched in her left hand.
“Would you like something to drink?” The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, offering a golden serving platter arrayed with red and white wine. She wore a starched catering uniform with a golden nameplate on her right breast, which read Kristi. Jane immediately both hated and loved her, seeing in her glazed eyes the same woman she had been only two decades before, serving the same drinks, sneaking to the bathroom on break to snort the same line of coke, promising herself the same thing each time: that she would be better, would be someone, someday, if she only had the chance.
And she had.
She had gone to college and done well. She had married Kevin when she was twenty-six, gotten pregnant when she was twenty-eight, miscarried two months later, and had gotten pregnant again, thanks to the fertility treatments, when she was thirty-one. It had meant that she had never gotten more than her Masters in French Literature, but at the time she had decided that being at home with Gina was the right thing to do. At least, everyone seemed to tell her that.
But as Jane took a glass of chardonnay from Kristi, who smiled politely at her in the way she herself had used to when she saw a woman who looked like she had been pretty once, before the life she had never wanted had robbed her of everything that had made her beautiful, Jane found herself resenting that she had ever gotten pregnant in the first place. The miscarriage had been a sign, surely. She was never supposed to be a mother; she had never developed the talent for it, just as her mother had never either. Something about forgetting to cut the crusts off peanut butter sandwiches and never quite being able to explain things in a way that Gina could understand.
Jane had done the duty required of her already, walking patiently through the rows of items—from signed hockey sticks to cosmetic surgery packages—and politely stopping at one every dozen or so, giving it a few seconds of serious attention, perhaps picking up the pen for a brief moment as if considering a bid, before setting it back down, smiling as if she were suddenly finding herself to be quite silly, and continuing on her way. Now she needed to go back, to actually place a few bids, and perhaps win a moderately priced item, to identify herself as an involved parent.
She was halfway down the third aisle when an unusual item caught her eye. Some people had surrounded it, laughing lightly, and even placing a bid. As they moved on, Jane considered that the item had not been there when she had made her rounds before, though considering how small it was, she could have easily passed by it without noticing.
The display was a simple, rigid card placed on a silver picture stand, positioned beside a small glass jar holding a small handful of seeds. The card read: “Forests are contained in seeds, but so many never realize it. The smallest thing, the littlest thing, has the potential to grow abundantly, ever-expand, and leave a legacy. These seeds of poplar are blessed—so it’s said—and when planted, shall sprout the potential of the forest contained within their small form.”
Jane was surprised to see that the latest bid had been for seven hundred dollars. Charity auctions were always this way. There was something tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing, which only heightened the more people drank. She was about to move on when a flutter of laughter across the aisle drew her attention up. Kevin stood near the entryway of the Hall, a blonde twenty-something on his arm. It hadn’t even been a week and he had already moved on. Perhaps, Jane thought, he had always had her on the side, just waiting for the chance when he could bring her out into the light. After a moment her eyes moved back down to the paper in front of her. Jane drank her wine down in one gulp and set it aside. She picked up the pen and wrote down a bid that doubled the highest. Her hands were shaking. She place her purse under her left arm and set down the pen hastily, walking with a kind of panic down the aisle away from the entrance, avoiding Kevin and the twenty-something, exiting by way of a small side door that led to the prayer garden.
It was dark in the enchanted sort of way. A small stream ran through it and toward a pond at its end where a bucket collected water until full, pitched forward, and emptied back out into the pond. She listened to it for a moment, closed her eyes and considered the water.
“You couldn’t stand it either?”
Jane opened her eyes and looked to her right. Leaning against the brick of the building, a woman her age, wearing a simple evening dress and lazily smoking a cigarette opened her mouth wide to the let the smoke tumble out.
“Do you have enough to share, Cassandra?” Jane smiled a bit, relieved and blinking the blur from her eyes as she stepped closer to the other woman. She set her purse down against the wall as Cassandra reached into her own, beside her feet. Cassandra pulled out a small packet, offering it to Jane. Jane took one, placed it between her lips, and nodded gratefully to Cassandra when she offered a light.
Jane took a deep drag and then turned, leaning against the wall herself before exhaling the smoke into the night. Above them, the clouds hung low. The bucket filled and pitched forward, water descending back into the pond. A few minutes passed as the two women silently inhaled and exhaled, offering false clouds to the milky sky. Jane took the cigarette from her mouth and studied it in her hand for a moment, watched the embered end fade. “I had an affair, Cassandra.”
“Did Kevin— ”
“He walked in on us.”
Cassandra swore, took a drag, and exhaled. The bucket released itself again, tumbling water into the pond.
“I don’t know what got into me.” Jane watched the ash fall from the end of the cigarette and break into flecks on the ground.
Cassandra laughed, bitterly. “Being a middle-aged housewife, Jane, that’s what got into you.” She shook her head. In the darkness, illumined only by the lights glowing from the windows of the school, Cassandra’s eyes seemed to have a haunting glow, her hair, curly and brunette, a languid rhythm. “You’ve played that part for so long. Who could fault you for having a little fling with the pool boy?” She laughed a bit more, though she began to cough midway through, smoke encircling her face.
“It wasn’t the pool boy,” Jane replied quietly, “It was Kevin’s partner.”
Cassandra swore again.
“Just that one time.” Jane threw the cigarette on the ground and felt her hands shaking as she brought them up to cover her eyes. “Just that one time and Kevin came in.” Her hands clenched into fists, which she violently threw back down, striking the wall. Her left hand split open along the knuckles and a thin line of blood began to form, slipping down her fingers.
“Hey, hey,” Cassandra soothed, tossing her cigarette onto the ground as well, moving to face her. She placed a hand on the side of Jane’s face tenderly and ran a thumb under her dripping eyes. “You made a mistake. That’s all. A mistake.”
Jane’s breath began to steady. “You don’t understand.” She inhaled deeply, clenched her lips closed, then finally spoke again. “It happened so quickly, Cassie. It just happened. We had done it once before, once back when we were all in college twenty something years ago. Kevin and I were engaged but James and I—” she broke off, looking up to the milky sky that pooled and stretched across the sky, a blanket of darkness. “When he touched me,” Jane murmured, tears slipping down the sides of her face, “When he touched me the other night it was like there was no stopping my body. My cells had memorized his touch, my flesh knew exactly what his fingerprints were, and all it took was a hand on my neck and I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him.”
Cassandra stepped back and nodded, tilting her head to one side. “Does Gina know?”
“Of course not.” Jane blinked several times, but her eyes refused to clear.
“What are you going to do?”
Jane wiped at her face, seeing the smear of blood on the back of her hand and recoiling slightly from the sight. “I don’t know,” she admitted quietly, “He’s already got some other woman in there with him. I never thought how easy it would be for me to be replaced.”
The bucket filled once more, tilted forward, and released the water back into the pond.
Cassandra nodded slowly. She took Jane by her right hand, avoiding the blood on her left. “I want to show you something.” Gingerly she led Jane to the side entrance of the Parish Hall. Through the glass-paneled doors, they could see the party: parents going around to each table, bids being placed, a few already having had too much to drink. “Look at them,” Cassandra whispered, melancholia buried in her voice. “Look at them all. None of them, not even our own families, seem to realize that we’re gone.”
Jane saw that Kevin and the twenty-something were leaning over the bid for a yacht, the twenty-something whispering into Kevin’s ear as he laughed and wrote down a bid. But Jane saw what Cassandra had meant, for near them stood Cassandra’s own husband, chatting to the mother of a preschooler, both of them looking somewhere between drunk enough to be foolish and drunk enough to not regret.
“I considered killing myself last weekend,” Cassandra whispered against the glass. Jane turned to her, but Cassandra was holding up a hand to insist that she continue. “I didn’t do it, obviously. We were having this dinner party for some of the clients and their wives. Everyone was having a good time. Everyone was laughing. At one point Connor came into the middle of the room in his pajamas and asked for his mommy. I went to pick him up but he recoiled from me and began screaming that he wanted his mommy. He wouldn’t stop,” Cassandra clicked her tongue, folding her arms across her chest to keep herself from the chill, “Until Agneshka, the Polish girl we hired to be his nanny last summer, came and took him to bed.” She paused, staring at her reflection in the glass. “He called her mommy, Jane.” Cassandra took a shallow breath. “He was cut out of me.” She placed her hands on her abdomen, looking down at them in disbelief. “That child was cut right out of me. And I’m not his mommy.”
Cassandra had tears gently sliding down the side of her face. Jane watched her, unsure if she should speak, though words pooled in her throat. Somewhere in the distance, the bucket pitched forward again.
“That’s when it occurred to me,” Cassandra wiped her eyes. “It occurred to me how completely unnecessary I am. Ethan has his whore at work to take care of him, Connor has Agneshka, and the maids do all of the preparation for parties. I could die and the world, this world that is so comfortable to them, could continue to function and spin on without the slightest interruption or inconvenience, save the unfortunate time waste of a funeral.”
Jane realized that in her own eyes, tears had begun to reform.
“So I started thinking about it. I started thinking about how it should be done.” Cassandra stepped away from the door, looking out into the prayer garden, beginning to trace the stoned steps as she walked, “I’m not one of those brave people who can put a bag over their head. Suffocation scares me. A gun is messy and I can’t help but think that it’s the kind of mess that is terribly inconvenient. You know I can’t swallow pills.”
She laughed.
“I thought about throwing myself in front of a train, a real Anna Karenina kind of thing. But then I realized that my family is Presbyterian, so they’d look for the pieces, hoping that I’d have a proper resurrection of the body.” Cassandra looked at a medium-sized statue of Christ praying, which had been placed in the center of the garden. His stricken face looked up to heaven, toward the darkened, starless sky. She studied it for a moment, blinked, and looked away.
“Slitting my wrists presents the same problem as the gun and if I were to hang myself—” Cassandra stopped. Jane could see that there was a tremble in the entirety of her body, like she was the ripple of a pond, cloaked in the night. The bucket had filled again, pitched forward again. “I read somewhere that finding someone who has hung themselves is one of the worst things you can ever experience. I don’t so much care if it was Ethan who were to see that, but Connor—” She placed her hands across her chest once more to keep them from shaking.
Jane took a step forward. “Cassandra, it can’t be that bad. You and I both know how hard it is to be stuck in this role, but—”
Cassandra whirled, showing the lines of pain in her forehead, the dampness around her eyes. “But what, Jane? But what? I now live in the crisis of knowing that I am completely dead to those around me but I don’t have the guts to make it official.” She shook her head, a dark laugh in the back of her throat, “When we were twenty we would make up stories of what our lives would be like, how one day we wouldn’t be the girls carrying the trays at these parties, that we would be these beautiful women, regal in their forties, lunching at the country club.” Cassandra slumped against the brick, her eyes focused on Jane. “And what’s the worst of it? That it’s a cliché. We weren’t given a good, tragic story to live. We were given boring stories. Bit parts, typecasting, and that’s how it all ends: affairs and thoughts of suicide and charity auctions.”
The water slid over the rocks in the stream, the bucket it filled at the stream’s end reached its limit, pitched forward, and spilled back out. Jane realized that she had placed her hand over her mouth, trying to keep back the words that were burning in her chest. Her hand trembled slightly as she pulled it down, tracing it down the front of her dress. “So what will you do?” She could not bring herself to acknowledge that what Cassandra had just said was true of her as well.
“I’m going to leave.” Cassandra reached down to her feet and picked up her purse. “I am going to be free for the first time in over two decades.” She looked up at Jane for a moment, as if she were about to ask the other woman to come with her, but the moment lingered too long and Jane looked away, the bucket filled again and splashing, once more, into the waters. “Goodbye, Jane.”
Cassandra turned from her and fled into the darkness of the prayer garden, away from the stricken Christ, out the far exit, and into the street. Jane watched her go until all she could see was the thin form as a mere ripple, a shadow, lost to her sight. She leaned down and picked up her purse from the side of the wall, turned back toward the plate-glass door, and studied the scene inside. She considered turning as Cassandra had, fleeing the moment and never returning. In the least, she could exit without having to face Kevin and the twenty-something. But when Jane looked inside and saw that Kevin was standing in front of the jar of seeds and the twenty-something was pointing at them, whispering into his ear, tracing her hand down his chest, Kevin leaning forward to place a bid on the jar, something inside Jane broke.
The bucket at the end of the stream filled, swung on its small nail, teetered and falling forward, the water shattering against the pond with a deafening chaos.
Jane threw open the door. Someone gasped. A guttural noise issued from Jane’s lungs as she lunged toward Kevin and the twenty-something, taking hold of the twenty-something by the hair and pulling her back. The accosted twenty-something screamed in surprise as Kevin whirled in alarm, calling out Jane’s name in shock as she broke between them and grabbed the jar in frenzied triumph.
“You can’t have it, Kevin!” she bellowed at him, blinking through tears, “You can’t take my potential anymore!”
She was running.
Perhaps someone tried to stop her, at one point her purse fell to the floor, but mostly people parted and let her go, bewildered and amused, the madwoman clutching a jar of seeds and running toward the entrance. Kristi was standing near the entrance with her tray of drinks and seemed to be about to try and stop her, but Jane threw her left hand out, colliding with Kristi’s cheek, streaking blood across the girl’s face. She backed away in alarm, letting Jane go.
Kevin followed her, not at quite a run but a curious pace, perhaps unsure if it even had been Jane in the first place. Her hair had fallen out of its bun, her look had been wild, and he could not bring himself to think that the woman who had always been so poised, so gentle in his arms could be this other woman.
When Kevin emerged from the entrance into the parking lot, he called her name. It carried on the evening wind and wound like a snare around her leg. Jane stopped and looked back, a frightened expression in her eyes, her hands clutched around the small jar.
Kevin took a step forward, his hand outstretched as if to calm her. Her nose twitched and she looked about to run, but as if in a moment of sudden clarity, she made to take a step toward him.
The sudden force of a car speeding out of the lot without its lights on broke them apart.
Jane’s body pitched away from him, the jar of seeds flying out of her hand and shattering on the pavement.
Kevin stood stupidly as if the world had suddenly slowed. He looked to the vehicle. In the car, Cassandra lay unconscious against a deployed airbag. He looked to Jane, running to his wife, who lay crumpled several yards from the front of the car. He called her name again and again, but she did not seem to hear him.
Jane, her face disfigured and bloodied, was looking beyond her husband, toward the shattered jar of seeds, reaching her bleeding left hand out as she mourned the small promises roll away, be picked up by the wind, and be lost to her grasp forever.
In the distance, the cars sped along the highway, a plane flew low overhead, and a bucket reached its fill at the end of the pond, pitched forward, and emptied.
© 2011, Preston. All rights reserved.
