The Mapmaker's Children (23 page)

N
EW
C
HARLESTOWN
, W
EST
V
IRGINIA
A
UGUST
2014

I
t was the Friday before the Dog Days End Festival. Eden successfully prepared Bulldog's Buffaloaf for dinner without a burnt smidgen. She ceremoniously placed the loaf on a cake stand between the trays of cooling CricKet BisKets. But with no one to witness, it felt a hollow triumph.

Cleo had just gone home. A
Jeopardy!
tournament was in progress, and she had it in mind to win the last cents necessary to open her own Bronner Bank account in anticipation of the bazillions she was certain they'd earn at the festival booth that weekend.

Earlier in the day, she'd come over with Suley Hunter to lend a hand in mixing, cutting, and baking dozens of pumpkin (Original) and apple (Apple Hill) CricKet BisKets.

“She may be a couple years younger than me, but she's real good at cooking,” Cleo had explained while Suley was at the sink washing her hands. “Has to be. Hunter kids would starve otherwise. Mrs. Hunter baked some raisin bread for a church picnic once. Mr. Morris said not even the ants took to it.”

Cleo was right. Suley needed no instructions. She joined their baking assembly line like a well-oiled gear. Eden had loved the girls' company in the kitchen. The giddy chatter over butter and flour, pumpkin and apples; the sight of their ponytails swishing back and forth as they stirred. Both eager to create something—to put their magic touch to an adult vision. All grown up, Eden couldn't say she'd grown out of that yearning. Maybe no child ever did.

Denny had gone out for beers and burgers, depressed that even the managers offering the most trivial positions had said they were considering
others. He'd been on daily interviews. Positions ranging from a statesman's personal gofer to a dishwasher at the Willard Hotel's Café du Parc. His lack of a college degree held him under the “solid salary” echelon, but he couldn't go back to sharing a dirty apartment with a crew of revolving bandmates and what—use the hookah stand as a high chair, sing Def Leppard lullabies? Ludicrous.

He was at a logjam: no going back, no moving forward.

“My last hurrah before I'm eating rice cereal,” he'd said on the phone.

“At least that's organic.”

Eden's attempt at a joke garnered little more than a grunt. She worried about him, but this was one journey he had to travel alone. She couldn't carry him, not even a step. The weight of her own life was all she could bear.

Jack had just flown back from Austin, Texas, and was upstairs changing.

Before he'd left for that week's trip, Eden had roused him from the couch, hoping to finally get him alone after everything with Jessica.

“Jack,” she'd whispered. “Jack, wake up.”

The early hour had a waning-days-of-summer nip to it and made her long for autumn to hurry in with its cozy way, change the leaves to bright oranges and blazing reds, give the summer of their discontent a new dress. She'd placed his roses in a glass jelly jar on the telephone stand, and they seemed to have blushed deeper overnight.

“Want to walk with us? Cleo has church this morning.”

She'd bent down to the couch to scoop up Cricket, and a wavy lock of hair fell down across his cheek. He didn't brush it away.

“Yes, of course, yes.” He stumbled over himself to find his sneakers, then joined them on the porch.

Apple Hill Lane on a Sunday morning was quiet. The congregants had set off to sing their hymns while the rest remained blissfully bedded. For once, there were very few neighbors out on the lawns and porches. Only the sound of sprinklers spattering round and round. A dewy haze clung to the ground, the earth cooler than the ether. Cricket wandered aimlessly through the pea soup, relying on their lead for direction.

“Here.” Eden passed Jack a paw-printed leash with matching collar she'd picked up at Milton's.

“Does this mean we're keeping him? In sickness and health, rabies and fleas?”

She couldn't very well sell CricKet BisKets with no Cricket, and she'd grown fond of him. It wouldn't feel like home without him there.

“We do.”

“Cricket Norton Anderson,” Jack proclaimed, giving him a good scratch behind the ear. “Welcome, little bug man. I don't know how you did it, but you've won the lady over.”

They set off slowly down the sidewalk.

“I wanted to talk to you. I think you already know, but…Jessica is pregnant with Denny's baby.”

He stopped but didn't put on a veneer of shock. She felt grateful. She wasn't in the mood to play games.

“So, he did tell you.”

He nodded.

“What advice did you give him?”

“At first I told him to marry the girl. He didn't appreciate that perspective.”

She smirked, conflicted between loving Jack's old-school chivalry and knowing that it simply wasn't the way things were done anymore. It wasn't practical, even if morally sound.

“I told him to support Jessica and show her that he accepts full accountability as a participating parent. He said they hadn't decided what they planned to do yet.”

Denny had said the same to her the morning Jessica left.

“To be honest, I'm rather pissed at the guy.”

“Don't judge him, Jack. He's trying to make good.” She put her arm through the crook of his and pulled him forward.

“Not for that reason. I understand even the best of us make mistakes—acting out in ways we regret the minute the deed is done. But you can't undo it.”

He cleared his throat, and she knew he must've been thinking of her
and her unfounded outbursts over the last many months. He'd stuck by her despite it all. He'd known what she could not say in those moments: that she was sorry.

“I'm angry at him for telling you. I specifically told him to exercise diligence. If I may speak plainly.” He exhaled sharply, but his voice was gentle. “You're just coming round to your old self, Eden, and I was afraid…”

She rubbed his arm, the muscles taut. “He didn't tell me. I figured it out.” He studied her face, and she smiled reassuringly. “After everything we've been through, the irony is not lost. It shook me up a little, I won't lie, but then I realized how egocentric that was. It's about Jessica and Denny and their baby, not me.”

For seven years, it'd been about her and Jack and what they couldn't create. She'd allowed self-pity to devour her. No more. Like the tale of Jonah and the whale, it was time to climb out of the belly of the beast.

Jack straightened his arm so that her hand slid down. He laced his fingers in hers, and they walked hand in hand. Something they hadn't done since they were dating, and even then it had seemed a gesture of high school sweethearts, not people their age. She liked it, though. The security of their woven palms.

Cricket pulled at the leash. Jack gave him more slack. “Do you think Jessica will go through with the pregnancy?” he asked. “I imagine terminating would be easier for someone in her spot.”

Eden had wondered the same thing.
What would I do if I were in Jessica's shoes? Would I sacrifice my college education, my career aspirations, meeting Jack, and the rest if it meant I'd have a child now?

“It's not an easy decision either way. It requires ownership of the outcome. Shaking a fist at nature or God is far easier than questioning what you did or didn't do in the situation.”

Was she talking about Jessica or herself?

“I don't envy either of them right now. That's why we have to be there for Denny. Whatever they decide.”

No. It came to her suddenly, like a gunshot. She wouldn't trade Jack and all they'd known together for a child. She wouldn't give back one
minute of the years or look over her shoulder wondering what could've been. Fear was a deceptive lover, and she was tired of sharing her bed with it. She had Jack. She squeezed his hand in hers, and the idea of ever separating pained her. She inhaled deeply to ease the cramp of remorse.

A yard of late-summer azaleas honeyed the air.

“Thanks again for the flowers.”

“I'm glad I got them right this time.”

She shook her head and studied the gray concrete sidewalk, mindful to step over the crack of each partitioned square.

“I've been a pill to live with.”

“You've been through a lot. The hormones,” he pointed out, defending her, even in this.

“Hormones or not, there's never an excuse for hurting the people you love. This baby stuff has made me feel like I lost my mind.” She sighed. “I'm just so tired of it all. I want my life back. I want
our
life back.”

He stopped walking again and turned to her. “I've only ever wanted whatever made you happy. Bollocks! We tried to make this picture-perfect family develop—whether it was meant to be or not, we didn't stop to consider. But there's no
forcing
fate or joy or love.”

Her eyes welled, and she didn't stop them. “We tried—we tried
every
way.”

It was the first break she'd allowed him to see in a long time. Instead of looking at her with pity, he cupped her chin. “Doesn't mean we stop believing in unexpected miracles.”

She leaned into his hand, wishing it could hold the whole of her. Cricket circled, and the leash tangled them closer.

“Like Cricket,” he said, wrapping his arms around her to keep them from falling.

The Presbyterian church's bells rang out a tuneless
bong, bong, bong
. The early service had ended, the next one beginning. Only a wisp of fog was left, the rest burned clear by the coming day. Cricket curled himself over Eden's sandaled feet. Yes, like Cricket, but it was more than that. It was everything about this place. New Charlestown.

An ice-cream truck's song began after the bells had ceased: Vee making
her church rounds. And then Eden remembered the National Register of Historical Places application, Cleo and their CricKet BisKet business, the doll and key, and all she'd set in secret motion. Maybe those things weren't the pot of gold at the end of her marriage but a bread-crumb trail in the direction of a new beginning.

A
CROSS THE
kitchen now, the doll's head watched her.

Eden gestured to the meat loaf. “I did it.” She took off her oven mitts. “I'd offer you a taste, but seeing as you have no stomach…” She pulled out a knife and sliced three pieces, scooping the first, still steaming, onto a plate.

“Supper's ready!”

Cricket's body continued to rise and fall steadily in slumber.

Jack, alone, heeded her call. “Smells good.”

He was barefoot and wore dark jeans with a white T-shirt. She rarely saw him in casual clothes anymore, but then she'd rarely seen him at all since they'd moved in. The change was nice.

Her thumb slipped into the warm center of the slice she was serving. She licked it clean and was happy to find that the dish tasted as good as it looked. “That one can be mine.”

Jack took the plate and ate with his fingers before she had a chance to raise a complaint.

“Damned good,” he mumbled.

“Jack…” She shook her head at his messy hands.

“What?”

She sighed with a smile. What—nothing. What—everything. “Let me get you a fork at least.” She went to the drawer, but before she'd turned around, he'd finished eating.

“I'll take another, if I may.”

He set the empty plate beside the pan. While she served a second slice, he came to her side of the island, his toes touching hers. And there it was again: Jack's minty cedar smell making her knees go weak.

God, she wanted him to kiss her. Wanted to kiss him. But it'd been so
long, she'd forgotten how to be intimate without the goal of conception. She'd forgotten how to make love. So while everything within her pulled like a magnet, her flesh remained rooted to the kitchen tiles.
Please
, she thought,
please help me, Jack
.

Cricket yelped suddenly, swimming his arms and legs in chase, his eyes closed, teeth bared.

Jack reached down to the dog, but Eden stopped him. She recalled a story she'd heard on NPR's
Weekend Edition
. A docile pit bull had attacked a pound volunteer who'd attempted to wake him from a fitful dream. By all other accounts, it was a gentle animal, abandoned by an owner who'd trained him as a guard dog against his better nature. While being stitched up in the ER, the volunteer had begged for the staff not to euthanize the animal. The program host argued that human or canine, the unconscious couldn't be controlled.

“He's dreaming,” said Eden. She sat on the ground at a distance and called him gently out of it: “Cricket, you're dreaming. Cricket…”

The long eyelashes fluttered, struggling through the malaise. The dog's legs went stiff, extended outward in a good stretch, and then he yawned awake.

Eden pulled him into her lap. “Hey there, baby?” His body was feverish. “Did you get it—whatever it was?”

He licked at her neck and face, and she didn't move him away. Nuzzled him closer instead.

Jack knelt down beside them. “How did you know to do that?”

She shrugged. “I just knew.”

Jack rubbed Cricket's neck, and the pup leaned toward him from Eden's embrace.

“You're good at this,” said Jack.

“Holding a dog?”

He smiled. “Mothering.”

“I'm not a mother.” The word still stabbed. She looked down at the furry bundle in her arms. Cricket's tail fanned her with each wag.

“I disagree.” Jack's countenance turned serious. “You've changed.”

“From shooing poor Cricket out the door to doting, yes, yes.”

“It's more than that. It's in how you are with Cleo, too. And taking the job at the bookstore with the children.”