Morning Glory(79)

Jimmy keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon. “You’re sad like me, aren’t you?”

I nod. “I guess so.”

“What do you do when you’re sad?” he asks. His eyes look like two big full moons.

“I daydream,” I say honestly. “I think of where I’d like to go someday.” In that moment, I envision Catalina Island with Collin. I think about us walking hand in hand on the beach. I think of the baby growing inside me, toddling along the shore. Dex’s words were painful to hear, but they made things clear.

“Me, too,” he says. “I’d go to Australia and see koala bears.”

I smile.

“Where would you go, Penny?”

“Catalina Island,” I say, looking out to the lake as if I can see my future in front of me. “There’d be turquoise blue water and sunshine. And a big sailboat that would take me anywhere I like.”

“That sounds nice,” he says, bouncing his ball on the dock. He’s quiet for a moment, then turns to me. “Can I go with you?”

If it were only that simple.

I think of Naomi then, with her arms wrapped around Dex, whispering sweet nothings into his ear, and I feel the onset of nausea. I hate thinking of them together, and yet I don’t have the right to be sad. I gave that up the night I let Collin take me into his arms. But the loneliness I feel now, well, it taunts me. “Jimmy, what would your parents think if you just up and left? They’d be sad.”

He shrugs. “I don’t think they’d really miss me.”

“Of course they would.”

I drape my arm around his shoulder. We sit together like that for a moment, until something bright floating in the lake catches my eye. I lean over the dock gently to pick it up. It’s a little sprig of morning glory, the flowering vine Naomi bemoaned.

“If you left, everyone would miss you,” Jimmy says softly. “Everyone would be sad. But not me. No one even cares that I’m here.”

“That’s not true,” I say. “I’d miss you.”

He smiles.

I hold up the little vine I’ve rescued from the lake. A drop of lake water falls from one of its white blossoms onto my dress. “Every person, every thing, has a purpose in this life. You, me, this little morning glory. We’re all interconnected.” Jimmy pauses to look at the flower in my hand. “It’s our job to remember that and to realize how it all works together, even when it feels like the puzzle pieces don’t fit.” I think of my own life then, and how the puzzle pieces not only don’t fit, but they’re hopelessly scattered. Some are missing. Will my life work together the way I promised Jimmy about his? I stand up and tuck the root of the morning glory into a pot near the house. “There,” I say to myself, patting the soil down around it.

I clutch my belly when I feel another surge of pain.

Jimmy leaps to his feet. “Are you OK?”

“I think so.”

He turns back to the ball he’s been bouncing on the dock between his legs, then tosses it into the air, but instead of landing in his lap as he intended, it bounces into the lake.

“Oh no,” Jimmy cries, throwing his arms out as far as they’ll stretch. “I can’t reach it.”

“Let me try,” I say, reaching unsuccessfully for the little ball.

Jimmy shakes his head. “We could take the canoe out.”

I shake my head. “Not at this hour, honey. It’s too dark.”

Jimmy thinks for a moment. The current has wrapped its tendrils around the little blue ball. It’s drifting away. “I have a stick at my house,” he says. “I’ll run and get it.”

I nod.

A moment later, Gene appears. “Oh, there you are,” he says, walking toward me from the dock.

I’m a little startled to see him. I wonder if Dex has told Naomi about my condition. I wonder if he knows about his wife and my husband.

“May I sit down with you?”

“Sure,” I say. Gene is a good man, his one fault being that he loves Naomi and is blind to her ways.

“I guess we’re in the same boat,” he says rather vaguely.

He does know. I wonder why he didn’t tell me. But the fact of the matter remains: Our spouses are having an affair. He knows. I know.

“I feel like a fool,” I say. “What are we supposed to do?”

Gene smiles as if to spare my feelings. Yet the tragedy and ruin, for so many lives, is inescapable. Nobody wins.

“Well, the way I see it there’s only one solution,” he says. His eyes flash, and I hardly recognize him for a moment. He looks bold, determined in a way I have never seen before. I look over my shoulder. Jimmy’s coming back soon. I don’t want him to overhear our conversation, the ugly details about his mother and my husband.