Boundary waters

14

“Shit.”

Jo O’Connor stood in a bright square of kitchen sunlight, glaring down at a cherry pie that flaunted its perfection from the pages of Rose’s opened cookbook on the counter. Flour and dough surrounded the cookbook as if there’d been a battle in a bakery. Jo’s fingers were doughy, her jeans starred with floury handprints. Her conversation earlier that morning with Rose played again and again in her mind, like a bad tune she couldn’t shake.

“You don’t really want to try this,” Rose had said, eagerly offering her sister an out.

“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to,” Jo replied.

“At least let me give you a few tips.”

“Tips? I’m thirty-eight years old, Rose. I make a living deciphering legal gobbledy-gook. I can certainly follow the instructions in a cookbook.”

“But-” Rose had tried.

“No buts. This is my pie.”

Rose had started to argue, then shrugged, opened her arms toward her kitchen, and proclaimed darkly, as if inviting an army to ravage that which she best loved, “Fine, then. Be my guest.”

Jo jammed her fists on her hips and eyed the mess she’d made of the kitchen. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, and rued her own stubbornness with Rose.

The territories of their interests had been established early. Their mother, an army nurse, moved them a dozen times when they were growing up, and a dozen times they’d faced the obstacle of being new in a place. Rose had been a plump child, freckled, terribly picked on by other children, and possessed of a gentle and uncertain spirit that kept her from fighting back. Jo had done that kind of fighting for both of them. When she was thirteen, she broke the nose of the son of a full colonel at Fort Sam Houston who’d goosed Rose, grabbed her purse, pulled out a tampon, and taunted, “Plug the ugly dyke!” Jo had been afraid her mother, whom she and Rose both called the Captain, would be angry. The Captain wasn’t. The colonel’s son not only apologized to Rose, he asked Jo to the movies. She turned him down.

For Rose, each home was a haven, and she learned to care for each respectfully and well. From early on, she did the cooking. Jo fixed the leaky faucets. Rose did the laundry. Jo changed the oil in the car. Rose sewed. Jo mowed the lawn. In school, Rose was content to pass her courses without attracting attention. Jo battled to be at the top. They were so different-in appearance and interest-that except for the fact they loved one another fiercely, it might have been hard to believe they were sisters.

Jo was in her third year of a full scholarship to Northwestern University when the Captain suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed on the entire left side of her body. Rose, who’d just begun a major in home ec ed at Eastern Illinois, dropped out to care for her mother. For more than seven years, that was the focus of her life. A few months before Jenny was born, the Captain passed away, another stroke, massive this time. Jo was about to begin her final year of law school at the University of Chicago, and Rose offered to come and help with the baby. She’d been an integral part of the O’Connor household ever since.

Jo looked down at herself, dusted with flour, barnacled with bits of dough. She was sorry she’d insisted on tackling the pie. But there was motive in her madness. The pie, along with other desserts prepared by the women of St. Agnes, was to be served that evening at a church gathering honoring Elysia Notto, a local girl who headed a Benedictine mission in Togo and who was visiting her home parish for a brief while. Jo knew the women of the church had long ago opened their arms to Rose. Her kindness, her firm, gentle spirit, and her proficiency at skills those women admired had helped her overcome fairly quickly the hurdle of being an outsider in Aurora. It didn’t hurt. Rose was always the first to put in, that she was also heavy, unattractive, and no threat whatsoever where their husbands were concerned. Whatever the reasons. Rose had found her place, as if she’d always belonged in that isolated, far north town. But Jo never felt accepted in the same way. Although the women of Aurora were always cordial, Jo sensed a half-built wall there. Rose believed this was because the women didn’t understand Jo. Part of it, she argued, was that from the beginning Jo had chosen to represent the Anishinaabe in proceedings that were often at odds with the interests of the citizens of Aurora. Also, she worked in an arena generally populated by men and was extremely successful there. And, finally, she was very attractive. That, Rose told her bluntly, was a lot to overcome.

If there had indeed been a wall, events of the last year had begun to make it crumble. Cork’s affair with Molly Nurmi, something known to the whole town now, had brought Jo a good deal of sympathy. Although she felt guilty-if people knew the whole story, there would be little sympathy-she was touched by the warmth of the concern suddenly showered on her, and she found herself trying, often in awkward ways, to reciprocate.

The pie, in some pathetic twist of thinking, was one of those ways.

Now she looked down at the ruins of a crust that refused to do for her even something as simple as roll flat on waxed paper. She swore quietly.

“Is Rose dead?”

Jo turned around and found Cork standing in the kitchen doorway taking in the devastation.

“At church all day. I’m cooking,” Jo said gravely.

“You?”

“I’ve cooked before. Remember?”

“Believe me,” Cork said. “I remember.”

She’d been notoriously bad, had had a reputation among their Chicago friends for possessing a flair for the soggy, the lumpy, the burned. Consequently, Cork had done most of the cooking before Rose came to live with them. He was pretty good at it; she’d always been the first to admit it.

Cork took a couple of steps into the kitchen. “What are you making?”

“Cherry pie. For the St. Agnes Guild tonight.”

Cork scanned the counter, the whole mess, and Jo was afraid he was going to offer her advice. He didn’t. Just nodded and glanced at the potato peelings lying in the sink. “Cooking dinner, too?”

“Yes.” She recalled the looks of horror on the faces of the children when they’d heard the news. “Shake ’n Bake chicken, mashed potatoes, canned corn, and gravy from a jar,” she confessed. “Want to stay?”

“Can’t,” he said.

“Coward.”

“No, really. I just stopped by to tell Jenny and Annie I won’t be opening Sam’s Place today.”

Jo turned back to her recalcitrant crust and lay on it with the rolling pin. “Going fishing?”

“Hunting’s more like it. A woman’s lost in the Boundary Waters. I’m going in to help find her.”

The crust rolled up with the rolling pin as if it were metal and the roller a magnet.

“Jenny’s at Sean’s. You can reach her there. Annie’s helping Rose at church. They should be home pretty soon. I heard Arkansas Willie Raye’s out at Grandview. Annie said he stopped by Sam’s Place yesterday.”

“He wanted to shoot the breeze about Marais and the old days,” Cork said.

“I didn’t even know he was still alive.”

“He definitely is,” Cork said. “And kicking.”

He leaned against the stove, watching Jo struggle with the pie crust. She wore a powder blue sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up. A small trickle of sweat crawled from her blond hair onto the soft down of her temple and then her cheek. He studied the curves of her hips as they rolled to her labor. He felt an old desire rising up, one that hadn’t visited him in quite a while, tempting and, at the same time, frightening.

“I’d better go,” he said.

Before Cork could move, Stevie burst through the back door. He ran and leaped into Cork’s arms. “Daddy!”

Cork nuzzled his son, who smelled of sunshine and dry leaves.

“Can you play football?” Stevie asked eagerly.

“Sorry, buddy. Not today.”

Disappointment flooded Stevie’s small face.

“I have to go away for a while. A day or two. When I come back, we’ll toss the old pigskin until our arms fall off. Okay?” He tousled Stevie’s black hair.

Stevie pushed out of Cork’s arms. “Okay,” he said, but his voice betrayed him.

Jo put down her rolling pin and knelt to Stevie. “Tell you what. Right after dinner, we’ll make some cookies shaped like footballs, you and me, then we’ll toss them down our mouths till our arms fall off. What do you say?”

“Cookies?” Stevie’s dark eyes were pools of concern. “Yours?”

“We’ll make them together. They’ll be ours.”

“All right,” he finally agreed. He turned around and drifted back outside.

“Smooth, counselor.” Cork smiled.

“I’m great at negotiations. Especially when the opposing party is six years old.”

She followed Cork to the front door and they stood a moment, awkwardly, as if they were on a first date.

“I’ll stop by soon as I get back so I can keep my promise to Stevie.”

Jo nodded. “Fine.”

Cork started down the walk. He was dressed in loose khakis and a red T-shirt. In the last year, he’d lost weight, and he looked good and strong. He’d stopped smoking, too. A promise to another woman-Jo knew and accepted.

A couple of weeks earlier, Jo had taken the girls and Stevie down to the Twin Cities so they could cheer Cork on in the marathon. Although she didn’t say anything to anyone, she felt a good deal of admiration for him-a man in his midforties, running his first marathon. In the best of ways, he was like the old Cork, before so many circumstances had come between them, split them apart, sent them both into the arms of other lovers.

“Cork,” she called suddenly, and went quickly to him as he stood by the Bronco.

He turned to her. Although his face was full in the sun, there seemed so much in it that was shadowed, so much unspoken between them.

“What is it?”

She felt foolish, not certain at all what she’d meant to say. “Just-oh, just take care of yourself.” Then she surprised them both. She leaned to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Thanks.” He looked slightly bewildered. “I-uh-I will.”

She watched the Bronco pull away. The street was quiet. Sunlight dripped over the houses along the block like butter melting over stacks of pancakes. From across the street drifted the aroma of Birdie Frank’s Sauerbraten and the sound of Birdie in her kitchen whistling “That Old Black Magic.” Jo felt empty and out of place.

A moment later, she heard Rose call out. Turning, she saw her sister and Annie approaching along the sidewalk from the other end of the block.

“Was that Dad?” Annie asked.

“Yes. He stopped by to say don’t come out to Sam’s Place. He’s not opening today.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t even invite him to dinner,” Rose said.

“I did,” Jo replied. “He declined.”

“Wisely,” Annie said. Then she ducked, as if her mother were going to swing.

“For that, you get to set the table.” Jo pointed an admonishing finger toward the house.

Jo stood with Rose in the sunlight after Annie went in. She was looking where the Bronco had gone.

“Why don’t you just ask him back?” Rose suggested. “He’d come in a minute.”

“He’d come for the children. I don’t want that.”

“Look in his eyes, Jo. He’d come for you, too.”

“You’re an incurable romantic, Rose.” Jo turned away and headed toward the shadow of the house. She felt suddenly weary, though it was not even noon.

“If you’d just listen to your heart for once, darn it-” Rose began to say.

Jo closed the front door before Rose could finish.

Rose stormed into the house behind her. “You’re so damn stubborn.” She followed Jo to the kitchen and stopped abruptly, staring about her in disbelief. “My God. What are you trying to do?”

“Make the cherry pie. I’m just having a little trouble with the crust.”

Rose smiled. The smile turned to a giggle, the giggle to a full-blown laugh that Rose couldn’t stop. She shook like a sack full of puppies. She laughed hard and crossed her legs. “I think I’m going to pee.”

“What’s so damn funny?”

Rose went to the refrigerator and, from somewhere near the back, pulled out a package that she held out to Jo. The package contained two round-perfectly round-and flat-perfectly flat-premade pie crusts.

“I haven’t made my own crust in years, Jo. Pillsbury does it for me. And so much better than I ever did.”