to see all chapters of The World Outside, click here
NOW
The next three months were hazy and seemed, to Joanna, not entirely real. Joanna had called Mary and Shoshanna close to midnight that night (Poppa and Mrs. Donovan, who’d been in on the secret, had greeted the two of them at the door with a bottle of Champagne and four glasses. It had been a while before they all finally said goodnight). Their reactions had been what Joanna had expected—lots of shrieking and then tearful yeses when she asked them to be in the wedding party (Maid of Honor for Mary, sole bridesmaid for Shoshana).
Almost immediately, they set the date for August 29th. Quick, yes, but neither of them wanted to have school hanging over their heads while on their honeymoon, and they didn’t want to wait through an entire school year, either. Erik had enough wiggle room between now and then to load June and July with extra work and take some real time off for the wedding and honeymoon.
Bruce shocked them both by offering to sell them the cottage. He quoted them a price low enough that, if they both continued to work like they had been and paid him rent, they’d own it outright in a year or two. Joanna felt, for the first couple of weeks, like she was living a charmed life.
At the end of May, Mrs. Wynn took her out for coffee, armed with a legal pad and an array of pens. By then, they’d decided to have the ceremony and reception on the beach, right outside the cabin. There’d been a rigmarole at the Town Hall to get permission, but Erik had done some repairs for the secretary there, and she smoothed the way for them. Poppa was going to call in some favors to get lobsters so they could have a real, old-fashioned lobsterbake; other than that, they’d serve picnic food.
Mrs. Wynn flipped to the first blank page on her pad. “Dress,” she said. “What do you think—David’s Bridal?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna said, feeling her heart start to race. “Going to an actual wedding place makes it so…” She sighed. “Let’s just go somewhere and find a nice dress, can’t we?”
“All right.” Mrs. Wynn eyed her carefully. “Old Port?” Joanna nodded, and Mrs. Wynn made another note. “Flowers you can wait on, although you should start thinking about what you’ll want. Food’ll be easyish…” She took a sip of her coffee, still looking down at her notes. “Anything else?”
Joanna had no clue, but she shook her head, reeling with one thought: she was about to hitch her wagon to one star and keep it there for the rest of her life. What if she and Erik were broke? What if they never saw each other and didn’t sleep and, like Mary, were stuck in some far-off place where they didn’t know anybody and could barely understand the words that came out of people’s mouths?
(Although that last fear seemed pretty unlikely. If there was one thing Joanna could count on, it was that Erik Anderson Donovan would be in Grace, Maine until his final breath.)
But what about everything else? Why did this have to be such a production? She wished they could just go into the woods on a nice day and make all the vows by themselves, without all this mess. What if she screwed everything up? Everyone would know.
Erik Erik Erik, she said to herself. He was the thing that all of this was about.
“Jo? Honey, you okay?” Mrs. Wynn’s voice was gentle, and her hand on Jo’s forearm was soft. She nodded, but she felt her lip tremble anyway. She bit it, to hold it still. Mrs. Wynn closed her pad and flipped it upside down. She reached across, awkwardly, to wrap Joanna in her arms and just sat there, rubbing her back, murmuring in her ear, until Joanna sat up, wiping her face. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?” Mrs. Wynn said, sounding like she understood. Joanna nodded. “And your mother is the one who should be doing this, isn’t she?”
Yes. Her mother should be making these lists, buying her the magazines, calling in the favors. She missed her more in that moment than she had since Josh had died. An image came to her mind of the wedding day—Erik’s mother, and Poppa, and all their friends in one place, with three empty chairs for Josh and her parents, right up front. They would never see this.
“Shouldn’t I be over this by now?” she said, half to herself.
“Honey, of course not. Death doesn’t just happen once. It happens over and over again, every time something happens that that person should be there for, and we realize it all over again.”
They sat for a minute, and then Mrs. Wynn took a breath in and said, “Have I ever told you about your parents’ wedding? I know you’ve seen the pictures, but they don’t tell the whole story.” Joanna shook her head, surprised that there were any unheard stories left to tell. “I was late, first of all. Your parents had asked me to sing Ave Maria during the ceremony—”
“You were a singer? I’ve never even heard you sing!”
“Oh, I wasn’t a singer. I was just a friend and maybe a good singer for a small town. And I did it for free,” she laughed. “Anyway, my one job was to get to the church early enough to practice once or twice, but people were already starting to find their seats by the time I got there, and your mother didn’t want them to hear me practicing, so she said I’d have to do it cold.”
“She didn’t give you any leeway?”
“Oh, she never did.” Mrs. Wynn laughed. “She was wonderful, your mother, and beautiful and exciting, but laidback, she was not. She was already mad at your father—he’d been supposed to call her the night before but had stayed out too late and forgotten. She looked like she was barely hanging on, to tell you the truth.”
Joanna had never heard any of this. Her parents had always been described as icons, pillars of the community. Maybe they had been, but maybe they’d also been stupid kids.
“So, what happened?”
“Well, everything went off without a hitch, for the most part. They did all the vows, they sat down together, I got up and sang and only missed a note or two. And then, there was a moment near the end, during the priest’s homily. I’m not sure who else saw it, because they were standing sort of behind him, but your dad looked at your mom with one of those looks, you know, like are you really going to stay mad at me? And he was such a cutie, your father. He always got away with everything—Josh was just like him in that way. And I saw your mom roll her eyes and smile, and then they leaned their foreheads against each other, and your dad kissed the tip of your mom’s nose, just as the priest was wrapping up, and then they both snapped to attention. The whole thing took maybe a second and a half, but I’ve never forgotten it. It was such a sweet moment. I was single at the time, and I think I held that moment up in my mind a little bit, as a litmus test for men. Like, would this guy kiss my nose in front of everybody?” Her voice trailed off and her eyes glazed over as she remembered. “Your parents were wild about each other, Jo,” she said a minute later. “And they were wild about you, and Josh. They would be so thrilled. So thrilled.”
Joanna’s back tingled. Her mother sounded like her—intense, emotional, wild in love, and not at all sure of what she was doing. It was comforting.
+++
Another night, Joanna was backstage for the opening performance of Hello, Dolly! which was going up at the theater in Weston where she’d worked in high school. She only had a minor role, and she’d only taken it on (on top of everything else) because the familiarity of the rehearsal and performance rhythm was a balm when everything else in her life felt like it was flying at 100 miles an hour.
Erik wasn’t seeing this show; he and Bruce were killing themselves to finish a flip by the end of the month. And, truth be told, old-school Broadway wasn’t really his style. It wasn’t Joanna’s style, either, but it really wasn’t his. He’d sent her a sweet text that afternoon, though.
Their relationship, when it wasn’t bogged down by wedding details, was experiencing whiplash these days. It felt like they were always either fighting or making up, each one as intensely as the other. A few nights earlier, they’d gotten into a screaming match about whether or not they should hang wedding photos on the wall or place them on the mantel. It had gotten so bad that, at one point, Joanna had wondered if the police would get a call. And then, it had gotten so bad that Joanna had taken a stack of plates off the counter and thrown them onto the floor, just to make them both stop. The noise they’d made as they’d shattered was thunderous. But it had worked. He’d looked at her, stunned, for just a moment. Then, he’d whipped the dish towel off his shoulder and slammed it down onto the counter. “What the hell was that?” he shouted.
Joanna watched him, bent over, carefully picking up the largest pieces, and yelled back, “I’m so sick of this! Why are we doing this? Why are—what?” she asked when he grabbed her by the shoulders and led her, roughly, out of the kitchen.
“You don’t have shoes on,” he huffed, stomping back and grabbing the broom and dustpan. “Keep Ro outta here, will you?”
After he’d cleaned up the shards; after she’d cried that she’d just wanted him to look at her; after he’d told her she was a psycho and a pain in the ass and she’d told him he was already a boring old man; after he’d kicked her out saying This is still my house, and, right now, I don’t want you in it; after she’d sat in the car long enough for her eyes to look more normal, she’d driven to Wal Mart and bought new plates. She’d also bought picture frames and hooks, so they could display their pictures both ways. It was almost midnight when she got back to the cabin, but he hadn’t been asleep. He’d grabbed her at the door, not even looking at the bags she offered, and carried her inside. He held himself back when he needed to—at this point, with the wedding so close, her virginity was more a point of pride than anything else—but she felt much, much more secure when she finally left him that night.
What she wanted, she kept telling herself, was just a few days—just one or two—that were slow, normal. Easy. But that wouldn’t happen until August 30th. Not with all the planning left to do and all the work Erik had taken on so that he could get the time off the both wanted. She would never have a slow, normal, easy day as a single woman again. Whether that thought thrilled her or terrified her depended on the hour. The minute. The moment.
And so, tonight, she was throwing herself into the play as fully as she could, and she wasn’t thinking about how insipid and boring the story was or how stale the lead actress was. She might have been hanging on for dear life in the real world, but here at least, she knew just what to do.
When the show was over, she slipped right down the stairs and into the dressing room, planning to change and head home before anyone missed her. With any luck, she’d be in bed before eleven tonight and would get a full night’s sleep.
As soon as she got back up to the lobby though, she heard a low whistle behind her. She felt a trail of goosebumps run up the back of her neck and, assuming that Erik had found a way to surprise her, she turned around eagerly.
It was not Erik standing behind her—it was Max Bennett.
Joanna hadn’t seen him in seven years, but she would have known him anywhere. Same dark hair, same dark and acerbic eyes, same sneer/smile hybrid.
He was wearing dark blue jeans, brown dress shoes that looked really expensive, a white button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone, and a dark blazer. His hair, which was a little longer than it had been in high school, was slicked straight back, and he had a few days’ worth of dark, neat stubble on his face.
“Well, look who’s all grown up,” he said, looking her up and down slowly. Whether it was from the shock of seeing him or from some residual longing, she felt her fingers start to shake and her cheeks get hot at the force of his low voice directed at her.
Only for a moment, though. She was proud when she collected herself and said, rather calmly, “Hi, Max. It’s good to see you.”
They ended up talking for a long time that night, until after the last audience member had trickled away and the last performer had left for a party at someone’s apartment. Mostly, they talked about New York. About why they loved it, why they hated it. His view was less balanced than hers was; he loved it so much that he hadn’t been home at all since his high school graduation. “Every time I planned a visit home, something else would come up down there. Eventually, I stopped planning visits,” he said simply. She nodded, almost understanding him. The only reason he was home now was because his lease had run out, and his new lease didn’t start for a couple of months and all of his friends were out of town. The new place was bigger and in Brooklyn, he said. “It’s really my friend’s place, but he has a two-year transfer to Beijing, and I’m taking it for him until he decides if he’ll stay there or come home.” He was excited; he’d never lived in Brooklyn before, and he described the neighborhood, how it was like the best of both worlds—real homes (or at least apartments bigger than a shoebox) and bars and coffee shops just around the corner.
He told her how he’d spent the last few years building up a portfolio for grad school, doing a bit of ghostwriting, taking workshops with “big names.” “And what about you?” he asked a few minutes later. “You’re still hanging around here? Did you ever get out of this place?”
Unsure whether that was an innocent question or a thinly-veiled insult—it was always hard to tell with Max—Joanna gave him the short version of her college years and ended with her engagement.
Max sat back, truly stunned for maybe the first time in his life.
“Married?” he said, finally. She nodded. “Wow—well, Jo, I had no idea you guys were that serious.”
“You really have been gone a long time, then,” she said drily. “No one else was the least bit surprised.”
“I guess I—I always figured you and I would be the ones who’d get out and do something different.”
Once upon a time, the way that he formed that you and I would have made her weep with lust and gratitude, but she was starting to remember how exhausting it had always been to talk to him. To have to appear cool for such long periods of time…she didn’t have it in her. At the first polite opportunity, she stood up and told him goodnight.
“Wait a sec,” he said, standing too with a hand lightly holding her wrist. “I’m glad I ran into you actually, because…” He shifted his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor. “Jo, I treated you like a jerk back then, and I’m sorry for it.”
In an instant, she was whisked right back to that dark car in the parking lot, flooded with disgust, shame, and confusion. She looked up at him, her cheeks burning. He gazed down steadily at her.
Fuck him for bringing that up, is what she wanted to think. But she couldn’t muster the energy.
He held his hand out; without saying anything, she shook it. She could at least be civil.
But the instant he let go of her hand, she walked away from him, her heart pounding. She was desperate for something certain. She wanted Erik.
He’d been asleep when she pulled up, she could tell, but Ro’s excited bark was enough to wake anyone. From outside the door, she heard him stumble down the ladder and shuffle across the floor. Then, when he opened it and pushed the screen door open too, his mouth opening in concern, she took him in: hair sticking up in some places, pressed flat to his head in others, bare chest and flannel pants she’d never seen before. The sight, so familiar and so foreign, filled her with relief and desire and took her breath away. She didn’t let him get a word out before she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hard enough to keep him awake a good long while after she’d gotten back in the car and gone home.
Max could have his big exciting life—all she wanted was that man in the doorway.