Immaculate Hearts

    The first thing Anne noticed about Eva was that she looked great. Fit, well dressed, sporting a flattering hairstyle that framed her small face nicely, she appeared to be at peace with life. Eva made the same mental remarks about Anne, but wasn't surprised by the observations because Anne had always been that way—trendy, sanguine, smart—even when wearing, as she was now, cutoff shorts and a T-shirt.    They sized each other up from either side of the threshold. Eva stood outside Anne and Stephen's mid-century colonial on an old familiar tree-lined street; Anne stood in the doorway that had been hers for the last six years. While the two women fumbled for something to say beyond each other's name and how great they looked, two girls, about four and six, came running to the doorway, giggling.

    Anne scarcely glanced at them but pulled the taller one in front of her and with both hands pulled the girl's blond tresses behind her little head, twisting them into a loose pony tail she let fall as she said,    "Girls, this is Mommy's college roommate, Aunt Evie." The older girl said hi. The younger one scurried behind her mother and buried her face in the cleft between Anne's bare thighs, just below the hem of her shorts; Anne ignored her. "We haven't seen each other since before your brother was born." The elder daughter enacted an exaggerated wide-eyed, mouth-agape double-take at Eva, then looked around at her sister and the two of them ran off, squealing. The two women remained locked in a stare, neither one commenting on the children. Finally, Anne said, "Jesus, Eva, why are we standing here—please, come in. Lunch is almost ready." Anne eased Eva's suitcase from her grasp, took Eva’s hand, and led her inside. To the trompe l'oeil Kilim runner that they followed down the hall from the front door back to the kitchen, Anne said, "Twelve years. Wow."
                                                    ~ 
    They were roommates their first two years. Eva chose Kent State University for its journalism department, which was nearly as good as Northwestern's but six hours further away from her parents. Anne chose Kent because her brothers and sisters all went to Akron U, her only other option.
    Once the girls became friends, Anne spent the night in Eva's room, then scheduled night classes so she'd have to be there two days a week and every Friday.
                                                    ~
Anne scurried around the kitchen preparing lunch while Eva sat at the table, sipping a glass of lemonade. While the two women talked, Janie the older daughter set the table, moving at such a slow pace Eva almost laughed at her. She knelt on a chair and slid plates to each place, first grabbing them one at a time from a stack Anne had set at one end of the oval table. She set silverware at two places side-by-side on one long length of the table. Janie stepped to Eva's left to lay a fork then walked to her right to lay the knife and spoon, then walked to the other end of the table to position her mother's flatware. She put a different colored cloth napkin on each plate. Eva watched her as she listened to Anne talk. It was easier than looking at Anne.

    "So, I don't know if you're still a veggie type, but we all pretty much are, so I made homemade veggie burgers." Anne had an excuse for not looking at Eva while she spoke to her; she was slicing onions and tomatoes and cheese. Liesl, the other girl, flitted around the end of peninsula separating the kitchen from the dining room and played an informal hide-and-seek with Eva while singing what sounded like a made-up song about butterflies. 

    "Oh, I'm back on the meat wagon, I'm afraid." As Eva spoke it occurred to her that this was another way in which she and Anne had reversed roles. Eva was the original vegetarian and the one who wanted to have kids—an unpopular goal to have and certainly to talk about pursuing in one's freshman year. And now Anne had the happy home and she was still struggling to forge even fleeting connections with men.

    "Well, maybe we'll get you back on track." Anne had her hands full of veggie burger goop and had her eye on Liesl, who had pulled a chair to the counter so she could climb up and sit, cross-legged, and watch her mother work. "Sweetie, off with you. We don't live like animals." Then she looked up halfway at Eva and winked. "At least not when we have company."  Anne bent over and kissed the girl's forehead then motioned with her head for Liesl to jump down, which she did without protesting or complaining. But she stayed close to Anne's side and finally couldn't keep herself from trying to get closer to her mother's workspace. She curled her little fingers over the counter's edge and batted her feet against the cupboards to pull herself up so her eyes were level with the plates on the counter. "Lee!" Anne pointed with her elbow for Liesl to back off then looked at Eva, rolling her eyes in either admission or deflection of fault, however Eva chose to read it, "We've been a little lax with Liesl. Last child, you know how it goes…"
Eva started to say that no, she didn't, but caught herself and instead said, "Last—for sure?"

    Anne nodded and made a snip motion with the first fingers of her right hand, keeping her eyes on the platter of lettuce and onion and tomato. Eva opened her mouth to say something but didn't know what to say or how to keep it over Liesl's head. It struck her as weird that she had assumed a familiarity with Anne in asking her if she and Stephen were done having kids—especially considering she was meeting these kids for the first time and had never talked to Anne about this stuff since their furtive exchanges on the phone twelve years earlier. She grappled for a neutral topic that wouldn't telegraph her nervousness, wouldn't drive them toward the conversation she was there to have. She had three days.   

   "Janie is named for your mom, right? Is Liesl named for someone?" Eva had liked Anne's mother until the last time she talked to her, which was just after the last time she talked to Anne. Eva began to feel like this was a bad idea, that meeting after all these years was pointless. Nothing could be resolved, nothing could be figured out, there was nowhere to move on to. All those books and TV shows about closure—she just wanted to leave.

    Hearing her name again, by this newly discovered aunt, Liesl hopped around the island and galloped right to Eva's chair. She put her hand on Eva's leg. A sizzle broke the silence as Anne started to toss veggie burgers onto the griddle section of the stove.

    "My name comes from a sound from music." Liesl looked Eva squarely in the face as she spoke, her expression serious, almost solemn, it seemed to Eva.

     "It's a cute story," Anne called over the fountainous mist of oil spraying up from the griddle, her eyes not leaving the patties, though they had to fry for a few minutes before being flipped.

    "Jack was a little apprehensive, shall we say, about having another sister—"
Liesl, still looking Eva in the face, asked her what "apperhandsive" meant. Eva opened her mouth and Anne answered before she had time to try to think about how to explain what Anne was saying without revealing exactly what she meant.

    "It means 'nervous,' sweetie."

    "Why was Jacky nervous?" Eva had learned the word earlier that week, when her dad left with Jack on a trip. When he'd kissed her mom goodbye he told her not to be nervous about her friend Eva coming, that everything would be fine. "Was it because he was excited, like you were with Aunt Eva coming to visit?"

   

Eva's eyebrows popped up and she began to glance at Anne but caught herself, turned her head only far enough to notice Anne had made and aborted the exact same movement. Both women smiled. And relaxed slightly; there, it had been said and neither of them had had to say it.

     "Yes, Mommie was nervous…" Anne slurred the next sentence and spoke it rapidly. "I suppose resentful would be a more accurate depiction of Jacky's attitude." Then followed it with an image the girls intended to stick in the girls' minds. "Maybe he was nervous that two sisters might cause him trouble – might, oh, I don't know, chase him around the house and try to make him wear lipstick?" Both Anne and Liesl looked at Janie, who was intent in her study of the napkins she was trying to refold into triangles.

      Without breaking rhythm, Janie asked, "What is 'resentful'?"

    "Resentment is what people feel when someone invites them to lunch and then makes them half starve before they can eat it. Now finish setting the table and go wash your hands so we can eat." 
Janie tossed the last napkin on a plate then threw her hands in the air and looked over to Liesl. The two ran off without exchanging a word.

    "Good. Peace for a moment." Anne lifted the edge of the first patty on the griddle to see if it was ready, then flipped them all one by one.

    "They hear everything, don't they?" Eva watched Anne work, watched her look over at her at intervals that seemed contrived, as if Anne had to make herself look at her old friend. Eva thought she might be projecting; but again, she might not be.

    "They do." Anne looked up at her. "They do. And just when you think you've developed a vernacular to out-wit them, you realize they've grown into it. Plus, since they're so close in age, at this point were almost raising two six-year-olds."

    "What about Jack?"

     Anne looked back to the grill.

    "Jack." Saying his name made Anne smile; Eva wondered what mix of tenderness and nervousness and resentment prompted that expression.

    "Jack is his own person. He's his dad's boy, but he is his own person. He was never into having one little sister and two, well, at that point—he was eight—he was done with siblings. And other people in general. I think he's a real loner—he's happy with books and his pens and art supplies. Stephen calls him our little da Vinci. But he liked them both to start with. What makes them irresistible to other people gets on his nerves."

    Anne pulled two buns from the toaster oven and brought them to the stove. She pulled two more out of a bag. She started pulling patties off the griddle and placing them in the buns. Eva stood and started bringing the platters of garnishes to the table, along with a potato salad Anne motioned her to take from the refrigerator.

    "As I started to tell you, Jack named Liesl. He was eight when she was born; Janie was two. Stephen's parents were great. They paid him even more attention than they'd given him when Janie was born; of course, he'd been looking forward to that birth, because one of his best friends in kindergarten had been a girl and he thought Janie would be just like that. So, I don't know, about a week or two before I delivered they took him to see The Sound of Music. He loved it. And when he came home, he said, "It's OK if it's another sister, but we should name her Liesl.

    "We thought, why not? It's a nice name—and how likely is it that there will be three of them in the same class?"

    "Which one was Liesl?"

    "The eldest—'I am sixteen going on seventeen…'"
Eva thought, "The one who almost ran off with a Nazi" but checked herself from saying it. "Well, that's a ways away. There's time to find her a hobby."

    "That didn't stop me…"

    The girls came racing back and climbed up to their places at the table. Anne reached over to steady Liesl's chair

    "Piety—like twins—appears to skip a generation."