“You’re just so, ah, fit.” She was fashion-model slender, her pants and top fitted to defined, shapely arms and a flat belly.
“For a while, I was just too thin. But I’m getting strong again. Slowly. You…you’re thinner, too, Thea. Not that you were ever at all overweight. The truth of it is, I just should eat more.” She paused and said, “I have trouble eating these days, for obvious reasons.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Because she can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Because Belinda can’t eat. Beet salad or macaroni and cheese or bean enchiladas or twice-baked potatoes or rum raisin ice cream.”
I thought of Stefan eating rum raisin ice cream in that horrible hotel on that horrible winter day. “Oh, Jill, oh Jill, I’m so sorry.”
She said, “I know you are. That’s the real reason I wanted to see you. I want to ask a favor of you. I want you and Stefan to stop speaking about Belinda in public.”
Again, I was caught flat-footed.
“You got so much attention, and it puts Stefan in the position of being kind of, I don’t know, familiar, a decent guy who made a big mistake, like somebody anybody could understand. This whole thing is making Stefan and you look very sympathetic. It’s breaking my heart, Thea, it feels so unfair to the memory of my daughter. And the girls and women who work with SAY are outraged, Thea.”
“I saw that for myself. But the interruption of the evening, that really wasn’t fair, Jill.”
“I had nothing to do with that. It’s their right to peaceful protest, their right under the constitution.”
“But so was the talk.”
“You’re trying to make it like there are two sides to this, and there aren’t.”
“And Stefan said it was his intention to try to support SAY. He still wants to do that.”
“And I said that was impossible, Thea. Even you must see why.”
I finally told her that it was only one speech. I said, “I won’t accept any another invitation. I promise.”
“You should not, and maybe even for your own good. I read about what happened to Stefan’s car recently. Aren’t you worried that something worse could happen to him or to you?”
Is it her? I thought then. Is it Jill who’s behind all that cautioning from Esme? Jill got to her and converted her and now she’s using her as her mouthpiece to shut us up. Jill probably paid that guy in the hoodie to stalk us too. Maybe even set Stefan’s car on fire.
But in the same moment, I thought, that is ludicrous. Jill might be fanatical, but she wasn’t crazy. You didn’t break into someone’s house or terrorize them in the parking lot at their work and then have a chilly but civilized chat in the arboretum. Jill’s whole life these days was predicated on non-violence. Still, I studied Jill’s face as she stared me down. The way she looked nearly frightened me: Her eyes seemed to recede into her head and the contours of her face had sharpened, although I am sure that could be my imagination or a mere trick of the light.
“So I have your word that you will stop,” she said.
“You have my word.”
“If you don’t, I think you will regret it.”
Was that a threat? So maybe it was her. Or maybe, more likely, she meant her words as an ordinary phrase people said all the time in an ordinary way, that I would regret a sort of egregious disregard for a bereaved mother’s feelings.
Then, as she was walking back to her car and unlocking her door, I spoke up.
“Jill, wait. I don’t want us to part like this.”
“I don’t either, Thea. But there is no other way to part for you and me.”
She didn’t say thank-you or even goodbye. Why should she have? She just gave me that unblinking hooded look once more and then nodded, once. Before she started the car, I asked her, “Do you know a person named Esme?”
Jill glanced upward, the way people do when they’re thinking, then looked away. “Hmmm. No, I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone named that, actually. Now, if you asked me if I know somebody named Kayleigh, I know fifty. If you asked me if I know someone named Brianna, I’ve got a list of ten.”
“Okay,” I said. “Goodbye, Jill. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all this suffering and I’m sorry that what I did felt like making it worse.”
“Not sorry enough,” Jill said.
After she left, I sat huddled in my own car, overtaken by the desire to just fall asleep there in the front seat. I had writing to do at home, and the day was closing in fast, but instead of keeping to my planned course, I stopped to get the ingredients for eggplant parmigiana, which the family loved, but which I rarely made because it was so labor-intensive: peel the eggplant, drain the eggplant, bread and crisp fry and then layer the eggplant to bake with cheese and sauce. When I got home I went straight to the kitchen and the dish and made tsoureki, too, and a custard to serve with the sweet almond bread, for dessert. When Jep walked in and sniffed the fragrant air, he looked concerned.