She Poured Out Her Heart - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jean Thompson is the author of six novels, among them The Humanity Project and The Year We Left Home, and six story collections, including Who Do You Love (a National Book Award finalist) and, most recently, The Witch. She lives in Urbana, Illinois.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2016 Jean Thompson

Ordinary



“Somebody should tell her he’s not worth it.”

It took Jane a beat or two before she could say, “Who? Tell who?” She had been lost in looking at the apples, her vision gone greedy at the wealth of them. They were piled and heaped in bins, all the different kinds: Jonagold, Red Delicious, Braeburn, Fuji, Pink Lady. Honeycrisp, Winesap, McIntosh, Rome. The names promised an extravagance of tastes. Granny Smiths were bright chartreuse, Ambrosias were yellow, and the rest were all shades and textures of red. Deep and polished, or striped and freckled with green and gold, or blush-stained. Row on row on row, all the apples in the world. She was thinking of nothing, nothing at all. Her eyes had taken her out of herself. And when Bonnie said what she did, it took an effort to pull herself back to normal conversation.

“Who?” Jane said.

“Tell who?”

“Over there. Don’t look.”

Directed, then forbidden, Jane managed a sideways glance: a young couple, eighteen? Nineteen? The boy worked here, he wore the usual blue shirt and cap and he was standing next to a cart of produce boxes that needed unloading. The girl was thin, tense, wearing glasses, neither pretty nor unpretty. Jane saw what had drawn Bonnie’s attention, since the two of them were having an argument.

You couldn’t hear them, but it was plain enough from the girl’s beseeching face and the boy’s impatience and bluster. Something along the line of, Where were you last night? And, I had things to do. And, Well, are you coming over tonight? And, I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. Depends.

At least that was what Jane imagined them saying. Bonnie gave her an elbow nudge and Jane dropped her gaze. After another minute or two the girl gave up and left, walking fast through the whooshing automatic doors. Even from behind she managed to look entirely miserable. The boy called out to one of the other boys working, again something Jane couldn’t quite hear, something along the lines of, You believe that? Yeah, well she needs to quit doing whatever shit it was she did—the boy getting louder as he walked away from them, swinging his arms to show the ex- tent of his exasperation and belligerence. He had an unremarkable, coarse face, and his voice had a braying tone to it, and Bonnie was probably right, he wasn’t worth it.

“Why are women such idiots?” Bonnie said, throwing a plastic tub of lettuce in the cart. “I want to kidnap her and deprogram her.”

“You could probably catch up to her in the parking lot.”

“She’ll have to figure it out for herself. A few more years of degradation and self-abasement.”

“That sounds nice,” Jane said.
            “Shut up, please. I’m being wittily bitter. Witterly bitterly.”

“Mhm” Somewhere, she had a grocery list. It wouldn’t be much help, since she’d gotten into the lazy habit of writing “fruits and vegetables,” instead of anything particular. The kids would probably eat apples if she sliced them up. She chose three of the ordinary red ones, McIntosh. Sep- arated out and sealed in a plastic bag, there wasn’t any magic left to them.

Bonnie trailed along behind her, giving baleful, disinterested looks at the celery and cabbage. It was all right to ignore her when she got herself all worked up like this, and in fact Jane knew she was meant to provide a certain going-about-her-business calm, while Bonnie had herself a little tantrum over her latest crash-and-burn love affair. Jane had already been through the escalating phone calls, detailing the events leading up to the final rupture, and had invited Bonnie over for coffee and a round of agreeing with all the terrible things Bonnie had to say about Patrick, whom Jane had never met. The tantrum could not be taken entirely seri- ously, just as Patrick could not be taken entirely seriously. When Jane said she had to get going on her errands, Bonnie surprised her by asking if she could come too. “I don’t want to be home so he can find me if he comes looking for me. Which he won’t. So I don’t want to be there wait- ing for him to not come over. You know?”

Jane knew. It was hard not to. Bonnie always told her such things They’d known each other since freshman year of college, and there was still that quality of late night dorm room oversharing, at least on Bon- nie’s part, because Jane’s life had gotten so married with kids, nothing steamy going on there. This, at least, was who they had agreed to be for the last ten years or so, even though by now there was an air of perfor- mance to it all. Bonnie was pushing past the age when she might have been expected to settle down. Instead there were still guys like Patrick, who was such an amazing brute in bed, but had some issues, in the past but still the recent past, with substance abuse. You were meant to be loyal, you were meant to be supportive, but honestly.

Loyalty? Even now?

You could run out of patience with playing your part, especially when it was assumed you wanted to hear all the lurid, depressing details be- cause your own life was, you know, dreary and conventional, while Bon- nie was a grande amoureuse. I mean, please. Patrick had even borrowed money from her, though Bonnie wouldn’t say how much, since that seemed to be more embarrassing than the sex stuff.

Bonnie said, “Is this the kind of occasion when it’s appropriate to send dead flowers? I could do that. He’d get the message.”

“I hope you didn’t let him take any naked pictures. You know, revenge porn stuff.”

“No,” Bonnie said, but not right away, meaning she had to think about it. For a moment her face lost its indignant, focused quality and wavered. Then she regrouped. “Not unless he had some hidden camera system, and I don’t think he’s bright enough.”

Instead of asking why it had seemed a good idea to invest (in all senses of the word) in a man who was either too dumb or too untrust- worthy, or both, for purposes of basic peace of mind, Jane said, “I forgot olives, would you go back and get a jar of olives? Kalamata. Pitted.”

Bonnie said sure and sauntered off, and Jane watched her go, think- ing that Bonnie should probably cut back on her drinking, it was making her gain weight. Or maybe Jane should wish that on her.

Jane steered her cart out of the main traffic path and rummaged her purse until she found the grocery list. If she didn’t arrive home with the right brand name products, her spoiled rotten children would whine. So that there must be fudge stripe cookies and Goldfish crackers and maca- roni made with florescent orange cheese, and so on. Of course, calling them spoiled was a cover for her own pleasure in buying such items for them and satisfying their passionate, trivial desires. It was a Mom thing.

She wondered if Bonnie would ever have kids. She talked about it from time to time. She hoped to God that Bonnie was using birth control. And if she wanted kids, she could find a sperm donor, or latch on to the next incarnation of Patrick and get herself a baby that way. Both of them were collapsing into their nervous late thirties now. Biology closing in. They were stale dated. All those calcifying, unreliable inner parts. Babies didn’t just come along when you wanted them to, lots of things went wrong. Nobody’s fault. Menopause would come down like the lid of a box for both of them, and...