Perfect Little World(88)
“No, of course not,” Izzy said, feeling very much like the entire affair had been her fault, that her carelessness, not Ellen’s and Jeremy’s, had caused this.
Ellen finally laughed, a ragged little breath of irritation and wonder. “You just had to come see me today,” she said to Jeremy. “You couldn’t wait until tomorrow when I’d come to the farm.”
Jeremy looked very much like a man who was just now realizing the choices he had made in his life; he looked so much older. “Ellen, please,” he said, once again.
Ellen looked at Izzy. She seemed almost grateful to have someone else to talk to. She waved off Jeremy with the flick of her wrist and then said, “I remember when we first moved here, a lot of us women were not exactly thrilled that you were coming to the complex, a single mother, like you were some kind of free agent. Some of us worried that you would try to take one of our husbands. It was kind of a thing for a few months and then everybody realized that you were really sweet and not a psycho and it was going to be okay.” Ellen laughed and then said, “Honestly, I was the one who was most upset about the possibility of you stealing Harris from me.”
Izzy looked back at those first few months at the complex, but couldn’t remember any tension with the other men and women in the family. Perhaps it was because that first year was so strange, regardless of whether people were worried about her status as a single woman, everyone trying to get used to the idea of being a new parent, of adjusting to life in the complex. Still, she felt the residual embarrassment of having been talked about, of being singled out, and then she reminded herself that the real issue was with Ellen and Jeremy.
“I have to go,” Izzy said, holding up the journal, forever holding up that fucking journal. “I have to get back to the kitchen.”
“I told Marnie not to forget her journal,” Ellen said, shaking her head.
Izzy left Ellen and Jeremy on the sofa and walked out of the house. As she closed the door, she did it so carefully and quietly, as if she was sneaking out of the house undetected, that she had not been discovered, that she had not discovered them. Outside, the wind had picked up and the prayer flags were flapping crazily; they looked like people falling out of the sky, rag dolls suspended in the air.
Izzy returned the journal to the classroom; Marnie gave her a hug in thanks, but Izzy could not bear to return it. She stood in the hallway, all alone, the walls vibrating with the sounds of the children expanding into the world. She looked toward Dr. Grind’s office, knew he would be in there, and she started toward it, but then pulled up short. She could feel her heart expanding and contracting. She thought about the entire family, a collective, a single form. It was a mistake to keep it a secret, would only delay the inevitable. One day Callie or Harris would grow angry with the situation. Marnie or Eli would discover Ellen and Jeremy and tell all their brothers and sisters. Or one of the other parents would find out, as easily as Izzy had, and they would go straight to Dr. Grind. But Izzy wanted only to hold on to what was good in her life. She would not be the one to potentially ruin it. She returned to the classroom and watched the children, furiously scribbling in their journals, rubber balls bouncing across the room, so much motion that it felt like it was the children, and the children alone, who kept the world spinning on its axis.
A short time later, back in the kitchen, Izzy was checking over the ingredients for that night’s dinner when Callie knocked on the door. Izzy felt the revelation of Jeremy and Ellen seize up inside her before she recovered and waved her in. Callie held up a basket of green beans from the farm, as well as some soft-neck garlic. While Jeremy and Callie had originally worked the garden at the complex, they had saved up enough money from Jeremy’s construction work and Callie’s odd jobs to buy some acreage a few miles away to start their own farm, selling their vegetables and meat, all organic, to local restaurants and farmers’ markets. Izzy was one of their best customers, using whatever they had harvested in her dishes, finding the quality to be unmatched.
Callie, so shy and reserved, simply pointed to the invoice that she’d placed on the table, and Izzy nodded and signed off on it after checking over the vegetables. Callie turned to leave, but Izzy, as if overcome by a muscle spasm, reached out for Callie’s arm, which made the woman flinch. She remembered what she’d said to Jeremy and Ellen, her promise to keep it a secret, but Izzy could not resist, needed to know for herself what the stakes were.
“Callie,” Izzy said. “Are you okay?”
Callie finally made eye contact with Izzy and held her gaze for a few seconds. Finally, stuttering, she said, “You know, don’t you?”
Izzy nodded and Callie backed away from her before she seemed to weaken, the tenseness in her shoulders finally relaxing, and she walked over to the counter and leaned closer to Izzy.
“Who told you?” she asked.
“No one,” Izzy replied. “I found them. In . . . in bed.”
“Who else knows?” Callie said, her stuttering becoming less pronounced.
“Just me,” Izzy said.
“Jeremy is a real complicated person, okay? He is a good man, but he has his own issues. He hasn’t really been the same since he lost his family’s farm. He became a lot more closed off after that, kind of wounded. I was the one who begged him to come join the project. I thought it would help us to be around other people. And he did get better, happier, and then I found out why.”