Penni and Jodie arrived the following Saturday morning. Once Jodie got Penni’s schedule she booked a flight—a real reservation!—that arrived within fifteen minutes of her sister’s. Leah at first thought this an uncommon courtesy on the part of Jodie, saving her an extra trip to the airport; and maybe it was. But further consideration allowed her to understand that Jodie didn’t want to arrive before Penni, to bear the full weight of her mother’s condition or needs, or after, to feel negligent or superfluous to her big-bellied sister bearing the blessed child.
And Penni was indeed big-bellied, as Leah witnessed with her younger niece, normally in the forefront of any crowd, the last from her flight to emerge from the arrivals corridor, shuffling along stiffly with her swollen belly beneath the cable-knit sweater playing cruel games with her normally thin body’s center of gravity. Leah rushed forward and took the small carry-on from her hand and put her arm around her niece’s shoulders to steady her.
“Sorry, Aunt Leah. My lower back is acting up today. I just couldn’t get comfortable in that cramped seat.”
“Why didn’t you ask for assistance?”
“A wheelchair?” Penni exclaimed in what may have been genuine horror. “Exercise is the best therapy!” she said, repeating her birthing class instructor’s mantra.
Leah recalled her last weeks carrying Jasper’s mix of fear and groaning, as every cramp might be the start of labor or one more lash to bear in the nine month masochistic exercise called pregnancy. Then she recalled the product of that trial, her son now back at school after spending most of his summer working on an organic farm with his girlfriend, managing to squeeze in only a couple short weekend visits to the one who had borne him those nine months. And just then she wasn’t sure which of the pains was worse. “Can you make it to the coffee shop?” Leah asked, pointing toward a row of retail outlets on the far side of the arrivals lounge.
“Is Jodie here?”
“A half hour late. Can you wait?”
“If you can find me a place to raise my legs.”
Leah did, positioning Penni at the end of the shop’s cushioned bench running along the back wall and putting a rolled up blanket she borrowed from the waitress under the small of her back as she swung her legs up onto the bench.
Penni winced once during the maneuver then sighed as she flexed her legs to ease the cramping. “Thanks, Aunt Leah. I’ve needed to stretch since leaving Boston. Not exactly something you can do at an airport gate.”
Leah nodded in sympathy. “Six more weeks?”
“If I make it that long.”
After the waitress brought Penni herbal tea and Leah coffee, Penni asked how her mother was doing. Leah tried to find the middle ground between honesty and alarm then realized there was no such place in the current circumstances. Brooke had diminished noticeably in the few days since she’d arrived, and the doctor had switched from synthetic opiates to the real thing yesterday, prescribing morphine to help alleviate her pain. Leah had thought that meant the end was fast-approaching, but the hospice nurse who came by each morning had said, “Not necessarily. Could be days. Could be weeks,” then had added something that could have been intended as consoling but was deeply unsettling to Leah. “It’s up to Mrs. Redmon.” Even now they were prisoners to Brooke’s will.
“She’s looking forward to seeing you and Jodie.”
Penni nodded. “Why do we only get together in a crisis?”
“There was your wedding.”
Penni smiled. Her first anniversary was in two weeks. How come it seemed so much longer than that? “There was a crisis then too.”
“What?”
“You never heard? Two nights before, Jodie was trying on her maid-of-honor dress—which fit, thank God; I was terrified something would go wrong with the long-distance sizing—in my bedroom when Mom burst in without knocking and saw Jodie’s tattoo for the first time. Well, she pitched a fit, saying there was no way she was going to have all her time and money and effort remembered only for the maid of honor’s tattoo. She said we had to get a matching mantle made to cover Jodie’s shoulders and even tried to call a seamstress she used occasionally. And of course Jodie threw off the dress and stormed out of the room in her underwear.”
“Did you go after her?”
Penni shook her head. “I long ago learned you don’t chase after Jodie at moments like that.”
Leah shook her head. “What did you do?”
“For the first and only time in my life, I told Mom to knock it off. This was my wedding, Jodie was my only sister, and she was going to be my maid of honor in the dress I’d chosen for her; and if she didn’t like it, that was too bad.” Penni took a deep breath, amazed now what she had said then.
“What did Brooke say?”
“She stared hard at me for a long time. I wasn’t sure if she were shocked or hurt. But I held my ground. And finally she said, ‘Let’s hope she’s not already back in Seattle.’”
“And the wedding went off without a hitch.”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘without a hitch’ but it did happen. And everybody loved Jodie’s tattoo.”
“Except Brooke.”
“She didn’t say another word till that dig at the end; and then it was too late to matter.”
Leah gazed silently at her niece, longing for those days of idle family drama.
“Don’t you two look comfy,” Jodie said as she walked up, looking at Penni with her legs up on the bench.
“Comfy is not an adjective you associate with a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy,” Penni replied.
Leah turned in surprise. She checked her watch then rose from her chair. “You’re early.”
“No, late.”
“Earlier than the later they posted on the monitor,” Leah explained then wrapped her niece in a big hug and planted a long kiss on her forehead.
Penni swung her legs off the bench and slid out from behind the table.
“Don’t get up,” Jodie said as she dropped her two bags beside the table and sat on the bench next to Penni. She leaned over and kissed her sister on the cheek then turned her face to let Penni return the endearment. Then she leaned back far enough to marvel at her sister’s ballooning midsection. “You’re huge!”
“Believe me, I know! Today my legs and back really know!”
“I had been jealous. Now, maybe not so much.”
“All pain and suffering here on out,” Penni said through her proud smile. “Right, Aunt Leah?”
Leah turned from where she had just finished catching the eye of the waitress. “Never ends,” she said with a grin to match theirs, a comment that was both sincere and facetious but mainly left Leah wishing the only pain and suffering they’d be facing in the coming days was of the child-bearing, child-rearing sort.