"This is blowing my mind," Ash said under his breath.
"Same," Magnolia said.
"Ignore them," Linden said with an impatient shake of his head.
"Go to the game," I said. "I'll be fine. You don't need to worry about me."
"Yes, I do," he mouthed.
The meal continued in much the same way—the triplets snapping back and forth with each other, Diana and Carlo peppering in wildly amusing and slightly odd commentary, food appearing on my plate even when I insisted I'd eaten more than enough—and I couldn't shake the sense this was how it was supposed to be. This was what I'd been missing, the place and the people and the connection I'd longed to find in my life, and now it was here, all around me, and I didn't trust myself with it.
I didn't know how to wrap my arms around all of this—the burly bear of a man, the family that didn't make sense but that was what made sense about them, this quiet corner of New England—without reminding myself I couldn't keep any of it.
17
Linden
I learned three things about Jasper tonight.
One—she didn't like being called beautiful. I wanted to understand but I didn't want her shutting down on me like she did in the woods this morning. I'd figure it out eventually.
Two—I'd always known she was capable of crushing people but I had no idea she could do it without them knowing they were being crushed. She crushed my entire family this evening and it was the greatest thing I'd ever witnessed.
Three—it shocked her every time I remembered boring little things like the wine she preferred. This was the second time I'd watched that reaction whip through her and I was certain it was one of shock. I didn't see how something as simple as grabbing the bottle she favored was worthy of shock but I wasn't to make an issue of it. Not yet.
And one last thing—I was a bit more attached than I cared to admit. Only a bit. Not very attached, not reorganizing my life to fit Jasper attached. Not imagining a future. Nothing like that. No, I wasn't that attached.
I wasn't.
But I was beginning to think she'd crushed me too.
18
Jasper
I had a complicated relationship with my body.
Things were better now but I'd struggled to understand—and shield myself from—the ways people treated me as a result of this body.
When I was eight years old, I started attending church services with my extended family. They kept an eye on me when my mother couldn't so I was on my best behavior. Not a toe out of line, not even when the women who gathered to gossip over coffee and cookies pointed at me with their Styrofoam cups and called me "the beautiful one" with undisguised contempt woven into the words.
They never called me by my name but they stared, their eyes narrowed and their lips curled up as if they expected me to shape-shift into the kind of serpent who tempted Eve out of the Garden.
They announced with great authority that I was full of myself, I was a stuck-up brat. Look at the attitude on her. Thinks she's something special. They often said my family would have to watch out for me, that the trouble I'd cause would place a real burden on my aunts and uncles. I had no idea what any of that meant and it made me want to put my head down and hide, but I didn't dare stray from my aunt's side. I couldn't get in trouble. My mother couldn't handle that on top of everything else.
They took a great interest in my birthmark. Some of the more devout gossipers believed it was the devil's mark, that I'd been touched by evil, and evil was inside me. Those who didn't see the devil in everything insisted I had to get it removed. No one would want me with that mud stain on my face. Others proclaimed it was good for me. I needed a flaw to keep from getting a head about myself. Whatever that meant.
I never told my mother about it. She'd already explained there was no getting through to Aunt Leslie and that I just had to follow her rules, even if they didn't make sense. Her kids got the belt and unless I wanted that, I had to keep my mouth shut. There was nowhere else for me to go, not until the summers when I could stay with Midge. I had to be good, and quiet.
When I was twelve and my body was changing in sudden and unpleasant ways, they still pointed and stared. They said it would be any minute until the teenage boys got their hands on me, that they'd know what I was about, that I'd ruin families looking the way I did. I didn't understand that either but it terrified me. I was afraid all the time, looked over my shoulder constantly. I avoided my male cousins and their friends at all costs and refused to ride alone with any of my uncles.
When I was fifteen and in possession of what could only be referred to as tits—for they were not breasts, they were not boobs, they weren't even jugs, they were big, bouncing tits that seemed to develop overnight—those women replaced "the beautiful one" with "the slut," "the whore," "the trash."
I hated myself. I didn't want to be a slut, a problem, a girl who had something bad coming to her because she lived in a womanly body. I hated everything about myself and I wanted it all to go away. I wanted to go away.
So I learned to disappear.
I started wearing sweaters with blouses that buttoned up to the throat and full, A-line skirts that fell past my knees. At the time, retro was not cool and everyone thought I was going through some kind of Bewitched-meets-Happy Days phase but I didn't care. Endlessly rummaging through thrift shops and church bazaars gave me a project that didn't involve making myself small and ashamed, and my new style was distracting enough to take the attention away from my body.
At eighteen, I didn't know the expression damned if you do, damned if you don't. The gossipers still criticized and called me names and I didn't understand how my existence could be wrong all the time, regardless of how I showed up in this body. But I started sensing they were wrong, and after a decade of hardening myself to their cruelty, I taught myself to stop caring.
I figured out I could exist in this body without hiding it. I could be as much of a woman as I wanted and I'd take no shit about it. Tits, curves, birthmarks—they belonged to me, no one else. Skirts, dresses, pantsuits—it didn't matter. The only issue on the table was my competence, and on that, I delivered every time.
People still told me I was beautiful. I still felt the need to shrink and apologize.
I bristled when shopgirls made offhand comments like, "What can I help you find today, pretty lady?" or my boss said, "Our lovely Miss Jasper will take care of that" or my ex-husband introduced me as his gorgeous wife.
And then I felt awful for bristling because it was just a compliment! How silly was I to be injured by a few kind, simple words? Why couldn't I just accept the nice comment and move on with my life?
And then I remembered those gossipy women and the hateful, churlish things they said to me when I was a handful of years old. They were angry and insecure for reasons that had nothing to do with me, and that anger blinded them to the fact they were taking out their insecurity on a child.
I was better now. Time and distance eroded away the worst of it, even if I had occasion to freak out over a compliment. It was easier to be excessively competent than it was to be beautiful, even if beautiful carried more currency. It was safer and I'd weaponized that competence to protect myself.