A Coventry Wedding. Becky Cochrane
a table while Sam walked Sue and gave her more water. By the time he joined Jandy, she had a plan.
“Why don’t we check into that La Quinta after we eat?” she asked. “Then, if you wouldn’t mind dropping me at the mall, I need to pick up a few things. Female things,” she added, knowing any man, straight or gay, shunned shopping for such items. “I don’t want to be rushed through the store, though. You and Sue can get settled into your room, and I’ll just walk back to the motel when I’m finished.”
“Fine with me,” he said, studying the menu.
She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or exasperated not to get more of an argument about walking alone in a strange place. He didn’t seem at all concerned about her safety, yet with that strange compulsion of a man to let a woman precede him through doors or to light a woman’s cigarettes, he insisted that Jandy be the first to order food. Then, while he talked over his options with the server, she looked at her hands. Even though she’d washed them, they still felt grimy. She began digging inside her purse, pulling things out and dropping them on the table as she searched for her hand sanitizer.
“You can figure out a lot about a woman by the contents of her purse,” Sam commented.
She would never let him see the bundle of money or the now inaccurate wedding invitation, but she took inventory of everything else as she emptied her purse. She wondered what he thought he was learning from her Estée Lauder lipstick; Clinique compact; Prescriptives eyeliner pencils in various colors; Maybelline Great Lash Mascara—Blackest Black, because she ignored makeup advice for redheads; hairbrush; two tampons inside a little case—she hoped he didn’t guess what that was, or he might wonder about her proposed shopping trip to Target; multiple key chains with keys to various apartments and cars; several computer disks; a copy of Jennifer Weiner’s novel Good in Bed—she’d been carrying that around for months and even though she liked it, she was still only on the third chapter; a half-finished résumé in a tattered envelope; three hairclips; four pens—she was sure at least three of them didn’t work; several crumpled receipts and ATM slips she’d never put in her check register; cell phone; cell phone charger—that would come in handy at the motel; book of stamps; a Dooney and Bourke wristlet case that held three condoms and her birth control pills; two pairs of sunglasses from a dollar store that were in Oakley cases discarded by a long-ago roommate; Burt’s Bees lip balm; a tin of Altoids Peppermint Smalls; a Coach wallet that contained other people’s business cards, a MasterCard, a Bank of America debit card, a faded photo of Hud, her driver’s license, and a five-dollar bill; and at last, a tiny bottle of Purell Hand Sanitizer.
She had no idea what her Fendi knockoff and its contents said about her. Which prompted an assessment from Pru: You’re a fraud with fake sunglasses and a fake purse. You have cosmetic promiscuity. You have more keys than a cat burglar. You don’t finish things. But at least you’ll have germ-free hands, fresh breath, and no sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned pregnancies.
She used the hand sanitizer and said, “What do you think my purse says about me? That I’m a big, disorganized mess?”
“You don’t have kids. You have a sore shoulder from lugging all that crap around. And you haven’t been living a low-income life in a trailer.”
“It’s a Fendi knockoff,” she said.
“With real Dooney and Bourke and Coach accessories inside it.”
Oh, yeah, he was gay. She would never let him see the fake Oakleys.
The server came back with their coffee. Jandy noticed that Sam took his black, while she loaded hers with cream and Sweet’n Low.
“I would have figured you for the blue package,” Sam said.
“No. I’m all about the pink. You really don’t know anything about me, Sherlock.”
“Tell me about the Beatles and the Barbies.”
She stared at him. Maybe he was more perceptive than she thought, because he’d bypassed stupid judgments based on her purse contents and gone right to one of her deep, dark secrets. After a few seconds, she decided there was no reason why she shouldn’t tell him. Sometimes it was easier to confide in total strangers. After all, as soon as the pickup was fixed, she’d be on her way back to California and would never see Sam again.
“The Beatles broke up way before I was born,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t have known who they were except that every time a Beatles song came on the radio, or there was something about them on TV, or even if they were mentioned in random conversation, my mother always got this sour look on her face. She’d change the station or the channel. She threw away magazines if they had articles on any of the Beatles. I thought it was weird, so I started doing things to test her.”
She paused when the server came back to top off their coffee. Sam pushed the cream toward her. He didn’t say anything, but his face had an expectant look, so she went on.
“I listened to a classic rock station to hear their songs. I named my pet turtle Martha after Paul McCartney’s dog. Sometimes my Aunt Ruby would keep chickens, and I’d call them names from Beatles songs: Lucy, Rita, Julia, Loretta. I didn’t dare name the rooster Ringo—that would have been too obvious—so I settled for Dr. Robert.”
Sam laughed and said, “Wasn’t Dr. Robert somebody’s drug dealer?”
“Allegedly, but hey, how would I have known that? I was just a little kid at the time. After school, I usually stayed at the library until somebody picked me up on the way home from work. I’d check out books on bands, including the Beatles. Not racy memoirs or unauthorized biographies or anything like that. Books that it would be okay for kids to have, mostly with pictures. My mother always made the same unpleasant face if she saw Beatles books in my backpack. And one time, I paid a boy at school thirty dollars—that was a lot for a kid to scrape together—for a T-shirt with a picture of John and Yoko on it. My mom went ballistic about that.”
Once again she had to pause while their plates were set down. Sam barely waited until the server was out of earshot before he said, “Did you ever find out why?”
“That is when I found out why.”
“Don’t tell me. You’re supposed to be John Lennon’s illegitimate child.”
She laughed and said, “Close, but no.”
“Yoko’s?”
“Do I look Japanese?”
“Good point.”
“Since my mother wouldn’t break her no-Beatles rule and tell me herself, I got the story from Aunt Ruby. When she was in college, my mother fell in love with a man—well, supposedly she married him, but I don’t think that part could be true, because my grandpa and Aunt Ruby never even met him. His name was Thomas Taylor, and he was a huge John Lennon fan. He apparently had every Beatles-related object he could get his hands on. Albums, posters, books, photos. Just like John, he drew and wrote songs and played guitar and piano. When John Lennon got killed, Thomas was crushed.”
“I’m sure.”
“Apparently, he got it into his head that if he went to Japan, he’d make peace with the loss of his idol. Find consolation.”
“Or find his own Yoko.”
“That’s exactly what I think!” Jandy agreed. “He told my mother he felt like he had to go on a pilgrimage to honor John’s memory. He was going to Japan, then Liverpool and London, then New York, and finally back home. Maybe he did find his Yoko, because he never came back, at least that I know of. Aunt Ruby said he didn’t know—even my mother didn’t know—that when he left for Japan, she was pregnant with me.”
“So you never met him?”
Jandy shook her head and said, “Now that I’m older, I think it’s more likely my mother was involved with someone who didn’t want to marry her. The rest of it sounds like some story she or Aunt Ruby made up.”
“But