Practical Jean by Trevor Cole Page B

You’ve got that faraway idea thing happening in your eyes. Oh, jeez, sorry.”
    A bit of marmalade had flicked onto her cheekbone, and Jean wiped at it with a finger and then licked it off. Foul, bitter, rindy taste. No, marmalade was not for her.
    Milt kept his head down for a while, chewing his crust, his mouth emitting sounds of walking on gravel. When he looked up he said, “Is it something I could help with?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œRemember I used to help you? Remember that time you needed a bigger kiln and I helped you build it?”
    She sipped at her tea. “I think I hired someone to do that.”
    â€œBut I read up on it.”
    Jean set down her cup, reached across the table, and laid her hand on his wrist.
    â€œI took out all those books from the library so I could advise you.”
    â€œMilt, darling,” she said, smiling as sweetly as she could but letting him see her eyes. “I’ll slice my wrists if you don’t stop talking.”
    â€œOkay, you’re concentrating, sorry. Artist at work .” He popped the last bite of toast into his mouth. “It’s nice to have you home, though.”
    She had so much to do. So much to think about. Jean took their little Hyundai to the Sobeys for a shop, partly because the house was low on just about every staple—Milt’s own shopping while she’d been gone had apparently centered on milk, bread, and a rotation of frozen stir-fry dishes—but also because she knew it would help her. Ever since living as a student on her own she’d found that walking up and down the aisles of a supermarket, when it wasn’t too busy, really cleared her head.
    Inside the store she grabbed a cart, picked out the old flyer that was lying in the bottom, and made her way into the produce section. There she felt the ceiling’s full cathedral height above her, and let the cool, humid air hit her face and neck like a breeze off the lake and bring goosebumps to her sleeveless arms. She went slowly through the mixed greens, the herbs and packaged salads, the fennel and snow peas showered with mist. And then, finally, past the tomatoes, amid the citrus and the pineapples, Jean nudged into the question that was plaguing her most at the moment. The question was: Who should be first?
    That dilemma sat on her as something stressful and fraught because, having had the vision, she had to act. She was compelled. An idea unexecuted was no better than a daydream; it did nobody any good. Yet acting on her vision required making a choice, and to choose one friend before the others suggested she liked one best, while the others would have to follow in some sort of ranking, next to least. To Jean that didn’t seem right at all. It was possible to have a best friend, she supposed, one who resonated in one’s experience more deeply than anyone else. But after her experience with Cheryl she had always tried to avoid making judgments like that. Even when girls in her class wanted to be granted that status, wanted exclusive access to her secrets, or sole rights to the cafeteria seat beside her. No, she wouldn’t do that. She loved all her friends equally.
    It was another reason for her mother to shake her head in exasperation. “You have to find your strongest allies, Jean,” she would say, frowning at the irritation of her as she scratched through her paperwork. “You have to form a circle of support. It’s ridiculous and unnatural not to. If you try to make everyone your friend you won’t have any real friends at all.”
    Well, somehow she had managed, and she had cultivated a group of friends that she cared about deeply. Through the years, of course, the numbers had diminished. People got busy with their careers, raising their families. Some of them died—Margy Benn getting her head split open by a mare’s hoof at thirty-two had been a shock. (Quick for her, though, Jean now