“Am I on speakerphone?”
“No.”
“Well, push the button. I think Clark should hear this.”
“He’s gone.”
“When he comes back, tell him I get it.”
“Get what?”
“My family got in the way of me and Abe. I won’t get in your way. I pinned my past onto your future, and that was wrong. If this is where your life is leading you, Hannah, then I’ll support you any way I can. And I bet your dad and Emma will agree.”
Behind Boop, the girls clapped lightly but tittered loudly. On the phone, Hannah gasped then went silent. She was crying.
“Oh, Hannahleh, I’m sorry, I should have said that right away. You just caught me off guard and it brought back so many memories. But that was my past, Hannah. It has nothing to do with your future.”
“We don’t have a future,” Hannah said. “Clark changed his mind.”
“We’ll see you soon, then,” Boop said, then pressed the button to disconnect the call.
“What’s going on?” Georgia asked.
“Clark broke it off with her,” Boop said. “He changed his mind.”
“How dare he,” Doris said. “There’s a baby.”
“There are two sides to every story,” Georgia said.
Boop stepped back. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on Hannah’s side. I’m just saying we don’t know what happened.”
“What happened was that she went home to tell him she loved him and wanted to marry him and he said ‘no thank you.’”
Georgia shook her head. “I bet it was more complicated than that.”
“Poor Hannah,” Doris said. “What can we do?”
Boop scampered through the living room, collecting framed snapshots from the end table, the bookshelf, and the wall. “We can get rid of the evidence.” She headed into Zaide’s old office.
“What are you doing?” Georgia yelled.
Arms full, Boop emerged holding every picture of Hannah and Clark she could carry. If Hannah had given it to her, Boop had displayed it. Hannah and Clark in Mexico. Hannah and Clark in kayaks. Hannah and Clark skiing, gardening, posing with silly faces. Now these would be reminders of her breakup—as if her belly wouldn’t be enough.
“You’re going to throw away all those photos?” Doris asked.
“Yes.” Boop tipped her head toward the screen porch so the girls would follow her. “But not the parts with Hannah in them.”
Settled on the screen porch, Boop, Georgia, and Doris hunched over their laps more from intention than age. They sliced through photographs, sometimes cutting around Hannah’s image as if playing paper dolls, sometimes just cutting out Clark’s head to preserve the scenery.
“What are you doing?”
Hannah? They looked up in succession. Boop, Georgia, then Doris.
Boop shuffled the scraps off her lap as if she were brushing away crumbs, then stood. She hugged Hannah and turned so that her granddaughter wasn’t facing the girls. Boop waved her hand back and forth, hoping they’d know to hide the evidence. Georgia swept clippings into a wicker trash bin and Doris tucked a few under her bottom. Just in time too. Hannah pulled back and whirled around.
“I thought you were coming tonight,” Boop said.
“I said soon. I didn’t want to worry you, but I was already in the car when I called.”
“You’re with family now,” Doris said. “We’ll fix you up right as rain. I leave in the morning but that’s plenty of time.”
Hannah reached out her hand and Doris grasped it. “That’s okay,” Hannah said. “I’m glad I got a chance to see you.” She glanced around. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Boop said. She’d never have started this if she’d known Hannah would arrive and catch them. It was meant to be a subtle change. There would be no visual reminders of Clark in South Haven. It would be a safe place for Hannah to heal.
Hannah plucked a discarded scrap from the trash can. “What are you doing?” she yelled.
Boop grabbed the photo. “I’m not going to have photos of Clark around. You don’t need to see that.”
“These are my memories!”
“I told you we shouldn’t have done this,” Georgia said.
Boop narrowed her eyes and scowled at her best friend.
Hannah plucked out six pictures of Clark and held them like playing cards. “You can’t just throw him away. For God’s sake, bubbes, turn the frames facedown, put them in a drawer. Don’t decapitate him.”
“It was her idea,” Doris said.
Boop placed her hands on her hips. “Best one I had all day. How dare he abandon you and the baby like that.”
“He didn’t abandon the baby. He said he didn’t want to get engaged now.”
Boop slumped. She’d panicked. Overreacted. “You left that part out.”
“I didn’t think you were going to mastermind a photo slaughter in the time it took me to drive here.”
After a few beats of silence, Hannah covered her mouth with her hand and the photos, and chuckled. Nervous that she was misreading the situation again, Boop kept silent. Then Doris hiccupped and laughed, and Georgia downright cackled. Only then did Boop join in as she collected Clark bits from the rubbish bin and set him on the arm of the glider. Later they’d find a way to put all the pieces back together.
That evening, they gathered at the kitchen table for Chinese food from Delightful Buddha.
“How about a little soup?” Doris asked, pouring wonton soup from its carton into a small bowl for Hannah.
Georgia dumped five fortune cookies out of their waxy bag onto the table. Doris reached for one; Georgia shook her head. “Pregnant ladies pick first.”
Hannah chose a cookie and waited because she knew the rules; everyone has to have a cookie before anyone can crack hers open. Boop and Marvin had invented this rule with Stuart, and it stood now as part of Peck family lore.
“You pick, Boop,” Hannah said.
Boop reached for the cellophane packet farthest from her. “Your turn, Doris.”
Doris picked one, which left two for Georgia.
“When I say ‘three’ we open them,” Boop said. “One, two, three.”
Hannah laughed as they pulled open the packages. If a silly game of paper fate was what it took to make her smile, Boop was in.
“I’ll read mine
