Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  “Here she is, ladies!” Natalie chirped. “Our beautiful bride.”

  They turned to look at Jane. Edith-Louise blinked rapidly as though a fan were blowing in her face, and Jane’s mother paused with a potato chip raised halfway to her mouth.

  “It’s pink,” Jane’s mother announced, and took a bite of her chip.

  “The color is called blush,” Jane said, stepping onto the little circular platform in front of the mirrors. The platform was covered in tufted white velvet and stained with the sweat of a thousand anxious bridal feet. She looked at her reflection in the mirrored walls. She turned slightly from side to side, but the view did not improve. The ruffled straps on her shoulders stood out like epaulets.

  “I think it’s lovely,” Edith-Louise said softly. “So—so distinctive and fanciful.”

  Jane’s mother rustled her chip bag. “It looks like you put it through the wash with a red sock.”

  “Oh, no,” Natalie protested, kneeling to fuss with the hem of the dress. “Blush is one of our most popular colors. Hardly anyone goes for plain old white anymore.”

  “Actually, it’s a very Victorian, old-fashioned notion that brides must wear white,” Edith-Louise said in her gentle voice. “Modern brides can choose to wear any color.”

  Jane knew that Edith-Louise meant this as only the most general comment on fashion and nothing whatsoever to do with virginity, but Jane’s mother cackled and poked Edith-Louise with her elbow. “Listen to you, you dirty bird!”

  A small silence descended then, like an invisible cloth dropping down from the ceiling.

  Edith-Louise gazed at her lap, seemingly suddenly absorbed by the slender taper of her own fingers. She examined her cuticles.

  Jane knew with certainty that Edith-Louise was thinking ahead, that she was looking down a long dim corridor at all the future meals and holidays that might include Jane’s mother, and feeling a black, despairing sort of dread.

  * * *

  —

  From the bridal store, they drove to meet Luke and his father, Raymond, for lunch at the golf course. The inside of the Civic had heated up like a toaster oven, and the air conditioner warbled noisily, making conversation difficult and Jane very relieved.

  Evidently, Luke and Raymond had both forgotten to bring sport coats because they were standing in the lobby of the restaurant wearing bright plaid blazers that must have come from the club’s community closet. They looked like a pair of sweaty used-car salesmen, and yet Jane and Edith-Louise both greeted them with glad cries and soft kisses—Jane suspected she and Edith-Louise were both just so happy to see someone who wasn’t Jane’s mother.

  Raymond leaned forward to kiss Jane’s cheek, and she introduced him to her mother.

  Jane had tried very hard to feel fond of Luke’s father, but two things made this difficult. The first was that Raymond looked so much like an older, dissipated, bloated, sun-blotched version of Luke. It took no imagination to see—less than no imagination! You had to actively suppress your imagination to avoid it—how Luke’s lean face would spread and become jowly, how his strawberry-blond hair would fade and recede, how his pale blue eyes would grow watery under crepey lids, how his freckles would multiply and run together until his skin looked like sandblasted granite. Jane found it difficult to look at Raymond without feeling as though the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was standing beside him, smirking.

  Still, she took his arm as they followed the hostess to their table. “How was your morning, Raymond?”

  “Not bad at all,” he said. “I’m pleased that greens fees have only risen by seven percent since last year. I honestly believe the current economy will force the industry to provide affordable golf for everyone.”

  This was the second thing that made it hard to love Raymond: he talked about finance all the time.

  “Dad, I’m not sure Jane cares about that,” Luke said, forcing Jane to say, “Oh, no, I’m very interested.”

  The hostess led them to a round table near a window overlooking the golf course. Beyond the careful green fairways, Lake Michigan heaved like a large blue dinosaur. What would it be like to run across the golf course and throw yourself into the waves? Just to keep swimming and not come back?

  Jane sat between Luke and Raymond. Luke draped his arm over the back of her chair, and Jane looked over at him gratefully.

  “How was your morning?” he asked quietly.

  She smiled. “Let’s just say I’m glad it’s over. Although I’m starting to wish we’d eloped.”

  “Tomorrow it will all be worth it,” Luke said, squeezing her shoulder. He smiled at Jane’s mother. “Now, Phyllis, tell me, what are you going to order?”

  “I’m not sure.” Jane’s mother was holding the menu at arm’s length. “I do believe I’ve grown lactose intolerant. If I so much as look at a piece of quiche these days, I get the most terrible upset stomach.”

  Jane sighed. She turned to speak to Raymond and found him eyeing her in the manner of someone wondering what he could possibly find to talk about. (That made two of them.)

  “Oh, hey,” he said suddenly, looking relieved. He must have thought of something. “Where are you two going on your honeymoon?”

  Jane smiled. “We’re going to Banff,” she said. “I’ve never been—”

  “Excellent choice!” Raymond said. “The Canadian dollar is so weak now. Do you know why that is?”

  “No,” Jane said. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Terrible national deficit.” Raymond shook his head. “Also, oil prices are low.”

  “Oh,” Jane said. She made herself start again. “Oh, well, that’s lucky for us, I guess.”

  “Edith-Louise and I went to Corinth on our honeymoon.” Raymond’s voice had taken on an expansive tone. “Of course, the Greek economy is hopeless, always has been and always will be. The Greeks’ problem is that they don’t produce anything except olives. They just have no place in the world market. But I think it’s also a cultural thing, like our neighbors—honey, what’s the name of those people down the block? The Greeks?”

  “The Korbas,” Edith-Louise said with the slightly weary voice of a longtime detail supplier.

  “Yes, the Korbas,” Raymond said to Jane. “Now, these people have lived in Massachusetts for twenty years, and yet they plant strawberries in late July! Total insanity. They have to know the growing season is less than a hundred and fifty days, and yet there they are every July, sometimes August, planting strawberries way past the time most people have their strawberries picked and eaten. I said to Edith-Louise, ‘That right there is indicative of what’s wrong with the Greek economy.’ ”

  “That’s a remarkable story,” Jane said, but now it was she who thought of the future, the lunches and dinners and drinks, and she who despaired.

  * * *

  —

  As the day wore on, Jane’s every thought seemed to start with Oh, why.

  Oh, why hadn’t she packed for the honeymoon? Oh, why hadn’t she gotten a manicure? Oh, why hadn’t she broken in these stupid shoes? (Her toes were pinched cruelly, and her heels were rubbed raw. It felt as though her feet were no longer feet but fleshy bags filled with gravel.) Oh, why hadn’t she written a check for the caterer? Oh, why hadn’t she finalized the seating chart? Oh, why, oh, why couldn’t she have a different mother?

  And why, she thought as the Civic bounced along the dirt road—the air conditioner now spitting water and wheezing heavily—hadn’t she chosen to have the reception at the country club or a restaurant where the staff would do everything for her? Why choose this stupid barn in the countryside?

  The answer was a sentimental one: Jane and Luke had gotten engaged there. They had come one October night to see a five-piece string band called the Soulful Mittens, and they had brought Freida with them because Freida tended to get jealous and bothered if Jane we
nt to concerts without her. In the middle of the band’s last number, Luke had taken Jane’s hand and kissed her palm. Then he slipped something cool and smooth onto her finger: an engagement ring.

  Jane remembered so clearly walking out the barn’s double doors into the moonlit dooryard, marveling that she’d entered the same doors earlier as a single person and now she was exiting them as an engaged woman. Her new ring had sparkled when she held out her hand, and Luke smiled at her. “Will you?” he asked.

  Jane laughed. “It seems I will.”

  Freida was so excited and happy for them that she bounced slightly up and down on the back seat of the car all the way home. Jane loved that Luke had included Freida in their engagement. She loved the ring, with its lacy gold filigree and rough diamond. She loved the Soulful Mittens. She loved Luke. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d never been properly proposed to, that she’d been somehow…gotten around. But surely it was uncharitable to think that.

  Now Jane turned the car into the small gravel parking lot outside the barn and bumped over a pothole. The car rocked wildly, and Jane’s mother spat a breath mint onto the dashboard with a startled woofing sound.

  “Sorry,” Jane said for Edith-Louise’s benefit.

  “Whoa.” Jane’s mother leaned forward to retrieve the mint. “Nearly jolted my spine right through my head.”

  Jane put the car in park and switched off the ignition. It seemed to her, for a long moment, that she couldn’t speak.

  “Here we are,” she said at last. Her voice sounded faint and small.

  They climbed out of the car, and Jane unstuck her shirt from her back. The wind puffed a breath of hot air at them.

  Like her wedding dress, the barn seemed to have undergone some changes since Jane had last seen it, and not for the better. Or maybe Jane had seen it before only at night. Then it had been starlit and pastoral, the open barn doorway glowing like a golden rectangle. Here, now, soaked in the bright afternoon sunlight, the barn had a dilapidated look, the red paint faded clean away in places to reveal weathered gray planks. The double doors were propped open on sagging hinges. The ground was baked hardpan with only forlorn tufts of grass scattered here and there like spiky green hedgehogs.

  Jane’s mother moved the breath mint from one side of her mouth to the other. “Looks like there ought to be diseased chickens running around,” she said finally.

  Jane waited for Edith-Louise to politely disagree, to say the barn was lovely and rustic and charming, but Edith-Louise remained silent. Perhaps she agreed with Jane’s mother’s assessment, or perhaps she was too tired to take up the lance and shield of her gracious commentary. Jane couldn’t blame her.

  “Let’s go to the office,” Jane said. “And ask where we should put the centerpieces.”

  They walked across the hard dirt yard to a small clapboard building the size and shape of a tollbooth. A handwritten note on the door read: Concert in progress! Please join us in the barn!

  Jane’s mother squinted at the sign. “ ‘Concert in—’ ”

  “We can all read, Mom,” Jane said impatiently. She sighed and lifted her hair off her neck with one hand. “I guess we’d better go to the barn. It’s too hot to wait in the car.”

  They crossed the yard again and entered the shadowy, stuffy barn. Inside, Jane was relieved to see that fairy lights and paper lanterns had been hung from the rafters. Pushed against the back wall were trestle tables and wooden folding chairs and white linen still in the plastic laundry packaging. Apparently, her wedding reception really was going to happen.

  At the front of the barn, more wooden chairs had been set up in a semicircle around the wooden platform stage where the concert was taking place, although Jane could not help thinking that “concert” may have been overstating things. Five sleepy-looking audience members—one of whom was presumably the office manager—were fanning themselves with folded-up programs while onstage a bearded man played a steel drum and a woman strummed a decrepit-looking lute and sang. The woman was in her fifties, with a waterfall of long black hair pulled back in a high ponytail, and overplucked eyebrows that gave her a startled expression. She looked like an insane flamenco dancer. Jane knew her, by sight at least, because the woman also worked at the dollar store, and she knew the man, too, because he sometimes worked shifts as a cashier at Glen’s. (Was every resident of Boyne City moonlighting? It was like living on the set of some underfunded community theater that didn’t have the budget for enough actors.)

  Jane and her mother and Edith-Louise slipped into three empty seats in the second row just as the insane flamenco woman was winding down the final chorus of “If I Had a Hammer.”

  “It’s a song about—love!” she sang out choppily, strumming. “Between—my brothers and my sisters—and my sisters—and my other sisters—and these—new people! Hello!”

  Jane looked up, startled at the change in the lyrics, and realized that the flamenco woman was actually singing directly at them. (Evidently the bearded man was startled, too; he hit the steel pan with his drumstick and then had to silence it with his hand.)

  Jane smiled self-consciously, but her mother waved like someone hailing a taxi in a rainstorm. “Hello yourself!” she called.

  “Welcome, friends!” the flamenco dancer said. She shielded her eyes to look at them, which Jane thought was pretentious considering there wasn’t actually a spotlight. “Do you have any requests?”

  “Oooh, yes!” Jane’s mother said happily. “Do you know ‘The Ballad of Eskimo Nell’?” (She had a love of bawdy songs.)

  The bearded man frowned. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”

  Jane’s mother was unembarrassed. Jane had, in fact, never known her mother to be embarrassed about anything. Jane had gone through life having to feel it for both of them. “What about something by Jimmy Buffett?”

  “Any particular song?” the man asked.

  “I’m flexible,” Jane’s mother answered magnanimously. “Whatever you two decide on is fine by me.”

  The man and the flamenco dancer consulted briefly and then started playing “Come Monday.”

  Jane settled back in her chair and started making a mental checklist. She needed to figure out that something-old-something-new business. Her dress was new, so that was okay, and she had some pretty vintage opal earrings, so old was taken care of, too. She supposed she could borrow a blue mandolin pick from Freida and slip it into her shoe, although wasn’t it supposed to be a penny you slipped into your shoe? And what if Freida didn’t have a blue pick, or more likely, wouldn’t let Jane borrow it? (Freida was fussy about other people handling her musical instruments.) What about blue flowers? Maybe they would have cornflowers at the farmers’ market. God, why hadn’t she planned all this months ago? You would almost think she didn’t want to get married.

  Familiar chords caught Jane’s attention and she stared up at the stage.

  “Patsy Cline!” Jane’s mother exclaimed.

  Jane’s mother had always loved Patsy Cline. Jane had done her homework at the kitchen table most nights while her mother made dinner and played Patsy Cline cassettes on the tape deck that rested on the kitchen shelf. To this day, Jane could not look at the periodic table without hearing piano chords and careful phrasing.

  The bearded man beat the drums, and the flamenco woman strummed. She smiled widely while she sang, which made her look even crazier. She sang so slowly that it made Jane’s throat ache.

  He loves me, too, his love is true.

  Why can’t he be you?

  “ ‘Youuuuu?’ ” Jane’s mother sang along joyfully. Glancing at Jane, she broke off abruptly. “Goodness, what ails you? You look like you’re about to cry.”

  “Nothing,” Jane said irritably. She stood up. “I think the concert’s over. Wake Edith-Louise and let’s get the centerpieces. I’ll meet you at the car.”
>
  * * *

  —

  Back at Jane’s house, the sun beat down on their shoulders like the blows of soft, hot hammers as they crossed the driveway. Jane’s feet felt almost too heavy to lift as she trudged slowly up the porch stairs to her house, with her mother and Edith-Louise behind her.

  “That lunch was delicious but now my skirt feels too tight,” her mother said.

  Jane paused with her key in the lock. She suddenly felt she might start screaming if she had to endure another minute—another second—of conversation. She needed some quiet time or she couldn’t survive. It was as simple as that.

  When she felt this way in the classroom, she clapped her hands and said, “One, two, three! Eyes on me!” and ordered all the students to fold their hands together on top of their desks. Then she would play Healing Sounds of Nature on the portable CD player until everyone’s heads began swaying in time to the ocean waves. (When Mr. Robicheaux in the classroom next door wanted quiet time, he just turned up the thermostat, forcing all his students into a state of helpless lethargy. It was very effective, though frowned upon by the principal.)

  Sadly, Jane didn’t feel she could use either method on her mother and Edith-Louise, so she did the next best thing. As soon as she unlocked the door, she waved them both toward the living room. “Please have a seat,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of iced tea. She sliced an elderly lemon and arranged the wedges on a saucer. She emptied a whole sleeve of Oreos into a cereal bowl, balanced everything on a tray, and carried it into the living room.

  “Now, I noticed Luke had the grilled vegetable ciabatta for lunch,” her mother was saying. “He’s not one of those vegetarian idiots, is he?”