So now on Tuesdays, while Jane and Duncan had cocktails with Aggie and Freida and Mr. Hutchinson, the girls and Jimmy and Gary played Life. Neither Jimmy nor Patrice managed money very well—Patrice cared only about landing on the child-acquiring squares, filling the little plastic car with blue and pink pegs until it overflowed and peg children lay scattered along the roadside. Glenn played like the mini-mogul she was, accumulating degrees and salaries and insurance and stocks. Gary played suspiciously, squinting at the board and hesitating before spinning the wheel. If the square he landed on read Volunteer at Charity Sports Event, Gary would say, “But I don’t like sports.” If the square read Win Nobel Prize, Collect $100,000, Gary would ask, “What did I win it for? Was it physics?” If the square read Get Married, Gary would say, “But I’m already married.” This made Jimmy and the girls laugh uncontrollably, and they always begged Gary to play. “It’s so funny when he pretends it’s real,” Glenn said. Jane was not so sure he was pretending, but it did make Taco Tuesday easier.
That Tuesday, everyone wanted to go to Kilwins to see Raelynne.
“We can’t all go together!” Jimmy said in dismay. “She’ll think I never had a girlfriend before!”
Jimmy never had had a girlfriend before; it would indeed drive that point home if they all went there together in a big excited group. They debated it for a while and decided that Jane and Duncan and Aggie would go. Jimmy and Gary and the girls would play Life while Freida played the mandolin and Mr. Hutchinson kept an eye on dinner.
“We won’t be but thirty minutes,” Aggie said to him. “All you need to do is stir the gravy continuously, nice sort of medium-hard strokes.”
That showed Jane how momentous this was, that Aggie was willing to relinquish gravy control. She and Aggie and Duncan drove to town in Jane’s station wagon and parked just outside Kilwins.
“Freida wants us to bring back a pint of Chocolate Caramel Cashew,” Jane said. “It’s Mr. Hutchinson’s favorite.”
“I thought Mr. Hutchinson’s favorite was Rum Raisin,” Duncan said, “seeing as how he has such a sophisticated palate and all.”
“Well, whatever flavor, we have to get it to go,” Aggie said. “I don’t want you all ruining your appetites.”
Into Kilwins they went. It was crowded, as usual, with the ice cream line doubling back on itself, and the air so heavy with the smell of sugar that it seemed to shimmer. They got in line, but it was a few minutes until they got close enough to see the scoopers behind the counter and read the nametags they wore.
Jane had pictured the girl that Jimmy liked as just that—a girl. A girl would be perfect for Jimmy, even though he was fifty-four. Maybe one of the college kids Kilwins hired in the summer, a girl with long blond hair and a shy smile, maybe plump with dimples. But the woman whose nametag read raelynne turned out to be whippet-thin and in her forties. She had russet-colored ringlets pulled back in a ponytail, and her facial features—enormous eyes, high cheekbones, full mouth, arched brows—were as voluptuous as ripe strawberries, as exaggerated as a clown’s. She wasn’t at all pretty, or wait—was she extremely pretty? Jane couldn’t decide. Raelynne seemed to be one of those women who flip between beautiful and ugly like a coin falling through the air, flashing heads and tails. It all depended on the angle.
But what most surprised Jane was Raelynne’s, well, roughness. Her hair was coarse and unruly, her eyes were sharp, her arms corded with muscle. This was what Jimmy longed for? Jane supposed she would feel the same blend of surprise and disapproval fifteen years from now when Glenn brought home a long-haired biker or a married college professor.
She and Duncan and Aggie stared at Raelynne from their place in the line. Aggie clutched Jane’s elbow, and Jane knew why. As always, when meeting an unfamiliar woman, the crucial question arose: Had Duncan slept with her?
Duncan looked at Raelynne and stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “She’s not from around here,” he said at last.
Jane and Aggie exchanged glances. That didn’t mean he hadn’t slept with her, only that he didn’t recognize her. (If he’d slept with her—if he’d known he’d slept with her—he would have said, “Well, dang.”)
When they got up to the counter and Raelynne asked him what he’d like, Duncan said craftily, “What flavor do you think I like?” And Raelynne said, her voice raspy but not unfriendly, “I don’t give a rat’s butt what flavor you like, but you better order because there are folks behind you,” which was sort of shocking but did seem to indicate that she didn’t recognize him either.
Raelynne was cheerfully, almost brutally efficient, assembling their order while barking at someone in the back room to bring more sugar cones and calling over to the candy counter that she needed more rainbow sprinkles now. She rung them up at the cash register and counted back the change with a machine-gun sort of rapidity. “Thank you and have a good night,” she said, already turning to the next customer.
Almost before they knew it, they were back out on the sidewalk in the sultry night air with a paper bag full of outrageously expensive cartons of ice cream. Duncan said that Raelynne looked like the type who would respond well to flowers you bought at the farmers’ market but said you picked yourself, and Aggie said that Jimmy should order an ice cream soda next time to make him seem like a more discerning customer, and Jane said nothing at all because her chest was too constricted with hope for Jimmy.
* * *
—
That was on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Jane and Aggie and Freida had a three-way conference call to pool their knowledge about Raelynne. It reminded Jane of when her class had a group meeting to discuss what they wanted to learn about land mammals.
Freida and Mr. Hutchinson had been to Kilwins earlier in the day for a Raelynne viewing, and Freida said Raelynne made her think of “The Maid with the Bonny Brown Hair,” but something in her voice made Jane suspect that Freida had been surprised by Raelynne, too. Freida had also called Kilwins using an unnecessary French accent and asked who the new assistant manager was, so they knew Raelynne’s last name was Collins. Aggie had pulled Raelynne’s rental agreement, so they knew that she lived in a mobile home in Lakeview Village. Gary had actually stirred himself over at State Farm to look up Raelynne’s credit rating, so they knew she was forty-seven and had a Sam’s Club membership (a store Gary disapproved of).
All this, they decided, was good, even the Sam’s Club thing. But how could they know for sure that Raelynne didn’t have a boyfriend?
“We need to stake out her house and see who comes and goes,” Freida said. “But I have back-to-back piano lessons tomorrow.”
“Jane and I will go,” Aggie said. “I don’t have any morning appointments.”
She didn’t ask whether Jane had any morning plans, but Jane didn’t protest. Sometimes with Aggie it was easier not to resist.
Aggie picked Jane and the girls up at nine the next morning.
“This is so exciting,” Glenn said, bouncing slightly in her seat. “Like a movie.”
“Where are we going again?” Patrice asked. (It took her a while to wake up in the morning.)
“To see Jimmy’s girlfriend, stupid,” Glenn said.
“Mommy!”
“No names, Glenn,” Jane said, while Aggie took a corner so fast that it felt like the car was on two wheels. In no time at all, they were parked just down the street from Raelynne’s mobile home—a neat little beige house with brown trim. A battered blue Dodge hatchback was parked in front.
“I’m hungry,” Patrice said.
Aggie looked concerned. “I do hope you girls aren’t getting crumbs back there.”
“We’re not eating anything,” Patrice said. “That’s why I’m hungry.”
Aggie took a paper cup of coffee from the cup holder, removed the lid, and blew on it while she told Jane how much Raelynne paid in rent and that garbage pickup was included
and that there was a summer cookout on Resident Appreciation Day.
“Now I’m starving,” Patrice said.
Aggie frowned at her in the rearview mirror. “What did you have for breakfast?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?” Glenn scoffed. “That was like half an hour ago.”
“So what did I have?” Patrice asked her.
“A blueberry Pop-Tart, same as me.”
“Was it good?” Patrice sounded intrigued. “Did I like it?”
“Jane, dear,” Aggie started. “You must see to it that the girls get better nutrition—”
Just then, Raelynne came out of her house, wearing pink sweatpants cut off at the knees and a turquoise tank top. She wore not a single speck of makeup, and yet Jane could still see her eyelashes from the car. She was carrying two bags of trash, and her biceps stood out like halves of tennis balls. She plunked the bags down at the curb and went back in her house.
Aggie started the car. “I guess she’s single, all right. Only women living alone take out the trash themselves.”
Such unstable beliefs they clung to.
* * *
—
So now all Jimmy had to do was call Raelynne and ask her out. They knew Raelynne’s phone number from the rental agreement.
“I can’t do that,” Jimmy said, sitting at the breakfast bar with Duncan that evening while Jane made meatloaf for dinner. The girls were playing croquet in the backyard. They were squabbling, but below the parental-interference threshold.
“Sure you can,” Duncan said. “If she asks where you got her number, just say you have a friend at the phone company.”
“No, I mean, I really can’t do it,” Jimmy said. “I know I’d get a pain in my throat like I’d swallowed a chicken bone, and I wouldn’t be able to talk, and she’d say hello a bunch of times and then hang up, and I still wouldn’t have said anything, and for a long time afterward, I’d think about it and kind of moan, even if I was all alone.”
Oh, to know yourself as well as Jimmy did! And people said he was slow learning.
“We’ll practice,” Duncan said. “Jane, go out on the porch and pretend to be Raelynne. We’ll call you shortly.”
“It’s no good to practice.” Jimmy sighed morosely. “I just can’t do it. I’m not you, Duncan. I can’t go around asking all and sundry out on a date.”
“The secret is to cast a wide net,” Duncan said, “and then you don’t take rejection so personally.”
Jane sighed as she shaped the meatloaf. Duncan had indeed cast a wide net, and she had swum willingly—eagerly—into it, and now she remained caught there with Aggie and pretty much every other female resident of Boyne City.
Jimmy shook his head. “I only want Raelynne.”
“Well, okay, how about this,” Duncan said. “How about you go into Kilwins late, just before closing, and offer to help her clean up? Then you’ll have stuff to talk about, like where to put the chairs and the extra gallons of ice cream, and at the end you ask her to go see a movie or something.”
“Aw, Kilwins is always busy,” Jimmy said. “The only way I could ever, ever ask her out was if we was all alone and no one else could hear and it was dark so she couldn’t see my face.”
“Okay,” Duncan said. “Then we’ll make that happen.”
* * *
—
Naturally, it was Aggie who thought of the solution. During dinner that night—were they all going to have to eat together every other night until Jimmy asked Raelynne out? Jane thought it might be possible—she said, “It’s no problem at all. I’ll have a dinner party and invite her and Jimmy will be my spare man.”
“What’s a spare man?” Jimmy asked.
“When you have a dinner party where you don’t have an even number of men and women attending,” Aggie told him, “the hostess invites a spare man, a male friend who happens to be handsome, charming, and sophisticated.”
Jimmy looked overwhelmed. “I think you’d better invite someone else.”
“Nonsense,” Aggie said. “You’ll do absolutely fine. And my house isn’t far from Raelynne’s, so afterward, you can walk her home.”
“How are you going to invite her, though?” Duncan asked. “Just go to Kilwins and say, ‘I’ll have the mocha chip, please, and come on over to my house on Saturday’?”
Gary looked up from his plate, agitated. “I don’t like ice cream with chips in it.”
Aggie ignored him. “No, Duncan,” she said coolly. “I’m going to call Kilwins and say that I want to hand out miniature tubs of ice cream at an open house. I’ll schedule an appointment to come in and discuss pricing, and I’ll get to know Raelynne then and invite her.”
“Are you?” Gary asked.
Aggie frowned. “Am I what?”
“Giving away ice creams at your open house.”
“Oh, no,” Aggie said. “I’m not even having an open house.”
“Well, who’s going to eat all the ice creams?”
“No one. I’ll say I’ve decided against it.”
“Can you make sure none of the ice creams have chips?”
“Gary, there aren’t going to be any ice creams.”
“Also, no pie flavors,” Gary said. “I find that bewildering. Is it pie or is it ice cream?”
“I still don’t see how you’re just going to invite Raelynne out of the blue,” Duncan said.
Aggie lifted her chin a little. “You just leave it to me.”
And she called Jane the very next day to say it was all set.
* * *
—
They had never planned anything so carefully. Aggie debated menus endlessly with Jane and finally called her on Thursday to say she had narrowed the main course down to three options: charred chicken with sweet potatoes and oranges, seared scallops with brown butter, or pork chops with fig and grape agrodolce.
“The scallops sound delicious,” Jane said.
Immediately, Aggie said, “I believe I’ll do the pork chops. Also, I forgot to say anything to Raelynne about the dress code, so I think some of us should dress up and some of us should dress down so she doesn’t feel out of place.”
“Okay,” Jane said.
“Now, obviously it’s most important that Jimmy looks his best,” Aggie said. “So please see to it that he wears clean khakis, and I believe Duncan has a very nice linen shirt with a Cuban collar—perhaps he would lend that to Jimmy.”
“I’m sure he would,” Jane said.
“I think Duncan should wear dress pants and a plain white button-down shirt,” Aggie continued. “I dislike it so when he wears cargo pants. And now you, Jane—don’t you have a very sweet denim dress?”
“Well, chambray, yes,” Jane said.
“Please wear that,” Aggie said, “so that if Raelynne wears denim, she won’t feel she’s the only working-class person present. She should realize that not all of us are glamorous and sophisticated.”
This was what Jane got for being friends with Aggie.
“I have to go,” she said. “I have something in the oven.”
She hung up, and Glenn glanced up from the kitchen table, where she and Patrice were coloring with crayons. “You don’t have anything in the oven,” Glenn said. “You were lying.”
Patrice looked at Jane worriedly.
“I wasn’t really lying,” Jane said. “I’m about to bake a cake, and if I don’t put it in the oven now, it won’t be ready before you guys have to go to bed, so that’s why I sort of exaggerated and told Aggie it was already baking.”
“Oh,” Glenn said.
Jane thought that Glenn was on the verge of being able to see through explanations like that, and though it would make life more difficult, Jane was secretly pleased. (Patrice would probably go on believing
everything Jane said until age thirty.) Jane knew it was irrational, but sometimes she worried that she and Duncan would be unable to raise anyone past the intellectual age of seven. They hadn’t done very well with Jimmy.
“What kind of cake?” Patrice asked.
“What kind of cake would you like?” Jane asked, resigned now to baking.
“Strawberry,” Patrice said.
So Jane made a strawberry layer cake, and she let Patrice and Glenn frost it, and they all had some for dessert. The girls took their cake out to sit on the porch swing while Jimmy and Duncan sat with Jane at the table.
Jimmy was nervous, licking his finger and picking crumbs off the table. “What if Raelynne doesn’t want me to walk her home?”
“Oh, I’m sure she will,” Jane said. “Aggie will say something like, ‘Jimmy, please walk Raelynne home,’ and Raelynne will say, ‘That would be very nice, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.’ ”
“And then what do I say?”
“You say ‘It’s no trouble at all.’ ”
“Say, ‘It would be my pleasure,’ ” Duncan suggested.
Jimmy looked unconvinced. “But what do I say when we get to her house?”
“Just say ‘I’d like to see you again,’ or ‘Maybe we could watch a movie sometime,’ ” Duncan said. “Be polite and respectful, just like you are at work.”
Jimmy shook his head. “At work I never say anything but that you’re not there and I don’t know when you’re coming back.”
“On the phone, yes, maybe so,” Duncan conceded. “But I’ve heard you be mighty polite to customers. You always say hello and compliment people’s choice of furniture and thank them for stopping by. Just pretend Raelynne’s a customer and say, ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you,’ and ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ and ‘Maybe we can have coffee and discuss this.’ ”
Early Morning Riser Page 27