A Day in June

by Marisa Labozzetta

  Ace Auto Repair

  Hank Wilson

  Baby’s Bar & Grill

  Jimmy Goulet

  Brackton Inn

  Terry Stewart

  Burns Accounting

  Rob Burns

  Cut Above Hair Salon

  Maisie Billings

  Chez Alexandre

  Alex Dubois

  Daffodil Inn

  Mark Goldman

  Dale’s Appliance Fix

  Dale Lapointe

  Boulanger Photography

  Eric Boulanger

  Heavenly Bakers

  Lisa Anderson

  High Spirits Shop

  Mother Twinkle

  Jazz Man DJ

  Richard Rinaldi

  Licks & Relics

  Danni Pritchard

  Pine Willow Realty

  Cary Clarkson

  Plantasia Florist

  Annie Chalis

  Trousseau Bridal Shop

  Fran Costantino

  After scanning the list, Eric asks Danni where the phone numbers and email addresses are.

  “The email addresses are in the email. I didn’t blind-copy them,” she tells him.

  “We should still have them written in the directory, along with phone numbers. Otherwise, Danni,” he says, lowering his voice, “what would be the point of the directory?”

  “Okay. I’ll send out a new one. Now that we’re all here,” Danni says, “I’d like to announce the results of the election of new board members for this year.” She proceeds to pronounce each name slowly and distinctly. “And all officers were reelected to their positions. They are: Eric Boulanger of Boulanger Photography, vice president; Annie Chalis of Plantasia Florist, treasurer; Lisa Anderson of Heavenly Bakers, secretary, and me, president.”

  “You have to state your name for the minutes,” the secretary says.

  “And Danni Pritchard, president,” she blurts out in one breath, looking at her as if to ask whether she’d made the correct response, but the secretary is focused on transcribing. “First on our agenda is the business of the Seniors’ Monthly Dinner. The Elks have offered to take over the job of hosting for this year, so we’re off the hook on that one. But if you remember, the Chamber voted to prepare the St. Patrick’s Day Feast. I’ll pass around a sign-up sheet, and I hope that many of you will be able to volunteer your time for the event. We need cooks and servers and a cleanup crew. The Grand Union in Rutland has offered to donate twenty-five pounds of corned beef and the paper goods. One of the farms will donate the cabbage, onions, potatoes, and carrots. The Chamber will contribute soft drinks from our budget, since Ray’s Country Market refused us again. I hope we can count on Heavenly Bakers for one or two large sheet cakes?”

  “I don’t think it’s fair that Heavenly is always the one to contribute the baked goods. What about Tea for Two Bakery in Putnam? They never contribute anything,” the treasurer and owner of Plantasia Florist says, continuing to work at some furry-looking piece of mint green wool with one circular knitting needle that puzzles Eric. Her defense of Heavenly Bakers also puzzles him, since everyone knows the two middle-aged businesswomen have been infamous rivals at everything since grade school.

  “I’ll look into it,” Eric says. “And I don’t think we should be so hard on Ray. We’re lucky he’s still open. How many of you do your big shop at Grand Union?”

  “How many of you do your big shop at Grand Union?” a familiar voice bellows, as though he hasn’t heard Eric. The owner of Burns Accounting has a habit of taking a joke, or suggestion, or significant point someone makes and repeating it much louder, so that it appears as though he initiated the comment.

  “Jeez. Can’t one of you girls bake something?” the mechanic asks, bypassing the comment about the depressed grocer.

  “I’ll make a cake. It’s no big deal,” the baker says, directing her statement to the hairdresser who has just stood up for her, as if to say: Don’t pretend you’re looking out for me.

  “Thank you.” Danni is relieved to have the matter of the cake settled. “The dinner will be in the basement of Saint Anne’s, as usual. That’s it for new business.” Danni lets out her unwarranted trademark giggle that irritates Eric no end. “And now Eric will report on how the Brackton Is for Brides Contest is coming along.”

  “Well, the committee has selected our couple. They’re from Boston—”

  “Boston! I thought we were trying to reach out to bigger fish, like New York,” someone says.

  “We couldn’t afford to advertise in the New York Times. The Globe gave us a deal.” Eric has told them this before.

  “Doesn’t the Times own the Globe?” another asks.

  “Not anymore. I think it’s owned by the Red Sox,” Danni says.

  “That’s impossible.” The mechanic has begun cleaning his fingernails with a pencil point.

  “The same guy owns both,” Eric informs him.

  “Whatever,” Danni mutters. “What about the online advertising? Why did we have to advertise in the paper at all?”

  “I linked our website to whatever wedding market sites I could find. And I ran it on Facebook and tweeted it once a week.”

  “Not enough,” the loudmouthed accountant says.

  “There’s such a thing as desensitizing, you know. If they saw it every day, they wouldn’t see it at all.” Eric is having trouble not fixating on the accountant’s inordinately large ears. He glances at those of the DJ sitting next to the accountant. The DJ is a big man, but his ears are normal and half the size of the accountant’s—ears that appear better suited for a donkey.

  “I disagree.”

  “Not everyone’s on Facebook,” Eric tells the accountant.

  “Everyone’s on Facebook,” he says.

  “How many of you are on Facebook?” Eric asks.

  Three hands besides those of the accountant and Eric go up.

  “There you have it. We haven’t decided which hotel will host the wedding yet.” Eric wants to get off the social network topic that’s creating anxiety on the part of the older members, who have no idea what he’s talking about. “Look, we’re done for this year. We can discuss advertising for next year’s contest in the fall. But we got a great couple. I hope you’ll all be happy. They’re gay.”

  “What?” The mechanic can’t believe his normal-sized ears.

  “At least we think they are.”

  “Couldn’t you find out?” the hairdresser asks, twirling a pen like a miniature baton. “Not that I care.”

  “That would be discriminatory,” Eric tells her.

  “So why do you think they’re gay?”

  “Their first names are both male, so we are just assuming,” Eric says. “Actually we’re thinking trans—he was a flower girl when he was little.”

  “Oh my God!” the mechanic bellows, still concentrating on at his fingernails.

  “Isn’t that stretching it a bit, Eric?” the baker asks.

  “I vote we find another couple.” The mechanic is adamant.

  “We’ve already notified them.” Eric is trying to keep his cool.

  The mechanic shifts in his seat. “This is supposed to bring business to Brackton, Eric. What the hell are you doin’, turnin’ this place into Provincetown?”

  “As far as I know, P-town does a pretty good tourism business, “ Eric snaps back. “Look, I think we’ve really got something here. We were the first state to adopt a same-sex civil-union law. Then what happened? Connecticut and Massachusetts—even Iowa—beat us to the punch by legalizing actual gay marriage. But now we can say not only that we’ve legalized gay marriage, but we actively stand behind what we preach by—”

  “By what? By making poster children out of this young couple? And I’m assuming they’re young.” That’s the heavy-set host of the Jazz Man show on the local public radio station out of Rutland, who also has his own DJ business and is the only openly gay man in the Brackton area to serve on a town committee.

  “I’m surpr
ised you feel that way,” Eric says.

  “Because I’m gay, Eric? That’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? We’re looking to be accepted as normal, not freaks. Face it. We legalized marriage because we have hardly any gays who’ve come out in this state.” He undoes the top leather button of his vintage brown cable-knit sweater, heat rising within it.

  “I know you’re hot on a gay couple, Eric,” the florist says, putting down her knitting needles. “But taking it for granted they’re gay just because of the name? Isn’t that wishful thinking? Someone could mistake a lot of our names for the opposite sex—Danni or Cary or Terry or Dale or—”

  “As far as I know, Oh Danny Boy has a y,” her antagonist, the baker, cuts her short. “Boys’ names don’t end in i.”

  “Thank you, Madam Secretary,” the florist says, then purses her lips.

  “On second thought, it’s probably a great idea. It’ll drive the governor—and Hank—crazy,” the DJ says, glaring at the mechanic.

  “Why do you always insinuate I’m homophobic?” the mechanic says, looking up from his nails.

  “Gentlemen, let’s not lose sight of our prime objective—making Brackton a destination for weddings. Revving up retail,” Eric says. “Go to Cape Cod and you’ll catch Lyme disease. Go to New York and get bitten by bedbugs. Go to Chicago and you might get shot. What’s better than a pure, wholesome small town in Vermont?”

  Eric couldn’t look at anyone when he uttered that last statement; he knew he was overdoing it about the other cities, and Vermont’s image of purity was a figment of the imaginations of lovers of the organic. As his mother always said, small towns have all the trouble any big city has—just in lower doses and secrecy.

  There is murmuring of consent with no disputing the need to drum up tourism in Brackton. Its main industry of construction—mostly roadwork and renovation projects—has fallen flat on its face over the last few years, and because of it their children are leaving and their population declining.

  “We’ve asked Ryan and Jason to come to Brackton early in February,” Eric says. “That should give the vendors who volunteered to be part of this venture adequate time to prepare their presentations. It will also leave enough time afterwards to work out the details of the wedding with the couple. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right.”

  “Or left,” someone says. A few laugh.

  “I think we’re off to an excellent start thanks to Eric,” Danni says, jumping in. “You have a question?” Danni recognizes the raised hand of Mother Twinkle, the owner of High Spirits Shop.

  “I’m new here and just getting to know you all and having trouble keeping you all straight.” She’s wearing green velvet slacks and a black velvet cape with gold trim. Her voice, in contrast, is harsh like the ribbit of a frog, leading Eric to believe she was a heavy smoker back in her heyday, and of as much tobacco as weed. Her cascading waist length white hair is also coarse and dry.

  “Just look at your list of members.” Danni holds up the sheet of paper.

  “I thought it would be easier to put a face to a name in a small town. That’s why I didn’t go to Bennington or Burlington,” Mother Twinkle says. “But I’m still finding it difficult—as though I were in some sort of Lope de Vega play, like Fuenteovejuna, where the entire town is functioning like a single character.” They stare at her, not having the slightest notion of what she’s talking about. “You know, like in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. No? Look, can we just take a moment for everyone to identify themselves so I can observe your auras and absorb you into my psyche?”

  The mechanic lets out a groan of disgust.

  “We’re a little short of time tonight, Mother Twinkle, but we’ll do a complete introduction at the beginning of each meeting until you, uh, absorb us. Won’t we, Danni?” Eric says.

  “All you gotta remember is Danni and Eric. They’re the principals here, as I see it. They run the show,” the vexed mechanic says.

  “When the couple meets with you participating vendors,” Eric says, “please try to give them some options so they’ll feel like this wedding is really theirs.”

  The board wants to know if the couple will have to choose between the Brackton Inn and the Daffodil House for the reception. It’s an awkward question for Eric to answer since the longtime owner of The Brackton Inn is sitting across from him. He knows the renovated Daffodil House is better suited to impress, but the owners are newcomers.

  “Why don’t we have the reception at one place and the rehearsal dinner and Sunday morning brunch at the other?” Danni suggests. “We can have equal number of guests stay at each inn and send the overflow to the smaller B and Bs and area motels.”

  “That can work,” someone says.

  “That can work!” the donkey-eared accountant says louder.

  Eric can’t help but marvel at Danni’s brilliant solution. They take a vote, and the Daffodil House has the majority for the reception and the Brackton Inn for the other two events. The owner of the Brackton Inn is not happy to play second fiddle to the Daffodil House as far as the reception is concerned but is relieved to be involved. Mother Twinkle suggests having an ice cream social for the couple when they arrive, with ice cream donated from Ben & Jerry’s.

  “Are you for real?” The mechanic jumps down her throat. “We got Danni’s ice cream. This is about getting people to Brackton, not the Ben and Jerry’s factory! Middlebury has the college; Stowe has the ski slopes; and Waterbury has frickin’ Ben & Jerry’s. Even Woodstock’s got that damn covered bridge. What the hell do we have? We got crapola, that’s what we got.”

  “Watch your mouth!” the hotheaded owner of Baby’s Bar & Grill says, pushing back his chair.

  “Oh, excuse me, I forgot. We got Baby’s Bar & Grill.” He raises his grease stained-hands as if to surrender to the restaurant’s proprietor, who responds by taking a step in the mechanic’s direction.

  “ All right, all right. Please. Forget the ice cream social, everyone, and let’s take a cleansing breath.” Mother Twinkle inhales and exhales. “We have a beautiful town nestled on the slopes of the Green Mountains, where a warm and gentle people await you, in the perfect setting for a couple in love to take their marriage vows and begin their lives together. That’s what we have.” She addresses the mechanic. “That’s what drew me here from Pittsburgh, and that’s exactly what I wrote in our new brochure, by the way. And that’s what we’ll be known for. Everyone will say Brackton is for brides.”

  “Straight to the dogs this town is going,” the cranky appliance repairman mutters, making a racket with his chair and cane, and tottering out of the building.

  * * *

  After the meeting, Eric heads over to his friend Michael’s house. Danni wanted to go over to Baby’s Bar & Grill for pizza and a drink so she could get him up to speed on the Friends of Brackton activity, but he said he was in a hurry and to please send him an email. He almost said he needed to check on his mother, but he didn’t like to lie—even little white lies gave him the uneasy feeling that his fabrication would one day come back to haunt him: in this case, his mother’s cancer might return.

  Yes, he was superstitious. In high school, he never washed his baseball jersey or cut his hair until the Grizzlies’ lost a game. Senior year, they went on to win the state championship, and Eric’s mother swore it was because no one could get close enough to him to tag him out at the plate, he stank so badly after losing only two games during their twenty-game season. She was surprised he almost never missed a ball in center field: “Even a ball wouldn’t want to get that close,” she liked to say. That was the year he broke the school record for stolen bases—a title he still held.

  Danni had been at all those games. And while baseball didn’t have cheerleaders, Danni, captain of the squad, had convinced her coach and the principal to let the girls cheer the boys on throughout the playoffs. It hadn’t been a hard sell: The five-town school system rallied around the boys’ success like bears to a honey pot,
since the Division II Grizzlies hadn’t had a baseball state championship in twenty-three years. They had gone to the playoffs Eric’s sophomore year but got knocked out in the first round. After the big win, however, there’d been a parade in downtown Brackton, led by a fire truck and a police car from each of the towns. Baby’s Bar & Grill, with its wide plank floors that reeked of stale spilled beer and its raw shiplap walls lined with rusted farm tools and nostalgic business signs, gave out free hamburgers and hot dogs and soda to the team for a week.

  It was at Baby’s on the night of the game, after Brackton’s town manager, flanked by the other towns’ managers and selectmen of the school district, had lauded the boys on their victory, that Eric committed his indiscretion. He’d been sitting in a booth with other players and riding high on adrenaline and a few beers a teammate’s older brother had secretly provided, when Danni Pritchard asked him for a ride home. Danni, who’d always worn too much makeup for Eric’s liking and whose large breasts and tight ass in a short but compact athletic body had compensated for her droopy eyes, wide mouth, and whiny voice, had never attracted Eric despite her obvious feelings for him since third grade. She wasn’t stupid by any means, but she was plagued with insecurities that made her appear stupid, which bothered Eric.

  She had changed out of her cheerleading uniform in the ladies’ room and into a pair of jeans, sandals, and a button-down fitted V-neck sweater that advertised her infamous melons loud and clear. She slithered into the pickup, smelling like the sexiest spice Eric had ever taken in. He turned to Danni and kissed her, propelled by all the ecstasy he felt having scored three out of the four runs in the winning game, buoyed by his hero’s welcome in the noisy darkness of a bar that now had one more excuse for a celebration, and prodded on by the raging hormones of a seventeen-year-old male. They sat for what must have been half an hour making out: tongues encircling each other; Danni’s breasts wriggling against his hard chest. He was bursting.