Juliet in August

by Dianne Warren

  “Shotgun,” shouts one of the twins when he sees that Shiloh isn’t in the car. He races to the street and yanks the passenger door open and gets in before his luck runs out and Shiloh appears to take control of the front seat. But then Martin says, “I’m older,” and tells him to get out and in the back, and he dutifully does.

  Vicki notices that Shiloh’s backpack is not in the car where he left it.

  “Darn him anyway,” she says. “Well, get in, kids, I guess we have to go looking for your brother. Funny thing, when the oldest gets to be the most trouble.”

  “Will Shiloh catch heck?” Daisy asks.

  “I’m not sure,” Vicki says. “Probably not. He’s likely walked over to Main Street. Although he should have said something.”

  They drive the few blocks to Main, and Vicki looks up and down but can’t see Shiloh. She angle-parks in front of the post office and tells the kids to stay in the car while she goes to collect the mail.

  The mailboxes are open at the back to the inner workings of the post office, and as soon as Vicki has her box open, Mrs. Bulin, the postmistress, says, “Hi, Vicki. How’s the day treating you so far?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she says, “I guess hell must be freezing over. They say it might rain.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Vicki says. “Doesn’t look much like rain.” She can’t see Mrs. Bulin, but she speaks to the voice. Mrs. Bulin talks to everyone who comes in for mail, but the whole town knows not to say too much back. Mrs. Bulin is approaching sixty-five and has expressed no interest in retiring. She likes her access to information too much, so the story goes.

  When Vicki leaves the post office with a phone bill and a bank statement she doesn’t care to open, she sees a middle-aged woman with red hair and green shoes talking to Martin through the car window.

  “Hello,” the woman says to Vicki when she sees her. “Your kids and I have been having quite the conversation here.”

  Just then they hear the sound of a cell phone ringtone coming from the open window of a truck piled high with furniture and packing boxes, and towing a trailer..

  “My phone,” she says. “Best answer that.” She gets in the truck and flips open her phone, but it looks as though she’s missed the call. She waves at Vicki and the kids as she pulls away. “Keep your eyes open for a gray horse,” she calls.

  “Well, that was a funny business,” Vicki says to Martin after the woman is gone. “What was she talking about?”

  “She lost her horse,” Martin says.

  “Pretty stupid,” Vicki says. “How do you lose a horse? And I don’t know why she’d be telling you.” She turns to look at the kids in the backseat and says, “What do you say we go buy Karla Norman a birthday cake?”

  They all cross the street to the grocery store, where Vicki goes to the bakery section to check out the cakes. There’s one devil’s food cake but it looks as though it’s been there for days. The chocolate icing is dry—the top of the cake resembles a bare field baked and cracking in the sun. She’d have to be desperate to buy Karla that cake, Vicki thinks, but then she sees it has a half-price sticker on it, so she buys it anyway. She pays with her debit card, holding her breath while the clerk rings in the sale, and it goes through. She should be getting her groceries and putting everything on one sale, but she has things to do and she doesn’t want the groceries to sit in the car on such a hot day. Blaine’s ham would be green by the time they got home.

  “Hey,” Daisy says when they get back outside. “There’s Shiloh.”

  Vicki looks in the direction Daisy is pointing and sure enough, there he is at the end of the street, heading for the railway tracks.

  “Good,” says Vicki. She reaches through the open car window and gives the horn a couple of blasts, but Shiloh doesn’t turn around and look. She hands the cake to Martin, who has positioned himself once again in the front seat.

  “All right,” she says. “Everyone in. We collect Shiloh, go for a quick swim, do our errands, and drop off the cake. Then home again, home again.”

  She looks at her watch.

  “What about Hank’s calves?” Daisy asks.

  “Oh my gosh, we forgot to tell someone about Hank’s calves. Okay. One stop to make a phone call, and then the swimming pool, and then home.”

  “Toot sweet, right?” says Lucille.

  “That’s right,” says Vicki, even though she knows it’s getting a bit late for toot sweet.

  Key Lime Pie

  Lynn Trass has found a recipe for key lime pie on the Internet. She likes to try new things, and key lime pie is something she and Hank discovered on a trip to Florida last winter. They’d started out thinking they would go to a lot of casinos, but they’d ended up going to a lot of restaurants, looking for key lime pie for Hank. In between tasting sessions, they visited Disney World, an alligator farm, and the Everglades swamp, which Hank was amazed to find resembles a tall-grass pasture, at least until you step in it and discover yourself knee-deep in swampy water. He’d been expecting a lush canopy of trees with huge trunks and moss hanging everywhere, but Lynn said he had Florida mixed up with Louisiana. He was also amazed at the tenacity of the mosquitoes, and concluded that maybe Saskatchewan in the winter isn’t such a bad place after all, because it’s mosquito-free.

  When Hank comes into the restaurant, he sees one of Lynn’s high school girls, Haley Barker, waiting tables. She’s wearing a skimpy little T-shirt that looks as though it shrunk in the wash and has a gold ring in her navel, which she absently plays with all the time, turning it round and round. A man can’t help but notice.

  “Hey there, Haley,” he says. “Getting ready for life in the big city?”

  “Not really,” Haley says.

  A few locals and a couple of truckers are having breakfast. He can smell the bacon. Lynn won’t let him eat bacon, for his own good, all the fat and nitrates.

  “Well, don’t get too smart to be useful up there in Saskatoon,” Hank says.

  He goes to the kitchen looking for Lynn, and finds her getting ready to cut one of a half dozen key lime pies into slices.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Hank asks.

  Lynn hands him a slice. “Let me know what you think,” she says. “Or rather, what your taste buds think. It’s low fat, but I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

  Hank takes the pie and sits on a chair in the kitchen so he can talk to Lynn while she works. Once he bites into the pie, though, he doesn’t want to talk. He closes his eyes and rolls the custard around on his tongue before he swallows it.

  “I guess it’s a hit, then,” Lynn says.

  “You’d better give me another piece, just so I can be sure.”

  Lynn slides another slice of pie onto his plate while Hank admires its lovely green color. In spite of his lack of sleep the night before, he couldn’t be happier, sitting here in Lynn’s kitchen, the promise of a new day all but guaranteed by a counter full of sweet and tangy green custard.

  “So what happened to you last night anyway?” she asks. “I thought you’d be home.”

  “Got as far as that campground just east,” Hank says. “Couldn’t quite make it the rest of the way.”

  Lynn knows he’s referring to his habit of falling asleep at the wheel. She often does the driving when they’re out late.

  “Did you get your trailer at least?” she asks.

  “Nope,” Hank says. “Rusted right through above the wheel wells. Tried to tell me he thought I was asking about a different trailer when he sent the pictures. I was none too happy, but what are you going to do? Turned around and came home.”

  When Hank has finished the second slice, Lynn tells him that’s all he can have, she wants to try it on someone other than him.

  “You’re the boss,” Hank says, and heads back into the restaurant to see who else has c
ome in for an early coffee or a late breakfast. As he’s about to go through the swinging door, he asks Lynn if she knows the end of the world is coming. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the yellow flyer that had stuck to his windshield, and holds it out to her, telling her about the flurry of paper in the parking lot.

  She gives it a quick read. “You know I don’t have much patience with fanaticism,” she says, and then wads it up and tosses it in the garbage. Haley comes through the door just then with an empty coffee pot and tells Hank he’d better get out of the way, she’s coming back through with a tray of clean cups.

  “Out of the kitchen,” Lynn says to Hank, and he goes into the restaurant and lets the door swing closed, and Lynn picks up another piece of paper that fell out of Hank’s pocket. The one that says Joni and gives a phone number.

  As Lynn stares at the name and number, she feels as though she’s having heart palpitations, or a stroke maybe. The big, loopy script and the little smiley face dotting the i jolt her back to a time—long ago now—when she spent hours of every day and night imagining Hank with girls who had flirty hair and makeup and names like Joni and Cindy and Louise. Hour upon hour with her imagination running away, picturing barrel racers and trick riders and girls who wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the other; waitresses and hairdressers and elementary school teachers. Hours of every day, jealous and miserable with not knowing for sure, and then knowing, absolutely, and then not knowing again, back and forth, the truth as elusive as a poltergeist. The sudden memory is so intense, she feels faint. She leans against the kitchen counter and thinks, The past never leaves you.

  When she and Hank were first married, Hank had a hard time with the idea of “forsaking all others,” mainly because several of his buddies were still living the bachelor life. When Lynn had become pregnant at twenty-two, she and Hank had a quick wedding, and not long after that, she’d heard the words from a distressed friend: I don’t want to tell you this, Lynn, but if it were me I’d want to know. According to the friend, Hank had spent the weekend with someone he’d met at a rodeo dance north of the river while Lynn thought he’d been at a cattle auction in Alberta. It had almost been the end of them, but Hank had admitted to the dalliance and had sworn that it was the only time—the only time, Lynn, I swear to God, and it meant nothing, it was just the stupid booze, an old habit. When their daughter Leanne was born, and a second girl, Dana, a year later, he’d turned into a responsible husband and father. He continued with the amateur rodeo circuit, but he was now introduced by the announcer as a family man, and the farm and his girls took priority over going down the road. Everyone but Lynn knew that. She couldn’t get the rodeo-dance girl out of her head. She’d never heard the girl’s name, but for years after, she’d looked for evidence, a scrap of paper hidden in a pocket, a name written on a matchbook cover, and her obsession had almost driven her crazy. Her doctor had even given her a prescription for antidepressants at one point, but she’d never filled it.

  And now here the name was, all these years later, having slipped from its hiding place in Hank’s pocket just as she had imagined it would. Joni. Lynn stares at the paper and feels the familiar old fear. Then she tells herself to smarten up, be realistic. Hank is no handsome young catch. He’s a man old enough to have two kids grown and gone, and gray hair—what’s left of it—and a bum hip. This is obviously the handwriting of a young woman, and what would a young woman be doing with Hank? She lets go of the counter and stands up straight. She folds the paper carefully, puts it in her apron pocket, and picks up three plates of key lime pie.

  “Coming through,” she says, and pushes the kitchen doors open with her shoulder and an expert swing of her body. She slaps one of the plates down in front of Willard Shoenfeld, who is sitting with Hank, and the other two she hands to a couple of her regular truckers.

  “On the house,” she says. “I’m considering adding it to the menu. Let me know what you think.”

  She watches Willard, who looks like he’s in heaven as he savors each bite.

  “Not too bad, eh?” Hank says.

  “What do you call this?” Willard asks.

  “Key lime pie,” Lynn says. “After limes that grow in Florida. Keys are islands, like the Florida Keys.”

  “Pretty swanky,” Willard says.

  “I suppose,” Lynn says. “For this place, anyway.”

  As she stands there, her mind keeps wandering to the paper in her pocket, and the added fact that Hank had not come home with a trailer. Maybe he had never gone to look at one; the trailer was just a story. She forces herself to think about something else. Willard Shoenfeld. What kind of life do he and his sister-in-law have out there at the drive-in, anyway? Such a strange arrangement. Marian is a nice enough woman, although she’s quiet, like Willard, and keeps to herself. People used to say she was a communist when she first moved here, but Lynn always thought that was just silly gossip because Ed was constantly talking about Russia. A woman communist would have to be serious, like that Emma Goldman, and a serious communist would not bother with a place like Juliet.

  Willard finishes his pie and lays his fork down.

  “Delicious,” he announces.

  Lynn checks in with the truckers, and they each give the pie two thumbs-up.

  “All right, then,” she says. “Starting tomorrow, it’s on the menu and you’ll have to pay for it.”

  As she heads back to the kitchen, Lynn is reminded that sometimes younger women are attracted to older men. She had worked with a girl named Lois when she was just out of high school. Lois always went for men old enough to be her father. One night Lois had talked Lynn into going to a party with her in a neighboring town, and everyone there had been twice her age. The experience had given her some insight about Lois; she, being the youngest and prettiest at the party, had been the star as far as the men were concerned. She was rewriting high school, Lynn thought, with herself as the femme fatale. Lois eventually married one of her older men, an oil tycoon of some kind, and he died not long after and left her a lot of money. His family, especially his ex-wife, was furious.

  When Lynn passes through the swinging door, she sees that Haley is in the kitchen, fingering her belly ring and staring at the dirty coffee cups on the counter.

  “They’re not going to wash themselves,” Lynn says.

  “I guess not,” Haley says. Still, she doesn’t make a move to begin the ritual of rinsing and washing that Lynn is very strict about.

  “Chop, chop,” Lynn says, clapping her hands together, and Haley finally steps up to the sink and dons a pair of purple rubber gloves.

  “God, these things are hideous,” she says, staring at her gloved hands.

  “Well, Vogue magazine isn’t going to come through the door and snap any pictures, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  The pies are cooled enough now to go into the fridge, and Lynn gets out the plastic wrap. She says to Haley, “So what do you think of older men, anyway?”

  “Huh?” asks Haley.

  “Older men. You know, Hank’s age. Would you ever date a man that age?”

  Haley turns to Lynn with a look of horror on her face. “As old as Hank?” she croaks.

  “Oh, never mind,” Lynn says. “Just get those dishes done before the coffee rush.”

  She wraps the pies and puts them in the cooler, tells Haley to speed things up, and goes back into the restaurant. She stands with her hands on her hips, staring at Hank and Willard, and then she says, “Excuse me.”

  Hank thinks this is a little odd—the way she said excuse me for no reason that he can see. “I guess so,” he says. He watches Lynn leave the restaurant and go to the little vestibule that separates it from the Petro-Can station and the convenience store. It looks as though she’s heading for the pay phone but he can’t really see, and he soon goes back to his conversation with Willard about how the Interne
t is a mixed blessing, which is way over Willard’s head since he’s never been on the Internet in his life and doesn’t plan to be.

  Lynn rummages in her apron pocket for a quarter and the paper with the phone number on it. She stands with her back to the glass door leading into the restaurant so no one can see her dial the number. She’s not even sure why she’s doing this. When a female voice says hello, she immediately hangs up. She stays by the phone for a minute, thinking, and then goes back into the restaurant.

  Hank looks at her as she passes his table, but she ignores him and gives one of the swinging doors a good hard kick. It flies open and she steps through, and then he hears her raise her voice with Haley, something about the dishes.

  Hank has been planning to follow her into the kitchen to see if he can talk her into one more slice of pie before he goes to work, but he changes his mind. The phone by the till rings. Once, twice, Lynn’s angry voice again, and Haley comes hurrying through the door to answer it, shedding the purple gloves to pick up the receiver. It’s apparently for her, because she says, “I can’t talk now.” She fiddles with her belly button ring as she listens to whoever is on the phone.

  Lynn sticks her head through the door and sees Haley on the phone and says, “That had better not be a personal call.” Lynn makes all her girls turn their cell phones off, except when they’re on their breaks.

  “I have to go,” Haley says, and hangs up. The kitchen door swings shut, and immediately the phone rings again. Haley looks as though she’s afraid to answer it and lets it ring, but then Lynn’s voice comes from the kitchen: “Someone please answer the phone.”