I shook my head. “What happened? Why didn’t you stay?”
An eyebrow arched. “You mean other than the pervasive smell of urine and black gunk that came out in a Kleenex whenever I blew my nose?”
I made a face. “Okay, so it wasn’t your thing.”
His laugh was easy, his eyes lost in memory. “I found a job easy enough. The money wasn’t bad, and my boss was always freaking out about my ‘small-town work ethic.’ ” He made ironic air quotes with his hands. “I just never caught the bug, I guess. I made a few friends, and I liked being near Lake Michigan. But I realized all I wanted to do was head to the lake. Walk past the skyscrapers, past all the crowds and the gray and the stuff, good and bad, that made Chicago a city, and get myself to the wide open of the lake, even when it was frigid outside.” He stopped when a plump woman wearing an embroidered magenta top hurried up to our table. Tucker stood, towering over the woman, and enveloped her in an affectionate hug while she clucked about how tall he was. They turned to me.
“Gracie, I’d like you to meet Beatriz Molina, the woman behind all the good food you’ve inhaled tonight.”
I winced at inhaled but couldn’t deny the truth behind the word. I stuck out my hand to shake. “So great to meet you, Ms. Molina,” I gushed, feeling a little like I was meeting a celebrity chef at the newest craze in Tribeca. “Everything was absolutely delicious.”
“Gracias, hija,” Beatriz said, holding my hand with one of hers while her other arm still draped Tucker’s waist. “It is an honor to meet you, nena. Tucker only brings his favorite girls to La Condesa.” She spoke with pride, and I stifled a giggle as Tucker frowned.
“Right, only the favorites,” he mumbled, his cheeks reddening. “And so I think we’re ready for the check,” he said more loudly.
Beatriz smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes.” She patted Tucker on the cheek and said, “But this dinner is my treat. Thank you for coming. We all loved how you enjoyed the food.” She smiled at me and nodded toward a row of servers who had gathered along the wall. They waved and grinned, and Tucker laughed.
“I guess you’ve had an audience. You were pretty loud.”
I sighed. “I’m still getting used to the idea that people actually care about what you’re doing around here.” I scooted out of the booth.
“Thank you,” Tucker said, kissing Beatriz on the cheek and taking the carry-out container that held Gigi’s tacos. Beatriz hugged me before she left, waving the servers back to work since the show was over.
“Let’s go,” Tucker said as he opened his arm for me to go first. “I want to show you something. And that mixtape is calling my name.”
I shook my head at him, at where I was in that moment. He turned to leave but not before tucking a very large bill under his plate, quickly so no one would notice. The amount was far too much for our dinner and then some. He walked ahead to get the door and I looked long at the bill on the table, remembering how one of the guys I dated in New York used to drop big cash tips on tables as we were leaving but how he always seemed to catch the eye of the server before we were out the door, nodding as he or she practically curtsied with gratitude. I walked toward Tucker and through the door he held, but my thoughts lingered on his quiet generosity, struck by how the very same act could be so different.
I inhaled a shaky, cold breath as Tucker opened the passenger door of his truck. Warm air and a heated seat met me as I settled in. I turned to Tucker, who had climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Seat warmers and a remote start,” I said. “With a cassette deck.”
He was already doing a very not-smooth car dance to A-ha. “Just goes to prove money really can buy happiness.” He reached for a falsetto “take on me,” and he failed.
I turned down the volume on the stereo a bit. “I want the rest of the story. You were standing on the banks of Lake Michigan.”
Tucker drove us through the quiet residential streets heading out of town. “Right. So the day I realized I’d organized my entire workday around taking a quick lunch and riding two lines of the L to get to the lake so I could glimpse it before heading back to work for the afternoon, I knew I was done. Handed in my notice and was back in Silver Creek three days later.”
We rode in silence, and I watched the town fall away and the still-indigo sky form a perfect dome above us. I knew the restlessness Tucker was talking about, though I didn’t tell him about it, about how, throughout my years in New York, I would develop a sudden and urgent need to walk through Central Park, in all kinds of weather. How, on certain days, the crowded sky above me, littered with buildings and steel and windows and glass, felt like it was closing in and I had to stop on the sidewalk and breathe hungrily until the feeling passed. I assumed these impulses were stress, signs of working too hard or too long. Hearing Tucker’s account of his time in Chicago made me wonder if they were instead a suppressed longing for the wide-open spaces of home.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m showing you why I left Chicago,” he said quietly. “So what about you? Tell me about your decade.” He took his eyes briefly off the road and glanced at me.
I must have looked pained, because he nudged my arm with his elbow. “Hey,” he said softly. “You can say as much or as little as you want. No pressure here. Old friends, right?”
I felt a tightness in my chest, the idea of being friends with Tucker a new and disorienting concept. I sighed and made myself relax into the seat. I looked out the window, seeing a few stars start to appear above the horizon. “I really love New York,” I said, “even with all its crazy and nonstop energy and insane rent. It’s a great place. And it’s the place I’ve wanted to prove myself since long before I left Iowa.”
Tucker nodded. “I do remember something like that.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “And your mark out there isn’t over yet. I’m pretty sure of that.”
It was such a small thing, such a tiny, smooth, precious gem of a gift that he gave me with those words. “Thank you,” I said as we rolled to a stop. I turned fully toward him. “Tuck, you’re a good man. You know that?”
He unbuckled and put one hand on the door handle. I could see his cheeks getting splotchy even in the dimness of the dashboard lights.
“I mean it,” I said, anxious to say words that needed to be said. “I know how you’ve taken care of Gigi’s friends when they’ve needed it.”
He glanced at me, wary. “I’ve hardly done a thing.”
I laughed softly. “Really? Because it sounds to me like you’re the on-call maintenance man for the over-seventy set.” I watched his face. “They’re very grateful.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not charity.” His voice was edged with a pride affronted.
“I know,” I said quickly. “It’s kindness. But it’s not just the ladies. I know how you’ve helped your uncle Sal when he’s needed it, how you’ve made it possible for him to keep his farm when he couldn’t do it alone.”
“He’s my uncle and the only dad I’ve had for years,” Tucker said. He pulled on a ball cap wedged under the center console and busied himself tightening and loosening the back. “And it’s not ‘helping.’ That makes him sound weak.”
“Well, he is,” I said, not backing down. “And you’re a good man to help him in his weakness without making him feel small. And here’s another thing: you treat Gigi like gold, and I appreciate it.” My voice caught and I clamped my mouth shut.
Tucker gave me a sideways glance. “How do you know about all this? I thought you cut ties.”
I rolled my eyes, in part as an effort to keep them from filling. “I know stuff. I’m very much in tune with the goings-on of Silver Creek, Iowa.”
“So Gigi had a few things to say during the flea market.”
I frowned. “Maybe.” Then, smiling, “She told me about Sal years ago, but I didn’t know about the handyman work until you showed up today with her latest request.”
He looked at me then, long and full. It had bee
n a really long time since I’d felt studied by a man, not just taken in or evaluated or wanted, but studied. I forced myself to stay still.
He slapped the steering wheel with both hands, making me jump. “All right. Things are getting a little stuffy in here, don’t you think?”
I sputtered a response but he wasn’t listening. He’d opened his door and jumped out, walked away from the truck. After a beat he looked back at me. “Come see.”
I followed him, the cool night air was nippy, coaxing a shiver to break through from me. Tucker took off his jacket without a word and helped me shrug into it. I kept my hands cocooned within his long sleeves and followed him as he walked.
“This is my newest project. Watch your step.” He offered a hand to help me navigate over a pile of two-by-fours. “We’re building a farmhouse, one that looks like the ones our great-grandparents built but tricked out with all-modern everything. Good, clean lines, floors finished with wood from an old barn just torn down east of town, big, soaring windows that will take in sunsets from floor to ceiling.” He was talking fast, gesturing to where each room would land. “A spacious farmhouse kitchen here, light-filled, south-facing, with enough room for a big table and lots of family and friends.” He stopped, lost in imagining the space as it would be, not the empty acres before us.
I said nothing as he led me around the site, pointing out progress here, a roadblock there. We circled back to the truck and he pulled several blankets from within the cab. He spread them on the bed of his truck and offered me a hand to climb up. He took the lead and sat down on the blankets, back against the cab and face toward the sky. I stood awkwardly, uncertain of where I was to go.
“Good grief, Kleren,” he finally said. “You coming down here or what? The stars are a lot easier to see if you’re actually looking up.” He patted the space beside him. “No funny business. I promise.” He grinned and I sank to my knees, still nervous to be so close.
Get a grip, I thought. It’s just Tucker.
I sat next to him, leaning my side into him slightly for warmth. Trying to keep the mood friendly, I asked again the question I’d tried once before.
“So . . . who’s the ‘sort of’?”
“Excuse me?” he asked, laughter around his eyes.
“When I asked if you were single you said, ‘Sort of.’ Old friends should know this about each other.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding slowly. He let out a long breath before continuing. “It should be such a simple question.”
I felt my heart dip, like a buoy getting pulled under a wave. I willed it back up. “What’s her name?”
“Natalie,” he said softly. “It’s still new. We met a few months ago. Set up,” he said, giving me a sideways glance. “Not by Gigi.”
“Thank goodness. I’d hate for her to start thinking this was some sort of calling,” I said, noticing abruptly that I was bouncing my leg and making the truck move. I threw on a smile. “What’s she like?”
He paused before answering. “She’s smart. Kind. Generous.”
“Pretty?” I was trying so hard to sound platonic, it was taking all my concentration. These were new waters for me and Tucker, and I was working like mad to keep him from knowing how choppy they felt.
“Yes.” He sounded sure. “She’s pretty.”
I paused before saying, “She sounds like quite a catch.”
He looked at me quickly, then away. “You’re right. She does sound that way.”
Falling silent, we drank in the hush of the surrounding fields. We watched the stars, more than I’d seen in years, cluttering the sky with an extravagance fit for the showroom of Tiffany’s. The blue-black backdrop filled my vision, from horizon to horizon, and we watched, transfixed, as the moon rose. If only New York had this.
“It’s so beautiful,” I said quietly. “I never would have said that before, but it’s true. You live in a beautiful place.”
I sneaked a peek at him out of the corner of my eye. This Natalie was a lucky girl. Tucker sat in silence, eyes on the sky. After a long while, he said gruffly, “I’m glad you’re here, Gracie.”
I said nothing but nodded, assuming, correctly, I thought, that even across years and experience and heartache, he knew I was glad too.
ten
I leaned against the closed front door for a moment, the only light in the house filtering in from the porch light. The quiet darkness of the house contrasted sharply with the sound of Tucker’s truck pulling away. I closed my eyes, trying to process the swing of emotions from an unexpected evening. So many things were the same about Tucker: his slow laugh, his wry asides, the way he made me feel as if we were just joining a conversation that had been in progress long before we’d found each other.
I tugged off my shoes and laid them soundlessly on the wood floor of the foyer. A small lamp on the kitchen counter illuminated a path from me to it, and I padded quietly through the living room, doing my best to dodge the disaster Gigi and I had created earlier in the day. I stumbled a bit and dropped hard onto the couch, still thinking about Tuck.
But there were so many ways he was different. For one, he was broader. His hands were hardened from years of working with tools. His jaw was speckled with a stubble that threatened to become a full beard if left ungroomed. But he also spoke like a man who had found his own way, like a person who was entirely sure that life would bring hard things but that he would be able to navigate them. He talked about the bedrock of faith, a subject we used to deftly avoid after my parents died. Tucker made faith sound like something very close, practical, daily, and I envied his assuredness, though the God he described didn’t sound like the one I’d known.
And yet I could see hesitation in Tucker’s eyes at times, how he looked away abruptly when we inched toward a discussion of his personal life, how he’d said good-bye in his truck as if we were former teammates on the basketball team instead of each other’s first hard and breathless crush.
I didn’t blame him, I thought as my eyes adjusted to the darkness in Gigi’s house. I was in no position to consider anything but polite friendship either. I had one foot dangling in Iowa and the other firmly planted back in New York. There was too much water under too many crumbling bridges with me and Tucker. And anyway, I reminded myself, he was seeing someone else. As he should be. Still, I wondered if there was anything we could do or if our history would always just be something we had to step carefully around when we were in the same room.
We got some good practice tonight, I thought as I settled into the couch. I smiled, thinking of Gigi’s ridiculous plan and how, while it was not what she’d hoped for, it wasn’t the disaster I’d feared either.
I closed my eyes, auditioning for sleep, but knew I was nowhere near tired. In fact, I felt the opposite. Wired. Ready to go. Or do. My eyes flew open and I reached for the lamp on the end table closest to me.
Picking up the dress I’d just been using as a pillow, I felt the fabric, a heart-stopping orange silk that fell through my hands like liquid. I worked quickly, my hands sure of the design that fabric was meant to have. A much lower V for the neckline, a higher waistband in a narrow, fabric-covered line, long layers for the skirt. I hand stitched the layers into gentle waves of fabric, humming to myself as I envisioned how the dress would move.
Finished, I shimmied out of my jeans and T-shirt, barely glancing to see if the living room curtains were drawn and not caring that they weren’t. No one in Silver Creek was up at one thirty in the morning, and if they were, they were about to see a ridiculously beautiful dress.
The fabric fell just as I wanted, and I caught my reflection in a mottled farmhouse mirror propped near the fireplace. The dress was stunning. The color was unique and fresh, and the silk felt like total indulgence against my skin. I removed the dress carefully, laid it out on the one empty chair, and picked up my next victim.
I clicked to publish the last dress and slumped into the couch, now empty of dresses and calling my name for a long, heavy sleep. A full mo
on suffused silvery light into the living room, and I tossed my phone onto the nearest stack of finished garments.
They were gorgeous, and I was exhausted.
The fabrics had dictated the designs, and I shook my head again, surprised at how inescapable the process had felt. The exuberant, geometric print was screaming to be a minidress, boatneckline here, V-neckline there, this one with embroidered trim, that one finished with a belt to bring the eye to a slender waist. The deep yellow silk, a cousin to the orange, was now a light and airy pantsuit with spaghetti straps and perfectly wide pant legs that would make a woman feel glamorous and comfortable with every step. One of my very favorite reincarnations was a floor-length maxi dress that would be equally at home as a day dress at the farmers’ market and dressed up for a summer’s night out. I’d posted that dress last on Etsy before falling onto the couch in a heap.
We’ll see if anyone else thinks they’re as beautiful as I do, I thought as I felt myself hurtling toward sleep. I had nothing to lose. I was blissfully close to oblivion, my aching shoulders and hands so tired that Gigi’s living room might as well have been a cave.
I didn’t know how long I’d been dozing when I heard a ping from my cell phone. I ignored it. It pinged again, and I knew it wouldn’t stop until I silenced it. Sadly, that action would require me to move.
I sighed loudly, eyes still heavy with sleep, and swept my arm along the couch cushions until I found the location of the pinging. I blinked hard, doing my best to focus on the screen. I blinked again, hard, to verify the message and make sure I was, in fact, awake.
“Etsy Alert!” the screen read, right next to a miniature image of the maxi dress. “Your first item has sold! Way to go!”
I laughed out loud, still staring at my phone. One sold. I checked the clock on my phone and saw only a few hours had passed since I’d put the dress up for sale and fallen asleep. One already sold! One dress, at least, given the blessing of a stranger who saw its beauty and said yes. I laughed again, hope filling me in a way I hadn’t known in weeks.
Heart Land Page 9