Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  Kelly touched the fabric tentatively, as though expecting the dress to scream in pain. “What happened?”

  “Open door…” the owner was saying. “Always open…welcoming…arrival…another bride looking for something similar…brought this one out…display…open door…roaming cat…scratching post.”

  The world was spinning. “Don’t worry—I’ll fix it,” Kelly was already saying, even though it was the last thing she truly wanted to do. “Tailor…Fine…All fine.” She stripped the mannequin and carried the dress outside, laying it gently in her backseat.

  She placed a few calls, but it was late and no one was answering. She made a detour to the liquor store, where she bought a bottle of red before heading home.

  The cork popped and curse words began to spill as she paced, drinking straight from the bottle. She cursed February and Valentine’s Day and fragile lace. She cursed stray cats and open doors and clichés. And Amos. Mostly, she cursed Amos—because where was he when she was obviously in need of her miracle?

  She got louder as she got drunker. And then, because she was too drunk to be polite and grin and bear it and pretend that it really was okay that she wasn’t a fashion success, but here, in Finley, planning weddings with identical red cummerbunds and black tuxes and white dresses and updos, no personality or unique style about any of it, she grabbed a pair of scissors from her dusty basket of sewing supplies. And she cut Ashley’s dress.

  At first, a snip here and there. Followed by a round of giggles. But something happened to her with those initial cuts. She felt, somehow, that she had cut something else away, without meaning to—her disappointment, maybe. Her embarrassment. She had not returned to Finley a star. Snip. She had simply grabbed hold of a job, any job, without considering who she really was inside, what she really wanted to do. Snip.

  Kelly gathered her own old dress form and placed it in the center of her living room. She draped the dress on top of it. And she returned to cutting—purposefully, thoughtfully. She cut, creating something with each slice, just as she had once dreamed of creating something with thread. She continued to cut even as her wine wore off, as night slithered toward morning. Snip, snip, snip.

  She called Ashley, who raced to meet her. She was already crying the moment she threw open the door. But the tears stopped when she saw her dress, displayed on the form. It hadn’t been ruined at all—this was no emergency. The dress was beautiful; when she tried it on, the lace was not in tatters but redesigned; it moved, it flowed. Kelly had done it—not just saved the day, but given Ashley something that had personality, was unique—just like she’d always wanted her dress to be, but hadn’t known how to make it so. Hadn’t even known how to begin to ask for it.

  The compliments came that Sunday, first in gasps as Ashley walked the aisle, then later, in the banquet hall. Ashley danced—and Kelly laughed, her face brightening in a way that snagged Nathan’s attention as he hobbled toward the buffet.

  Once the clock edged toward midnight, another round of champagne bottles popped. Glasses were filled and coats draped across women’s bare shoulders as they all raced for the door. This was it, the last dregs of Valentine’s Day—the final moment to catch Amos and Finley together again. They all poured through the doors, into the park, ready to toast the reunion.

  The crowd quieted, waiting.

  Midnight arrived. And slipped by.

  Nothing—no sign of Amos. Or Finley.

  Slowly, the wedding guests began to murmur a round of next year, then turned, heading back inside. The party wasn’t over yet. Even if Amos and Finley had decided not to come.

  Nathan dragged his hobbling cast toward Kelly. “Never seen such a happy bride,” he said.

  “That dress could have been a disaster. But it worked out,” she beamed. Because the feeling of possibility had come back to her—there was a way, she’d begun to think, that this business of hers might just be the kind of accomplishment she’d hungered for after all. Maybe, she’d begun to suspect, there was a way to make it her own. That she could have her cake—and it would be delicious, like the one the bride and groom had cut into inside. It could fulfill her.

  “Almost a disaster, huh,” he repeated, his own previous February fiascoes running through his mind. He remembered, too, the surprising thought that had come to him as he’d sat in Founders Park—how he’d imagined his true love would be able to roll with the daily catastrophes.

  “You look better without the helmet,” Kelly said.

  “I’ve almost decided to trust February,” he admitted.

  She laughed, raising her glass. “To happier accidents from here on out.”

  Nathan raised his, too. But they both paused in that moment before the lips of their champagne flutes could touch.

  Because Michael was watching, giving them the thumbs-up. He’d predicted this—happy accidents, he’d said. The hairs, he’d promised, would stand on the backs of their necks. And here they were, eyes swelling and goose bumps spilling down their arms. A fall that had mangled a ring, an uninvited visitor that had destroyed a dress—hadn’t that been a kind of sweet serendipity that had made them open their fists, let go of their hurt, prepare to start again?

  “To happy accidents,” Nathan agreed.

  Their glasses clinked. And though neither of them would have admitted as much, not out loud, they both suspected that at the river’s edge, beneath a moon that had risen like the most celebratory of champagne bubbles, the bronze lips of Amos Hargrove were stretching into a proud smile.

  Dearest March…

  Do literary heroes ever walk straight off the page and into modern life?

  At fifty-five, Jo, the proprietor of Jo March Books: Depository for the New & Used, still clings to the idea of finding her very own Mr. Darcy, the star of her beloved Pride and Prejudice. When her ex-husband returns to town (at the same time gifts begin to appear from a “secret admirer,” no less), she begins to wonder if she pegged him all wrong…

  Wind didn’t trickle gently into Jo March Books: Depository for the New & Used the moment the front door flopped open—stampeded was more like it. Galloping and whipping its tail around, knocking over a display of hardbacks, scattering the price stickers on Jo’s front counter, and snapping a few of the posters taped to the walls like sheets on a clothesline.

  “Oops,” Mark Quigley muttered around the side of his sprinkle-laden ice cream cone. And chuckled somewhat nervously.

  Jo sighed. Of course it was Mark Quigley. Who else would make such an entrance, then slam the front door too loudly and leave giant muddy footprints across her recently mopped tile floor? Mark Quigley was also something of a force of nature: unapologetically noisy and brash and uncensored. He didn’t care that he laughed too loudly at the comic strips in the morning paper, his voice shaking the pyramids of espresso mugs inside the Cuppa coffee palace—no more than the thunder cared about how loudly it was booming and rattling your grandmother’s china. It never seemed to register with him that he might be making you uncomfortable, the way he was staring relentlessly at your table in the Corner Diner while he ate his own fried chicken special—no more than the sun ever stopped to notice that its glare was making you squint in a way that was giving you a headache.

  Jo leaped out from behind the counter, rushing to pick up the books before Mark. “I’ve got it,” she insisted. But he was already squatting, surely smearing his sticky ice cream across the merchandise.

  “There,” he announced, slamming the books into the display less than a second before she reached the front of the store. “Fixed.”

  In truth, he’d replaced the books in a haphazard manner, spines facing all different directions. Not that he seemed to notice. And that, too, was just so…Mark. There was something sort of faraway about him, something that made him seem a bit removed from the details of daily life. Jo often got the feeling that saying hello to him when they both happened to be on two different sides of the same pump at Gus’s Gas (she to top up her Ford Transit with “Jo Ma
rch Books” painted on the doors, he to fill his Jeep with the flimsy zippered doors) would only startle him out of a daydream. Or a deep thought—the kind of thought that sent him repeatedly scrambling after the tiny spiral notebook he kept in his shirt pocket. What he scribbled inside it was a mystery to her, though.

  No, Mark Quigley rarely noticed much—not his footprints on Jo’s floor or his own flopping shoelace or the fact that he’d just bumped into you, knocking your purse onto your foot. Once, Jo had seen him walk into a dog’s leash. Tripped right over it, not seeing the nylon cord stretched between the Golden Retriever and the owner with the pooper scooper until it was too late.

  She sighed. An odd smell was emanating from the burlap sack tossed across Mark’s shoulder. Earthy but sour, spoiled.

  “Can I get something for you?” Jo asked, mostly because she wanted to pull a book for him, keep the footprints from spreading and the neatly displayed books on the shelves.

  “Kites!” he shouted. “I need something on kites.”

  “Kites?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Mark asked, pointing toward the plate glass window, where the scalloped edges of Jo’s cloth awning whipped around and around, like a sea of double Dutch jump ropes.

  “You want something how-to?”

  “Whatever you’ve got.” He shrugged. “Long as it’s got plenty of pictures.”

  This, too, was no surprise. Mark Quigley, in addition to being a force of nature, was also quite childlike. Which Jo honestly could not understand. He’d always been quite smart in school. Not exactly genius material, but then again, who ever was, really? He’d been off to a such strong start, though—the kind of start that had him snagging a few science fair ribbons and nearly making it to state one year in a spelling bee. He’d gone to college. For more than one degree, if Jo’s memory served. But he had never, in the entirety of his fifty-plus years, ever had what Jo could have called a brag-able career. He had instead bounced from one part-time seasonal job to another: he sold Christmas trees starting in late November, and he plowed snow from the parking lots in January. He aerated lawns. Occasionally, he delivered The Finley Times. He opened fireworks tents in July.

  But it wasn’t just the string of silly jobs that made him seem excessively youthful, almost even strangely childlike to Jo. Mark also shaved only when it suited him. He often butted in on conversations taking place on the sidewalks of the Finley square, enthusiastically adding his two cents even when no one asked his opinion. His socks never matched. And—this was the most unbelievable part of all to Jo—he lived in a tree house. A literal tree house, in the midst of two giant side-by-side sycamores, on the outer edge of the Finley park, near the river.

  Jo had done all her growing up a long time ago—her pepper gray hair said as much. She, for one, had no interest in going back, reliving all the bumps and shocks and even disappointments that had stolen the deep walnut brown from her shoulder-length locks. Nor did she have any interest in letting her hairdresser dye it, no matter how she begged. Didn’t the shade of her hair make her look like she actually maybe had a clue? Unlike the giggly seventeen-year-olds currently spending Saturday afternoon with their noses in steamy romances, whispering to each other about “book boyfriends,” a concept that seemed about as juvenile to Jo as Mark’s kite plan.

  Oh, yes, Jo reminded herself. Kites. “I’ve got something. Hang on right there, will you?” she asked, pointing at the mud tracks.

  “Sorry,” Mark said. Suddenly seeming self-conscious, he pulled his burlap sack from his shoulder, hugged it to his chest in a way that tried to tuck it from view. “I was out at the community garden working today.”

  “It’s a little early for gardening, isn’t it? March?”

  “No! So much to do. Time to develop the soil content. Get the right mix of minerals. Nothing like some well-rotted manure…”

  Jo cringed. That was the smell.

  “Helps hold moisture. The manure, you know.”

  She was certain her face illustrated her disgust. But she was saved from the conversation when the door flew open again and in walked Norma Johnson, newest Finley citizen and current owner of the antique store next door. Jo sighed with relief. She adored Norma, who, in her mid-sixties, was a good six or seven chapters ahead of Jo in the novel of her life. Her bookmark was sitting closer to the back cover—but you would never know it based on the fast clip at which Norma moved through her days, the enthusiasm she had for her current chapter, and the way she seemed at peace with the giant pile of pages that had already come before, the way some of them had even started to yellow around the edges.

  Norma tossed her auburn hair from her eyes and waved a package. A present. In tissue paper, tied with red ribbon. “You have a secret admirer.”

  “Who?” Jo asked.

  “You,” Norma insisted. “A man left this at my store. He asked me to deliver it.”

  “To me?” Jo’s head was spinning. Her throat was dry and her heart felt like it had made a fist and was beating her up on the inside. Things like this didn’t happen to fifty-five-year-old women. She was past whistling and ogling. This didn’t make sense. And the nonsense of it put her instantly on-edge. Feeling like she needed to plant her feet, get ready to defend herself.

  “You are Jo March, aren’t you?” Norma showed off the gift tag, which read, “Dearest March…”

  What was this? No one called her March. Not by itself. When she was little, for a time, she’d been called Jo March, her first and middle names, in a way that sounded all smashed together: Jomarch. But never simply March. Did this person even know her? How could anyone in Finley not know her at this point? At least know of her? Know that this was the wrong name?

  “He wishes to remain anonymous. For now,” Norma added.

  Jo stared at the present as though she half-expected it to detonate in her hands.

  Mark blurted, “Go on. Open it. Let’s have a look. Surely you want to. Everyone likes presents.” And bit into his sugar cone.

  Jo shredded the tissue, finding an antique copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  This had to be a joke. But what was the punchline? What man her own age would play some secret admirer game?

  Emotions whipping around inside her every bit as violently as the wind outside, Jo raised her head. When she glanced through the plate glass window, she glimpsed a figure in a tweed jacket leaning against the old metal newspaper dispenser on the sidewalk. It was the lean she recognized—not the face, the coat, the hair. And her heart exploded. Even though it shouldn’t have. Even though the ink had long since dried on her divorce papers. Even though the tan line had completely disappeared from the ring finger of her left hand. Still—it exploded.

  Her secret admirer was her ex-husband.

  And even though her heart was acting like it belonged to those teenage girls in the romance section—even though her cheeks were hot and a “hello” had started to rise inside her throat, Jo’s feet remained rooted. All she could do was watch him turn and walk away.

  Inside the store, Mark cleared his throat loudly. Impatiently, it seemed.

  “Kites,” Jo said, tucking the antique volume under her arm, out of sight. “Yes. I have just the thing.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Mark’s voice bounced against the walls of his tree house with the same enthusiasm and excitement usually reserved only for children on playgrounds. But he always sounded this way when he Skyped with the university. Usually, by the time he was done, he’d been gesturing with his hands so wildly that giant greasy stripes and fingerprints were all over the screen of his laptop.

  Mark—Dr. Quigley, that was his official title, though he hated the somewhat pompous sound of it—was a botanist, a field researcher with the University of Missouri. Studying the various vegetative wonders that, quite frankly, never should have been able to grow in Finley, Missouri. Tropical flowers he’d still yet to fully catalog (including a stunning number of orchids seen primarily in Florida) popped up along the edge of the river that fl
owed from the ancient, long-closed mill. Grasses not native to Missouri curled down from the curbs.

  The plants had barely caused little more than a second glance from the rest of the residents. A few who had taken notice of any out-of-place bloom had shrugged, said the flowers and grasses had been brought over by wagon wheels spreading and dropping seeds a good hundred-plus years ago, when the town of Finley was in its infancy. Others said it was the work of a wedding planner who’d long been throwing flower seeds instead of rice during riverside nuptials. But Mark knew that none of those plants should have continued to grow—not here. Not year after year. They hadn’t anywhere else throughout the Midwest.

  His studies had even taken him to the town’s history museum—he’d held a magnifying lens to the images, scanned them into his computer and blown them up. Even a hundred-plus years ago, when Amos Hargrove, the founder of Finley, was still walking the roads through town, these out-of-place flowers were very much alive. Looking thick and lush and sturdy—as though they had even then long been growing. Mark found them in tintypes of weddings. In rare outdoors photographs.

  Mark occasionally thought of the yearly without-fail appearance of these plants in the same way one woman in town—Mrs. Clayton, wife of the county coroner—claimed to have been repeatedly visited by a ghost. As something that never should have happened, but did, clearly—her eyes certainly hadn’t failed her (and quite frankly, she often insisted, she should be the expert on such things, considering her husband’s position). Yes, Mark felt exactly the same way. As a botanist, he certainly wasn’t going around making any of this up. And as a botanist, the explanation continued to elude him. But he also knew that if he were to point to the blooms the same way Mrs. Clayton pointed to morning fog, insisting that sometimes, common things really were quite special and different if you only looked hard enough, no one would believe him. No one else in town would ever see the plants as he did. No one would ever think of them as really all that special or inexplicable or worthy of study. It wasn’t as though a bunch of palm trees had started popping up; coconuts didn’t drop onto their heads in the middle of a hard winter. And it wasn’t as though plants here all defied laws of science. Early frosts had ruined vegetable gardens in Finley, the same way they ruined tomato plants in St. Louis. Death arrived each fall, the cold autumn breath causing ferns to turn black on front porches.