He straightened his back and stretched, watching Wendy and Zachary wiggle like monkeys. She seemed to have recovered from the shock of their parents’ rift.
A girl he didn’t recognize stopped in front of him, folding slender arms across her chest. “I’m not sure James Brown would approve,” she said. “Shout on the accordion?”
He laughed. “Probably rocking and rolling in his grave.” He leaned back, appraising her. Not someone he knew but familiar. A high school friend, forgotten all these years?
“She’s good. Your girlfriend.” She arched her eyebrows toward Audri who wriggled next to Lenny on the dance floor.
“I just met her tonight. She is good.” He stood up. This girl wasn’t from around here. She must be one of the college students. She had boyishly short blond hair, accentuating her dark eyes. She wore a tight pink t-shirt and low-slung jeans that fit well. She had a sweet smile. It’d been awhile since he thought that about any woman. He blurted, “You want to dance?”
She took him by the hand into the crowd, closed her eyes and began to dance. Watching her he felt the beat of the music and let himself relax. He wasn’t performing now, just a dancer on the floor. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Who was she?
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Halfway through a song by Nirvana he introduced himself. She only nodded, with a mysterious twitch of an eyebrow. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Her squint was cold. For a moment she stopped dancing. He had the impression she was going to walk away. She looked away and began moving with the beat again. When the song ended he almost asked her again but thought better of it. She didn’t walk off, just stood there, her cheeks pink, her upper lip damp. She dug her fists into her back pockets. He felt tongue-tied. He wasn’t used to meeting women. He felt fifteen again, again.
“Nice evening,” he said lamely.
“Cooler than some.” Before he could think up a reply she turned to him. “Do you think your friend will make a good mayor?”
“Um, yeah. He’s got new ideas, and stuff.” Think, man. “The mayor has been in office too long anyway. It’s time for some new blood.”
“He seems very energetic.”
Lenny was talking to some of the teenagers, waving his arms around like an Italian. “We went to high school together. But he came back after college.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No. I mean, I like Red Vine and all. It’s a nice town.”
“Not too many jobs, I bet,” she said. He nodded. “Where did you go to college?”
“In the Twin Cities,” he said, making it vague as always. He wasn’t ashamed of his technical degree, but it was nothing to brag about. “You?”
“Illinois.”
“Oh, you’re here with the bee study then?”
She squinted at him again. Her lips tightened into a frown. Had he met her and didn’t remember? Was she playing him? He didn’t like the coy act. Just say your name. It reminded him of Cuppie, of hypocrites and liars.
“I cut my hair.” She touched the back of her neck and rolled her eyes up at the tent roof before saying in a whispery voice, “The Queen Bee, at your service.”
Jonny took a step back. Now he could see. The girl with the black pigtails and hat. She’d cut her hair. No cargo pants. The same tiny mouth, he’d just never seen it turned up before. And her eyes looked bigger, sparkly. That college girl who sneered at him, who was plain unpleasant. Who called the cops.
“Oh. Sure. I didn’t—” He felt himself backing away from her. He tried to keep his expression neutral but he felt his jaw drop. He looked around for Lenny, for somebody, but they had all drifted away. He was trapped. “Sorry. What’s your name again? Your real name.”
She wiped her bangs off her forehead. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, turning away. He’d never seen her out of those baggie pants and lug boots. She looked good from the back.
“Wait. It’s Isabel, right? Sorry, come on—” But she kept walking, out into the starlight. The crowd closed behind her.
“Who was that?” Lenny appeared, also watching her backside disappear through the crowd, humming appreciatively.
“That, my friend, is the Queen Bee.”
“But she has black hair.”
“Had.” He clapped Lenny on the back. “Great party, man. If all these people vote, you’re going to slaughter Norm. Thanks for bringing Audri. She rocks.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” Lenny sighed, searching for Audri in the crowd. The music had begun and Audri was dancing with a high school jock. “She’s not into me.”
Everybody had love troubles.
“What’s going on at your house? Your parents splitting the sheets?”
Jonny shrugged. “Drama. Lots of drama.”
——
Isabel walked at the edge of the dark woods back into town. Scents rose from the forest floor, piney and deep with moss and mushrooms. Off to the right, between wild roses and sumacs and cattails, the lake stretched black as ink, rippled with stars.
She kicked the rocks on the road, glad she’d walked instead of driving back with Terry and Kate. She’d had enough driving today, back from Chicago through pastures and pig farms, along streams and maple woods. Time to think about her family, about what she was doing here in back-of-beyond, about her dissertation. But apparently she needed even more time to figure out what was what in her life.
The reaction from the students— about her new hair, new clothes, and ditching them for a day— more than made up for the time lost. She smiled now, still enjoying Alison’s shriek of envy at her sandals, how the girls pawed through her new stuff, demanding to know what was happening in the city. It was fun to shock people, to make them wonder who she really was. If she’d known it would be this much fun she might have done it earlier.
Fun. She would never have used the word in relation to ‘field study’ or any of the last six or seven summers of her life. She’d always worked, sometimes three jobs, until she took off for Europe last fall. Even in Barcelona she worked when she could, waitressing and picking up customers as an off-the-books tour guide. Neither was fun. Was she changing, or was it just a new hairdo?
She had talked to Jonny, grabbed his hand. Danced! Would the old Isabel do that?
The Elks Lodge loomed ahead, every blade of over-fertilized grass standing at attention, silvery blue, like a rolling ocean. A car slowed next to her. The guy running for mayor poked his elbow out the car window. The black singer sat beside him, head back on the seat, eyes closed.
“Give you a lift back to the Rainy Days?” Lenny asked.
“No thanks. I’m enjoying the clear skies for a change.”
“Oh, ha. Funny.” He hit the gas. They roared off, red lights streaking across the dirt.
A joke. Just trying to be light and fluffy. She was bad at it, obviously. Should she practice telling jokes, risking humiliation until someone got her humor? It would be cool to make people laugh, to be somebody who knew how to charm. She thought about Jonny, how he got it right off that she was teasing him about James Brown.
Only when he didn’t know who you were. When he realized she was the same jackass he knew from the motel, the person who’d been rude about the accordion, who had called the police on his squeeze box, well, she’d seen that look in a man’s eyes before. Still, it hurt, because he seemed different.
She shook herself, willing away the pain. She would be gone in a month and never see him again. Maybe he was just surprised. Jumping to conclusions, just how things progressed with Alec and Luis. No, she made him step back and say, whoa. Be realistic, Iz. Those other boyfriends? Silly infatuations.
She plunged her hands into her pockets. Be rational. You’re an academic. She was just alone out here (not lonely, that assumed she was looking for somebody and she wasn’t) and he— he smelled good.
That was all.
——
The house was quiet when Jonny got home, lights off. On the porch he stopped to listen. No
t a peep from the thespians, hysterical or otherwise. Friends, spouses, and offspring had moved on.
He sat down on the stoop. Would his parents divorce? Was the small-town bliss myth finally bust? Well, he had bust it wide open himself. Didn’t his parents have the right to be happy? Hadn’t he told his mother that he was in charge of his own love life? He owed them the same respect.
In the sky, the stars swept over the lake with a twist of sugary cloud. Cicadas sang in the trees. Margaret’s roses released perfume. Like most places Red Vine was full of secret heartache and false cheer. Keep an even keel, an unfurrowed brow. Never speak an ill word. No one wants to hear about your problems. You don’t want to hear about theirs. You have all you can handle. Better to pretend you don’t have any, that the world is just the way you want it. It made life easier for everyone around you. If not, exactly, for you.
Orion, high in the sky, his knife and belt of stars, stood out, one of the few reliable constellations. What was he doing here? It only reminded him of those mindless days at Hormone High. And gave Cuppie the idea that he wanted her back. Hiding from his job? He liked it, mostly. The future? Was he afraid to find out what it held?
Maybe he would be alone. He let the thought roll around his skull. He felt his lungs fill, his heart flutter in his chest. Alone. He had never lived alone. The bachelor, they would call him, with a wink perhaps. He might never find anyone who met his ‘lofty new standards,’ as his mother chided him today in her rage. Her view was if you chose badly once, if you rejected what you had, you had no right to expect love, much less happiness.
Maybe she was right. Jonny pictured himself taking waitresses and flight attendants to dinner and finding them all too Cuppie-esque. Or up a rung, hooking up with lonely stockbrokers and flinty lawyers out for a quick romp. And never really connect. Never mate again— except in the animal sense.
He rubbed his eyes, exhausted from the long day. What if he never found anyone? He sighed aloud. Face it: You will live. Plenty of people led meaningful lives without true love. He would be happy with whatever came his way. He wasn’t built for anything else, and if that made him shallow, then so be it.
That decision, to be happy, to not dwell on the past, made him feel free somehow, free to follow his heart in matters that had nothing to do with romance. That was over-rated. Look where it got his parents. Look where it got him. No, he would take a giant leap and do something that would probably make him look like an idiot. Something that he wanted to do so much it scared him. Like go back to college or build a grain bin house. Like divorce the hometown girl who had once been a perfect match. Like live alone and be happy.
He smiled up at the sky full of stars. He didn’t care what Red Vine thought of him, or Minneapolis. He would try very hard not to get anxious about what the Big Scary Future held. He would handle it. He wouldn’t make a mess of his life like his parents— he would be smart, he would look ahead. He would work and plan— and make it happen.
Whatever the hell it was.
Chapter 10
Three days after the occupants of the house on Birch Street saw the backside of Ozzie Knobel he returned to the Rainy Days Motor Inn. Jonny stood at the parlor window with his mother and Father Teddy, watching Ozzie on the roof, stripping shingles. The sun was out, waves of heat in the air. He wielded the big hook frantically, as if he’d just realized that the roof was a mess, even though it leaked every spring for the last twenty.
Margaret stared over the rose bushes, eyes like slits. She had recovered her sanity, even braved the gossips at Eva’s Beauty Barn to get her hair done. She made a noise like a raspberry. “She wants him to sell,” she grumbled. “And leave town.”
“Now, Margaret,” the priest said, touching her arm. “Maybe he just wants to prove his worthiness— to you and the family.”
“After 35 years?”
Jonny watched his father dig away at the old shingles, sending rotting layers flying. Jagged pieces of asphalt shingle and tarpaper landed on the students’ cars. Others fell on rose bushes and the picket fence. Jonny felt the pressure to help, to at least clean up. His father was acting like a crazy person. Ozzie would be at it for awhile, maybe days. Maybe get Jonny involved, make him take sides.
The priest said, “People change, Margaret.”
She snorted. “Germans?”
Ozzie crawled over to the other side of the roof, bent to his task. They shouldn’t watch. Jonny asked Father Teddy if he’d like more coffee. Before he could answer, a knock on the door was followed by a yoo-hoo. Carol floated in on a cloud of gardenia.
“Look who I’ve brought!”
Carol wore her yellow pedal pushers with a Hawaiian shirt featuring hula girls. She stepped aside to let two young women pass. The first Jonny recognized as Carol’s daughter, last seen at a Christmas gathering. She was bony everywhere Carol was ample, her mother’s exact opposite, right down to soul-killing shyness.
Margaret clapped her hands in a rehearsed manner, her strange, estranged husband forgotten. “Darling Frances! Just look at you. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
The exchange between the old friends told the story: Margaret and Carol had concocted a plot to boost Frances’s self-esteem. There was no other explanation for their enthusiastic comments about her haircut, her complexion, her shoes, her height. Jonny felt a pang of sympathy. The girl hung her head, mud-colored eyes darting up unwillingly from under hair the color of soggy toast. The other girl smiled at everyone as the mothers ignored her. She radiated good feeling, with blue eyes and long brown hair that was sleek and wavy.
The Frances Boosters returned to earth. Carol’s voice resumed its normal pitch and she introduced the dark-haired woman as Kiki Calhoun. Kiki worked the room, shaking everyone’s hand. When she got to Jonny her hand was warm. “Great meeting you, Jon,” she said, startling him with her sunny smile.
Coffee was ordered up, and cheese with crackers since baking hadn’t been on the schedule for some time. Father Teddy took up a post next to shrinking Frances and tried to get her to talk. No such methods were required for Kiki Calhoun. She asked Jonny about Red Vine, and soon was talking about herself. She went to college with Frances at a small college in Ohio and was visiting campuses with her, looking at graduate programs. They had already toured Minnesota, Iowa State, Chicago, and Missouri.
“And are you finding good programs?” he asked. “I’m sorry, what did you say you’re studying?”
“Physics. I mean, for Frances,” Kiki said, throwing back her head as she laughed. “Don’t ask me about it! It’s over my head. I mean, I thought I was smart.”
He smiled, glad the pretty one wasn’t studying physics. That would have been the end of that. The visit ended soon— although none too soon for Frances— and they were invited to dinner that night. No mention was made of the absent father or roofing. They had stuck with light subjects, summer weather, college life, baseball. He hadn’t consciously avoided the topic of his musical instrument, or the reason for his extended visit. He wondered if Kiki despised accordions like other college girls he could mention.
He found out minutes after they arrived at the Chichester’s that evening. His grandmother Nora, an old friend of Carol’s now-deceased mother, had also been invited, along with Father Teddy. Nora held Margaret’s hands and whispered solemnly, presumably about her crazy son. Margaret nodded like a metronome run amok. Frances wore the same gray jeans and blue shirt— both too short in the cuffs. Kiki had changed into a yellow top and white slacks that set off her tan.
“You didn’t tell me you played the accordion, that you’re in a band,” she said, giving Jonny a playful smack on the shoulder that made a hot run down his spine. “You Minnesotans are so modest. Where I come from if you have a talent everyone knows about it before you can spit.”
She was from suburban Chicago. She’d heard plenty of polka bands in her youth and was not adverse to a swing around the floor now and then. He told her about Lenny’s party and she was sorry to have missed
it.
“You’ll play again, right? The band, I mean.”
Jonny glanced at his mother. Was the Rose Rave still on? Margaret was helping set the table, setting out bowls of olives. She looked composed, normal, as if her husband wasn’t the town laughingstock, sowing his late-middle-aged oats. “We might be doing a gig next Saturday. If you’re still around.”
“Fantastic! It’s been ages since I saw someone under the age of sixty— and frankly, worth looking at twice— play a polka. I’ll see if we can stay.”
She bumped his elbow conspiratorially. This was flirting. Jonny remembered it slightly. He gave her an appreciative look as her glance fell to his left hand. “Now what’s this I hear about you being married? That better not be true.”
“Separated.”
“You look sad,” Kiki said, peering up into his downcast eyes, a pout on her bow-shaped mouth. “You miss her.”
“I’m working to make it final.” Easy how the exaggerations flow: he hadn’t done one thing to make the divorce a reality. And here he was meeting attractive women. What was he waiting for?
At dinner he had Kiki on one side and his grandmother on the other. Nora chewed roast beef slowly, making little conversation. Carol tried to draw her out, asking if this year’s blueberry crop was a good one and whether she’d had any of the college students out in her field.
“They spent two days in the back acreage,” Nora said. “Counting the bees.” Kiki stifled a giggle. Nora gave her a sharp look. “It’s a scientific study. The more bees, the more berries. I’m curious to find out what sort of bees I have. I’d love to have more.”
“I’m allergic to bee stings,” Frances complained. “Bees attack me. I blow up like a balloon.”
“Bees don’t attack, Frances dear,” Nora said, setting down her fork. “They are interested in nectar. And if they’re honeybees, making honey. They are very interesting creatures. That girl— what’s her name?” Jonny told her. “Isabel is a clever girl, so smart. I enjoyed her. She hopes to make a career in science. We need committed people in science, especially women. They understand the big picture so much better than men do. How all the earth is connected. Bees are a vital link in the food chain.”
All Your Pretty Dreams Page 8