The others chewed silently at this speech, looking at Nora as if they didn’t know her. Or didn’t know she had opinions on such topics. Jonny knew but hadn’t heard Nora expound so much in ages. Kiki raised her eyebrows and smiled.
“She does wear odd costumes,” Carol said.
Nora harrumphed. “We need more women in science. It’s not a fashion show.”
An awkward pause, then thankfully Kiki changed the subject, talking about college campuses (los campi, she called them charmingly) and their travels around the Midwest in an ancient Cadillac that belonged to her mother. Ten miles to the gallon, she said, rolling her eyes.
“Her father was an astronaut,” Frances said suddenly, motioning to Kiki with a toss of her hair. Had there been one more moon mission, he would have walked on the lunar surface. “And made history,” she added.
“Oh. Bad luck,” Margaret said. “Still, an astronaut. How exciting.”
“Did you live in Florida?” Father Teddy asked.
“Summers, when it was beastly hot,” Kiki said. “My parents divorced when I was five so after that I only spent summers with him.”
All sorts of questions came up then, about space travel, weightlessness, moon rocks, the military. Kiki’s father had almost gone up in a space shuttle too, but he had gotten too old to be a pilot. More bad luck. Everyone commiserated, jangled a bit with their pretty young visitor and her exotic connections to a world they never imagined would touch them so closely. Just think, if he really had walked on the moon. That was thrilling. Or would have been. Almost thrilling was pretty good for Red Vine.
“When he retired from NASA, he became a commercial pilot. Not too old for that.” She smiled, then looked at her plate, sadness transforming her bright expression. “For awhile.”
No one wanted to ask what that meant. Clink of silver, gulps of water, potatoes passed around for seconds: all transpired before Frances finally pushed back her hair and explained. “He died in a plane crash. It wasn’t his fault.”
“Lightning,” Kiki sighed. “He was teaching pilots for the airline.”
“Oh, dear,” Margaret said.
“Dreadful,” Carol seconded. They all looked at Kiki sympathetically, nearly an orphan.
“Poor Daddy,” Kiki said. “Oh, dear, I’ve made everyone gloomy. Please, someone tell a joke or something.” She smiled. “Father Teddy? No? Mr. Chichester?”
In the spotlight again after his carving demonstration earlier, Dennis Chichester burped into his napkin and proceeded to tell an off-color joke about a nun, a priest, and a piano stool. Father Teddy blushed. When Kiki jumped up to help Frances clear, Jonny joined them in the kitchen. A white layer cake, decorated with fresh blueberries and tall as a top hat, sat on a platter, ready for action. He looked at it and sighed.
“I’m going to skip dessert. Your mother won’t mind, will she?” he asked Frances.
“Who cares?”
Kiki frowned at her. “You want to go on a walk or something, Fanny?”
Frances had a nickname? He waited for her to correct Kiki, or get mad. She seemed to go off at the slightest provocation. Instead she calmly scraped a plate and said, “You go ahead. I should stay here. Carol and Dennis need me, or so they think.”
“What about you, John-boy?” Kiki asked, making him wince. He hated that name.
“His name is Jonathan,” Frances said, staring at him then glaring at Kiki.
“Ah, yeah.” Jonny looked at Kiki. “You want to get a drink?”
They made quick goodbyes, slipping out the kitchen door into the night. They walked silently past moonlit hydrangea bushes, sprinklers tick-ticking across lawns, fireflies emerging from the woods. Jonny asked, “What’s with Frances? She seems a little, um, anxious.”
“She gets down. Worried about her grades. And she has anger issues, to tell the truth. Her therapist was the one who suggested she come home and work out things with her parents.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure where she’s going with that.”
“Nice of you to help her out. With the driving and all.”
“Oh, it’s been fun. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. She’s a good person, under all that hair. Jonathan.”
“What?” he said, startled. “Oh. Right. I didn’t know she knew my real name.”
“She might have a little crush on you, you think?”
“What?”
“Poor Fanny.” She bit her lip. “I shouldn’t say this— but actually I think she might have switched teams. I saw her once, kissing a picture of her lab instructor, this woman built like a linebacker with a greasy ducktail hairdo.”
“Maybe she was just praying for a good grade.”
Kiki grabbed his arm and swung around him, hair flying, on the dark sidewalk. “Oh, forget Fanny! I want to dance and I am soooo thirsty.”
Jonny enjoyed the way her mind, and mood, flitted around. “I don’t know about dancing, but we can kill that thirst.”
The Owl was quiet, no music. Only the usual farmers and truck drivers drinking solo. Jonny eyed them, wondering if this was his future. With Kiki at his side he thought not. She was the most friendly, uncomplicated person he’d met since coming back to Red Vine. They agreed to meet again the next evening. Tomorrow she and Frances had to do some things for Carol, go through closets, visit the cemetery, and other excitements.
Jonny had chores the next day as well. He woke up to the sound of stripping shingles and by eight stood outside with a cup of hot coffee, watching Ozzie on the motel roof. Tarpaper was flying. A large section sailed over the picket fence.
Ozzie glared down from the roof. He wore a dirty blue jumpsuit over his clothes, with a pair of Artie’s old running shoes. “You gonna stand there, or get on with it?”
Jonny set down his cup and started gathering up shingles and torn roofing paper littering the yard. Forty-five minutes later the garbage can was stuffed. Ozzie sat on the peak of the roof where Jonny spent his first day back. He held the stripping tool, running his thumb over the sharp end.
Jonny picked up his cold coffee. There was no point actually asking Ozzie what was going on or what he planned to do. He’d tell you when he was ready. Jonny took a sip then threw the rest of the coffee onto a nearby rose bush. His father stared off into the distance, the knees of his jumpsuit white with dirt.
“You want some coffee?” Jonny said, backing toward the house. “I made it myself.”
He carried the two cups, one with milk and sugar, one black, back to the ladder. Ozzie was halfway down, stepping carefully due to his wobbly knee. They drank silently, avoiding each other’s eye.
Coffee: the glue that keeps Minnesota families together. Goddam it.
Finally Ozzie cleared his throat. “I hate this piece of crap motel,” he said without much feeling. “Hated it for thirty years.”
Not news in the Knobel clan. He’d made this declaration more than once. Usually when some kind of major repair was unavoidable.
“Well.” What was there to say? He owned it. He could complain about it for another thirty years, or sell it and move on.
“That’s life, that what you mean?” Ozzie glared over his cup.
“Life?” Jonny choked. He had never had any sort of philosophical discussion with his father. This didn’t seem like the time to start. The glower on Ozzie’s forehead deepened like he was gearing up for a fight.
“I’m stuck with it— that what you mean? Like being married to your mother?”
Jonny buried his nose in the cup. It was way too early for this.
Ozzie kept talking. “You gave me the idea. You leaving that little pop-tart. Saying, this ain’t working for me, I’m outa here. Good for you, Jonny. You showed me it wasn’t so bad. That it could be damn good, in fact. The world doesn’t come to an end. Nobody dies. I got it from you.”
Jonny sagged against the ladder.
“Comes a time for a man to stand up for himself. To figure out what works in his life, and what doesn’t. And do something about it. That
’s what you did, and so did I.” Something softened in his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t love her, son. It’s not that at all.” He sighed, gazing toward the house and the roses.
“Then why did you take up with Loreen?”
Ozzie blinked, sticking out his chest. For a moment he was his old self, full of manly bluster and secrets, eyes hard and challenging. The kind who made pronouncements like, I’m a man. No female’s going to tell me what to do. Even though they did, constantly.
Then he deflated. “You want to know why?” he said, his voice pained. “You’ve seen him. Holti. Dear old dad, the poor schlump. That’ll be me in a few years. He got it young and they say I will too.”
“Dad, no. That’s not for sure.”
“It’s in my genes. They told me. And when I’m wearing diapers, strapped to a bed like a raving loony, do you think I’m going to be the one who only had one woman, who never broke the rules, who did everything just like his old man told him? Who kissed the ass of society and got smacked down anyway?”
Ozzie shook his head. “I bought this piece of crap motel because he told me to. He didn’t want me to be a farmer. Said I didn’t have the temperament for it. Wasn’t a man of the earth like him. A business, he said, something you can manage. A motel. Like it would be easy. Termites, tourists, toilets. Did he know about any of that? Hell, no. Well, he can’t tell me what to do anymore.” He barked a sad laugh. “That’s for sure.”
Jonny stared at the toes of his shoes. Jesus. Sixty-one years old and still battling his old man. Still measuring himself by his father’s standards. Jonny looked at the dregs of his coffee then the treetops, the sky, anywhere but at his father. Humiliating, that was the only word for it. To not be your own man by sixty. How was that possible? Six decades in, ready for retirement, and still no satisfaction, no peace. It couldn’t be true. Yet his father had never been more confessional. Never more blunt, which was saying something. He was telling the truth, his truth. His father had screwed him by making him do something thirty years ago that he didn’t want to. As if he had never had a say in the events of his life, as if his father was pulling all the strings. As if his father, deep in his last decade and out of his head, was to this day running— and ruining— his life.
Jonny felt queasy and took a step toward the picket fence, staring at the rose bushes. He had come back because his father gave him the chance to measure up, for once. But— measure up to what? Manly responsibility? Motel management? Polka virtuosity? Family loyalty? Some invisible ever-higher bar that no one ever reached because your old man would never admit it? Did fathers hold you down, keep you dependent and broke so they could gloat in their old age? I told him not to do it. He was never any good at that.
Or did sons do it to themselves? Wasn’t it easier to blame your failures to your father’s petty insecurities and dirty tricks? That made bitterness a lot more fun.
But that ate you up. Could you just exit this sick game before it ruined your life? Cash your chips? Could you walk away— if you still wanted to have a relationship with your father? Wasn’t there some middle ground?
“So,” Jonny said, tossing his coffee into the grass and taking a deep breath. “You want some help up there?”
He didn’t get to the Owl Bar that evening. His mother was home by herself. Carol was busy with her visitors and Father Teddy had to make a run to a sick parishioner. Wendy was— well, who knew where Wendy was. Jonny heated up baked beans and his mother fried a couple slices of leftover ham.
Margaret seemed a little too calm. Had Carol delivered more Valium? He thought it best not to inquire. As they did the dishes, he asked her about the Rose Rave. “Is it still on for Saturday?”
“Saturday?” she repeated. “This Saturday? Oh— oh yes.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
She sighed, looking out at the rose garden in the twilight. “There’s plenty of time, Jonny.”
“Two days, Mom.”
She blinked to clear her head. “I have to call Carol.” She dropped the cup she was rinsing. It broke in the sink.
In his room that night, Jonny took down all the old baseball and rock-and-roll posters, stuffing them into a garbage bag. With a damp cloth he wiped down the small bedroom, cutting through years of black dirt on the bookshelves. He packed away old trophies, plaques, and ribbons, the meaningless detritus of childhood in a box. He pulled off the bedspread and the curtains and threw them in the washing machine with a little extra bleach. Then, for good measure, rounded up all the dust bunnies under the bed.
As he carried the box and garbage bag out to the alley, he saw scraps of roofing he’d missed in the motel parking lot. He brought the bag back and began gathering up roofing paper by moonlight. Ozzie stripped most of the old roof today, with Jonny’s help. After the flash of intimacy, Ozzie turned quiet and taciturn for the rest of the day. There was plenty to think about up there on the roof, for both of them.
“You looking for this?”
He spun around, found the student holding out a large piece of roofing paper and several sections of shingle. Her light hair glowed in the moonshine, her face in shadow. He held open his bag.
“Thanks. It’s Isabel, right?”
She turned sideways, ignoring the question and giving him her profile, an upturned nose, an angry chin. “It better not rain before you get the new roof on. That will make my professor seriously unhappy.”
“Your professor?”
“If the entire crew bolts.” She was back in full battle garb: cargo pants, baggy t-shirt, thick belt, heavy boots. Hands on her hips.
“Hey, sorry I didn’t recognize you the other night. You—”
“Look different. I know.” She turned back toward him, shadowing her expression again. “It’s funny how people categorize each other. How they make assumptions based on clothes or hair or— family. When who you are is something so real— to you— that you can’t imagine anyone thinking you are something or somebody else.”
Something odd in her voice, maybe because of the dark. He couldn’t see her eyes. Everyone was acting so weird today, as if tired of the burden of their secrets. He didn’t know about this one though, what her secrets might be. He didn’t know anything about her at all.
“You know what I mean?”
“I guess,” he said.
“People think of you a certain way because of your family, your mother or your father. Even your sister. They put you in a box because it’s easier than seeing you for who you are. They don’t think of you as an individual, as separate. Even the instrument you play or the place where you grew up is part of the box. And they don’t see you because they are so focused on your box. It’s like you’re invisible.”
“Are you talking about me?”
“Or me, or Kate, or Terry. Or Walter. Anybody.”
She had revealed enough. She raised a hand as she slipped away into the shadows.
Chapter 11
The crowd at the Owl was large the next evening, even for a Friday night. Jonny was tired from lugging stacks of shingles and rolls of black paper up the ladder, and from talking his mother down from the edge of whatever she was freaking about, aphids and fruit punch and paper napkins. The Rose Rave details, conveniently forgotten in the turmoil of Ozzie and Loreen, had now erupted all over chez Knobel.
Jonny managed to stay out of most of the drama while up on the roof with his father. After a hasty supper eaten over the sink he’d gone back up, making the most of the twilight. Now it was after ten and his hair was wet from his shower.
He stepped into the chatter and gloom, pausing to looking around. Would Kiki be here? Was she mad he hadn’t shown up yesterday? A large crowd, three deep at the bar, crammed most of the open area. Lenny sat at his usual table, the bachelor farmers, the college kids, and— was that Audri on the bandstand? A guitar player sat on a stool next to an amplifier and small speaker and began to play a blues song. Jonny felt a warm familiarity cloak him— his hometown wasn’t half bad af
ter all— as he pushed his way toward the bar.
“You brought in a band?” Jonny nodded approvingly as Walter handed him a bottle of beer.
“Not me. But I’ll take ‘em.”
“Hey!” Kiki Calhoun tapped him on the shoulder, wearing in a white summer dress. “I thought I’d scared you away.”
She led him to a table in a corner where Frances sat fingering a Coke. Before they sat down Kiki leaned close to whisper: “Things aren’t going well on her parental project. I’m trying to cheer her up. Maybe find someone here she can talk to.” She wiggled her eyebrows as if encouraging him to be that person.
Jonny sat down and tried to coax a few words out of Frances. She slumped in her chair, hair hiding her face, a look that definitely said: touch me and I’ll smack you. He wondered why she bothered. Audri was singing a gravely old song in her rich alto voice. She nodded at him as she sang.
Lenny pulled up a chair. As the band quit for a break he told Jonny he had raised five-hundred dollars at the party last weekend and found seventy-five more signatures for the petition to move the landfill. He thanked Jonny again for playing.
“So what’s going on with the corn crib? You find one to remodel?”
Jonny shook his head, draining his beer. “Been roofing with Ozzie. The whole damn roof at last.”
Lenny stared from under his bushy eyebrows. “Why aren’t you working on your own stuff? That emergency house or whatever you called it.”
“It’s just an idea. It’s nothing.”
“Ideas aren’t nothing. They’re everything. Listen, I had this thought. You could call it an idea, maybe.” He grinned. “Your corn crib— a way to promote Red Vine. Our symbol. It, like, shouts Red Vine, Minnesota. Humble, farming, thrifty, the recycling of old stuff. Plus it could be the mayor’s office. My office.”
All Your Pretty Dreams Page 9