“So, Polka Boy, where’s the squeeze box?” He slumped against the bar. She swatted him again. “Relax, I’m just kidding. What are you doing here?”
“I’m here with one of the architects at my firm. She worked with the groom apparently.” He nodded toward the pod of women. “Jill Martel. Yellow dress.”
Daria glared at Jill. “You’re kidding, right? You know Roger dumped her. She’s got a lot of nerve.”
“She told me they were engaged,” he said. “And something about snoring.”
Daria laughed. “Let’s dance, Polka Boy.”
Her crooked finger led him onto a small dance area near the band now playing hits from the Jurassic Period. They danced lamely, a good match to the guitarist’s enthusiasm but a diversion from drinking. Daria twirled and smiled. When the song ended she told him she was thirsty and took his arm, dragging him back to the bar.
“Are you a friend of the bride’s then?” he asked as she drummed her fingers, waiting for champagne.
“That chipmunk?” She shuddered and put a large tip in the bartender’s jar. “My boyfriend works with Roger. He’s over there. The tall, good-looking one.” Tall Guy looked over at her and she blew him a kiss. He caught it and pressed it to his mouth. Jonny bit his lip to keep from smiling. He had no idea people blew kisses, like, in real life.
“So how’s things in Twinkie-ville?”
“Cream-filled.”
“So you and Jill? Doing the big bopper?”
“We just work together.”
She watched him. “Aren’t you going to ask about Isabel?”
He had a weird pain in his chest. It’d been there since he realized who Daria was. He took a deep breath. “Sure. How is she?”
“Working her ass off. Back to not replying to email. Thank god she’s got a cell phone now. She’s still lecturing for her professor. The woman only broke her leg but she’s milking it for all it’s worth. Paying Isabel a pittance of what she’s worth. Plus— get this,” Daria said, not waiting for a reply. “Isabel’s still living upstairs at the prof’s house and taking care of her! Like a nurse. She hates it but she told the woman she’d help her. She has honor, my sister. She made a promise. But really! I mean there’s home health and all that but at night the professor makes her dust the knick-knacks and go out for groceries and do laundry and all the stuff Isabel hates.”
Jonny waited for her to take a breath. “She’s not very domestic.” It was more of a question.
“I didn’t mean that. Isabel’s not all princess-y. That’s me, honey. It’s just her professor is so demanding, like an old biddy would be. She’s gotten on Izzie’s nerves and why not, after six weeks of step-and-fetch-it. Would you do that for a stranger, somebody you hardly know?”
“I was in that house. The professor’s.”
Daria blinked. “Really.”
“In August. My sister ran away from home and I thought, we thought, that she might have stowed away on the University van. But it turned out she wasn’t there. She came home on her own.”
Daria was watching her boyfriend, frowning. “I’ll be right back.”
She stalked in a beeline in her strappy little sandals. Her boyfriend stood in a clump of people his age, men and women. They all seemed to be talking at him. Daria gave the elbow to a willowy blonde, took him by the hand, and dragged him out of the danger zone. Once she’d sprung him she turned on the charm, laying a hand on his lapel, touching his hair, before sending him on some errand. She returned to the bar, a satisfied smile on her face.
“Taking care of business?” Jonny said, admiring her work.
“Damn straight.” She squinted at the blonde. “Tall girls think they are so superior. Now. Your sister ran away from home?”
“She got a flight home. I think my grandmother sent her some money.”
“No kidding.”
“We’re just glad Wendy’s home, and safe.” The last few weeks hadn’t been without their drama on the Wendy Front but at least everyone was still talking. The brothers had made a pact to call her twice a week, just to make sure she had her head out of the clouds. There had been a bit of headway, unless she was grounded or pissed off, which was often.
“Did Wendy call her? The granny?” she asked.
Daria’s eyes were wide behind her champagne flute, fixed over his shoulder. He swirled his beer. “Do you know something about it?”
She shook her head, taking a breath just as her boyfriend snaked his arm around her waist and nuzzled her ear. She giggled as he whispered into her hair. Jonny tried not to look as she pulled him close, pressing herself against him. He ran his hands down her back, cupping her bottom in his big hands. That sort of intimacy pained him now. He couldn’t stop thinking that it might be lost to him forever.
He stared into his empty bottle. The last few weeks flashed by: the impersonal apartment that smelled of canned chili, a nodding acquaintance with sullen, balding neighbors, the fluorescent glare of the grocery store late at night, grabbing Hungry Man Meals in the frozen food aisle. And he’d asked for it, that was the hell of it. He’d left her, left himself alone and lonely. The empty spot in his gut, the one that he’d been able to ignore at work for the last six weeks and even during weekends in Red Vine working on the grain bin, reared up, a black hole, an acid wash of dread. He was alone.
He took a deep breath. Snap out of it, soldier. This was just the Wedding Effect. He would live. Alone or not, he would survive. There were worse things than loneliness. Like being married to Cuppie St. John. He glanced at the lovers. Daria’s profile was so like her sister’s. Somehow that made it worse. Better that they’d never met. Maybe if they’d met some other time, when he was on an even keel.
Across the room Jill tipped back another glass of champagne as her girlfriends cackled. He wondered if she remembered that he was here. Why was he here?
“Hey.” Daria put a delicate hand on his arm. “This is my friend, Will Franklin. This is Jonny— Oh, lord, I was going to call you Jonny Applebee.”
“Jonathan Knobel.” He shook Will’s hand. Broad-shouldered like a football player, Daria’s boyfriend seemed like a solid character with straight white teeth and a wide forehead. He asked how they knew each other. “We met in Minnesota.”
“Where Isabel was working this summer,” Daria said. “Jonny brought her back for Egon’s funeral, remember? Were you there, honey, when I gave Jonny some coffee for the road? No? You work for an architect, Jonny, right?”
“CAD jockey.”
Will said he was an architect as Daria jumped in. “He’s doing this green thing. Aren’t you, honey?”
“A sustainable building contest,” Will said. “Drum up some interest, a little press. We’re looking for new ideas, people adapting structures in new ways to make them greener. Reusing old materials in new ways. But mostly I do the big commercial stuff. Banks and shopping malls are us.”
“I’m working on an office-retail right now. Thrill a minute.”
“Bread and butter, man.”
Daria clinked her glass with her nails. “What’s that thing you’re working on in Red Vine, Jonny? A— you know— a whatchamacallit.”
He wondered how soon he could get another beer. It was embarrassing to even think about talking about his squatty grain bin with this high-flying architect in a real man’s suit. Will probably had a skyscraper’s power supply in mind, or a hypermodern solar-wind extravaganza. Not a spruced-up granary in backwater Minnesota.
Jonny looked around. “You think they’re going to cut the cake soon?”
“A corn crib, that’s it,” Daria said, her attention undeterred. “Tell Will about it.” Then, just like that, she dashed off, calling to someone named Sharon in a high trill.
Will tipped his head. “A corn crib?”
“Grain bin actually. Little fat guy. I’m converting it for a friend. It’ll probably end up as a tourist information center.”
Just what they were looking for, Will said, as if grain bin conversion
s were a hot new trend. Organically brilliant! Tied to the earth, of the earth. Jonny listened, wondering. Franklin seemed really pumped. It was weird. Jonny wasn’t really that jacked about the project. Hadn’t been for months. Only Lenny had a passion for it. Jonny had returned to Red Vine three weekends, painting, insulating, installing a skylight. One more weekend to go, finishing the decorative painting on the outside and overseeing the installation of a small woodstove. Lenny wanted it done by the election. Then, thankfully, he could stay out of Red Vine until at least Thanksgiving.
Will Franklin kept talking, going pink with the excitement. He explained about the contest, the website, where to submit photos. He was encouraging. But there was no way Jonny was submitting his grain bin into a sustainable architecture or any other kind of contest. He could imagine the other entries: elaborate roof gardens, high tech solar farms, deceptively intricate modern dwellings that recycled their own water and made their own gelato. Hot young designers in tight pants and spiky haircuts would compete for honors. They would laugh at a one-room steel pod that once sheltered piglets. No matter how excited Will Franklin proclaimed himself to be.
Jill almost missed the flight. Jonny took a cab back to the hotel about midnight, exhausted from pretending to enjoy himself. Jill didn’t make it back at all. At nine the next morning she called Jonny and asked him to get her bag from her room. This entailed the cajoling of a desk clerk from Traverse City and a housekeeper from Puerto Rico. At the gate he pushed Jill’s black carry-on toward her feet as she slumped in a plastic chair, her jacket thrown over her head.
On Monday she dragged herself by his cubicle, an oversized coffee cup hugged to her chest. Steam rose, moistening her chin. She was a little green, her hair lank against her cheeks. The owner of the office park wanted changes.
She didn’t mention the weekend.
Chapter 22
On the first Tuesday in November, the town of Red Vine leapt into the twenty-first century and voted in a new mayor. Leonard Rhodes Jr. was the youngest mayor in Minnesota, and thrilled to pieces. At his campaign office in the courthouse park that had drawn the eye of every citizen with its unique shape and fanciful red painted foliage design, not to mention the cute green door, patriotic bunting was hung around the roofline. Enthusiastic whoops and rock and roll bellowed over the square.
Before a party could be planned to celebrate the victory Reinholt Knobel, age 86, passed away in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday. The funeral was set for Saturday.
“Dad wants the band together again. He wants us both to play at the mass,” Artie said in his kitchen that night. Sonya was feeding both brothers vegetable soup and saltines. Jonny looked up over his spoon.
“You’re going to do it?”
Artie shrugged. “It’s for Holti.”
At least the old guy had one last dance. Jonny felt sad about his passing, of course, crushed at moments. But tinged with relief too. His grandfather’s final years hadn’t been anywhere near golden.
They drove down to Red Vine on Friday night. Margaret had a long face, her shoulders rounded. If possible she was more melancholy than usual. Ozzie had not come to his senses in three months and everyone now wondered if he ever would. No one had the heart to discuss the future with Margaret. Jonny hadn’t seen his father on any of his weekend trips back to finish the grain bin, out of respect for his mother. He would have liked to give his old man a little advice.
The service was set for noon. They ate scrambled eggs and bacon silently at the table. Margaret was wearing a blue shirtwaist dress with a frayed collar. Jonny remembered it as her pinochle dress. It fit her because she’d basically stopped eating since Ozzie left. As they cleared the dishes Sonya and Artie were whispering. Artie turned to his mother.
“Can I help you pick out something to wear, Mom?”
They went upstairs together. As Jonny stacked dishes Wendy bounced into the kitchen, looking for food. “You missed breakfast,” Sonya informed her and sent her upstairs to dress. Wendy made a face, grabbed a piece of toast, and disappeared.
They played the same songs they had for the polka mass. Even, for Holti’s sake, the ‘She Likes Kielbasa Polka.’ The crowd didn’t have the words to sing along this time but they managed. Ozzie was solemn, and firm with his orders. He gave a short, emotional speech about his father, as did a couple of Holti’s old friends, then they all filed out.
The townspeople, and the family, squeezed into Nora’s little house on Elm Lane for coffee, cake, and pie. Carol brought her Lemon Honey Slaw and stood close to Margaret, whispering and offering moral support. Jonny did his best, shaking hands. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he escaped out the back door to sit by himself in the chill afternoon wind. Leaves had blown off the oak tree and made piles against the wooden fence. He found a rake in Nora’s garage and set to work, stuffing the brittle leaves into a garbage can.
He had to do something. He felt a terrible sorrow coming on, the kind that lasts all winter. He should feel happy for Nora, he thought, with Claude at her side in the house. He wanted to. He should feel peace for Holti. Instead all he could feel was a rising hollowness that felt black and ugly. He was going to cry, he could feel it. And it wouldn’t be for Holti or Nora or Ozzie or Margaret. It would be for himself.
He raked until there were no more leaves to rake. Sweat gathered on his back and neck. He stood with his hands on the back fence, thinking about his father. He hadn’t said a word to Ozzie about Reinholt. What should he say? He was still angry at the jerk. Why hadn’t he gone back to Margaret? What was he waiting for?
The back door slammed. Artie walked down the cracked sidewalk and stood with his hands deep in his pockets. His face was the same as always, stoic and unsmiling.
“You gotta see something,” Artie said.
Artie motioned him down the driveway to the front of the house, stopping beside a blue spruce. The neighbor’s flowers were dead, rattling in the wind. The tidy lawns on either side of the street were yellow now, ready for snow. Cars were parked down both sides of the block, and onto the next.
“There. In Dad’s pickup.”
Across the street Ozzie’s old truck was parked facing them. In the cab Jonny could see two people, Ozzie and a woman. His stomach sunk, then he blinked. It was Margaret. They were talking. She touched his neck. He hung his head, she leaned in and kissed his cheek, laying her forehead against his temple. “They’ve been out there for a half hour,” Artie said.
“Kissing?”
“Making out like teenagers.”
Lenny, wearing a sports jacket over his black t-shirt, the same combination Jonny wore to his last funeral, drove back to the house with them. He squeezed between Jonny and Wendy in Artie’s back seat. Ozzie and Margaret showed up an hour later, holding hands. Lenny sprawled on the sofa, drinking a beer. He jumped to his feet. The others sat up straighter with hopeful smiles.
“Mr. and Mrs. Knobel,” Lenny said formally, hiding his bottle. “I didn’t get a chance to offer my condolences. And perhaps congratulations as well?”
“Thank you, Lenny,” Margaret said, her eyes bright. “Congratulations to you as well. I voted for you.”
“So you’re back?” Wendy asked, squinting hard at her father, arms crossed. “What happened to whatsherface with the big boobs?”
“Wendy, please,” Margaret said, clutching Ozzie’s arm.
“It’s okay, Marg,” he said. “She wants to know. Wendy, boys. Sonya. I’m done with Loreen. For good. I apologized to your mother and now I’m saying it to you. I’m sorry. I lost my head. I hope you can forgive me.”
Wendy opened her mouth but Artie put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a stern look. Yes, Ozzie had lost his head. But his speech was so out of character, not particularly ashamed of acting like a randy teenager but at least repentant and honest. They were all speechless. Margaret reached for Ozzie’s chin, turned him toward her, and planted a kiss on his lips. Lenny sat down and took a swig of beer. And belched, breaking the spell.
<
br /> Jonny stood up. “I’m sorry, Dad. About Grandpa.”
Ozzie hugged him so tightly it made his eyes water. Then he slapped Jonny on the back. “Good playing today, son. All of you. Really good job. Holti enjoyed it, I know he did. One last swinging polka gig for the old man and the old band.”
Over pizza and Cokes that night the mood swung wildly. With old stories of Ozzie and Margaret and the band, to older stories of Holti and his apple orchard, there was laughter and wonder and tears. Wendy stuck with it all, Jonny noticed, listening raptly to tales of bitter winters and the time the goats got into the sour mash, the fire blight panic of 1969 and the day her parents met. Later in the kitchen she carried in dirty plates.
“Slide ‘em in,” Jonny said, his hands in the suds.
Wendy eased the plates into the sink and grabbed a dishcloth to dry. “Did you know Holti and Nora met at a USO dance?”
“That was a new one.”
“It’s just so weird,” she said, taking a plate. “I wanted to leave this place so bad this summer. I hated it here. You probably don’t remember how awful high school is here. It’s like the end of the fricking world. I mean, stick a fork in me. But if I hadn’t been forced to come back, I would have missed all this. And I can’t imagine that.”
Jonny paused with the sponge. “What do you mean, forced?”
“Well, you know. I was going to stay in Illinois and try to go to classes. See if they’d let me in early and if they wouldn’t I’d get a job or something. Anything to stay away from here. Until I got put on that plane.”
Jonny turned to his sister. She was wearing a gray wool skirt, still very short but with boots and black tights, and a dark green sweater. Her hair was pulled back and she looked, well, fresh and lovely and seventeen. For a change.
“You were in Illinois?”
She shrugged and smiled mysteriously.
“How did you get back?”
“Oh, Jonny.” She looked at him sideways.
All Your Pretty Dreams Page 21