Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

  “I’ll bet there are some familiar faces here tonight,” Daisy said, looking around the room.

  “There are,” Jack agreed, his eyes following hers. “I remember Dawn Peterson,” he said, nodding in the direction of an older woman in line at the buffet table. “I take it she still owns the bait-and-tackle shop?”

  “She does,” Daisy said. “And that man with her is her third husband, Johnny.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

  Daisy nodded.

  “He must be twenty years younger than she is,” Jack pointed out.

  “Oh, at least,” Daisy agreed. “Her husbands keep getting younger. But, you know, all those worms can’t sell themselves.”

  Jack chuckled and looked around some more. “I remember the Jalowitzes, too.” He indicated a man sitting a few tables down from them. “They have a big family, don’t they? What, six or seven kids?”

  Daisy nodded solemnly. “They had seven. But their oldest son, Don, died in Iraq. His picture’s up over there,” she said, glancing at one of the walls.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said.

  “The entire town lined the streets the day his casket came home,” Daisy said softly. “Mom closed Pearl’s so we could be there, too.”

  Jack nodded, awed, as always, by someone who could be so brave at an age when he’d been content to just be reckless.

  “Do you want some more iced tea?” he asked Daisy, noticing her cup was empty.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said contentedly, putting down a half-eaten biscuit. “In fact, I don’t know if I can eat another bite. But, Dad, seriously, how are you really doing here?”

  “I’m doing fine,” he said, a little evasively. He preferred to talk about Daisy when they were together.

  “You’re not . . . you’re not lonely, are you?” she asked.

  “What? No,” he said, a little too quickly, and Daisy didn’t miss it. Daisy didn’t miss anything, as far as he could tell.

  “Honey, if you’re worried about me, you’re worried for nothing,” Jack said now. “I’m fine. During the day, I don’t have time to get lonely. I’m basically rebuilding that cabin from the inside out, and, if it doesn’t kill me, it’ll definitely make me stronger.” He laughed, shaking his head. “And then, at night, I have my meetings. I don’t always want to go to them, but once I get there, I’m usually glad I did. It’s kind of like working out at the gym that way. And sometimes, after the meetings, a few of us grab a cup of coffee together at the Quick and Convenient. It’s nice. We’re not soul mates or anything, but it helps pass the time.” It was after he got back to the cabin that the nights were a problem. Each night, really, was its own kind of eternity, crowded as it was by guilt, and regret, and that longing, still, to do it all again, but differently this time. He didn’t tell Daisy about that part of his night though.

  “And how’s . . . how’s everything else going?” Daisy asked; “everything else” was a euphemism for his relationship with Caroline. Because even though they’d never discussed the real reason why Jack had moved back to Butternut, Daisy knew what it was. And he knew that she knew. It was strange, he thought, strange and amazing, really, that even after all those years apart, he and Daisy still shared some kind of unspoken understanding with each other.

  “Everything else is going fine,” he said, though he had his doubts about this, too.

  “Good,” she said, smiling. And seeing her smile gave Jack an idea.

  “Daisy, would you mind if I asked someone to take our picture together?” he asked, sliding his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “No, of course not,” she said, and she grabbed Bill Phipps, the first person who walked by their table, and asked him to take their picture. He took it and then he stayed to talk to Jack about the mill, where Jack had once worked, and about Wayland’s cabin, which he said he’d like to take a look at once Jack was done fixing it up.

  “That came out well,” Daisy said, looking at the picture on Jack’s cell phone after Bill had left their table.

  “It did, didn’t it?” he agreed. “By the way, how’s Will?” he asked when they’d settled back into their conversation.

  “Will?” Daisy repeated, her cheeks coloring.

  Jack nodded. “That is his name, isn’t it?” he said mildly.

  “Yes, it’s his name. But every time I hear it, Dad, even when I’m the one saying it, I feel like I’m hearing it for the first time. And I feel like . . . like it’s the most amazing name in the whole world. Does that sound stupid?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, it doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “Juvenile, maybe?”

  Jack smiled. “Well, juvenile, maybe. But falling in love makes juveniles of all of us.”

  She colored again, darker this time, and Jack wondered if he’d crossed a line. Had he said something too personal? “Let’s talk about something else,” he suggested, picking up his fork and turning his attention to his coleslaw.

  “No, I want to talk about this,” Daisy said firmly. “I want to talk about Will. And about what you said, about falling in love.” She looked down at her plate. “Because I have a question for you.”

  “Okay,” Jack said, a little uneasily. “As long as you realize I’m not exactly an expert on matters of the heart. Your mom, actually, might know more about this than I do.” That was cowardly, he knew. But also true.

  Daisy shook her head though. “No, I can’t talk to Mom about this. She doesn’t like Will.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No, but she doesn’t need to,” Daisy said. “I know her well enough to know.”

  Jack didn’t dispute that.

  “But, Dad, it’s not fair. She doesn’t even know him. How can she not like him?”

  Jack shrugged. “Sometimes we see what we want to see in a person. Or what we expect to see, anyway.”

  Daisy nodded. “Well, then Mom sees the person Will was in high school. He used to . . . you know, just kind of hang out, cut class, get detention. Stuff like that. He was kind of a . . .”

  “A punk?” Jack suggested. “That’s what people used to call guys like that when I was your age.” Jack knew this because he’d been considered one of them himself.

  “Yeah, okay, I guess he was kind of a punk,” Daisy said, with a little laugh. “But he’s not like that anymore, Dad. I don’t even know, honestly, if he was ever like that. He’s . . . he’s different. He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met before. He’s really . . .”

  “It’s okay if you can’t put it into words,” Jack said. “Love does that to us, too. Now, what was the question you wanted to ask me?”

  Daisy looked down at her plate again and became suddenly absorbed in breaking off a piece of her biscuit. “It’s about that,” she said, blushing. “About being in love. Is it possible . . . I mean considering how short a time I’ve known him . . . is it possible that I could already be in love with Will?” She looked up at him now, her cheeks bright pink. With a telltale complexion like that, Jack thought, she was never going to be able to play poker.

  “Of course it’s possible you’re in love with him,” he said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Because . . . because it’s so new, so fast. How could anyone fall in love that quickly?”

  “I don’t know how they can, Daisy. But they do; they do it all the time.” He thought, for a moment, about telling her a story, a story about the first time he’d laid eyes on her mother. He’d only recently moved to Butternut to work at the lumber mill, and he’d walked into Pearl’s one morning in search of a decent cup of coffee. And there she was, standing beside a table, taking someone’s order, her expression a mixture of boredom and politeness as she scribbled on her check pad. She’d looked up though, midorder, and her eyes had found Jack’s, across the room, and she’d smiled at him. And just like that, Jack had felt it, a sensation like all the air was rushing out of his body at the same time. She’d felt it too; she could barely finish taking the order
, she was so flustered. He’d thought, before then, that love at first sight was a cliché. He didn’t think so after that.

  “But, Dad,” Daisy was saying, when his mind returned to the conversation, “I’m not like those people, people like Jessica. She falls in love all the time. She’s . . . impulsive—I guess that’s the kindest word for it—but I’m not. I’m the opposite of impulsive.”

  “So you’ve, um, never been in love before?” he asked, feeling again like he was in uncharted territory.

  She shook her head emphatically.

  “But you must have known, Daisy, that you’d fall in love one day?”

  “Well, I hoped I would. But I thought when I did, it would happen gradually, as I got to know someone, got to know them really well. And not over a period of weeks, like now, but over a period of months, years even.”

  “Years?” he echoed, trying hard not to smile.

  She nodded solemnly. “Yes, years. Because I wasn’t going to do things the way other people did them. I was going to take my time, go slowly, make sure whomever I fell in love with was the right person. For me, anyway. You know, someone I respected, and someone who respected me, someone whom I was compatible with. It would be someone who shared my interests and my values, someone who would make a good husband and father, a good, you know, life partner. I wasn’t that concerned about the whole ‘being in love’ thing. I thought that was probably overrated, anyway.”

  “Overrated?” he repeated, and now he couldn’t help it; he really was smiling. She was so young. Had he ever, ever, been that young? he wondered. He didn’t think so. But she was looking at him now expectantly, waiting for some kind of response from him, so he said, still smiling, “Daisy, did you really think all the books and songs that have been written about love would turn out to be about something that was overrated?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. But somehow I didn’t think it could be that big a deal. I mean, it’s one thing to read a book about something; it’s another thing to actually do it.”

  “So how does being in love stack up against reading about being in love?”

  “Oh, Dad,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “It’s so much better,” and here she blushed again, a soft pink blush that made her look especially lovely, even under the American Legion hall’s harsh lighting. “But, Dad? It’s so much scarier, too.”

  Jack nodded seriously. Because now, of course, he knew what she meant. He wished he’d known that when he was her age—how big, and serious, and scary love could be. If he had known it then, he could have saved himself a lot of time.

  “It is scary,” he said. “But try not to let it scare you. Does that make sense?”

  “Actually, it does,” Daisy said, smiling and putting another biscuit fragment into her mouth.

  They were quiet for a few moments and then Jack said, “Oh, by the way, I saw your Facebook posting today, the one about your volleyball team’s reunion. That sounds like fun.”

  “It is fun. We’ve done that every Labor Day weekend since we graduated.”

  “You were a good team, weren’t you?”

  “We were. I mean, not to sound conceited, but it’s going to be a while before that high school has another volleyball team as good as that one.”

  “I wish I’d seen one of your games,” Jack said, without thinking.

  “Me too, Dad,” Daisy said, without any bitterness, but with a disappointment that seemed, for a moment, to hang in the air between them, like a thread connecting them to each other. And Jack knew that that disappointment would never, ever, go away. Not completely. But here was the thing about his daughter: she never let it hang there for very long. Like now, for instance, she smiled at him and said, “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know that other thing we talked about?” she asked. She meant him and her mother.

  He nodded.

  “Don’t . . . don’t give up on it, all right?”

  “Daisy, I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.

  CHAPTER 13

  Caroline?”

  “Jack?” Caroline said with surprise, turning to see her ex-husband standing in line behind her at the Butternut IGA. She felt suddenly flustered. Maybe that was because she hadn’t seen him since the night a few weeks ago when she’d tried rather clumsily to seduce him. “You’re the last person I expected to see here on a Saturday night,” she said.

  “Why?” he said, as the line edged forward. “It’s as good a time to go grocery shopping as any.”

  “Maybe,” she murmured, starting to unload her groceries onto the checkout counter. But she was thinking that the Jack she’d been married to, the old Jack, wouldn’t have been caught dead in a grocery store on a Saturday night. No, she corrected herself, he wouldn’t have been caught dead in a grocery store period. He’d been one of the least domesticated men she’d ever known, though when she turned now and saw that the only things in his grocery basket were a couple of frozen pizzas, she wondered if that aspect of his personality had changed all that much.

  “Jack, one of those pizzas isn’t all you’re having for dinner, is it?”

  His eyes followed hers to the basket. “Um, yeah,” he said, a little sheepishly. “But it’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine,” she said, without thinking. “And it’s not real food, either.”

  “Well, I could always make a grilled cheese sandwich,” Jack said, his blue eyes teasing, and Caroline almost smiled, but she caught herself before she did. And she didn’t know what was worse: the fact that she was worried about what Jack was having for dinner or the fact that it had been so easy for her to almost fall back into the habit of flirting with him again.

  Caroline finished unloading her groceries and maneuvered her cart down to the register. But, as luck would have it, Alice Brody was working. She’d worked at the Butternut IGA forever—or at least for as long as Caroline could remember—and she was an efficient, if vicious gossip.

  “Hello, Alice,” Caroline said warily, sliding her wallet out of her handbag.

  Alice nodded, taking in both Caroline and Jack in one meaningful look. Caroline sighed internally. This was the problem with living in a small town—everyone knew everyone else’s business. By tomorrow morning, half the town would know she’d run into Jack at the grocery store the night before. Everyone already knew, of course, that Jack was back in town; she’d spent the last several weeks deflecting questions about his return from curious customers at Pearl’s.

  Now Alice rang up and bagged Caroline’s groceries and waited, with a smirk on her face, while Caroline paid for them.

  “If you wait a minute, Caroline,” Jack said, “I’ll help you carry those out to your truck.”

  “I can manage,” Caroline said breezily. But she hesitated a moment too long and ended up watching Alice ring up Jack’s frozen pizzas and put them in a plastic bag.

  “Jack, look, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?” she asked impulsively.

  “Are you sure?” he said, hesitating.

  “I’m sure,” Caroline said, not at all sure. But she heard Alice snicker a little as Jack paid for his groceries, and it made up her mind for her. “I have to make dinner for myself anyway, so it won’t be any extra work. Besides,” she added pointedly, staring straight at Alice, “there’s nothing wrong with two old friends having dinner together, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t,” Jack said, noting her tone, and her look, with amusement. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Half an hour later, Jack and Caroline were sitting at her kitchen table, sipping iced tea and eating chicken salad on butter lettuce and slices of freshly baked French bread.

  “Thank you for taking pity on me,” Jack said, buttering his bread. “It’s a nice change from eating frozen pizza at the cabin. It can get . . .” He shrugged.

  It can get lonely eating by yourself? Caroline said silently. Because she knew all about that now, now that she and Buster had stopped going out for dinner every Saturday night. But sh
e didn’t tell Jack that. She wanted to keep their conversation on a polite, but impersonal, footing. Otherwise, Jack might think that her inviting him over for dinner tonight meant more than it did, or at least more than she wanted it to mean.

  “Anyway, this is nice,” Jack said again, and he smiled at her—smiled that smile at her, that long, slow smile.

  Caroline put down her fork, folded her arms across her chest, and leveled what she hoped was a cool gaze at him. a gaze she hoped said, I’m immune to that smile, Jack. Completely and utterly immune.

  “What?” he said, looking at her warily.

  “Jack, I’ve asked you before not to smile that smile at me.”

  “You have asked me that. But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “So I can’t smile at you?”

  “No, you can smile at me. You just can’t smile that smile at me, that slow smile you smile when you . . .” When you want something. Or someone.

  “Okay, no slow smile,” he said, his expression playful. Then he had the wisdom to change the subject. “By the way, where’s Daisy tonight?”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “At the Black Bear. Where else?”

  “She told me she went there,” Jack said, bemused. “I can’t believe that place is still around.”

  “I know. Even twenty years ago it was a throwback. But Daisy must like it; she’s there every night.”

  “But not . . . not drinking, right?”

  “No, not drinking,” Caroline said, and she saw relief in his expression. It had never occurred to her before that Jack worried about Daisy drinking. “No, Daisy doesn’t drink, as far as I know,” she said now. “She just goes there to hang out with that guy.”

  “You mean Will?”