by Mary McNear
Billy had just taken a sip of wine when she saw her neighbor, Pastor Hanson, come out into his backyard. “I thought you might be here,” he called, opening the fence gate and crossing over to her porch. “We got this in our mailbox by mistake,” he added, holding up an envelope as he climbed the steps. “Sorry to say, it looks like a utility bill.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to miss that.” Billy smiled, reaching for it. Was it her imagination or did he frown, ever so slightly, at the glass of wine in her hand? One glass, Pastor Hanson, Billy wanted to say, just one, never two. He was, she knew, a famous teetotaler, and the one time she’d attended a service at his church, she’d half expected him to rail against the evils of alcohol. But while he might not have made a good drinking buddy, he was a good neighbor, he and his wife and their three children. More times than Billy could count, he’d helped her out: jump-starting her car, fixing her sprinkler, leaving a stack of wood on her back porch when he got his fall delivery.
“’Night,” he said, starting back down the stairs.
“Thank you, Pastor Hanson,” she said, setting the bill down on the table. She’d been tempted to ask him how his daughter was. She hadn’t seen Annabelle recently. Annabelle was Luke’s age, and she and Luke and another neighborhood boy, Toby Halsey, had been best friends until . . . until when? Until sometime last winter. Luke said they’d just drifted apart, but Billy wondered what had really happened. She could never get a straight answer out of Luke. Annabelle and Toby were good kids, the kind of kids you wanted your child to be friends with, and the absence of them in Luke’s life made her uneasy. Contributing to this feeling was the fact that Luke had a new friend, Van, the boy he’d gotten caught smoking with.
There were other things about Luke that were worrying her, too. He’d gone from being a good student to being an indifferent one. This spring, he’d still done his homework at Billy’s urging, but more often than not it was slapdash, something he did hurriedly between bites of cereal at the breakfast table. This alone hadn’t bothered her that much. Neither had the many hours he spent skateboarding or holed up in his bedroom, listening to music. She knew some kind of separation was normal, even necessary, for kids Luke’s age. What bothered her was that Luke’s once sunny talkativeness had morphed into a brooding silence.
Billy slid Persuasion out of the box set now and set it down on her lap. It was the novel she read when she was feeling melancholy. The Jane Austen set had been a rare splurge for her, but it had been worth it. All of the Austen novels she had owned in the past had eventually disintegrated. Starting in the sixth grade, she’d worked her way through several copies of each one until they’d simply fallen apart. This set, she hoped, would stand the test of time.
Though Billy loved Jane Austen, she didn’t consider herself a “Jane-ite” or belong to the Jane Austen Society or participate in any kind of Jane Austen fandom. She considered her relationship with Jane Austen’s work to be a private one, and while she’d read biographies of her before, she was much more interested in the novels than she was in the woman who’d written them. Unlike most Austen lovers, she didn’t have a favorite. She chose which one to read based on what kind of mood she was in. Sometimes she read one from beginning to end; sometimes she just read in one, a favorite scene or piece of dialogue. Sometimes, like tonight, she didn’t read anything at all—just the proximity of the books made her feel better.
She smiled now as Murphy came up the porch steps and nudged her knee with his wet nose. She scratched him behind his ears. She’d read once that this released endorphins in a dog’s brain, and she believed it. Thirty seconds of this and Murphy looked so blissed-out, she thought his eyeballs might roll back in his head. She stopped, rumpled his ears, and left him in peace to enjoy his endorphin rush. He liked this part of his day, she thought, taking another sip of wine, though in truth he liked every part of his day. All he needed most of the time was a bowl of water, a comfortable place to lie, and her proximity, or the promise of her proximity, and he was content. Add to that two meals a day, two walks a day, the occasional meaty bone from the butcher’s, and the thrice-weekly trip out to the town beach at dusk, where he chased tennis balls until it was too dark, and his life was complete.
Billy, on the other hand, needed more. Still, she savored his companionship, especially during this nightly cocktail hour. This was when they talked to each other. Or rather, Billy talked and Murphy listened. She didn’t talk to him out loud. She wasn’t completely crazy. She talked to him silently, but fortunately for her, Murphy, in addition to his many other exceptional qualities, was a mind reader. He was sensitive, thoughtful, and patient. He never passed judgment on her. Never reminded her of past mistakes. Never did anything, really, but listen and let her scratch him behind his ears.
In her imagination, Murphy had a drink, too. It wasn’t a chilled white wine like hers. His tastes were more . . . masculine. Less refined. She’d wondered, once, about what his invisible drink might be. A scotch and soda, maybe? No, too complicated. He was more a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy. How about an aged whiskey, straight up? No, that would be too expensive. Murphy, she was pretty sure, liked to watch his bottom line. No, Murphy’s drink of choice would be a beer. A Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboy. Ice-cold. And he’d drink it straight from the can, the way a beer like that should be drunk. That was just the kind of guy Murphy was.
How are you doing, Murphy? she asked him now.
His liquid brown eyes seemed to consider this. I’m good, he said finally. (Billy could read Murphy’s mind, too.) I have no complaints. I mean, I’ve got a little arthritis in my hip, but that’s just life, isn’t it? You can’t get to fifty-six without a few complaints. What about you, Billy? How are you doing?
I’ve been better, she admitted, sipping her wine. Murphy, resting his head on his paws, blinked patiently. I’m sorry, Murphy. I wish I were in a better mood tonight. I’ll make it up to you at the beach tomorrow. And Murphy, in his own inimitable way, seemed satisfied with this.
Billy heard the sprinkler go on with a little hiss and noticed the flickering lights of fireflies in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. Luke had loved fireflies when he’d first discovered them. He was convinced they’d been put on this earth for his entertainment. He’d caught one once, but he’d worried that it would miss its mother, and he’d quickly let it go. That was Luke at five, sweetness personified. The sweetness was still there, she hoped, buried under all those layers of adolescent angst.
And she felt suddenly nostalgic for a simpler time in their life together. She wished she could flip through the photo album on the coffee table of her mother’s living room in St. Paul. Her mom was a meticulous chronicler of their lives. Unlike so many people today, her photos weren’t stored in a cellphone or on a computer. She still took them with her trusty Minolta, had them developed, and carefully arranged them in chronological order.
In her mind’s eye, Billy saw an album labeled “Billy and Luke” that opened with a photograph of her at eighteen years old, looking equal parts anxious and thrilled, holding the tiny bundle that was a newborn Luke on the steps of the house she had grown up in. It was late December; snow covered the boxwood hedges, and the lights of a Christmas tree were visible through the living room window. Not pictured were Billy’s parents, who, already in their early sixties, had been planning their retirement when Billy had surprised them—no, shocked them—with the news that she was pregnant. At first they were upset, especially since the father-to-be was nowhere to be found, but ultimately they rose to the challenge with energy and enthusiasm. Billy’s father had painted Luke’s room and assembled his crib. Her mother had shopped for onesies and blankets and a pale blue snowsuit with unrestrained delight. They were even busier after he was born. Her mother helped Billy with all the chores—big and little—that came with an infant, and her father spent hours walking his colicky grandson up and down the hallway until Billy’s mother teased him that he’d wear out the rug.
There was
another photograph of Billy taken in September of the next year, standing in front of the bookstore at St. Catherine University in St. Paul on her first day of classes. She’d begun a year later than expected. She was thinner here than in the last photo and, though she looked happy, there was a new maturity about her that belied her age. Most college freshmen were preoccupied with studying and parties. Billy was preoccupied with the wriggling baby her mother was taking care of at home. In yet another photograph, a smiling three-year-old Luke stood at the gate to his new preschool, holding a Star Wars lunchbox. Next came a photo of Billy and Luke cutting the ribbon across the doorway to their cozy new apartment. They weren’t moving far; her parents had had it built for them over their garage. And now, time sped up. Billy graduated from college, Billy and Luke adopted a puppy—a golden ball of fluff they named Murphy—Luke started kindergarten, and Billy started a master’s program in library and information sciences at St. Catherine.
Finally there was an eight-year old Luke on the front steps of a house, only this time it was their own house in Butternut. They might have continued living near her parents, but Billy knew that no matter how comfortable they had all grown with the arrangement, it was probably time for her and Luke to be on their own. After almost two years as an assistant librarian at a branch library in St. Paul, she’d interviewed for, and been offered, the position of head librarian at the Butternut Library. After they’d moved, though, her parents continued to be a constant in their lives. An easy back-and-forth developed between the two households. Billy and Luke played host at Christmastime, decorating the house before her parents arrived with a car full of presents. And in the summer, Billy’s parents would often come for the weekend. Billy’s dad would take Luke fishing, and afterward the four of them would go to the Corner Bar for dinner and feed Luke a constant supply of quarters for the pinball machine. Then, of course, there were Billy and Luke’s trips to St. Paul to go to see a baseball game, visit with old friends, and eat Billy’s mom’s fabulous cooking.
But photographs, Billy knew, told only part of the story; they left out many things she wanted to remember, and a few things, too, she would have preferred to forget. In the latter category was Luke’s bout with croup when he was one year old. Billy and her mother had taken turns holding him in a steamy bathroom, and, when Billy wasn’t holding him, she was studying for her statistics exam the next day, her eyes already bleary from lack of sleep. In that same category was a spate of epic temper tantrums Luke had when he was two, one of which took place at another child’s birthday party during which Billy had felt sure the other parents were judging her and finding her wanting. And finally, there was their first night in their new house. Boxes still unpacked, Luke lonely for his grandparents and his best friend, Charlie, in St. Paul, and Billy worrying about whether she’d made the right decision.
Fortunately, the good memories far outnumbered the bad. She would always remember the winter morning when Luke was three and she’d taken him to the window to see that his whole world had turned white overnight. While they were sleeping, the first snowstorm of the season had blanketed the city; there would be no classes for Billy and no preschool for Luke. They spent the afternoon sledding down the hill behind their house. When Luke was in the second grade, Billy had spent every night of a rainy spring reading the first half of the Harry Potter series to him. Sometimes Luke would fall asleep in his wizarding costume. And the first summer they lived in Butternut, they’d spent almost every Saturday and Sunday at the town beach, Luke running around with a pack of kids, Billy reading under the shade of an umbrella and trying to keep her freckles to a minimum. When they got home in the evenings, sand between their toes, they’d be starving. After hosing themselves off, Billy would grill hot dogs they’d wolf down on the back porch, and later Luke would choose a movie for them to watch. Through it all, Billy had thought of Luke and herself as a team; they were best friends, they were buddies, they were partners in crime. All of which made her feel their recent estrangement so acutely.
Lately Billy had wondered if she should have made getting married a priority. There had been men other than Luke’s father: a classmate she’d dated in college, a fellow graduate student she’d seen when she was getting her master’s degree, even a few men she’d met in Butternut. But there had never been anyone she was serious about. Sometimes, she’d explain to friends, like Rae, that being a mother and having a full-time job were all she could manage. Yes, she knew that boys of single mothers needed a father figure. But until last spring, Luke had had one. Her father had filled that role in Luke’s life. Besides, she hadn’t wanted to disrupt her own relationship with Luke. Another single mother she’d known had finally married, only to find herself struggling to reconcile her two sons to their new stepfather; as far as Billy knew, things were still tense between them.
Yes, those might have been good excuses for not getting seriously involved with anyone, and Billy had gotten used to hauling them out when the occasion required. Still, there was a more complicated reason, she knew, one she preferred to keep between herself and Murphy, and it had to do with Jane Austen. Billy was a romantic. Her lifelong love of novels had nurtured and sustained her through good times and bad. It had done more, though. It had convinced her that when it came to love, romantic love, her experience with it was bound to be disappointing. Life, after all, was not a novel. Love, after all, was not perfect. She knew this, but it didn’t stop her from wanting a man like Mr. Darcy, witty dialogue, amusing plot twists, surprising new characters, and neatly tied-up endings in which hero and heroine were left with nothing more to do than contemplate their own happiness together.
Billy sighed now, and this served as Murphy’s cue to stand up. It was late; he was probably wondering why they were still out here when he had a dog bed he was especially fond of in the corner of her room. Even Luke, it appeared, was ready for sleep; he’d turned off his music.
“All right, Murphy, let’s call it a night,” Billy said. “We have a wedding to go to tomorrow. Oh, sorry,” she corrected herself. “You weren’t invited. I’ll try to smuggle out a piece of Caroline’s fried chicken for you, though.” And Murphy, who always understood her, wagged his tail in acknowledgment.
CHAPTER 5
Luke waited until the sounds of sleep overtook the house. Then he rolled his skateboard from under his bed, popped the screen out of his window, and dropped his skateboard onto the ground. He climbed out after it and stood there for a minute outside his bedroom window, listening to see if he’d woken up his mom or Murphy. But he didn’t hear a sound. His mom was a deep sleeper, and at night, Murphy rarely budged from his dog bed. Luke started walking gingerly over grass still wet from the sprinkler, stopping to give the tire swing in the backyard a push. Its chain creaked in the quiet night, and there was something so lonely about it swinging like that, without anyone on it, that he looked away and kept walking. He cut through the Hansons’ backyard and looked reflexively at the window he knew was Annabelle’s. Her lights were off. No surprise there. She’d probably been asleep for hours.
He continued on to the next backyard, and the one after that, and the one after that, using the moonlight to navigate an entire block of backyards, edging along shrubbery, swerving around children’s toys—a bicycle, a Hula-Hoop, a wading pool—and slowing down outside the houses where he knew dogs lived. At the last house, the Kimballs’, he skirted around the side yard to the front and then, still carrying his skateboard with him—its wheels were too loud for a residential street—headed down the sidewalk. This part would be trickier. The other two times he’d done this, he hadn’t seen any cars. But you never knew. Still, he figured if he listened carefully, he’d be able to hear one in time to hide behind a tree before it drove by.
As it turned out, there were no cars, and no lights on in any of the houses, either, except occasionally a faint light in an upstairs bedroom, or a TV on in an otherwise dark living room. When he came to the end of that block, he turned onto the first of two commerc
ial streets that anchored the town. “Downtown Butternut,” his mom had heard someone call it after they’d moved here; at the time they’d both thought that was funny. First he walked down Main Street with its painted wooden benches, striped awnings, and window boxes filled with flowers. His mom had once described Butternut’s Main Street as “circa 1950,” but he’d forgotten what “circa” meant. Then he turned down Glover Street, staying close to the buildings as he passed a series of businesses: a pet groomer’s, a chiropractic clinic, a knitting store. Another block of this and the buildings grew farther apart, the businesses bigger. He passed a plant nursery, an electric co-op, and an auto body garage. Finally he turned onto Northern Lights Road, dropped his skateboard, stepped onto it and, pushing off the concrete, cruised down the sidewalk.
The sky seemed to open up above him, black and starry, with a big yellow moon hanging low and looking like the rubber ball he’d seen lying in the wet grass of someone’s backyard tonight. He pulled a deep breath into his lungs and felt the wind on his face, the board humming beneath his feet. It felt good to be out here after being inside all day, grounded because of his suspension. And he could have kept going, too, all the way out of town, but he knew the longer he stayed out the more likely he was to get caught. So when he reached the recreation center, which took up a whole block on one side of the street, he stopped, tried the gate and, when he realized it was locked, tossed his skateboard over the fence and went clambering after it. So much for keeping people out, he thought, getting back on his skateboard and cutting through the parking lot to the back of the building, where there was a playground, a grassy lawn with some picnic tables on it, and a sand volleyball court.