Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  Lindsey Mercado’s father told Jane that Lindsey had told him that the moonlight is actually reflected sunlight and wanted to know why Jane was spreading falsehoods.

  Brianna Wooten’s mother let the class hamster out of its cage without asking and spent almost the entire conference dashing around the classroom calling, “Cuthbert! Cuthbert! I need you to listen!” Jane had only a minute there at the end to tell her that she thought Brianna might have some attention deficit issues.

  And Kenny Parish’s father told her indignantly that Kenny could definitely read at a second-grade level because he could tell the difference between Foster’s Lager and Foster’s Special Bitter when asked to fetch one from the fridge.

  After the last conference, Duncan brought Jane her own beer from a cooler in his van and held her feet on his lap and gave her a foot rub—massaging her insteps with hard, smooth strokes. It was actually better than sex, in a way, because really, how often do you sit around thinking, I’m so tired, I wish someone would have sex with me?

  “All the time,” Duncan said when she told him this. “I literally think that all the time.”

  And so they did that, too, right there in the classroom, with the door shut and the lights off. For weeks after, Jane felt horribly guilty whenever she looked at the Peter Rabbit rug.

  * * *

  —

  Jane had hoped that Duncan would want to spend Thanksgiving alone with her—a romantic long weekend by the fire. But he told her that he always spent Thanksgiving in the Upper Peninsula at a friend’s cabin, fall fishing for steelhead.

  (It seemed to Jane that people who lived downstate had cabins in Northern Michigan, and people who lived in Northern Michigan had cabins in the Upper Peninsula, but where did people who lived in the Upper Peninsula have cabins? Canada? And where did Canadian people have cabins? At what point did there cease to be an appeal in going north and people gave up and bought time-shares in Florida?)

  So Jane drove down to Grand Rapids to spend Thanksgiving with her mother. Her mother worked as a receptionist in a dental office, and they always had Thanksgiving dinner with the dentist and his family. Every year, Dr. Wimberly told Jane that her mother kept his practice afloat singlehandedly. Jane had no doubt that was true.

  Her mother was a stout woman with a slight bullfrog neck, a broad, leonine face, and an imposing manner. Jane took after her father—he’d had the blondness and the slighter build. Her mother had darker hair and darker eyes. She wore her bifocals on a chain around her neck, and when she put them on and tilted her head back to examine you, you knew she was going to find you wanting, and you weren’t wrong. Jane had heard her mother on the phone, confirming dental appointments: “We expect to see you tomorrow at nine, regardless of the weather.” “You’re not going to waste our time like you did last week, are you?” “I do hope you’ll manage to be prompt and not inconvenience everyone.”

  It was even worse in the dentist’s waiting room, where Jane had spent many afternoons as a child, coloring or reading. “Put the magazines back on the rack when you’re done reading them,” her mother would say sternly to patients, “and don’t go taking one just because it has a recipe you fancy trying.” And, “If you’ve brushed and flossed like you’re supposed to, I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”

  You would think patients would leave the practice in droves, but maybe they were afraid Jane’s mother would hunt them down. Dr. Wimberly either didn’t know or didn’t care about her mother’s scare tactics. He always got emotional on Thanksgiving, patting her mother’s arm and saying, “I would be lost without Phyllis, completely lost.”

  “Nonsense,” Jane’s mother would say, looking pleased.

  This year, Jane suspected Dr. Wimberly had had some predinner drinks because he gave her a hug that was at least thirty seconds too long. “Jane, little Jane!” he said. “Look at you, so grown up! Phyllis tells me you love it up north.”

  “Yes, I do,” Jane said, retreating a step.

  “Phyllis also says you have a boyfriend,” Dr. Wimberly continued. “Some sort of day laborer? Or is he a tinker?”

  Jane gave her mother an annoyed look. “He’s a woodworker,” she said to Dr. Wimberly.

  “Ah!” Dr. Wimberly smiled condescendingly, as though Jane had just told him that Duncan was a bard, or maybe president. “Are you two serious?”

  “Yes, very,” Jane said firmly. (Dr. Wimberly was looking like he might start hugging her again.)

  “Not serious enough for him to come here for Thanksgiving,” her mother said to no one in particular.

  On Saturday, Jane drove back up to her house. She hadn’t heard from Duncan because the fishing cabin had no phone and neither Jane nor Duncan had cell phones. (No one in Boyne City did—the reception was almost nonexistent because Boyne City rested in a slight hollow. The only person Jane knew who had a cell phone was Dr. Haven, the local family doctor, and he had to hike up Avalanche Mountain on Sunday nights to check his messages.)

  She drove past Duncan’s apartment on her way into town, hoping that maybe he, too, had returned early, but it was dark and shuttered-looking.

  Yet there was his van in Jane’s driveway, and there was Duncan sitting on her front porch steps. He was wearing a denim jacket with a shearling collar that shone faintly in the darkness.

  She parked her car and got out, carrying her overnight bag. “Oh, hey,” she said softly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I called your mother and she said you’d left a couple hours ago, so I thought I’d come see you.”

  Jane stood for a moment, her bag bouncing lightly against her legs. “Weren’t the fish biting?” she asked.

  “They were biting,” Duncan said. “I just missed you.”

  The moon glowed (with reflected sunlight, remember) through the bare trees like a heavy silver ball resting on elegant black fingers, and Jane thought she had never seen anything so beautiful.

  * * *

  —

  The first snow came in early December. Jane awoke to the rumble of machinery and peeked out her window to see Duncan clearing her driveway with a snowblower. The world was soft and white and crystalline; the red of the snowblower and the green of Duncan’s jacket were the only splashes of color.

  It snowed again the next week, and twice more before Christmas. Each time, Jane could stay in bed, secure and cozy and cared for, knowing that Duncan or Jimmy would come to clear her driveway and sidewalk before she had to leave for work. Of course, she knew that one of them was also over clearing Aggie’s driveway because Gary was apparently not in harmony with snowblowers either. Actually, it might have been more than just Jane’s and Aggie’s driveways. Maybe Duncan did the driveways of all his former lovers, though Jane didn’t suppose he had that much time.

  If Duncan cleared her drive, he would let himself in quietly afterward and get in bed with Jane, pulling up her nightshirt, his body warm from exercise, only the tips of his fingers cold on her spine. (If Jimmy cleared the drive, that part didn’t happen.)

  * * *

  —

  Jane bought a too-short tuxedo jacket at the thrift store and trimmed it with a three-inch ribbon of satin and added white silk piping to the pockets and lapels. She was not much of a tailor, and all this took her many days, and she wound up with bruised fingers and a tuxedo jacket that looked almost exactly like one she’d bought at a Detroit flea market two years earlier, only not as nice.

  When she showed it to Duncan, he stroked his moustache for a full minute. “Winters are long here,” he said. “That’s a fact.”

  * * *

  —

  Christmas came, as it always does, bringing a rising anxiety about gift giving and gift receiving. Always there’s the worry that you will undergift someone who will overgift you, or that you will give a gift to someone who looks at you blankly in return, or that you will receiv
e an unexpected gift that requires the impromptu gifting of one of your own (hastily wrapped and sometimes beloved) possessions in return. Jane also lived with the fear that a student’s family would give her some horribly intimate gift—like a nightgown or massage oil—and she would have to write a thank-you note for it, or that Duncan would give her a horribly nonintimate gift—like a wastebasket—and she would have to pretend to love it. The run-up to Christmas was sort of like the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of escalating tension.

  But in the end it was okay. Jane’s students gave her small, thoughtful, easily thankable gifts: gift cards and coffee mugs and scented candles. Jane gave Freida a Bob Dylan biography, and Freida gave Jane a CD of Christmas carols she’d recorded herself. Jane gave Duncan a blue button-down shirt made of Egyptian cotton. It had thin amber stripes that exactly matched his eyes, and the cloth was as soft as water. Duncan gave Jane a delicate silver necklace with a leaf-shaped pendant. It would have made Jane completely happy except that she’d seen an identical necklace on one of Duncan’s former girlfriends—a waitress at Robert’s Restaurant—and it brought to mind the image of Duncan having bought these necklaces in bulk years ago. But it made her mostly happy even so.

  * * *

  —

  In January, Freida invited Jane to play in her all-female jug band, who called themselves the Jug Bandits.

  “It’s a good way to meet people,” Freida said. “The other players are all very nice. Well, mostly. Monica Daniels won’t shake hands with anyone because she says it stresses her bowing hand. I know all violists think they’re bullied, but sometimes it almost seems called for.”

  Jane didn’t want to say that now that she’d met Duncan, she had no interest in meeting anyone else, so she agreed.

  The Jug Bandits had gotten their first paying gig—the Association of Women Radiologists had hired them to play at their annual meeting at the library—and Jane wore a black pantsuit with a thin black velvet ribbon tied around her neck. (Some of her thrift-store outfits were more successful than others; she looked vaguely like an undertaker in this one.)

  Jane didn’t experience anything you might call a performer’s high, but it wasn’t so bad, beating on a saucepan with a pair of wooden spoons while Freida played the mandolin and the band worked their way through “Happy Feet” and a number of other songs made famous by the Muppets. Freida wore a fringed leather headband that made looking at or speaking to her very difficult, and the band outnumbered the audience, but otherwise it was a good night.

  Duncan was one of the five audience members, which made Jane happy, and the assistant children’s librarian went home with the band’s washtub player afterward, so it might have been a night of sexual awakening.

  “Not unless there’ve been big changes,” Duncan said on the walk back to Jane’s house. “Because I slept with both of them, back in the early nineties.”

  “At the same time?” Jane asked. Her face was flushed, and the cold painted her cheeks in a way that made her feel every brush stroke.

  “No, a couple of years apart,” he said.

  “Is there anyone in Boyne City you haven’t had sex with?” she asked irritably.

  “Oh, sure,” Duncan said. “Freida Fitzgerald, for one.”

  * * *

  —

  Jane and Duncan were invited over for dinner at Aggie and Gary’s.

  “Aggie said she wants to get to know you better,” Duncan told her, and Jane felt a little thrill of competition. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, so it wouldn’t seem she was trying too hard, with her new tuxedo jacket, so she would seem stylish and unique, under a vintage embroidered beige dress coat that was sure to be prettier than any coat Aggie owned. The coat was also far too thin for the fifteen-degree weather, and Jane hopped lightly from foot to foot as she stood shivering on Aggie’s front porch. Duncan, carrying a bottle of merlot, rang the doorbell.

  Inside they heard Aggie say, “Who do you suppose is at the door?” and Gary say, “No idea. Are you expecting someone?”

  Jane rolled her eyes at Duncan.

  He looked thoughtful. “Could be she meant next Friday.”

  Just then Aggie opened the door. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. She was wearing a denim skirt and pink ruffled blouse, and as always, her milk-fed, creamy-skinned appearance made Jane feel like a gym teacher, or maybe a greyhound.

  “Hi there, Aggie,” Duncan said, as if everything were going according to plan. “Thank you so much for inviting us over.”

  “Honestly.” Aggie shook her head. “You are just hopeless.”

  Duncan walked past her into the house, and Jane trailed along timidly. “Sorry if I might have gotten the day wrong,” he said, “but we’re here now. Hey, Gary. How are you?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Gary said slowly. He was sprawled on the couch in front of the TV wearing a gray sweat suit. Jane sent up a brief prayer of thanks that he wasn’t wearing just his underpants.

  “Gary, this is Jane.” Duncan gestured vaguely. “Jane, this is Gary.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Jane said formally.

  Gary squinted at her through his bifocals. “What’s your opinion of three-way lightbulbs?”

  “Three-way lightbulbs?” Jane blinked. “Um, I think they’re okay.”

  Gary frowned. “You’re saying you’re fine with having to make a decision every time you turn on a lamp?”

  “Duncan, I don’t have a thing for dinner,” Aggie interrupted. “We were going to have sandwiches.”

  “They’re not open-faced sandwiches, are they?” Gary asked.

  “No, dear,” Aggie said.

  “I don’t like open-faced sandwiches,” Gary said to Jane. “Too much like toast.”

  “Well, luckily, Jane and I like any kind of sandwich.” Duncan held up the bottle of merlot. “Shall I open the wine?”

  Apparently they were staying. Aggie took Jane’s coat, saying, “Aren’t you terribly cold in such a thin wrap?”

  “No, not at all,” Jane said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

  The worst part of the evening was not that the sandwiches—grilled tomato, chèvre, and thyme on baguettes—were easily the best sandwiches Jane had ever eaten, or the fact that Aggie served homemade potato chips to “round out” the meal, or that she “happened” to have made apple dumplings the day before, so dessert was taken care of. (Fucking show-off.) The worst part was that it began to feel to Jane like a blind double date where she and Gary were struggling and Duncan and Aggie were hitting it off.

  Jane had tried several times to speak to Gary, asking him how he liked working at State Farm and how long he’d lived in Boyne City, but he had ignored her, watching the news over her shoulder.

  She tried to talk to Duncan and Aggie, but they were talking to each other.

  “Did you hear Clive and Michelle Parsons are getting divorced?” Aggie asked.

  Duncan speared a potato chip with his fork. “Is it because of Clive sleeping with that woman who runs the produce stand in Mancelona?”

  “You knew about that?” Aggie said, looking startled.

  Duncan shrugged. “Everybody knew about it but Michelle, and I guess she found out.”

  Aggie sighed. “It seems like everyone we know is divorced. I think it’s so sad, like a decline in civilized living.”

  “You didn’t think it was so sad when you divorced me,” Duncan said. “Back then you said it was the smartest thing you ever did.”

  “Did I say that?” Aggie looked fondly nostalgic.

  “Many, many times,” Duncan said without rancor. “And you’ve been saying for years that the way shops put a tip jar by the cash registers is the cause of decline in civilized living, not divorce.”

  Their conversation was like the apple dumplings, perfectly crimped around the edges and sealed off. Jane couldn’t get
in.

  “What is an Alsatian?” Gary asked her abruptly.

  Jane was pleased he was at least trying. “Well,” she said, thinking, “it’s kind of like a German shepherd—”

  Gary interrupted, “Who is Jules Verne?”

  Jane could see a blue screen reflected in Gary’s glasses. Understanding came to her like a sip of ice water: Jeopardy! was on mute on the television behind her.

  At seven thirty, Gary leapt to his feet and there was a mad scrabbling around for the TV remote because apparently he strongly disapproved of Wheel of Fortune, which was on next. Once he’d turned off the TV, it seemed like time for Duncan and Jane to go.

  “Thanks, Aggie,” Duncan said on their way out. “I’ll come over and fix that toaster oven for you later this week.”

  Jane smiled and waved as she shivered in her embroidered coat. She was suddenly cheerful again as she took Duncan’s hand. Let Aggie have her moment with Duncan, let Aggie have her memories, let Aggie have her toaster oven fixed. Who was Duncan going home with? Jane—that’s who.

  * * *

  —

  “Well, he wasn’t drunk, particularly,” Freida said thoughtfully, stirring her drink. “And he wasn’t a migrant worker, though he was in town for the Cherry Festival. And when I woke up the next morning, he’d up and left with my best tuning whistle.”

  And that was February, pretty much.

  * * *

  —

  Winters were long here. It was a fact.

  * * *