Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  —

  In March, Duncan called Jane and said, “We have a crisis.”

  “What?” Jane asked happily. If you were having a joint crisis, it must mean you were also having a relationship.

  “Aggie’s pipes froze and her house is flooded.”

  “Oh,” said Jane.

  “She and Gary went to Livonia for four days, and their heat went out, and Gary hadn’t even thought to leave the tap dripping,” Duncan continued. “So along comes that cold spell last week, and the pipes froze and the waterline burst above their bedroom and soaked everything all the way down to the kitchen. They might have mildew in the drywall.”

  This seemed to call for some sort of response, so Jane said, “Goodness.”

  “They have to move out for at least a week,” Duncan said, “and they can’t stay at a hotel because hotel heating is bad for Aggie’s sinuses.”

  This was a crisis? Jane wanted to laugh. She dealt with crises greater than this every day. A true crisis was when all the second-grade girls except Mariah Visser clustered under the slide on the playground, whispering, and Mariah sat on a swing and pushed herself back and forth with the tip of one white sneaker.

  “Aggie and Gary can stay here,” she said. “And I’ll stay with you.”

  * * *

  —

  Jane stood at the door on the morning Aggie moved in, striving for an expression of warm and loving welcome, but the first thing Aggie did was gesture at the bowl of dried flowers on the kitchen table and say, “I believe that’s my soup tureen.”

  “No, it’s mine,” Jane said. “I bought it at the thrift store.”

  “I’m sure you did.” Aggie put her hands on her hips. “But it used to be mine. Duncan and I got it as a wedding present from the Mitfords. I recognize the chip on the handle. How much did you pay for it?”

  “Ninety-nine cents,” said Jane. (It had actually been twelve dollars.)

  “Now, wait a minute,” Duncan interrupted calmly. “Who are the Mitfords and what’s a soup tureen? How’s it different from a bowl?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Aggie said. “The Mitfords are my godparents. You only went over to their house for Sunday dinner a hundred times.”

  Duncan looked thoughtful. “Are they the people with the Doberman who tried to attack you when you wore the coat with the squirrel-fur collar?”

  “No, that was the Masons,” Aggie said. Her eyes were flickering over the soup tureen and over Duncan, who was examining it. She looked proprietary of both.

  “Why did you give our wedding present to the thrift store?” Duncan asked.

  “Well, the chip on the handle.” Aggie shrugged. “Besides, Gary doesn’t really approve of soup.”

  Jane excused herself and went to get her overnight bag from the bedroom. The overnight bag was from the thrift store, too, but suddenly the leather looked old and scuffed, not classic and well loved, as she had previously thought. Of course, that was the bad thing about the thrift store. You knew everything was there for a reason, like a chipped handle. You brought other people’s things home—soup tureens, suitcases, husbands—and tried to love them as best you could, but it didn’t always work.

  * * *

  —

  Living in Duncan’s apartment was a lot like living in Duncan’s furniture repair van: a small rectangular space, smelling strongly of paint thinner, and filled with dust and wooden spindles and empty beer cans. Really the only difference was that Jimmy had a key to the apartment, and twice he walked in while Jane and Duncan were having sex.

  The first time, Jimmy merely grabbed a putty knife and then stepped tactfully back out. The second time, he and Duncan had a short conversation about someone’s grandma’s chifforobe.

  “Christ.” Duncan spoke to Jimmy over his shoulder. “Is it that woman from Boyne Falls?”

  “Sure is.” Jimmy nodded. “Said she’s coming in today to see how much progress you’ve made.”

  “Well, put the chifforobe in the middle of the workroom and scatter some sawdust around it,” Duncan said. “I’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said cheerfully.

  Duncan turned back to Jane, who lay beneath him, and said, “Sorry about that,” in exactly the same way the teller at the bank said it when the line was longer than two people.

  Duncan had a single bed (Jane suspected it was to discourage women from sleeping over), and every night, Jane slept with her bare shoulder blades pressed up against the wall like a child’s hands against a pane of glass.

  During the ten days she lived there, she had a constant low-level headache from the varnish fumes, she stubbed her toe repeatedly on a piece of cast-iron fence propped behind the bathroom door, and she discovered there wasn’t a single article—not one!—that she wanted to read in Field & Stream. She had never been so happy.

  * * *

  —

  Jane had invited her mother to visit the last weekend in April, or rather, Jane’s mother had invited herself.

  “Dr. Wimberly is renovating the office, so I have a long weekend,” she told Jane on the phone. “Thought I’d come on up and have a look-see at your house and this Duncan I’ve heard so much about.”

  Jane was nervous about her mother meeting Duncan—conversations with her mother were often thorny and barbed.

  But Duncan wasn’t nervous. “Oh, it’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve met more women’s parents than you’ve had hot dinners. She’ll like me.”

  Of course, that made sense. Meeting your lover’s parents got easier the more you did it, just like tying your shoes or boiling an egg or looking interested when people talked about their pets. It was just that you didn’t necessarily want your lover to have had all that practice.

  But apparently if you were good with women—and certainly Duncan was good with women, the way other people are good with cars or numbers—you were good with all women. Seeming to sense that Jane’s mother would be suspicious of a compliment on her appearance, Duncan complimented her instead on her Ford Fiesta and her wisdom in buying an American-made car. He debated the weather with her politely before agreeing that a heat index was nothing more than a meaningless number manufactured by the Weather Channel—it was as though he knew she wouldn’t respect someone who agreed with her right away. When Jane’s mother told a very pointed story about a handyman who had overcharged her, Duncan replied that Jane didn’t need a handyman—that she could change the batteries in a smoke detector faster than a mongoose could kill a snake—and it just went to show how well she’d been raised.

  On the way out to dinner, her mother held on to Duncan’s arm and looked up at him with a shiny sort of expression that Jane had never seen before.

  On the second night of Jane’s mother’s visit, Freida invited them all over to her house for a combination barbecue and recital. Jane wore a dark green maxi dress with yellow and maroon flowers—her mother said it made her think of three-bean salad, the kind with garbanzos—and Duncan escorted both of them over to Freida’s.

  Freida lived in a tiny brick house, almost anonymous until you got inside and saw the baby grand piano sitting proudly in the middle of the living room and glimpsed the lush and shady backyard with its tall oaks. Jane and Duncan and her mother let themselves in the front door and walked through the house to the backyard. Freida crossed the grass to greet them. She was wearing black pants and a white blouse with neck ruffles and looked oddly like Mozart.

  Jane introduced her mother, and Freida pointed out the teenage students who would be performing—two boys and three girls—and their parents. It was warm for April and most people were in shirtsleeves.

  Aggie was there, Jane saw, and so was Gary, looking bewildered.

  Jane introduced her mother to both of them.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Phyllis. We’ve been getting to know Jane quite w
ell,” Aggie said, in the way people say they’ve finally caught up on their ironing. “How was your drive up from Grand Rapids?”

  “I ran into terrible roadwork outside Cadillac.” Jane’s mother shook her head. “I honestly think road construction should be outlawed for all but two weeks of the year.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel about carrot peelers,” Gary said so unexpectedly that Jane spilled a little wine down the front of her dress.

  “Duncan,” Aggie said, her eyes taking on a slight possessive sheen, “it looks like you and I will have to be in charge of barbecuing. I believe Freida thinks the food is going to cook itself.”

  Jane glanced over and saw that Freida had a grill set up, and the table next to it was stacked with hamburgers and sausages still in the supermarket packs and with unopened plastic bins of coleslaw and potato salad. A new-looking bag of charcoal was propped against the grill, which looked almost new itself.

  “We’re going to have to thin those burger patties right down.” Aggie’s voice throbbed with bossy satisfaction. “Duncan, light the fire and see if there are any small oak branches lying in the yard. I doubt Freida has mesquite chips.”

  “Maybe she has plans you don’t know about,” Duncan said, but he went off good-naturedly. Aggie marched off toward the house, Gary following obediently.

  Jane’s mother stepped closer to her. “That Gary fellow,” she whispered, “is he an alcoholic?”

  “Gary?” Jane was surprised. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Her mother frowned. “Then what exactly is wrong with him?”

  “No one really knows,” Jane said. Duncan had told her once that Gary had been slightly higher-functioning before he married Aggie but that he had regressed somewhat since. He thought it was because Aggie never allowed Gary to make a single decision on his own. (“But then that’s why she married him,” Duncan had said. “Because he does what she says so.” It was an odd turn of phrase, but Jane found it very fitting.)

  “Hello, Mrs. Wilkes,” a shy voice said. It was Jimmy Jellico. “It’s awful nice to meet you.”

  “My pleasure, young man.” Jane’s mother shook his hand. “You work with Duncan at his shop, don’t you?”

  “Sure do,” Jimmy agreed, smiling.

  “And I believe Jane said you were a Boyne City native,” her mother said. “Were you born here?”

  “Oh, no.” Jimmy shook his head. “I was born at the hospital over in Charlevoix.”

  Jane’s mother paused, looking at Jimmy thoughtfully. “Tell me where you live now, Jimmy, and what your house is like.”

  “I live with my ma over on Pearl Street.” Jimmy looked pleased. “It’s a green house with brown shutters, and it has a sleeping porch.”

  “A sleeping porch sounds perfectly lovely,” Jane’s mother said. “Do you sleep out there every night in the summer?”

  “No, mainly I take naps back there,” Jimmy answered. “I like naps.”

  “I do, too,” Jane’s mother said. “Now, tell me some other things you like. What are your favorite TV shows?”

  Jane didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she let it out. Sometimes she thought being with her mother was like crossing a desert: long, hard stretches of burning sand that exhausted you, but every once in a while, you happened on a little oasis of kindness.

  For dinner, Aggie performed some sort of minor miracle with canned pineapple, grilling it with honey and red pepper sauce, transforming the most basic fare into something memorable. Duncan said it reminded him of a chicken casserole Aggie had made once without a single fresh ingredient. He said it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

  Freida had set up her back deck as a stage, with two barstools and a music stand. After dinner, she had everyone drag their lawn chairs over. “Thank you all so much for coming tonight,” she said, her voice tremulous with gratitude. “I have five of my most promising students here to perform for you and I’ll be accompanying them on the mandolin.”

  Jonathan Floyd was first, playing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on the clarinet to moderate applause. Next, Chloe Jensen played “Amazing Grace” on the violin. Her short lavender lace dress was too tight in the armholes, and the hemline rose perilously when she reached for the high notes. The Myers sisters sang “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” while Freida strummed along and sang out in places where she obviously thought the girls would be unable to hit the notes, making the lyrics oddly emphasized: “There is no sickness, no TOIL, nor danger, in that BRIGHT land to which I go!” Sexy Nicky Burdine played “Afternoon Delight” on the guitar and sang, while looking directly at the younger Myers sister, who was thirteen:

  Please be waiting for me, baby, when I come around.

  We could make a lot of lovin’ ’fore the sun goes down…

  Mr. Myers grew murderous-looking and muscles bunched in his jaw.

  The last notes of Nicky’s guitar faded away, and Jane’s mother said, “Imagine the less promising students!” in a loud whisper.

  Jane sighed. They were back in the desert.

  * * *

  —

  Summer finally came, all at once. Grass turned green, flowers burst into bloom, birds were everywhere, and temperatures zoomed up into the eighties, as though the weather wanted to catch people unawares and make them complain about the heat.

  To celebrate, Jane took her class to the park for the day. She brought a laundry basket full of water bottles and a big cooler of popsicles. They played Mother May I, and Red Rover, and Red Light, Green Light—all the old standards that are still fresh to seven-year-olds.

  Duncan and Jimmy came at lunchtime with pizzas, and afterward, they chased the children through the playground until the children screamed with laughter. Jimmy pushed Corey Navarro around and around on the tire swing until Corey got dizzy and threw up, and Alicia Sweet accidentally locked herself in the park restroom and had to be rescued.

  Freida joined them in the late afternoon with her mandolin and led the children through “The Old Gray Mare” and “I’ll Tell My Ma” and “Kookaburra” while Jane sat on a nearby bench with Duncan’s arm around her. Duncan sang, too, and his voice was so deep compared to the light, golden voices of the children that it was less a voice than a rumble beneath the words.

  When the children grew too sleepy to sing along—Scott Stafford was actually asleep on one of the picnic tables, covered with Duncan’s sweatshirt—Freida switched to more sophisticated songs and sang by herself. “Red Dirt Girl” and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” and “Sweet Old World” and a song Jane didn’t know:

  Well, I could’ve loved you better, didn’t mean to be unkind.

  You know that was the last thing on my mind…

  The afternoon sunlight hit the trees, making the leaves shine like a million tiny shifting mirrors. Jane leaned her head on Duncan’s shoulder, wondering how she could have gone so long without realizing that mandolin music was the most beautiful music in all the world.

  * * *

  —

  The next day was a Saturday, and Jane rode with Duncan to Alpena to deliver a pair of beautiful French rococo chairs with blue-and-white upholstery to a client. Jane wore jeans with the cuffs rolled up and an old flannel shirt of Duncan’s. They drove with the windows down, Jane’s outstretched hand cupping the wind and letting it go, cupping the wind and letting it go.

  Once they got to Alpena, they drove through a residential area where the homes grew progressively larger, making it look as though the houses were stalking them, creeping toward the street. Duncan parked in the driveway of a big white Colonial-style house, and Jane followed him up the porch steps.

  The woman who answered the door looked as if she’d just been called off a photoshoot. Green-eyed and red-lipped, she had glossy blond hair that hung over one shoulder in a shining banner. She wore a white-on-white embroidered caftan tha
t stopped above her knees to reveal shapely legs. She looked at Duncan with such sleepy bedroom eyes that Jane was surprised the woman could see anything at all.

  “Hi, Duncan,” the woman said. Her accent was Midwestern, but her voice was husky and smooth. She looked past him to Jane, and her expression didn’t change; Jane got the bedroom eyes, too. Maybe the woman had just woken up.

  “Hey, Amanda,” Duncan said easily. “How are you?”

  “Good,” Amanda breathed. The word was like a puff of smoke. “Thank you for bringing the chairs.”

  “No problem.” Duncan sounded cheerful. “I can bring them in right now if you tell me where you’d like them.”

  “I made space in the bedroom.” Amanda gestured vaguely. (Of course the bedroom, thought Jane.) “Would you and your friend like some iced tea?”

  “That would be great,” Duncan said. “Amanda, this is Jane. Jane, Amanda.”

  Amanda stepped aside. “Come on with me,” she said to Jane. “Duncan will bring the chairs.”

  She led the way languidly to an ordinary kitchen—Jane had expected something more exotic. When Amanda reached into a cupboard for glasses, Jane saw a wide gold band and big diamond sparkler on Amanda’s left hand. She felt a little better. Amanda took so long pouring three glasses of iced tea that Duncan—who seemed to know where the bedroom was without being told—had carried the chairs in and joined Jane at the kitchen table before she was done.

  Amanda set the glasses down and seemed to drift into her own chair.

  Duncan took a drink. “So how do you like living here?”

  Amanda gazed around as though she had just discovered where she was. She shrugged. “It’s not bad,” she said. “More to do in the winter. More to keep me…busy.”

  Everything she said sounded like sexual innuendo. Jane thought Amanda could say How is Boyne City? and it would sound rich with erotic promise.

  “How is Boyne City?” Amanda asked.