Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  “Same as ever.” Duncan nodded. “And how’s married life?”

  Amanda smiled lazily. “I like it. How about you? Are you and”—she frowned minutely—“Jane tempted?”

  “No, ma’am,” Duncan said immediately. “I’m never getting married again.”

  Suddenly there was nothing slow and languid about Amanda’s eyes—they flicked straight to Jane, and something like triumph showed in them.

  Jane kept her face completely neutral. She forced the muscles in her cheeks to relax so it wouldn’t look like she was clenching her teeth. Her eyelid was threatening to twitch, and she focused all her attention on not letting it.

  Amanda asked Duncan how business was, and he shrugged. He said if Amanda wanted a loveseat to match those chairs, he’d keep an eye out. Amanda said she didn’t know, that she didn’t like the bedroom to be (she paused and made a vague gesture) cluttered.

  Jane took a sip of her tea. It was bitter—Amanda had oversteeped it. Jane wanted to add sugar from the pretty little white bowl Amanda had set out, but she was afraid her hands would shake too much and she’d scatter grains of sugar all over the table. Besides, bitter tea seemed appropriate. Bitter was how she felt.

  * * *

  —

  Jane was quiet on the ride home. She rolled her window up, and after a while, Duncan asked if she’d like him to roll his window up, too.

  “Yes, please,” Jane said.

  He glanced over at her. “Are you hungry? Should we stop for something to eat?”

  Jane shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  “I have to go to Traverse City tomorrow,” Duncan said. “Want to come along? We could visit some wineries.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jane said. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  In the back of her classroom, Jane had a Good Manners Wall—a green felt board with a number of laminated cards Velcroed to it. The cards had polite phrases printed on them, everything from Yes, please and No, thank you and May I have the bathroom pass? to I’d like to use the scissors and I’m ready to listen and I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. The children were supposed to consult the board when they didn’t know how to say something politely. (It didn’t always work—Shawn Vandenberg had figured out right away that he could abuse it by saying things like, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Lizard Face.”) But right now it was working for Jane. She felt as though she were plucking the cards off one by one and handing them to Duncan.

  Duncan didn’t repeat his invitation. He said, “You’re being awfully quiet. Is it what I said to Amanda about not wanting to get married? Because you knew that, right?”

  Jane sighed and looked out the window at the trees flashing by. “I know it now.”

  “I guess I thought we understood each other,” Duncan said.

  Jane said nothing.

  Duncan cleared his throat. “You being so young and all, and new in town—I thought you wanted an interim type of relationship. I figured when you wanted to get married, you’d look around for someone else.”

  Jane reached for the Good Manners Wall in her mind again. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

  After a moment, Duncan took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

  When they got to her house, dusk was settling in like a giant had shaken out a lavender blanket and left it to drift down. Duncan came inside, and they both wandered around aimlessly, opening and shutting the refrigerator, turning on and off the TV.

  “Maybe I should go,” Duncan said finally. “I have to get up early to leave for Traverse City.”

  Jane wanted to ask Duncan to hold her, but she suspected he’d get tired of holding her after about five minutes, and she knew she could make sex last a lot longer, so she took him by the hand and led him upstairs.

  They made love quietly in her bedroom. The lights were off, but the window shades were up. The sheets glowed faintly silver in the darkness, and shadows lay like spiderwebs in the corners. The love they made was ghostly, insubstantial. If Duncan noticed that Jane used only phrases from the Good Manners Wall—“Yes, I would like that” and “Is this okay?”—he didn’t say so.

  * * *

  —

  Afterward, Jane stood on her porch steps and watched Duncan drive away in his van. He honked lightly from the street, and she waved. She was wearing her robe, the silk one with all the embroidered daisies that were beginning to come unstitched. The wind had freshened and ran cool fingers through her hair, chilling her scalp.

  Jane knew then that she couldn’t go on seeing Duncan. Of course she would still see him, because it was impossible to live in Boyne City and not see someone else who lived there, but she wouldn’t go on trying to have a relationship with him. She wouldn’t keep trying to make him something he wasn’t.

  She stood on the porch with her chin down and her arms crossed, hugging herself slightly. She thought that the worst part was not that Duncan had taken her heart as surely as Freida’s long-ago lover had taken her tuning whistle. The worst part was that she’d given it to him. Yes, that was always the worst part. You gave it to him. You carved out a crucial little part of yourself, and you not only gave it to him, you begged him to take it. You pushed it on him, the way you might press food on a hungry traveler or money on a less fortunate relative. You were sure at that moment that you would always have an endless supply, or at least more than enough, because you were one of the lucky ones. So you gave it to him. You did it—you did—you stupid, reckless fool.

  2005

  Surely not all brides woke up so bad-tempered on the day before the wedding. At least, Jane didn’t think they did. But then probably not all brides put off everything until the last possible moment, the way she had. She lay in bed, her to-do list beating a pulse in her temples. Caterer—cake—flowers—

  The phone beside her bed rang. “Hello?”

  “I take it your mother’s in town,” Duncan said, “seeing as how she just nearly ran me over in the Glen’s parking lot.”

  “Of course she’s in town,” Jane said. “She’s here for the wedding.”

  Duncan continued in a cheerful, headlong way. “Then I saw her at the gas station getting coffee, then she’s at Johan’s getting croissants, then she goes back toward Glen’s. All this before nine in the morning, mind you.”

  Jane squinted at her bedside clock. “It’s nine already?”

  Duncan was still talking about her mother. “She’s like a CIA agent,” he said. “Always doubling back and randomly turning down side streets.”

  “She probably went back to Glen’s because she leaves her credit card behind a lot,” Jane said. “And I think she turns down side streets because she sort of forgets where she is sometimes.”

  “Then she’s worse than a CIA agent,” Duncan said. “She’s like a CIA agent who’s had a nervous breakdown and can’t remember why she does these things. She’s going to kill someone one of these days.”

  “Look, I should probably go,” Jane said. “I have a million things to do.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Duncan agreed. “It’s like that for brides. The night before Aggie and I got married, she ironed a whole bunch of five-dollar bills to use as tips on our honeymoon—”

  “Was there a reason you called?” Jane asked.

  “Actually, yes,” Duncan said. “Darcy wanted me to ask you if it’s okay for her to leave right after the dinner tonight or if you want any post-rehearsal photos.”

  Darcy was the wedding photographer, and Duncan’s girlfriend.

  “No, that’s fine,” Jane said.

  “Then I’ll see you at the rehearsal,” Duncan said cheerfully. “Just think, tomorrow you’ll be Mrs. Lance Armstrong!”

  “Good-bye,” Jane said, and hung up.

  Obviously, Jane wasn’t marrying Lance Armstrong. She was marrying Luke Armstrong, a very nice financial analyst who
lived in Petoskey, although he spent most nights at Jane’s house and would move in after the honeymoon. He had a shock of reddish-blond hair and a long, interesting face, and a slanting smile. He was smart and ambitious and kind and loyal. He valued family and education, he volunteered at the Humane Society, he overtipped in restaurants, he truly thought Jane looked good in high-waisted jeans, and he didn’t slide his hand down her shirt in a bored way during ER. He had a million sterling qualities! But Duncan and Freida and all Jane’s Boyne City friends couldn’t resist calling him Lance Armstrong. Ironically, Luke liked to cycle, and sometimes he would bike all the way from Petoskey to Jane’s house, and if she happened to be in her yard, he would join her there wearing his black cycling shorts and a yellow polyester jersey. Then Jane would hope that no one would see him, because it would make them all happy in a way she didn’t care for.

  Jane got up and looked out the window. Hot and cloudless. A July bride could ask no more.

  She walked toward the kitchen in her nightgown, glancing into the tiny guest bedroom as she went. The single bed was made with a sort of aggressive neatness, signaling that her mother was definitely up and about.

  Was there anything more dispiriting than your house the day after a big craft project? No, was Jane’s opinion as she surveyed her kitchen, which was littered with bits of ribbon and paper and sticky puddles of glue. She and her mother had been up late making the wedding centerpieces: two dozen mason jars transformed with burlap and rough yarn and vintage lace into lovely rustic centerpieces that would be filled with wildflowers and add charm and individuality to her reception (as a catalogue might put it) and yet—Jane thought they still looked an awful lot like mason jars.

  She cleared the trash off the table and began scraping at a glue puddle with a butcher knife.

  Outside, a car door slammed and a moment later Jane’s mother hoisted herself up the porch steps, looking sturdy and vital, her eyeglasses glinting in the sunshine. She was carrying at least a half-dozen plastic bags, which hung from the fingers of her right hand like shiny tan wisteria bunches. She used her left hand to yank up the skirt of the gaily colored two-piece knit dress she was wearing. Jane knew that dress well. Jane’s mother believed that this dress never went out of fashion, and that it flattered her figure, and that the colorful chevron pattern hid stains well. None of these statements were true. Its only redeeming feature was that whenever it got baggy, Jane’s mother could wear it front-to-back for a while and it would regain its former shape (such as it was).

  She came in and dumped her plastic bags on the table.

  “I can’t believe you don’t get the newspaper delivered,” she said to Jane by way of greeting.

  “I never have time to read it in the mornings,” Jane said.

  “You should make time.” Her mother spoke vigorously. “It’s part of your responsibility as an educator. What happens when some child in your class asks who the Kurds are? Do you say, ‘Darned if I know! I was too busy hitting the snooze button’?”

  “Mom, I teach second grade—”

  Her mother was rummaging through her purchases. “Oh, here, I brought you a jelly doughnut.”

  This was the paradox of Jane’s mother. For every ten—possibly twenty—irritating things she said or did, she did one sort of perfect thing, like producing a jelly doughnut right when you needed one, or having a wet wipe in her purse when your hands were sticky, or massaging your temples with her strong, capable fingers when you had a headache.

  So Jane ate her jelly doughnut and drank a glass of milk while her mother read aloud to her from a Detroit Free Press article about the dwindling supply of anthrax vaccine in Southwest Asia. The doughnut didn’t help, though. The day refused to brighten.

  * * *

  —

  After breakfast, Jane and her mother loaded all the centerpieces into the trunk of Jane’s Honda Civic and drove to Petoskey to pick up Luke’s mother, Edith-Louise, from her hotel and go to the bridal salon for Jane’s final dress fitting. They were a little late starting, and Edith-Louise was already sitting on a stone bench in front of the hotel entrance when Jane drove up. At her feet was a shiny white shopping bag, which presumably contained the dress she planned to wear to the rehearsal dinner.

  God help us, Jane thought miserably. She’s planning a whole day of togetherness.

  Edith-Louise was one of those women who aged into perfection. It wasn’t that she didn’t appear to get older, but that she looked so lovely now that you suspected (at least, Jane suspected) that she looked better in her fifties than she had in her twenties or thirties. Edith-Louise’s short, thick, dark hair was shot with strands of silver and her pale blue eyes were edged with sexy crow’s-feet. She was tall and slender, wearing a crisp white blouse and dark blue linen pants. A row of delicate silver bangles on her wrist caught the morning sun.

  Jane sighed as she put the car in park. She herself was wearing black jeans and a faded pink T-shirt and pale pink high heels. (She was trying to break her wedding shoes in but it seemed as though her feet might break first; the shoes had not one molecule of give.) Jane feared that on some personal elegance spectrum, she was much closer to her mother’s end than Edith-Louise’s.

  Both Jane and her mother got out of the car and Jane made introductions. “Mom, this is Luke’s mother, Edith-Louise—”

  “Just call me Phyllis,” Jane’s mother interrupted. “I’m not one who goes in for fancy names.”

  Was she implying that a hyphenated name was unnecessarily fancy? Jane struggled to find an alternate interpretation but failed.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you.” Edith-Louise had a quiet voice.

  “Now, I hope you don’t mind if I ride in the front,” Jane’s mother said. “I’m prone to motion sickness.”

  “Not at all,” Edith-Louise said softly. She was smiling at Jane’s mother, but already—less than a minute after they’d been introduced—the smile had taken on a slightly fixed look.

  Once they were back in the car, Jane’s mother began firing off questions. How had Edith-Louise slept? How was the hotel? When had they arrived? How was their journey? Where were they from?

  “Deerfield, Massachusetts—” Edith-Louise started.

  “Oh, my husband and I drove through Deerfield once on our way to Boston years ago,” Jane’s mother interrupted. Then she questioned herself. “Was it Deerfield or some other place? Anyway, we stopped for lunch, and there was a dead moth in the clam chowder.”

  “I’m…awfully sorry to hear that,” Edith-Louise said. Her smile now appeared to be set in concrete.

  “Here we are at the bridal store!” Jane interjected in a bright, desperate voice. She pulled into the parking lot with a flourish. They all got out of the car, and Jane’s mother hitched up her skirt again.

  The interior of the bridal shop seemed shadowed and gloomy after the bright sunshine, and Jane’s mother, who was wearing eyeglasses with transition lenses, stumbled and grasped Jane’s arm. The floor of the shop was dark wood and the walls were mirrored, reflecting the dozens of wedding gowns hung in garment bags on the racks that lined the length of the shop. The shop reminded Jane of a spider’s lair, the gowns dead silk-wrapped insects to be eaten later.

  “Oh, hi, Jane,” said the girl behind the counter. Her name was Natalie, and Jane knew her fairly well because Natalie also worked as a waitress at the barbecue restaurant in Boyne City. She was young and freckled, wearing jeans and a plaid cowboy shirt. She looked like she’d shown up for work at the wrong place.

  “Hi, Natalie,” Jane said. “This is my mother, and Luke’s mother.”

  Edith-Louise smiled. “Hello, Natalie.”

  “I can hear you, but I can’t see you,” Jane’s mother said. “I won’t be able to see you until my glasses lighten up.”

  “Goodness!” Natalie looked alarmed. She probably thought Jane’s mother was vision-impair
ed. “Let me help you to the seating area.”

  She grasped Jane’s mother’s elbow and led her slowly toward a scrolled white loveseat with matching end tables. Jane and Edith-Louise followed.

  “There you go,” Natalie said as Jane’s mother sat down with a small grunt. Edith-Louise sank gracefully beside her. “Now you come with me, Jane. I have your dress in the fitting room.”

  Jane followed Natalie into the small curtained room at the back of the store. Natalie swung the curtain shut. Jane’s dress was hanging from a hook in a pearl-colored garment bag. “Just one minute and we’ll have you set,” Natalie said, unzipping the bag. “You go ahead and get undressed.”

  Obediently, Jane took off her jeans and T-shirt. She held up her arms as Natalie took the dress out of the bag and slipped its soft billowing folds over Jane’s head.

  Jane looked at her reflection in the mirror.

  Something strange seemed to have happened to her wedding dress. For one thing, it had changed color since the fitting two weeks ago. At that time, the dress had appeared to be a delicate shell pink, but now Jane thought it looked distinctly flesh-colored. Also, the princess bodice seemed to have stretched and was now too large in the bust. The silky woven fabric of the overskirt had looked glossy and rich then, but now it glittered like cheap nylon.

  “Oh, Jane, you look lovely!” Natalie said, rapidly fastening the covered buttons up the back of the dress. But Jane had sat in Natalie’s section at the barbecue restaurant many times; she knew that was Natalie’s cheery waitress voice. Hello, I’ll be your server! What a good choice! You have a good night now!

  Jane looked in the mirror, biting her lower lip. “Prom dress” were the words that came to mind.

  “Let’s go show your family,” Natalie said. She held back the heavy white curtain.

  Jane left the dressing room and walked into the showroom. Her mother and Edith-Louise were sitting side by side on the loveseat. Edith-Louise seemed gracefully posed there, long legs crossed at the ankles, one slim hand draped on the armrest. Jane’s mother’s eyeglasses had returned to normal, and she was sprawled comfortably next to Edith-Louise, holding a small bag of potato chips and saying, “At first I thought it was Lyme disease, but it turned out to be a rash from wearing wool socks.”