Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  Jane wrapped her arms around her daughter and was asleep in no time.

  * * *

  —

  Everything was against Jane the next day. Everything.

  Jimmy and Glenn wanted Jane to make them oatmeal, too, not just Gary, and they wanted their oatmeal with raisins. Gary picked all the raisins out of his bowl and left them in sticky lumps on the table. Glenn was uncharacteristically slow and grumpy, claiming she couldn’t go to preschool until Jane found her butterfly hair clips. She wanted them, needed them, and no, not the daisy hair clips or the green ribbon ones—the butterfly ones! The butterfly ones! Jane, holding a squirming Patrice in her arms, finally found them on a chair in Glenn’s room under a pile of clean clothes.

  She herded everyone into the car—Gary stood absently by the passenger door until Jimmy opened it for him—and she dropped Jimmy off at Duncan’s workshop and Gary off at his office and Glenn at preschool.

  Patrice had apparently decided to experiment with passive resistance, and instead of clinging to the car door handle and screaming wildly when Jane tried to drop her off at daycare, she fell to the sidewalk and lay there, glassy-eyed and unmoving. She wouldn’t stand up, no matter how much Jane cajoled, coaxed, and ordered, and other children had to step over her on their way inside. Finally, Jane picked her up. Patrice was limp and unresponsive, her head tilted back on her neck. Jane, suddenly frightened, wondered if Patrice was having some sort of seizure. She carried her inside, where Patrice saw another child using the orange Play-Doh and came instantly to life, bellowing savagely.

  Afterward, Jane sat in her car in the daycare parking lot, trying to calm her nerves. She wished she could go home and crawl back into bed. She called Duncan’s cell phone, hoping for sympathy.

  He answered, sounding distracted. “Hello? Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Jane said.

  “Oh, hey, how are you? How are the girls?” His words were bunched together unnaturally.

  “Patrice just melted down at drop-off.”

  “Well, that’s her baseline, pretty much,” Duncan said. “I’m going to have to go to the funeral here in a minute.”

  “Oh,” Jane said sadly. She wanted to tell him about seeing Gary in his pajamas. Shared misery being joy and all that.

  Then, suddenly, in the background, Jane heard Aggie say something.

  Duncan spoke but not into the phone. He was not talking to Jane. He was talking to Aggie. “Honey, you look great, let’s just go.”

  Jane felt suddenly as though her heart was cooling, had cooled, was cold.

  “Good-bye,” Duncan said into the phone. “I’ll call you later.”

  Jane said nothing at all.

  * * *

  —

  She drove to school in a daze. Duncan called everyone “honey.” Waitresses, bartenders, cashiers, nurses, receptionists, babysitters. Sometimes he called Jimmy that. And Freida. Even Jane’s mother. But not Aggie.

  Honey, you look great.

  When Jane got to school, she discovered that two of the four parent chaperones had canceled. (Parents got less reliable as the school year went along; by May, they scattered like cockroaches in the light whenever help was needed.) The two parents who had shown up were Edwin Mueller’s mother and Liam Bruggie’s father. Jane already knew Mrs. Mueller well because Edwin was a budding sociopath with no impulse control, and Jane had mandated that he couldn’t go on any field trips unless accompanied by a parent. Mrs. Mueller looked like a hastily drawn cartoon woman, with her washed-out coloring and long limbs, her round face and blunt-cut hair. Right now, she was panting raggedly around the playground after her son, calling, “Edwin! Yoo-hoo! Come back!” and Jane had no doubt that Mrs. Mueller would be doing that all the day long.

  Mr. Bruggie was standing by the school entrance, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He was slender and dark-haired, and he wore khakis with knifelike creases and a red polo shirt. He had his arms crossed and nodded curtly to Jane. Jane had not met him before, but Mrs. Bruggie had served as a chaperone on the November field trip to the pumpkin patch, and Jane suspected that afterward Mrs. Bruggie had had to lie down in a darkened room and drink gin straight from the bottle. (It had been rough, that pumpkin patch trip.) Probably Mr. Bruggie had told her not to be ridiculous, and Mrs. Bruggie had wailed, “You have no idea!” And Mr. Bruggie was now here to prove to Mrs. Bruggie how easy it was if she only handled field trips in a more businesslike way. (After a few years of teaching, you got a sense for family dynamics.)

  Jane had always taken her classes on the May field trip to a nearby petting zoo, but the week before the zoo had been shut down by the Michigan Department of Agriculture for illegally selling rabbit meat. (The place had not been without drawbacks.) She had been forced to go online and research other options, finally settling on a place called Stick Farm. The website showed beautiful photos of the farm shop and café, and promised visitors could enjoy nature walks, outdoor playgrounds, a livestock encounter program, petting zoo, barn tour, picnic lunch seating area, and a “souvenir” to take home, which Jane sincerely hoped would not turn out to be a live chick. She’d called and booked a guided tour.

  It was nearly impossible to take attendance. The children were so excited and chattery that no one could hear anything, and finally Jane had them stand single-file against the classroom walls, and then she walked along the line, writing down names. Then there was a massive scramble while everyone retrieved his or her backpack, and they went outside to wait for the bus.

  They could actually hear the bus before they saw it. It was one of the older models, and it rattled and coughed up the street like a laboring dray horse. It turned into the school drive, its yellow paint long faded to a curdled-cream color, its black lettering chipped away. They all waited patiently as it heaved its way over to them and the doors wheezed open.

  The driver was a heavyset, deep-voiced woman called Quiche, who wheezed just like the bus.

  “Find your seats, people!” she called out in a raspy voice as soon as the doors closed behind the last person. She put the bus in gear so abruptly that everyone swayed alarmingly.

  The drive out to the farm took over an hour, during which Julia Sherman threw up and lots of other students looked like they wanted to, Edwin Mueller pulled most of the stuffing out of one seat through a rip in the cover while Mrs. Mueller pleaded ineffectually with him to stop, and Mr. Robicheaux took a nap. And what did Jane do?

  Jane thought about Duncan. Duncan and Aggie. She thought about Aggie’s pale prettiness, her corn-silk hair, her creamy-white cleavage. She thought of her own body, her stomach soft and baggy after two children, her hair darkened from caramel blond to dishwater. She remembered glimpsing a woman on Main Street shortly after Patrice’s birth and thinking, That woman wouldn’t look so bad if she wore makeup and better clothes, and realizing abruptly that she was seeing her own reflection in a storefront. And yet, still, Jane hardly ever bothered with makeup and wore jeans and plaid shirts on the weekends, wool pants and blouses to teach. She thought about how handsome Duncan still was, his older cowboy looks a perfect match to Aggie’s milkmaid beauty. She remembered him telling her that he and Aggie had still slept together even after she married Gary. “Just once in a while,” he had said. “Usually when she sold a house and wanted to celebrate. It was like a treat for her. The other real estate agents used to go to the Sportsman after a sale, but Aggie never was much of a drinker.”

  But that had all ended long before Jane even moved to Boyne City. What had Duncan said? “Aggie stopped wanting to, and I always felt kind of bad about it, even though I did mow their lawn and clear their snow.”

  The dirt road that led up to the farm made the bus shake so much Jane feared it might jitter apart like an old toy. Quiche parked the bus in the farm parking lot and turned off the engine. The bus made three alarming clunking sounds and then fell quiet. They all
got off and Jane made sure everyone had their backpacks and water bottles. It was hot for a May morning. The sun shone down on them like a laser, flashing off the bus’s rusty chrome.

  The farm had the air of an uncompleted—perhaps never-to-be-completed—renovation. The building that housed the shop and café was spotless green clapboard with fresh white trim and flower boxes of bright blooms, but the lovely patterned-brick footpath stopped ten feet from the building, as though the owners had run out of funds at that point and the contractor had said, “I’m stopping right here unless you pay up.” The footpath changed to plain beaten dirt and curved down into a charmless grass-tufted farmyard with splintery gray wood fences and chicken-wire animal enclosures. A dilapidated barn leaned to one side in the distance.

  Quiche struggled off the bus with a green vinyl lawn chair and an ancient bottle of suntan oil and a Big Gulp cup of soda. “I’m gonna do some sunbathing while you all are off on your trip,” she said.

  “Are you going to put on a swimsuit?” Owen Downing asked.

  “Nah, just roll up my sleeves,” Quiche said.

  Just then, a short, stocky man with a bristly black beard and thick black eyebrows came charging out of the farm shop. He was wearing a checked shirt, denim overalls, and a fierce expression.

  “I’m Farmer Kev,” he said abruptly. “You the lady who called about the school trip?”

  “Yes,” Jane said. “I’m Jane Wilkes and this is Mr. Robicheaux and these are our second graders.”

  “Anybody got questions?” Farmer Kev asked. He said it the way someone would say it after having made a long presentation.

  Joseph Burd raised his hand. “What do you grow?”

  Farmer Kev frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “Do you grow sticks?” Joseph asked. “Is that why it’s called Stick Farm?”

  “Stick is my last name.”

  “You just said Kev was your last name.”

  “No, I said—”

  “Perhaps you could tell us all where the bathrooms are,” Jane interrupted smoothly. “And then we’d like to start with the playground.”

  “Edwin’s already on the playground,” Grace Sellick said, pointing. “See?”

  Jane squinted across the dusty open space and could make out the faraway figures of Edwin climbing a fence while Mrs. Mueller loped behind him, her purse and his backpack dangling by their straps from her shoulders and bouncing against her hips.

  “You’re going to have to keep a better eye on that boy,” Farmer Kev said severely. “Won’t be my lookout if he gets lost.”

  “What if he falls and hurts himself ?” Nicholas Beslock asked.

  “That either.”

  “What if he gets trampled by cattle?”

  Farmer Kev narrowed his eyes. “Don’t have cows.”

  “What if he gets run over by a tractor?” Nicholas said. (He had some anxiety issues.) “What if he falls down a well? What if he eats rat poison?”

  “Nicholas, I don’t think we have to worry about any of those things,” Jane said. “I’m sure this is a lovely, safe place where nothing bad ever happened to anyone.”

  “Is that true?” Nicholas asked Farmer Kev.

  Farmer Kev thought for a moment. “More or less.”

  “Has anyone—”

  “Okay, off to the playground!” Jane announced cheerily. “Farmer Kev, you lead the way.”

  “I thought we were going to the bathroom,” Avery Heller said.

  “Okay,” Jane said. “Anyone who has to go to the bathroom, go with Mr. Robicheaux and Mr. Bruggie. Everyone else come with me.”

  She started off across the farmyard with Farmer Kev and most of the children. As they drew closer, Jane could see that the playground was more like an installation art exhibit. Some irrigation pipes had been twisted into interesting squiggles and sunk into the ground, and a huge wooden wire spool was tipped on its side. It was mainly a patch of bark chips surrounded by a rail fence, which any child older than four could easily step over and any child younger than four could just as easily crawl under.

  Edwin Mueller was sitting on the fence and shouted out to them, “This place sucks!”

  “Critical little bastard,” Farmer Kev muttered.

  Jane was beginning to think Farmer Kev was new to farming. Perhaps until recently he had labored in some occupation—possibly as a prison guard or customer service representative—where his worst expectations of human behavior had been strongly reaffirmed.

  But the beauty of seven-year-olds (excluding Edwin) is that they can play anywhere, and soon, the children were racing around and shouting and getting bark chips in their sandals.

  Jane leaned against a tree in the shade and wondered if Duncan and Aggie would stay for Whatsit’s after-party. Scratch, that was his name. Duncan would almost certainly want to—Jane had never known him to skip a party. Jane’s cell phone was in her pocket, and she traced its outline with her finger. Maybe she should text Duncan and ask him to come home tonight instead of tomorrow. But then she’d seem clingy compared to Aggie’s cool reserve. Maybe she could say that one of the girls had spiked a small fever? But then she would look all needy and helpless next to Aggie’s poise and independence. Or maybe she could text Aggie and say that she was worried about Gary because this morning he had seemed—what? Confused? Mentally altered? (That wouldn’t even be a lie!) But then Jane would seem alarmist compared to Aggie’s calmer approach. Maybe she should text and encourage Duncan to stay for the after-party so he and Aggie could tell how secure Jane was, how confident of Duncan’s love, how much she trusted him. Because she did trust him, didn’t she?

  The bark of the tree seemed imprinted on her shoulder at this point, so she straightened up and walked back toward the playground. Farmer Kev announced that it was time to visit the animal enclosures, and led them over to what Jane had assumed was a pile of scrap metal and spare lumber but turned out to be the pigpen, where two large pigs were lying desultorily in the shade of a slatted wooden roof. One of them struggled to his feet and walked slowly out into the penned area. His body was white and black, but he didn’t look like a white pig with black spots; he looked like a white pig with patches of dark fungus growing on him. The pig drew a deep breath and vomited a glut of mustard-colored liquid onto the ground. The children cried out in disgust.

  Jane looked at Farmer Kev.

  He shrugged. “Heat bothers ’im.”

  Next was an arched metal frame covered with fabric and surrounded by steel-pipe fencing, which turned out to be where the lambs lived. To Jane’s relief, the lambs appeared healthy and sweet. And hungry. Farmer Kev cut open a fresh bag of grain pellets, and even the shyest students cupped their hands for the lambs to eat from. When Farmer Kev told them none of the lambs had names, the children debated the choices endlessly. Woolly? No, Lambert! Cloud? Maybe Cream? No, Snowball! Wait, what about Curly? Fluffy? Daisy?

  “Daisy’s a stupid name,” Farmer Kev said to Kaitlyn MacLeod.

  Kaitlyn frowned. “It’s my little sister’s name.”

  Jane took her phone out of her pocket—Jane, who made it a point never to check her phone during school hours, much less on a field trip! No message from Duncan. She took some photos, including a beautiful one of Samantha Denny kneeling down in order to be face-to-face with one of the lambs. The lamb and Samantha regarded each other with perfect understanding.

  “You probably have anthrax now,” Nicholas Beslock told Samantha.

  Jane straightened up. “All right, I think we’re ready for lunch.” She looked around. “Where’s Mr. Robicheaux?”

  “He went away about fifteen minutes ago,” Addison Jacobs said.

  “What do you mean, went away?”

  “He went in there,” Addison said, and pointed to the back entrance of the café, where a sign read free wine tastings.

 
Jane glanced at Mr. Bruggie, and found him staring harshly back at her. She looked away.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back momentarily,” she said. “Right now it’s lunchtime.”

  It had been deathly still all morning, but the moment they sat down at the picnic tables, a strong wind blew up from nowhere, sending napkins and paper plates and plastic wrappers flying. Even Quiche folded up her lawn chair and went inside the bus, a dim figure slouched behind the wheel.

  “Maybe we could move to the café?” Jane asked Farmer Kev.

  “Café’s for paying customers,” he said sternly.

  So they sat outside, huddled in small groups like penguins at a winter breeding ground. They ate with one hand clutching their sandwiches and the other holding their water bottles. Owen Downing’s potato chip bag took off as if by magic, scattering everyone with crumbs, and Landon Burke remembered belatedly that the ENT doctor had instructed him to wear earplugs in windy weather. The only pleasure Jane had was how miserable Mr. Bruggie looked.

  She finished her lunch and sheltered in a corner of the tall cedar fence to check her phone. Still no message. She scrolled through her photos to find the picture of Samantha and the lamb and sent it to Duncan, because it really was very sweet. And it would remind him that, you know, in addition to caring for their two daughters and Jimmy and Gary, she was also guiding a class of second graders through a valuable learning experience in the richly educational atmosphere of nature and whatnot.

  Just as they gathered up the bits of trash that hadn’t blown away and stuffed everything back in their backpacks, and Jane had sent the children to the bathrooms in groups of four, Mr. Robicheaux came stumbling out of the café, squinting in the sunlight.

  “Sorry to disappear,” he said to Jane. “I had terrible diarrhea.”