Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  “Like you said to that one lady?” Jimmy asked.

  “What lady?”

  “That one pretty lady with the fiddleback chairs,” Jimmy said. “She had six of them and a dining table, too, and you said, ‘Maybe we should have coffee and discuss this.’ ”

  Duncan looked at Jane. “That was a long time ago.”

  She looked back at him silently.

  “A very long time ago,” Duncan said. “So long ago I forgot all about it, but yes, Jim, that’s the kind of thing you say. Just, you know, ‘I’d love to get together and talk some more.’ ”

  “But what if we haven’t even been talking?” Jimmy asked. “What if we walk the whole way to her house and I can’t think of a single thing to say?”

  “Just ask her how she likes working at Kilwins,” Jane said, “and what she thinks of Boyne City.”

  “What else?” Jimmy asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. Women love to talk about themselves,” said Duncan, who had once dominated an entire evening talking about the smell of spar varnish. “Once she gets started, you just act like it’s the most interesting thing you ever heard and ask lots of questions.”

  “Aw, you know I’m not good at remembering stuff,” Jimmy said.

  “You don’t have to remember it,” Duncan said. “If you forget something and she asks why, just say, ‘You looked so pretty tonight, I can’t remember anything.’ But if you do say that, then don’t give her another compliment for at least a week, so she’ll start wondering what was up with the first one. Pretty soon she’ll wonder if she imagined the first one, or she’ll wonder if maybe she somehow offended you by not acting pleased enough—”

  How sad was it that Duncan was the man Jane loved? How sad was it that he believed what he was saying? How sad was it that Jane believed it, too?

  * * *

  —

  It had been so long since Jane had gone to a dinner party that she’d forgotten how awful they were. Well, maybe not awful, but certainly exhausting. You book a sitter and feed the children early and get dressed up and figure out who’s going to be the designated driver and go over to someone’s house and by the time you’ve finished your first and only glass of wine, you’ve already listened to another guest tell you about their gluten allergy and you realize that it’s hours before you can go to bed. But tonight was for Jimmy, so it would be different. Maybe.

  When Jane and Duncan and Jimmy arrived at Aggie’s house, Aggie was busy in the kitchen, so they were greeted by Gary. He was wearing corduroy pants and a stiff new-looking plaid button-down shirt.

  “You look nice, Gary,” Jane said. He didn’t look especially nice, but she felt she had to say something.

  Gary pulled at his collar and grimaced. “Aggie told me to wear this, but it’s not very comfortable. I don’t like it when she dresses me.”

  “I feel you, brother,” Duncan said with more sincerity than Jane had ever heard him use when speaking to Gary. “Now, how about you get us some drinks?”

  While Gary was getting the drinks, Freida and Mr. Hutchinson arrived.

  “I brought my mandolin,” Freida said to Jimmy, quite unnecessarily since the mandolin bag was hanging from her shoulder. “You can tell a lot about a person by their taste in music. Personally, I’ve never trusted anyone who dislikes Lester Flatt.”

  Raelynne was the last to arrive. She wore a short denim skirt and a ruffled pink blouse with a drawstring neckline. She had pulled her hair back and wore pink tasseled earrings, and she looked attractively disheveled, the way she had at Kilwins.

  Aggie came bustling out of the kitchen and made introductions. Gary poured her a glass of wine, and they all sat down in Aggie’s living room. Raelynne perched on the edge of the sofa next to Aggie, holding her wineglass with both hands. She glanced around, smiling nervously.

  And then it was like a black hole opened in the middle of the room and sucked all the conversation down into it. No one said a word. Jane realized that none of them had thought past the moment Raelynne would arrive for the dinner party. She flipped desperately through her mental files, trying to remember what they usually talked about, but all they’d talked about recently was Raelynne. Finally, Gary asked Raelynne if she still shopped at Sam’s Club. The rest of them glared at him, but Raelynne didn’t seem to wonder how he knew. “Not since I moved here,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll renew my membership.”

  “Where did you move from?” Freida asked.

  “Muskegon,” Raelynne answered. She took a big drink from her glass.

  “Muskegon?” Duncan leaned forward, his eyes sharp with interest. “Did you know the Trimble sisters?”

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  Duncan sat back. “Good.”

  Everyone let out a breath of relief. Duncan had slept with two or perhaps all three of the Trimble sisters. He said they were all so close in age and looked so much alike, he’d never been sure who he was with. Mr. Trimble had threatened to shoot Duncan with his duck-hunting gun if he ever showed up at their house again.

  Aggie touched Raelynne’s arm. “Now, what made you decide to move to Boyne City?”

  “I wanted to get away from my ex-husband,” Raelynne said promptly.

  They all glanced at each other. Ex-husband? Was that good or bad? Good, Jane decided. It would make Jimmy seem all the more kind and loving in comparison.

  “Was your first husband…stalking you?” Freida asked delicately.

  “He’s my second husband,” Raelynne said, sitting back on the couch, “but he wasn’t stalkin’ me. Him? He’s too lazy to stalk anyone. No, he was just calling me all the time.” Abruptly, her voice grew deep and somehow whiny. “ ‘Raelynne, the toilet’s backed up again and I don’t know what to do. Raelynne, I used Dawn in the dishwasher and now the whole house is full of suds. Raelynne, I tried to clean the shower with malt vinegar and the tile turned brown.’ I mean, imagine gettin’ that type of call ten times a day. And then he would show up at the bar where I worked wearin’ some sorry-ass shirt he’d shrunk in the dryer.”

  Nobody knew quite how to respond to this, but finally Jane said, “You worked in a bar?”

  Raelynne turned to face her and flipped from ugly to beautiful in the process. “Yes, I was a bartender. That’s where I met both my husbands, and finally, I thought to myself, ‘Raelynne, maybe the problem is not just the men but also where you’re meetin’ them. Maybe you’d better try your luck in some other establishment.’ So here I am.”

  Aggie looked concerned. “Did your first husband have a drinking problem?”

  “Oh, no,” Raelynne said easily. She seemed to have relaxed. She crossed her legs and swung one pink-sandaled foot. “Me and him got divorced over chicken pillows.”

  “What’s a chicken pillow?” Jimmy asked.

  “It’s an awful dish his mother raised him on,” Raelynne said. “It has like ten ingredients—crescent rolls and cream cheese and saltine crackers and cream of chicken soup and a whole bunch of others I can’t even remember.”

  “Goodness,” Aggie said weakly. She always said any dish with canned soup in it made her feel faint and dizzy.

  “Came out of the oven lookin’ less like a chicken’s pillow than some chicken’s upchuck,” Raelynne said cheerfully. “I made it once a week for that first year—you know how newlyweds are, so eager to please. And then I made it less and less and finally not at all. Chester kept askin’ for it and I made up excuses, but finally I said, ‘Listen, mister, if you want chicken pillows so bad, you can make them yourself.’ Chester said I was disrespectin’ his mother. I said, no, I was disrespectin’ chicken pillows and doin’ the world a favor while I was at it.” She shook her head. “It seems like such a little thing, but it led to a big argument, and I moved my stuff out that very night.”

  They were all so absorbed by this that when the kitch
en timer went off, everyone jumped a little. Aggie leapt out of her chair, crying, “My pork chops!” and rushed from the room.

  The pork chops were fine, nowhere close to overdone, and they all sat down to eat them at the table covered with a white cloth and laid with Aggie’s fussy floral-patterned china. Aggie had put out name cards, too, and seated Jimmy and Raelynne next to each other. Everyone else immediately engaged their nearest seat partner in a low, intense conversation so that Jimmy and Raelynne would be forced to talk to each other.

  Jane turned obediently to Mr. Hutchinson, and he asked her softly if she had heard rumors that the city water supply was contaminated with wild boar excrement, and she said, “No, not a word,” and Mr. Hutchinson said he’d heard it from someone at Glen’s, and Jane murmured, “It’s certainly something to think about.”

  Across the table, Raelynne said “Now, where do you work, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy swallowed audibly. “I work with Duncan at his woodworking shop.”

  “Is that so?” Raelynne said. “Maybe you can come over and build me a little porch overhang. I hate to stand there in the rain, searchin’ for my keys.”

  Jane and Mr. Hutchinson beamed at each other. Things were going so well! (Although under no circumstances should Jimmy be allowed to build a porch overhang.)

  Jimmy asked Raelynne how she liked working at Kilwins, and Raelynne said it was a sure sight better than being hassled by drunk folks all the time, although the tips were not as good. Gary said that he was perplexed by Superman ice cream. Was it supposed to taste like Superman, or only like ice cream Superman would like? Everyone frowned at him—Jimmy was supposed to be the one talking to Raelynne!—but Raelynne said that she thought it was because Superman ice cream was red and blue and yellow, like the colors of Superman’s costume. And then they did an around-the-table analysis of everyone’s favorite flavors that carried them all the way through dinner.

  After dessert—raspberry panna cotta—Duncan said, as planned, “Well, we’d better be going.”

  Everyone else made noises of agreement, and Raelynne said, “Oh, yes, this has been so nice, but I have to work tomorrow.”

  They all pushed back their chairs and started making that strange rustling sound people make when they’re getting ready to depart, even when they have nothing—no newspapers or windbreakers—that actually rustles.

  Aggie cleared her throat. “Jimmy, could I ask you to walk Raelynne home?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Raelynne said.

  “I insist,” Aggie said. “I wouldn’t think of sending a young woman home alone after dark.”

  Raelynne glanced out the window, confused. “It’s eight thirty.”

  “Well, but still, you can’t be too careful,” Aggie said.

  “I’ll be fine, seriously.”

  “I’d like to walk with you,” Jimmy said shyly, surprising them all. “If it wouldn’t bother you.”

  “Well, okay.” Raelynne shrugged. “Maybe you can give me an estimate on that overhang.”

  Everyone thanked Aggie and Gary for dinner and walked outside, but since they had no intention of leaving, they just stood around awkwardly until Jimmy and Raelynne walked away together on the sidewalk, Raelynne with her purse slung over her shoulder and her hand resting on it like a farmer toting a rifle. Jimmy and Raelynne turned the corner, and Jane and the others dropped into Aggie’s front porch chairs.

  “Heavens.” Aggie fanned herself with her shirt collar. “I’m completely wrung out.”

  “Wasn’t it terrible when she didn’t want to be walked home?” Freida asked. “I thought she was going to keep arguing and say she knew self-defense.”

  “The worst was when Jim volunteered,” Duncan said. “I was holding my breath.”

  Freida took out her mandolin. “We need a little music to relax us.”

  “You’ll have to play quietly,” Aggie said. “The Bullards next door have a ten-month-old and her bedroom is right there.”

  So Freida played softly. She played only love songs, saying perhaps they would bring Jimmy luck. “Sally in Our Alley,” “Lark in the Morning,” “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

  The music was soothing and ripplelike. Jane, exhausted from the tension, felt herself drifting away on it. Twilight was turning the sky to sapphire, and a crescent moon was already out, looking down his long chin at them.

  Suddenly Jimmy was standing there in front of them. No one had seen him arrive because he’d come from the other direction.

  “I got a little turned around,” he said. “I started up Meadow Lane and thought ‘This doesn’t look right’ and—”

  “Never mind that!” Aggie cried out. “Tell us what happened!”

  Jimmy smiled and ducked his head. He rubbed a little circle in the grass with the toe of his shoe. “I asked her if I could help her close up at Kilwins sometime, and she said she’d like that a lot.”

  They cheered so loudly they woke the Bullards’ baby, and Mr. Bullard snapped up a window shade and shook his head at them in disapproval.

  * * *

  —

  Jane knew that most things that are too good to be true are, indeed, not true, like that idea about Nutella being a healthy food. (Or else they’re true but not really that good, like Avatar.) Raelynne seemed too good to be true, and, yet, amazingly, she was. She appeared to be genuinely interested in Jimmy and to honestly enjoy his company. Jimmy began riding his bike to Kilwins around ten most nights to help her close up, and before long he was filled with information about her—literally filled, as though he were an empty container into which she poured all her views.

  Raelynne was a Gemini, and a night person. Her favorite drink was a strawberry margarita and her favorite perfume was straight vanilla extract. She preferred Coke to Pepsi and jeans to chinos. Also, French fries to potato chips and candles to air freshener. And being early to being late, TV to books, McDonald’s to Burger King. And Facebook to Twitter, the beach to the woods, country to city, summer to winter, cats to dogs, carpets to floors. And pizza to burgers, plain M&Ms to peanut, earbuds to headphones, Netflix to YouTube, phone call to text, cake to pie, laundry to dishes, couch to recliner, pancakes to waffles, coffee to tea, soup to sandwich, ketchup to mustard, steak to chicken, the dentist to the gynecologist, caffeine to sugar, and naps to yoga. She preferred baths to showers, but not bubble baths because the bubble stuff bothered her skin. Her favorite movie star used to be Mel Gibson, but now that he’d had such an obvious midlife crisis, it was Matthew McConaughey, and she felt too much loyalty to ER to even start on Grey’s Anatomy. If she were a Crayola crayon, she’d be Blue Bell, and if she were a kind of weather, she’d be the rain when it spits. She couldn’t even remember her natural hair color, and she twirled spaghetti, not cut it, and if she knew the world was ending tomorrow, she would go out and eat a whole pecan pie and not care if it gave her a migraine.

  Jane didn’t know if Raelynne preferred her men shy and inexperienced, but she hoped so. They all hoped so. If only Raelynne could see past Jimmy’s deficits to the deeply kind and honorable man who dwelt inside.

  Jimmy didn’t go to Kilwins every night, because Duncan had told him to skip nights here and there, so Raelynne would wonder where he was. But Jimmy should be careful not to pick the same days every time, Duncan warned, or Raelynne would think he had another girlfriend, a girlfriend who had book club on Sunday nights, for example. (Jane gave him another look; her book club met on Sundays, and always had.) Jimmy worked out a whole schedule and consulted Jane—did it look random enough? Raelynne wouldn’t think he had a girlfriend, would she?—before he carefully circled the dates on the kitchen calendar.

  After Jimmy helped Raelynne close the store, they would put his bicycle in the backseat of her car and drive to her house. Jimmy said she had fixed up the mobile home so nicely you’
d never guess it wasn’t a real house, with rainbow-colored wall hangings and braided rugs, embroidered furniture with fringed pillows, colorful velvet footstools and scented candles everywhere. (Aggie told Jane it sounded like a fire hazard and was almost certainly in violation of HUD standards.) Jimmy said that as soon as they got to Raelynne’s house, she smoked a cigarette—Jimmy said he worried no end about her smoking but that she had cut down to two a day—and changed from her Kilwins uniform into jeans and a sweatshirt. (Jane and Freida hoped Raelynne would change into something sexier, but so far she hadn’t.) And then she’d make a cup of coffee with a quarter-stick of butter melted into it and a tablespoon of protein powder sprinkled on the top—she told Jimmy this made up for having skipped dinner—and they’d watch a movie. Raelynne watched more movies than anyone Jane had ever met. Titanic, Dirty Dancing, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Breakfast Club, When Harry Met Sally, Groundhog Day, The Wedding Singer, Notting Hill, That Awkward Moment, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Tangled. One after the other. Surely it was a good thing she liked romantic comedies so much? Didn’t it show she hungered for love?

  When the movie was over, Jimmy would bike home. (After an enormous amount of debate, everyone had decided that Jimmy should tell Raelynne he was saving up for a car, rather than tell her outright that he didn’t have a license. Freida was a holdout, insisting that Jimmy should say he bicycled to reduce his carbon footprint. But it didn’t matter in the end because Jimmy said that Raelynne never asked.)

  But—but—what happened between the movie ending and Jimmy getting on his bicycle? This was what they were all dying to know. Jimmy had reported that he and Raelynne hugged when he got to Kilwins, and hugged again when he left her house. He said he was getting better at hugging, which made Jane feel as though someone were pinching her insides. He said they watched TV sitting side by side on a loveseat covered with an Indian-print throw blanket, and the loveseat had broken-down springs so they sort of naturally sank toward each other, and once Raelynne had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and her hair had smelled like Strawberry Chunk ice cream and now that was his favorite flavor. But they hadn’t kissed yet, and everyone agreed privately that Raelynne should be the one to initiate that. And surely she would. No woman had a man over for so many movies and hugs without some romantic intent.