Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  Only once did she find Jimmy’s bed empty. Her heart rose briefly, but when she looked outside for his bicycle, she saw that Jimmy was asleep on the porch swing. She opened the door and stepped out quietly. Jimmy stirred and looked up at her. His hair was spiky as a hedgehog’s spines.

  “What are you doing out here?” Jane asked gently.

  “I forgot my key,” he said, sitting up and stretching. “I didn’t want to ring the doorbell and wake everyone.”

  Jane sat beside him in her bathrobe. “Did you have a good time at Raelynne’s last night?”

  Jimmy smiled shyly. “She called me her guy,” he said. “The manager, Mr. Vickery, stopped by as we were closing up and looked at me and said to Raelynne, ‘Who’s that?’ and Raelynne said, ‘Why, that’s my guy,’ and Mr. Vickery said to me, ‘Aren’t you Jimmy Jellico? It seems to me you did some yardwork at my house years ago,’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir, but you all let me go after I knocked your birdbath over with the lawn mower—’ ”

  There was more, but Jane didn’t listen. My guy! What a lovely phrase! How well it summed up Jimmy, how well it summed up his relationship to Raelynne. She couldn’t wait to tell Freida and Aggie.

  Eventually, Jimmy sort of ran out of steam and stopped talking, but Jane didn’t mind. It was enough just to sit with him on the porch, looking at the dew sparkling on the grass and the sun shooting biblical-looking rays of light through the pine trees. She should sit out here more often early in the morning. She and Duncan could have coffee here, start their day with calm and beauty. But she knew it was one of those things—like Sunday afternoon drives and mother-daughter yoga class and vacuuming the refrigerator coils—that she would think about but never actually do again, and that made it all the sweeter.

  * * *

  —

  It was not for nothing that Jane taught second grade. On the August evening Jimmy came home from Kilwins early, she knew just from the way he was walking, pushing his bike slowly—just from the way he had his free hand crammed in his pocket—that something bad had happened. She was off the porch swing and across the lawn before Duncan had even set down his beer.

  “What is it, Jimmy?” she asked, putting her hand on his arm.

  “Nothing,” Jimmy said, and then as though two seconds were all the dishonesty he was capable of, he added, “Except that Raelynne has a boyfriend.”

  Jane heard Duncan come up behind her and felt his arm around her waist.

  “His name is Mason,” Jimmy said. “And Raelynne said she wanted to introduce me special. She said, ‘Mason, this is Jimmy, the friend I was telling you about. And Jimmy, this is Mason.’ ”

  “Maybe Mason’s just a friend, Jim,” Duncan said.

  Jimmy shook his head. “I could tell from the way she said it. Just his name, nothing after it.”

  Oh, Jane knew all about men who were so superior, you didn’t add the identifying phrase. Men you loved so much it would only diminish them to refer to them by those common terms—boyfriend, lover—that other people used. Jimmy was right.

  “And he looks good in a cowboy hat and he works in construction and he only went to Kilwins once in his whole life!” Jimmy’s eyes were damp and his voice shook. “And the worst part is she asked me to come home and watch a movie with them. With both of them.”

  Jane’s heart cramped. Your heart was a muscle, right? Hers had a charley horse.

  “Why don’t you come on and sit on the porch, Jim?” Duncan said softly.

  “No,” Jimmy said heavily. “I think I just want to go to bed.”

  “Have a beer with us,” Duncan urged. “Or we could all do something, drive over to the lake, maybe.”

  “Yes,” Jane said unsteadily. “Stay with us.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I just want to go to sleep.”

  “Well.” Duncan’s voice was thick. “See you in the morning, I guess.”

  They watched him go into the house. He pulled open the screen door as though it were a boulder he had to roll out of the way, and his footsteps made heavy thudding sounds on the floor inside.

  Jane and Duncan looked at each other helplessly.

  If only Jane could tell Jimmy it was Opposite Day, or promise him a Popcorn Party, or tell him he could skip the spelling homework and have him feel better instantly. Second grade didn’t prepare you for heartbreak, she thought bitterly. Nothing prepared you for heartbreak, although high school probably came the closest.

  * * *

  —

  Jane was so upset that night that after the girls and Jimmy were in bed, she and Duncan called the Wilcox’s youngest daughter over to babysit and went to the Sportsman. Jane ordered vodka-and-cranberry-juice spritzers, something that usually cheered her right up. But not tonight—occasional tears ran down Jane’s cheeks and plopped onto the scarred wooden bartop.

  Banjo was bartending, and obviously seeing Jane cry made him uncomfortable. He set their drinks on the bar gingerly with his arm extended fully, like someone setting down a grenade, and then he busied himself washing glassware as noisily as possible. Otherwise the place was empty, except for a young couple poring over their selections on the jukebox.

  One of the very nice things about Duncan was that women’s tears did not make him want to leave the room. (Although maybe that was because he’d caused so many women to cry.)

  “Honey, it’ll be okay,” he said, squeezing Jane’s shoulder.

  Jane shook her head and blew her nose on a cocktail napkin. “I just wanted this so badly for him.”

  “I know.”

  “He deserves to be happy, and I don’t think he ever will be.”

  Duncan thought for a moment. “Maybe he is happy, though. Maybe Raelynne would have made him happier, but he still has us, his family.”

  A tear splashed into Jane’s drink, and she shook her head again. You needed romantic love to be happy—it was right up there with garlic bread.

  Duncan pulled his barstool closer to hers and put his arm around her. “You’ll see,” he said. “I’ll give Jim a promotion, and we’ll go walleye fishing, just him and me, and he’ll be good as new.”

  Good as new? Was Duncan crazy? Jimmy would never be new, never be the same. How could Duncan not realize that every time you fell in love and it didn’t work out, it scraped out a little piece of you, like scooping out a piece of cantaloupe with a melon baller, and there were only so many times that could happen before the scoop marks started to show? That in really no time at all, your heart could become a cold, pockmarked stone?

  The jukebox clunked, and Jane heard the sound of a record dropping. The young couple returned to their table. The song that came on was a strange combination of boisterous music and slow female vocals. Jane leaned her head against Duncan’s shoulder and listened. At first, she thought it was a love song, but slowly she realized it was something more profound, and that it could have been written for her. Her and Jimmy.

  If things are going wrong for you,

  You know it hurts me too.

  The last note of the song played and then hung there in the stale, beery air, fading softly until finally there was nothing left but the faint hiss of static.

  * * *

  —

  But oddly enough, Duncan was right. Jimmy was moody and withdrawn for a day or two, and he stopped going to Kilwins completely, but after a while he did seem as good as new, or at least as good as he was before. Well, except sometimes, Jane caught Jimmy with a faraway, melancholy look, as though contemplating a desolate and lonely future. Though it’s possible she was just projecting her own heartbreak, her own devastation.

  Jane’s world had not gone cold and gray; quite the opposite. The world had become too brightly colored, garish almost. Reds were now bloody, greens were turquoise, all yellows were yolk-colored, pink and lavender had failed to exist, and even the blue of the
lake was harsh and squint-making. Sounds were too loud, and smells as strong as they’d been during her pregnancies. It seemed as though some outer protective layer had been peeled off, and now Jane’s entire self was like the raw skin under a scab.

  No one else seemed to understand the depth of Raelynne’s betrayal, or to show anything beyond the most superficial sympathy. When Jane told Aggie about Raelynne’s boyfriend, Aggie said, “Oh, poor Jimmy! I’m going to make some apple fritters and bring them over right away.” Apple fritters? This kind of hurt went beyond apple fritters! But Jane supposed anyone who was married to Gary wouldn’t understand that. Even Freida seemed lacking in sympathy. “That is the worst,” she said to Jane. “Once, I waited nearly a week for a man to call me back, and when the phone finally rang, it was a man who’d found my purse at the library. I thought I’d never get over it. But Jimmy will find someone worthy of him. I just know it.” They were all as bad as Duncan.

  Only Patrice seemed to understand. When Jane told her gently that Jimmy wasn’t friends with Raelynne anymore, Patrice threw herself on her bed with a wail of anguish and refused to be comforted.

  “She’s just overtired, I think,” Jane said to Duncan in the kitchen.

  “I am not overtired!” Patrice shrieked from upstairs.

  “She really is,” Jane said, and then had to stop and tilt her head, listening. Who had just spoken? Was it Jane’s own mother, throwing her voice from Grand Rapids? Patrice was upset; let Patrice be the judge of why. At least she understood the seriousness of the situation.

  And yet—and yet—no one could stop summer from continuing. Duncan took Jimmy to work, and Jane took the girls on outings. They drove all the way back from Sleeping Bear Dunes with Patrice saying, “Glenn is touching me again! She’s touching me!” every ten seconds. They had Taco Tuesday. Gary tried pasta with white sauce for the very first time and liked it. (“How about that?” Jimmy said. “Isn’t that something?”) Aggie sold the old Hemple house to a man who raised ferrets and reported that the man himself looked so much like a ferret that she half expected him to hold the pen with both hands at the closing. Freida had a small dustup with a mandolin student who refused to learn the Compton grip. Mr. Hutchinson took a glass of tap water to the Health Department to have it tested, but the results came back negative for wild boar fecal material.

  Only Jane seemed to realize that happiness had fled their lives along with Raelynne. Every night when she did the dishes, she thought of a particularly sorrowful song Freida had played once:

  She clears the table and she scrapes the plates,

  And sends the children off to bed!

  Sometimes Jane wished Freida had never learned to play the mandolin. Those lines summed up the rest of Jane’s life, the dreariness and repetition and futility. She would stand for long minutes at the sink, staring at her reflection in the kitchen window until her eyes were dry enough for her to turn around and face her family. She was doing exactly that one night when Duncan said, “It’s beautiful out. We should go to—to the beach.”

  Jane knew he’d been about to say they should go to Kilwins. But the girls clamored excitedly about the beach and Jimmy seemed agreeable as always, so off they went.

  They drove to a little public beach on Lower Lake Drive that Glenn had said once was like a doll’s beach, everything was so small. One parking space, one picnic table, one tree. Only twenty yards of shoreline, but it was all the beach they needed. Glenn and Patrice had already been swimming earlier in the day, so they were content to wade in the water while Jane and Duncan and Jimmy sat on the table and watched the sunset.

  The sunset had turned the sky a hostile orange, or perhaps that was just Jane’s new vision. The sun seemed like an angry, pulsing ball, shooting lines of harsh vermillion light through the clouds. The lake was a bright, hurtful blue, and the sun glinted off it, tossing sun dazzles as sharp as Chinese throwing stars.

  Jane got up from the table to wander the beach. Jimmy followed her, picking up stones. She felt a sort of cellular-level sorrow and wondered if she loved more deeply than other people. Or was everyone else just more mature, more rational? More realistic? Maybe everyone else was right, and Jane was wrong. Maybe—

  Glenn’s excited voice interrupted her thoughts. “She’s doing it! She’s doing it!”

  Jane looked up and saw Patrice turn a cartwheel. It was a wobbly, uneven cartwheel—if it had been an actual wheel on a cart, the ride would be exceedingly bumpy—but it was still a cartwheel, a genuine cartwheel.

  “Oh, Patrice!” Jane whispered.

  “Congratulations, sweetie,” Duncan called, standing up from the table. “Do another one!”

  Patrice turned another cartwheel, this one not so wobbly. And another. And another. The switch had flipped.

  Glenn was hopping up and down and clapping, sibling rivalry momentarily forgotten. Duncan stood with his arms crossed, his body casting long, lean shadows on the sand, his look full of loving pride.

  Patrice turned another cartwheel, her round face flushed, her hair a glinting auburn tangle.

  “Did you see, Mommy?” she yelled. “Did you see me?”

  “Yes!” Jane answered. “I saw you!”

  Patrice shaded her eyes. “Did you see, Jimmy?”

  “I sure did!” Jimmy called from behind Jane, and Jane turned to look at him.

  He was smiling proudly, his face as sweet and open as a sugar cookie. He was so happy for Patrice, so happy for all of them, so delighted by their accomplishments. Could anyone else, ever, be so devoted and selfless? Maybe Jane was wrong; maybe she had been wrong all these years. She’d spent so much time either feeling responsible for Jimmy or feeling sorry for him that she’d forgotten to love him.

  “Patrice can do a cartwheel, Jane!” Jimmy said. “She really can!”

  Jane gave him a small smile. “How about that?” she said. “Isn’t that something?”

  Jimmy looked confused for a second, and then he laughed—the strong, easy laugh he so seldom used. Without thinking, Jane reached out and hugged him.

  “Oh, hey, now.” Jimmy’s arms went around her, and he patted her shoulder awkwardly.

  Jane closed her eyes and inhaled. He had his own smell, too—pine, and also, very faint, pencil shavings. Jimmy smelled like family. Why had Jane never realized that before?

  Jane’s chin didn’t fit neatly into the dip of Jimmy’s shoulder like it did on Duncan’s—she had to turn her head sideways—but Jane kept hugging him anyway. She felt sure that if she could just stay like this for a moment longer, the harshness would fade. When she opened her eyes, the alien sun would be gone, the beach would be as softly colored as chalk dust. All she had to do was stay here and let Jimmy hold her. Just let him hold her until the world slowly righted itself, and she could go on.

  Acknowledgments

  THANK YOU

  To Kim Witherspoon, for being the best agent ever. Period. To Felicity Rubinstein, for giving me courage when I had none. To Maria Whelan, for always having my back.

  To my editor, Jennifer Jackson, for her unbelievable wisdom, encouragement, diligence, and kindness. (And, at times over the past year, for single-handedly restoring my belief that humans still do possess those qualities.) To Helen Garnons-Williams, for believing right from the start. To Maris Dyer for hand-holding beyond measure. I am forever in their debt.

  To Patrick Walczy and Jennifer Close, for reading early drafts so willingly and so wisely, and for talking me off the writing-insecurity ledge so many times. I can never thank them enough.

  To James Ohlson, Gary L. Aschenbach, Stephanie Agnew Kornoely, and Sean Ryan, for advising me on everything from law enforcement to folk songs. To Dede Roberts, especially, for her expertise on all things second grade.

  To Jesse Woods, Big Harp, and First Aid Kit for generously lending their song lyrics to this book. I could not have written
the novel I wanted to write without their music or their inspiration.

  To my brother, Christopher Heiny, for being such an endless (and endlessly patient) source of helpful plot ideas. To my sons, Angus and Hector, for (literally when they were toddlers, metaphorically all the time) filling my life with song. And most of all, to my husband, Ian McCredie, for letting me take all the credit.

  A Note About the Author

  Katherine Heiny is the author of Standard Deviation and Single, Carefree, Mellow, and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many other magazines. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her husband and children, and is a former resident of London, The Hague, and Boyne City, Michigan.

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