Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

He felt a familiar stab of guilt now, so sharp this time it made him open his eyes and sit up on the couch. He blinked and looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. God, this place is hopeless, he thought. And he’d been a fool to think it might be otherwise. But then something else occurred to him. Because if the cabin wasn’t the way he remembered it being twenty years ago—what with all the basic amenities, like a roof that would keep out the rain—it also didn’t have any of the fringe benefits that it had had back then. Like a refrigerator full of ice cold beer waiting to be emptied out. And that, Jack Keegan knew, was a very good thing.

  Daisy, what were you thinking?” Caroline asked that night, back at their apartment above the coffee shop. She was in crisis mode now, doing what she always did when she was in crisis mode: sitting at the kitchen table and drinking black coffee.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Daisy admitted. “I’m sorry. In retrospect, it was a bad idea.”

  “In retrospect?”

  “Okay, it was always a bad idea. But, Mom? Tell me the truth. If I’d told you he was coming, would you have agreed to see him?”

  Caroline closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “No,” she said.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  She opened her eyes again and looked at Daisy. Daisy, who suddenly seemed so young, so anxious, and so . . . so hopeful. And Caroline relented—but only a little. Because while she knew her daughter’s intentions, however misguided they might seem, had been good, she was also hurt that Daisy had kept a secret like this from her, and kept it from her for so long. Still, feeling disappointed with Daisy was such an unfamiliar feeling to her that she tried to brush it away.

  “Look, I’m not angry,” she said. “Or at least I’m trying very hard not to be. But, Daisy, there’s a whole history between your father and me that you can’t possibly understand. And I have to believe that if you did understand that history, you would know that it could never be erased over a single lunch.”

  “Mom, I know that. I do, really. And I don’t want you to erase it. I just want you to . . . to give him a chance, I guess,” she said, with a little shrug.

  “A chance to what?” Caroline asked, immediately tensing.

  “A chance to prove to you he’s different. I mean, different from how he was when you were married to him.”

  Caroline frowned. There was something about Daisy’s choice of words that bothered her. And she was suddenly reminded of a movie that Daisy had loved as a child, a movie she’d watched over and over and over again. In it, twin daughters had schemed, successfully, to get their long divorced parents back together again. God, how Caroline had hated that movie, and its easy, fairy-tale ending.

  “Daisy, your father and I have lived apart for eighteen years,” she said, carefully. “We’ve been divorced for more than sixteen of those years. And we got divorced because we were completely, and totally, incompatible.” Well, that and your father was a serial adulterer.

  “So,” she went on, “even if I didn’t already have someone else in my life whom I care about—and I care about Buster very much—there would be no possibility of your father and me getting back together again. None whatsoever. And I know your father feels the same way. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Daisy said, flushing with either embarrassment or disappointment, Caroline wasn’t sure which.

  “Because I’ve heard of the children of divorced parents fantasizing about their parents getting back together again,” Caroline continued pointedly. “And you need to know, that is not going to happen here.”

  “Mom, please, I’m twenty-one. I’m old enough to know the difference between a Disney movie and real life,” Daisy objected. But her cheeks were still pink.

  “Good,” Caroline said, only slightly mollified. “Now, if you want to continue the . . . the friendship you and your father have begun, then obviously, that’s different. I can’t tell you what to do with your own life.” Although God knows, in this case, I’d like to. “But I can warn you, Daisy, that your father is not reliable. Or trustworthy.” Here Caroline flashed on a memory of Jack coming home at six o’clock in the morning. Still slightly drunk, still reeking of perfume—some other woman’s perfume. “When it comes to your father,” she added, “you should proceed with caution.”

  “I will,” Daisy said. But then her chin jutted out stubbornly, and she said, “But I’ll remember what you taught me, Mom. That everyone deserves a second chance.”

  Well, not everyone, Caroline thought, but didn’t say.

  Daisy, sensing her skepticism, persisted. “I mean, you thought Frankie deserved a second chance. And Frankie’s an ex-con.”

  “Frankie was a very special case,” Caroline said.

  “Mom, he killed a man.”

  “Yes, he did,” Caroline said, calmly. “But you know as well as I do, Daisy, that there were extenuating circumstances.” Extenuating circumstances that Frankie had only recently told her about. “Frankie did what he did in self-defense. He was trying to protect his sister from an abusive husband, and that husband, it turned out, had a knife. Even so, Frankie paid the price for his actions. He did his time. And there’s nothing now he wouldn’t do for you, or for me, or for Pearl’s, for that matter.”

  Daisy nodded. “You’re right, Mom. When it comes to second chances, Frankie is a special case. But, Mom, people change.”

  Caroline sighed. Daisy was just young enough, and just naive enough, to actually believe this. And now she worried that all the time Daisy had spent in libraries over the last several years had taught her a lot about academic subjects, but not a lot about the real world. Because in Caroline’s experience, most people didn’t change; most people stayed the same. And, as she poured herself another cup of coffee, she remembered an old adage about this.

  “Daisy, do you know what my grandmother Pearl used to say?”

  “What?”

  “She used to say ‘a leopard never changes its spots.’”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. “Mom, this is the same woman who made her husband drink cream every day because she thought it was good for his heart.”

  “Well, yes. She did do that,” Caroline admitted. “But she had a point about those spots.”

  “Maybe for some people that’s true,” Daisy allowed. “But Dad’s changed, Mom. I know he has.”

  “Dad?” Caroline echoed. The surprises just kept coming today.

  “Yes, Dad,” Daisy said, a little defensively. “Because that’s what he is, Mom. My dad.”

  “Well, biologically, yes,” Caroline started to say, but something about the set of Daisy’s chin made her stop. Instead, she sipped her coffee.

  “I didn’t call him that right away,” Daisy said, after a moment of silence. “I didn’t call him anything right away. But that felt strange. So after I’d seen him a few times, I started calling him Jack. And that felt wrong, too. Then, one day, this spring, I just . . . I just called him Dad.” She blushed again but added stubbornly, “And despite what you say, Mom, he has changed.”

  “Okay, then,” Caroline said, changing tack. “How has he changed?”

  “He just has,” Daisy said evasively. “I’ll let him tell you how.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong, Daisy,” Caroline said. “Your father’s not going to tell me how he’s changed. He’s not going to tell me anything. Because I’m not going to ask him anything. I’m not interested in him, or his life, anymore, except as it pertains to you.”

  Daisy started to say something, then stopped. She knew Caroline well enough to know that they’d reached a stalemate on this topic. “If it’s okay with you, Mom,” she said, after a moment, “I think I’ll go to bed early.”

  “Of course it’s okay.”

  “And you and I . . . we’re okay?” Daisy asked.

  “We will be. Just . . . just give me a few days. And, Daisy . . . no more surprises, all right? Not for a little while, anyway.”

  “You have my word on that,” Daisy
promised, reaching for Caroline’s hand on the tabletop and giving it a quick squeeze. They stood up then, Caroline to take her coffee cup to the sink, and Daisy to leave the kitchen. But in the doorway, Daisy stopped and turned back.

  “Mom, you know the mechanic who repaired your truck today?” she said, coming over to Caroline. “I went to high school with him.”

  “Really?” Caroline said distractedly, washing out her coffee cup. She was thinking about Jack again.

  “Uh-huh. His name is Will. Will Hughes. We weren’t friends back then. I think he used to . . . you know, get into trouble a lot.”

  “Well, no wonder you weren’t friends,” Caroline said. “That doesn’t sound like someone you’d have had anything in common with.”

  “No, but . . .” Daisy lingered there for a moment, then shrugged and said, “Well, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “All right, honey,” Caroline said, putting her coffee cup in the dish rack. She was relieved when Daisy went into her bedroom and closed the door. God knows, Caroline adored her, but right now, she needed to be alone. She needed to think. And although she generally did her best thinking at the kitchen table, the bathtub, she decided, was a close runner-up. So she went to her room, undressed, and put on her bathrobe. Then she went into the bathroom and ran lukewarm water into the tub, pouring a generous stream of jasmine bath oil under the faucet. Soon, its soothing fragrance filled the room, and Caroline felt some of the tension ebb out of her body.

  She turned the faucet off and started to slip out of her bathrobe, but she stopped and turned instead to look at herself in the mirror above the sink. Caroline wasn’t a vain woman, not by any stretch. And, as a general rule, she spent very little time staring into mirrors. But tonight, she studied herself in the mirror carefully, critically, trying objectively to see who it was Jack had seen when she’d first sat down across the table from him that afternoon.

  Still no gray in her red-blond hair, she thought with satisfaction, ruffling it with her fingers, though that would probably change soon. And her eyes, she decided, leaning closer, her eyes were still her best feature, still a vivid blue. But her skin, unfortunately, was beginning to show her age. It was still creamy white—she’d always been careful to avoid sitting in the sun—but there were a few wrinkles, she thought, with a frown that only deepened those wrinkles. Well, there was nothing she could do about those.

  She turned her head slightly to the side now, and, lifting her chin a fraction of an inch, studied her profile. Was the skin there, under her chin, softening just a little? she wondered. Getting just a little less firm? Would she look like her grandma Pearl one day? Grandma Pearl’s droopy under-the-chin skin had always reminded Caroline of a turkey’s wattle.

  She sighed and let her eyes travel down, to her neck, to her collarbone, and then to her breasts, partially obscured by the pink fabric of her bathrobe. And she was tempted, for a moment, to slide her bathrobe down, over her shoulders, and continue her inspection. But she wasn’t brave enough to do it. She was still, after all, Pearl’s granddaughter, and Grandma Pearl would never have approved of anyone—let alone a middle-aged woman—examining herself naked in the mirror. Still, Caroline thought her body had held up pretty well over the years. Not that she believed in exercise. She didn’t; she hated it with a passion. And she’d be damned if she’d get on a treadmill when she already walked at least five miles a day between tables in her coffee shop. But she hadn’t gained any weight, as far as she could tell. There was no scale in the apartment, but there was an ancient pair of ripped blue jeans in her closet that were too comfortable to give away, and they still fit her. So that was something, wasn’t it?

  But then she came to her senses. “Oh, for God’s sake, Caroline, stop being such an idiot,” she mumbled, turning away from the mirror and dropping her bathrobe on the floor. You look exactly like what you are, which is a forty-two-year-old woman. A forty-two-year-old woman who doesn’t get facials, or Botox, or . . . or whatever other treatments women used today to turn back the clock, or at least slow it down a little. And that was fine, she thought, stepping into the bathtub, and easing herself down into it. She was perfectly attractive as she was, perfectly attractive to the only man who mattered to her, and that was Buster.

  Buster! She sat bolt upright in the bathtub. She’d forgotten to call him back. She looked at her watch; it was too late now. Buster belonged to the “early to bed early to rise” school of thought. It had been something of a sticking point, in fact, in the early days of their relationship, though she’d learned to appreciate the fact that if she didn’t have any late nights with Buster, she also didn’t have any bleary eyes at Pearl’s the next morning. In any case, she decided, lying back down in the bathtub, she’d call him in the morning and bring him up to speed on everything that had happened today. He’d be as surprised as she’d been to discover her ex-husband was back in town. Buster had never met Jack before, of course. He’d only moved up here three years ago, when he’d retired from the military and bought a cabin on Butternut Lake. But he’d heard about Jack from her, heard about him and disapproved of him heartily. But then Buster and Jack were as different as two men could be. Buster would never do anything impulsively, never shirk a responsibility, never count on his looks, or his charm, to get the job done when hard work and discipline would do it just as well.

  Still, she thought, easing down a little more into the water, she couldn’t pretend Jack wasn’t living here now. Butternut was too small for that. And even living out at Wayland’s cabin, Jack would be making frequent trips into town. He wouldn’t have any choice, if that cabin was as run-down as Caroline remembered it being. Besides, Jack had never been one for seclusion, or quiet reflection—not when there was a bar, or a poker game, within driving distance.

  She’d get his cell-phone number from Daisy, she decided, and call him tomorrow. Then they could meet and establish some ground rules. Chances were Jack wouldn’t stay long in Butternut anyway. He wasn’t much on follow-through, wasn’t much on what he’d once told Caroline was the “boring part” of life, the day-to-day in and out that most people not blessed with Jack’s good looks had no choice but to be part of—paying bills, running errands, just generally taking care of business. Of course, Jack’s business, when Caroline had last known him, had been having a good time. And, as she recalled, he’d been very good at that, though he’d been less good at picking up the pieces that having a good time left behind.

  She sat back up and took a sea sponge off the bathtub ledge. She squirted some bath gel onto it and started to wash away the faint scent of bacon grease that always clung to her skin by the end of every workday. And, as she was rinsing herself off, the first real breeze of the day rippled the bathroom window curtain. It felt delightful on her bare skin, and it led her to hope that tomorrow, at least, might be cooler. Then maybe, just maybe, the air-conditioning wouldn’t have to work so hard, and it would hang on a little bit longer, until . . . until what? Until she found the money to replace it under her pillow? Or until a customer left her a gargantuan tip, tucked beneath his or her water glass? She sighed. She’d better make that appointment with John Quarterman, the bank’s executive vice president, tomorrow, she reminded herself. With all the craziness today, she’d never gotten around to it.

  But she pushed the thought of that future meeting out of her mind and lay back down in the bathtub, letting the now cool water lap over her. She’d think about something else, she decided. She’d think about . . . Daisy. But thinking about Daisy, which usually brought her so much pleasure, brought something else with it tonight. She was still hurt that Daisy hadn’t told her about Jack coming back into her life, and she was surprised, too, that Daisy didn’t seem to share any of her resentment toward him. Then again, she reasoned, if Daisy didn’t resent Jack, it was probably because Caroline hadn’t wanted her to resent him. She’d always been careful, in the years since he’d left, to shield Daisy from any of the bitterness she’d felt toward him. She hadn’t don
e this because she’d thought Jack would ever come back. She hadn’t. No, she’d done it because she hadn’t wanted to sour Daisy on the institution of marriage. Because despite her own experience with it, and her own reluctance to try it again, Caroline still believed in it, and she hoped Daisy would believe in it too, someday.

  Now, though, she wondered if she should have been more honest with Daisy. And not just honest with her about the years before Jack left, but honest with her about the years after Jack left, too. Honest about the loneliness she’d felt then, a loneliness so overwhelming that there were times she was afraid it would simply swallow her whole. Honest about the exhaustion she’d felt; raising a child and running a business by herself, she’d sometimes been so tired that she’d literally fallen asleep on her feet. And maybe she should have been honest about the constant anxiety over providing for their little family, especially when the check that Jack sent every month never seemed to stretch far enough.

  But no, she decided, she’d been right not to tell Daisy how difficult those years had been for her. Besides, Daisy wasn’t a fool. She knew how hard Caroline had worked. She’d told Caroline, many times, how much she’d appreciated it, too. If she wanted to get to know her father now, well, that was her decision. And if he hurt Daisy, as he probably would, well, then Caroline would just have to strangle him herself. That was all there was to be done about it.

  Another breeze blew now, stirring the window curtains again, and feeling, on her skin, like the gentlest caress of summer. Summer, she mused. She’d been looking forward to it all year, since last summer, actually. It was always a hectic time at Pearl’s—the summer tourism season saw to that—but it was also an uncomplicated time, too. Sure, she worried about whether the “Butternut Burger” special would last through the lunch hour, but beyond that, her biggest worry was how soon she and Daisy could close up Pearl’s and head out to Butternut Lake for a late-afternoon swim. Now, suddenly, everything seemed uncertain, unstable—as if the ground had shifted, ever so slightly, beneath her feet. And between the looming deadline with the bank, her ex-husband’s return to town, and her daughter’s relationship with that ex-husband, Caroline realized that, for the first time in years, she had no idea what to expect of the summer ahead of her.