Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

  It wasn’t that Will didn’t like women; he did. And it wasn’t that he saw them only as sexual objects; he didn’t. It was just that having a relationship with a woman, a relationship with a capital “R,” was something he’d never had any desire to do before. It felt too complicated, somehow, too serious and too weighted with expectations. And it wasn’t just women he’d felt this way about either. It was everything in his life. He’d worked hard to keep things easy and unencumbered, striving hard to not care too much about or invest too much in any one thing. That’s why his arrangement with Christy had worked so well for so long. They’d understood each other; they’d wanted the same thing. And they’d known where they were heading, which was nowhere in particular. But things were different with Daisy. Everything was different with Daisy, in ways he was only just beginning to understand.

  But, as it turned out, it wasn’t Daisy Jason wanted to talk about anymore. “Have you, uh, seen Christy lately?” he asked now, a little too casually.

  “No,” Will said, shooting Jason an irritated look. “Why?”

  “No reason. But I saw her the other night and . . .”

  “And?”

  “Will, she was so pissed at me,” Jason said, with a little shudder.

  “You? Why was she pissed at you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you weren’t there for her to be pissed at?”

  “Maybe,” Will said. Definitely, he thought.

  “Did you, uh, did you tell her about Daisy when you broke up with her?”

  Another irritated look from Will was all the answer he needed.

  “And what about Daisy?” Jason persisted. “Does she know about Christy?”

  Will glanced away and took a slug of his beer.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jason said, under his breath.

  Will shot him another irritated look. “Jason, seriously, stay out of my personal life,” he said.

  “Okay,” Jason said, holding up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “How about a game of pool then?”

  “Maybe later,” Will said.

  “All right. Well, I’m going to see if I can pick one up now,” Jason said, grabbing his beer and heading over to the pool tables.

  As soon as he was gone, Will was sorry he’d gotten mad at him. But Jason had hit a nerve. Will hadn’t told Daisy about Christy, even though he knew he should, even though he knew it was stupid not to. The two of them lived in the same town, and everyone who lived in a town that size knew each other, whether they wanted to or not. Of course, he and Christy had been careful to keep their relationship hidden, but there was probably still talk about it. And the simplest, smartest thing for Will to do was to tell Daisy, now, before she heard about it from someone else, namely, Christy. But he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t tell her.

  He couldn’t because he knew Daisy saw something in him, something no one had ever seen in him before. Something he’d never even seen in himself before. He didn’t know what it was, exactly. But it was there, in her eyes, when she looked at him, and in her voice when she talked to him, and in the expression on her face when she listened to him. And when she touched him, and kissed him, it was there, too, in her tenderness, a tenderness that might have unraveled Will completely if it hadn’t also aroused him so completely.

  But if he told her about Christy, then what? Then, he knew, she’d be disappointed, and already, one month into their relationship, he hated the thought of disappointing her. And that was different, too. It had never particularly mattered to him before whether he disappointed anyone or not. Maybe it was because, from his earliest memories, all the adults in his life—his father, his teachers, even his mother, he suspected—were already disappointed in him. But that disappointment, Will had quickly learned, had an upside. Because the less people expected from you, the less you had to try, and the less you had to try, the less you had to care. Soon Will had made not caring a habit in his life, a religion, really. The only exception he made was to his work at the garage. Doing his job, and doing it right, mattered to him. But not much else did—until now, until Daisy.

  The problem was, Christy was from the part of his life before Daisy, the not-caring part, and he didn’t know how long he could keep those parts separate from each other. So far, it hadn’t been an issue, because as different as he and Daisy were in some ways, there was one way in which they were alike: they only wanted to be with each other. And the amazing thing was, they’d figured out a way to do this, a way to be alone in what felt sometimes like their own personal universe.

  It had started when Daisy had suggested, a couple of weeks ago, that instead of going out for dinner they have dinner downstairs at Pearl’s. There were always leftovers there, she’d pointed out, and they would go to waste if nobody ate them. So they’d had dinner down there that night and most nights after that too. Daisy kept the window blinds drawn and only turned on a few, necessary lights, so that when they had their dinner at the counter, on side-by-side stools, it was under a soft pool of yellow light in an otherwise dark room. It was like being at a private restaurant, a restaurant with no frazzled waitress waiting for them to pay their bill, and no wriggling kids at the next table staring at them when Will kissed Daisy—which he did as frequently as possible.

  It was around the same time they started having dinner at Pearl’s that they discovered the Black Bear. They’d gone for a drive one night, and Will had chosen a back road without really paying attention to where they were going. They rarely had a destination in mind anyway. He drove and they talked, or listened to the radio, or they were quiet, letting the sweet air blow in gently through the pickup’s open windows, while the moon bathed them in its soft, dappled light.

  But that night, Will slowed down when they came to a roadhouse with an enormous carved wooden bear standing on its hind legs in front of it.

  “What is this place?” Daisy asked.

  “The Black Bear,” Will said. “I’ve never been here before, but I’ve heard Jason’s dad talk about it. He and his friends used to come here when they were our age. Do you want to check it out?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  They parked in a parking lot that had only a few other cars in it and walked into the slightly ramshackle building. The inside consisted of one low-ceilinged room, with wood-paneled walls, a small bar, a jukebox, and a scattering of tables. But its most prominent feature was a series of taxidermied animal heads—including an enormous bear’s head—bolted to one wall. It was a lot of fur, and snarling teeth, but the effect was mitigated, somewhat, by the Christmas tree lights someone had thought to string between the animals’ heads and even wrap jauntily around a buck’s antlers.

  “We don’t have to stay,” Will said quietly, not wanting to offend a couple of customers who were sitting at the bar.

  “No, I like it,” Daisy said, amused. “It reminds me a little of a movie set.”

  “You mean, a horror movie set?”

  “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I still like it.”

  “Do you want to stay for a drink?”

  “Why not?” she said, and while he ordered his beer and her Diet Coke Daisy wandered over to check out the jukebox.

  “Will,” she said excitedly when he brought their drinks over. “Look at these songs. There isn’t anything here that’s later than the eighties.”

  Will looked at the jukebox. She was right; the songs were mainly from the ’70s and the ’80s. Daisy loved classic rock because her mom had raised her on it.

  “Will,” she said suddenly, taking their drinks out of his hands and putting them down on a nearby table. “Dance with me. Please?”

  “What? No,” he said automatically. And then, apologetically, “I don’t dance, Daisy.”

  “Oh, come on,” she chided him playfully. “I’ll put on something slow.” She fished a couple of quarters out of her pocket and dropped them into the jukebox, and then, after studying the song selection, she punched some numbers in.

  “Daisy,” he
said, shaking his head. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” she asked teasingly, putting her hands on his shoulders.

  “Both,” he said, but he put his hands tentatively on her waist as he heard the record drop in the jukebox.

  “Didn’t you go to any dances in high school, Will?” she asked, standing on her tiptoes and nuzzling his neck with her lips. He drew in a sharp breath.

  “You know I didn’t,” he said, looking around the bar. But nobody was paying any attention to them.

  He heard the first notes of the song and sighed. It was “Night Moves” by Bob Seeger. This, he knew, was Daisy’s all-time favorite song; there was no way he was getting out of dancing with her now.

  “Will,” she said, her voice soft in his ear. “It’s not that hard. Don’t think of it as dancing, okay? Just think of it as holding me.”

  And he sighed, again, because if there was one thing on this earth he knew how to do now, it was how to hold Daisy. He’d spent the last couple of weeks perfecting the art of it. So he circled his arms around her waist and drew her gently against him, and she slipped her arms around his neck and rested her cheek against his shoulder.

  “That’s good,” Daisy said, after a moment. “Now all you need to do is move. But just a little, all right?” And she showed him how to sway, almost imperceptibly, to the music.

  And they danced. Or they held each other. Or they did some combination of the two. And the funny thing was, Will liked it, a lot; he liked it so much that they used up all their quarters that night. Soon, going to the Black Bear, like having dinner at Pearl’s, became part of their routine. It wasn’t long before they felt like regulars there. They’d walk through the door and the bartender would smile and put Will’s beer and Daisy’s Diet Coke on the bar, and the other customers, mostly middle-aged regulars, would nod politely at them before going back to their conversations. Then Daisy and Will would sip their drinks and put all the quarters they’d hoarded that day onto the table. And after that they’d feed them into the jukebox and dance like they were the last two people left on the planet. And as far as they were concerned, they were.

  Will wondered, sometimes, if he should have gone to the dances in high school. But he decided it wasn’t dancing he loved; it was dancing with Daisy. It was the feel of her soft, pliant body against his and the smell of her clean, fragrant hair, and the smoothness of her cheeks and her neck when he touched them with his lips. When he held her like that, wanting her, but not having her, and not knowing if, or when, he would ever have her, he understood, for the first time in his life, that sometimes desire had less to do with getting what you wanted than with not getting what you wanted.

  There was another part of their routine too, the part after they’d run out of quarters at the Black Bear. Will would drive Daisy back to Butternut then and park his pickup on Main Street, a block or two down from Pearl’s. He did this because he thought their proximity to Daisy’s apartment, and to her mother—who he knew didn’t really like him—was the best insurance he had that he wouldn’t cross the line he’d drawn for himself. After he’d parked, the two of them would kiss, though the word kiss probably didn’t do justice to what it was they did to each other. Because Will would kiss not just her mouth but her neck, and the little hollow at the base of her neck, and her shoulders, and her arms, and any inch of skin he could find that wasn’t covered by clothing. And as he did this he’d run his hands over her body, gently at first, caressingly, but then hungrily, almost greedily, feeling as much of her warmth and her softness as he could through her thin, summery clothes.

  And Daisy would be kissing him and touching him, too, her fingers splayed open, her hands traveling up and down his back, his chest, his stomach, and sometimes settling even lower, on his lap, and stroking him there, through his blue jeans, until he thought seriously about taking those blue jeans off, and every other article of clothing both of them were wearing.

  That was when Will knew it was time for them to stop, time for them to say good night. And with a degree of self-control he hadn’t even known he’d had, he would untangle himself from her and watch her warily from his side of the front seat while she caught her breath, and straightened her clothes, and tried to restore some order to her hair. And then he’d walk her to her front door, kiss her one more time, and drive back to the garage and his little apartment behind it. He was almost never tired then, his blood still running so hot from Daisy’s feel and touch that on more than one occasion he’d literally taken a cold shower. But finally, sometime in the early hours of the morning, he’d get into bed and lie there in the darkness, staring up at the wavering shadows of tree branches on the ceiling and wondering if it was possible for someone to actually die of sexual frustration. But, apparently, it wasn’t, because the next evening, at exactly six P.M., he would get off work, get into the shower, and get over to Daisy’s as fast as he could, to start the whole thing over again.

  “Do you want another beer?”

  “What?” Will asked, startled, looking up.

  “I said, ‘do you want another beer?’” the bartender asked, looking pointedly at Will’s empty bottle.

  “Oh, no thanks,” he said, glancing around the bar. He was amazed to see that while he’d been thinking about Daisy, the place had gotten crowded—and loud.

  He left some bills on the counter for a tip and went to find Jason, who was in the middle of a game of pool.

  “I think I’m going to take off now,” he told him.

  “That’s all right,” Jason said, taking a shot. “You were lousy company, anyway.”

  Will didn’t disagree. Other than working on cars, there were only two things now he was able to do: be with Daisy and think about Daisy.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said to Jason, and he turned to leave, but Jason put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

  “Hey, Will,” he said. “I like Daisy. If she’s what you want, then I’m happy for you. Really, I am.”

  Thanks,” Will said gratefully, before an uncomfortable silence fell over them. This was about as serious as their conversations ever got.

  “See you tomorrow,” Jason said, taking his hand off his shoulder.

  “Yeah, okay,” Will said with a quick smile. And he couldn’t know it then, as he pushed open the bar’s screen door and walked out into the dusky parking lot, but he would remember every single detail of those summer nights with Daisy—Pearl’s, the Black Bear, the front seat of the pickup—until the day he died. Life, it turned out, didn’t get a whole lot more perfect than that.

  It’s crowded tonight,” Jack said, sliding down to make room for more people at their table in Butternut’s American Legion hall.

  “It’s always crowded,” Daisy remarked, looking up from her fried walleye. “But you know that, don’t you? You must have come to one of these the last time you lived in Butternut.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said, because this fish fry was exactly the kind of thing he’d made a habit of avoiding back then. Occasionally, Caroline had twisted his arm into going to some picnic, or potluck or church social, but they’d always seemed to him to be boring, gossipy affairs, and they’d always had the added disadvantage, from his perspective, of not serving alcohol.

  But this fish fry tonight didn’t seem so bad. For one thing, he was here with Daisy, and in between gorging themselves on the fried walleye, the biscuits, and the coleslaw, they’d been talking. Talking about everything and nothing, about all the things they’d never talked about when Jack was away. Talking was such a simple thing, he thought. But he would never take it for granted again, at least not when it came to his daughter.

  And the America Legion hall was cheerful enough too. The wood-paneled walls were lined with photographs of Butternut veterans from every war since World War I, and the rafters were hung with fluttering pennants from the baseball championships this chapter of the Legion had won. Then there were the long tables, set with red, white, and blue plastic tablecloths
and bunches of freshly picked wildflowers for their centerpieces.

  “Well, you must have had to work pretty hard to avoid the fish fry,” Daisy said, amused. “I don’t know if you noticed it then, Dad, but there’s not a lot to do in Butternut on a Friday night.”

  “Oh, I noticed it,” Jack said. But he hadn’t cared the last time he’d lived here; he’d made his own fun or, more accurately, his own trouble.

  “Did you hate Butternut then, Dad?” Daisy asked, her blue eyes thoughtful.

  “Did I hate it?” Jack repeated, sipping his iced tea. “No, I wouldn’t say I hated it,” he said, though that was a bald-faced lie. “I’d say it was more like its charms escaped me.”

  “And now? Do its charms still escape you?”

  “Not anymore,” Jack said, with a smile. But unlike his daughter, he didn’t love Butternut. Not yet. He only loved two of the people who happened to be living in it right now.

  “Was it the town you didn’t like back then, or the people?” Daisy asked, pausing, a forkful of coleslaw on its way to her mouth.

  He shrugged. “To me, they were one and the same, though I didn’t dislike all of it, of course. I didn’t dislike you, or your mom. I think what I really didn’t like was . . .” He paused here, wanting to be honest with his daughter, but still learning how to be. “I think what I, yes, hated,” he started again, “was the feeling I got, every time I walked into some place—the grocery store, the hardware store, Pearl’s—that everyone who was in there had just been talking about me. Partly that was my guilty conscience. But partly, I think, it was because they had just been talking about me.” Me, and whoever I owed money to, or whoever I’d gotten into a fight with, or whoever I was sleeping with, other than my wife, of course . . .

  “But you don’t feel that way anymore, do you?” Daisy asked, frowning.

  “Not really,” Jack said. And it was true. Since he’d been back, there’d been some townspeople who’d been friendly, and some, fewer, who’d been unfriendly. But for the most part, they’d simply been curious about why he’d come back, and how long he was planning on staying. The first question Jack had answered, somewhat disingenuously, by explaining that he was fixing up Wayland’s cabin, and the second he’d answered by saying, honestly, that he didn’t know how long he’d be staying. (He didn’t add, of course, that the answer to that question was up to Caroline.)