by Mary McNear
“Oh, Pops, then of course you can stay,” Win said, with a rush of emotion.
“Yay!” Poppy said, grabbing her and twirling her round. “You won’t regret it. I promise.”
But as they were spinning around, something caught Poppy’s eye, and she stopped, mid-spin, and pointed at the cherry pitter, still sitting on the kitchen table. “Winona Robbins,” she said, with mock seriousness, “were you rearranging your kitchen drawers tonight?”
“No,” Win lied.
“No? Then where are the cherries?”
Win didn’t answer.
Poppy walked nonchalantly over to the kitchen table and picked up the cherry pitter. “So you don’t mind if I just put this . . . in here?” she asked, opening the top drawer.
“Go right ahead,” Win said, and she couldn’t help but smile. No one had ever been able to tease her the way Poppy did.
“Or what about . . . this drawer?” Poppy asked, opening up the bottom drawer. “Can I put it in here?” She dangled it over the drawer.
Win started laughing. She couldn’t help it. This was the best thing about Poppy. This was what made everything else about her worth putting up with. She could always be counted on to make Win laugh. Laugh at life, yes, but even more importantly, laugh at herself. And suddenly, it seemed ridiculous to her that this was how she’d spent her night, at home, alone, rearranging her already perfectly arranged kitchen drawers.
“I missed you, Pops,” she said, through her laughter.
“I missed you, too,” Poppy said, giving Win a hug.
Win hugged her back, hard. “And you’re right. We will have fun this summer. Stay, Pops. Stay as long as you want.” This would be good for Poppy, Win thought, but it would be good for her, too. Because for every night Win made a gourmet dinner for one, there was a night she ate a bowl of cereal leaning against the kitchen counter. And for every night she curled up on the couch after dinner to read an edifying novel, there was a night she ended up on her bed, tearfully perusing old photo albums until she fell asleep, in a soggy heap, on top of the covers.
“We should let Mom and Dad know I’m here,” Poppy said, giving Win one final squeeze before she let go of her. “They’ll be happy we’re together.”
“Oh, I got a postcard from Dad,” Win said. She plucked it out of a basket on the kitchen counter and handed it to Poppy. Their father, who was divorced from their mother, was a part-time carpenter, a part-time musician, and a full-time drinker who spent most of his time ricocheting around the country, going wherever his work or his drinking took him.
“He sent me the same one,” Poppy said, studying the postcard. She flipped it over and read it. “Same wording, too.” She glanced over at Win. “Where, exactly, is Shelby, Montana?”
Win shrugged. “Do you really think he’s found a regular gig playing in a bar there?” she asked Poppy, a little skeptically.
“I think . . .” said Poppy, putting the postcard down. “I think that he’s probably got a regular gig sleeping with the woman who owns the bar. And I think she’ll probably keep him around until she gets tired of him. Or until he drinks her out of Jack Daniel’s.”
“One or the other,” Win agreed, wishing Poppy wasn’t right, but knowing that, in all but the details, she probably was.
“I got a phone call from Mom, though,” Poppy said, with artificial brightness. Their mother, like their father, could never be accused of being an overinvolved parent.
But unlike their father, she was not a drinker. She was instead, as she’d explained to her daughters many times before, on a lifelong journey of self-realization, a journey that had not often included, when Poppy and Win were growing up, such mundane things as attending their orchestra performances, or school plays, or parent teacher conferences. Now she and her most recent boyfriend were living in a trailer outside Sedona, Arizona, and she was trying to get her new crystal business off the ground. “Apparently, selling dream catcher jars is much more competitive than she realized,” Poppy explained. “I guess Sedona’s a crowded market.”
The two of them shared a look that spoke volumes about their respective relationships with their mother, and then Win remembered something. “Poppy, what about your friend?” she whispered. “We’ve just left him sitting out there this whole time.”
“Oh, Everett hasn’t just been sitting out there,” Poppy said. “He’s been getting his ax out of his trunk so he can . . .” She used her hand to make a hacking motion at her neck.
“Very funny,” Win said, and pushing through the kitchen’s swinging door she found Everett sitting, ax-less, on the living room couch.
“Hey,” he said, standing up. “I hope you don’t mind . . .”
“That you sat on my couch? No. I hope you don’t mind that you’ll be sleeping on it tonight,” Win said. There was a third bedroom at the cabin, one that their grandfather had turned into a study many years before, but Win knew, from experience, that the fold-out couch in it was almost comically painful to sleep on. Everett would do much better to bed down in the living room for the night. “Really, you’re welcome to stay,” she said, gesturing at the overstuffed couch. “Unless you decide to drive back, and I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?”
“Probably,” Everett agreed. “Especially since I don’t know these roads that well.” He pushed his light brown hair out of his light brown eyes. He looked both shy and sleepy at the same time.
And Win, who soon discovered that Poppy and Everett hadn’t had dinner yet, started to make it for them while they unloaded the car. When the grilled cheese sandwiches were browning in the pan and the tomato soup was bubbling in the pot, she stuck her head out the kitchen door to check on their progress. Everett was carrying one of Poppy’s suitcases into the cabin, and looking at it, Win cringed reflexively. It was overpacked, bulging at the sides, and something—a bathrobe, she thought—was trailing out of it. Soon, she knew, that bathrobe would be flung, carelessly, over a piece of her furniture, most likely the living room couch. But just then, Win saw what Poppy was carrying into the cabin, and her jaw dropped.
“Poppy, you didn’t bring him. You know I’m allergic to him,” she said, pointing at Sasquatch’s pet carrier.
“Of course I bought him,” Poppy said, mystified. “What else was I supposed to do with him?”
“Leave him with a friend?”
“Win, I can’t leave him with someone else. You know that,” Poppy said, looking wounded.
But Win was already heading back into the kitchen, and already convinced her eyes felt itchy.
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P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . . *
About the author
Meet Mary McNear
About the book
Reading Group Discussion Questions
About the author
Meet Mary McNear
Photo by Amelia Kennedy
MARY MCNEAR is a writer living in San Francisco with her husband, two teenage children, and a high-strung, minuscule white dog named Macaroon. She writes her novels in a local donut shop where she sips Diet Pepsi, observes the hubbub of neighborhood life, and tries to resist the constant temptation of freshly made donuts. She bases her novels on a lifetime of summers spent in a small town on a lake in the northern Midwest.
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About the book
Reading Group Discussion Questions
1.When Daisy arranges for a lunch between her estranged parents, without the consent of her mother, Caroline wonders if Daisy is trying to reunite her and Jack, even though they have been separated for eighteen years. Do most children of divorced parents harbor this wish? Is there an inevitable compulsion on the part of children of divorced parents to want to put the marriage back together, to mend what has been broken, even if it was an unhappy union?
2.Jack, now a sober man, returns to Butternut after eighteen years, with the hope of
reclaiming his ex-wife and continuing the newfound relationship with his daughter, Daisy. Why does Walt, Jack’s AA sponsor, think that Jack is putting himself in a vulnerable position that could cause him to relapse? During the course of the novel, does Jack have any moments where he acknowledges that alcohol is still a temptation that he must avoid?
3.Jack’s “all or nothing” philosophy may be part of what drove him toward the extremes of drinking, gambling, and philandering. In what way does this very same philosophy help him to reestablish a life in Butternut, pursue an ex-wife who is angry with him, and maintain his sobriety?
4.Although Buster is a good man, he is too regimented and settled in his ways to give Caroline a fuller and deeper relationship. So why is Caroline ambivalent about ending things between them? And what is it that Caroline had with Buster that she was never able to have with Jack?
5.Being abandoned or beaten or verbally abused by a parental figure can cause long-term psychological, as well as physical, scars. Both Jack and Will emerged from such a childhood. Jack, as a younger man, indulged in extreme behavior. Will made a a “religion” of not caring. In what way were these behaviors coping, or defense, mechanisms? How and when do they both realize that these mechanisms are working against them?
6.Caroline wonders if she was right to keep from Daisy all the pain and anger she felt after Jack left them. Was she right to do this? Parents who are divorced have been known to try to turn their children against the other parent. Except in extreme cases where the other parent has been abusive, is this ever a good policy? How does it harm the child?
7.Daisy is attracted to Will, a young man who is unlike her in many ways. It seems, at first, that it is simply “chemistry,” that ineffable connection between two people, that draws her to him. But on closer inspection, Will has qualities that are deeply appealing to Daisy. What are they?
8.Daisy, despite the simplicity her name would imply, has a complex and judicious understanding of herself and those around her. She recognizes the shortcomings, or failings, of her father, her mother, Jessica, herself, and Will, but she is able to simultaneously acknowledge each person’s strengths. In many ways, she is the book’s central character; she is the one person with whom all the other characters freely communicate. How else is Daisy different from the other characters in the book?
9.Caroline declares that a leopard doesn’t change its spots; that is, people do not change. But Butternut Summer is a book about people who do change. Who changes and how? And what does it mean to change? Do we become different persons? Or do we get in touch with a part of ourselves that has been dormant or previously inaccessible?
10.Caroline has expectations for Daisy: she wants her to finish college, go to graduate school, and have a career that doesn’t entail working in a coffee shop. She fears that Daisy will make the same mistakes Caroline did when she was young and thereby ruin her chances of having a different kind of life. Some parents want their children to follow in their footsteps and some parents explicitly do not want their children to follow their example. In what way are these two contrary wishes similar? And at what point do a parent’s expectations become a burden to the child?
11.Daisy tells Caroline that she needs to stop focusing on Daisy and instead focus on her own life. This hurts Caroline, but she realizes it’s true. Why is the poster of Bermuda important and how does it symbolize Caroline’s shift toward articulating her own dreams?
12.Will is transformed through knowing Daisy. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. And he is driven to change his own life so he can be with her “in the long run.” So why does he join the army, a plan that will take him away from Daisy for a couple years?
13.The book begins with Jack’s arrival in Butternut and ends with Will’s departure. Jack has been away from Butternut for many years, and Will has never really left the area. How are their journeys similar and how are they different?
Also by Mary McNear
Up at Butternut Lake
Credits
Cover photographs: dock © by Dave
Reede/Getty Images; couple © by
MAIKA 777/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
BUTTERNUT SUMMER. Copyright © 2014 by Mary McNear. Excerpt from Moonlight on Butternut Lake © 2014 by Mary McNear. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverseengineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition June 2014 ISBN 9780062283177
Version 05082015
ISBN 978-0-06-228316-0
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