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Kate
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AT EIGHTEEN DEGREES, the dry air begrudges only the ashen scent of car exhaust and the vanilla camphor of lip balm. As if they might counteract the loss of more humid aromas (the river’s fishy tang, the woodsy summer breeze) retail stores pump out eye-watering doses of eucalyptus, pine, and cinnamon (via aerosols, scented candles, and potpourri) all in an attempt to sell a few last-minute Christmas presents. At the Gonzo Fox, Mark prefers an organic approach. His roasting cashews can transform a window-shopper into the dazed owner of a vintage bedroom set and a maxed-out credit card.
When Kate enters their store, dinging the brass bell above, Ray Gonzalez is already behind the glass counter, scooping nuts into a wax paper bag for her. The gallery and back halls are crowded with customers ogling furniture and knickknacks; estate odds and ends with origins obscured by a little spit and polish.
She whistles at the price tag on a gothic minister’s throne that will probably end up heading the table of some dining room on St. Paul’s Summit Avenue. “How do you sell so much used stuff to people who refused to buy a pre-owned car?”
“Nostalgia is a heady narcotic,” Mark says, taking the bag of nuts from Ray. “It only needs,” he passes the cashews beneath Kate’s nose, “a trigger,” and drops it in her hands. He always seems to know these things. He’s even earned the moniker The Great Foxtradamus from the locals by predicting every divorce in town.
“Thanks.” She gives him a shy smile and hug. His muscles feel tense. “Okay, listen.” She warms her hands with the bag. “We were hog-tied into that situation. You know how the senator is. It will never happen again though. Trust me. Cut me some slack this time, okay?”
Ray raises a dark eyebrow. “Well, that depends. Will you be at our wedding?” He comes away from the glass counter with its pink heat lamp and mounds of sweet and savory nuts then wanders into the clutter of the back hall.
Kate has always found Ray quirkily appealing. His dark head of short-cropped hair with its patch of grey on one side looks as if he’s had a mishap with a paint roller. His brown glass eye (the one he received after a beating in his teens for being a gay Puerto-Rican) is a near-perfect match for its natural twin and its slight cast inward gives him an innocent air.
“Of course I’ll be there,” she calls after him. “I want to be a bridesmaid or groomsperson or—something.”
“Um,” Mark says from across the store, “we were thinking best matron. But you may be demoted to flower girl if I’m still feeling oppressed by you.”
“Can I wear eggplant? I look good in eggplant.” She pops a roasted cashew; eyes close. Ah, dinner and dessert in one bite.
“Honey,” Mark says, “you can wear palm fronds and a pineapple on your head for all we care. I just want to do this already. Ray isn’t getting any younger.” He huffs. “So you’re really going to stop letting the MIL run all over you?”
Ray elbows him.
“New leaf,” Kate says. “You guys would have been so proud of Sam last week. Really put the senator in her place.” She drops three nuts onto her tongue.
“Good for her,” Mark says. “She deserves everything that’s coming her way.”
Kate halts. “Claudia or Sam?”
“Both.” Mark sidles up. “Now, don’t breathe a word of this, but my sources tell me Sam’s just about guaranteed the lead in the high school musical this spring.”
Kate honks, slaps her chest, and coughs. She raises the bag and rattles it. “My baby.”
Mark wags a finger. “You can’t tell her.”
Ray nods. “She’s gonna tell.”
Kate helps Mark and Ray haul out a scroll-armed park bench to the sidewalk by plopping down on it before they can lift it and tucking back into the cashews. Ray says nothing of the added hundred and forty pounds. Mark grunts, insists he’s sprouting a hernia. Kate kicks heels, imagining all the costume shopping and altering she could do with Samantha. One of the cars passing on Main toots twice. Mark and Ray set Kate down with a thud and look up.
A hand in a black fingerless glove extends from the sunroof of a road-salted BMW Z coupe. The car, with its long front end and hearse-like hatchback, looks like the sort of hot rod Cruella DeVille would drive.
“Lucy,” Mark says, faking a smile and waving back.
The roadster growls by in a blur of shabby black. Its wide sports tires grab onto twisty Bluff Road, which curves up to the Gainsborough house and dead ends at Maiden Leap lookout point. The car disappears around the wooded corner and hums up the hill.
Mark straightens his hand-lettered sign.
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Too many relatives home for the holidays?
Bench ‘Em — $150
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“Miss Ex-Lez came in the other day to sell me some O’Keefe prints,” he says.
Ray nods. “Can’t handle all that vulva imagery around.”
Kate struggles to contain her nuts.
“Boy, she’s let herself go,” Mark chatters on. “Setting foot outside of the house without makeup when you’re twenty is precious. When you’re forty it’s just plain irresponsible.”
“Brrr.” Kate shivers, follows the two back inside. She silently disagrees. If Lucy took off her Clinique mask, it’s a step in the right direction. Letting go conjures up images of abandoned barns leaning to one side, foreclosed farmhouses burnt darn near to the foundation, prairie grasses reclaiming a wheat field. All beautiful things in their own way. So let them go in a blaze of glory. That’s willfulness.
“Neglect has nothing to do with it,” she mumbles.
“What’s that?” Ray says.
“Nothing.” She eyes the bottom of the bag, shakes it, and raises it to her mouth. The last shreds of nuts and a dusting of sea salt scatter across her tongue. Lucy’s been back for two seconds and is already a burr in the brain. “Let’s get back to the top story. What’s the play going to be?”
“Not supposed to tell.” Mark peers into the cash register readout as he pecks the keys. “But I can promise you, it’s going to be really wicked.”
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THAT EVENING, THE doorbell rings at the Larson split-level ranch.
Samantha ambles downstairs from the kitchen to the foyer as though she isn’t thrilled to be going on her first date, as if this is some UPS delivery she needs to sign for.
Kate leans against the entryway to the kitchen, pressing her pruned hands to a dishtowel and savoring the moment. She’d been dying to share the good news about the play with her daughter but decided the kid could only handle one milestone at a time.
At the doorway, Zev Cohen smiles at Samantha and looks up the stairs through his Clark Kent glasses and shaggy, light brown coils of hair. “Hey, Mrs. Larson.”
“Hi, Zev. C’mon in. Make yourself at home.”
Samantha’s shoulders sink. “Mom.”
“Erik!” Kate yells, startling Zev. “Zev’s here!”
Brace’s size twelve footsteps rumble up from the rec room. He nods his chin at Zev. “S’up.”
Zev nods back. “S’up.”
Samantha strains toward the door as if leaning into a windstorm. She’s in black as usual, but wearing a dress this time with a fuzzy raspberry-pink sweater on top. Her hair has some wave to it, meaning she finally unpackaged that hair-crimper Kate got her for her birthday in August.
“Have you got my perfume on again?” Kate asks the air.
Samantha turns and answers Kate with puckered mouth and bulging eyes.
Kate throws the dishtowel over her shoulder. “So, Zev, what’s on this evening’s schedule?”
Erik lumbers up from the rec room and grunts as he attempts to take the stairs as fast as his son. “Mr. Cohen.” He shakes Zev’s hand with a boisterous yank.
“Mr. Larson.” Zev’s face now matches Samantha’s sweater. He looks at Kate again and pushes up his glasses at the bridge of his nose. It’s a tic she used to have, nearly endearing enough to quiet her worry. “We’re heading out to the mall. Dinner at Ruby Tuesdays, then see that comedy with Matthew McConaughey and Lindsay Lohan?”
“Oh, he’s dreamy,” Brace says.
“Shut up, bro,” Zev mutters.
Samantha sneers at her brother. “Yeah, bro.”
“And then they’re going to Maiden Leap,” Brace says with a coo.
Kate nods. “Oh no they’re not.”
“We weren’t, Mrs. Larson, I swear.”
“Well, then, you kids have fun.” Kate waves them through the threshold.
She retreats to the kitchen and leans on the sink, hoping Erik will come upstairs to witness her tears, wondering why she’s the only one stunned by this moment. But he doesn’t come. He goes back downstairs to watch TV with Brace.
Kate stands, tears drying, eyes glazing.
Maiden Leap. Damn that place. Zev wouldn’t take her there, would he? No, he didn’t have the chutzpah. His own mother would murder him. But damn that place. The tallest bluff on the St. Croix (once known as Squaw Leap in the last century) was a landmark Kate could not fully ignore as long as she lived in the river valley. Just north of downtown Wicasa Bluffs, it loomed solid as an anvil and was not going anywhere any time soon.