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Kate
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ON THE HIND side of winter, when the eastern sky blushes early in the morning and a few brave sparrows chirp in damp air, hope blooms in Kate’s thoughts. The kids are chasing their dreams on the ice rink and the stage. Erik’s business, Taken4Granite, is on the cusp. His formulation of a substrate that out-performs stone countertops and costs less than other man-made materials has won him a meeting with 3M Corporation.
By late morning, as she heads out the door, Kate inhales the promise of spring. And underneath that, the vaguely ominous scent of that which is defrosting in the snow after months of letting Chuck Norris outside unassisted. In her groin, sure as seasons, comes the tear and pinch of ovulation. She thinks little of it as her minivan crosses the bridge to Wicasa Bluffs. The town looks hung over and in need of a hot shower before the real crowds arrive. Christmas, New Years, and Valentine’s Day have passed in a bloated procession of buying, selling, eating, drinking. Faded boughs of fir sag from the light posts. Snow lines the boulevards; mixed with sand from the plows, the resulting slush is the same color and consistency of spice cake batter. No driver has committed to a carwash yet and the newly exposed patches of grass need reminding of their addiction to chlorophyll.
Kate parks the minivan at the near-empty Portage Avenue parking lot, which will fill with out-of-town cars come summer. She slings a plastic-wrapped quilt over her shoulders and heads for the Gonzo Fox. It won’t be long before she can strap a quilt or two onto the carrier of her old green Schwinn and accomplish exercise and commerce at the same time.
She’s only walked a block before halting.
Lucy Van Buren stands in the middle of the sidewalk at Portage and Main wearing her long black coat and feathery dark hair with eyes closed to the porcelain skies of late February. Behind the veil of clouds, the sun hangs like an enormous pearl. And Lucy’s like the cat that’s picked out a sunny patch of carpeting by the door and purrs there, daring to be tripped over. It’s too late for Kate to cross the street. If new Lucy is anything like old Lucy, she already knows she’s being watched.
Kate slows her approach to take Lucy in, in all her moody glory. Lucy’s worn around the edges, but still the most enigmatic person, besides Claudia Larson, that ever walked these streets. A half dozen openers offer themselves up, none quite fitting for small talk. So, how’s that Sojourn thing working out? Found a husband yet? How thrilling is conducting a small-town choir after Lollapalooza? You do realize there’s no mosh pit, right?
When Kate steps up alongside her, Lucy tilts her head. “Smell that?”
Kate’ looks back and forth as she attempts to discern whether Lucy’s talking about car exhaust or Northern Roast’s burnt java.
“Don’t get that smell in Paris.” Lucy nods in agreement with herself. “Actually, I think I smelled it in Norway once. In the forest. It’s like, I dunno, sap maybe. Sweet. It’s really nice. Reminds me of home.”
“You are home.” The light changes, Kate starts for the crosswalk.
“Oh. Right. Well, there you go.” Lucy wraps arms around herself and rocks back on her boots. “Hey, so congrats on Samantha.”
“What?” Kate halts.
“The part in Wicked. The play?”
“She got it?”
“Yeah, Elphaba. The lead.” Lucy cringes. “Woops, thought you knew. I told her to text me as soon as she found out.”
“She only texts me shopping lists.” The light goes red again.
“Kid’s got some lungs.” Lucy licks her lips. “So, about that conversation we had at the church a while back.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry, I um, if I hurt your feelings, Katie.”
“You didn’t.”
“Or disappointed you.”
“It’s none of my business, anymore.”
“True.”
The traffic light changes.
“Bye.” Kate’s crosses the street, and over her shoulder yells, “Also, I go by Kate now.”
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AT THE GONZO Fox, Kate fails to mention the brief encounter and can’t concentrate on Ray’s adoption discussion. Mark tells her about some complaint the last quilt recipient had and she nods complacently, promising to do better next time.
She’d certainly seen Lucy in town several times now. They’d smiled, waved, offered polite hellos. Mark and Ray were making generous furniture trades for Lucy’s cache of art without trouble. Samantha was finally learning how to sing from her diaphragm, for gosh sakes. If they could befriend her, so could Kate. After all, in a small town, you don’t have the luxury of protracted warfare. So there is no reason to skulk around all self-righteous and bitter. The woman shaped who she was. Who she is. What if Lucy decided to leave again? Kate would kick herself daily for not getting to know Lucy in whatever crazy form she wished to take.
Maybe Sojourn wasn’t all bad. It isn’t like Lucy goes around evangelizing. According to the owner of Risdahl’s supermarket, she’s a bit prickly, but certainly speaks without the usual condescension of the heaven-bound. She even showed up at Mark’s production of Guys & Dolls where she endured the looks and the murmurs. But forty is still young enough to want and need, far too young to be alone without intimacy. Can there even be a cutoff for such a thing? Anyway, she’s far too young to never give again, to never receive. And according to Mark, no men have ascended Bluff Road to volunteer for the Sojourn Reclaimers experiment. But they sure hear plenty of music descending it. Music rattles the panes of the Gainsborough three-story Queen Anne late into the night. Not hymns or opera as tumbles down the hills in the daytime, but rock ‘n roll.
Maybe it’s that awful Christian rock stuff.
Kate snorts. Nah.
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IN THE LATE afternoon, Kate sits in the living room basking in the heat of a particularly sweet-smelling fire from the mulberry tree she ordered a hit on. A pile of mismatched quilt pieces lays at her right with nothing to do. Chuck sputters to her left, legs twitching as he dreams.
It’s too hot in here. So hot she can’t tell if she’s bored, sad, or angry.
She doesn’t hear the door open from the garage, yet she knows it has by the whooshing change in air pressure. The fire rises and falls back. Chuck’s ear flutters.
“You baking a cake?” Erik asks as he takes the stairs.
“No,” she says quietly, “a tree.”
“Huh?” His keys hit the mottled tan countertop instead of sliding onto the key pegs she had him install at the top of the stairs the week before.
“How did it go with 3M?”
“All right. Not as well as we’d hoped . . .” And he goes on. Whatever it is that transpired in that windowless conference room, it always works out. Everything just happens, good, then bad, then average, then back again and there’s nothing you can do about it but react or choose not to react, which is only another form of reacting, now isn’t it?
Erik walks into the living room and looks up from the mail he’s sorting through. “Where’s dinner?”
“Oh, that.”
“Kate, I’m starving.”
“Pizza?”
He sighs.
“I’m sorry.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel sort of bad that I had you cut down that tree.”
“The mulberry.” Erik nods solemnly at Chuck. It was those purple dog turds that finally did it in.
“Yeah. You know?” Kate shakes her head slowly. “Once it burns—it’s gone.”
Erik squints at her. “Are you on your period already?”
Her words flood out at such a shrill pitch, Kate knows her husband has no idea what she is babbling about. “Life is so transitory, Erik. It just—it just wants to run amok. We’re always trying to control it. When it gets too messy,” she tosses a hand, “we just clear it all out.”
“Have you been drinking?” Erik kneels beside the couch.
She stares at him for a moment.
“I saw Lucy.”
His gaze arcs across the ceiling. “Oh, great. All that woman does is upset you.”
Chuck’s snout invades their embrace; he volunteers his head so that they can scratch it together.
Kate sniffles. “We were talking about Sam’s musical. She got the part.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“I know. I know.” Kate tries to smile. “But all I could think about was the promise of youth. How it can all go so wrong.”
Erik stands and shuffles off to their bedroom to change into sweats. “Sam’s gonna be all right. She’s got a better noggin on her shoulders than that woman.”
“Mmm.” Kate stares into the fire. It warms her face, dries Chuck’s kisses and the tears that don’t want drying.
“Hey, why don’t you invite Lucy over for dinner some night? I’d love to grill her on what you were like back then.”
Kate glowers at Chuck. His ears flatten.