The Year of Second Chances, page 13
There was no Volvo in row D, either. No Volvos anywhere, that I could see.
A door slammed in the distance.
I turned to watch a gold hatchback reverse out of its spot. As it rolled in my direction, something in me sparked at the sight of the driver’s bare head, his sharp jaw.
In what I could see of his face, there was the same slow recognition as he crept past. The brake lights shone. The Prius reversed.
The window rolled down. “Robin.”
“Hi,” I said, dumbstruck. It was Jake B. “What are you doing here?”
“Driving,” he said drily. With a hint of amusement, he squinted at me, perhaps trying to piece together the situation. I noticed him glance at my bare arms, both of which I was rubbing with vigor.
“I’m lost,” I explained. “I mean, I lost my car.”
“You, uh . . .” Jake’s eyes roamed his windshield for a second. “Want some help?”
“Oh, my god, yes, please.” I got into his front seat, thanking him profusely, and we moved through the level C rows, eyes peeled for Volvos.
He was wearing a nice button-down, untucked from pressed pants. He had gone straight from work to a birthday party in Uptown, he told me, but now it was time to commute back to Pole City so he could get up for his winter-running club tomorrow morning.
“Winter-running club?” I repeated, as if it were a foreign language. “Wow.”
“Yep,” he said simply.
The silence was thick, but not tense. I was still in a state of disbelief. The sight of him wasn’t entirely unreasonable—this garage happened to be within blocks of both of our workplaces, as I remembered—but that it was Jake, a man I’d put in some untouchable corner of my subconscious, made it all the more surreal. The last I’d seen him was almost two months ago, through a layer of tears.
“I was in a club tonight,” I said, breaking the silence. “A dance club.”
“The clerb, huh?” he said with a smile. “And you’re going home? Don’t you know the party doesn’t start ’til midnight?”
He was razzing me. I didn’t hate it. I threw up my hands, thinking of Mo’s circle of social-media vapers and Red Bull drinkers. “Are we old?”
“Yes. We’re the exact same old, if I remember correctly from when we—from before.”
“Right.” I swallowed. He glanced my way a couple of times with his deep brown eyes under sharp brows. “It’s wild to run into you after all this time,” I added.
“It’s pretty wild to see you.” His eyes darted to my bare legs, my purply arms returning to their normal color. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded, wondering what it could be. Maybe he was thinking of that day, too. The unseasonable warmth. Calling to each other in the rustling green of the maze, before everything soured. Before I had soured.
“Where is your coat?”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. Between the night’s failed attempts at dancing and the awkwardness with Mo and the lost Volvo, this was too much.
“In the clerb,” I answered.
He laughed, too. His smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “Do you wanna go get it?”
“No, no. I’ll get it later. It’s fine.”
“You sure?” He looked at me with curiosity, but with a strange familiarity, too. He looked at me like we were sharing a joke. A laugh followed most things he said, I was noticing, some of them small, some of them big. With anyone else, this might have been obnoxious, but with Jake, it seemed to mean that he genuinely thought life was a little bit funny. As the recipient of one of life’s cruelest jokes, I had to agree.
“You know what?” I slapped his dashboard.
“What?”
“Let’s do it.”
A half hour later, I was happily huddled in my coat in Jake’s front seat. After our rescue mission, we had gotten gyros from a food cart, which I failed to devour without making a giant mess. Jake’s car was very clean, I noticed, except for a patch of old mud streaked on the door, probably from some outdoor adventure. There was a pine-tree air freshener. A plastic holder for his phone. An insulated water bottle in his cupholder. This was an orderly place. Like the Volvo used to be, before I couldn’t bring myself to do anything after work but turn on the TV, let alone clean; before I filled the floors with gas-station-burrito wrappers and Diet Coke bottles as I carted Gabe to and from appointments. I used to be a functional person, I wanted to tell Jake. There was a different version of me somewhere, who didn’t forget where she put her car or abandon her coat or cry in parking lots.
We had discussed everything from our families—his parents had been divorced, he had a sister in Bemidji—to speculating about what happened to the Paul Bunyan theme park they’d tried to open on Highway 61 in the ’90s. As we talked, I kept picking onions and lettuce off his floor and putting them in the foil wrapper to preserve the interior’s cleanliness; he kept telling me not to worry about it.
Now, we were back in the parking garage, full of meat and on the hunt for the lost Volvo. Jake had assured me we would hit every garage in the Twin Cities metro area if that was what was necessary. Conscious of my onion breath, I couldn’t stop thanking him.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, after what might have been the fifth thank-you. “Really.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, as if we were still joking, but I wasn’t. “You should be in bed but you felt sorry for me. I know I’m pathetic.” I shrugged. “I embrace it.”
“You’re not.” Jake’s laugh this time had a touch of annoyance. “Do you know how bummed I was after our date didn’t work out?”
“I didn’t know that.” I squeezed the foil wrapper in my hand. “I was bummed, too.”
“You were?” He seemed surprised.
“Well, yeah. Of course.”
“I thought maybe I had done something wrong or . . . I don’t know.” He glanced at me before taking the turn down row L. “I did notice your little Bubbl icon was still active after our date, so I was like, well, I guess I wasn’t her type.”
“Wait, what?” I was unable to keep the shock out of my voice. “I thought I ruined things with you. Because I freaked out.”
“No way,” Jake said. He cleared his throat. “I mean, yeah, you did freak out, but you didn’t ruin anything.”
“Damn,” I said, keeping my gaze fixed out the passenger window. “You could have reached out.”
Jake made a sound of exasperation. “I said see you later, and you said—and I quote—‘No, you won’t.’”
I buried my face in my hands. “Oh, my god,” I said through my palms. “I didn’t know you could hear me!”
Jake began to chuckle. “I heard you, all right.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t even. It’s no big deal.”
“You’re probably dating someone much cooler now.”
He cleared his throat again. In my periphery, I saw his gaze flick in my direction. “Uh, nope.”
“No cool, like, mountain-climber chick with amazing guns?”
“No—” Jake paused to laugh, almost embarrassed. “Not even close.”
“Oh.”
My breath caught in my throat. My fingertips tingled. I held them up to the heater vent, moving them back and forth in the warmth.
Suddenly, the Prius halted. Jake pointed. “Hang on, is that it?”
That was it, yes. My good old dirty Volvo, in B8. “I’ve already said thank-you, so I’ll just say see you later.” I found his eyes. “For real this time.”
“You will?” He met mine, and he didn’t look away.
I was still in his car, I realized after a time. Door half-open. Maybe I didn’t want the evening to end. He had a string of tiny brown freckles across the bridge of his nose, I noticed. I felt almost tipsy, though I’d barely finished my Golddust drink. I ran my fingers across a I Biked to Northfield sticker on his dashboard. What would have happened if I hadn’t run off that day? This was the same tiny voice that had leaned into Mo tonight, the same awakening thing that dreaded the stale, empty room waiting for me at home. The wind rattling the windows. The space heater clicking.
“Robin, um . . .” He swallowed.
“You want to drive back with me?” I found myself asking.
He furrowed his brow. “But I need to take my car—”
“No, I mean—I have an idea.”
As we both safely reached the interstate, I pressed dial on the screen on my dashboard. We could keep each other company over the phone as we drove home, I’d proposed. Keep each other awake.
Maybe we could talk more about getting older, about what it was like to grow up in our little corner of Minnesota. After being closed for years, they were reopening the Brokenridge Holiday Market, I would tell him. The streets of downtown would be lit up again just like when we were kids, with sleigh rides and light displays and stalls selling handwoven sweaters. Everyone in the Lee County area would be getting the same clay ornaments in their stockings, sold by that one stall run by the long-haired family who might be in a cult. And there’d be hot, homemade mulled wine, making everyone’s hands and breath smell like cinnamon and cloves. He would know exactly what I meant. The thought was comforting.
When the phone finally connected to my speakers, Jake picked up on the first ring. “What took you so long?” he asked.
12
My most irrational fear . . .
That not enough people buy Honey Buns from vending machines, and that they will stop making Honey Buns. Please buy Honey Buns. For me.
The sun was setting earlier now. Inside Levi’s living room, he switched on a single brass lamp—he hated overhead lighting, I remembered—revealing the same old leather La-Z-Boy from when he and Gabe used to share this place, the same old antique coffee table, and in the corner, the ’70s-installed radiator that appeared to still be working overtime. Levi had wanted to start making plans for next year’s Gabe-themed cancer benefit—he might have to go on tour with the band this summer, he’d told me, and though we were approaching Christmas, next September would be here before we knew it. Tonight, I’d stopped by after work.
Levi was shoving aside a pile of throw pillows on the futon. Harpo ran to greet me, and I patted his head. I hadn’t seen the hound since he was a puppy. I used to find white fur in clumps on Gabe’s jeans.
I kicked off my boots and plopped down next to the box of memorabilia I’d brought. I bounced a little, feeling the cushioned material underneath with my fingertips. “You replaced the futon?” I called to Levi.
“Yeah, it was getting saggy,” he called back from somewhere down the hall.
“Huh,” I said to Harpo, scratching his ears.
Levi came back in gray sweatpants and a weather-inappropriate sleeveless T-shirt that revealed his tattooed arms, his hair twisted into a high bun. There was a laptop and photo album under one arm and in the other, a platter of hummus and carrots. Carrots? The throw pillows were new, too, I noted. So were the plants on the coffee table, replacing the usual game controllers and Altoids tins of weed. A candlelike scent overlaid the incense and coffee and wet dog I remembered from years ago. Levi, domesticated.
He sat on the floor, and we dipped carrots in the nothing-tasting gloop as I summarized my latest Bubbl adventures, my glamorous night as Mo’s horny, elderly groupie, my on-the-fly creation of Thing 1 and Thing 2. “And you’ll never believe this,” I added, my insides tingling with pride and nerves. “Ted called me again and asked me if I wanted to try doing makeup for his theater’s upcoming production of Hamlet.”
“Wait, for real?” Levi asked through a full mouth of veg and dip. “Some guy you went on one date with is trying to volunteer you for community theater?”
I fiddled with a stray thread on Levi’s photo album, feeling my cheeks flush. “He’s not pawning it off. I took it on willingly.” I looked up at him, feeling self-conscious. “You’re the one who told me to say yes to things.”
Levi’s demeanor changed, now gentler, now somewhat impressed that it was a real thing. “No, no—you’re right,” he said. “That’s amazing, Robin.”
“I mean, I still have to sort of audition. But yeah, apparently the real makeup artist broke her leg, so they needed someone.” On a real production. Because of Thing 1 and Thing 2. Please, Ted had begged. We’re a small operation. We can’t find anyone who isn’t already booked, and you’re clearly talented.
Levi was shuffling through the photo album. “And it’s not like you don’t have experience.” He held up a picture.
I took the photo, feeling my mouth break into a grin at the image of the three of us, though we were barely recognizable as ourselves. A few years back, Gabe had realized how much I missed our old Halloween traditions, so we’d gone all out and entered a costume contest in downtown Minneapolis. I was Annie Wilkes from Misery, and Levi was Swamp Thing from Swamp Thing 2 with green paint and putty all over his body, fake garlands from Michaels hanging off him, soaked with supposed bog water, all mustard dye and glitter.
But Gabe was the coup de grâce, my masterpiece: Pinhead from Hellraiser. A bloody grid I’d faux-carved with red and black pencil lined his face. Real nails stuck out of a skullcap which covered his thick, dark hair. It had taken me an hour to get it right, during which Levi entertained Gabe and me with his latest dating misadventures. We’d had Theo drop us off at the nearest light-rail station and taken the train in, I remembered, passengers gawking, asking me to take photos of the boys decked in my painstaking work. I didn’t mind. At the venue, we were competing with blue Avatar characters and perfectly reconstructed ensembles from Rocky Horror. I never thought we’d win. But then, when all the other numbers had been called to the stage, they’d called Gabe’s last. The applause hurt my ears. I’d always thought of that night as the purest luck—the light of the venue just so happened to fall on Gabe’s pale visage perfectly, casting the nails I’d set in eerie shadow. I returned the photo to its proper place.
Levi was shaking his head, barking laughter that sprayed carrot all over the coffee table.
“I can’t believe you’re going to be a fancy theater person now because of a dating app. That’s how you do Bubbl, y’all. Take note. I love it.” He put on his WWE voice as he patted the mess with a paper towel. “Can you smell . . . what the Robin . . . is cooking?”
As Levi finished tidying, he answered my questions about Christy. Where she was from (Eau Claire), where she lived (Seward), whether they were serious (not yet; she traveled a lot). Regarding my own dating life—regarding Jake—I kept quiet. There wasn’t anything to say, anyway. Not yet. We’d called each other again, twice on the sleepy-morning commute, waxing about dreams we’d had the previous night or deer we’d spotted on the side of the road. Our conversations were rambling and relaxing, like when I used to lie on the carpet listening to my dad’s AM talk-radio shows. It felt too new to talk about, too undefined.
Meanwhile, Levi was dipping a three-carrot combo into the center of the bowl, taking a third of the hummus with him. “Now,” he said. “Let’s give the Gabemeister a proper show.”
The funeral had been too formal and stuffy, Levi and I agreed, with the fire trucks and sheriff’s cars leading the procession down the tree-lined road to the cemetery; the high school ROTC with their color-guard presentation; the bagpipes; the speeches from the senator Gabe had assisted in his twenties; the two former mayors of Brokenridge; the current mayor of Saint Paul or Minneapolis, I couldn’t remember which—all of it recorded by the local news.
This new gathering—this fundraiser—would be more personal. This was for folks from the team and their families. For Levi’s brothers. For friends. For me. We’d have a memorial kickball game, and Levi would finally share the song he’d written for Gabe, performed by the Hidden Beaches.
Tonight, I had two jobs: one, help Levi pick out photos to feature, and two, email a Save the Date to a long list of people we’d thought might want to attend and donate to the cause, whatever cancer-related cause we’d end up choosing.
Hi all, it’s been a long year, I had written to start the email and left it in my drafts. That was it. I hadn’t been able to go beyond that.
“Come on, shake,” I said to Harpo, holding out my hand. Harpo looked at me blankly.
Levi held up two photos from my box: one of Gabe as a knob-kneed eight- or nine-year-old, posing with a baseball bat and a helmet on his too-big head, and the other as a laughing, dark-eyed baby at a Sears portrait studio. If Levi looked closer, he’d see my fingerprints.
“What do you think?” Levi asked. “This one to start? Or the baby one? Or both?”
“Both, sure. Whatever.” I dangled a carrot in front of Harpo’s nose. “Shake, Harpo!”
Levi reached across me to scratch Harpo’s ears. “If he hasn’t done it before, he’s not going to do it now. Especially not for a carrot. Where are you going?”
“Maybe he’ll be motivated by bacon or something.” I had stood and wandered to the kitchen, where Levi had tried and failed to scrub a pan of what looked like crusted taco mix. There was the Levi I recognized, the Levi of our twenties who was always too busy running in and out of the apartment for shows or shifts or one-night stands. Now, our roles felt reversed. He was being the responsible one, putting all this together. And I was avoiding.
Harpo had come along with me, tail wagging. Through the little barlike window between the kitchen and living room, Levi noticed me standing at the stove, looking at the dirty pan. “I meant to get to that,” he called.
“Sure.” I opened the fridge, scanning the shelves crowded with condiments and take-out boxes. I held an expired carton of sour cream up to the opening. “You should throw this out.”
