“Uh, sure.” A familiar wall of defensiveness formed, something that tended to happen when one of the most painful events of my life was tossed out by a stranger. My husband’s name, so casually falling out of her mouth. After a year, I was still getting used to it.

  Perhaps Christy could sense a chill. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry. I’m awkward.”

  “Do you guys want to join us?” Jake asked. He looked at me. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  “Nah,” I said and crunched on a bite of raw vegetables. “We should let them have their date.”

  “No, no, I think it would be fun.” Levi looked down at Christy’s upturned face. “Right, baby?”

  I stared at my plate as I chewed, trying not to laugh. Baby? I’d never heard Levi use a term of endearment before, except when he called Harpo variations of little baby dog.

  “If you guys don’t mind,” Christy said. From inside Levi’s arm, she looked around at everyone, her angelic face contorted in a wince. “But I might need to keep my coat on. I’m still cold.”

  “Nope,” Jake joked. “No coats allowed at the table.”

  The three of us laughed, though Christy looked taken aback for a second, as if this were actually the case. Finally, the joke seemed to register, and she laughed, too, a minute too late.

  I got the server’s attention to ask permission to add a couple more chairs. And perhaps they could bring us something with a little more substance than a vegetable tower. It might be a long night.

  Once we had all warmed up to each other—though not literally, in Christy’s case, as she was still in her coat—the impromptu double date was not as painful as I thought it would be. Jake and Levi were both so amiable, they seemed to become fast friends. It helped that Jake had heard of the Hidden Beaches.

  “Yeah, dude, I hear you guys on The Current all the time,” Jake was telling Levi over our artichoke flatbread. “Great shit, man.”

  “Aren’t they so good?” Christy added emphatically, leaning across her untouched plate. “I’ve been trying to get them a write-up at Pitchfork or Noisey. I know some people.”

  “No, no,” Levi said, wagging his finger. “No nepotism.”

  “No nepotism necessary!” Christy said. “You’re going to blow up, anyway. It’s like The Ramones meets the Jonas Brothers. Look at this guy.” She waved a thin hand in Levi’s direction. “He’s a star. So sexy. I can’t get enough.”

  Levi looked nice, this was true. He had put his long hair into a half-up, half-down situation, emphasizing a square shape to his face that was often hidden by greasy waves.

  “He looks kind of like Thor in a dress shirt,” Jake said, looking at me. “Doesn’t he?”

  “But Thor when he’s depressed in that cabin in Norway,” I added.

  “Ha!” Levi almost spit out a swallow of water.

  “No, babe . . .” Christy, with that pained expression again, reached across the table to comfort him.

  Jake raised his eyebrows at me.

  “What? He’s laughing.” Again, I felt too loud and out of place. “Any comparison to a Hemsworth is a compliment.”

  “It’s fine,” Levi said as his laughter died down. “Robin and I have known each other forever.”

  “Maybe I need to work on my date etiquette,” I said.

  “You need to work on your comedy act,” Jake replied, playful. As Levi and Christy began to peruse the wine menu, he leaned close to me, putting one of the purple squiggly things in his mouth. “It’s a radish, by the way. It’s just cut weird.”

  “Good to know.” Together, we snickered.

  Christy began to tell us about her latest piece for Bon Appétit, an article that followed the life of an avocado from where it grew in Mexico to its time in the produce section of a grocery store. “Now it’s with the fact-checkers. Fingers crossed it’s out soon so I can get paid.” She made an eyes-wide, tongue-out expression at Levi. “Freelance life, am I right?”

  “So frickin’ cool,” Levi said, shaking his head, looking at her. “Such important work.”

  “It’s kind of derivative of that New Yorker article about the price of beef, but you know.” She shrugged in her coat. “I think it’s important we keep reminding ourselves where our food comes from.”

  “Move out to where we live—” I nodded at Jake “—and you’ll get a reminder every day.”

  “Yep,” Jake agreed. “A manure-smelling reminder. Even worse when you ride your bike.”

  “You’re one of those long-distance bikers, aren’t you?” Levi narrowed his eyes with assessment at Jake. “Respect. I could never do that.”

  “Biking, hiking, running, camping. Nature clears the head, man.” Jake gestured toward me. “Hopefully when the weather turns, I can get Robin out there.”

  Levi cringed, glancing at me. “Good luck. Robin’s an indoor kid.”

  “Hey,” I said, kicking him under the table. “I’ve camped.” Just a few times, and mostly for private hook-up purposes with Gabe. But I had camped. I also resented Levi’s label. If anything, he was the indoor kid. The city boy. The gamer. The man raised by professors who knew what crudités meant.

  “I want to live out in the country,” Christy was saying dreamily, pulling a piece of artichoke off her flatbread. “That would be my dream to one day have a little farmhouse . . .” She gave Levi a sappy look. “With goats and chickens and foxes and stuff? Wouldn’t that be cute?”

  “Yikes,” I said. “You probably don’t want foxes around if you have chickens. My husband and I used to have chickens, and it was like waking up to a Tarantino murder scene every day.”

  “Oh, man, I remember,” Levi said, throwing his head back with a loud guffaw. “Gabe was obsessed with catching that fox. He used to call me, like, I’m gonna get the bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I smiled, remembering. “We had to give the chickens to someone in a nearby town for their own safety. Get them out of the fox’s territory. We even had to change their names,” I joked. “The Chicken Protection Program.”

  Levi rolled his eyes. Christy offered a weak chuckle. Jake thought it was hilarious, which I decided was all that mattered, anyway. I looked over at him, taking in the pleasant roundness of his head under the hint of hair, his brown eyes catching the light from the candle. Here was a man who was kind, who was confident and relaxed enough to invite strangers to a fancy dinner, yet he could slip out into the wilderness at any moment and thrive. And he had laughed at my dumb jokes. I had held my own with his friends, and he was holding his own with mine. Or one of mine, at least. The jury was still out on Christy. She was a strange combination of one of the smartest people I’d ever met and somehow also one of the dopiest.

  But as she rambled on about the scientific effects of meditating on the moon, Levi looking on, I could see the appeal. I felt an odd sense of pride in Levi. The Serial-Disappointer-and-Ghoster had snagged an impressive, mostly functional person. Not only that, he had held on to her. He had grown. I gave him an appreciative look across the table, nodding toward Christy, offering a thumbs-up.

  In response, he put two rock ’n’ roll fingers on his forehead, head-banging. Hail Satan, he mouthed. This was a common Levi gesture of general approval.

  The bills came, and though I balked at the price of what was essentially a pile of vegetables and canned artichokes on cheesy bread, I insisted on paying my share.

  “At least take the leftovers,” Jake said as we walked out, offering me the take-out box.

  “Nah, I prefer gas-station pizza,” I said. When Christy laughed at that, I assured her that I was one hundred percent serious this time.

  “She eats like a raccoon,” Levi confirmed. “Hey, Robin—can I grab you for a second? To talk about memorial stuff?”

  “I’ll go get the Prius and pull around,” Jake said.

  “You don’t have to—” I started.

  “I don’t mind at all.” Jake kissed me on the cheek. I smiled after him.

  Levi handed Christy his keys. When Levi and I were left alone, me stomping with cold, I noticed he was looking at me as if he were waiting for me to say something. “Well?”

  I frowned at him. “What? I thought we were talking about the memorial.”

  “Nah, Robbie. Why do you think I came out to Saint Paul? I need the skinny on Jake.”

  So their arrival at the pop-up wasn’t a coincidence. I gave him a little shove, which didn’t move him a single inch. “You sneaky bastard.”

  Levi lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Christy wanted to go, anyway, so why not tonight? If we just happened to run into you, great. If not—”

  “But you did. And what is there to report? He’s great. You guys seemed to get along great.”

  “Sure, sure, but I get along with everybody. What’s the deal with the two of you? Where’s your head? Where’s your heart?”

  “My heart?” I scoffed. “Uh, same place it always was, I guess. And yeah, I super like him. We haven’t put a label on it, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Good.” Levi’s voice was taking on an annoying, cautionary tone. “Keep playing the field. Make sure you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.”

  “You’re the one who told me to go all in!”

  “Yeah, go all in and get sloppy with a bunch of weirdos! Not go all in and talk about the frickin’ future.” He took on a deep, hollow tone, imitating his version of Jake’s baritone. “Robin and I are going camping when the weather gets better. He’s talking about months from now, and you guys have known each other for, like, three days. Like, slow down, turbo.”

  I shook my head, not sure if I was more amused or frustrated. “This coming from the man who basically proposes to girls the night you meet them. You’re such a hypocrite.”

  “I know.” He looked up at the sky, holding out his arms. “I know! But I feel protective of your wee little heart. I don’t want him to be like me. Or, like, the twenty-five-year-old version of me.”

  “Nah, he’s going to stick around.” I kicked at a parking meter, avoiding his eyes. “We’ve been on the phone for, like, weeks. Since before Christmas.” I looked up at Levi, unable to keep a smile off my face. “We talk to each other as we drive to work.”

  “Okay, that is so cute it’s kind of annoying,” Levi said, smiling back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know if it was going to be anything.”

  “But it is something, huh?” There was a sadness in Levi as he said it, probably the same sadness I’d been wrestling with as memories of my first love reared up at every turn, every new hand-hold, every little flame in my chest.

  “I think so,” I said, and I realized how much I wanted it to be true. Levi knew as much as anyone I couldn’t live in those memories forever, that I needed a reason to grow like he was growing, to catch up with the passage of time. Behind him, I spotted the Prius’s headlights, illuminating the first flurries of another new snow. “We’ll see,” I said. “We’ll see.”

  17

  Worst fad I ever took part in . . .

  Really into Red Bull when it first got popular in college. Like let’s-have-a-dorm-room-intervention into Red Bull.

  St. Patrick’s Day in Brokenridge is not so much a holiday as it is an airing-out, a . . . thawing of whatever has been stored up and frozen over the course of the winter. Emotions run high. Feuds escalate or come to a truce. Marriages begin and end. And all the while, the Brokenridge High School marching band plays on, usually a bit off beat and out of tune, lending the whole occasion the air of a circus gone wrong. Usually I’d be helping out at the restaurant all day, feeding giant green-clad families, cleaning ketchup and macaroni from the floors until around three, when the parade gets over and the crying drinkers take the place of the crying toddlers.

  This morning, I’d left Hamlet rehearsal in time to get home and actually watch the parade for the first time since I was a kid. All the Irish families were out in full force, including our landlords the Sheas, waving their green and orange flags from their lawn chairs in front of the courthouse, where they were fighting a lawsuit with a rival, I’d heard. And there were the Kellehers, many of them dying out but their strongest members still thriving, including a young niece, who was currently playing flute in the marching band, and her proud aunt, our very own Nance. And, of course, the Byrnes, whose parade float was a giant papier-mâché leprechaun awash in soap suds, an ad for their car wash, which was rumored to be a money-laundering operation for organized crime out of Saint Paul.

  Silly that I still knew all these rumors and stories, I thought as I watched the kids from the Pole City Hmong Cultural Center walk past and wave in their beaded traditional clothes. Why could I name random facts about the Byrnes when I’d forgotten half the things I’d needed to buy for Mom’s party this afternoon? It felt like a lifetime had passed since I’d even seen these people, but somehow, I would always know their business. It wasn’t as if I relished gossip in the way Mom did, but I always listened, always took note. As if I needed to know the outcome of the garden-shed border dispute between the Sheas and the Rundles, as if keeping tabs on that one Kelleher boy’s arrest were essential to my survival. Jamila Hassan: got into prestigious art school, dropped out because of anxiety issues. Hans Hinderman: tried to start a Quaker church, but nobody came. But mine was not the only ledger of stories. They kept one on me, too.

  The sound of the drums got deeper. Bagpipes whined and caterwauled, played by the same group of old men who’d played in Gabe’s procession. What were they saying about me now, I wondered. Who was I around their kitchen tables if I wasn’t Mrs. Mayor? All I knew was that I couldn’t be the person I was at home, alone. A half of a person. A nothing person, who had ruined the garden, who had not had her shit together enough to throw a one-year anniversary, who spoke more to random people from a dating app than people who’d known her for years. So far, I’d tried to simply not exist anymore. The less of a life I had in Brokenridge, the less there was to scrutinize. Problem solved. That’s what I was trying to tell Levi the other night. That’s why, when I’d finally sent the email for Gabe’s kickball memorial and the replies started coming in, I still had a lump in the pit of my stomach.

  As the pipes faded and the VFW’s clover-decked, flag-toting pickup brought up the rear of the line, I began to walk back to the Green River to start setting up. We’d gotten city permission to block off the street in front of the restaurant. The parade was already disrupting traffic, they figured, what’s one more block. I’d rented space heaters for what was supposed to be a high of forty-five. Summer weather for most Minnesotans, but better safe than sorry.

  Near the edge of town, an elderly woman had made her way across her yard, pausing at her open mailbox. I was about to remind her that the mail didn’t come on holidays, but I knew this woman. She was a donor to Gabe’s campaign. Construction money.

  “Mrs. Mayor? Is that you?” the elderly woman called. “It’s good to see you, dear.” She gave me a once-over and added, “I barely recognized you.”

  I found I had nothing to say to that. Her words were a sharp reminder of how different I must have looked. In my haste to get everything together for the party—not to mention having to get up at the crack of dawn today to make up the actor who would play Ophelia—I had resorted to putting my unwashed tangles in a bun and throwing on a pilled green sweater. I supposed people were used to seeing me in straightened hair and the tailored skirt I always used to wear for Gabe’s events, a skirt that no longer fit. Thanks, lady. Exactly what I wanted to hear.

  “Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” I told her as I passed, feeling her eyes on my back.

  I could practically hear her go inside and tell her husband, You’ll never guess who I just saw. The mayor’s wife. Back out and about. I wonder why.

  Because I had to make sure Theo and Mom didn’t burn down the restaurant this afternoon, that’s why. And maybe I had to account for the new man in my life, maybe I wanted to. Maybe I wanted less Twin Cities dates at fancy pop-ups and less making out in alleys. Maybe that would mean more sidewalk stares or a scowl from the ladies’ book club who met at the diner every Sunday morning. It meant a Valentine’s Day date last month with Jake at the best restaurant in Pole City, served by a girl Theo went to high school with. That meant that Jake was coming today, to meet Mom and Theo for the first time, and Mrs. Construction Money and the Tammy Finks of the world were going to have to deal with it.

  I wasn’t hiding anymore. Because despite my best efforts, life went on.

  Later that afternoon, the final notes of “Happy Birthday” hung in the air. To thunderous applause from a parking lot full of shades of green and raised green plastic Solo cups, Mom blew out two flaming six and five candles, and Rick and his band fell into a passable version of “Sugar Magnolia.” I was looking for Jake.

  My plan was to keep the introduction short and sweet. Best to experience Mom and Theo in small doses, anyway, I’d reasoned on the drive home from rehearsal. Too long, and Mom could get in one of her weepy moods, or Theo could lash out and say something rude. Either one could just as easily give the classic Minnesotan smile-and-cold-shoulder. I’d seen Mom do it with customers she didn’t like.

  People filtered around me with pizza and cake on plates, pausing at the table of old photos of Mom, occasionally fishing in their pockets for a five or a twenty. I’d had the idea to mark a giant punch bowl with Birthday Blessings, and though Mom had hated it—we didn’t need charity, she spat—now, to my relief, it was stuffed with bills to the brim. At least she would be able to pay the mortgage.

  Finally, I spotted Jake’s forest-green ball cap at the far side of the parking lot. I began to weave through the partyers, noting a pair of cloverleafs bouncing around his shoulder, jutting out of a familiar brown-feathered mop.

  There he was beside Mom, and Mom beside Nance, Mom gesticulating with her green cup in one hand and a menthol in the other. It appeared they’d been talking for a while. So much for short and sweet. My stomach turned.

 

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