Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel (14 page)

“Well,” he said, “I got to keep mingling.” He shook Henry’s hand and moved into the room of strangers.

The evening passed pleasantly. None of the anxieties we’d carried into the party seemed to matter much. A few new faces introduced themselves to us, people from Lee’s record label. They asked us questions about Little Wing, about the mill, about what Lee was like as a boy. My heart nearly stopped when one woman asked me, “So, did you ever date him?” I know I paused overly long, tilting my head, before simply saying, “Oh, no. We’re just friends. Always just really good friends.”

She waved a hand in the air, frivolously, innocently. “I just thought, you know, it seems like such a small town. Maybe everybody’s sleeping with everyone.”

Henry must have been half-listening to our conversation because he came up behind me just then, an arm around my waist, and said, “Let’s hope not.” He kissed me, and I smelled alcohol on his lips.

Around midnight we crawled back into our car and rode back through the still-alive streets. In the hotel room, champagne drunk, I fell asleep quickly in the big soft bed, and I don’t think a million taxis blaring their horns could have stopped me from dreaming.

*   *   *

We slept until almost noon, the sound of the maid’s knuckles on our door.
“Room service!”

Henry impressed me by howling in a low, deep voice, “GO AWAY!” It was enough apparently to back the maid away from our room, the retreat of her cart audible as it wobbled down the hallway away from us. Satisfied, he lay on his stomach, and I draped an arm over his back.

“We haven’t slept this long in years,” I said.

“My body feels like wet cement,” he said.

“Hungover?” I asked.

“That too,” he said, “but mostly, I’m just so relaxed. Everything feels heavy. Loose.”

“Maybe we should get away more,” I suggested. “We could just do some little vacations. Weekend trips. Leave the kids with Mom and Dad. Go to California. Vegas.”

He sighed, like a little boy. “I love our home,” he said, almost wounded. “Everything we need’s right there. And what about the herd? What about the milking? We can’t afford to
pay
someone. Not right now anyway.”

“It’s just—you just said how relaxed you were. I worry about you. You know? I want us to travel, to do things together. To see the world. Don’t you ever get bored of just the same old stuff? Don’t you ever want to get out of Little Wing? Even just a weekend?”

He turned his head away from me, cleared his throat. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”

“Maybe,” I said.

I thought of our children. Of weekend mornings.

“But it’s okay,” I said, “to take a break every now and again, don’t you think? Things look better sometimes after you go away for a little while.”

I lay on my back, thought briefly about the notion of making another baby, rested my hand on my belly button.

Henry sat up slowly, put his feet on the floor, rested his head in his hands. “Lord,” he said. “Champagne bubbles. It’s like they’re all popping in my skull right now.” I watched him rise to his feet, scratch his stomach, pad toward the bathroom. I climbed out of bed too, opened the blinds, stood in the midday sunlight, naked, for about a minute’s time, scanning every window I could see for an observer, but no one was watching. I pulled the blinds shut and walked into the bathroom. Henry was sitting slumped on the toilet, head propped against his fists.

“Let’s find some coffee,” I said.

*   *   *

In high school, our art teacher was named Roger Killebrew. How he came to live in Little Wing, none of us could say, but he’d been there forever, had even in fact taught my mother. He was a dapper man, with dark brown hair that was clearly dyed. He wore well-tailored tweed suits, fine leather shoes, and cologne that could not have been purchased from the local pharmacy or variety store.

I think of Mr. Killebrew quite often actually, but most often when I find myself in a city. So I wasn’t entirely surprised that, as Henry and I walked the streets of New York in search of a café, I thought of our eleventh grade painting class. We were studying modern American abstract painting—Killebrew had prepared a slideshow, and some of the boys in our class were snickering at the Rothkos and Pollocks.

“Boys!” Killebrew barked. “Anything particularly wise to add to the discussion?”

I don’t remember what exactly was said, but Henry, a seventeen-year-old version of Henry, said something along the lines of, “Only in a big city would anyone be dumb enough to spend a lot of money on junk like that.” Other boys in the class were whispering, as they always did, about Killebrew’s wardrobe, his gesticulations, the way his wrists worked, his high-toned voice, his cologne, his sleepy eye, his loud small-town bachelor status.

But what I do remember is Ronny suddenly announcing, “Painting is gay.” The classroom exploded in laughter, boys high-fiving Ronny as if he’d just scored a winning touchdown and spiked the football defiantly.

Mr. Killebrew extinguished the slide projector, circled the room to turn on the lights, and then returned to the front of the class, where he leaned against the chalkboard, not saying a thing, just staring, his hands resting in the chalk trays behind him. He waited for us. He might have waited one minute or five minutes, I don’t know. But I remember really
loving
Mr. Killebrew right at that moment, because he wasn’t like any other man that I knew. Every year, he hosted an art-club trip to Chicago. He had friends down there, some in hotel management, others who owned restaurants, or cafés. So, for a weekend, we were treated to the best of the city: We slept in a posh hotel, ate in a different restaurant every meal, and for two days we explored the Art Institute, posed for pictures in front of those great green lions. Our world was largely flat, but Roger Killebrew made sure that our horizons ran at least as far south as Chicago.

When the classroom was finally quiet, he said, “First of all, I want you to think of the city as a collection of people. That’s easy, right? You think of Minneapolis or Chicago or Milwaukee, you think of hundreds of thousands of people. Millions of people. That’s what you think of right away. Maybe you think of skyscrapers too, I don’t know. But
I
think of people. The next thing you should think about is ideas. Think of each of those millions of people as a set of ideas. Like,
That woman is a ballerina, she thinks about ballet.
Or,
That man is an architect, he thinks about buildings
. If you begin thinking about it that way, a city is the greatest place in the world. It’s millions of people, brushing up against one another, exchanging ideas, all the time, at every hour of the day.”

“But we don’t live in a city,” Cameron Giroux had said. “We live here.”

“And this is a good place,” Killebrew said. “I love this town. But don’t be so quick to disparage the city. Good people live in the city, too. And they’re not all painters and sculptors. Think about your favorite baseball and football players. Without cities, you think those athletes would have jobs? You think there’d be any stadiums or fans?”

“I don’t get it,” Ronny said. “I thought we were talking about paintings.”

Killebrew had walked toward Ronny’s desk. He liked Ronny, despite his obtuseness. “We were,” Killebrew said.

*   *   *

Inside a café off Sixty-whateverth Street, sipping coffee, lost in the city, eating croissants, I said to Henry, “Let’s go to the art museum, huh? We have time.”

“Really?” he asked. “The whole city and you want to go look at paintings? They’ve got paintings in Minneapolis.” He held his forehead, wincing every time the bell over the door jingled to signal a new or departing customer. Outside, horns blared, sirens wailed, policemen whistled and windmilled their arms. “Christ,” Henry said, “how do you survive a hangover in this city?” He closed his eyes, chewed at his croissant.

I touched his hand. “It’ll be quiet in the art museum,” I whispered. “I promise.”

He opened one eye to look at me, smiled.

*   *   *

The wedding was held in a mansion that looked more like a medieval fortress, though all the flowers and decorations did something to soften and brighten the sharp, dark edges of the grand, red-bricked castle. Security guards manned the doors and we were asked to show identification. Inside, the building felt like a jewelry box, the air close and dark, and likely to shimmer and dazzle.

We moved around dutifully, like figurines on a track, Ronny and Lucy close by our sides, their mouths agape, their eyes wide open. Movie stars brushed past us like warm, slow comets. Faces we recognized from grocery market tabloids,
right there,
looking impossibly skinny, shiny, beautiful. Henry held Kip and Felicia’s gift close to his chest, like a football, as a gauntlet of forcefully helpful arms and hands ushered us toward a ballroom where our designated chairs awaited us at our designated table. We took our seats like nominees at an award show in which it was very unlikely our names would be called.

“Jesus,” Ronny said, “we ain’t in Wisconsin anymore.”

“I’ve never seen nothing like this,” said Lucy. “Even in Vegas.” She looked at me knowingly. “And I
have
seen some shit in Vegas.”

After all the tables had been seated, after the room had buzzed in anticipation for half an hour or more, after we had drunk two glasses of champagne, and after the already advantageous lighting of the room dimmed into what seemed golden starlight, they entered the grand space, Lee and Chloe, and everyone rose, as you might for the arrival of the president or the royalty of some faraway land. I glanced over to gauge Henry’s reaction, and like many of the attendees, he was clapping, his eyes trained on Chloe, I suppose—her off-white dress, so slim and so gauzy, revealing nearly her entire back, her shoulder blades, her long, yoga-strong arms. She and Lee moved toward a stage at the front of the room, two hundred feet or so from where we stood watching.

An officiant greeted them on the stage. He was young and handsome, in a white nondenominational robe, with a tuxedo beneath. His face seemed familiar to me, and for several minutes I ignored the man’s words, focusing all of my brain power on where I had seen this man before, until I realized that he had played Romeo opposite Chloe’s Juliet. Now Lee and Chloe held hands, a microphone between them.

*   *   *

Maybe it’s because I’m a mother, because I’m used to children lying to me, or
trying
to lie to me. Maybe it’s because of spending my whole life around Henry and his friends and listening to their lame excuses for returning to our house late, their pant cuffs caked in mud, brandy on their breaths, the bed of our truck suddenly loud with empty aluminum cans. I don’t know. But I watched Chloe closely. I watched her eyes, her shoulders, her feet. She seemed skittish, too cute. They giggled throughout their vows, which is something I distrust. A little laughter, okay. But constant giggling, no. This is an oath. This is a promise.

I wanted very badly to share with Henry what I was thinking, but I kept it to myself.
I don’t think they’ll make it. I give them a year, two, tops,
I thought. It didn’t seem right to speak it aloud somehow, no matter how right I might’ve been.

When the vows where finished, they kissed, and I must say, it was a convincing kiss, long and passionate, arms draped everywhere. The wedding party loved it, began banging away at their glasses with what appeared to be genuine silverware. But I must confess that the whole time they were embracing, all I could think was:
She does this for a living
.
She is an actress
.

Lucy leaned into me and said, “He looks like a pretty good kisser.”

I blushed, unable to respond.

“Well,” she said, “I’m just sayin’.”

*   *   *

We shared a table with Chloe’s college friends from NYU and, situated in the very middle of that grand room, it felt like we were the hub of a great wheel, our heads turning to gawk at celebrities as they passed by us, their actual hands on the backs of our chairs. It was a good night, truly. Once I allowed myself to sink back into the pomp of the evening, to simply enjoy the excellent wine and champagne, the dinner, and the company, time began to race by, and it was enough simply to sit beside Henry, to watch Ronny and Lucy together, to feel happily lost.

Late in the evening, Lee and Chloe came to our table to shake our hands, and accept our congratulations. Lee beamed out straight love, his eyes glossy with happiness. I watched how he touched her, directed her about the room, his hand in the small of her back. He was sweet with her. I wondered if she knew yet, if she would ever know, how lucky she was to possess him as a husband. If she understood how talented and kind and tough he was as a man. It made me self-conscious, made me dip my face into my purse to rifle around for lipstick, breath mints, anything,
anything,
to take my eyes off them, to center myself back in the present, to be there, beside Henry. Good Henry, decent Henry. Henry, father of my children. Henry, back-breaking farmer and carpenter, autumnal hunter and vernal fisherman. Henry, who, only hours earlier, had patiently walked with me through the endless and labyrinthine Met, badly hungover, pausing in front of the paintings and Egyptian artifacts and aboriginal art to read their placards. Henry, who had surprised me, standing before a Warhol, saying, “I don’t know, maybe we should save some money. Buy a nice painting. Something we could pass on. We don’t really have much to pass on to the kids. Nothing worth keeping.” He seemed to be really appraising the painting, really scrutinizing it.

I decided to test him. “What do you mean?” I whispered. “Like a hunting scene or something? Like ducks or eagles or something?” I hoped not. I sincerely hoped not.

“No,” he said, “I don’t know. Maybe we could head into Minneapolis. Visit a gallery. I think I just want something very green. Something to look at during winter.”

I thought to myself,
Here is a sweet, sweet man
.

Lee and Chloe were still on the other side of the table, attending to Chloe’s people, shaking hands and offering their cheeks for kisses—a practice totally foreign to us Midwesterners. By and by we stood and waited, our hands in our pockets or crossed over our stomachs, until it was our turn to hug the bride and groom, to tell them how beautiful they looked, how happy, how magical a night this was.