All Your Pretty Dreams (14 page)

“
Nice of you to help her
out. With the driving and all.”

“
Oh, it’s been fun. I
wouldn’t do it otherwise. She’s a good person, under all that
hair.
Jonathan
.”

“
What?” he said, startled.
“Oh. Right. I didn’t know she knew my real name.”

“
She might have a little
crush on you, you think?”

“
What?”

“
Poor Fanny.” She bit her
lip. “I shouldn’t say this— but actually I think she might have
switched teams. I saw her once, kissing a picture of her lab
instructor, this woman built like a linebacker with a greasy
ducktail hairdo.”

“
Maybe she was just
praying for a good grade.”

Kiki grabbed his arm and
swung around him, hair flying, on the dark sidewalk. “Oh, forget
Fanny! I want to dance and I am
soooo
thirsty.”

Jonny enjoyed the way her
mind, and mood, flitted around. “I don’t know about dancing, but we
can kill that thirst.”

The Owl was quiet, no
music. Only the usual farmers and truck drivers drinking solo.
Jonny eyed them, wondering if this was his future. With Kiki at his
side he thought not. She was the most friendly, uncomplicated
person he’d met since coming back to Red Vine. They agreed to meet
again the next evening. Tomorrow she and Frances had to do some
things for Carol, go through closets, visit the cemetery, and other
excitements.

Jonny had chores the next
day as well. He woke up to the sound of stripping shingles and by
eight stood outside with a cup of hot coffee, watching Ozzie on the
motel roof. Tarpaper was flying. A large section sailed over the
picket fence.

Ozzie glared down from the
roof. He wore a dirty blue jumpsuit over his clothes, with a pair
of Artie’s old running shoes. “You gonna stand there, or get on
with it?”

Jonny set down his cup and
started gathering up shingles and torn roofing paper littering the
yard. Forty-five minutes later the garbage can was stuffed. Ozzie
sat on the peak of the roof where Jonny spent his first day back.
He held the stripping tool, running his thumb over the sharp
end.

Jonny picked up his cold
coffee. There was no point actually asking Ozzie what was going on
or what he planned to do. He’d tell you when he was ready. Jonny
took a sip then threw the rest of the coffee onto a nearby rose
bush. His father stared off into the distance, the knees of his
jumpsuit white with dirt.

“
You want some coffee?”
Jonny said, backing toward the house. “I made it
myself.”

He carried the two cups,
one with milk and sugar, one black, back to the ladder. Ozzie was
halfway down, stepping carefully due to his wobbly knee. They drank
silently, avoiding each other’s eye.

Coffee: the glue that
keeps Minnesota families together. Goddam it.

Finally Ozzie cleared his
throat. “I hate this piece of crap motel,” he said without much
feeling. “Hated it for thirty years.”

Not news in the Knobel
clan. He’d made this declaration more than once. Usually when some
kind of major repair was unavoidable.

“
Well.” What was there to
say? He owned it. He could complain about it for another thirty
years, or sell it and move on.

“
That’s life, that what
you mean?” Ozzie glared over his cup.

“
Life?” Jonny choked. He
had never had any sort of philosophical discussion with his father.
This didn’t seem like the time to start. The glower on Ozzie’s
forehead deepened like he was gearing up for a fight.

“
I’m stuck with it— that
what you mean? Like being married to your mother?”

Jonny buried his nose in
the cup. It was way too early for this.

Ozzie kept talking. “You
gave me the idea. You leaving that little pop-tart. Saying, this
ain’t working for me, I’m outa here. Good for you, Jonny. You
showed me it wasn’t so bad. That it could be damn good, in fact.
The world doesn’t come to an end. Nobody dies. I got it from
you.”

Jonny sagged against the
ladder.

“
Comes a time for a man to
stand up for himself. To figure out what works in his life, and
what doesn’t. And do something about it. That’s what you did, and
so did I.” Something softened in his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t
love her, son. It’s not that at all.” He sighed, gazing toward the
house and the roses.

“
Then why did you take up
with Loreen?”

Ozzie blinked, sticking
out his chest. For a moment he was his old self, full of manly
bluster and secrets, eyes hard and challenging. The kind who made
pronouncements like,
I’m a man. No
female’s going to tell me what to do.
Even
though they did, constantly.

Then he deflated. “You want
to know why?” he said, his voice pained. “You’ve seen him. Holti.
Dear old dad, the poor schlump. That’ll be me in a few years. He
got it young and they say I will too.”

“
Dad, no. That’s not for
sure.”

“
It’s in my genes. They
told me. And when I’m wearing diapers, strapped to a bed like a
raving loony, do you think I’m going to be the one who only had one
woman, who never broke the rules, who did everything just like his
old man told him? Who kissed the ass of society and got smacked
down anyway?”

Ozzie shook his head. “I
bought this piece of crap motel because he told me to. He didn’t
want me to be a farmer. Said I didn’t have the temperament for it.
Wasn’t a man of the earth like him. A business, he said, something
you can manage. A motel. Like it would be easy. Termites, tourists,
toilets. Did he know about any of that? Hell, no. Well, he can’t
tell me what to do anymore.” He barked a sad laugh. “That’s for
sure.”

Jonny stared at the toes
of his shoes.
Jesus
. Sixty-one years old and still battling his old man. Still
measuring himself by his father’s standards. Jonny looked at the
dregs of his coffee then the treetops, the sky, anywhere but at his
father. Humiliating, that was the only word for it. To not be your
own man by sixty. How was that possible? Six decades in, ready for
retirement, and still no satisfaction, no peace. It couldn’t be
true. Yet his father had never been more confessional. Never more
blunt, which was saying something. He was telling the truth,
his
truth. His father
had screwed him by making him do something thirty years ago that he
didn’t want to. As if he had never had a say in the events of his
life, as if his father was pulling all the strings. As if his
father, deep in his last decade and out of his head, was to this
day running— and ruining— his life.

Jonny felt queasy and took
a step toward the picket fence, staring at the rose bushes. He had
come back because his father gave him the chance to measure up, for
once. But— measure up to what? Manly responsibility? Motel
management? Polka virtuosity? Family loyalty? Some invisible
ever-higher bar that no one ever reached because your old man would
never admit it? Did fathers hold you down, keep you dependent and
broke so they could gloat in their old age?
I told him not to do it. He was never any good at
that.

Or did sons do it to
themselves? Wasn’t it easier to blame your failures to your
father’s petty insecurities and dirty tricks? That made bitterness
a lot more fun.

But that ate you up. Could
you just exit this sick game before it ruined your life? Cash your
chips? Could you walk away— if you still wanted to have a
relationship with your father? Wasn’t there some middle
ground?

“
So,” Jonny said, tossing
his coffee into the grass and taking a deep breath. “You want some
help up there?”

He didn’t get to the Owl
Bar that evening. His mother was home by herself. Carol was busy
with her visitors and Father Teddy had to make a run to a sick
parishioner. Wendy was— well, who knew where Wendy was. Jonny
heated up baked beans and his mother fried a couple slices of
leftover ham.

Margaret seemed a little
too calm. Had Carol delivered more Valium? He thought it best not
to inquire. As they did the dishes, he asked her about the Rose
Rave. “Is it still on for Saturday?”

“
Saturday?” she repeated.
“
This
Saturday?
Oh— oh yes.”

“
Are you sure you’re up to
it?”

She sighed, looking out at
the rose garden in the twilight. “There’s plenty of time,
Jonny.”

“
Two days,
Mom.”

She blinked to clear her
head. “I have to call Carol.” She dropped the cup she was rinsing.
It broke in the sink.

In his room that night,
Jonny took down all the old baseball and rock-and-roll posters,
stuffing them into a garbage bag. With a damp cloth he wiped down
the small bedroom, cutting through years of black dirt on the
bookshelves. He packed away old trophies, plaques, and ribbons, the
meaningless detritus of childhood in a box. He pulled off the
bedspread and the curtains and threw them in the washing machine
with a little extra bleach. Then, for good measure, rounded up all
the dust bunnies under the bed.

As he carried the box and
garbage bag out to the alley, he saw scraps of roofing he’d missed
in the motel parking lot. He brought the bag back and began
gathering up roofing paper by moonlight. Ozzie stripped most of the
old roof today, with Jonny’s help. After the flash of intimacy,
Ozzie turned quiet and taciturn for the rest of the day. There was
plenty to think about up there on the roof, for both of
them.

“
You looking for
this?”

He spun around, found the
student holding out a large piece of roofing paper and several
sections of shingle. Her light hair glowed in the moonshine, her
face in shadow. He held open his bag.

“
Thanks. It’s Isabel,
right?”

She turned sideways,
ignoring the question and giving him her profile, an upturned nose,
an angry chin. “It better not rain before you get the new roof on.
That will make my professor seriously unhappy.”

“
Your
professor?”

“
If the entire crew
bolts.” She was back in full battle garb: cargo pants, baggy
t-shirt, thick belt, heavy boots. Hands on her hips.

“
Hey, sorry I didn’t
recognize you the other night. You—”

“
Look different. I know.”
She turned back toward him, shadowing her expression again. “It’s
funny how people categorize each other. How they make assumptions
based on clothes or hair or— family. When who you are is something
so real— to you— that you can’t imagine anyone thinking you are
something or somebody else.”

Something odd in her voice,
maybe because of the dark. He couldn’t see her eyes. Everyone was
acting so weird today, as if tired of the burden of their secrets.
He didn’t know about this one though, what her secrets might be. He
didn’t know anything about her at all.

“
You know what I
mean?”

“
I guess,” he
said.

“
People think of you a
certain way because of your family, your mother or your father.
Even your sister. They put you in a box because it’s easier than
seeing you for who you are. They don’t think of you as an
individual, as separate. Even the instrument you play or the place
where you grew up is part of the box. And they don’t see
you
because they are so
focused on your box. It’s like you’re invisible.”

“
Are you talking about
me?”

“
Or me, or Kate, or Terry.
Or Walter. Anybody.”

She had revealed enough.
She raised a hand as she slipped away into the shadows.

Chapter 11

The crowd at the Owl was
large the next evening, even for a Friday night. Jonny was tired
from lugging stacks of shingles and rolls of black paper up the
ladder, and from talking his mother down from the edge of whatever
she was freaking about, aphids and fruit punch and paper napkins.
The Rose Rave details, conveniently forgotten in the turmoil of
Ozzie and Loreen, had now erupted all over
chez
Knobel.