All Your Pretty Dreams (32 page)

Daria glared at Jill.
“You’re kidding, right? You know Roger dumped her. She’s got a lot
of nerve.”

“
She told me they were
engaged,” he said. “And something about snoring.”

Daria laughed. “Let’s
dance, Polka Boy.”

Her crooked finger led him
onto a small dance area near the band now playing hits from the
Jurassic Period. They danced lamely, a good match to the
guitarist’s enthusiasm but a diversion from drinking. Daria twirled
and smiled. When the song ended she told him she was thirsty and
took his arm, dragging him back to the bar.

“
Are you a friend of the
bride’s then?” he asked as she drummed her fingers, waiting for
champagne.

“
That chipmunk?” She
shuddered and put a large tip in the bartender’s jar. “My boyfriend
works with Roger. He’s over there. The tall, good-looking one.”
Tall Guy looked over at her and she blew him a kiss. He caught it
and pressed it to his mouth. Jonny bit his lip to keep from
smiling. He had no idea people blew kisses, like, in real
life.

“
So how’s things in
Twinkie-ville?”

“
Cream-filled.”

“
So you and Jill? Doing
the big bopper?”

“
We just work
together.”

She watched him. “Aren’t
you going to ask about Isabel?”

He had a weird pain in his
chest. It’d been there since he realized who Daria was. He took a
deep breath. “Sure. How is she?”

“
Working her ass off. Back
to not replying to email. Thank god she’s got a cell phone now.
She’s still lecturing for her professor. The woman only broke her
leg but she’s milking it for all it’s worth. Paying Isabel a
pittance of what she’s worth. Plus— get this,” Daria said, not
waiting for a reply. “Isabel’s still living upstairs at the prof’s
house and taking care of her! Like a nurse. She hates it but she
told the woman she’d help her. She has honor, my sister. She made a
promise. But really! I mean there’s home health and all that but at
night the professor makes her dust the knick-knacks and go out for
groceries and do laundry and all the stuff Isabel
hates.”

Jonny waited for her to
take a breath. “She’s not very domestic.” It was more of a
question.

“
I didn’t mean that.
Isabel’s not all princess-y. That’s me, honey. It’s just her
professor is so demanding, like an old biddy would be. She’s gotten
on Izzie’s nerves and why not, after six weeks of
step-and-fetch-it. Would you do that for a stranger, somebody you
hardly know?”

“
I was in that house. The
professor’s.”

Daria blinked.
“Really.”

“
In August. My sister ran
away from home and I thought,
we
thought, that she might have stowed away on the
University van. But it turned out she wasn’t there. She came home
on her own.”

Daria was watching her
boyfriend, frowning. “I’ll be right back.”

She stalked in a beeline in
her strappy little sandals. Her boyfriend stood in a clump of
people his age, men and women. They all seemed to be talking at
him. Daria gave the elbow to a willowy blonde, took him by the
hand, and dragged him out of the danger zone. Once she’d sprung him
she turned on the charm, laying a hand on his lapel, touching his
hair, before sending him on some errand. She returned to the bar, a
satisfied smile on her face.

“
Taking care of business?”
Jonny said, admiring her work.

“
Damn straight.” She
squinted at the blonde. “Tall girls think they are so superior.
Now. Your sister ran away from home?”

“
She got a flight home. I
think my grandmother sent her some money.”

“
No kidding.”

“
We’re just glad Wendy’s
home, and safe.” The last few weeks hadn’t been without their drama
on the Wendy Front but at least everyone was still talking. The
brothers had made a pact to call her twice a week, just to make
sure she had her head out of the clouds. There had been a bit of
headway, unless she was grounded or pissed off, which was
often.

“
Did Wendy call her? The
granny?” she asked.

Daria’s eyes were wide
behind her champagne flute, fixed over his shoulder. He swirled his
beer. “Do you know something about it?”

She shook her head, taking
a breath just as her boyfriend snaked his arm around her waist and
nuzzled her ear. She giggled as he whispered into her hair. Jonny
tried not to look as she pulled him close, pressing herself against
him. He ran his hands down her back, cupping her bottom in his big
hands. That sort of intimacy pained him now. He couldn’t stop
thinking that it might be lost to him forever.

He stared into his empty
bottle. The last few weeks flashed by: the impersonal apartment
that smelled of canned chili, a nodding acquaintance with sullen,
balding neighbors, the fluorescent glare of the grocery store late
at night, grabbing Hungry Man Meals in the frozen food aisle. And
he’d asked for it, that was the hell of it. He’d left her, left
himself alone and lonely. The empty spot in his gut, the one that
he’d been able to ignore at work for the last six weeks and even
during weekends in Red Vine working on the grain bin, reared up, a
black hole, an acid wash of dread. He was
alone
.

He took a deep
breath.
Snap out of it,
soldier
. This was just the Wedding Effect.
He would live. Alone or not, he would survive. There were worse
things than loneliness. Like being married to Cuppie St. John. He
glanced at the lovers. Daria’s profile was so like her sister’s.
Somehow that made it worse. Better that they’d never met. Maybe if
they’d met some other time, when he was on an even keel.

Across the room Jill
tipped back another glass of champagne as her girlfriends cackled.
He wondered if she remembered that he was here. Why
was
he here?

“
Hey.” Daria put a
delicate hand on his arm. “This is my friend, Will Franklin. This
is Jonny— Oh, lord, I was going to call you Jonny
Applebee.”

“
Jonathan Knobel.” He
shook Will’s hand. Broad-shouldered like a football player, Daria’s
boyfriend seemed like a solid character with straight white teeth
and a wide forehead. He asked how they knew each other. “We met in
Minnesota.”

“
Where Isabel was working
this summer,” Daria said. “Jonny brought her back for Egon’s
funeral, remember? Were you there, honey, when I gave Jonny some
coffee for the road? No? You work for an architect, Jonny,
right?”

“
CAD jockey.”

Will said he was an
architect as Daria jumped in. “He’s doing this green thing. Aren’t
you, honey?”

“
A sustainable building
contest,” Will said. “Drum up some interest, a little press. We’re
looking for new ideas, people adapting structures in new ways to
make them greener. Reusing old materials in new ways. But mostly I
do the big commercial stuff. Banks and shopping malls are
us.”

“
I’m working on an
office-retail right now. Thrill a minute.”

“
Bread and butter,
man.”

Daria clinked her glass
with her nails. “What’s that thing you’re working on in Red Vine,
Jonny? A— you know— a whatchamacallit.”

He wondered how soon he
could get another beer. It was embarrassing to even think about
talking about his squatty grain bin with this high-flying architect
in a real man’s suit. Will probably had a skyscraper’s power supply
in mind, or a hypermodern solar-wind extravaganza. Not a spruced-up
granary in backwater Minnesota.

Jonny looked around. “You
think they’re going to cut the cake soon?”

“
A corn crib, that’s it,”
Daria said, her attention undeterred. “Tell Will about it.” Then,
just like that, she dashed off, calling to someone named Sharon in
a high trill.

Will tipped his head. “A
corn crib?”

“
Grain bin actually.
Little fat guy. I’m converting it for a friend. It’ll probably end
up as a tourist information center.”

Just what they were looking
for, Will said, as if grain bin conversions were a hot new trend.
Organically brilliant! Tied to the earth, of the earth. Jonny
listened, wondering. Franklin seemed really pumped. It was weird.
Jonny wasn’t really that jacked about the project. Hadn’t been for
months. Only Lenny had a passion for it. Jonny had returned to Red
Vine three weekends, painting, insulating, installing a skylight.
One more weekend to go, finishing the decorative painting on the
outside and overseeing the installation of a small woodstove. Lenny
wanted it done by the election. Then, thankfully, he could stay out
of Red Vine until at least Thanksgiving.

Will Franklin kept talking,
going pink with the excitement. He explained about the contest, the
website, where to submit photos. He was encouraging. But there was
no way Jonny was submitting his grain bin into a sustainable
architecture or any other kind of contest. He could imagine the
other entries: elaborate roof gardens, high tech solar farms,
deceptively intricate modern dwellings that recycled their own
water and made their own gelato. Hot young designers in tight pants
and spiky haircuts would compete for honors. They would laugh at a
one-room steel pod that once sheltered piglets. No matter how
excited Will Franklin proclaimed himself to be.

Jill almost missed the
flight. Jonny took a cab back to the hotel about midnight,
exhausted from pretending to enjoy himself. Jill didn’t make it
back at all. At nine the next morning she called Jonny and asked
him to get her bag from her room. This entailed the cajoling of a
desk clerk from Traverse City and a housekeeper from Puerto Rico.
At the gate he pushed Jill’s black carry-on toward her feet as she
slumped in a plastic chair, her jacket thrown over her
head.

On Monday she dragged
herself by his cubicle, an oversized coffee cup hugged to her
chest. Steam rose, moistening her chin. She was a little green, her
hair lank against her cheeks. The owner of the office park wanted
changes.

She didn’t mention the
weekend.

Chapter 22

On the first Tuesday in
November, the town of Red Vine leapt into the twenty-first century
and voted in a new mayor. Leonard Rhodes Jr. was the youngest mayor
in Minnesota, and thrilled to pieces. At his campaign office in the
courthouse park that had drawn the eye of every citizen with its
unique shape and fanciful red painted foliage design, not to
mention the cute green door, patriotic bunting was hung around the
roofline. Enthusiastic whoops and rock and roll bellowed over the
square.

Before a party could be
planned to celebrate the victory Reinholt Knobel, age 86, passed
away in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday. The funeral was set for
Saturday.

“
Dad wants the band
together again. He wants us both to play at the mass,” Artie said
in his kitchen that night. Sonya was feeding both brothers
vegetable soup and saltines. Jonny looked up over his
spoon.

“
You’re going to do
it?”

Artie shrugged. “It’s for
Holti.”

At least the old guy had
one last dance. Jonny felt sad about his passing, of course,
crushed at moments. But tinged with relief too. His grandfather’s
final years hadn’t been anywhere near golden.

They drove down to Red Vine
on Friday night. Margaret had a long face, her shoulders rounded.
If possible she was more melancholy than usual. Ozzie had not come
to his senses in three months and everyone now wondered if he ever
would. No one had the heart to discuss the future with Margaret.
Jonny hadn’t seen his father on any of his weekend trips back to
finish the grain bin, out of respect for his mother. He would have
liked to give his old man a little advice.

The service was set for
noon. They ate scrambled eggs and bacon silently at the table.
Margaret was wearing a blue shirtwaist dress with a frayed collar.
Jonny remembered it as her pinochle dress. It fit her because she’d
basically stopped eating since Ozzie left. As they cleared the
dishes Sonya and Artie were whispering. Artie turned to his
mother.

“
Can I help you pick out
something to wear, Mom?”