The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (31 page)

“Ooh. I heard she got some winter chicks.”

I drop my chin and levy him a dubious look. “So
that
made the bulletin?”

He shrugs. “Also in the bulletin,” he adds, “I heard you are helping Simone apply for art school. And you took Colleen to a medical procedure—apparently something gynecological—and took care of her after like she was a sister. And you've quietly connected Jenny to three up-and-coming artists from Chicago who are looking for galleries.” He clears his throat. “And you got me—famous town recluse Ben Hutchinson—to go to a party.”

“It was your mother's birthday party.”

“Sure it was. Did Jenny and Colleen tell you the last time I was out in a social setting in Minnow Bay?”

“No.”

“Try the mid-nineties.”

Just about everything this guy says is a surprise to me. “So you're an actual hermit? Not the exaggerated kind of hermit that Jenny had me thinking of?”

Ben sighs. “I'm not proud of it, but since you're thinking of breaking up with your boyfriend for me, I should probably give it to you straight. It's been nothing but work, home, and the café since I moved back to town five years ago. And only the café because the electricity in my house is iffy. That night after we fought, that was the first time I've set foot in my own dad's bar since I moved back.”

“Jeez. What exactly happened to you in California?”

He shrugs. “I lost myself.”

“And yourself was in a broken-down cabin in Minnow Bay?”

He pauses. “Up until recently. Yeah.” He gives me a meaningful look.

I feel momentarily stymied. Then I blurt, “I'm not breaking up with my boyfriend
for
you. If I do break up with him.”

“Which you should.”

“Which I probably should. Still, it's important that you understand that.”

Ben nods. “Okay. Got it.”

“And your house is a dump. It's about to fall down around your ears.”

“Well, that's uncalled for.”

“I'm starting to care about you, Ben,” I hear myself say. “And I don't think it's good to be living like that. I mean, to care so little for yourself that you can't invest in a comfortable home … It's one thing if you're broke. But I have to assume that Minnow Bay High pays you enough to get a decent furnace.”

“Minnow Bay High doesn't pay me anything,” he says softly.

I start. “What? You're a volunteer?”

“Please don't tell anyone. It's between me and the principal.”

“But I don't understand. Why would you work for free?”

Ben pauses for a moment. I feel like he's going to sidestep me. Then he says, “Because I can. Because these kids deserve a good STEM education. And, for that matter, they also deserve having an artist in residence. Someone who does internships. Teaches master classes from time to time.” He looks at me searchingly, as though he is daring me to imagine a whole life in Minnow Bay. And God help me, I do.

“I have to go back to Chicago,” I say almost out of habit. Ben says nothing. There is a too-long quiet between us. Not companionable. Uncomfortable.

“I'm not broke, Lily,” he finally says. “I could afford to fix up the cabin … if I had a reason to.”

I know what he is saying but I pretend to misunderstand.

“Well, I am broke. And, coming full circle, since Jenny was wrong about the paintings, and Mitchell will definitely fire me when I break up with him, I am going to be pretty broke for the foreseeable future.” I hear the false lightness in my voice. There's no covering it up.

He tilts his head at me. “Have you ever heard the phrase, it's only money?”

“Are you kidding? I
invented
that phrase. But now I don't know. I mean, try telling that to Colleen today, when she found out what it would cost to adopt. It's not only money for her.”

Ben nods quietly. “I guess it isn't. But I do know how to cheer her up.”

“You do?”

“Uh huh. But first, tell me how you do on ice skates.”

 

Nineteen

 

What a question. How do I do on ice skates? I do like every other non–hockey player from the suburbs of Chicago does: every time I lace up it's like I've never done it before. Then I go around in a circle about ten times, fall about five, and pretty much feel okay and enjoy the rest of my time out on the ice. Then I go home and don't do it again for three years.

Apparently my three years is up. But there's an extra wrinkle to ice skating in Minnow Bay, Wisconsin: they do it outside. This dawns on me very, very slowly, that there is no ice arena in a town the size of a mall parking lot.

I meet up with Ben after school, and get in his car, and he says, “Did you bring skates?” and I say, “What, isn't there skate rental?” and he laughs himself silly. I mean really. He just laughs and laughs. I have to sit quietly in the passenger seat and wait for it to die down.

Finally he shakes his head and says, “Never mind. We're only grooming for now,” and drives me through town in the opposite direction of Lemon Lake, past a few side streets and then by a pretty little park with a gazebo and a snow-covered play structure. And across the road from that, there is a large clearing, no houses and no trees, and a sidewalk that leads to a tall iron bridge over the snow.

“Is it a pond?” I ask, because the snow has fallen so deep that there's no telling what's underneath it. “A skating pond?”

“Yep,” he says. “Cute as a button once it's cleared, but until then, we've got our work cut out for us.”

“But what do you mean, cleared? As in, we have to shovel the snow?”

More laughing. “Shoveling would be crazy. No, we've got to think smarter, not harder.”

I gesture to the car's temperature display. “It's four degrees outside. Smarter would be to go home and watch people ice skate on TV.”

Ben smiles with a good-natured twinkle. He
is
good natured, right? Except when he's looking at me in that dead serious way of his that makes me feel not just naked but skinless. “That wouldn't be as fun.” He hops out of the truck and slams the driver-side door shut, leaving me in the warmth of the car trying to figure out what is going on here. I can't, and it looks cold out there, so I just sit tight. After a few moments my door opens and Ben peers inside.

“Everything okay in here?”

“I'm just trying to understand why I'm looking at approximately thirty tons of snow and how you expect to move it.”

He nods. “That's fair. Climb out and I'll break it down for you.” He offers me his hand out of the car. I touch it and there is electricity even glove to glove. I pretend not to feel it and put my hands on my hips, then cross them over my chest, then back to my hips awkwardly. “The snow isn't really our major concern,” he tells me.

“Oh no?” I ask, and pointedly look down to the spot where I am standing, where the snow is up to my knees.

“Nope, the ice is. You see, we've got to test the ice, and then, if it's strong enough, which I'm
fairly
certain it is, we go into that shed over there”—he gestures to a small abandoned-looking shed—“and get out the snow tractor.”

“Snow tractor?”

“Basically an ATV with a plow blade.”

“Like a riding lawn mower?”

“For snow.”

“You can't go out on the ice in a riding lawn mower. For snow. Someone could die. It could be you.”

“Well, you may be right. That's why we test first.”

“And how exactly do we test?”

“By walking on the ice.”

“With our feet?”

“Yes, walking with our feet,” he says casually, as he opens his trunk and pulls out a pair of silver foil blankets tied in a bundle, a thermos of something, two lengths of rope with knots and carabiners, and two bright orange vests with lots of useful-looking loops.

“And if the ice isn't strong enough for our body weight?”

“Then we'll be glad I brought so much rope.”

“This is not a good idea. This is not a job for two nice but highly citified people who want to cheer up a friend. Think of her face when she learns we've drowned in the freezing water.”

“The pond is barely eight feet deep.”

“I can drown in three feet. Try me.”

“I'll take your word for it. It's been subzero for almost five days in a row. It's January. I have this ice auger I borrowed from the fire department, and these flags for us to carry, and we go around together, staying close to each other, and we test the ice's thickness, and then put the flags in anywhere it's safe. Hopefully it's thick enough not just to stand on, but to plow as well. If one of us falls in, the other fishes him—or her—out and goes to the clinic. The keys are in the truck.”

I stare at him agog. “This is a terrible idea. You see that, right? The reason the fire department has the ice auger is because this is a job for said fire department.”

“Actually, I'm a volunteer fireman.”

It is all I can do not to smack my forehead like a sitcom actor. “Of course you are. And what qualifications does that entail, exactly?”

“Oh, they run a background check. I think. As I remember, I had to do a mental health questionnaire and a safety class. Most of the strong healthy people ages twenty-five to forty in Minnow Bay are on the squad. Some are much, much older. But you have to be at least able to lift a forty-pound bag.”

“You can lift a forty-pound bag and this qualifies you to wander out onto untested ice and possibly plunge to your death?”

“Possibly plunge. Definitely not to my death. Rope, remember?”

“How exactly did you pass that mental health questionnaire?”

I get a good laugh for this, and I am satisfied.

“I can see your reservations,” he says. “But I've done this before. I may have spent fifteen years getting soft in the valley and five more hiding in my cabin, but before that I was a real Minnow Bay kid. And it used to be that this pond got groomed for skating every year by the city.”

“Really?” This makes me feel somewhat better. “Why did they stop?”

“Oh, it's hard to say. It might have had something to do with that poor drunken teen couple who fell through and drowned some years back.”

I jerk my head up at him. He's smiling.

“That's not funny,” I say, though it is a little. In a dark way.

“I can't help it. You make this face when I say something outrageous. It's so funny. Like you're horrified, yet not surprised at all.”

“I think it's because I expect you to be an utter lunatic.”

“I wasn't the one who ripped up our divorce papers like a madwoman.”

“No, you were the one brandishing the hatchet like an axe murderer.”

“And I
still
didn't hack you into pieces. Not even a little. Don't I get any credit for that?”

I laugh and shake my head. “No. No you don't. I may have settled for less than I deserve in the past, but I still don't give out any gold stars for refraining from axe murder.”

“It sounds like you're going to be very high maintenance,” he says with a wink.

“Sounds like you're going to have lots of opportunities to see my horrified face,” I tell him back. “Now, tell me why they really stopped grooming the pond.”

“Because of furloughs. Tough times during the recession. The town had to close one ice rink—either this one for public figure skating, or the one behind the high school, which is for the hockey teams. And, considering the Stormin' Sturgeonettes hockey team won State three out of the last ten years…”

I nod. “That is a much better explanation.”

“Plus it has the advantage of being true,” he says. “Okay, let's get out there and start flagging. You can start by putting a green flag right where you're standing. Careful, the tip is sharp, it cuts right through, you don't have to push too hard…”

“Is this to remind us of where the edge of the pond is?” I ask as I pull a green flag out of Ben's leather satchel and plunge it into the ground.

Ben shakes his head mischievously. “Nope. See that?” He points to the spot directly in front of where he parked his car. “That was the edge. We've been standing on the ice for the last ten minutes. Seems strong enough to me.”

*   *   *

A very cold but strangely exhilarating hour later, we have flagged a nice large pond, and with the exception of two spots near the edge, the ice is thick enough not just for two adults but for the plow. By now, full dark has fallen over the pond and the pretty gas lamp–style park lights make a beautiful ring around the perimeter.

Ben sends me back to the truck to watch him plow. I want to go with him—after all, there is a cab with heavy plastic sheeting to keep warmth in, and the tractor looks fun. But he wisely points out that we are human and even humans with ice augers make mistakes. So my job is to watch with phone in hand from his truck and call 911 if worse comes to worst. Then he has to spend five minutes reassuring me that this is only a precaution and no one has ever fallen through the ice on the snow tractor. And then he has to spend five more minutes showing me how the plastic-coated cab of the tractor breaks away if you just push firmly on it, so that in the event of an emergency, he could easily get loose. Then he leans in to kiss me on the cheek and I turn my head and that's another five minutes. Then, and only then, do I go back to the truck to watch him plow.

The slow, methodical circles he drives are hypnotizing. I start to imagine the end result of all this hard work. It's going to be surreally beautiful, when the ice is cleared and the drifts of snow around it are waist high and the pretty iron bridge is rising high out of two puddles of white and skaters can slide underneath. Ben and I were making a mental list of who to invite skating for Colleen's cheer-up party, and we ended up thinking it would make the most sense just to invite Simone and Jenny, thereby informing the entire town. The forecast is for a slight warm-up tomorrow and only light snow between now and Thursday, so we plan the party for Thursday night. I look out the windshield and start imagining a few small touches to bring more magic to the scene. Luminaria, maybe, on the edge of the ice? Dozens of them, flickering against the snow to their own private rhythms.