IF YOU’RE ALL DONE LIKE YOU SAID YOU’D BE by Katherine Heiny
It was only a matter of time before Jane and Duncan began dating again.
She saw him in the supermarket at the beginning of June, right after school got out, and he said, “I see you’ve bleached the hair on your upper lip,” and Jane sighed and said, “Yes, but I didn’t know it was going to make me look like Colonel Sanders,” and Duncan said, “More like a very pretty Mark Twain.”
And just like that, they were a couple again. (It was a very small town.)
This time, Jane was determined to do everything right.
She wouldn’t be jealous, not of Duncan’s ex‑wife Aggie, not of his ex‑girlfriends (who were legion), not of the new waitress at Robert’s with the long dark lashes, not of the girl at the video store who carried her breasts in front of her as if they were a couple of large cupcakes.
She would not be demanding, not of his time, not of his attention, and not of his money. He didn’t have any, so that would be pretty easy.
She would be all the things she had always meant to be in their relationship and somehow never gotten around to being: wise and cool and levelheaded and regal and hopelessly alluring, like a single ball bearing gleaming on a black velvet background, or maybe a Swedish nanny.
Jane was a little nervous about telling people that she and Duncan were back together, but she didn’t need to be.
The first person they told was Duncan’s assistant at his wood-working shop, Jimmy. Jimmy smiled broadly – the smile that made you realize how handsome he would have been if he’d been born just a little smarter – and shook Duncan’s hand over and over, saying, “Good for you, buddy! Good for you!”
Aggie said, “Why, that’s wonderful,” in the uncertain tone people use when setting up wi‑fi networks, and Aggie’s husband, Gary, said, “You’re not the one with the fondness for GrapeNuts, are you?”
“No,” Jane said. “That must’ve been someone else.”
She was the most nervous about telling her friend Frieda, the high school music teacher, but Frieda looked delighted and said, “Oh, good! Do you know that ever since you broke up, he clears my driveway every single time it snows?”
“He does?” Jane was not upset that Duncan did that; she was only upset she didn’t know about it. That was how Boyne City she’d become.
“Oh, yes,” Frieda said. “And once my car got stuck in the school parking lot and he came over right away and pulled my car out with his van. He really is the nicest man, much nicer than most people think.”
“Well, yes,” Jane said. “Well, yes.” She seemed to be as stuck as Frieda’s car.
Jane had forgotten how Duncan loved her body, loved it deeply and simply and entirely, the same way he loved a winter sunset or fresh banana bread. He seemed happy to stroke her endlessly – the curve of her hip seemed to fascinate him, the smell of her hair to intoxicate him, the taste of her skin to transport him.
He did not seem to see any of her body’s imperfections. It was not that he ignored them – he truly didn’t see them. His eyes grew heavy-lidded with desire when she leaned down to get something from under the sink and her shirt rode up, or when she pulled on a pair of underpants and let the elastic snap against her hip.
He would lie for hours – what seemed like hours – between her legs, licking, caressing, murmuring, “I love this so much, this makes me so happy.” (Which was exactly what he said about banana bread, come to think of it.)
Suddenly Jane stiffened.
“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked, lifting his head.
“Nothing,” Jane whispered. “Don’t stop.”
The idea that some people – Jimmy, Frieda – might never know love like this, it broke Jane’s heart.
“Jimmy’s in love,” Duncan told her one night.
“That’s wonderful!” Jane said. “I’m so happy for him. When did this happen? Can we meet her? What’s her name?”
“He doesn’t know her name yet,” Duncan said. “All he knows is that she’s the new ice cream scooper at Kilwin’s.”
“Oh,” said Jane, and her hope was a small crushed thing, like a jelly bean found under a sofa cushion.
“Yes,” Duncan agreed, watching her. “It’s that kind of in love.”
Jane and Duncan were invited over for dinner at Aggie and Gary’s. Jane carried a bottle of red wine and Duncan rang the doorbell.
Inside they heard Aggie say, “Who do you suppose is at the door?” and Gary say, “No idea. Are you expecting someone?”
Jane rolled her eyes at Duncan.
He looked thoughtful. “Could be she meant next Thursday.”
Just then Aggie opened the door. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. She was wearing a denim skirt and ruffled blouse and, as always, her milk-fed creamy-skinned appearance made Jane feel like a gym teacher.
“Hi there, Aggie,” Duncan said, just as if everything were going according to plan. “Thank you so much for inviting us over.”
“Honestly,” Aggie said. “You are just hopeless.”
Duncan walked past her into the house and Jane trailed along meekly. “Sorry if I might have gotten the day wrong,” he said, “but we’re here now. Hey, Gary. How are you?”
“Okay, I guess,” Gary said. He was a thin, balding man with a slightly concave chest. He was sprawled on the couch in front of the TV. Jane sent up a brief prayer of thanks that he wasn’t wearing just his underpants.
“Duncan, I don’t have a thing for dinner,” Aggie said. “We were just going to have sandwiches.”
“We’re not fussy,” Duncan said, ignoring her tone completely. “Let’s drink the wine and order a pizza.”
“What kind of pizza?” Gary asked, as though this were the only thing that mattered.
“Gary doesn’t hold with that Hawaiian kind,” Aggie said quickly, and Jane could tell she was sufficiently distracted that she would let them stay.
The worst part of the evening was not that they had to have plain cheese pizza (that being the only kind of pizza Gary would agree to) but that it began to seem to Jane like a blind date where she and Gary were struggling and Duncan and Aggie were hitting it off.
“So this lady calls me at work yesterday,” Duncan said to Aggie, “and asks if I can refinish her highball, and I say, ‘I can either refinish a highboy or I can finish off a highball, which do you want?’ ”
“Hah,” said Aggie. She always laughed like someone reading off a cue card. “Remember when you drank so many highballs you threw up on my Aunt Sheila’s carpet?”
“Did they ever have that replaced?” Duncan asked. “I seem to recall the stain wouldn’t come out.”
“What is an Alsatian?” Gary said abruptly to Jane.
Jane was pleased; Gary seldom spoke directly to her. “Well,” she said, thinking, “it’s kind of like a German Shepherd – “
Gary interrupted. “Who is Jules Verne?”
There was a blue screen reflected in Gary’s glasses. Ah. Understanding came to Jane like a drink of ice cold water: Jeopardy! was on mute on the television behind her.
At seven-thirty, Gary leapt to his feet and there was a mad scrabbling around for the TV remote because apparently he strongly disapproved of Wheel of Fortune, which was on next. Once he’d turned off the TV, it seemed like time for Duncan and Jane to go.
“Thanks, Aggie,” Duncan said on their way out. “I’ll come over and fix that toaster oven for you later this week.”
Jane smiled and waved. She was suddenly cheerful again as she took Duncan’s hand. Let Aggie have her moment with Duncan, let Aggie have her memories, let Aggie have her toaster oven fixed. Who was Duncan going home with? Jane – that’s who.
Everyone wanted to see the object of Jimmy’s love. Even Aggie and Gary, who were over at Jane’s house for a reciprocal Thursday night dinner. Jane had invited Jimmy and Frieda, too, so she wouldn’t have to talk to Gary (or even not talk to Gary).
“You can’t all go to Kilwin’s together!” Jimmy said in dismay. “She’ll think I never had a girlfriend before!”
Jane was startled. Jimmy said this sort of semi-insightful thing all the time. Because while he never had had a girlfriend before, it would indeed look like it if they all went there together in a big excited group.
So they decided that Jane and Duncan and Aggie would go, while Jimmy stayed at Jane’s house with Frieda and Gary. Although Gary didn’t hold with banjos (“Cigar boxes with string,” he’d said disdainfully and inexplicably) he had agreed to learn how to play the mandolin, which was very exciting for Frieda, who’d never taught the mandolin to anyone but cats and plants and various inanimate objects, as far as anybody knew.
Jane had pictured the girl that Jimmy liked as just that – a girl. A girl would be perfect for Jimmy, even though he was forty-five. Maybe one of the college kids Kilwin’s hired in the summer, a girl with long blond hair and a shy smile, maybe plump with dimples. But she turned about to be a whip-thin fortyish woman named Raelynn who was the new assistant manager. She had unruly brown ringlets pulled back in a pony tail and her facial features – enormous eyes, high cheekbones, full mouth, arched brows – were as voluptuous as a ripe strawberry
Aggie suddenly clutched Jane’s elbow and Jane knew why. As always when meeting an unfamiliar woman, the crucial question arose: had Duncan slept with her?
Duncan looked at Raelynn and stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “She’s not from around here,” he said.
Jane and Aggie exchanged glances. That didn’t mean he hadn’t slept with her, only that he didn’t recognize her. (If he’d slept with her – if he’d known he’d slept with her – he would have said, “Well, dang.”)
When they got up to the counter and Raelynn asked him what he’d like, Duncan said craftily, “What flavor do you think I like?” and Raelynn said cheerfully, “I don’t give a monkey’s nut what flavor you like, but you better order because there are folks behind you,” which was sort of shocking but did seem to indicate that she didn’t recognize him, either.
Aggie let go of Jane’s arm and Jane saw her flick her fingers slightly, as though she’d touched something sticky.
Almost before they knew it, they were back out on the sidewalk in the sultry night air with their cones. Duncan said that Jimmy and Raelynn might do okay on a date provided that Jimmy didn’t start talking about his Pokémon collection and Aggie said that Jimmy should order an ice cream soda next time to make him seem like a more discerning customer and Jane said nothing at all because her chest was too constricted with hope and pain. It was so complicated, love.
That was on Thursday, and on Friday, they all had dinner together again in order to pool their knowledge about Raelynn. It reminded Jane of when her second-grade classes had a group meeting to discuss what they wanted to learn about land mammals.
Frieda had called Kilwin’s using an unnecessary French accent and asked the name of the new assistant manager, so they knew Raelynn’s full name was Raelynn Collins. Aggie was a realtor and had pulled Raelynn’s rental agreement, so they knew that she lived in a two-bedroom mobile home in Lakeview Village. They all agreed that Raelynn living in a mobile home was a positive thing – she was less likely to be critical of the fact that Jimmy still lived with his mother. Gary had actually stirred himself over at State Farm to look at Raelynn’s credit rating, so they knew she was thirty-nine and had a Sam’s Club credit card (a store Gary disapproved of).
All this, they decided, was good, even the Sam’s Club thing. But how could they know for sure that Raelynn didn’t have a boyfriend?
“We need to stake out her house and see who comes and goes,” Frieda said.
This comment, combined with Frieda’s call to Kilwin’s, made Jane wonder how Frieda spent her free time.
But Frieda had back-to‑back piano lessons scheduled for the next day, and Duncan had to work and needed Jimmy to help him, because some lady was threatening him with legal action if he didn’t refinish her grandmother’s trestle table, for which he’d already accepted payment and which he’d had for at least a year. (“People,” Duncan said, shaking his head.)
Aggie decided. “Jane and I will go. I don’t have any morning appointments and it will give me chance to get to know Jane better,” she said, the way people say they finally have a chance to catch up on their ironing.
“Then afterwards, we can all meet here again,” Duncan said, as though Jane’s pretty little gray house with the outdoor shower and the flagstone steps were a town hall, or a restaurant, or his.
Aggie drove like every other realtor Jane knew: speedily, inattentively, and with sweeping hand gestures. But in no time at all, they were parked just down the street from Raelynn’s mobile home – a neat little beige house with brown trim. Raelynn’s car was in front.
Aggie took a cardboard cup of coffee from the cup holder, removed the lid, and blew on it while she told Jane how much Raelynn paid in rent and that garbage pickup was included and that there was a summer cookout on resident appreciation day.
Then she said, “How are things with Duncan? He seems very happy.”
Jane had noticed that Aggie often asked a question then answered it herself. She supposed that was a realtor habit – How do you like this place? I love that third bedroom! – but it also might be the result of living with Gary.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“Oh, well, he and I were in the hardware store buying hinges for my kitchen cupboard and I asked how you were and he looked all sort of pleased. Normally, when I ask about some girl he’s seeing, he looks, I don’t know, sort of belligerent.”
Duncan and Aggie had gone to the hardware store together? To buy hinges? Jane’s mind raced like a beagle down that alley and then she made it stop. She didn’t do that anymore.
“I think you’re good for Duncan,” Aggie continued. “He needs someone who doesn’t take him so seriously.”
Funny how this conversation was making Jane feel belligerent.
But just then Raelynn came out of her house, wearing pink sweatpants cut off at the knees and a turquoise tanktop. She wore not a single speck of makeup and yet Jane could still see her eyelashes from the car. She was carrying two bags of trash and her biceps stood out like halves of tennis balls. She plunked the bags down at the curb and went back in her house.
Aggie started the car. “I guess she’s single, all right. Only women living alone take out the trash themselves.”
Such unstable beliefs they clung to.
It seemed they were all going to live together – or at least spend every evening together – until the situation with Jimmy and Raelynn was resolved, one way or another. Jane was not sure how it started, really; it just seemed that suddenly Duncan brought Jimmy home with him when he came over to Jane’s after work and soon Aggie and Gary and Frieda would show up.
“It’s sort of like Bible camp,” Jimmy said. “Or maybe rehab.”
Jane’s money was on rehab.
Aggie taped a list of foods that Gary didn’t eat to the fridge: eggplant, tomato juice, hummus, dark chocolate. And another list of foods he couldn’t even stand to have in the house: salmon burgers, chunky peanut butter, frozen yogurt, garlic bread.
“No garlic bread?” Jane said in true despair. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Duncan said mildly. “There’s also his aversion to slipcovers.”
“But – garlic bread,” Jane said. This seemed to her of all Gary’s beliefs, the least understandable, the least forgivable.
They also had to watch Jeopardy! every evening. “It’s how Gary keeps his mind sharp,” Aggie explained.
(“Man,” Duncan said later to Jane, “you hate to think what he’d be like without it.”)
The good news was that Frieda had plenty of opportunity to continue Gary’s mandolin lessons, although Gary played so stubbornly and consistently behind the beat that Jane suspected of him of doing it on purpose. She could hear them as she stood at the kitchen counter, arranging carrot and celery sticks on a glass plate.
Frieda was playing her best mandolin and Gary played her second-best. They sang together, Frieda’s voice the full-bodied voice of a music teacher and Gary sounding like someone who’d just woken up from a nap.
Once again it’s happening
All this love is unrequited (faster Gary!)
Twice the pain, the suffering
Oh, my love is unrequited
Something was wrong with Jane. All alone in the kitchen, she blinked back tears.
Jane decided to have the hair on her upper lip waxed. Frieda recommended a woman named Nanci in Petoskey who was one of her clarinet students but who also did a little beauty work out of her basement and would give Jane a discount. Yes, it would have been far simpler and more sensible just to book an appointment in a salon, but that’s how things were done in Boyne City.
Duncan went with Jane to the appointment because Duncan liked to go on any sort of errand. It was one of the very nicest things about him.
Of course, it turned out that Nanci knew Duncan, not because he’d slept with her but, she said, because he’d stood her up at pancake supper more than twenty years earlier.
“I find that hard to believe,” Duncan said. Jane did, too. Duncan really liked pancakes.
“Well, it’s true,” Nanci said, as Jane lay back in an old pink beautician’s chair that seemed to be bolted to the floor. “I’m not likely to forget. I was awful excited since you said you were a Navy doctor.”
Duncan nodded slowly, as though Nanci had suddenly begun speaking language he could understand. “That was something I told women round about that time.”
This seemed to indicate the end of the social niceties. Nanci spread warm wax on Jane’s upper lip and ripped it off with a practiced flick of her wrist, like a heavy drinker throwing back a shot of bourbon.
“Ah, a whole new girl,” Duncan said when Jane stood up. He put a finger under her chin and examined her face. “Is it going to grow back all thick and brown?” he asked Nanci.
“No, that’s only with shaving,” Nanci said.
Duncan paid, making Jane feel like they were on a date. No mention was made of a discount, which was maybe understandable. Jane felt like she was living someone else’s life, but maybe that was understandable, too.
Jimmy’s courtship of Raelynn had come to a standstill. Well, it hadn’t come to a standstill since it hadn’t started. It was more like something that never moved at all, a rock or a barnacle.
“Just call her up,” Duncan said to Jimmy as the three of them sat at Jane’s kitchen counter. They knew Raelynn’s phone number from the rental agreement.
“I can’t do that,” Jimmy said.
“Sure you can,” Duncan said. “It’s legal.”
“No, I mean, I really can’t do it,” Jimmy said. “I know I’d get a pain in my throat like I’d swallowed a chicken bone and I wouldn’t be able to talk and she’d say hello a bunch of times and then hang up and I still wouldn’t have said anything and for a long time afterward, I’d think about it and kind of moan, even if I was all alone.”
Oh, to know yourself as well as Jimmy did! And people said he was slow learning.
“Well, okay, how about this,” Duncan said. “You go into Kilwin’s late, just before closing and offer to help her close up? Then you’ll have stuff to talk about, like where to put the chairs and the extra gallons of ice cream. And then you can ask her why she moved here and how she likes working at Kilwin’s.”
“What else?” Jimmy asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Women love to talk about themselves,” said Duncan, who had once dominated an entire evening talking about the smell of spar varnish. “Once she gets started, you just act like it’s the most interesting thing you ever heard and ask lots of questions.”
“Aw, you know I’m not good at remembering stuff,” Jimmy said.
“You don’t have to remember it,” Duncan said. “If you forget something and she asks why, just say, ‘You looked so pretty tonight, I can’t remember anything.’ But if you do say that, then don’t give her another compliment for at least a week so she’ll start wondering what was up with the first one. Pretty soon she’ll wonder if she imagined the first one, or she’ll wonder if maybe she somehow offended you by not acting pleased enough – ”
“Wait!” Jimmy cried, scribbling notes on the back of Jane’s paycheck envelope.
How sad was it that Duncan was the man Jane loved? How sad was it that he believed what he was saying? How sad was it that Jane believed it, too?
It turned out that Raelynn liked to talk. Jimmy went to Kilwin’s every night around ten to help her close up and he came over to Jane’s every evening literally filled with information about her, as though he were an empty container into which she poured all her views.
Raelynn was a Gemini, and her favorite drink was beer. She preferred jeans to chinos, margaritas to daiquiris, TV to books, the dentist to the gynecologist, caffeine to sugar, and naps to yoga. She preferred baths to showers, but not bubble baths because the bubble stuff bothered her skin. Her favorite movie star used to be Mel Gibson but not now that he was having such an obvious midlife crisis, and she felt too much loyalty to ER to even start on Grey’s Anatomy. If she were a Crayola crayon, she’d be Blue Bell, and if she were a kind of weather, she’d be the rain when it spits. She couldn’t even remember her natural hair color and she twirled spaghetti, not cut it, and if she knew the world was ending tomorrow, she would go out and eat a whole pecan pie and not care if it gave her a migraine.
They didn’t know if Raelynn preferred her men shy and inexperienced and still living with their mothers, but they hoped so. Oh, they hoped so.
“I wish Jimmy would actually start dating Raelynn so we could get a discount,” Duncan said one day as he and Jane walked toward Kilwin’s. “Because five bucks for an ice cream cone is an outrage.”
“We can’t keep coming here every day,” Jane said, “or I’ll gain ten pounds.” She said this every afternoon; they kept coming every afternoon.
But that day Duncan was happier than usual because Kilwin’s had punchcards. There was a big stack of them by the cash register; all you had to do was fill out your name and phone number.
“They even keep it here at the store,” Duncan said, reading the back. “And Mondays are double-punch days.”
“That’s very exciting,” Jane said. She taught second grade, after all.
Raelynn wasn’t always their server – sometimes they had a plump girl with braces who was no fun to look at – but this time she was. “Can I help you folks?” she asked in her rough, cheerful voice. Her cheekbones were so prominent you could have rested a marble on each one.
“Duncan Ryfield?” Raelynn said when Duncan handed her the punchcard. “Why, I believe you slept with my sister Maggie after you installed her closet organizer. Never called her again, either.”
“Maggie . . .” Duncan said thoughtfully. “Would that have been Maggie over in Elk Rapids?”
“Nope.” Raelynn put her hands on her hips.
“Kalkaska?”
“Guess again, Sunny Jim.”
“Would it be possible to give me a time frame?” Duncan said. “Or else some details about the closet?”
“Well, this would have been, oh, about – ” Raelynn broke off, looking at Jane. “You okay, honey? What’re you laughing about?” She frowned at Duncan. “What’s wrong with your girlfriend? She’s going to make herself sick if she doesn’t stop.”
But Jane couldn’t stop.
Jimmy had news – news so exciting he showed up at Jane’s house early in the morning, while Duncan was still reading the paper and Jane was standing in the kitchen in her faded old blue bathrobe, drinking a glass of milk.
“Raelynn called me her guy,” Jimmy told them, jiggling his keys. “Last night the manager stopped by as we were closing up and looked at me said to Raelynn, ‘Who’s that?’ and Raelynn said, ‘Why, that’s my guy,’ and the manager said to me, ‘Aren’t you Jimmy Barksdale? It seems to me your uncle sold me a lawnmower once,’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir, but he doesn’t work at the hardware store now, not after what happened with the parakeet feed – ”
There was more, but Jane didn’t listen. My guy! What a lovely phrase! How well it summed up Jimmy, how well it summed up his relationship to Raelynn. She couldn’t wait to tell Frieda and Aggie.
Eventually Jimmy sort of ran out of steam without really finishing his story, and left, saying he’d see them later that night.
Duncan looked at Jane. “What?” she said.
He stroked her upper lip. “I miss your mustache.”
It wasn’t so bad, this communal living. Oh, it took some getting used to, Jane would admit that.
You had to get used to the fact the Frieda played the mandolin all the time – softly when people were talking, louder if they weren’t. If the conversation got heated, she would strum faster; if they were all tired, she would play something soothing. It was like having a constant soundtrack to your life, or maybe a mandolin-playing Greek chorus, because sometimes she sang, too – little snatches of lyric which always seemed to fit the occasion. “Next time you bring champagne on, I’ll have the ball and chain on,” she might sing softly when Jimmy drove up. Or when Jane sat on the arm of Duncan’s chair, “If you’re all done like you said you’d be, what are you doing hanging out with me?”
You had to get used to watching Jeopardy! every night. (Jane was getting quite good at the “Before & After” category.) And once the question was “Father of Bluegrass Music” and Frieda shouted “Who is Bill Monroe!” and played a few bars of something on her mandolin even though she’d promised not to do that between seven and seven-thirty.
You also had to get used to Gary using the remote to zap the TV into silence the minute Jeopardy! was over. “What happens if he doesn’t get to the remote in time and we do happen to see Wheel of Fortune?” Jimmy asked one night.
Yes, indeed, thought Jane. What things fall apart, what center will not hold if that happens?
But apparently only she and Jimmy wondered about this – everyone else just looked at him as though the answer was clear. Poor Jimmy. All his life people probably looked at him like that, Jane supposed.
You had to get used to the fact that Aggie was terribly bossy and told Jane that keeping tomatoes in the fridge was lower-class, that Jimmy told long stories which had no point, that Gary spoke mostly through Aggie as though she were a medium, that six people could eat a whole box of pasta in a single sitting.
But there were good things, too. Aggie did most of the cooking, and Duncan did most of the shopping. Frieda set the table and Jimmy cleared, and (amazingly to Jane) Gary washed the dishes. Jane really didn’t have to do much of anything. And there was always lots of alcohol, and long sweet shady cocktail hours out in Jane’s yard, drinking sangria or mint juleps under the fairy lights that Jimmy had strung through the pergola for her. Jane loved the lights, and the fancy drinks, and the strands of conversation mingling through the air like smoke rings. Duncan saying, “So this lady calls me and asks how soon I can get there and I say, ‘Well, normally, I have a cupcake and a cup of coffee about now,’ which means, you know, I’ll get there when I get there – ” and Aggie wondering if there was a way to make really decent peanut butter pie and Jimmy saying, “Does it ever seem like time is a river?”
Jane could relax in a deck chair and read her mail and not have to even get up for another drink, because Aggie circled with the sangria pitcher.
The others were all in their deck chairs, too, (more had been brought over from Aggie and Gary’s house) and Frieda had her mandolin and was playing “In the Good Old Summertime” so slowly it made Jane’s throat ache.
“Oh, honestly,” Jane said, looking at her bank statement. “I think annual service fees should be outlawed.”
“That’s exactly how I feel about carrot peelers,” Gary said so unexpectedly that Frieda stopped playing for a moment.
They all waited, but Gary said nothing more and after a moment, Frieda began playing again, and Duncan rattled the ice in his glass, and the air was as warm and sweet as cinnamon toast. So why did Jane feel so restless?
Jane and Duncan had just made love; the air in her bedroom was heavy with the scent of their bodies. They lay side by side, not touching because of the heat, yet Jane could swear that every inch of her body was still pressed against him.
“Have you ever thought,” she said into the soft darkness, “that Jimmy is like some sort of oracle?”
“No, I can’t say that I have,” Duncan said. “But I do think Gary would make a good monk.”
“I think there’s more to being a monk than disapproving of handheld mixers,” Jane said. “There’s, like, a whole spiritual element.”
“But that’s what I mean,” Duncan said. “I feel like he’s simplified his life. He’s done away with all the unnecessary stuff, and only left what you need to live. I could learn by his example except I don’t want to.”
Jane didn’t want to, either, and she wasn’t even sure she agreed. Yes, of course, you could live without handheld mixers and garlic bread, but could you live well without them? Jane didn’t think so. To live well, you needed garlic bread, and rinse aid, and People magazine, and shower gel, and scarves, and sex, and love, and everything else Gary disapproved of.
It was not for nothing that Jane taught second grade. She knew just from the way Jimmy was walking – just from the way he scuffed the ground with the toe of his shoe – that something bad had happened. She was out of her deck chair and across the lawn before the others had even looked up from their drinks.
“What is it, Jimmy?” she asked, putting her hand on his arm.
“Nothing,” Jimmy said, and then as though two seconds were all the dishonesty he was capable of, he added, “Except that Raelynn has a boyfriend.”
Jane felt Duncan’s arm around her. The others had come over, too, and they all stood on the edge of Jane’s lawn, like rubberneckers around an accident.
“His name is Mason,” Jimmy said. “And Raelynn said she wanted to introduce me special. She said, ‘Mason, this is Jimmy, the friend I was telling you about. And Jimmy, this is Mason.’ She didn’t say ‘This is my boyfriend, Mason,’ or ‘This is the man I’ve been seeing, Mason,’ or ‘This is the love of my life, Mason.’ She just said Mason, and that was worse.”
Oh, Jane knew all about men who were so superior you didn’t add the identifying phrase. Men you loved so much it would only diminish them to refer to them by those common terms that other people used. Jimmy was right.
“And he wears a cowboy hat without looking like a jerk and he’s a veterinary tech in Petoskey and he only went to Kilwin’s once in his whole life!” Jimmy’s eyes were damp and his voice shook with anger. He was the gentlest person Jane knew, but she had no doubt that he would hit anyone who tried to contradict him at this moment.
“Why don’t you come on in the house, Jim?” Duncan said softly.
“Oh, yes,” Aggie said. “I’ll make biscuits with butter and honey.”
Jimmy shook his head. “My mom’ll be expecting me for dinner,” he said, although apparently his mother hadn’t been expecting him for dinner the past month.
“But it’s almost time for Jeopardy!,” Frieda coaxed. “Come on in and watch with us.”
“Is it really almost time?” Gary asked.
“No thanks,” Jimmy said heavily. “I think I better head on home.”
Jane wanted to hug him, but she didn’t know if Jimmy would accept a hug right now.
“Well,” Duncan said. His voice was thick. “See you in the morning, I guess,”
“Yes, let’s do something tomorrow,” Frieda said. “All go out to breakfast, maybe.”
“Good night everyone,” Jimmy said, and began walking down the block, his hands stuffed in his jean pockets.
If only Jane could tell him it was Opposite Day, or promise him a Popcorn Party, or tell him he could skip the spelling homework, and have him feel better instantly. Second grade didn’t prepare you for heartbreak, she thought bitterly. Nothing prepared you for heartbreak, although high school probably came the closest.
Jane was so upset that night that she and Duncan had to go to the Sportsman and drink vodka-and-cranberry juice spritzers, something that usually cheered her right up. But not tonight – occasional tears ran down Jane’s cheeks and plopped onto the scarred wooden bar top.
One of the very nice things about Duncan was that women’s tears did not make him want to leave the room. Although maybe that was because he’d caused so many women to cry.
“Honey, it’ll be okay,” he said, squeezing Jane’s shoulder. But the TV over the bar was showing Fishin’ with Bob Dillow and Jane knew she had only a very small percentage of Duncan’s attention. “I’ll give Jimmy a promotion and his mother will make sloppy joes and we’ll take him with us when we go to the movies and he’ll be good as new.”
Jane shook her head and blew her nose on a cocktail napkin.
Good as new? How could Duncan not realize that every time you fell in love and it didn’t work out, it scraped out a little piece of you, like scooping out a piece of cantaloupe with a melon baller, and there were only so many times that could happen before the scoop marks started to show? That in really no time at all, your heart could become as clawed and ragged as a hank of hay rope?
But maybe Duncan didn’t realize that because he didn’t love as deeply as other people, as deeply as Jane and Jimmy. And she was becoming just like Duncan, Jane realized. She had forced herself to become like Duncan so that she could stand to be in a relationship with him, when really she was much more like Jimmy – and she’d rather be more like Jimmy. It was better.
“Duncan,” she said urgently. “I can’t keep – ”
Duncan didn’t take his eyes off the fishing program but he gripped her hand so tightly that she stopped speaking. “I know,” he said. His voice was as kind as a condolence card, as gentle as a baby wipe. “I know.”
Katherine Heiny’s fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and presented on Selected Shorts on NPR, and performed off-Broadway. Her collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow, will be published by Knopf in Spring 2015.