Butternut Summer (36 page)

She felt a wave of nausea roll over her,
steamroll
over her, really, so that for one appalling second she was afraid she was going to throw up right onto the floor of Will's truck. But the moment passed, and the nausea eased, though as it receded her scalp prickled with perspiration, and a dizziness descended over her. She put a hand out, reflexively, to brace herself against the truck's door.

“Daisy, seriously, what's wrong?” Will asked, but they were driving into town now, and she knew she could hold it together a little bit longer. Still, she had to tell him something, because if she looked as bad as she felt, she must look pretty awful.

“I think I'm coming down with something,” she said, glancing over at him. “I'm going to go straight to bed. But I'll call you as soon as I wake up, okay?”

“All right,” he said, pulling into his usual parking place a block away from Pearl's. “But let me walk you to your apartment.”

She shook her head. “No, you better not. My mom still thinks I spent the night at Jessica's, remember? I'll call you later. I promise.”

He nodded worriedly and started to reach for her, but Daisy pulled away. She knew she had a fever, and she didn't want him to feel how warm she was.

“I'll call you later,” she said, grabbing her backpack, sliding out of the truck, and slamming the door behind her. Then she walked, at what she hoped was a normal speed, down the block. The pain was worse now, and she wanted to stop, or sit down, but she kept going. If Will was watching her, she didn't want him to be any more worried about her than he already was.

When she got to her building, she bypassed the door to her apartment and went straight to the door to the coffee shop. She'd ask Frankie to make her something to eat, she decided. She'd only pretended to eat something at breakfast with Will that morning. But now she would try to have a cup of tea, or some toast, or anything that might make her feel better.

But as she pushed open the door to Pearl's and walked inside, her stomach lurched, violently, and she changed her mind about eating. Instead, she tried to shut out the sounds of the coffee shop—the drone of voices, and the clink of dishes—both of which seemed somehow too loud this morning. She tried, instead, to focus on Frankie's massive form, rising up from beyond the counter. He was working the grill, and standing beside him, and talking to him, and looking worried was Jessica.
Jessica?
What was she doing here? She was supposed to have today off, and Daisy was supposed to be with her right now, having spent the night at her house.

“Daisy,” Jessica said, catching sight of her. “You're back.”

“I'm back,” Daisy agreed, coming around slowly to the other side of the counter.

“Didn't you get any of my messages?” Jessica asked, looking agitated. “I left you seven voice mails.”

Daisy shook her head. “No, I turned my phone off. I didn't get service out there.”

“Well, your mom called my house last night,” Jessica said, her lower lip trembling, something Daisy knew it did when she was upset. “I was out. But my mom told her you weren't spending the night at our house. I'm sorry, Daisy. I didn't want you to get into trouble.”

“Jessica, it's fine, really,” Daisy said, feeling dizzy again. “It's not your fault. It's mine; I should have told my mom the truth to begin with.”

“I know. But, Daisy? She's really mad,” Jessica said. “She called me this morning and asked if I could come in and help out, and when I got here, your dad was here, too. Your mom
asked
him to come, Daisy. He's upstairs with her right now.”

Wow
, her mom
was
mad, Daisy thought, mad enough to invite her dad over. But then Daisy reminded herself, for the hundredth time, that she was an adult now, and she didn't have to ask her mother's permission to do anything anymore. She was free to come and go as she pleased. But the pain in her side was taking up so much of her energy that she didn't have enough left over to work up any real sense of injustice over the situation.

“Daisy, what's the matter?” Jessica asked then, and even Frankie paused in his pancake flipping long enough to study her.

“You don't look so hot,” he said, frowning.

“I'm fine,” she said, a feverish chill racking her body.

“Well, why don't you sit down at the counter and I'll get a glass of ice water,” he suggested, going to pour one.

But she shook her head. “No, I want to get this over with,” she said, heading for the coffee shop's back door. She went through it, walked down the back hallway, and climbed up the stairs to the apartment, counting each one as she went as a way to counteract her dizziness. When she got to the top of them, she took out her keys, unlocked the front door, and walked, a little unsteadily, into the kitchen. Her parents were both there, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, just as she'd known they would be.

Her mother saw her first, and after relief flitted briefly across her face, her jaw set in a hard line of disapproval, disapproval and disappointment. Her father looked up too, but his expression was different. He gave Daisy a half smile, and an apologetic little shrug, as if to say
sorry about all the fuss
.

Daisy tried to smile back at him, tried to let him know how glad she was he was there, but the pain in her side tore at her again.

“Daisy?” her mother said, alarmed, standing up and moving toward her.

And Daisy's last feeling, before she fainted, was one of relief—because she knew the conversation she and her mother were going to have to have had just been postponed.

A
fter Will dropped Daisy off at Pearl's he drove around for a while, at loose ends. He was worried about her. On the drive home, and even before that, she'd been so quiet, so tense. And so . . . so flushed, each of her pale cheeks stained with a single feverish red splotch. Should he drive back to her apartment and check on her? But no, she'd said she was going to go straight to bed. If he went over now, he'd only wake her up. He'd call her later, he decided, after she'd had time to take a nap.

But he didn't drive back to his apartment yet, maybe because he couldn't stand the thought of being there now, in that depressing little space, after his euphoric night with Daisy.

So he drove back out to Butternut Lake, with no real aim in mind but to pass the time. Once he'd gotten to the beach, though, where he and Daisy had gone that first night, and where picnickers and swimmers were now out in full force, he realized something. There was a place he needed to go, and a person he needed to see. It wouldn't be easy right now, especially so soon after being with Daisy, but it wasn't going to get any easier if he waited. It might even get harder. So with a feeling of resignation that bordered on fatalism, he turned his pickup around in the beach parking lot, and, taking one of the back roads that crisscrossed the area, he headed out to his dad's house.

When he got there, he parked his truck on the road—his dad had blocked his driveway by stringing a barbed-wire fence across it—and got out and started walking. He followed the fence into the woods, until he found a break in it. Then, being careful not to snag his clothes on the barbed wire, he slipped through it and worked his way back to the overgrown driveway. He walked down it for a quarter of a mile, passing several Private Property, Keep Out, and No Trespassing signs that his father had tacked to tree trunks.

When he rounded the final bend in the driveway, and the house came into view, Will felt the corners of his mouth twitch up in grim humor. His father's obsession with his privacy was totally unwarranted, he thought, looking at his unkempt front yard and decrepit house. Because the truth was, no one in his or her right mind would ever
willingly
come to this place, which begged the question, really, of what Will was doing here now.

He made his way up the barely visible path to the house's front door, stepping over the rusted-out car parts that were scattered around the yard. Will didn't know whom he'd gotten his affinity for car engines from, but it hadn't been his father. He'd always been a lousy mechanic.

Will climbed gingerly up onto the sagging front porch, testing it for stability. It held under his weight, but just barely. When he reached the screen door, he rapped loudly on its frame and called inside.

“Dad? Are you home? It's me, Will.”

Silence. Will listened carefully. He heard the faint hum of talk radio, then footsteps from another room and an angry, incomprehensible mutter.

Will's body stiffened, and he almost,
almost
, left. But he didn't.
Suck it up, Will
, he told himself.
You knew you wouldn't get a warm reception. And you're not here for one either. You're here to say good-bye. So hurry up and get it over with
.

“Dad, I'll just be here for a minute, okay?” he called out. “I won't keep you long.” He watched through the screen door as his father shuffled into view. He came over to the door and peered through it, but he didn't open it.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Will felt a flicker of anger, but he quickly smothered it. He needed to keep his cool. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

“About what?” his father grumbled, still watching Will warily through the screen door.

“Dad, I haven't seen you in three years. Do I really need a reason to want to talk to you?”

Will heard his father sigh. “All right, come in,” he said. He stepped aside and propped the screen door open, just wide enough for Will to angle himself inside the house.

He held his hand out then for his father to shake, but his father had already sidled away.

“I'm not really set up for guests here,” he mumbled, gesturing around the small front room.
That's an understatement
, Will thought, looking around at the shabby, haphazard furnishings.

“That's all right,” Will said, walking over to a rusty-looking lawn chair in the corner and sitting down on it carefully. His dad sat down—slumped down, really—on a nearby couch that had springs breaking through its threadbare slipcover.

“I'd offer you something to drink, but . . .” His father's voice trailed off.
But I don't want you to stay
, Will finished for him silently. He studied his father now. He'd been in his forties when Will was born, so he would be in his sixties now. He looked the same, more or less, as he had the last time Will had seen him. He was a little leaner, a little grayer, a little more grizzled, maybe, but basically unchanged. Now his father narrowed his blue eyes at Will—
mean eyes
, Jason had called them—and rasped uneasily, “What are you here for, Will? Spit it out.”

But Will wasn't ready to tell him yet. Instead, he looked around the little front room, which, even on a summer day, had a chilliness and a mustiness about it that was hard to ignore. Will wondered what it was like in the dead of a northern Minnesota winter, and he barely repressed a shudder.

“Are you doing okay, Dad?” he asked. “Money-wise, I mean?”

“Why do you want to know?” his father asked, immediately suspicious.

“I just wondered if you had enough, you know, for groceries, your utility bill, stuff like that. I mean, you've got your heat on in the winter, don't you?”

“What's it to you?”

“I don't want you to freeze to death, Dad,” Will said bluntly, his patience wearing thin.

“Nobody's freezing to death,” his father said. “In fact, I'm doing just fine,” he added, his chin jutting out with a pride that seemed a little misplaced, given his surroundings.

“That's . . . that's good, Dad. But if you needed money, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?”

“
You
? Why would I tell you if I needed money, Will?”

Will felt his jaw clench involuntarily. “So I could give it to you, Dad.”

“Oh, I see. My son, the big-time mechanic, is making so much money now he has to give it away,” his father said with a humorless laugh.

“That's not it,” Will said, his patience slipping again. “But I've made enough money to put a little aside. And it's yours, if you need it.”

“Well, I don't need it,” his father snapped, his blue eyes suddenly blazing. “I don't need anything. But that doesn't seem to stop people from trying to give me something, does it? Last year, right around this time, someone came from some organization and wanted to know if I needed them to drop off lunch and dinner here every day. Like I was some old goat who couldn't even open a can of beans by himself,” he said, disgustedly. “They said one of my neighbors—I'd like to know which one—told them I was a shut-in. I said, ‘You're not a shut-in if you choose to be a shut-in.' And then I told them to get the hell off of my property and—”

“Yeah, okay, Dad,” Will said, trying to cut him off. But his father wasn't done yet.

“Then, last fall, a nurse comes here. Said she's from the County Health Department. I had my doubts, though. She had some ID card, but it's not hard to make one of those yourself. Anyway, she says she's here to make ‘a home visit.' Wants to do an exam and give me a flu shot.
A flu shot
, Will. I said, if you are still on this porch in ten seconds, I swear to God I will—”

“Okay, Dad, I get it. You don't need help,” Will said, breaking in again. “I'm sorry I asked, all right? You're obviously managing fine on your own.”

Will's father nodded, seemingly satisfied, and Will breathed a sigh of relief. He thought he'd succeeded in heading off his father before they'd gotten to his favorite topic, which was his hatred of everything and anything having to do with the government.

“Look, I came to say good-bye, Dad,” Will said, cutting to the chase. “I'll be leaving soon.”