The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (10 page)

Ben looks unimpressed. “And then ten years went by…”

“Well, yes. It was a junk drawer. Full of random things I never look at. I never would have looked at this, either, but then I got—I
decided
to move”—I can't bear to tell him about the eviction—“and I found it while I was packing. That was only two days ago. I came as soon as I found out where you were.”

“And you did that how, exactly?”

“I told you, I googled you.”

“I spend a lot of money on Reputation Defender. Google should have been a dead end.”

I make a face. “Maybe you should ask for your money back. I googled you plus MIT and found your high school affiliation. I called a bar in the same town owned by a guy named Hutch. He gave me the name of the school. It wasn't exactly CSI.”

“So you invaded my privacy and the privacy of my family.”

My mouth falls open. What is this guy's problem? I stare him down. “You're being kind of a dick about this. The whole thing is an innocent mistake. One I'm trying to fix.”

“Trying to fix it would be sending your paperwork to a clerk of court in Vegas. Letting them worry about contacting me.”

I stand in dumb silence. “I guess I could have done that, yes. I was trying to give you a heads-up. Reach out and apologize in person. I thought—”

“You probably thought you were winning the lottery,” he says, crossing to that card table, where a laptop is open and a stack of paper sits nearby. “When you looked me up.”

“What do you—”

“That was my lawyer on the phone.” He helps himself to a folding chair but doesn't offer me one. I have been standing this entire time, I realize. He sits, leaning back, legs open wide, arms folded, in that awful masculine power position men seem to learn in high school. “When you came into my classroom this morning I thought, pretty girl, wild night, botched paperwork. No harm, no foul. I was just relieved not to have fathered a child. But my lawyer just gave me a much different picture of what I'm up against. You're a sometime painter with virtually no work history. You've just been evicted for past-due rent. You're in credit card debt up to your eyeballs. You find out who I am and think it's your big payday. After all, we've been married all this time. Half of my earnings over the last ten years belong to you now. Is that what you think? Think you will come up here, get me in the sack, and then demand alimony for life? Is that why you consulted with a divorce lawyer one day ago?”

“Consulted—I don't—What are you—How did you—” I'm so mad and disoriented I can't complete a thought. I keep interrupting myself. “I'm not a sometime painter,” I say at last. “Fuck you.”

“Get off your high horse. I know a con job when I see one. And I've seen plenty. My lawyer assures me I owe you nothing. Not one red cent. I don't know what promises your second-class divorce lawyer pal made you, but let me assure you, if you press this issue, I will counter-sue for invasion of privacy and intent to defraud—”

“What the hell?” I interrupt. “What's wrong with you? I'm not trying to steal your precious fortune. Christ. You think anyone in her right mind would want this shithole anyway?” Nice, Lily. But I am hurt, and surprised, and I can't stop myself. “I don't know who you think you are, but let me assure you, I am
more
than happy to walk away from you and never ever, ever, ever speak to you again. Where do I sign?”

Ben Hutchinson, Dot-Com Douchebag, looks taken aback.

I sneer. “Stop looking at me. You're making my skin crawl with your icky greedy grabby suspiciousness. Nice way to go through life, jerkwad. Is everyone out to get you? Steve here just waiting until you turn your back for a second so he can eat all your roast beef?” Steve, sweet innocent Steve, thumps his tail at the mention of roast beef.

Unrepentant, Ben inclines his head toward his so-called front door. “You'll have the paperwork first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Good.”

“I better have a fully signed copy in my hands by sundown tomorrow.”

“You'll have your copy. Oh, and I brought you something. A little souvenir for you. To remember me by.” I reach in my back pocket. Tucked there is a worn beer coaster from that night, something else I found in that stupid kitchen drawer. It's from the all-night Beer ‘n Eggs joint next to the all-night wedding chapel next to the all-night tattoo parlor next to the all-night dry cleaners. It's written on in a fine-tipped Sharpie, the kind of pen I always keep in my sketchbook, which I always keep in my purse, even now. The handwriting is blocky and masculine. Ben's.

It reads:

Prenuptial agreement for Ben Hutchinson and Lily
Something
Stewart

1.1.1. What's mine is mine, what's yours is yours.

1.1.2. That's the entire prenup.

1.1.3. This is legal because we the undersigned say so.

And then there are our signatures, and the date, scribbled drunkenly at the bottom of the coaster. It had made me laugh at the time. Seemed like such a funny joke. I had suggested the so-called prenup in the first place, reminding Ben that one day I was going to be a famous artist and he wasn't getting a piece of it.

What a joke.

What an asshole. I throw the coaster on the ground as I'm yanking my coat off its nail, rushing out the front door and into the cold before I can get it slipped over my slumping shoulders. My parting words surely would make no sense to anyone but me, but I say them anyway. “I should have just gotten a tattoo.”

And then I'm gone.

 

Five

 

Though I want to be Renee, to be tough and righteous and unapologetic all the time, I am not. I cry in the car on the drive back to town. And it takes forever, because I get lost, and there is too much darkness, and too much snow. I hate this godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere. I hate that I came here, that I spent my last dime on gas and lodging and these stupid mittens that are impossible to do anything in. Why did I buy these mittens?

The next morning comes hard and bright. I stay in my bed past breakfast and when I come down, Colleen is nowhere to be found. Dinner last night was regret and a banana from the fruit bowl on the dining table, so I'll have to visit the café for some sustenance. In the North Woods, I am learning, a bright piercingly sunny day in winter means bone-chilling cold, and today is very sunny. I practically run across the street, ignore the sneers of the angsty teen barista-with-no-espresso-maker, and huddle in a corner as far from the door as possible, clutching my bottomless coffee like it is a firstborn child.

Ten minutes in, I see that there is no one else in the shop, and so I carry one of the airpots back to my table. Now I don't have to get up for the thirty refills I'm anticipating needing before I can muster the will to pack my bags, check out of the B&B, and supplicate my stepbrother for mercy.

The girl behind the counter comes over twenty minutes in. I think she's going to want the airpot back, but instead I see that she is holding something. A scone. Lemon. My absolute favorite.

“Here,” she says. “You look like shit.”

I should take offense but I doubt she's wrong, and I want that scone. “Thank you. How much?” I've got about six dollars and fifty cents left in cash. The card I am using to settle my bill today at the B&B is off limits, and the others are maxed out, so it's cash only until I get to my brother's.

“It's a pity scone,” she says. “The cost is, you have to hear me say, ‘I told you so.'”

I sigh. “You were so right. He's a total asshole.”

The plate with the scone, which the barista is still holding, suddenly whooshes out of my grasp. “Hold on now. You take that back. I giveth, I can taketh away.”

Rather than retract my statement, I dart my hand out and take the scone right off the plate before she can pull it farther out of my reach. “How old are you?” I ask her around a delicious mouthful.

“Fifteen,” she says with pride. “I have my learner's permit.”

“Well, I've been driving since before you were born. And in that time I've learned how to spot an asshole when I meet one.” Oh, if only that were true.

“You're wrong,” she says. “You just don't know him as well as I do.”

“And how well is that, exactly?” I ask, suddenly wondering if asshole is the wrong word, and statutory rapist is a better fit.

“Oh, get off it. Not that I don't wish,” she adds wistfully. “He told me I need a boy my own age. But look at them,” she says, gesturing out the huge windows to a scene of three teenage boys, who, rather than be caught dead in a hat or proper winter wear, have their jackets open, their bare hands stuffed in their pockets, their shoulders shrugged up high, and their faces set in miserable coldness. “They're morons.”

“Yes, they are. But I'm not sure it gets any better as they age.”

“It has to. Or I'm going to die a virgin.”

I consider this girl. I know her. A misfit in high school but not a true loser, not a victim of bullying or gossip. An unrequited crush on an idolized teacher, a menial job for spending money, the confidence that she knows everything, the satisfying illusion that she doesn't belong. She'll go on to be some sort of silly major at a liberal arts school miles from home. Eighteen more years of unrequited crushes, bad jobs, a few better outfits, and she's me.

“No one's dying at the moment, virgin or otherwise. What's your name?”

“Simone.”

“Simone?” I ask with eyebrows raised. This girl could not be less of a Simone. She's more like a … Gertrude.

“Whatever. Your name is Lily. What does that even mean?” I notice that she is sitting down uninvited, leaving the register unmanned. I can't decide if I want someone to come in and give her something to do or if I actually want her company.

“A lily is a flower,” I say. “That's what it means. Flower. And how do you know my name?”

For this I get only a wry grin. “You're from Chicago,” she says in answer. Again she sounds wistful.

“Yes, and I like it there,” I say. “It's big enough that you can visit for a day without everyone learning your name and life story.”

“Oh, I don't know your life story,” she says. “I only know that you are a landscape painter and you went to art school at Northwestern. You have a brother in the suburbs. You've never been to the North Woods before. You drive an old foreign car with a small dent on the rear passenger side. And you had a date with Mr. Hutchinson last night.”

I blink. “That's about it. Jesus.” I honestly don't remember telling any one person in Minnow Bay all those details. It must be a carefully compiled composite from every interaction I've had since I arrived.

“Don't take it personally. It's not that you're interesting. Just that this town is dull.”

“Um, thanks. But you know, it's actually not so bad here,” I say, though I can't wait to leave. “The restaurants are good, there's some nice people, it's quiet…” And it's a frozen wasteland occupied by horrible Ben Hutchinson.

“Yeah, I'm sure I'm going to super-duper appreciate all that stuff when I'm like, sixty-five. In the meantime can I come live in Chicago with you?”

“No,” I say. And then, to soften the blow, I add, “Chicago is expensive. And big.”

“I don't care if it's expensive. At least there, people will understand the way I dress.”

I look at what she's wearing today—a purple maxi-length sweater dress that I'm pretty sure she knit by herself. Baggy and misshapen and so, so purple. More purple than her hair. It's horrifying. “Well…” I drift off, unable to think of anywhere outside a circus where people will understand the way she dresses. “You could go to college in Chicago. There are lots of good schools.”

“I'm not going to college,” she says quickly. “I'm going to be a professional party planner.”

I look at her for a few moments open-mouthed. Then I see just the hint of a smile. It is the first she's given.

“I believe you're messing with me…” I say.

“I'm messing with you. My parents have a dairy farm. I'm going to be a dairy farmer.”

“Don't you go to college for that?”

“Not if your parents teach you everything.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“Yeah, exactly. Shoot me now.”

“My dad owned a Dairy Dame. Doesn't make me a restauranteur.”

“Dairy Dame is not a restaurant.”

“That's not the point. Though it
is
a restaurant. It's a delicious restaurant that puts gravy on everything. I'm saying, you can do something different if you want to.”

“That's only because your dad isn't an authoritarian dictator.”

I pause for a moment, thinking of letting it go. But because I am warming up to this strange Simone, I tell her, “Actually, my dad was totally like that while we were growing up. Which is probably why I didn't want to go into business with him. The fact that someone as strong-willed as you is even considering going to work for your parents tells me they might not be as bad as you say.”

She gives me an approving nod. “Yeah. They're actually pretty okay.”

“Meaning, they want you to be happy?”

“I guess so.”

“So if you figure out what it is that would make you happy, then they'll probably support you in that.” I think of my mother. The day I told her I wanted to go to art school. Her happy tears that I had found my passion. She hadn't told me yet, about the test results.

“Probably…” she says, but her voice is noncommittal. Like she doesn't quite believe me. Or doesn't quite like me. “Oh. Oh, shit. Go hide behind the counter.”

“What?” I furrow my brows at her. “Why?”