The View from Mount Joy (38 page)

Tuck Drake’s big meaty hand squeezed Kristi’s shoulder, and then he offered his own white and shiny teeth for the cameras.

“All I’ll say to that, ladies and gentlemen, is amen!”

The next day, on Jenny’s birthday, I asked her to stop at the store.

“I left your present there,” I said. “In my office.”

“Oh, Joe, can’t we pick it up after we eat? I don’t want to lose our reservations.”

“We’ll dash in and dash out.”

“We?” she said. “I’ll wait outside. It’ll make you hurry more.”

My mind whirred. “Well,” I said, “I’ll need your help to carry the present.”

“Can’t you get someone in the store to help you?” she asked, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she smiled. “Oh, Joe, the present you’re giving me doesn’t happen to be a musical instrument, does it?”

I smiled enigmatically. She had mentioned recently that it might be fun to learn the cello, but I had paid no attention to it; she often said it would be fun to play an instrument other than her own.

She pulled into the lot. There were some cars parked there, but that wasn’t unusual, as the store was still supposed to be open for another hour. To allay any suspicions a full parking lot might cause, we had arranged car pools and taxi rides for our friends and customers.

When we entered the store, Eileen looked up from her register and waved. This was our signal that Stan, standing behind a bakery display, saw, and he in turn waved to Ben, who was sitting up in my office with the lights off. His job was to send Conor down to the basement and tell everyone we had arrived.

“Okay,” said Jenny, rushing by Banana Square. “Let’s go get my present!”

“Hold on,” I said, pulling her toward me. I kissed her. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, honey, it is.” She pushed herself away from me. “Come on, let’s hurry.”

“Look at these,” I said, picking up a piece of fruit from a display. “Coconuts. Who’d ever think people would want to buy real coconuts—but they do. I mean, they taste nothing like the sweetened stuff in bags.”

“Joe, what do I care about coconuts? Now come on, let’s—”

“Surprise!”

Jenny stood frozen, staring at the flood of people that streamed up the aisles. It was only when Conor and Ben and Flora cut through the crowd and raced up to her that she seemed to realize what was going on. She covered her mouth with her hands and then opened her arms wide to let her children in.

It was a great party. Joe and Sons wowed the crowd with our electric-guitar version of “Happy Birthday.” Jenny cried when “All Busy Mothers” played, and cried again when Flora accompanied Nick as he sang the song he wrote for his mother-in-law at the Darva Pratt Performance Center. Contests were held and all the answers had something to do with Jenny, and all the prizes were new Belgian chocolates that Flora had discovered on a buying trip.

When the caterers started circulating among the crowd with their trays, I stole up into my office. Ben had left on the radio and I sat in the dark, listening to the news program that was documenting Kristi’s career.

“After listening to that particular broadcast of
On the Air with God,
Kristi, I’d be interested in knowing how you would plan to govern a country made up of many different religions—and nonreligions for that matter.”

“First of all, it would be my husband, Tuck Drake, who as president would be governing, and second of all—”

I switched off the radio, which, along with the television, had been playing all Kristi all the time.

“Sorry, Kristi,” I said out loud, “but you’re not allowed to intrude upon this particular party. Or any future party, for that matter.”

I took my chair and sat in the dark, looking out the window.

Seeing Ben flirting with one of the new cashiers, I could see Kirk at his age, doing the same thing with the college girls in their miniskirts. I saw my aunt Beth, laughing and talking with Linda and Swanny Swanson, and thought of how she had made the suggestion, all those years ago, that I go put in an application at Haugland Foods. I saw Len kiss my mother as Shelly Erickson fetched a plate for old Mrs. Brady. I saw Clarence Selwin in conference with Millie Purcell and remembered when he had first met Martha, his wife-to-be, while reciting Walt Whitman at Banana Square.

I saw Stan, my loyal assistant manager, sweeping up a spill, and thought of Ed and all he had given his own assistant manager.

I saw the newlyweds, Flora and Nick, showing their wedding rings to Eileen, the queen of cashiers. I saw Conor in the candy aisle, helping himself and another boy to less sophisticated chocolate than the Belgian stuff.

I looked in the bakery section.

“Joe?” whispered Jenny, coming toward me in the dark. She sat on my lap and the swivel chair creaked as it swayed. She put a hand to my face. “Why are you crying, honey?”

“Was I?” I said, feeling like an idiot as I sniffed and wiped my eyes with my fingers.

Jenny kissed me.

“It’s the best birthday I ever had.”

I nodded and we both sat for a moment, looking out the window.

“I love the view from up here,” said Jenny. “Look, Conor’s filling his pockets with candy!”

“Our modern-day Mr. Snowbeck,” I said of our departed Twinkies shoplifter. I cleared my throat. “Do you know what else I was looking at?”

Jenny shook her head.

“I was looking at the bakery section, remembering the day you came in and you won the apple pie.”

“You rigged the contest.”

“Damn straight.”

“I’m sure glad.” She straightened her back. “Hey, Nick’s getting back on the stage.”

“We should go down and hear him,” I said, but neither one of us moved.

The party, with its laughs and music and chatter, continued down below us, but for me, the party was holding my fifty-year-old wife in my arms, breathing in the smell of her fifty-year-old hair, her fifty-year-old skin.

“Joe,” she said, “you’re crying again.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s just—well, I never could have imagined…all this. All this
life.
Everything I see out this window.” She sat quietly in my arms, nodding as I added, “Our view from Mount Joy.”

About the Author

L
ORNA
L
ANDVIK
is the bestselling author of
Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Your Oasis on Flame Lake, The Tall Pine Polka, Welcome to the Great Mysterious, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons,
and
Oh My Stars.
Married and the mother of two daughters, she is also an actor, playwright, and dog park attendee with the handsome Julio.

Also by Lorna Landvik

Oh My Stars

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Welcome to the Great Mysterious

The Tall Pine Polka

Your Oasis on Flame Lake

Patty Jane’s House of Curl

The View from Mount Joy
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Lorna Landvik

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50228-5

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