Finally, when decorating the altar at Holy Mother of Sorrows for Easter, removing the dark altar clothes and solemn draperies of Lent and banking the sanctuary with decks of vanilla-colored lilies and pale irises, Jeannie spoke with Janet English, her old school friend, and Betsy Lemon, another member of the Altar Society.
Betsy offered to line up a summer job for Maureen working with the older kids at Toddle Town, the preschool and summer day care. Jeannie didn’t think that Maury had the patience or the strength to run after the babies. But then Janet English suggested that Maury might work at her sister Ruth’s new bakery and craft shop, Crafty Crumpets. The grand opening was the Sunday after Easter.
“What if she spills something on somebody?” Jeannie asked Janet.
“We’ll put her behind the counter making the drinks and getting the bakery goods frosted,” Janet said. “It’ll be good for her hands, and she can sit on a stool when she gets tired.”
So, within weeks, Maury was spending all day Saturday and every other Friday night making quad, half-decaf, extra-tall, part-soy, no-foam gingerbread lattes with an extra cardboard sleeve. What her mother had hoped would help with her hand-eye coordination did even more: It taught Maureen to use memory tricks, such as matching the drinks that the “regulars” ordered to their appearance. For example, the extra-tall, no-foam gingerbread man was extra tall himself. Soon she no longer came home with drink orders scribbled on her forearms like temporary tattoos.
On some Friday nights, there were musicians, whom Maureen loved. That night, Crumpets had what they called a coffeehouse.
Evan and his friends, among others, came in on those nights to watch and flirted mildly with Maureen in her red pants and polo with her red-striped apron. Maureen bit back the urge to ask how much Evan had heard from Danny. All she got were one-line emails, signed with love but telling her that writing more would make it worse because he missed her too much already. There’d been one awkward phone call on the night of his birthday.
Then one night Evan and Slade Dinerson came in with a portable keyboard and a guitar case. It was open mike night; and Evan and Slade came on next to last, before Mrs. Rottier sang some horrible song about vegetables from The Fantasticks. The guys sang a couple of old Woody Guthrie songs, including one about California nights and stars that Maureen loved. And then they played an Ian Tyson song that Judy Collins sang—one Maureen’s mother liked—about a young man who rode the rodeo. She caught herself singing along, “Someday soon, going with him…”
And she remembered how much she loved to sing, and about how silent her months had been since she and Danny had sung along with the radio through the long summer nights with the stars dancing above them like fireflies on strings.
She remembered that there was a boy somewhere riding a horse, and that she still loved him. She was being true to him, too, not that anyone else had broken down the door to ask her out. Someday soon, going with him…
The next time there was an open mike, Maureen shocked Evan by slipping off her apron and joining him and Slade for the old Stevie Nicks song “Landslide.”
“I forgot that Danny told me you had pipes,” Evan said with a really sweet smile. He told her that they ought to be a trio. She could get a couple of black nightgowns and be the Stevie Nicks of Bigelow, Minnesota.
But Maureen reminded him that she was the “coffee” in “coffeehouse” at the Crumpet.
In Sky, Montana, Danny was seeing a lot of sky.
Naturally, as the new kid in a small school, he had been an object of considerable interest to girls after Lindy went her own way. He thought he was ripped from wrestling, but he found out what sore really was working nights and weekends on his uncle’s ranch. More and more, he was trying his best not to think of Lindy or Maureen or girls in general, not in that way. He was trying to be content to hang with groups of kids, and the occasional date he had was casual. One night as he was getting ready to meet a girl his cousin had fixed him up with, a text from Maury popped up on his phone, about singing at some café in town with Slade Dinerson and Ev. Danny wanted to run every mile back to Bigelow. Then he thought that maybe he should grab this girl he was seeing tonight and send pictures to Maury of them making out.
She sounded so normal and breezy. She was so over him.
How could she be over him?
Danny rode. He cleaned tack and mucked the stalls and fed the freshening heifers. One night, he was with his uncle when twin calves were born—it was a miracle that both survived. That night Danny started to think his cousins had it made. They lived wild and free. Every corner of the ranch looked like some calendar picture, and it was all going to be theirs someday: His uncle had a good job down in Missoula, but he wanted to move his life to Sky forever once he got enough money. Year by year, he bought more land for the heifers. He had other plans, too. He wanted to raise horses, beautiful quarter horses like his big bay stallion, Turk. Pictures of the house that his uncle and aunt were going to build on the south ridge, just under the brow, looked like some massive hotel for skiers.
And a lodge, his uncle said, might come next.
If it did, he might want a guy like Danny around.
Danny started to think that hotel management might be something to study. Music might be just a hobby, like his dad always said. In Sky he got grades like he never got back home—he guessed it was because there were no distractions—and slept hard every night. Some nights when the sky was a riot of stars, he dreamed he might never go back. His cousins’ tales of fly-fishing in the canyons at sunset made him wonder if staying through the summer wouldn’t be so bad. Having his own horse, Soda Pop, to ride and herding the calves up to the spring pasture sure beat hauling sod for his dad and sucking up to the richies in The Corners while he planted their annuals and pulled their weeds. He missed his mom and Den and Dave; but he figured he would be leaving home in another year or so anyway, and this was what college would be like. He told his parents he’d like to spend the summer in Sky. To his surprise—he knew his dad relied on him to work at the business–they agreed.
Finally, it was June. The term ended in Montana before it did in Minnesota. It was time to go home to see his senior teammates graduate.
He’d see Maureen.
He’d be home for three full weeks.
For two days before he left Sky, Danny couldn’t sleep. He played out in his mind what he’d say when he saw her. He’d play it cool. He’d pick her up and swing her around. He’d call when he knew she was at school and leave a message.
But when Danny got home, even his parents weren’t there. His brother picked him up from the airport, and he found a note saying that they couldn’t wait to see him. There were sandwiches and cake in the refrigerator; but his aunt Laura, his dad’s sister, had picked this Saturday of all days to up and marry the guy she’d been dating for years. She’d given them exactly one day’s notice. Even Dave Jr. and Den weren’t invited. His parents would be home by nine at the latest. They were so sorry…blah blah.
Danny was in the house, alone.
Could he bring Maureen here?
Why did he think she’d even want to come?
He could barely remember her cell number, but he pushed the buttons. It went right over to voice mail.
Danny tried to lie down on his own soft bed. It felt like a veritable cloud after the thin mattress in the bunkhouse, but it might have been a gravel road for how comfortable he could get. Danny tossed and turned and finally gave up on a nap. He got in his car, which Den had started religiously every week while Danny was away, and drove past the O’Malleys’; but no one was home. He saw the curtains twitch at the Flannerys’; but everything was quiet over there, too. He drove on to the school and walked in through the gym entrance. Decorations were already up for graduation. But he could hear the cheerleaders in the side gym.
It would be fun to surprise Brit and Molly.
When he walked in, though, it was Maureen he saw, Maureen without her cane, clapping out the rhythms of
“Hey, hey, hey, talk that ball away. Go, go, go, Bulldogs from Bigelow…” Her hair was longer, pulled back in a band; and she was wearing khaki shorts and a couple of those strappy things girls wore one over the other. She’d put on weight. She looked beautiful, already cocoa dipped by the sun. Danny didn’t recognize the girls learning the cheer until he spotted the youngest Hillier girl. These must be eighth graders, getting ready to try out for junior varsity.
He thought of Bridget at the top of a cheer pyramid, suspended high on the Smith sisters’ shoulders, her beautiful leg extended alongside her head, her toe a perfect point. For a moment his head shimmered with all he had lost. In the vision, the faces of the two girls he loved slid back and forth, morphing into and out of each other—Bridget and Maureen, Maureen and Bridget.
But this was now. This was his Maureen.
What was Maureen doing?
“Come on now!” she told the younger girls. “Let’s practice some jumps! What’s more important? Enthusiasm or perfection?”
“Enthusiasm!” the little girls called. They looked so very little and young.
“That’s right!” Maureen called. “It’s spirit! It’s the big give-it-all-you’ve-got! Perfection comes after you do something a hundred times. Let’s start with some stretches. Down for three sets of leg lifts in a straddle. Hands behind you on the floor. Now lift, lift, lift! Yeah, I know it hurts! Point your toes, Corey! That’s it. Stretch! Legs straight! You can’t throw a jump if you’re going to pull a muscle…. I used to do it all the time.”
Moments passed before each of the girls, one by one, noticed him and, self-consciously, stopped what they were doing. Maureen whirled.
Then she was in his arms and his mouth was on her mouth; and for both of them, it was like a cold drink after a long hike.
Hours later, as they left Danny’s darkened house, after he’d scribbled a note for his parents telling them he was going out with some friends for a pizza, she put her hand on his arm.
“I’ve had a good time since you were gone,” she said. “I worked hard.”
Danny could still smell her cologne, the Irish cologne he had given her before he left, on his skin. He stepped back.
“I…I had a good time, too. Sky is great. My uncle’s great,” he said.
“But this is what I want to tell you. I don’t care if you love me,” she said. “I love you. And if it’s not going to last, that doesn’t mean I don’t love you now.”
Danny could breathe again. He said, “I was going to say it if you didn’t.”
And they had a whole week until his dad found out that he was with Maury again.
Danny had to admit to Maureen that he’d agreed to go back to Montana for the summer.
“How could you?” she asked him, through tears.
“I didn’t know I’d feel the same,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d feel the same, to tell you the truth.”
“Can’t you get out of it?”
Danny argued with his father. He offered to work six days instead of his usual four at Green with Envy.
His dad was unmoved. “It was your idea, son,” he said. “Your uncle created a job for you. That’s how it is.”
Danny had no arguments left. He held Maureen close the following night, as they lay on a blanket at the ski lodge.
“I can’t ask you to wait all summer,” he said. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to.”
“And you’ll want me to understand if you don’t,” Maury said bitterly.
“I love you, Maury,” Danny said.
“I love you, but what does that mean?” she answered.
When Danny left the second time, Maureen thought that if she didn’t give him up—really give him up, with all her heart—she would go out of her mind.
And so she wrote him a letter.
Dear Danny,
If someone can break up with someone by saying she loves him too much to stay together, that’s what I’m doing. I care too much about you to make you wait for me, or for me to wait for you. If I do, it’s going to be all I think about. It’s going to be no life for me except wondering when the next time you’ll call me will be, or if they’ll ever let you come home. You’re going to college out west after next year anyhow. We’d be apart no matter what we felt. And so, I’m going to tell you that it’s never going to be over in my heart, but it has to be over for now. You’ll be my friend. You’ll be my first love. I’ll never forget. But all our loving each other has brought you is trouble. And I have to face school and the world on my own, without Danny Carmody to stick up for me. When you come back, I don’t know how you’ll feel, or how I will. But you’ll always be my Danny.
Love,
Maureen
She waited until she was sure, and then sent it.
June slipped away. Maureen checked the mail every day, and no answer came. Then she began to count the days until school began.
two again
To be safe, Maureen took the bus to school the last week in August.
She felt like a complete fool, with middle-schoolers whacking one another on the head with their binders and mooshing their faces flat against the back windows. Tucking in the ear buds of her iPod—purchased with her earnings at the Crumpet over the summer—she stretched out her legs and tried to doze. Inevitably, she thought of Danny, although she tried to pay attention to the lyrics of the songs.
Danny had come home two weeks before. He didn’t call the first day. The next day he did, and was eager to see her. But when they’d finally hugged, they both felt awkward and broke away. They ended up going to a funny movie and studying each other secretly. The letter Maureen had written back in June sat between them like an open question neither of them wanted to answer.
Danny didn’t know if she wanted him back, or if he wanted to go through what getting back with her would mean.
Maury didn’t know if she wanted him back for nine months, just to lose him later.
Danny was taller and leaner and tanned. But he also had a changed spirit. He seemed to approach things in general more casually, as if content to let life unfold slowly.
Maureen looked different too. And the change was more than physical. Maureen’s mother once told her that a month in the life of a teenager is a year in the life of an adult. It was true.
She’d spent the summer serving lattes and muffins at the Crumpet and occasionally visiting the lake cabin up north that Molly’s parents owned, flirting with boys at the music camp across the bay. She’d swum every day and had felt herself getting stronger and more coordinated. The pool sessions had definitely made a big difference; and she had written Pat to tell him so and to thank him. She had made tapes of herself talking and played them back, and learned that if she simply spoke more slowly, she didn’t have so much trouble with the words. She’d let her hair grow. With her mother, she’d sewn new clothes that didn’t scream “handmade.”
Danny had spent the same time chasing calves and sleeping in a barnlike bunkhouse with his two cousins and the rest of the men at his uncle’s hobby ranch. After several days of soaking his legs in a stream because of the sores he’d gotten sitting five hours at a stretch in a saddle, he got used to riding and loved it. He drank beer and smoked cigars with the cowboys, who came from Missouri and New England and Mexico. After he had gotten Maureen’s letter, Danny had nearly fallen for a dark-haired girl—Marianna, the daughter of the rancher down the road. She was strong and curvy, as strapping as Maureen was tiny, and rode up to the house on her big Morgan, never bothering with a saddle. They had come close to it one night, high up in a mountain meadow.
But Danny had drawn back, again thinking that he and Maureen deserved another chance.
And anyhow, if he got a scholarship to Missoula, Marianna would still be there.
Danny had sent Maury one card.
She had sent him a card, too—a funny one—for his birthday.
When he came home, he knew he was changed; and though Bigelow was not, Maureen seemed changed
, too.
She didn’t use her cane anymore, except for long walks. And her arms were buff with muscle, her shoulders wider from daily lap swimming.
She was no longer Danny’s broken angel.
He was no longer her devoted protector and constant companion.
And so they circled each other for the early weeks of school.
Their first dates were with groups of friends, and Maureen apparently was happy with that. Keeping it light seemed to be what she wanted. That was fine with him…well, actually it wasn’t, but Danny was too proud to say.
October came, and homecoming.
They went together, but in a group. Danny brought Maureen flowers; but after a huge pizza meal, they didn’t pair off to be alone. Maureen went home with Molly for a sleepover.
Neither brought up the fact that they’d done no more than kiss since school started.
Although Danny wanted to be with her—no candle had winked out, in his mind or his belly—he wasn’t sure he could handle such an intense bond. He wasn’t sure anymore what he meant by “love.” The more he thought about it, that past closeness seemed like something they had needed then but not something they could easily resume now.
And Maureen was so busy it wouldn’t have been possible to spend much time together anyway.
She was taking piano, and now voice lessons twice a week, and working Saturdays at the Crumpet, so their times together were few. Ev had dated Britney Broussard for about two weeks, until he realized that if they hung out, he would never be allowed to speak a full sentence again. So he went back to being the all-around flirt. Molly had been with Brandon Hillier since the middle of the summer. Maureen and Danny were absorbed into the usual rumble-tumble of a loud gang of couple-friends—no longer the intense and isolated pair they were before. Part of it was due to Maureen’s recovery. Now she could go easily with Danny to watch Evan play fall soccer, and to the homecoming bonfire. With what probably had been a massive effort on her part, she’d overcome her naturally shy nature and the compound effects of her brain injury. Once withdrawn and clinging to his arm, she now drifted among the others, joking and teasing. No one in their group brought up the accident. No one treated her as if she were breakable. He noticed that she’d grown adept at turning attention away from that.