This Is What I Want Read online

  “It would mean a lot to your father.”

  “Yeah.” Debatable, that contention, but not worth the circular argument that would ensue if he pushed back.

  “It would mean a lot to me, too.”

  “I’m awful busy.”

  “You can bring your friend.”

  “You mean my euphemism?”

  “Hush now.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “At least think about it. Denise and Randy could pick you up in Billings, and you could ride out here with them. Wouldn’t that be nice? Denise says she hasn’t heard from you in an age.”

  Now, Norby looked out the window at the steel-and-glass office towers sliding by. There was no way in hell he’d ride with Denise. Four hours in a car with his estranged sister and her amiable but dumb husband—or probably five or six hours after factoring in pee breaks for his two crumb-factory nephews. No, thanks. When he finally acceded to his mother’s wishes, he lied and told her he’d fly into Bismarck and then make the drive into Grandview. Technically, it would be a shorter drive to do it that way, but he couldn’t reach Bismarck with fewer than two layovers, so between flying time and waiting in airport terminals it would be a horribly longer day. No, he’d go to Billings, rent a car, and if he bumped into his sister and her brood at the Town Pump in Miles City, oh well—he’d be a found-out liar. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  His heart panged for Derek. He shouldn’t have thought of what his mother said, shouldn’t have let Derek back into his thoughts. He’d been doing a good job of playing defense against that lately—better by far than he had the first several days after the breakup, when he locked himself inside the house except to go to work—but Derek and the reason Norby was now shooting down the 880 in a town car were inseparable. If Derek hadn’t said he wasn’t happy and was leaving—over a plate of spaghetti at Original Joe’s, as if it were just another dinnertime topic—Norby probably wouldn’t be dragging himself back to Grandview, back to the past, back to the place where he’d taken Derek three years earlier so he could at last be honest with his family. What a fiasco that had been. The old man had looked at Derek kind of quizzically upon meeting him, as if trying to make sense of his twenty-five-year-old son bringing home a guy from the office and whiffing on the obvious, and Norby had choked on what he’d intended to say. He’d put it off until dinner that first night, when he took Derek’s hand at the table. The old man stared for an uncomfortable few seconds and then asked for the mashed potatoes. Norby’s mother stood up and served everyone more salad. Denise, thick with child, snickered audibly. And no one said anything more about it, ever. Derek offered a handshake to Norby’s dad at the end of the visit, and the old man accepted and then wiped his hand on his Wranglers.

  From the gate, Norby called the house. Ten in the morning in California, eleven back home: the old man would be gone. All the better.

  “Ten-hour flight,” Norby told his mother, fudging the timeline. “I think I’ll just spend the night in Bismarck and then drive up tomorrow. Unless you want me to—”

  “No,” she said. “That’ll be fine. You don’t need to be driving here that late. Besides, your father needs his sleep, and he doesn’t like to leave the house unlocked anymore.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Oil-field trash,” she said, the words expectorant. “Scum.”

  “That’s pretty harsh, Mom.”

  “Well, it’s accurate.”

  “OK.”

  “He’s glad you’re coming,” she said, suddenly sounding chipper.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He is.”

  “OK.”

  “He’s a particular man, Samuel. Like you, really. You ought to be able to see that.”

  He closed his eyes and winced. “No, no, I don’t see that.” And don’t put his name on me.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said. It was her way, the short-circuiting of something that threatened emotion or settling of old disputes. Stiffen the upper lip and move on. Straight out of the playbook.

  “OK, Mom.”

  Norby settled into his aisle seat, on the wing as he preferred. The airline fascist at the gate had made him check his duffel bag planeside, which cost him the new Raleigh Ridgeley novel he was slowly penetrating. He thumbed an in-flight magazine and waited for the pushback.

  He glanced at his seatmate, readying a smile in return if one came his way. Nothing. Just as well. Smiles lead to talking and talking leads nowhere good. He remembered how Derek would fend off a talker on a plane by pulling a porn mag out of his backpack and reading it openly. Oh, your kid goes to Santa Clara? That’s fine. Really fine. Here are two guys fucking. You want to talk about that? No? I didn’t think so.

  He shook his head, wiping away thoughts of Derek a second time, and tuned in to the last of the captain’s preflight message. He buckled his seat belt. “We know you have your choice of airlines when you travel to hell,” Norby said under his breath. “Thank you for choosing United.”

  His seatmate looked over. Norby fumbled a smile.

  The plane pushed back from the gate.

  PATRICIA

  The phone had been ringing all morning, threatening to compromise the assembly line of strawberry-rhubarb pies Patricia Kelvig was running through her kitchen. She’d had to chase Samuel off the phone faster than she wanted, though it was probably for the better. The topic she’d tried to broach—the one she always poked at in some way—could blow up on her if she pressed too much. He was at the gate in California, and that was good enough for now. It meant he was coming. Of course, she had no guarantee that he wouldn’t get to Phoenix or Minneapolis and buy a one-way ticket back. He’d done that before. She would wait, and worry, and hope for the best, and she wouldn’t say anything to her husband until she was sure.

  Her thoughts bounced again to that morning, Sam sitting at the edge of the bed, pulling on his boots. “I sent him an e-mail about it,” he’d said. “Shouldn’t have had to, though. It’s his ten-year reunion. Wouldn’t be right for the class president not to show up, but I haven’t heard back. You?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s a mystery, dear.”

  She’d watched in the mirror as his face scrunched up at that, as he tried to figure out if she was mocking him or agreeing with him. She had no intent either way. She’d just come to learn a few things in thirty-two years as Mrs. Sam Kelvig, and this was one of them. They came at problems from different directions, and their son was definitely a problem, or at least a mystery, as she’d said. She’d found that amid uncertainty it was better to offer up as little information as possible and do her best work behind the scenes.

  The phone rang. Patricia whisked two pies out of the oven and onto the cooling racks, then slipped two more into the heat. Two more rings sounded before she could pick up. The barking from the other end of the line commenced, and Patricia fended off the charge.

  “Yes, Maris.”

  “Yes, I’m on it.”

  “Yes, twelve pies.”

  “Yes, I’ll have them there by five thirty.”

  “Yes, I’ll remember.”

  “Good-bye, Maris.”

  She knew she could expect at least two more phone calls like that before tomorrow. Maris Westfall, the self-appointed doyenne of the Jamboree Friday-night supper at Clancy Park, had a management style that leaned toward hectoring. And yet every year, Patricia baked a dozen perfect pies, same as Marlene Wolters made five pounds of scalloped-potato casserole, Nancy Drucker turned out four huge bowls of garden salad, and Maris—or, rather, poor henpecked Jim Westfall—roasted a few pigs. The supper was the start of all the Jamboree festivities. Everybody in town came to eat, and then a goodly number of them bellied up downtown as the band began to play. The decent people, Patricia suspected, went home and waited for the drunken n
ight to blow over. Sam liked to stomp around as if he were the grand marshal of this deal, but Patricia knew better. Without the Friday supper, the rest would fall apart. It gave her half a mind to turn off the oven and take a long drive to somewhere else. Let Maris deal with that.

  Again, the phone.

  “Maris—”

  “Who’s Maris?”

  Patricia felt her cheeks flush.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Who’s Maris?”

  “Raleigh, you know darn well who Maris Westfall is.”

  A chuckle came back at her. “She’s worried about the pies?”

  Patricia leaned against the counter and smiled. “Earlier than ever. Will you be here in time?”

  “Wouldn’t miss your strawberry-rhubarb. Or you.”

  Her cheeks went red again at the easy flattery. “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Billings. Just got in from Scottsdale last night.”

  There was more—lord, how Raleigh Ridgeley could go on about his travels and his houses in Arizona and Montana—but Patricia caught only snippets. She was lost now, stuck thirty-six years earlier, when the thirteen Grandview class of ’79 graduates were spilling out into the waiting world. Could anyone have known then what Raleigh Ridgeley would become? Or what Sam Kelvig would become? Not Patricia. She might have chosen differently. Or, rather, she might have wished she had a choice. In her memories, Raleigh was the nice-enough kid who didn’t fit in anywhere, and she’d taken pity on his obvious enchantment with her, unaware of his upside. Sam, on the other hand, was the popular boy and solid citizen and the owner of her heart when she cast it.

  “I had to get a motel room in Glendive,” Raleigh said. “Can you believe that?”

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the kitchen window, goofy smile and all, and then hurtled back into the moment. “Glendive? That’s fifty miles away,” she said.

  “Sixty-three,” he corrected. “Everything’s full up in Sidney. The oil fields, they say. I had no idea.”

  “It’s terrible.”

  “Not if you own a motel.”

  She laughed. “OK, for everybody else. Did you know dogs are disappearing?”

  “Dogs. Why?”

  “They don’t know. Sam thinks they’re being stolen and used as bait.”

  “Dog fighting?”

  “That’s what Sam thinks. Mina Pollard lost her Chihuahua. Right out of her backyard, they snatched it.”

  “Shit.”

  “It’s terrible,” she reiterated.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing you.” He said it quickly, and she picked up on that. The nervous way he jammed it in there. She spun herself in a half circle at the sink, the phone cord draping her hips.

  “It’ll be good to see you, too.”

  “How is Sam?”

  She’d been twirling her brown-gray hair but stopped. “You know. The same. He’s making his rounds.”

  A pause moved into the conversation. She waited.

  “I’d like to talk to him about what’s going on up there,” Raleigh said at last. “You, too. Maybe it’s something I need to write about.”

  “Well, you know Sam. He’ll talk to anybody.”

  “What about you?”

  She smiled again. The tingle. The suggestion of a recovered youth.

  “I’ll talk.”

  “Good. See you soon.”

  “Bye, Raleigh.”

  After she hung up, she fairly flitted back to her duty. Twenty minutes more on the cooking pies. She started to fill two more shells as she waited them out.

  Her thoughts now lay beyond the Friday-night feed, beyond the downtown bash, beyond the Saturday parade and the games and the blowout Saturday-night party. She wished it all away for Sunday morning, Clancy Park, the Raleigh Ridgeley book club under the bandstand. Every year he came home, and every year she and her friends took a swim in his vast intellect, like the grad-school kids in workshops in Brooklyn and San Francisco, only the Grandview ladies didn’t have to pony up for it, because Raleigh Ridgeley was from here and never forgot it. She’d read and loved all five of his books, none more than the first, The Biggest Space. That one was like peeling back the lid on home and showing what was really inside, the posturing and the politics of a small community and the subtle ways in which people were anointed or undermined. Sam hated the book, but it’s like Raleigh told her once: Sam was invested in the myth of the place, not the truth, and he was among the anointed. You couldn’t blame him, really, Raleigh had said. Imagine all the things Big Herschel must have pounded into his head. All the false platitudes.

  She couldn’t wait for Sunday. This year, they’d be talking about Raleigh’s new book, Squalid Love. She’d read it, she loved it, but she wasn’t sure she understood it entirely. The inscripted copy she kept on her nightstand, which she’d driven all the way to Billings to receive from Raleigh personally, said: For Patricia . . . May you find beauty in this romaunt. With affection, Raleigh. She’d swooned over that.

  She caught herself smiling again and reeled back into the moment. She flicked on the oven light and assessed her work. It wouldn’t be long now.

  THE MAYOR

  John Swarthbeck led the petite woman and the trailing photographer a block north on Main Street, from his office to Kelvig’s Farm and Feed. Every few steps, he tossed a glance over his shoulder to make sure they were still following. When she’d come in, he’d spotted the heels right away: dead giveaway that she was an out-of-towner. Grandview women were many things, wearers of sensible shoes most of all. And damn, these reporters were getting younger all the time, it seemed—this one from the New York Times, no less. She must be a firecracker, he thought.

  He checked on them again. “Just up here,” he said. “Sam Kelvig’s the man you want to talk to.”

  “Mr. Mayor, we want to talk to you, too,” the reporter said, moving in double time to catch Swarthbeck’s long strides.

  “Of course,” he said. “Call me John.”

  Swarthbeck recognized the photographer, Larry Grubbs, from the Billings Herald-Gleaner, probably picking up some extra scratch by freelancing this assignment. He’d had a few laughs with Grubbs over the years, even one drunken night up in Plentywood when they fought their way out of a bar. But that was the ’80s, a long time ago. Everybody who lived that time had a story like that.

  The mayor reached the door and stopped.

  “What did you say your name was, again?”

  She smirked. At least, he thought it was a smirk. By his reckoning, she couldn’t be north of twenty-four years old. Everybody that age seemed to be smirking.

  “Wanda Perkins,” she said. “New York Times.”

  He pulled open the door and bowed deeply. “Well, come on in, Wanda Perkins, New York Times.” Grubbs cracked a grin at that as he passed, which made Swarthbeck feel better.

  Swarthbeck cupped his hands around his mouth. “Where’s Kelvig?”

  “You don’t have to shout.” The interlopers turned and watched as Doreen Smothers came up the aisle toward them. “He’s not here.”

  “Get him,” Swarthbeck said.

  “Actually, I’d just as soon—” the reporter began.

  “New York Times here. Rude to keep this young lady waiting.”

  Doreen held up a walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Where are you, boss?”

  Kelvig’s squelchy voice broke in. “Almost there.”

  “Mayor’s here.”

  “OK.”

  Doreen threw a deadpan look at the mayor. “He’s on his way, your majesty.” She turned and headed back to her post at the cash register.

  “OK, thanks, Doreen,” Swarthbeck said. Then, to Wanda Perkins, he said, “She loves me.”

  The Times reporter filled the empty moments of waiting by slinging questions at Swarthbeck, who
dropped his rump into a stack of bagged dry cement and feigned blitheness.

  “Would you say Grandview is an odd place, Mr. Mayor?”

  Swarthbeck chuckled. “Odd? No. It’s a great place. Odd compared to what?”

  “Compared to what it used to be.”

  “No. It’s always been a great place. We’re a progressive town. No time for sentimentality.”

  “Really? Isn’t this whole weekend about sentimentality?” She kept her head down as she delivered the question. Swarthbeck frowned and remained silent.

  Finally, the reporter looked up from her notebook and reframed the question. “What I mean is, how is it now versus before the oil boom?”

  “Great then, great now, Miss Perkins. We’ve always had booms here, and busts. Booms are better. A lot more people coming through, and I guess you’ve seen that man camp just across the state line, else why would you be here. But jobs and money are coming through, too. Those are good things.”

  Grubbs moved around them as they spoke, snapping images. Swarthbeck had been in this game before, although never with the New York Friggin’ Times. But the Minneapolis paper was no slouch, and it had been here, too, trying to draw a bead on What Oil Means. He could tell from the distances and angles Grubbs worked that this would be a feature piece, maybe even in the Sunday magazine. Wouldn’t that be a kick?

  “What about you?” the reporter asked. “Do you consider yourself an unusual mayor?”

  Swarthbeck leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. The sleeveless plaid shirt he was wearing would give her a good look at his pits and his tattoo-festooned arms. Soak it up, lady.

  “I have my peculiarities. Care to be specific?”

  “He sucks at poker!” Doreen shouted across the store.

  Swarthbeck kept his eyes on the reporter’s. “Sucking at poker ain’t unusual. And I don’t, by the way. At all.”

  “What about keeping a grizzly bear cub on your property?”

  The mayor leaned forward, hands on his knees now, closing the distance. “That would be unusual. Not me, though.”