30. Nellie
THIRTY
NELLIE
Tanner—thirty-six, father of two, estranged from his wife, blond hair, hazel-eyed—McIntyre immediately plants himself beside me at the picnic table in Midge’s yard. His plate is piled high with two burgers and a sausage on a bun, potato and macaroni salad, and three kinds of pickled vegetables. He’s already chewing when his ass hits the bench.
“You’re gonna love staying here,” he sputters around a mouthful of something brown.
“Is it the company that will win me over?” I ask, biting into a carrot stick.
He takes a swig from his beer, swallows, and gives me a big smile. “Oh, it’s definitely the company.” He continues to watch me while we eat, as if I’ve given off some vibe that having my every move watched is a turn-on. For the record, it is not. At least not when it’s Tanner’s eyes on me.
As subtly as I can manage, I look around the yard trying to pinpoint where Teddy is. It takes me no time to spot him, even through the deer fencing. He’s slowly walking through the garden with Florence, Midge’s oldest granddaughter. I see her gesturing to different plants and Teddy’s appropriately enthusiastic response. I don’t need to know his background to know he’s in his element out there. He looks like he was meant to be out there with the growing things.
“My wild girl,” Midge says fondly, sitting down across from us. “She took to the garden like a duck to water. It’s nice of him to indulge her.”
“Oh, I guarantee it’s not a hardship for him. Teddy is a nature guy.”
I watch Midge study the pair for a while longer before she nods. “I see it.”
“He doesn’t look like a hippie,” Tanner scoffs.
“He’s not,” I say, a tad defensively. “He just has a deep respect for the environment. Teddy has a degree in Environmental Science and spent years traveling the world working as an arborist.”
“You together?” Tanner asks, his eyes narrowing.
I answer “No” at the same time Midge says “Yes.”
I see a warning in Midge’s eyes and settle on, “It’s complicated.”
He holds his beer out to me, and I tap it with my can of root beer. “Been there. So, uh, before, you weren’t flirting back?”
I mean, I kind of was but not really in a I-hope-this-goes-somewhere kind of way, which I realize now seems cruel. “No?” it comes out like a question, and I hope he drops it.
“Cool, cool, good to know.” The whole cocky guy aura Tanner has been glowing with fades, and he looks almost relieved.
“Hey Dad?” Devon says, sitting down beside Tanner.
“What’s up, bud?”
“Catelyn said Mom’s getting us at the end of the summer, is that true?”
Tanner looks over at Midge. “Mom? ”
Midge shrugs. “News to me, kid.”
“Can you go find your sister and you two can meet me inside in a few minutes?”
Devon nods, and Tanner begins cleaning up his half-eaten dinner, his appetite seemingly snuffed out by talk of his wife. “If I don’t see you before you folks head out, thanks for doing this library thing. The town needed some excitement.” He smiles sadly at me before making his way into the house.
“He’s not a terrible guy,” Midge says, her eyes on her son. “He’s just unsure of himself, and because of that, he can be a bit too forward, a bit too much for some. I think he took my criticisms about him not fighting for his wife as advice to jump into every possible new relationship with gusto.”
“Overcorrection.” I nod and look back toward the garden to see Teddy walking up the slope towards us. “I know what that’s like.”
“That garden is spectacular,” Teddy gushes, sitting down where Tanner had just been, although he leaves more space between us than Tanner had.
Midge’s eyes seem to register the distance, but her attention is quickly pulled to her left as Florence sits down. “It wasn’t until this one,” she says, wrapping her arm around her granddaughter’s body and pulling her in. “I have no idea where she got her green thumb from, but we sure are glad she’s willing to share it with us.”
“I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to the garden when I go away to school,” Florence frets from behind a curtain of hair. She’s certainly not as comfortable outside of the garden.
“What are you going to school for?” I ask, leaning into Teddy’s heat.
“Plant science, and then I want to come back up here and use that to create more sustainable growing habits for a more northern climate. ”
I’m impressed. I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t a group of kids so driven. Although, with Midge leading the way, it’s not all that surprising. “That’s really interesting,” I say and hope she knows I’m being serious.
“That’s only the second nerdiest major at this table.” Teddy bumps my arm.
“By a long shot,” I agree.
Midge bats us away when we try to help clean, and Teddy and I are left alone at the table in the fading light.
“I thought Bennett’s was peaceful, but this place…It’s on a whole other level.” Teddy sighs, tipping his head back and breathing deeply.
I watch as his chest inflates and deflates and fight the urge to lay my head on it. “I’m sure the dogs have something to do with it.” I look under the table to where Kevin is sprawled on his side and sound asleep. “That being said, seven kids is a lot.”
“I don’t know how Midge does it.”
“Love, probably. That, and she spent so many years in classrooms, seven probably seems like nothing.”
“Except at the end of the day they don’t go home to their parents, they stay.” Teddy stretches and then we sit in silence. An owl hoots from somewhere off in the trees and a tree groans, and still we sit, absorbing the silence as if we are drawing strength from it.
“My mom was a teacher,” he says suddenly. “Her career was cut short, obviously, but she lived and breathed teaching. For a while, I thought about becoming one, but I just didn’t like kids the way she did.”
“You’d never guess it by the way you’ve been today. I bet she’d be proud to see how you are with them.”
“I didn’t say I hated kids, Nellie.” He smiles over at me, and the silence somehow becomes even quieter. “I just don’t love them the way she did.” Those pale blues watch me for a few seconds. “You still on the no-kid track?”
I’d told him I didn’t want kids that summer. We had been hanging out after one of his baseball games, and one of his teammates was trying to comfort his son who was having a meltdown about being given the wrong ball, even though it looked identical to all the others. It just came out of my mouth. “Ugh, I could never do that.”
“Do what?” he’d asked.
“The kid thing.”
I’d expected him to tell me I’d change my mind or that he desperately wanted them, but he’d just said, “Then we’re on the same page.” And we just left it there, a big-ticket conversation over in the blink of an eye.
“Staunchly,” I say. “Same for you?”
“Same for me.” He nods.
Midge breaks us out of the apparent trance we’ve both fallen into by inviting us to follow her to the bunkie.
“Both beds have fresh linens,” she says, flinging the door open and leading us into a cramped single room with a single bed on each side. “Now I’d ask if there is going to be any hanky-panky, you move some blankets to the floor, since I’m not sure the beds could withstand what I’d imagine is vigorous lovemaking.” She then winks at me and leaves.
We stand there, watching as she grows smaller in the distance, and then I hear Teddy start to laugh.
“I wonder if she’s related to Cass. They have to share DNA,” he says in wonderment.
“Because they’re so blunt?”
He looks at me, and I can tell there is something specific he wants to say, but instead he just nods. “Please stay with me tonight.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he continues, “I desperately need to sleep, and I’m not going to if you’re five kilometers away on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. This is no different than sitting in the truck together. It’s not like we’re sleeping together-together.”
He looks wary and exhausted, and so I agree. After both of us have completed our nighttime routines, the lights are off and we’re in our respective beds.
“Are you sleeping?” I hear Teddy ask softly from across the room after a while.
“No,” I reply.
“Why not?”
“I can hear you breathing.” It’s not the truth. I can’t sleep because he’s there, so close yet so far. A whole gulf of emotions shared and intimate histories spread out between us in the form of an old wood plank floor.
“I’m sorry, I’ll try and breathe quieter,” he says.
“It’s not your breathing,” I murmur, but no response comes, just the sound of a mattress shifting.
“Nellie. Nellie.” Teddy’s voice and the gentle push on my shoulder bring me into consciousness on our fourth morning in the bunkie.
“What?” I yawn.
“I found a lake.”
“And you had to wake me up to tell me?” I’m so confused.
“The loons are out.”
Loons. I sit up, and I feel him step back quickly, our foreheads brushing. I’m out of bed and slipping my shoes on so fast that I forget that the mornings are much cooler up here than they are at home. I’m halfway down the front steps when the cool air hits my arms. I turn to go back inside and run straight into Teddy. His arms wrap around me and keep me from falling backward.
“Arms up,” he commands, and I follow without a second thought. Heavy fabric slips down my arms and over my head, and while my bare legs are still covered in goosebumps, at least my upper body is protected from the chill.
“Thanks,” I get out before I’m striding the rest of the way to the ground and across the yard. Stopping abruptly, I turn to see Teddy on the other side of the bunkie.
“You could go that way, but you probably won’t get to the lake before noon.” I don’t know why I assumed I knew where the hell I was going. Turning on my heel, I jog to catch up with Teddy and Kevin, who is eagerly prancing at his feet.
The minute I hear the loons, the frantic feeling I felt upon waking dissipates. How did he remember my love for loon song?