My Favorite Mistake Read online

  The weather had been mild, by Minnesota standards, so I had not been expecting ice on the slushy back roads. The bare trees were black against the heavy beige sky, but my spirits were soaring—I came, I saw, I conquered the Ford Ranger. Distracted by Flynn’s hand on my thigh and giddy with my newfound prowess with the stick shift, I had loosened my death grip on the steering wheel and turned to give him a kiss on the cheek. At which point, of course, all hell broke loose, in the form of a vast patch of ice dusted lightly with snow and a cat streaking across the asphalt.

  In the grand tradition of neophyte teenage drivers, I hyperventilated, stomped on the brakes, and spun off the road. We slammed into a tree to the sound of screeching metal and a dull clunk, which turned out to be the front bumper of my father’s new truck wrenching off and hitting the ground.

  I did the only thing I could: I succumbed to hysterics. I started to cry, and then Flynn started to laugh, and we fell into each other until we calmed down, kissing and whispering under the freezing, desolate twilight.

  When we finally returned to my house, Flynn insisted that he be the one to face my parents’ wrath, telling my father, “Well, Mike, the bad news is that we messed up your new truck, but the good news is that your bumper is the same color as the duct tape we used to fix it.”

  Now, staring down at sun-bleached cobblestones half a world away, my throat closed up. I hadn’t thought about that accident in years. The snow and the wind screaming away outside the truck’s cab. The damp heat inside next to Flynn. That must have been about six months before our high school graduation; the two teenagers curled up against each other in that Ford didn’t know how bad things were about to get. How hidden hazards could send you spinning even when the summer sun was shining.

  I knew now. I knew because I had finally stopped spinning. I could feel, really feel, the force of gravity pulling my body to the ground. The faces-and-places kaleidoscope of the last few years finally stopped churning.

  I had to go home. I wasn’t sure if I could help Skye any more than she could help herself. I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t make everything ten times worse. But I had to try.

  The time had come to stick a toe back into the murky, shark-laden waters of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. And, God help us, the next installment of “Street Food” would feature fried cheese curds and walleye-on-a-stick.

  2

  I like to fancy myself a decent travel writer, but I am a very bad traveler. Yes, yes, it’s all glistening with irony. The very first time I flew cross-country, I realized that my childhood fantasies of growing up to edit a glossy European fashion magazine, hopping on the red-eye to take in the latest spring lines in Paris and then continuing on to Rome for a quick espresso could never be realized because the jet lag would kill me.

  I don’t mean it would “kill me” in that I would be disoriented and in need of two cucumber slices for my puffy eyes. I mean that the flight attendants would have to collect my cold dead body along with the empty soda cans.

  But the trip back from Italy was not too bad, relatively speaking. As the plane began its descent into Los Angeles, I white-knuckled the armrest and peered out the window at the sprawling city. Pulsing grids of lights checkerboarded out toward the vast black ocean. Strings of headlights snaked up the freeway.

  When you are airborne, it’s obvious that the city is larger than the state of Rhode Island, but when I first drove into L.A., I had no sense of this sprawling panorama. I could only see the view from the ground while I blinked up at the sun from rock-bottom. I hoped that the sun would dry and harden me like the brittle terra-cotta tiles on the rooftops. I wanted to get lost in perpetual energy and motion, in the daily commutes on 65-mph highways. But it turns out that constant sunshine only buries the dark places in deeper shadows, and a morning spent crawling through miles of gridlock gives you too much time to think. And, raw and pale after that long Minnesota winter, I didn’t want to think at all, because every thought brought me back to Flynn.

  The unfortunate truth about Flynn and me is that we never ended things properly. There was a lot more walking than talking. Our story had no ending, until yesterday’s accusatory phone call.

  I would never call you unless it were a dire emergency. He’d come a long way from Faith, will you marry me?

  In occasional moments of weakness or solitude, I couldn’t help but try to mentally rearrange the fractured pieces of our past and compose an alternate future for us. Goethe said, “There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.” And we used to laugh at everything. Like hyenas. When I was fourteen, I fell through the black ice on Flatbush Lake and after they fished me out, somewhere between hypothermia and death, Flynn held my hand in the ambulance and made me laugh until the paramedics yelled at both of us.

  And yes, I know: Pining is for suckers and trees, and can’t we all please move on from high school? I didn’t regret leaving. Realistically, he and I had more issues than National Geographic, and we never could have worked it out. He had pushed me away and I had pushed ahead, and now I had what I always wanted—a safe, warm little life under the California sun.

  Back on Flight 867 to Los Angeles, the pilot announced that we would have to wait on the tarmac while the runway cleared of traffic. I gazed out the window at the concrete, which was cracked and speckled after years of baking in the summer heat. The dirt of my childhood, the dirt we buried my father beneath, was rich and dark and loamy. In early summer, you could smell the ploughed acres like a cool mountain spring. The overturned fields sloped against the sky like wet desert dunes.

  My father. I remembered that he built a yellow plywood hutch for my pet rabbit, Mr. Popper, when I was starting grammar school. I remembered scooching over in bed so Skye could climb in and cling to me when we heard my father slamming out the front door and into the still winter night. When he still lived at home, we weren’t allowed to wake him in the morning, so we tiptoed around the fetal form on the couch, the fitful sleeper who smelled of stale cigarettes and whiskey.

  It was surprising, how quickly my father’s life had faded from my memories. But I remembered his funeral. Skye and my father’s new wife had screamed at each other over a bottle of moisturizer just before we left for the church. And afterward, when I returned to L.A., brittle and wrung-out from the memorial service, my boyfriend Thom broke up with me at the airport.

  Thom was representative of my California boyfriends—a lost cause with great bone structure who worked occasionally as a model and more frequently as a bartender. His car had always been cluttered with head shots of himself and crumpled cocktail napkins smeared with lipstick and scrawled phone numbers that I tried not to ask about.

  Now, sitting on the tarmac on the flight from Rome, I tried to congratulate myself on all the progress I’d made since that unfortunate airport break-up two years ago. I had pretty much given up Thom and his ilk, as I had pretty much given up dating altogether. (I got too tired of seeing sides of myself I didn’t like reflected in the dating pool.)

  At least I had the sense to keep moving. To stay flexible and restless. Until now. Now I was about to drive to Minnesota and throw myself directly into the path of the Little Blond Engine That Couldn’t.

  Fifty-five hours, two Holiday Inns, and far too many drive-thru cheeseburgers later, I met up with Skye in Minneapolis. She claimed that she wanted to go into the city to shop, that she wanted to drive with me for the last sixty-five miles to Lindbrook.

  This was a lie.

  What she actually wanted was to wait until I had spent three days on the highway and had invested too much time and energy to turn back. She wanted to soften me up, then drop her bombshell in the middle of the cornfields where no one could hear me scream.

  When I pulled up to our rendezvous point in the gray concrete parking lot at the Mall of America, my sister scrambled into my decrepit black VW Golf, a breathless blonde whirlwind with high heels and even higher drama.

  “Faithie!” She smacked my
cheek with a resounding, wet kiss. “Thank God you’re here. I missed you!”

  I unbuckled my seat belt and hugged her back, amazed by how prominent and fragile her ribcage felt. In the midst of marital apocalypse, she retained the air of a fresh-faced sprite too busy with pixie dust and eye shadow to remember to eat dinner.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you trying to get down to your birth weight?”

  She threw a bulging blue shopping bag into the backseat. “What?”

  I held up my pinky finger. “This is what you look like.”

  “Yeah, I wish.” She flung herself back against the passenger seat. “I guess with Bob, and, you know…everything…it’s possible I lost a few pounds.”

  I shoved my sunglasses up on my forehead and scrutinized her midriff for any sign of a telltale bump. Flynn hadn’t said how far along she was, but it had always been my impression that mothers-to-be should not be interchangeable with swizzle sticks.

  But better to hold off with the sisterly nagging and just plunge ahead with The Unpleasantness.

  I tried to look stern. “Listen, Skye. I know you’re pregnant.”

  Her willow-blue eyes widened. “You do?”

  I nodded. “We have to talk about this.”

  “No, we don’t.” She shook her head, her pale curls bouncing off her shoulders. “How did you know?”

  I remained poker-faced. I’d decided back in Nebraska not to reveal my sources—Flynn and I had enough to deal with without adding breach of confidentiality to the mix. “Psychic Hot-line. Who cares how I know?”

  “Ugh.” She pursed her lips and dug a single, pink-polished fingernail into the corner of her mouth, a habit she’d had since childhood. “Small-town gossips are the worst.” She used her other hand to point imperiously at the keys dangling from the car’s ignition. “Drive.”

  “I’m not your chauffeur,” I huffed, dropping the pregnancy gambit and playing right into her hands.

  “Of course not.” She patted my wrist as I started the engine. “You’re my big sister, here to save the day.”

  I backed out of the parking space. “Why couldn’t Mom save the day for a change?”

  “She wanted to go canoeing in the Boundary Waters with her new boyfriend, Doug. She said you’re better in a crisis than she is.”

  Our mother had been saying that since I was thirteen, which was why I’d spent my high school years giving Skye curfews and signing her dismal report cards. “Great. So. Does Bob know about the baby?”

  “Are you going to keep bringing that up? Because if you are, this drive is going to take, like, forever.” She hitched up her rainbow-striped tube top.

  I gave her a look and lowered the sunglasses back over my eyes. “You want some cheese with that whine?”

  “No, but I’ll take some crackers with my cheese.” She readjusted the rearview mirror and applied peony pink lip gloss, then tilted her head to study me. “You look good, Faithie. Very L.A. fabu. Except what is going on with your hair? Did you sleep in a wind tunnel?”

  “I didn’t, actually. How kind of you to mention it.” I had long ago resigned myself to life as a walking recessive gene. Wavy red hair, blue eyes, skin that burned at the mere mention of sunlight. Ideal for beachside living.

  “Here, I’ll fix it.” She beamed at me and dug a comb out of her purse.

  I threw up my palms to ward her off. “I can brush my own hair.”

  “Don’t be so stubborn. You need to look your best.” She grinned. “I know someone who’s all anxious to see you.”

  My whole body tensed up as she tried to drag the comb through my tangles. “Who?”

  She giggled. “Lars, of course! I’ve been telling him all about you!”

  My lungs released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Oh.”

  She blinked and studied my face. “Why? Who’d you think?”

  I shook my head. “No one. Stop scalping me and let’s hit the road.”

  Which we did. And then, on a desolate stretch of Route 57, with nothing but miles of open horizon on either side of us, she dropped the bombshell of Bikini Atoll proportions.

  “You know, you have a terrible attitude,” she declared from her post in the passenger seat while I muttered about the downfalls of a culture which espouses ice-fishing and refers to the popular children’s game as “duck, duck, gray duck” rather than “duck, duck, goose.” “What are you so snarky about, anyway? You grew up here. It’s your home.”

  This was mortifying but true. God knew I had played a few rounds of “duck, duck, gray duck” in my day.

  “I may have grown up here, but it is not my home.”

  “Sure it is,” she insisted, waving to a passing eighteen-wheeler. “You’ve lived here longer than any other place. How come you hate it so much?”

  I sighed. “I don’t hate it, I’m just not small-town material. And after the whole thing with Dad leaving—I had a lot of good reasons to move away after high school.”

  She popped open the glove compartment, presumably foraging for gum. “You took off to California like a bat out of hell with a weasely bass player.”

  “That is neither here nor there. I’m very happy in L.A. now.”

  “But you’re hardly ever there,” said the Sun-In Sage. “You just keep bouncing around the world all by yourself. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

  “No. And don’t start with the Phyllis Schlafly rhetoric. I like my life the way it is.”

  We watched at the reflection of our car in the shiny silver tanker truck crawling along in front of us. A redhead, a blonde, and a whole lot of baggage under an empty blue sky.

  She started to gnaw her bottom lip. “So…guess what?”

  My big-sister Spidey sense started tingling. “What?”

  She stared down at the cluttered floor mats. “Well, um, I think I told you this before, but you know about Flynn, right?”

  I sat up straighter and adjusted the seat belt across my chest, bracing myself for the fresh horrors about to unfold. “What about him?”

  I tried to imagine what might have become of my childhood love. Raising eight rowdy children with a nagging wife, a rotting white picket fence, and a mangy spaniel? Living a wretched, unfulfilling existence in a van down by the river, surrounded only by ESPN and empty beer cans? Starring in a tell-all reality TV series in which past girlfriends are hunted down and made to pay for their crimes?

  “Well…” She picked at her cuticles. “You know that he’s the other co-owner of the bar, right?”

  I swerved to the side of the deserted highway and slammed on the brakes. The safety belt strap dug into my chest. The road stretched out in front of us, a black ribbon receding into amber waves of grain.

  I cut the ignition, unbuckled my seat belt, and turned to stare down my sister.

  “What?”

  She widened her eyes and blinked. “What what?”

  “Flynn is a co-owner of the bar? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  She avoided my gaze and shredded a gum wrapper. “He owns a third of it. I thought I told you when I faxed you the copy of the loan application that—”

  “No, you did not tell me. I definitely would have remembered that.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged one delicate shoulder. “Well, you should have read the contract more carefully. I asked him for help to buy it right after I asked you, and he said yes.”

  “Then, why the hell didn’t he co-sign the mortgage?”

  “He didn’t want to.”

  “He didn’t want to,” I repeated. “Smart guy. He gets off scot-free while you and I get sucked down deeper and deeper into the financial sinkhole. How convenient.”

  “No, no, it’s not like that! He’s helping out. He’s bartending and stuff at night. He’s going to help all summer.”

  I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the black plastic steering wheel.

  “Flynn. Is working at the bar. Right now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

&nbs
p; “Did you tell him I’m coming?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That’s it.” I put the car into gear and executed a neat three-point turn across the double yellow line. “I’m going back to Los Angeles.”

  She gasped. “Faithie! Nooo!

  “I’m dead serious. If you want to get back to Lindbrook, you have ten seconds to get out and start hitchhiking.” I lunged across the front seat and shoved the passenger door open.

  She wrapped both hands around her seat belt and howled. “Don’t leave me! I really need your help. I mean, with all your restaurant experience…”

  Six years ago, I worked as a cocktail waitress at a club in Los Feliz. The job involved ferrying Pinot Grigio and Johnnie Walker Blue to record producers and sitcom actors. Then I bought a juice bar, which I sold because I couldn’t stand getting up at four A.M. every day to hit the organic produce markets. How this made me a crackerjack candidate for a managerial position in a backwoods tavern called “The Roof Rat,” in which they served a regional beer called “Pig’s Eye,” was unclear.

  “You do not need me. You have Flynn.” I pointed at the car door. “I’m going back to Cali, baby.”

  “But he can’t do everything!” She layered her voice with a Styrofoam squeak and played her trump card. “What about the baby?”

  I closed my eyes and balled up my fists, the better to really concentrate on seething. “I am going. To kill you.”

  “You’ll hardly ever see him. I swear to God, Faithie! He lives up in Minneapolis now, and he’s been driving down to help me out every night since Bob left. But he has this big important job in the city…”

  I couldn’t resist taking the bait. “What’s his job?”

  “He works for the new NHL hockey team in the cities.”

  “The Polecats? Flynn works for the St. Paul Polecats?”

  “Yeah, I guess. He’s kind of a workaholic.”

  “He is?” I paused. “Is he married?”