My Favorite Mistake Read online

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Maybe.” She turned her attention back to her cuticles, bored with this line of questioning. “I don’t exactly keep track.”

  My foot remained firmly on the brake. “Let’s sum up, shall we? Currently, I have no money, you have no money, I’m on the brink of professional ruin, and I just drove halfway across the United States to the one place I never want to see again, all to face personal and financial humiliation with a man who hates my guts and doesn’t know I’m coming. Is that about right?”

  “That’s right.” She nodded. “Oh, except don’t forget about Bob and the baby.”

  “Bob and the baby. Of course.”

  She clasped both hands under her chin. “Does Flynn really still hate your guts?”

  “In a word, yes.”

  “What happened when you guys broke up?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She waved a hand as if dismissing her butler. “Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.”

  I thought about his chilled, clipped voice on the phone line in Italy. “It will not be fine. In fact, it will be the exact opposite of fine.”

  “Why? Just because you guys used to date?” She looked amazed. “I’m sure he doesn’t care about all that anymore. It’s been, like, ten years. He probably doesn’t even remember your passionate, star-crossed whatever. He’s a guy.”

  “That makes me feel so much better, Skye.”

  “You’re welcome.” She beamed. “Besides, we need you. You’re so good at math and bossing people around. You know about making drinks and running a business. The family business. And besides, what were you talking about before? Oh yeah, your credit rating. Think about that.”

  We listened to the rustle of the wind in the open fields. Finally, I turned the engine back on, jerked the car through another three-point turn and started off toward the Land of Lutefisk.

  “Damn it, damn it, son of a bitch.”

  Skye let out a delighted whoop. “This is going to be great, Faithie! You won’t regret it!”

  I already regretted it, but I was too far gone to turn back now.

  3

  Twenty miles of cornfields later, I remembered why I’d been in such a hurry to flee America’s heartland ten years ago.

  Skye, having depleted the chewing gum reserves, slouched into her seat, as close to a supine position as she could achieve in the overstuffed Volkswagen. I was trying to watch the road while simultaneously whipping myself into a frenzy about the upcoming reunion with Flynn. I had given up on subtlety and resorted to interrogating my sister in a loud, high-pitched voice.

  “Do you guys ever talk about me?”

  “Not really.” She blew a big pink Trident bubble and crossed her eyes, watching it balloon past her nose.

  “Well, does he ever ask about me?”

  “Not really.” The bubble popped.

  I gritted my teeth. “What does ‘not really’ mean?”

  “I don’t know! It means stop asking me. What’s the big deal, anyway?”

  “Look. I just want to know where I stand. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, and I need to know what to expect. You dragged me into this mess—the least you can do is prep me.”

  She slowly scraped the gum off her cheeks and popped it back into her mouth. “Why so nervous? Seriously. What on earth happened when you broke up that you’re still so antsy about the whole thing?”

  “I’m asking the questions here.”

  “Whatever.” She sighed, all put-upon and penitent. “He never mentions you. Mostly we just talk about how much money the bar is losing and what we should do.” She squirmed in her seat. “Why did you take up with that bass player, anyway?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Eventually, I stopped badgering the witness and stared out the windshield at acre after acre of undulating golden grass. Trying not to think about the river at the edge of the town where Flynn and I had grown up together. We had made endless discoveries in the clear, cool water and the silty gray muck underneath. When we were young, it was all about tadpoles and turtles and other wholesome Mark Twain critters. But our late adolescence was spent in large part lying on the riverbanks, tangled up in a gasping urgency, exploring each other. We delved into the savage, lovely wilderness that can exist between two people who are too desperate and too young to realize that you can get lost if you forge ahead too quickly. And we got lost, all right. We found that river together, and we left each other on that wet, grainy shore, but I wasn’t sure what remained of the deep, dark undercurrents between us.

  “Here we are. I guess.” My sister’s voice was flat as we whizzed past a giant bronze statue of Paul Bunyan (don’t ask), which was flanked on either side by a white clapboard sign welcoming us to Lindbrook.

  “Yep.” I studied the Jackson Pollock bug splatters on the window. “The bar’s where The Penalty Box used to be on Main Street, right?”

  “Yeah, but we can’t go straight there. We have to go see Lars first.”

  “Forget it. I’m your underpaid business consultant, not your bad boyfriend enabler.”

  She clapped a hand to her heart. “How can you say that? You haven’t even met Lars! He’s totally different from Bob. And Jason. And Dave. And Seth.”

  “Allow me to refresh your memory. You are pregnant with your AWOL husband’s child, are you not? Isn’t it a tad early to return to the dating circuit? Let’s not be a ground ball for the Jerry Springer recruiters.”

  She giggled. “I’m not dating him—yet. Besides, we have to go see him because he’s got my house keys. I gave them to him before I left so he could fix the kitchen sink while I was gone.”

  “What happened to your sink?”

  “Oh, it got clogged or something because I put Bob’s fishing tackle down the disposal when I got mad. Here, pull over. There it is, Minne-Motors. That’s his auto shop!”

  “Minne-Motors?” I parked the car. “What does that even mean?”

  I had expected my return to Lindbrook to be marked with a rush of bittersweet déjà vu. I had expected to be overwhelmed with total recall of my childhood days. But when I finally stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk, I was struck not by how much things had remained the same, but by the slight changes in the landscape. Like the McDonald’s down the block. That was new. Garish golden arches now soared over the familiar brick storefronts and the grassy public park.

  “Come on!” Skye pranced in place on the sidewalk, scattering an orderly parade of black ants. “I can’t wait for you to meet Lars! And I really have to pee.”

  The proprietor of Minne-Motors had obviously not invested a lot of time or money in interior decor. Piles of grease-streaked chrome crested between open-hooded, disemboweled cars. The walls were dotted with rusty out-of-state license plates, and the metallic pounding of mechanics at work almost drowned out the Guns ’N’ Roses blasting out of a tattered black boombox.

  “Isn’t this great?” My sister yelled over the racket.

  She dragged me over to a gutted green Honda, where her latest ticking time bomb of a suitor was replacing a tire. Lars was everything I’d expected, a big sister’s nightmare. Clad in jeans and a smudged white T-shirt, smelling vaguely of WD-40, he wore his blond hair in that style so perennially popular with Minnesota maintenance men—the mullet.

  Skye turned on the full-voltage charm.

  “Hi.” She raised her chin and smiled at him, the afternoon sun streaming through her curls like a halo.

  Lars stumbled to his feet and scuffed the ground with one well-worn boot toe. He was roughly the size of the Tower of London. “Hey.”

  It was hard to tell, but it almost looked like he was blushing under those grease stains and that swarthy farmer’s tan.

  “This is my sister, Faith.” She grabbed my fingers and forced them into a handshake with the Human Harley-Davidson.

  He sort of grunted by way of introduction, but his eyes continued their all
-access tour of Skye, who was still doing her rendition of sugar and spice and everything nice.

  She flitted off to the Minne-Motors version of a ladies’ room, leaving Lars and me to stare blankly at one another for five minutes in an effort to get to know each other better. It was all the time I needed to ascertain that the man had the wit and personality of an anvil. When my sister returned from the bathroom, she demanded her apartment key.

  “Sure, babe.” Lars dug through his jeans pockets, frowning at the array of loose change, Swiss Army knives and begrimed store receipts he unearthed before handing over a glittery pink keyring. “I had to replace the disposal rotor in the sink. It’s not a good idea to put wire and lead weights in there.”

  “Of course. How silly of me.” Skye wrapped her slender white arm around his bulging bicep, then turned to me. “Now let’s get out of here and go home. I need to change.” She frowned down at her tube top. “This shirt is totally sweaty. You should really get your car’s air conditioner checked out. In fact, I’m sure that Lars here would be happy to—”

  “No time for primping.” I gave her a look. “We need to start dealing with the bar—and other, more pressing matters—posthaste.”

  “I have to change,” she pouted. “And I live right upstairs from the bar. It’ll take two seconds.”

  Lars regarded her with the same pitying expression as he might an abandoned kitten shivering in the gutter. I rolled my eyes and gave in.

  “Oh, fine. But you get two seconds only,” I warned.

  “Okay! Lars will drop me off. It’s his lunch break.” She tugged him toward a gleaming silver motorcycle in the parking lot.

  I trailed behind them, closing the door as “Welcome to the Jungle” started pounding out of the boombox. I started for my car as they roared off down the street, but froze in place as a familiar figure rounded the corner a block ahead of me. He was tall and dark-haired with broad shoulders. I scrutinized the back of his head and his gray T-shirt, my heart pounding like a kettle drum.

  And then a dog barked and bounded across the street. The man turned to greet the black and white spaniel, and as soon as I saw his profile, I exhaled, the tension eddying out of my chest. It was no one I knew. Just a tall, dark stranger.

  I started the car with shaking hands. I knew exactly where to find Skye’s bar—I had vivid memories of darting in there twenty years ago, red-faced and stealthy as I tried to convince my father to come home for the evening.

  Returning to Lindbrook had been a huge mistake, the equivalent of rowing out to the center of a lake in an aluminum canoe during a lightning storm, brandishing a titanium golf club, and yelling “Bring it on, God!”

  When I parked on Main Street three minutes later, I kept my seat belt fastened and stared at the dusty brick facade of the Roof Rat. The bar was constructed like a Midwestern version of a classic Italian palazzo—a small, squat building with a business on the first floor and living quarters on the second floor. A large picture window showcased the bar’s name in fanciful turquoise letters (Skye’s nod to redecorating). I could see neon signs inside, glinting against the glass.

  The House of Bad Karma cleverly disguised as a backwoods watering hole.

  What finally forced me out into the open was the humidity. Without the air conditioner cranked up to eleven, the Golf soon assumed the properties of a terrarium under a blazing sun-lamp.

  I grabbed my battered suitcase out of the backseat and lugged it around to the sagging wooden steps.

  “What took you so long?” Skye demanded, throwing open the door. “Gosh, it’s hot.”

  “You got that wrong. It’s fucking sweltering.” I tossed my bag on the floor and assessed Chez Skye.

  She had painted the living room walls lemon yellow, offsetting a threadbare purple loveseat and a huge red sofa in the shape of a pair of lips. The floor was carpeted with old newspapers and discarded wardrobe choices, and she stepped over a fuzzy pink sweater on her way to turn on the air conditioner.

  Atop the scratched wooden coffee table lay several issues of Cosmopolitan, a copy of Field & Stream, and an overflowing ashtray. Guessing that the ashtray and Field & Stream were artifacts from happier days with Bob, I scooped them up and carried them to the trashcan in the kitchen.

  Automatically, my hands started to clean up the mess my sister had left on the counter—boxes of Pop-Tarts, half-empty coffee mugs, bananas far past their prime.

  Skye appeared at the kitchen door, twisting her hair up into a topknot. “What are you doing?”

  “Listen up, buttercup. I came here to save both our asses, and as God is my witness, that’s what I’m going to do. But you need to cooperate.” I opened the dishwasher and tried to locate the silverware drawer. “If you’re going to spend all your time drooling over Sven and the art of motorcycle maintenance, this isn’t going to work.”

  “Hello? I am cooperating,” she protested. “I’m getting changed right now to go to work.” She emphasized her point by retrieving a powder-blue halter top from the top of the refrigerator and disrobing in front of the sink.

  “Okay. Putting on darling little outfits is not what I need from you right now.”

  She stuck her bottom lip out. “Then what do you need?”

  “Long-term, I need you to come to the bar every day ready to work. I need you to help me sort through the financial stuff you have down there. I need you to pay attention so this kind of thing doesn’t happen to you again.” I ticked these items off on my fingers and tried to look stern.

  “I’m listening,” she said with her head in the freezer. She emerged with two frostbitten grape Popsicles, handed one to me, and smiled. “What about the short-term?”

  I thought this over while I stacked plates in her cupboard.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do about the baby?” I finally asked, raising an eyebrow at her flat stomach.

  “Um…no?”

  “Then you have to do three things. One, make an OB-GYN appointment as soon as possible. See if they can get you in tomorrow. Two, watch out for Lars…”

  “You are so paranoid.” She twirled the Popsicle in her mouth and did not, I noticed, agree to my terms. “What’s three?”

  “Three is…” I deposited the clean spoons in the silverware drawer and let my hair fall down over my face. “Flynn’s coming to bartend tonight, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go down to the bar now, and you’re going to show me all the accounts and receipts. But you need to let me know when Flynn shows up. Do not tell him that I’m here until I get a chance to tell him myself. I will handle him. Okay?”

  “Okay. I promise.” She nodded solemnly. “I will let you know the second Flynn gets here.”

  “Good. Now let’s get ready to go.”

  As we headed for the bedroom, the damp, mosquito-riddled heat brought back memories of my childhood summers, spent languishing in front of whirring portable fans, playing lethargic games of Uno and sweating.

  “Jeez, look at your arm. You’re going to be a crispy critter tomorrow,” Skye said. “Didn’t you use any sunblock?”

  “Half the bottle.”

  “Well, you’re all freckled and pink and gross. What should I wear with this top? I need to look good.” She peeled off her shorts and surveyed the floor for clothing options. “How about this?” She fished up a miniscule white skirt.

  “I don’t know.” I frowned down at my gross, pink, and freckled arm. “What’s typical Roof Rat attire?”

  “Oh, you know. A bar is a bar. Just wear what you’d wear to go clubbing in L.A.”

  “In L.A. I’d be wearing second-hand Prada and a canister of pepper spray. Ugh. I feel like roadkill. I need to take a shower.” I could not face anyone, let alone the ex love of my life, with sunburned limbs, insomniac bags under my eyes, and wind-tunnel hair.

  “No time to shower. Here, borrow my lip gloss. And let me do something with your hair.” She pounced on me
again with the comb.

  “Ow! Knock it off, that really hurts!”

  “Faithie, no offense, but you’re a buzz-kill and a half today,” she said, continuing to yank my hair out by the roots. “What is the matter with you?”

  I pulled away and struggled into a white tank top and a black cotton skirt. I felt tight and hot all over. The sunburn had gotten under my skin and into my blood. “Nothing’s the matter with me.”

  “Then stop acting like something crawled up your ass and died. Let’s go!”

  So we trooped out the door and down the back steps, Skye still swiping at me with the comb. Every step we took toward the gray metal door to the Roof Rat brought me closer to outright panic. Because I was really back. I was back, my old boyfriend was back, and, just like the song, there was gonna be trouble.

  4

  All right. Let’s have a look at this place.” I tried to steel myself for the task ahead.

  Skye was having trouble with the dead bolt. Maybe this was a sign. A sign that I should not go into the bar.

  But then the door swung open, a portal from the orange Minnesota sunset into shadowy layers of spilled Pig’s Eye and cigarette smoke.

  “Come on! This is going to be great.” She bounced past me, flicking on lights inside the bar.

  I ignored the coppery taste tingling in my mouth, set my jaw like a new recruit and marched inside.

  My sister had told me the bar was in trouble, but even I couldn’t imagine how much trouble until I saw it with my own eyes.

  It was bad. The main barroom seemed to be styled in North Woods Nouveau. Mottled maroon floor tiles were scuffed beneath the thick maple chairs and tables, and the chipped wooden bartop had clearly seen better days. A cracked cloudy mirror, an enormous stuffed moose head and a stuffed gray muskie wearing an expression of eternal disdain hung alongside the collection of neon beer signs.

  “This place has got a lot of character,” I said truthfully.

  “Don’t you love it?” Skye grinned. “I bought the moose head after I divorced Jason. Found it at a garage sale. And wait ’til you see what I did to the women’s bathroom! Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”