The Mourning Hours

six

One night that August, Stacy Lemke showed up unannounced at our back door.

Johnny was in the living room practicing moves with some of his wrestling friends, Peter Bahn and Erik Hansen. Johnny was always conditioning—hefting feed bags and doing chin-ups at a barn in the hayloft, but he saw these nights as serious training sessions. Dad was there, of course, and Jerry Warczak had stopped by to talk with Dad about some new fencing he would need help installing. Grandpa took a seat in one of the out-of-the-way recliners and cheered at all the wrong times. Somehow, despite watching dozens of Johnny’s matches, he’d never figured out the scoring system.

Johnny’s coach was there, too; he liked to stop by from time to time to check in with Dad and throw around words like “scholarship” and “state title.” Coach Zajac was Johnny’s height but twice as wide, his shoulders straining the seams of the warm-up jacket he wore year-round, no matter the weather. His ears were puffy, bulbous even, like an early version of human ears, before God ironed out all the kinks. Cauliflower ears, Dad had explained to me once. “It’s just fluid that gets trapped in there.” But every time I saw him, I was reminded of the jar at Wallen’s Pharmacy, where people dropped their spare change to help end birth defects.

When Stacy arrived, I happened to be in the kitchen, helping myself to a glass of lemonade. I didn’t recognize the white sedan that dropped her off, but there was Stacy, striding across our lawn as if she’d done this a million times before.

“Oh!” Mom said, opening the door but standing in front of the doorway, as if she wasn’t going to let Stacy inside. “You know, this might not be the best time, honey. Johnny’s in the middle of some wrestling with the guys.”

“I know,” Stacy said, smiling sweetly. “I came over to watch.”

Mom didn’t respond; she just stepped out of the way. Stacy gave me a little wave, passing right through the kitchen into the living room, as if she belonged there. I saw Mom raise an eyebrow; she didn’t approve. It wasn’t personal, but as far as she was concerned, Johnny was too young to have a serious girlfriend.

I followed Stacy into the living room, noticing the way her jeans hugged her thighs, the way her hair floated over her shoulders. She didn’t fit in here, I realized. Everything we owned was shabby, from Mom’s hand-me-down furniture and the worn carpet that had been here since Dad was a boy and the peeling wallpaper we always meant to take down. Everything about Stacy was new and fresh, as if it had just been invented that day.

The men in the doorway stepped back to let Stacy into the room, and Grandpa looked up from the recliner. Dad looked from Stacy to Johnny and back, as if he was trying to figure out the joke. Only Johnny and Peter Bahn, wrestling in the middle of the floor, didn’t notice her right away. I said loudly, “Stacy’s here,” and Johnny froze, his glance drifting over his shoulder. Peter took advantage of the moment and flipped Johnny over, pinning him. Grandpa clapped. Johnny swore.

“Got you,” Peter said, laughing.

Johnny rolled out from under Peter’s grasp, his chest heaving. “Caught me off guard,” he panted. “That’s no fair.”

Peter shrugged. “Fair’s fair,” he said, pushing himself up to a standing position.

Johnny stood, too, scowling. He hated to lose.

“I didn’t mean to break anything up,” Stacy said, smiling uncertainly.

“What are you doing here?” Johnny demanded.

Stacy’s smile faded. “I just wanted to say hi.”

Johnny shook his head. “You could have just called.”

Dad cleared his throat. “Johnny, why don’t you introduce Stacy around.”

Johnny hesitated a long beat, breathing through his nose. Only after catching Dad’s eye did he relax. “This is Erik, Peter, Grandpa Hammarstrom, Coach Zajac,” he said, gesturing. Erik and Peter smiled, Grandpa gave a slight, confused nod of acknowledgment, and Coach raised one hand in a meaty salute. “And this is Jerry, who lives next door.”

Jerry reached out his hand a little bashfully, and Stacy shook it.

She turned to Johnny playfully. “And you are?”

“We were in the middle of something,” Johnny said, still not letting it go.

Dad cleared his throat again, trying to diffuse the awkwardness. “How about a breather?” he asked, motioning toward the kitchen. The men followed his cue and trudged off obediently, even Grandpa, who seemed to greatly resent having to move. I stayed in the doorway, nervous for Stacy.

“Really, I didn’t mean to break up anything,” Stacy said. She reached for Johnny’s hand, threading her fingers through his. Johnny was as unyielding as a plastic dummy. “Okay. Look, you’re right. I should have called first.”

“Yeah,” Johnny grunted, relenting. He locked his fingers with hers, bringing her hand to his chest. “We were about done anyway.”

I knew that wasn’t true. It was barely eight o’clock, and sometimes they wrestled past ten, until Mom started hinting about an early shift in the morning, and Dad drifted off to check the barn one last time. This was the power Stacy had over him, then; she could interrupt his wrestling night—that most sacred of Johnny’s rituals—and be forgiven.

“Are you sure?” Stacy gave him a playful smile. “You might need more practice. Looks like you were getting whipped right there.”

“Oh, yeah?” Johnny grabbed her by the waist. “That’s it, Lemke, you’re going down.” He scooped her up in his arms like she weighed nothing at all. I held my breath, trying to figure out if he was joking or angry. It was hard to tell from the way he handled her—swinging her around a little too fast, depositing her a little too roughly on the carpet. Stacy shrieked but didn’t struggle as he pinned her down, his knees on either side of her legs, his hands on her shoulders.

“Say that again?” Johnny asked.

Teasing, I thought, relieved. He’s only teasing.

“I said it looks like you need a little more practice,” Stacy said, smirking.

“You’re going to help me with that?” Johnny leaned over her, pressing his weight against her.

“You bet.”

Johnny brought his face down to hers and kissed her so hard that it made me dizzy. Stacy grabbed him around the neck and somehow they were rolling, her over him and him over her, not coming to a stop until they bumped up against the sofa. Stacy was on top, grinning.

“Looks like I win,” she said.

Johnny laughed. “This is only round one, Lemke,” he said, and rolled her onto her back.

I slipped into the kitchen, joining the men for a piece of pie.

By the time Johnny and Stacy came in, red-cheeked, all the men had left, except Grandpa, who was picking at a few last crumbs on his plate.

“Everyone’s gone?” Johnny asked, looking around.

No one answered. Mom was at the sink with her back to him, running water, and Emilie stood next to her, scowling, a dish towel in hand.

“I should probably go, too,” Stacy said. “Good night, everyone!”

“Good night,” Mom murmured.

“Good night, Stacy!” I called, and she gave me a little wink.

“Umm...Stacy’s going to need a ride home,” Johnny announced, jiggling his keys. “I’ll be back in a half hour.” I watched the two of them head down the sidewalk together, with both of her arms wrapped around his waist. Johnny opened the passenger door of his truck and escorted her inside with a flourish.

“It doesn’t take half an hour to get to the other side of Watankee and back,” Emilie observed drily.

Mom gave Dad a look—the look.

“I don’t think we were ever like that,” he said, giving her a playful nudge with his foot. His sock, I noticed, was worn thin at the heel.

In the moment before the interior light in the truck was extinguished, I saw that Stacy had scooted across the bench seat, so she was riding with the left side of her body pressed up against Johnny.

“No,” Mom said, refusing to take the bait. “I don’t think we ever were.”

I never learned where Stacy had seen Johnny for the first time. Maybe it was between classes and he was shelving books in his locker, or maybe he was standing in line at the cafeteria, but I liked to believe that she first saw him when he was wrestling, crouched in the stance perfected on all those long summer nights, a number on his back, battling his way through the bracket and coming out, just about always, on top.

seven

After that evening, Johnny’s wrestling nights became rarer and then tapered off for good. There was something a little awkward about being around Johnny and Stacy, something that made everyone else feel like a third wheel. They couldn’t stop touching each other, and they practically sat on top of each other on the couch, even though, as Mom liked to point out, there was plenty of room to spread out. On warm-weather weekends, Johnny’s friends used to congregate in our driveway, their Fords and Chevys idling, finalizing plans for cliff jumping in Manitou Park or riding their bikes down Clay Pit Road to the old quarry. But once Johnny and Stacy were officially dating, the guys Johnny had known his whole life—guys he’d played with since elementary school—basically disappeared.

Stacy’s sixteenth birthday coincided with Labor Day weekend, our last truly free moments of life before school began. Stacy delivered the party invitation herself, her hair swinging in a thick French braid.

“It’ll be small, just family and a few friends,” she said at dinner. She’d become a regular fixture in our lives in a short span of time. “My parents just want to meet everybody, you know, officially.” She grinned at Johnny, and he smiled back at her.

“Well, that sounds very nice,” Mom said with a tight half smile she generally reserved for the women she didn’t like at church, or the times when Grandpa invited himself over and didn’t seem inclined to leave. “Doesn’t that sound nice?” she continued, looking around the table. “Please tell your parents we wouldn’t miss it.”

Later, Emilie made a valiant effort to plead for freedom. “When you said we wouldn’t miss it, you meant you and Dad, right?”

Mom stiffened her jaw. “We’re all going,” she said, throwing her gaze onto me.

I tried to shrug casually, but it was no secret to anyone that Stacy Lemke had become my idol. When I was alone I tried to imitate the way she walked, with just a little slouch to her shoulders. I loved how she parted her straight hair right down the middle and had tried it with my own, wetting my hairbrush under the faucet. Emilie had studied the end result critically. “What happened to your hair? You look like a drowned rat,” she’d pronounced.

As it turned out, the Lemkes lived less than two miles from us, on the south side of Watankee, not far from the juncture at Passaqua Road. I noticed right away that their white house looked neater than ours, as if it were standing up a little straighter in its frame. Half a dozen kids were bouncing on a huge trampoline on the lawn—the sort of thing Dad would never approve of because it killed the grass. Behind their house, tucked between a row of evergreens and a three-car garage, the yard was set up for Stacy’s party. Crepe-paper streamers twisted from surface to surface, and bouquets of helium-filled balloons floated from the backs of folding chairs.

“I thought this was just a small thing,” Mom said as we pulled into the driveway, which was lined with parked cars. Johnny’s truck was already there, behind a shiny burgundy Buick.

Stacy, wearing a white dress with eyelet trim and red sandals, rushed over to greet us, followed by her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Lemke, tall and tanned, might have been siblings. If they were cookies, they would have come out from practically the same cutter. I couldn’t stop staring at Mrs. Lemke; she looked pretty enough to be on television. Her hair was sprayed upward and rode on her head like a reddish-blond helmet. She wore a pink shift dress with platform sandals, and her fingers glittered with rings. Mr. Lemke wore a bright Hawaiian shirt with white pants and navy deck shoes. They were as polished as a pair of Kennedys.

“Looks like they’ve come straight from the country club,” Mom muttered under her breath. But she smiled broadly; a second later she held out a hand to shake with Stacy’s parents.

“Oh, homemade potato salad, Bill!” Mrs. Lemke exclaimed, taking the dish from Mom, followed by a conspiratorial whisper in Mom’s direction, as if she were revealing a state secret, “It’s his favorite, and I just don’t have time to make it from scratch anymore.”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” Mom said. Without the salad bowl to hold, she clasped her hands in front of her stomach awkwardly.

I set our gift—a soft white cardigan with tiny pearl buttons that Mom had picked out and Emilie had judged “too fussy”—on a card table already heaped with presents, and then stood uncomfortably in the middle of a circle of strangers. Emilie spotted a group of teenagers that included Joanie Lemke and wandered over, perfectly at ease. It wasn’t difficult to spot Heather Lemke; even in a sundress, she was just as fearsome as she was on the playground. She was giving a piggyback ride to a little boy about half her size, who wobbled on her back like an oversize doll. I made my way over to the drink table, where my parents stood uneasily, sipping out of plastic cups. I reached for one of the massive plastic ladles but was redirected by Mrs. Lemke.

“Oh, no, Kirsten. Have some punch from this bowl,” she said and laughed, steering me by the shoulders to a bowl floating with lumps of orange sherbet.

Sipping the too-sweet punch, I joined my parents, who were in the middle of a polite set of introductions.

“John’s a farmer and Alicia works at the hospital in Manitowoc,” Mrs. Lemke announced to the group. “Can you believe that? She’s a lot tougher than me, working around blood and guts all day long.”

Dad and Mom grinned and nodded, looking as out of place as I felt. We had dressed carefully, with Mom ironing out our wrinkles, but in this crowd of linen dresses and polo shirts, we might have been the Beverly Hillbillies. I spotted Johnny and Stacy coming out of the house holding hands and marveled at how comfortable Johnny looked here, as if he belonged.

“And over there, that’s their daughter Emilie, and this is Kirsten.” Mrs. Lemke leaned down to me with a wide pink smile. “And Kirsten will be starting...?”

“Fourth grade,” I said loudly. Mom gave me a little nudge from behind, which I knew meant—Be polite.

Mrs. Lemke wrinkled her pretty face inquisitively, as if there was a joke she didn’t understand.

“She’s just a little small for her age,” Mom said quickly.

I looked around for Stacy and saw her standing with some of the other high school kids. Then Johnny came up behind her and dropped something down the back of her dress, and she screamed, swatting him away. She wriggled an ice cube free and tossed it playfully after him.

“Who wants the grand tour?” Mr. Lemke asked, and Dad and I, not sure what to do, followed him. Mr. Lemke led us into their rambling house, pointing out the upgrades such as the finished basement with a pool table and the master suite addition, which he joked had cost “an arm and two or three legs.” Everything looked bright and new, down to the dozen red pillows on the white living room couch. A white living room couch? Between Mr. Lemke’s white pants and Stacy’s white dress, I was beginning to believe that dirt didn’t exist here.

When we got to Stacy’s room, I lingered behind, giving the open door a slight nudge. Inside, the walls were a pale yellow, and the furniture was white, from her nightstand to her headboard to a double chest of drawers. I pinched myself: I was inside Stacy’s bedroom. There was a massive “Shipbuilders” banner on one wall and a bouquet of red roses on the nightstand, which I guessed were from Johnny. Her room was so white, so clean and sterile, it might have belonged in a hospital. Emilie and I had filled about every inch of our room with our junk—where were Stacy’s bunched-up socks, her bottles of perfume, the paper fans folded from church bulletins?

I peeked into the hallway, but Dad and Mr. Lemke had continued on without me. I stepped farther into the room, cautiously. Stacy slept here, in this very bed, I thought as I ran my finger along her pillow, over her crisp pillowcase. I scanned her bookcase. A King James Bible, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a set of pristine leather-bound classics. Through her filmy white curtain, I could see kids bobbing up and down on the trampoline, their heads coming in and out of view. I sat gently on the edge of her bed, and slid open the top drawer of her nightstand.

I wasn’t looking for anything exactly—just evidence of the girl I knew in this too-perfect room, or maybe evidence of how much she loved Johnny, and me, too. But right on top was a picture of Stacy and someone who wasn’t Johnny. His arm was tight around her shoulders, and she was grinning so widely that I could see her one pointed tooth. Someone had drawn a heart in red marker around their heads—and then, more recently I suspected, the boy’s face had been blacked out with a ballpoint pen. I ran a finger across the snapshot, imagining Stacy wielding the pen, digging the deep hash marks across his face until it was gone, obliterated. She had pressed so hard that she’d almost poked a hole through the back of the picture. He didn’t matter anymore, but Stacy was still there, beaming.

I dropped the picture as if it was on fire and slid the drawer closed, my heart pounding. Standing, I straightened the edge of the bedspread to erase my presence. Maybe Emilie was right—Stacy had loved someone else before, as intensely as she loved Johnny now.

“We spent the most money in the kitchen, of course,” Mr. Lemke was saying when I caught up to them. “You know how these old farmhouses are, with the outdated plumbing and electrical.”

Back outside, Mrs. Lemke removed a store-bought cake from its pink bakery box and poked sixteen candles through its stiff loops of white frosting. We sang a wild rendition of “Happy Birthday,” with Mr. Lemke holding all the notes too long and stretching out his hands dramatically, as if he was performing for the back row of a crowded theater. Mrs. Lemke clapped excitedly when Stacy blew out all the candles in a single shot.

“No candles left? You know what that means, don’t you?” Mr. Lemke bellowed. “No boyfriends!”

Everyone laughed, and Johnny pretended to look offended. Stacy leaned over to give his cheek a loud smack. “One boyfriend,” she clarified. My cheeks burned, thinking of her in the picture with the other boyfriend, scratched out of existence. Mom forced a polite smile and excused herself to the bathroom.

Mrs. Lemke stepped up to cut the cake, and Heather and Joanie came forward to pass out plates and forks to the guests.

I picked at my slice, slipping a red rose of frosting into my mouth and holding it on my tongue until it dissolved. The adults, finding it difficult to balance their drinks and their slices of cake, found their way back to the folding chairs. I sat cross-legged on the grass, my own plate in my lap.

The frosting had melted in my mouth, sickly sweet. I felt a little bit like throwing up, whether from the sun or the sugar, or thinking of Stacy with a boyfriend she had loved as much as Johnny.

One of the ladies, passing by, said under her breath, “They’ve sure got their hands full with that one.” I turned around, trying to pinpoint who she was talking about, but got only a sharp glare of late-afternoon sun.

Suddenly Mom was standing over me, her shadow like a soft blanket. “Did you save any cake for me?”

I held out my plate. “You can have the rest.”

I lost count of how many boxes Stacy opened, carefully working her finger under the wrapping paper and gently separating layers of tissue. Instead I was watching her carefully, looking for any hint that Stacy was somehow less than perfect, not the angel I’d thought. She cooed over each sweater, shirt, skirt, necklace, bracelet and earring, holding it up for our appraisal. When she got to our gift, she said, “Oh, I love it! It’s perfect. Tell the truth—who picked this out? It wasn’t Johnny, was it?” Everyone laughed, Johnny loudest of all. I was irritated with him then; he looked like a buffoon, like just another big, dumb guy. “And now, the best for last,” Mr. Lemke said, setting a huge box in front of Stacy. “Go ahead, baby.”

Stacy ripped off the paper and opened the box—only to find another wrapped box inside, and another inside that. She tossed the wadded-up pieces of paper at her dad in mock frustration. Finally she came to a tiny velvet jewelry box in the middle, and opened it to pull out a single key. She screamed. “Oh, my goodness. You didn’t! You didn’t!”

“Follow me, everyone,” Mr. Lemke said, and the whole party trooped behind him to the shed, clutching cameras and glasses of punch.

Stacy squealed at the sight of what was plainly a car shrouded in white sheets.

“Nothing but the best for my girl,” Mr. Lemke said, whipping off the sheets to reveal a shiny red Camaro. Everyone gasped and applauded, as if he had just pulled off a daring magic trick.

“I can’t believe it!” Stacy cried, tugging open the driver’s door.

“Not bad.” Johnny grinned, running a hand along the hood.

“We needed a way to get her to and from school,” Mrs. Lemke explained, her cheeks pink. “She’s getting so independent now, always needing to go somewhere.”

I caught a glance between Dad and Mom that was half smirk, half eye-roll. Maybe their look was in reference to our own 1985 Chevrolet Caprice station wagon, which was fast approaching the ten-year mark, or Johnny’s ’69 Chevy, dubbed the Green Machine, which he’d inherited from Dad when he turned sixteen. We’d all figured Dad would buy himself a new truck at that point, but instead he’d come back from Manitowoc with an even older model, one that was so stripped down on the inside, Mom refused to ride in it. “It runs fine,” Dad had said, shrugging.

After the grand unveiling, Stacy’s party fizzled out. One by one, we wandered back to gather the plates and napkins that had scattered in the breeze. Dad and Mom moved silently, helping to stack folding chairs against the side of the garage. There was another round of handshakes before we left, with Mrs. Lemke insisting we simply had to get together again soon, and Mom answering, “Of course!”

The next time we would see each other, Stacy wouldn’t be there. The next time we would see each other, the Lemkes and the Hammarstroms wouldn’t even pretend to be friendly. But that afternoon, we all smiled and said polite goodbyes, and Johnny announced, “Think I’ll stick around and give Stacy a driving lesson.”

“Don’t be too late,” Mom said automatically, which was funny, because Johnny had been coming home later and later, and no one seemed to know what too late was anymore.

When we were at the end of the driveway, Emilie and I craned our necks to look back at them. “Look at them—they’re like a magazine advertisement,” Emilie marveled.

Even from that distance, we could see Mrs. Lemke standing on a folding chair, unpinning a row of streamers. Mr. Lemke was scraping down the grill with a long-handled brush. As we straightened out of the turn heading onto Passaqua Road, we got a clear view of the Camaro behind the shed. Stacy was sitting on the hood, her arms wrapped around Johnny’s neck, her legs hooked around his thighs. He was standing, his body pressed tightly against her in a way that was—well—

Mom cleared her throat suddenly, and all four of our heads swiveled on our necks, facing the road in front of us once again.

“I’ll bet he teaches her how to drive,” Emilie whispered, but I knew better than to laugh.

eight

Fourth grade wasn’t much different from third grade, with its spelling tests and vocabulary words and the maps of Wisconsin we traced diligently from our social studies textbook. In gym class, my teacher seemed to plan our activities around things a small person simply could not do—shoot baskets, break through the chain in Red Rover. It was shocking how tall my classmates had grown over the summer. Mom resisted my constant pleas to write a note that would excuse me, permanently, from gym. In retaliation I lugged several of her old medical books to the hayloft and spent my afternoons trying to pull off a case of rheumatoid arthritis or intestinal polyps.