All Your Pretty Dreams by Lise McClendon

realistic, Iz. Those other boyfriends? Silly
infatuations.
    She plunged her hands into
her pockets. Be rational. You’re an
academic. She was just alone out here (not
lonely, that assumed she was looking for somebody and she wasn’t)
and he— he smelled good.
    That was all.
    ——
    The house was quiet when
Jonny got home, lights off. On the porch he stopped to listen. Not
a peep from the thespians, hysterical or otherwise. Friends,
spouses, and offspring had moved on.
    He sat down on the stoop.
Would his parents divorce? Was the small-town bliss myth finally
bust? Well, he had bust it wide open himself. Didn’t his parents
have the right to be happy? Hadn’t he told his mother that he was
in charge of his own love life? He owed them the same
respect.
    In the sky, the stars swept
over the lake with a twist of sugary cloud. Cicadas sang in the
trees. Margaret’s roses released perfume. Like most places Red Vine
was full of secret heartache and false cheer. Keep an even keel, an
unfurrowed brow. Never speak an ill word. No one wants to hear
about your problems. You don’t want to hear about theirs. You have
all you can handle. Better to pretend you don’t have any, that the
world is just the way you want it. It made life easier for everyone
around you. If not, exactly, for you.
    Orion, high in the sky, his
knife and belt of stars, stood out, one of the few reliable
constellations. What was he doing here? It only reminded him of
those mindless days at Hormone High. And gave Cuppie the idea that
he wanted her back. Hiding from his job? He liked it, mostly. The
future? Was he afraid to find out what it held?
    Maybe he would be alone.
He let the thought roll around his skull. He felt his lungs fill,
his heart flutter in his chest. Alone. He had never lived alone. The
bachelor, they would call him, with a wink perhaps. He might never
find anyone who met his ‘lofty new standards,’ as his mother chided
him today in her rage. Her view was if you chose badly once, if you
rejected what you had, you had no right to expect love, much less
happiness.
    Maybe she was right. Jonny
pictured himself taking waitresses and flight attendants to dinner
and finding them all too Cuppie-esque. Or up a rung, hooking up
with lonely stockbrokers and flinty lawyers out for a quick romp.
And never really connect. Never mate again— except in the animal
sense.
    He rubbed his eyes,
exhausted from the long day. What if he never found anyone? He
sighed aloud. Face it: You will live. Plenty of people led
meaningful lives without true love. He would be happy with whatever
came his way. He wasn’t built for anything else, and if that made
him shallow, then so be it.
    That decision, to be
happy, to not dwell on the past, made him feel free somehow, free
to follow his heart in matters that had nothing to do with romance.
That was over-rated. Look where it got his parents. Look where it
got him . No, he
would take a giant leap and do something that would probably make
him look like an idiot. Something that he wanted to do so much it
scared him. Like go back to college or build a grain bin house.
Like divorce the hometown girl who had once been a perfect match.
Like live alone and be happy.
    He smiled up at the sky
full of stars. He didn’t care what Red Vine thought of him, or
Minneapolis. He would try very hard not to get anxious about what
the Big Scary Future held. He would handle it. He wouldn’t make a
mess of his life like his parents— he would be smart, he would look
ahead. He would work and plan— and make it happen.
    Whatever the hell it was.

Chapter 10
     

     
     
    Three days after the
occupants of the house on Birch Street saw the backside of Ozzie
Knobel he returned to the Rainy Days Motor Inn. Jonny stood at the
parlor window with his mother and Father Teddy, watching Ozzie on
the roof, stripping shingles. The sun was out, waves of heat in the
air. He wielded the big hook frantically, as if he’d just realized
that the roof was a