“I coulda been a contender.” Duke said it like Brando, conTENdaah.
It was fun to be in the car, fun to be together and going somewhere other than rehearsal. I saw an antique store up ahead and leaned forward to tap on Sebastian’s shoulder. “Stop, please.”
“No!” Duke cried. “Antique stores are worse than fruit stands. They’re full of things the grown children had to sell off when their parents died so they could put the farm on the market.”
“You just keep raining on that parade,” Pallace said.
Sebastian stopped the car.
Duke turned to Pallace, leaning over the seat. “Don’t let her out.”
But I was out. I’d been invited to lunch by our director and I’d be damned if I was going to arrive without a gift. Just inside the door, on top of a glass display case, a dozen linen napkins with cutwork around the edge were sitting in a basket waiting for me. They were a blue nearly pale enough to be white, nicely ironed. I knew very little when I was young but I knew the role of Emily and I knew fabric. These were good napkins. I counted them slowly, looking for stains and finding none. As a bonus, they were expensive, and that pleased me more than anything.
“You must have come in looking for these,” the woman at the cash register said when I handed them over.
Two minutes later I was back in the car.
“Let me see!” Pallace held out her hands. Sebastian turned in his seat to look.
“Napkins!” Duke cried. “They must have seen you coming. Napkins are for tourists. First they try to unload a tractor on you, then they bring out the napkins.” He clutched his head as Pallace held a single napkin up to the light.
“I can’t imagine anything nicer than these,” she said.
Sebastian waited until the napkins were back in their bag so they wouldn’t all blow out the window once we started driving again. Pallace sang single lines of show tunes along the way and we guessed the musical. （“Because it’s JUUUNE! June--June--June.”） Duke recited pieces of dialogue and we guessed the play. （“Always tell the truth, George; it’s the easiest thing to remember.”） Duke was crackerjack at memorization. He believed in memorizing any part he wanted, both for the discipline of it and to make sure he would always be ready. “You never know when something’s going to open up,” he said.
“What’s your secret talent?” I shouted to Sebastian.
“Driving,” he called back, leaning his elbow out the open window.
By the time we got to Traverse City, the sky was clear. The rain had given up and gone to Canada. Duke read Nelson’s directions aloud—-a complicated series of poorly marked turns onto twisty roads. Finally up ahead we saw a small sign reading NELSON nailed to a post beside the drive. “He named the place for himself?”
“It’s his aunt and uncle’s farm,” I said. “Their last name is Nelson.”
Duke stuck his head out the window like a dog. “So I can call my cherry farm ‘Duke Acres’？”
“Dukedom,” Sebastian said.
The rutted drive was filled with rainwater. Every leaf and blade of grass was shining. Once we turned we quieted down. The towering woods to our left, the white clapboard house with blue shutters up ahead, the gentle hills of fruit trees to the right that spread out behind the house past where we could see—-it looked like a sampler stitched by an eighteenth--century girl.
“They have a barn,” Pallace whispered.
It wasn’t as if I’d grown up in Los Angeles. I’d seen plenty of farms in my day, but never had I seen a place that made the tightness in my chest relax. The order in the rows of trees and the dark green of the lush grass beneath them soothed me like a hand brushing across my forehead.
Sebastian parked the car beside the gray Chevy we knew to be Nelson’s. Then the screen door of the house opened and Nelson came onto the porch and waved.
“Go tell him you invited us,” Duke said quietly, his eyes straight ahead.
I shook my head. “Not on your life.”
“He didn’t invite us?” Pallace lifted her sunglasses.
“Emily invited us,” Duke said.
I might have looped my purse strap around Duke’s neck but Nelson came to the car smiling. “You found us!” he said. “Those roads can be tricky.”
“You draw a good map.” I held the package lightly. The napkins weighed nothing. I suddenly thought how nice it would have been to have brought a gift for Nelson as well, for all he’d done for us, but I would have had no idea what to get him.
Sebastian held out his hand and introduced himself.
“You’re the tennis player,” Nelson said, smiling. “The other Duke. I’ve seen you at rehearsals.”
“I think we may be crashing the party,” Sebastian said.
Nelson laughed. “There is no party, or there’s always a party, depending on how you look at it. People on farms love company. The more people showing up, the better.” Pallace walked right up to Nelson and kissed his cheek like they were best friends. She kissed our director, who, in his blue T--shirt and jeans, looked nothing like the person who’d been telling us where to stand and how to speak for more than a month now. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Nelson outside before.
Duke was making the slow rotation I had wanted to make the first day I came to Traverse City, and when he stopped he looked at Nelson. “I’m from Michigan,” he said.
“So am I,” Nelson said.
“But I’m not from this Michigan.”
Nelson nodded. “This is my uncle’s farm. I worked here in the summers when I was growing up. I took the bus here when school let out and then my parents would drive up from Grand Rapids at the end of the season and bring me home. As far as I was concerned, August fifteenth was the saddest day of the year.”
“I’ll bet it was.” Duke cast his gaze out over the cherry trees.
“It’s like Tom Lake,” Sebastian said, by which he meant we weren’t exactly driving over from Flint. We were trading beauty for beauty.
“I’ve got nothing but praise for Tom Lake,” Nelson said. “But it’s not like this.”
That was what Duke had meant. For all of Tom Lake’s splendor, this was superior by an order of magnitude. Nelson turned and led us up the stairs and into the house.
“Stop,” Emily says, raising up on her elbows. “Are you saying that Duke came to our house? You brought him to the house?”
“It wasn’t our house then but yes, he was here.”
“The happiest day of your life was the day Duke came to our house?”
“Maybe you could just shut up and listen to the story?” Maisie suggests.
“Why wouldn’t you have told me that?”
“Maybe,” Nell says, choosing her words judiciously, “you were a maniac who was in love with a movie star and Mom didn’t feel like throwing gasoline on it.”
“I wasn’t in love with Duke,” Emily says. “I thought he was my father.”
“Right. Your father. Forgive me.” Maisie pulls the towel over her face. “Please proceed.”
“None of you think she should have told us this before?”