Mourning Wood

by Daniel Paisner

  She buys in bulk, naturally. There’s a standing order for three times each week—she doesn’t have the refrigerator space to go longer between deliveries—and on each pass this Howie’s supposed to leave two five-pound bricks of processed American cheese, presliced, one hundred sixty slices. Only, the last couple times, the cheese was all crusty at the edges and moldy in the middle and she could only salvage like fifty or sixty slices from the whole damn order, and even those she wasn’t so sure about. No one complained or anything, but for, like, a day or two in there, she was expecting a pissed-off call, or a summons. For, like, a week now, she’s had to send one of the Lennys to the Stop ’n’ Shop out by the highway for the individually wrapped Kraft slices, which run like a thousand dollars a pound, just so she can offer cheeseburgers, cheese omelets, and grilled cheese sandwiches to her good customers. Everyone else can just wait for this wholesaler to get his deliveries together, thank you very much.

  The fisherman crowd, they’re a couple decades behind the rest of the world. They hear old Two Stools’s not serving cheeseburgers, and, right away, they’re into this old John Belushi routine from Saturday Night Live. It’s like a time warp. They’re clapping each other on the back, bellowing “Cheeseburgah, cheeseburgah, cheeseburgah,” doubled-up like they’ve never heard it before. Maybe they haven’t. Maybe the routine’s just come to them on its own. Maybe the joke’s been so long in the atmosphere, from all those reruns and retellings, that all the air’s been taken out of it, and it just touches down in their fishermen heads. “Cheeseburgah, cheeseburgah, cheeseburgah.”

  Bar Harbor’s always been safely removed from the cutting edge—the kids up here are just now starting to wear Airwalks and flannels—but it’s like these fishermen haven’t been near a television set in decades. Ask any one of them—Mike, Lem, Chester—and he’ll tell you the only reason he hasn’t seen Carson on the Tonight Show past couple years is because he and the wife haven’t been staying up.

  There’s a piece in the New Yorker—Grace’s subscription just started—about the geography of cool, about how, in matters of fashion and trends and music, New York and Los Angeles are generally a month or two ahead of Chicago and Boston and San Francisco, while cities like Dallas and Orlando and Indianapolis drag by another few months. She started reading the article, and she was thinking, you know, what with television and the Internet and movies and everything, the whole country should be wired pretty much the same, but it turns out it has to do with the way different types of people from different parts of the country respond to that wiring. It’s all tied up in how these different products are distributed, how they connect in each community. The article tells how it’s actually someone’s job (a marketing job, Grace guesses) to track how long it takes the huddled masses in each of our major metropolitan areas to catch on to the next big thing. There’s a whole formula for it, and Grace figures, if this is the case, then her particular corner of Maine must be about ready for disco and leisure suits. Even the phrase, the geography of cool, would be meaningless to her fishermen. They’d think she was talking about Canada.

  Like with sneakers, okay, you’ve got your Nikes and your Reeboks and whatever else it is you see on those basketball player commercials, but, up here, everyone just wears what fits from the sale bin at Cuthbert’s Drug Store and Emporium. There’s the New Balance factory, but everyone knows at least one person who works there to poach on their employee discount, and, besides, they sell all the slightly damaged seconds down at the outlet store. There’s this one guy in town, one of her regulars, still wears the canvas P. F. Flyers he had back in high school. Salamander, they call him. Real name is Salmon, Jimmy Salmon, but he goes by Salamander, and his sneakers are shot through with holes, but they’re still on his feet. The point is, the day these good people have one hundred thirty-nine dollars to spend on a pair of sneakers is the day Grace wears a thong.

  “Chester,” she says, leaning over the fishermen to bus their table, refill their coffee mugs, see about pie. She wants to get a conversation going. “You know the Bushes? George and Barbara? You’ve met them? Took them out on that boat of yours, I recall?”

  Lem laughs. “Chet thought he was in the charter business,” he says. “Had half the Secret Service thinking that boat would be their death.” He laughs again. “They were going down with their president.”

  “It’s a fine boat,” Chester counters.

  “It floats,” Mike offers.

  “For the time being,” Lem roars. “It floats for the time being.” He slaps his palm against the table, hard, as he says this.

  “But you met the president?” Grace continues. “And the first lady?”

  “That there’s no lady,” Lem contributes. “That’s Babs.” He’s slapping, still.

  “But you met them, right? You know the kind of people they are?”

  “I s’pose,” Chester says. “I mean, they’re not having me down to Houston or anything.”

  “Fine. So here’s my question. What kind of president d’you think his son would make?” She’s got their three plates stacked on the muscle of her left arm; she’s working the table with a no-longer-wet rag pulled from her apron belt; she’s not cleaning so much as she is moving stuff around. “Junior. Primaries just around the corner. What kind of job you think he’s done down there in Texas?” She’s thinking, okay, this is a good line to pursue, this is something they can get their hands around: local kid, sort of, making good on the national stage. Next-door neighbors in New Hampshire about to cast the first nods in his direction that count for anything more than publicity. She replaces the rag, picks up the coffee pot, and goes to rest the dirty dishes on the counter. Coffee shop’s not so big she can’t have a conversation from the other side of it. “I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this.” She really would, that’s how hungry she is for an exchange of ideas.

  “I thought it was Florida,” Mike interjects.

  Lem: “No, that’s the other one.”

  “The one owns the baseball team.”

  Chester, trying to think this through: “He’s got, what, two kids, then?”

  “More like a million,” Mike figures. “Remember all those White House Christmas cards? Them all dressed up? Greta Cuthbert’d set ’em out behind her cash register every year like they was close personal friends?”

  “Six. Pretty sure.” This is Peter, some guy who paints houses. He’s sitting over by the window. It’s his slow season, it being winter and all. Grace can’t say what accounts for the slowness of her fishermen.

  “There was that Vietnamese kid,” Lem contributes. “They adopted this Vietnamese kid, I’m remembering. Didn’t look nothing like ’em.”

  “Not like Jack Kennedy,” Chester says, with the reverence New Englanders reserve for their own. “With Jack Kennedy, you knew it was Caroline and John-John and that’s it. They didn’t have to go adopting.”

  “Hop Sing Bush.”

  Apparently, Kennebunkport or no, the Bushes don’t cut it as New Englanders.

  “Dog looked nothing like ’em, either.”

  Acky, used to own the hardware store at the corner of Brown and Bartlett, reaches his coffee mug into the air and waves it about. “Coffee,” he says.

  “What Vietnamese kid?” Mike wonders. “Since when was there a Vietnamese kid?”

  “Millie. A collie, I think.”

  “Since she was in all those Christmas cards.”

  “She or he?”

  “There you go, Ack,” Grace says, pouring. She holds the coffee pot out for her other customers to see. “Don’t make me make a special trip,” she warns with what’s left of her good nature. “Ask me now.” Peter the painter holds out his cup, and she moves to fill it.

  “No,” Chester corrects. “It was a grandkid. Wadn’t his kid, and it wadn’t no Vietnamese kid, either. Korean, I think. Something like that.”

  “Sh’wrote a book. The dog. Remember?”

  “There was those miscarriages Jackie had. They had a de
vil of a time with those miscarriages, ’f’was up to them it wouldn’a been just Caroline and John-John.”

  “A spaniel. Some kind of spaniel.”

  “What miscarriages?”

  “Read a book, why don’tch’ya?”

  “No,” Lem insists. “It was Vietnamese. I’m telling you.”

  “What the hell is a spaniel, anyway?”

  “If a dog can write a book, then I don’t see as I have to go and read it.”

  “Since when can you adopt grandchildren?” Mike wants to know. “You can do that?”

  Grace, back now to the other side of the coffee shop, has reduced her listening to just one ear, her hoped-for exchange of ideas reduced to the standard foolishness. She’s brought the dishes to the sink and cleaned the rest of the tables and set herself down on her remaining stools and started figuring her lunch checks. One ear of this is about all she can take. She meant to get a conversation going, but it’s like she started a brush fire.

  “Hey, Two Stools!” she hears. “Mike here thinks you can adopt grandchildren!”

  “Well, then, it must be so,” she sends back. There is no arrogance in her voice, but there’s no effort, either, and there’s no trace of the good nature that had been running thin. “If Mike thinks it, it must be so.” She doesn’t turn around when she says this, keeps figuring her checks. This time of year, she’s got to reach to make ends meet. If the building wasn’t paid up in full, she once told her father, she’d be out on her substantial ass.

  “Mexican, maybe,” Mike tries. “For some reason I’m thinking the kid was Mexican.”

  Into this foolishness walks Grace’s Harlan—bearded, pale, and looking like he could sell pipe tobacco, or cough drops, maybe even flowers. All he needs is a sweater. (Grace makes a note of this for when he tells his birthday.) He’s caught the gist of the conversation, past few minutes, from the doorjamb to the back stairs. He’s down for a bite to eat and gets this earful from Grace’s chowderheads. “How ’bout she’s American?” he says, when he’s heard enough. “How ’bout her father was the president of these fucking United States, and we’ll just leave it at that.”

  The others hadn’t heard Wood come in, and they turn to face him. “Hey, lookie here,” Chester says. “It’s Larry Lobster.”

  “Time for his bottom-feeding,” Mike announces.

  Grace chuckles at this. It’s a good one, especially for Mike, especially with the way Harlan has to come downstairs to eat. She wonders if Mike put this much thought into it, if he thought of it just now.

  “Trask,” Lem says, kicking out a chair. “Just in time for pie.”

  They’re glad to see him. They’ve known each other their entire lives, these fishermen, and yet in just a few months they’ve allowed this stranger into their midst to where he’s nearly one of them. He doesn’t fish, but he gets the idea. He gets the rest of it too.

  “If Harlan eats, the pie’s for free,” Chester calls over to Two Stools.

  “Like hell,” she says, her good nature restored now that Harlan’s around. She likes the sweet mood he brings with him, wants to hold on to it for later, but she hates the idea of free pie. It’s one of her biggest profit margins. That, and coffee. “’He’s not careful, I’ll charge him too.”

  “Oh, I pay, Gracie dear,” Wood says, sidling up to the counter, pressing himself against Grace from behind. “I pay dearly.” He kisses the back of her head, sweetly, then he plays absentmindedly with her hair, then he crosses to the other side of the counter and helps himself to what’s left of pie. Blueberry. She’s sold about six pieces, but she cuts them so thin there’s more than half still in the tin. He grabs some forks and walks his bounty back to the table to join his friends.

  “What kind?” Lem wants to know.

  “Blueberry.”

  “Stains my teeth,” Chester says.

  “Who’s having?”

  “They’re not even yours,” Mike says. “Just take ‘em out and soak ‘em.”

  “Ammonia,” Lem declares. “Someone told me ammonia does a good job.”

  “On denture stains?”

  “Absolutely, on denture stains. This is what we’re talking about. Denture stains.”

  “They’re not dentures,” Chester insists. “Mike knows shit. They’re capped, is all. They’re still mine. And it’s just these front four, top and bottom.” He opens wide, in a cheesy smile, to illustrate.

  “And who’s paying for all this?” Grace wants to know, meaning the pie party. She’s back at the table. She’s brought plates. She doesn’t want to hear about Chester’s teeth.

  “It’s on the house,” Mike says, indicating Wood.

  “Since when is Harlan the house?”

  “He lives here, don’t he?”

  He’s got her there. “So what if he does? Still don’t make him the house.”

  Wood puts a five-dollar bill on the table. “Here,” he says. “This makes me the house.”

  Grace pushes the money back across the table to Harlan with the tip of her pie knife. “I don’t want your money, Harlan,” she says, and then she waves the knife at the fishermen. “I want theirs.”

  Lem laughs at his own joke before he can give it voice, and when he does, it doesn’t come out funny. “Trask can work it off in trade,” he says, hopeful.

  “Got any apple?” Chester says, when Grace slides a thin piece of pie in front of him. “This blueberry really does stain.”

  “It’s just blueberry today, Chet,” she says. “Sorry.” She really is. They were on sale, the blueberries, flash-frozen, from Oklahoma. She didn’t even know they grew blueberries in Oklahoma, thought it was just wheat fields and maybe corn, but Howie, the wholesaler, swears to it. Says it’s peak growing season down there. “There’s ice cream,” she says, “if you prefer.” She’s off to the painter’s table to see if he wants. Acky never takes pie. Says it clots the arteries. She’s never heard this except from him.

  “What kind?”

  “Chocolate.” Also on sale: two-for-one.

  “Well, that stains too, chocolate.” Chester pouts as he says this. These caps of his have become a big bother, especially around dessert.

  “Aw, Chester, quit whining,” Lem says. “Just take your fucking teeth out and put ‘em in your pocket.”

  “He’ll have the pie à la mode,” Wood says, and the fishermen howl—Chester, too.

  “I suppose you’re payin’ for the mode,” Grace says to Wood, returning to their table. She’s asking and telling, both.

  Mike doesn’t know why he’s laughing. “What’s mode?” he wonders, catching his breath. “Ain’t never seen that on the menu.”

  This is true, Grace thinks. He ain’t never. She gets her boys served and recaffeinated and returns to her stools to total their bills. They’ve got tabs going, but she’s let them run up pretty high. Money’s tight for everyone this time of year. Harlan, too. She can’t imagine he’d have enough with just his winter paycheck from down at the park if it weren’t for her room and board. He’s got, like, no expenses. She doesn’t have it in her to be on him about work, but she’s thinking a man like that should be working more than just weekends. He should be doing more than just managing. He’s strong and healthy. There must be something. She’s also thinking, you know, he must have some real money somewhere. There must be some resources he can call on, if it gets to that. He’s not the type to go hungry. Just look at him. The man’s put on about thirty pounds since he drifted into town, and most all of it has come from her refrigerator. She doesn’t mind, but it’s something to think about.

  “Vanilla’s really a better match for pie,” Lem says. He’s put some thought into this. “Goes with everything.”

  “Mmmm,” Mike says, presumably in agreement.

  Chester (stained): “Vanilla.”

  “D’you hear that, Gracie?” Wood thunders across the restaurant. “The chowderheads seem to think the chocolate dominates the blueberry.”

  “That so?” Grace shoots back. S
he and her one ear are only half-listening. She’s still on her bills, and the mess-ups with her wholesaler, and the way it takes forever for the latest trends to find her, and how Harlan has fitted himself into her world. It’s like there was a place for him, waiting. She’s back and forth and all over. She’s thinking how tomorrow’s Oprah is one of those book club shows (she saw it in the listings), and how she hasn’t read the book, and how she’s got nothing to show for her forty-three years but a small coffee shop with mismatched tables and chairs and more money going out than coming in, how in winter she should probably cut back on one of her Lennys, but then she’s back on Harlan, on what to do with a sixty-six-year-old man who isn’t sure who he wants to be, or where, if he wants to be there with her. She looks over at him, laughing with his new friends, contented, and wonders at her feelings for him.

  She feels alone, and yet she’s not alone; she’s somewhere in between. She wonders if what she feels is love, or if it’s just that she loves the attention, the rough of his beard, the salt of his kiss, the way he likes to fall asleep against her breast, watching Nick at Nite. Maybe she just loves the idea of him. It’s not like they’re banging down her bedroom door, the men up here, so maybe she’s confusing Harlan’s banging with something deeper. Maybe it’s just banging. Maybe she’s just a place to park, something to do while he figures what he really wants, and she’s fooling herself into thinking it’s anything more. She’s relaxed around him, herself, but his own uncertainty is beginning to tear at her. And this place—Maine, the coffee shop, the mold on the cheese, the being overweight and alone and forty-three—is beginning to tear at her too. She doesn’t want to grow old, like this, here. She wants a better spot in the geography of cool, to be somewhere, to matter. She doesn’t want to spend the rest of her days perched on her two stools talking blueberry stains and George Bush’s adopted Vietnamese grandchildren with her regulars. She doesn’t want to keep reaching. Or, if she has to keep reaching, she wants whatever it is she’s reaching for to stay wherever the hell it is and give her a chance to catch up. She wants Harlan Trask to rise from his chair and cross to the counter and take her in his arms and carry her upstairs and come clean. She wants it to be like that scene in An Officer and a Gentleman, the one where Richard Gere comes into the factory and collects Debra Winger into his arms and fireman-carries her to a happy ending, and everyone in the coffee shop will just stand and applaud and surge with good feelings. She wants to look like Debra Winger. From the back. From the front, she wants to look like that actress from The English Patient, the one who has sex in the bathtub with Ralph Fiennes and then dies in the cave. Sometimes she thinks she’d even take dying in a cave if it came with having sex in the bathtub with Ralph Fiennes. It seems to Grace as good a way to go as any.