Once Upon a Time, There Was You

by Elizabeth Berg

  10

  Saturday afternoon, John sits on the patio at W. A. Frost, waiting for Tom Meister to show up. They’re going to have lunch and talk about financing John’s latest idea for refurbishing the hotel on Wabasha. Tom is the only mortgage banker John knows who’s a bit of a sentimentalist, a practical romantic, really; and that’s exactly the kind of banker he needs for this project. He’s worked with Tom before, and he likes him. They’ve developed a casual friendship; whenever a client gives Tom tickets for a Vikings or Twins game, he invites John to come along. For his part, John occasionally meets Tom for a drink and provides an ear for the man’s woes with the opposite sex. Tom is a thirty-seven-year-old womanizer who can’t settle down, but he likes to think the problem is much more complex than that. John just lets him talk. Tom’s got a good sense of humor and perspective; he’s not one of those guys sitting at the bar all hunch-backed and damp-eyed, blubbering into his beer. A few weeks ago, in fact, when he told John about his latest disaster, he slid onto the barstool beside him, loosened his tie, and began singing the lyrics from a country-and-western song: You done stomped on my heart/And you mashed that sucker flat. Then he ordered a boilermaker and some buffalo wings and said, “Okay, ready for this one?”

  Tom is chronically late for most appointments, but every now and then he shows up on time, so John always feels compelled to arrive at the appointed hour. Ordinarily, he brings a book or a newspaper, but this time he has forgotten. He could peruse the menu in the overly studious way people sitting alone do, but he already knows what he wants: the fried egg BLT and the curried carrot soup. He supposes he could check his email, but he did that not fifteen minutes ago, just before he came into the restaurant. He was looking for a message from Amy, which he did not find. He’d thought of sending her one, but in the end decided against it, not sure if he was honoring the need to give her or himself space. It had hurt when she left the way she did; but then, suddenly, it had not.

  He leans back in his chair, watching people come onto the patio with the benign interest of a cat stretched out on a window ledge: Pretty girl. Nice briefcase. I know that man from somewhere—an actor at Dudley Riggs’s Brave New Workshop?

  At the table next to him, two women sit down and begin talking in low tones with their heads practically touching. He’d bet anything they’re engaging in the time-honored practice of man-bashing. He discreetly moves a bit closer and hears, “Oh, please, she’s always been sensitive about that. And everything else! She’s such a little drama queen. If he had a functioning brain cell, he’d dump her.”

  Well. So much for assumptions. He thinks again of emailing Amy, speaking of assumptions. It could very well be that her behavior the last time they were together embarrassed her, and she’s waiting for him to make the first move toward reconciliation. Probably he should wait awhile longer, though. Best not to rush these things.

  He watches an older couple eating their lunch, and their ease and enjoyment in each other’s company is obvious. He bets they’ve been married for over fifty years, although the last time he thought that, he asked the guy, whom he met in the restroom, how long he’d been married to the woman he seemed so happy to be with, and the guy said, “Oh, hell, we’re not married. Why do you think we’re jabbering like a couple of jaybirds? This is just our second date!” John looks for wedding rings on this couple’s hands: yes. And so he decides that they’ve been happily together since their twenties. They fought, but they fought fairly. They understood and believed in commitment. It did happen.

  He looks at his watch. Tom is now half an hour late; John will wait another five minutes and then give him a call. He looks up into the trees to see if he can spot any birds or, even better, nests. He used to pay Sadie a quarter for every bird’s nest she spotted. He wanted her to be skilled in the art of noticing, and he liked teaching her about the ingenious architecture of those tiny abodes. She liked the Baltimore oriole nests most of all, she told him, on the day he showed her one, and when he asked why, she said it was because they seemed the hardest to build. Always after a challenge, that one. It was a good quality, so long as it was not taken to extremes.

  She’ll be rock climbing today, presumably is doing it right now, in fact. He wishes he were with her. He’s missed out on so much of her life, and he resents it. But Irene was hell-bent on moving to the coast, and he doesn’t want to live in San Francisco. There’s too much there, there. He is put off rather than charmed by Lombard Street and the trolley cars and Fisherman’s Wharf. He dislikes the gawking tourists, carrying on about the Golden Gate Bridge and how they wish they could live in such a place as this.

  What he likes is the subtler style of his own town, the nonblaring treasures that abound: Mickey’s Diner and Manny’s Steakhouse. The alcoves at the St. Paul cathedral, the houses tucked into Crocus Hill. The gigantic international grocery store on University and Dale; the venerable used bookstore on Snelling, the omnipresent lakes. He and Sadie both love the annual Minnesota State Fair, the tractors and the quilts and the blue-ribbon cakes and the engaging patter of the men selling Miracle knives. They like the sight of the 4-H kids sleeping next to their cows and the towering Clydesdale horses that are dressed up in bells and hand-oiled, brass-trimmed harnesses to pull the Budweiser wagon. Every year, they join the throngs of admirers who stand before the sculpted-from-butter heads of Princess Kay of the Milky Way and her attendants. These are displayed with a noticeable lack of irony in refrigerated cases. Best of all, they like the church tent, where stout, kindhearted women wearing faded floral aprons serve meatball sundaes.

  St. Paul spawned the Wolverines, a band whose members wear threadbare tuxedos and play 1920s and ’30s jazz songs, many of which they scored themselves by listening again and again to old records. It has Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books. There’s the conservatory at Como Park. The James Hill House. The Mississippi River Boulevard and Summit Ave. Even the cold winters and the humid summers of St. Paul, John likes them, too. In part it’s because—he smiles ruefully, thinking this—they are a challenge.

  He checks his watch again, and when he looks up, he sees a woman coming out onto the patio. It’s Amy, and she’s with a tall, good-looking man, who is laughing loudly at something she just said. She hasn’t seen him, and so while she has her back to him, he leaves his table and asks to be seated inside, in a far corner, so she won’t pass him on the way out. As soon as he is reseated, he begins drumming his knuckles on the table. When he sees Tom come in, he calls out his name and rises to wave him over.

  “Hey,” Tom says, pulling out a chair and sliding into it. “Sorry I’m late.” He folds his sunglasses, slips them into his front pocket. He looks around the room, raises his chin to the young woman a few tables over who’s waving at him. She’s lovely, with thick blond hair that hangs down to her waist.

  “So, Tommy,” John says.

  “Get this,” Tom says. “That blond woman who looks like Barbie? That’s her name! Barbie! Hey, how come we’re not out on the patio? It’s dark in here. And it’s beautiful outside.”

  “It’s quieter in here,” John says. “So as I told you, I’m thinking about a residential hotel, and here’s the beautiful thing. An extended-stay hotel runs about three thousand a month. Renting an apartment costs about a thousand a month, but it’s empty, and it provides no services. I’ll be the place in between, for about eighteen hundred, so I’ve got a competitive edge already. But by putting it there on Wabasha in that great old hotel, I’ll have virtually no competition. I want a restaurant in there that can service both the public and the residents, and I want a rooftop garden—there’ll be a view of the river from there. I’ve already talked to a structural engineer—putting it on top of eleven stories won’t be a problem.”

  Tom blinks. “Hello. How are you? Did you order yet?”

  “Sorry.” John hands him a menu. As soon as they’ve placed their orders, John starts in again. “Think of the guys who come here for business for six, eight weeks. They’re displace
d from their homes and their families and friends. They need a comfortable place, they need the companionship of others like them. I’ll give them that. And more. For example, they won’t have to incur the cost of everyday maid service, but I’ll offer someone to come in and tidy up whenever they want.”

  Tom nods, thinking. “How many rooms?”

  “One hundred sixty-five.”

  Tom stares into space, doing calculations in his head. John knows him well enough to see that he’s not immediately enthusiastic about the idea. He’ll need to personalize it more. He leans back while the server puts his lunch before him, takes a bite and waits for Tom to do the same—he, too, ordered the fried egg BLT.

  “Damn, this is good!” Tom says, after he takes a bite.

  “Yeah,” John says. “So, listen. This idea isn’t just for business-people who travel. Let’s suppose your girlfriend dumps you.”

  Tom’s fork stops midway to his mouth, and he looks at John.

  “Suppose you’ve been living with her and she all of a sudden gives you the heave-ho.”

  “Yeah, I’ll try to imagine that,” Tom says.

  “All right, so you’re out of there and you’ve got nowhere to go except maybe your sister’s pull-out sofa. But you don’t want to be in your sister’s house with her asking what happened this time and the nieces and nephews rifling through your duffel bag and asking you to play Candy Land every five minutes. You don’t want to see your sister and her husband sitting and watching a movie at night all cozy and getting bowls of ice cream for each other. You don’t want to crash with your friends for nights on end, either, you’re too old for that bullshit. You’re not sure what your next move is; you just need some time alone to think.”

  Tom nods. “Yup.”

  John leans back in his chair. He might pretty much have him, now. “You come to my hotel and there’s a comfortable room, and you can be alone if you want to. But there are also other people so you don’t have to be alone. Might even be some other people who’ve been dumped.”

  “Some guys to talk to,” Tom says.

  “Not just guys,” John says, and he can tell by Tom’s face that the deal’s all but done.

  “So what are we looking at?” Tom says. “Eight, nine million?”

  “Nine point five.”

  “I’ll talk to Bill Montgomery this afternoon; we might be able to get you in for a meeting by midweek.”

  After lunch, John goes out to the parking lot, and there is Amy again: the guy has just opened the car door for her. And now she sees him, too. She is startled, but then she smiles and waves. He waves back, unsmiling, then dives into his car and takes off.

  11

  Sunday mornings are given over to God, as Irene understands him. Which is to say that, on Sunday mornings, Irene attends open AA meetings. She is hurrying to one now. Then she’ll head over to the brunch she’s working today.

  Irene is not an alcoholic, but one of her friends, named Carl Palmer, is, and a few years ago, she attended her first meeting with him. They had made plans to go to Angel Island one Sunday, but Carl said he had to go to his meeting first. Irene asked if she could come along and he said sure, this was an open meeting. Irene had been curious about those meetings for a long time. A few people she knew went often, and seemed to profit immensely from them.

  The meeting was held in a classroom of a church in Presidio Heights. Irene and Carl arrived late, and sat in the back. A young woman was standing at the front of the room, speaking, and Irene had to lean forward to hear her. Her voice was ravaged-sounding, and Irene thought that she would make a good blues singer. She had dirty blond dreadlocks, and she wore an oversize navy hooded sweatshirt over blue jeans and work boots. She held a cup of coffee in one hand, and there were rings on every finger. “So I was home that night,” the woman said, “and the kids were sleeping—they’re two and three—they’d been sleeping for a couple hours, and I was trying to watch TV, but it was starting, you know, I just needed a drink so bad, and I had nothing in the house. I started pacing around, and finally I just couldn’t stand it, I busted out and went to the bar at the end of the block. I told myself I’d just get one quick drink.”

  There was a kind of murmuring among the crowd, a lot of knowing uh-huhs.

  “I know, right?” the woman said

  Busted out? Irene thought. You left your two- and three-year-old children alone?

  “Anyways, I got home at one o’clock in the morning. And I right away went into the kids’ room and they were okay, they were sound asleep, but I sat on the floor and just fell over crying. That was my low point, and the next day I went to my first meeting.

  “And I’m doing good, I haven’t had a drink for over a month now.”

  The woman was applauded, but Irene sat stiffly in her chair, trying to think of how she might climb over the people who had come in after she, and get out of there. She wanted out of there. That woman had left her children alone! For hours! And come back drunk! Irene looked left, then right, trying to see which was the best way to go. Carl grabbed her arm. “Sit tight,” he said quietly. “You don’t walk out when someone’s presenting.” He wasn’t angry, but he was firm, and so Irene sat still.

  The woman said, “This morning, my son told me about a dream he had last night. I’m not going to tell you his dream, even though it was a good one. But him telling me his dream? It made me want to tell you mine. I know most people don’t like to hear other people’s dreams, but I would like to share this one. Hope it’s okay. It’s short,” she added, and the crowd chuckled.

  She drew in a big breath. “So what it was, is I dreamed I was at the head of this birch-bark canoe, same kind we had when I was a kid growing up on a lake in Wisconsin. But I wasn’t in a lake, I was at sea, and it was real foggy and the waves were really high, and the water was so black. I was scared to death. And I couldn’t move my hands to row, I couldn’t unclench my fists. I thought, My God, I can’t move, I’m going to capsize. I didn’t know why I hadn’t capsized already. I looked behind me, and I saw that the boat was real long, I mean real long, like I couldn’t hardly see the end. And it was just packed with people. I didn’t know ’cause I’d been sitting with my back to everybody. But the boat was packed with people. And they were rowing.

  “Like a lot of you have said before, I was so ashamed to come here the first time. I was so afraid to admit to my weaknesses and my wrongdoings. One thing is, they were so bad. Other thing is, if I admitted to them, I’d have to do something about them. But that dream reminded me that a lot of us are in the same boat, right?” She joins in the laughter, then says, “Okay, I’m done, but I just want to end by saying I can’t wait for my hands to start working so I can row someone else. And also I want to say that I think it’s our salvation that so many of us are in the boat together.”

  Some man on the other side of the room called out, “Our salvation is that there’s nobody who’s not on the boat!”

  Carl looked over at her then, and Irene nodded.

  12

  Sadie starts awake. Outside, there is the distant sound of a dog barking. The night has passed; sunshine is pushing through the cracks of the shed. It’s cold.

  He didn’t come back.

  “Help!” Sadie cries. She gets up off the mattress and goes to the door of the shed. “Help!” She presses her ear to the door: nothing. She pounds on the door, kicks at it. “Help! Help! Heeeeelp!”

  The word seems ridiculous. Help. She’s said it so many times, it’s starting to lose its meaning. “Help!” she says, one last time, and then laughs. Laughs!

  Maybe she’s starting to crack up. People do crack up, under circumstances like these. She has to get a grip. She can’t think about the fact that no one will find her. She can’t think that he is coming back. She has to make her thoughts small and immediate.

  She goes to the corner of the shed she peed in before, and pees again. Not much there; she’s not had much to drink. And she’ll need to ration what little water she has
left, just in case. It hurts, thinking again about Irene putting that water bottle in her backpack, taking care of her in spite of the fact that Sadie keeps pushing her away. If she gets out of here, when she gets out of here, she’ll make it up to her mother. Somehow. Although she’s said that before, that she’ll make things up to her mother, and then has done no such thing. Has, in fact, made things worse, in the ongoing and escalating battle that has developed between the two of them. She tried to talk about this to her dad, but he seemed only to want to defend Irene. To the extent that Sadie said, at one point, “Well, why’d you get divorced, then?” He started to respond, but then did not. And she did not press him. Him, she does not press.

  But. Now is not the time to pile on guilt. Now is the time to think practically.

  She tries to remember what she learned about how long people can go without water: Three days? A week? She won’t drink any water yet. She’ll wait until she is even thirstier.

  So. She has peed. Now what? If she were home, she’d shower and brush her teeth. She rubs vigorously at her face, checks the corners of her eyes for sleep. She gets out her toothbrush and toothpaste and brushes her teeth, then spits in the corner where she peed—the bathroom, she supposes. She thinks about using a little water to rinse her mouth but decides not to waste it. Instead, she uses her index finger to run across her top teeth, then her bottom, then sucks the paste off her finger. Next, she shakes her hair around and runs her fingers through it, combing it as best she can. She feels a pressure in her bowels, and tries to ignore it.

  She goes back to the mattress, sits down and holds her knees to her chest. Pulls harder. Exercise. She stands and begins doing jumping jacks, she’ll do one hundred, and then she’ll do sit-ups and then she’ll do push-ups. Then she’ll have a bite of PowerBar, only one bite despite the fact that she’s really hungry.