by Claire Cook
I held my nose in case it smelled like a science experiment by now and chugged the whole thing.
I shivered and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I held the bottle up to my mouth. “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, was one bad bottle of wine,” I said into my wine bottle microphone. I blew into it a few times, unsuccessfully trying to get the melody of “Red, Red Wine.”
“And I am one cheap date,” I added as the wine rushed to my head.
I gave the bottle a quick rinse and turned it upside down on the top rack of the dishwasher to finish drying. It wobbled and started to fall.
“Uh-uh-uh,” I said as I grabbed it. “I’m not through with you yet, little bottle.”
I giggled. I definitely had a bit of a buzz on and was quite possibly having a midlife meltdown at the same time. I considered a quick WebMD search so I could compare symptoms, but decided this was no time to get sidetracked.
I knew I’d seen the recipe online, and sure enough, when I Googled it, all sorts of links popped up. I clicked on one randomly.
MAKE YOUR OWN CHALKBOARD PAINT
1/2 cup latex paint, any color
2 tablespoons unsanded grout
bowl
paint stirrer
paintbrush
white chalk
Stir grout into latex paint until lump-free. Paint surface of chalkboard-to-be. Let dry. Rub chalk over entire surface and wipe off before using it for the first time.
I found an old bag of unsanded grout in the garage and some black paint called “Beluga” I’d once used to freshen up an old table. I mixed the paint and grout together in one of the old coffee cans I used for collecting metal scraps.
I layered some long strips of paper towel on the kitchen island and painted the empty wine bottle carefully, stopping once to double-check that the front door was locked. I mean, how embarrassing to be caught decorating a Spin-the-Bottle bottle at my age. Although maybe I could pass it off as a menu vase I was making to write the day’s pathetic offerings. Tuesday: single serving probiotic plus fiber yogurt, single serving hummus with stale crackers, microwaved single serving frozen Healthy Choice entrée.
While the bottle dried, I pulled down the creaky attic stairs in the hallway and climbed up. I hadn’t saved much from high school, but I was pretty sure my yearbook was still packed away somewhere. I found boxes and boxes of Trevor and Troy’s old things, everything from Matchbox cars to Halloween costumes to Sesame Street stuffed animals to report cards to retired refrigerator drawings. Spiderwebs stuck to my face and arms like strands of sticky hair. I brushed them away and tried not to think about what other creepy-crawly things might be up here.
Tucked in a corner under an old grapevine wreath I found a cardboard box with MELANIE’S STUFF written on it in loopy letters with faded purple marker, the I in MELANIE dotted with a red heart. The first thing I found was an eight-track tape of Carly Simon’s No Secrets. Yellowed paperbacks followed—Fear of Flying, Love Story, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, The Great Gatsby. A pet rock in a crate, a chocolate leatherette backgammon case, a ticket stub from The Sting, a picture postcard of the waves at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, with a five-cent stamp. Having a great time! Wish you were here!
Alone in my attic, I giggled across the decades. “Who the hell were you, Finn Miller? Wish I remembered!”
I could have sworn my high school yearbook was blue and white, our school colors, but it turned out to be bright yellow with MARSHBURY HIGH SCHOOL written in orange psychedelic swirls.
I backed my way down the attic stairs, holding the yearbook in one hand as if it were a Magic 8 Ball that might reveal my future: Signs point to yes. Outlook good. You may rely on it.
I found my bar stool and placed my yearbook carefully on the kitchen counter. It was in pretty good shape for its age, but who knew, one wrong move and it might crumble into dust. I thought about looking for my own picture, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. What if it was even more embarrassing than I imagined? The remnants of my dwindling self-esteem might just crumble into dust, too.
“Will I remember Finn Miller?” I asked my empty kitchen as I flipped to the M’s.
I found him in the middle of a page. The yearbook pages were black and white, which softened the clash of his plaid suit jacket and striped tie. He had a serious side part going on, his long, wavy hair obscuring most of one eyebrow before it tucked behind his ear. But his chin was strong and his eyes were dark and borderline sexy. His smile was a bit forced, but he was probably just camera-shy. I scanned down to his quote: School’s out. Memories past. Don’t ever doubt. The fun will last.
I carried the yearbook into the little office we’d made in one corner of the guest room. I scanned Finn’s picture and the pictures of some other fairly cute male classmates. I enlarged them until their heads were big enough to fill a page of computer paper, then I printed them and cut them out like paper dolls.
I left them on the kitchen island while I searched the garage, finally settling on two relatively clean brooms and a long-haired mop that had never been used. I carried them into the kitchen, turned them upside down, and taped the paper faces onto their business ends.
Music. Poor Carly Simon’s eight-track tape was never going to find its match in a tape player again, so to make it up to her I downloaded No Secrets onto my laptop. “You’re So Vain” filled my kitchen with retro longing.
“You bet I think this song is about you,” I said to Finn Miller.
His mop hair was a good look for him, a step up from that old side-part swoop, almost like white dreadlocks. We danced around the kitchen together, his hair tickling my neck, his paper face crinkling when he leaned close. He dipped me, and I smiled up at him as Carly sang her approval.
The two broom boys leaning back against their bar stools never took their eyes off us. “Sorry, guys,” I said in my sexiest, slightly wine-soaked voice. “I’m taken.” It came out low and scratchy, almost like a croak, the voice of a woman spending way too much time alone.
When the song ended, I wedged Finn Miller through the spindles of a stool and dragged him around the island until he was diagonally across from me.
I reached for the bottle and wrote SPIN THE BOTTLE on it in white chalk in my old loopy letters.
“So, who’s up for a little fun?” I was getting better at the sexy-voice thing. I looked from chair to chair, pretending my former husband and sons had never sat in them and that this was a high school party: lights out except for a single lava lamp off in one corner, “Born to Be Wild” pulsing in the background, hormones raging, hearts beating.
I gave the bottle a generous spin and leaned back to let fate have its way with me.
The bottle skittered across the shiny granite to the edge of the counter. I lunged and caught it just before it fell off.
The mouth of the bottle was pointing between two bar stools, so I spun it again.
It pointed right at Finn Miller.
It’s not easy to fake a make-out session with a long-haired mop, but I gave it everything I had. I closed my eyes and stroked the long, scraggly mop-locks and tried to remember the smell of Brut, the Pepto-Bismol taste of a hastily chewed and then spit-out piece of Clark’s Teaberry gum, the heat of an unremembered boy pressing up against me.
To: Finn Miller
From: Melanie
Subject: Re: sweet dreams of you
I remember that Leon Russell concert like it was yesterday. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Was I a good kisser? (In the dream, I mean!)
To: B.J.
From: Melanie
Subject: Re: Spin-the-Bottle Reunion Centerpieces
Oh, grow up. (No offense.) And no, I haven’t booked my flights. I’ve moved beyond high school.
CHAPTER 7
The next morning I tucked a branch of flowering crepe myrtle into the chalkboard bottle sitting on the kitchen island to make it less conspicuous. Every time I looked at the bottle, I practically b
lushed, but I still couldn’t make myself put it out with the recyclables. I mean, acting out a harmless little fantasy was progress, wasn’t it? Before I knew it I’d have a sparkle in my eye and a spring in my step.
Either that or I was totally losing it.
I added some water to keep the branch alive, possible evidence that I was both lucid and compassionate. Then I woke up my laptop to check my email. I’d gone from checking it once or twice a week to checking it fairly often. Okay, a lot.
My cell phone rang, distracting me from the disappointing absence of a new message from Finn Miller. I didn’t recognize the number.
“This is Melanie,” I said.
“And this is Ted Brody, who bought a sculpture of yours at the Art in the Park show.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Hi. And, well, thank you.” I’d been thrilled to hear Endless Loop had sold, on the first day of the show, no less. As much as I loved my work, I only made money when somebody bought something. The house was paid off and the property taxes weren’t high, but since Kurt had left, I was paying the utility bills myself. And crazy food and gas prices on top of that. I was okay for now, but I was really feeling the lack of a paycheck I could count on. The sale of Endless Loop gave me a little bit of breathing room while I figured out what the hell I was going to do next.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Ted Brody said. “I’ve got a restaurant to run here, and when a hose breaks loose on a busy night and sprays a courtyard full of diners, and their food, I think you’ve got to find a way to make that up to me.”
“Oh, shit.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Ted Brody’s voice was rich and deep, and totally pissed off.
I closed my eyes. “I am so, so sorry. If you tell me where you’re located, I’ll come over and weld the hose on permanently for you. And in the meantime, if you take two wrenches and turn one in each direction, really hard, it’ll hold. And maybe wrap some duct tape around it for extra reinforcement, not that I think you’ll need it. Wait, maybe you shouldn’t turn it on again until I make sure it’s okay.”
“Ya think?”
I scrunched my eyes shut as if it might ward off some of his anger. “Again, I’m really, really sorry,” I said.
“I’ll text you the address of the restaurant.”
“Okay, and well, I’ll get there as soon as I can, but if anything else happens in the meantime, not that it will, feel free to call me back.”
“Count on it,” Ted Brody said.
When I powered off my MIG welder, I noticed Ted Brody standing behind me with his arms crossed over his chest, probably keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t cause any more damage. Lunch was over and dinner hadn’t started yet, so up until now I’d had the restaurant courtyard all to myself.
I put the MIG down carefully on a low brick wall, tucked one of my heavy AngelFire gloves under my armpit, and pulled out my sweaty hand. I flipped up the visor on my helmet. Over Ted Brody’s shoulder, I could just make out the restaurant’s bright-green-and-white sign through the glare of the merciless late-afternoon sun.
“Sprout,” I read. I wiped some sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my T-shirt. “Great name for a restaurant, by the way.” More proof that I was a brilliant conversationalist, but at least it was better than adding another babbling apology to the stream. I had to be approaching double digits by now.
I’d white-knuckled it the whole way here, winding along the back roads and hoping the MapQuest directions I’d printed out as backup to my GPS hadn’t lied to me and I really could avoid Interstate 75, which I could just feel snaking along beside me as I drove. While I sat in my Element waiting for red light upon red light to change, I promised myself that if I could fix Endless Loop without Ted Brody asking for any money back, money I hadn’t even received yet since the check would come from the art show minus their commission, then I’d use the proceeds to break free from my own endless loop. Somehow.
“Thanks,” Ted Brody said. “Glad you like the name. What does it make you think of?”
I took my time pulling off my helmet while I rewound our limited conversation far enough to remember what he was talking about. I gave what had to be a serious case of helmet hair a fluff, not that it mattered. He’d been polite but cool when I arrived, but so far he hadn’t handed me a bill for water damages. I gave him the friendliest smile I could muster in a trillion percent humidity.
“Let’s see,” I said. “Sprout. Green and tender and really, really fresh. Like a baby beanstalk. And healthy and maybe a little bit trendy. Not that I’m an expert, but I really do think it’s a great name. It would make me want to eat here in a second.”
I closed my eyes as soon as I said it. Now he was probably going to expect me to hang around and buy some food. The last thing I needed right now was a solo meal in a restaurant to remind me how alone I was. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of here.
“My father used to call me Sprout.”
“Aww,” I said. Aww? Really?
When Ted Brody grinned, the light hit his eyes just so and I could see that they were hazel, not brown. He had a nice smile when he wasn’t glaring at me. “There were six of us, three boys and three girls, and he actually called all of us Sprout because he could never get our names straight. And he also used to say, ‘If you kids keep sproutin’ up like that you’re going to eat your mother and me out of house and home.’ ”
His accent shifted when he said the last part. “Where did you grow up?” I asked.
He tilted his head and ran one hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “A little town on Lake Michigan. Great place to live until winter hits.”
“Do you still have family there?”
“One brother. One sister. How about you?”
“I grew up in a little beach town near Boston. My sister’s still there, not that I ever see her. I’m working up to visiting one of these days. When I can find the time . . .”
“Hmm, I think I might have a brother like that.”
“Ha,” I said. “I mean, she’s not that bad.”
“Every time I hang up the phone with him I feel like I just got sucker-punched. The money he made last year, his new vacation house, his seven-hundred-and-twenty-two-inch 3-D TV—”
“Wow, seven hundred and twenty-two inches. They make them that big?”
“Apparently so. Unless you think he might be exaggerating?”
I laughed and Ted Brody joined me. I tried to remember the last time Kurt and I had laughed at something the other one said, but I couldn’t. I could remember us laughing at things the boys said, and even things our couple friends said. But I couldn’t recall us laughing when it was just the two of us. Had we ever? We must have, but I honestly couldn’t summon up a single example.
Ted was still talking. “And let’s not forget his fancy Cuban cigars, and the fact that his kids—”
“—are better than your kids.”
“Exactly. The thing is, I wouldn’t change lives, or kids for that matter, with him for all the 3-D TVs in China, so it’s not that.”
I nodded. “I hear you.”
Ted Brody smiled again, just as a big white truck rolled past the courtyard toward the back of the restaurant.
He followed it with his eyes. “Can you hang on for a second? I’ve got a delivery.”
Despite myself, I checked him out as he walked away. He was in good shape for a guy his age, especially one who owned a restaurant.
I waited for a few minutes, baking in the sun, before I realized how ridiculous it was to just stand there. It took me two trips to carry my stuff out to the Element. On my way back from the second trip it occurred to me that maybe I should have done a leak check first.
Belatedly, I traced the hose from the back of Endless Loop behind some wooden latticework stained a rich shade of terra-cotta, and used the opportunity to finally take a good look around. Three courtyard walls were covered in rough latticework and dotted randomly with clay pots overflowing with succulents and herb
s. About a dozen iron tables with mismatched chairs dotted the paved courtyard, each one shaded by a bright red market umbrella. Even though it was tucked behind a row of stores just a stone’s throw from a busy road, once the candles were lit, I could imagine the courtyard feeling off the beaten path and practically romantic.
I shook my head and bent down to turn on the spigot. My knees cracked as I stood up again. I pulled my T-shirt away from my sweat-soaked body and watched the old rain showerhead I’d found at the dump begin to spit. As it built up to a patter, I actually shivered. It really did look as if a summer rain was falling on the rusty circles of metal.
A rainbow appeared in the watery mist like a vision.
“Wow,” I heard Ted Brody say behind me.
He stepped up beside me, and we watched together in silence. He smelled like rosemary, or maybe it was one of the pots on the wall.
“Amazing,” he said.
“You picked the right wall,” I said.
“You’re really talented.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You have a nice courtyard.”
He laughed. “That’s right. You haven’t even seen the restaurant yet. Let me give you a tour. Do you have anyone you need to get home to, or can you stay and have a bite to eat with me?”
I looked at him.
He looked at me, waiting for an answer.
“No,” I said finally.
We looked at each other some more.
“Which part?” he said.
I could feel my face going from red to redder to reddest. It had to be about a million degrees out here. A blob of sweat broke free from my bra strap and rolled down my back.
“No,” I heard myself say. “No, I don’t have anybody to get home to. And it really, really sucks.”
I was halfway to my Element before I realized I hadn’t even said good-bye. I kept walking, horrified by the way I’d acted, too horrified to turn around and go back. I mean, what could I say? Excuse me, but can I try that answer again?
