by Holly Jacobs
“Grid . . .” Sam left the threat hanging because, truth was, he couldn’t think of a threat he hadn’t tried on Grid.
His friend had relocated to Pittsburgh and found an apartment near the rehab center. Sam had protested, saying Grid should go home, but Grid assured him that the only home he’d ever had was with his friends in the service, so Pittsburgh was as good a place as any. He got a job at a local bar working evenings so that he could spend his days torturing Sam.
“I’m tired,” Sam said.
“Me too. Tired of all your pussy-boy whining. Now, get up and get your ass on the bars.”
Sam flipped him the bird.
Grid reached down, hoisted Sam up, and dragged him with very little care or gentleness to the bars. “Walk.”
“Mr. Gridley,” the therapist hollered.
Sam could have told her it was useless. Just as he’d known himself it was useless. “Bite me, Grid.”
“Listen, there were guys who didn’t get to come home. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for them. You owe them, Sam.”
Sam swung at Grid, who neatly ducked out of the way, and Sam found himself sitting on the floor.
“Great. Get mad. I don’t care. Just get your ass up and walk the bar. You get out of here, and maybe I’ll leave you alone.”
“Promise?”
Grid wouldn’t let the therapist help him up, nor would he offer a hand himself. He waited and watched until Sam clawed his way back up to the bars, then slowly walked to the other end.
“I would have given up if it wasn’t for Grid. I would have just sat back and stopped. But he pushed me. The therapists yelled about insurance issues and tried to keep him away. He didn’t listen to them any more than he listened to me. He just kept hammering away at me. He wouldn’t let me quit. I didn’t imagine you giving up and the thought of it pissed me off.”
I snorted. “You think you know me from whatever this is, but Sam, you don’t know me at all yet.”
“But you’ll tell me?”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to let him live with his illusion of me being strong, just like Gracie had. But I knew I’d come too far to lie to him now, either by saying the words or by omitting them.
Lies of omission were still lies.
“I’ll tell you. But I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
“Lexie, it’s your mother,” Mom announced over the phone late the next afternoon. She’d always started conversations that way, as if I wouldn’t know who she was unless she told me. “I’m coming out for dinner.”
“Mom, today’s not a good day for me. I’m working on this project—” I’d been stitching a graduation cap into the tapestry. I’d worked on it all day today.
“Lexie, you and I both know that no day is a good day for you anymore. There haven’t been any good days in a long, long time.”
That was true a few months ago, but not anymore.
Mondays were good days.
It was as if talking to Sam brightened . . . well, everything. I felt the need to work again. I felt . . . I searched for a word. More alive.
I’d tried therapy, but I’d just ended up sitting across from some bottle-redheaded woman, staring at her and trying not to think about how much money I’d wasted in order to sit and stare at her.
But at The Corner Bar, for the price of a bottle of Killian’s, I’d found my couch.
“Mom—”
“Don’t cook. We’re going out.” She hung up.
“Great,” I said to Angus. “Looks like I’m going out on a Tuesday.”
I glanced in the mirror. Then did a double take. I looked . . . well, haphazard. As if I’d taken a shower and thrown on the first clean clothes I’d found, then pulled my wet hair back in a ponytail.
I probably looked that way because that’s exactly what I’d done. My mother wouldn’t believe I was okay if I didn’t look the part. Marion Jones Morrow was a firm believer in putting on a social-face. “Looks like I’d better do some spit and polishing first.”
Angus barked.
“Everyone’s a critic,” I muttered.
By the time my mother arrived, I had on a pair of jeans that had no holes and a shirt that Conner hadn’t outgrown or Lee hadn’t passed on to me.
I’d brushed my hair and even put on some eyeliner.
“Well, you look spiffy,” my mother said as I opened the door for her. “For you,” she added.
Mom still lived with the hope that someday I’d clean up properly and be wearing clothes I could introduce her to by name. I hated to shatter that hope, so I simply said, ‘Come on in, Mother.”
She shook her head and remained firmly on the porch. “No. We’re going out. I’m dragging you away from here, at least for a little while.”
Angus hadn’t even bothered getting up from his seat on the couch. I left him there, grabbed my keys and wallet and stuffed them in my pocket, then flipped the lock on the knob and shut the door. “So, where do you want to go?”
“To your bar. I assume they have food?”
I didn’t want to take her to the bar. Maybe it was selfish, but I didn’t want to share it. It was my place. “Maybe we could go into a restaurant in Union City or even Waterford. There’s a restaurant at the old Eagle Hotel. It’s supposed to be fantastic.” The cottage sat about midway between both towns.
“Or we could go to your bar. I drove by it coming in. Come on, I’ll drive.”
My mother was a force of nature. At one time I’d stood against the Marion gale force winds, but though I felt better and stronger, I wasn’t up to fighting against her yet. So we drove to The Corner Bar.
Sam was behind the bar. Jerry was in his normal seat.
I knew they were here every Monday night, but I’d never thought about other days or nights.
They both did a double take.
“My mom,” I explained. “Marion Jones Morrow, this is Jerry—sorry, I don’t know your last name.”
He raked his fingers through his thinning hair—wisps, really—and stood. “Smith. Jerry Smith.” He extended his hand.
My mother was all grace and manners as she shook Jerry’s hand. “Mr. Smith. It’s a pleasure.”
“And this is my friend, Sam. Sam Corner.” I remembered the first time I’d brought Lee home to meet my parents. His reception had been somewhere above frostbite, but just barely. But as I introduced Sam as my friend, my mother smiled at him. “Mr. Corner.”
“Ma’am,” he said with a courtly nod.
“We’re here for dinner,” she announced.
“We have great burgers and I think there’s some chili still in the back.”
It was kind of Sam to offer that much because I’d never eaten food here and wouldn’t have known what my options were.
“Chili, please,” I said.
“Me, too,” Mom said and led me to a booth.
“So this is where you come on Mondays,” she mused as she took in the bar.
I tried to see it as if I were seeing it for the first time. There were signs for various beers on the wall, some framed pictures and . . .
Sam set a glass down in front of me. It wasn’t Killian’s. It was a darker, richer color. Brown, almost black. And the foamy head on the beer was a layer unto itself and showed no signs of dissipating. I knew what it was without asking, but I wasn’t sure how or why.
“I got a keg,” Sam announced, answering the how, but not the why.
“Pardon?” I asked stupidly.
“I was going to surprise you next week. I have a keg of Guinness. Jerry said he’d switch over to it, and I’ve got a sign coming in, so hopefully we’ll have a few regulars try it, too. I waited for you to tap it.”
“You got a keg,” I repeated.
Sam looked embarrassed as he nodded. “I thought I’d see if we could build a following. Might be good marketing. I don’t think any other bar around here carries it on tap. And according to the experts, draught is the only way to drink it.”
He shot my mom a charming smile. “It�
��s not like other beers, I’ve been told. And when I bought the keg, my dealer told me there’s an art to pouring a pint right. Thank goodness for YouTube. They had more than a hundred videos on how to do it. It’s a two-part method of pouring a pint of Guinness.” He nodded at my glass. “I did okay for a first attempt. But hey, if it takes off, I’ll have it down to a science soon. It’s good business,” he said again.
But we both knew it wasn’t business. It was a gift.
I took his hand and squeezed it. “Thanks.”
He smiled and we just stayed that way for a minute. Me smiling my thanks, holding his hand. Him smiling back at me.
My mom cleared her throat.
“Sorry. Ma’am, what can I get you to drink?”
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
So there I was. At Sam’s on a Tuesday with a pint of Guinness and my mom.
Sam didn’t ask me one-thing.
I didn’t offer one.
And yet, there’d been a moment. Just one small thing. And I’d learned that maybe that’s what life was all about, one thing after another. One small moment. Good or bad.
This one was good. A very good moment.
My mother and I ate in companionable silence. I thought she’d grill me, or tell me how worried she was about me, but she simply ate.
“Mom?”
She looked up, still silent.
“Connie came out a few weeks ago. I told her about the day after dad died, when we went for a walk on the peninsula.”
She smiled, as if the memory was a happy one for her as well. “I remember.”
“I don’t know if I ever told you how much that day meant to me. Every time I took Bernie for a walk, or snuggled with him, I thought of you.”
“Some people might not see being compared to a dog as a compliment, but I understand what you’re saying, and I do take it as such. Thank you.”
“I never said it, but thank you, too.”
“For a trip to the pound?”
“No, for letting me think that Dad was perfect. I think that day on the beach was the day I realized how much you loved me. Love me.”
My mother blinked rapidly and I was struck with the thought that Marion Jones Morrow might be on the verge of tears.
“I know I’ve never been a demonstrative mother. I wasn’t raised that way. My parents, your grandparents, weren’t like that. I never learned how to be . . .” She hesitated, searching for a word. “Cuddly.” She threw my own long-ago word back at me, but she smiled as if to say it was okay.
“But Lexie, I have loved you since the moment you were born. I would do anything for you. I let you believe your father was perfect because you needed someone more effusive than I could be.”
I reached across the table and took her hand. “I know that. That kind of unconditional love is precious. Thank you.”
She squeezed my hand, then let go and took a sip of her Guinness. “This isn’t what I imagined a Guinness would taste like.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes, very much.”
I went back to The Corner Bar the following Monday.
I wasn’t sure if the bar would feel different, now that I’d come with someone else on a day that wasn’t a Monday. I worried that like a fairy-tale character, I’d somehow broken the magic by pressing for more.
I walked through the doorway that Monday evening and stood a moment. Maybe a third of the tables had people at them. The signs for various beers still twinkled merrily. Jerry sat on his regular barstool, and Sam turned from a drink he was making and smiled at me.
A wave of relief swept through me. The bar was still the same. My Monday magic was still in place.
Relief spread through my body as Sam slid me a pint of the Guinness. It made me smile.
I took a long sip of the thick, frothy head. “Now, that’s a beer.”
“One thing,” he said, sounding as cheerful as I felt.
“The kids had graduated and were both working adults. Lee and I were divorced. I still wasn’t doing any of my own pottery, or anything else that could be remotely labeled artistic. But I was dating a very nice man named Jensen and I was happy. Not one of those bone-deep happinesses, but a quiet, not-in-pain sort. It was quite a lovely respite.”
“Degrees of happiness?” Sam asked.
I nodded.
Lexie hummed as she got ready for her date with Jensen. He was a nice man. A banker. Not a teller, but rather someone who sat at a desk and gave out loans and investment advice. He liked to talk about work. It wasn’t exactly scintillating conversation. She frequently zoned out as he droned on and on, but she found the sound of his voice soothing. She liked that what he did excited him, even if the idea of working with numbers and money all day gave her the willies and occasionally reminded her of Lee.
The doorbell rang and she hurried down the stairs.
“Jens—” was as far as she got, because it wasn’t him. It was Lee.
“You look nice,” he said.
She glanced down at her khaki-colored pants and simple black shirt. She’d added a scarf and thought it gave her a jaunty, carefree look, but she wasn’t sure she liked that Lee had noticed. They were divorced. He shouldn’t notice how she was dressed. But instead of saying that, or even mentioning she’d been thinking about him, she simply said, “Uh, thanks.”
“You’re going out?”
She nodded.
“Then I won’t keep you. I’m going to Connie’s on Saturday. Just for the day. I thought maybe you’d like to come along.”
“With you?” Drive to Cleveland with her ex? That didn’t sound wise, despite the momentary spurt of interest.
He nodded.
“To see Connie?”
He nodded again.
“You never asked me when she was in college and you were going to visit.”
“I’m asking now,” he said simply.
Lexie had been feeling happy a few moments ago as she got ready for her date with Jensen, but as she thought about spending a day with Lee, she felt beyond mildly happy. She felt practically giddy.
Giddy with glee.
It had been a long time since she’d felt that way.
“Yes.” I looked at Sam. “I told him yes. And for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t just feel happy. Happy can be a flat, sort of even, word. It’s a go-with-the-flow and fill-in-the-cracks word. I’m not sad or mad, so I must be happy. But standing there, at my door, dressed for a date with another man, a nice man, talking about spending a day in the car with my ex-husband, I felt glee. And glee is as different from happy as sad is from despair.”
“Degrees of happy,” he repeated. This time it was a statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
I didn’t want him to ask what happened next. I didn’t want to remember that now. I wanted to bask in the warm glow of that long-ago glee. So, I asked, “One thing?”
“Through no fault of my own, I healed.”
“Well, I’m leaving,” Grid said one day, out of the blue.
Sam had been out of rehab for six months. Though he still used a cane, he felt as if he was walking well. His mother had been after him to move back home with her. She tried to sound convincing when she told him that she was lonely since his father died. But he knew she was dating a new guy, and figured the last thing she needed was a grown son hanging around.
He knew she loved him, but right now, her love felt suffocating. She would have waited on him hand and foot, and wouldn’t understand he didn’t need that. He couldn’t deal with it. Grid, on the other hand, made it a point of not waiting on him. If he wanted a drink, then he damned well better haul himself off the couch and get it.
Even when Grid pissed him off, Sam knew that his friend understood his need to be self-sufficient.
So he’d gently told his mother no and stayed in town at an apartment he rented with Grid. A run-down, two-bedroom in Oakland. Grid had made sure he’d rented something with stairs—which wasn’t hard
since Oakland felt as if it were one giant hill. He claimed the extra steps were part of Sam’s PT.
“Hot date?” Sam asked. Grid had a way with women. He genuinely liked them. Oh, he didn’t stick with one for any length of time, but he didn’t use them. He liked them, and they liked him in return.
“No, I’ve got a job offer. A security firm in California. I’m taking it. Who knows, maybe some hot starlet’s going to meet me and fall under my spell.”
The star part was meant to be humor, and somehow Sam managed to laugh, but it was hard because he knew the job part wasn’t a joke. He counted on Grid. When everyone else pussyfooted around him, Grid just called things as he saw them and didn’t take any guff.
Sam realized how much he was going to miss him. “Oh. That’s great, Grid.”
“The bar’s going to need a new bartender with me gone. Chuck said come on down and interview. And by interview, he means you’ve got the job.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m not sure I can stand eight hours a day.”
“I mentioned that you were a bit gimpy, though he’s met you, so he knows. He said you could have the afternoon shift; it’s slower then. And he doesn’t have a problem with you sitting down on the job.”
Sam was better, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to be out in the real world on a daily basis. “I—”
“Listen, I kicked your ass before, don’t make me do it again. It’s a job. It’s some cash in your pocket and it will get you out with people. You don’t realize it, but you need people.”
“Grid, you are a pain in the ass.” When Grid had first come to town Sam had said those words, or something similar, practically every day. But now, he said it with no anger or frustration, but rather with gratefulness. Without Grid, he might still be in that rehab hospital staring out a window.
“A pain in the ass who is generally right. I know, I know; it’s a curse. I try not to flaunt my rightness, but hey, it’s there. Like an elephant in the room. You can’t help but notice that I’m right so often.”
“When’s your flight?” Sam asked, with a grin, which he knew had been Grid’s intent.
“Tomorrow morning. But tonight, we’re going down to the bar and I’m going to introduce you around.”
