In Springdale Town

by Robert Freeman Wexler

  8

  After the reception, I went back to my room and sat on the balcony, which overlooked the main concourse of the shopping mall. The problem with solitude, sometimes, is what to do with it. For me, here, in this tacky mall hotel, the options were few: read my legal journal, watch television (64 channels!), or traverse the corridors of the shopping mall. There was a movie theater on the far end. I considered going, but decided that seeing a movie would constitute a form of replacement solitude.

  For the moment, the artificiality of the view appealed to me. Three stories below, people walked about the mall, young couples hand in hand, families, and tired office workers relishing their weekend, everyone buying things: movie posters, compact discs of the latest hit songs, jogging shoes, and sweaters.

  Down there to my right, water flowed from a fountain in the shape of that famous cartoon penguin. Benches ringed the fountain–I had sat on one last night after dinner. The water sparkled as if dyed with light.

  As I watched, waves began lapping over the sides of the fountain’s basin. I figured something must have clogged the drain, though it should be a closed system–water in the basin pumping back up to exit from the penguin’s mouth. So with a clogged drain, there should be no water spewing.

  Water splashed and pooled on the pavement surrounding the fountain. A child, maybe six years old, ran laughing into the growing puddle, splattering its clothes and head. The mother pulled it away, lifted it, and carried it into a shoe store.

  I was feeling hungry, but didn’t want to leave my balcony–the scene here entertained me more than any movie could have. I went inside and called room service for pepperoni and mushroom pizza with a salad. When I returned to the balcony, some man in blue cover-alls, likely from mall maintenance, stood near the fountain. He spoke into a cell phone, then put it in his pocket. He remained, perhaps observing the situation while someone elsewhere attempted to turn off the water. After a time, as the water converged on the bases of the surrounding benches, he was forced to take several steps back to keep his feet dry.

  Surely by now someone would have figured out how to shut it down? My liability-law nature started coming up with scenarios. Obviously a problem with the pump’s manufacture, though it could also be a question of improper maintenance. A knock sounded on my door–the pizza. I signed for it and carried the tray out to the balcony.

  Another man in blue cover-alls had joined the first. I poured blue cheese dressing on the salad and worked it around. The pizza smelled pretty good, considering where I was, and the salad actually had more to it than limp lettuce. I speared a cherry tomato with my fork and ate it.

  A man in a business suit called out to the men by the fountain. He trudged around the growing pool, keeping his glossy shoes far from the water’s edge. A couple of inches of water now covered the bases of the benches, and I wondered how much farther it could extend. A sporting goods store stood maybe halfway toward the other end of the mall, and I pictured its employees busily inflating rubber rafts for use in an evacuation. They would paddle through the stores, forcing their way through floating clothes and plastic toys.

  Closing time neared, and few shoppers remained in the area. Some clerks from stores near the fountain hung out in their doorways, watching. They jeered when the flow of water stopped, their voices drifting to my perch as thin echoes. I finished the pizza and wiped my lips. With the live entertainment over, I slipped inside and changed for bed.

  9

  Cold and dusty morning light filled Shelling’s front room, a thick light, a light that promised nothing. It smelled of degradation, of decay. Shelling had no place here, the light said. But look around–were these not his things, had he not made his mark on the house, the garden? He refused the light’s verdict.

  The Briar Café had always been crowded on weekends. Shelling decided to breakfast there among his fellow townsfolk, away from the dismal light that had invaded his house.

  He reached the cafe at 8:45; no one was there but the teen-aged wait staff and the unseen cooks, though a few minutes after the arrival of Shelling’s blueberry pancakes, he heard the chime of the brass bell hanging on the door and the sound of people being seated in the booth behind him.

  “Ran around naked with the neighbor’s horses?”

  “Well, up until maybe seven or so. I was her babysitter, did you know that? And her parents’ Tarot reader of course.”

  The first speaker sounded like Shelling’s Great-Aunt Paula, grandmother’s sister on his father’s side; the other woman had a scratchy voice. Scratchy-voice had apparently been to a wedding the day before. Shelling ate his pancakes and listened to the women. He wanted to talk to them–the first non service- providers he had encountered since the couple at the bar, but he didn’t know how to initiate it. They appeared to be giving him no attention. Obviously, the emptiness wasn’t universal, or his presence would have held more significance. Indecision tore at him–he longed for conversation, but feared being rebuffed.

  “I was at a CAMAG{note 8} retreat,” Aunt Paula-voice said. “Down in Oakville.”

  “Did I mention the vegetables?” Scratchy-voice said. “They brought in all these tubs of plants, growing I mean, limes, peppers, mangoes. They had ’em sent from some place in California. Instead of flowers, you see.” Scratchy-voice coughed, a tearing sound that couldn’t have been painless. Shelling hoped her cough meant that she had given up smoking, but he knew so many who continued despite the onset of emphysema and worse. The names the women kept repeating–Caroline, Wadholm, Caitlin, and others–reminded him of something. Probably he had seen them in the paper. An event as big this wedding–no doubt there had been an announcement.

  Rainfall had begun as Shelling entered the café, and its rate increased while he sat. The sound of the rain pleased him. The season had been far too dry. Inspired by his new farmhouse (and the solitude), Shelling had planted a vegetable garden, which he kept expanding as spring progressed into summer. Broccoli, basil, tomatoes and, of course, carrot. Aided by a detailed do-it-yourself book,{note 9} he had installed a drip irrigation system, but a steady rain like this was so much better.

  “He didn’t shoot anyone,” Scratchy-voice said. “Fired off two rounds into the air to catch everyone’s attention. There’s just nothing like the report of a Colt 45 Peacemaker.”

  “What year?” Paula-voice asked.

  “Eighteen Seventy-four, with mother-of-pearl grips.”

  “Sounds like a presentation model.”

  The waitress left the check. Shelling put money in the tray and got up. He paused beside the women’s booth and smiled at them. Scratchy-voice was maybe sixty, with gray hair pulled back in a bun. “I don’t need more coffee,” she said.

  Shelling went outside. Damn this place–nobody gives a thought to a stranger. What use, this river, this scenic vista of a town? Nothing for him, no one. He slumped against the wall, a few feet from the restaurant’s door. His throat constricted. He coughed and gasped, and his stomach...as soon as he realized what was happening, he staggered to the parking lot side of the restaurant and vomited.

  Unbelievable–first time in years he had thrown up. In a daze, he re-entered the café and shuffled into the bathroom to splash his face at the sink. He swished water in his mouth and spat, then pulled several paper towels from the dispenser to dry his face.

  Somewhat refreshed, Shelling left the bathroom. The two women were still eating. He stopped in front of them and leaned in close to Scratchy-voice, with his hands resting on the edge of their table. “Hey,” he said, using his best growly voice, the one he had developed for the wife beating psychopath in that episode of Precinct 10. “I don’t work here. I don’t refill no damn coffee cup. Got me?”

  Without waiting for a response, he spun around and swaggered out of the café, aiming himself in the direction of the hardware and garden store. Weekends there were always busy. Last week–had it been last week?–he had waited for the old guy...Frosty?...Smokey?...to finish showing some woman
how to build window screens and help him, but he had given up and left.

  Today, he went straight to the seed display. A man passed him, and Shelling looked up expectantly. Not a customer. And he refused to talk to any more shopkeepers.

  He selected packets of seeds: arugula, Boston lettuce, and acorn squash. After paying, Shelling found the exit blocked. The door had been propped open to admit the rain-cooled air, and a man several inches taller than Shelling and as wide as the doorway stood there, facing outward and talking to another tall man. Thrilled to have encountered others, Shelling paused.

  “But even that’s a reaction,” the big man in the doorway said. “I’m trying to reach cause, not effect.” He had a long ponytail down the middle of his broad back and spoke in a deep voice.

  “Excuse me,” Shelling said, thinking more of passage through the door than conversation.

  “But what makes a man start fires?” the other asked.

  “Excuse me,” Shelling said, louder this time.

  “When I was in social work it was easy to feel defeated by the forces of nature,” the big man said. As he spoke, he gestured wildly with his beefy arms. Shelling tried to squeeze through while the man’s arms were up, but the big man brought a ham-sized elbow down on Shelling’s forehead, staggering him back against a flashlight display. “What I’m trying to do now,” the big man said, continuing, apparently without having felt his arm’s impact with Shelling, “is formulate a working model of societal impulses. How everything comes together to form behavior.”

  Shelling leaned against the flashlight display, taking shallow breaths. He had dropped his seed packets on hitting the display, and they had scattered nearby. He left them. The faces of the men in the door pulsed and distorted, as if viewed through phosphorescent clouds. A humming sounded, starting low and rising to a cicada shriek. Clenching his eyes shut, Shelling propelled himself forward, smacking against the big man at about kidney level. The impact thrust the big man aside and threw Shelling to the sidewalk. Shelling pushed himself to his knees and crawled toward a bench on the opposite side of the sidewalk.

  Someone lifted Shelling onto the bench and held him there. Voices echoed, and lights flashed orange and white. A diorama filled the hardware store’s front window: in it, a model train rolled along tracks bounded by cornfields and into a town that mirrored Springdale, the stone church on one end of Main, the movie theater, river, shops. Minute figures flowed along the sidewalks. There were the people! His memories of the town, so jumbled–people walking, enjoying the quiet life here. Which town did he inhabit? The train stopped to disembark passengers, who joined the other pedestrians on the crowded streets. Two police officers, a man and woman, walked toward the hardware store.

  10

  At the train station I returned the rental car, but somewhere between the rental company and the ticket machine I decided to extend my stay. I guess I was feeling sentimental about the place, especially with Caroline away. It had rained, and the morning sky was lemony and wrinkled, which I took as a sign. The train station was a block off Main, behind the town hall. Scooter and a tall policewoman were escorting some guy in as I passed. I went to the bed and breakfast and booked a room for one night, staying there just long enough to drop my bag on the bed and arrange my glasses and contact lens stuff by the sink. Back out on the street, I stood watching passersby. Mist floated on the hills behind town. I had always admired the houses up there, with their sweeping views. I liked height, liked the way this town sat in its nest of hills, with the river cutting through the middle. Maybe I would walk up that way later, after breakfast, if it didn’t start raining again.

  The little café off Main was crowded, but I saw a spot at the end of the counter. As I passed these two old birds at a booth one of them glared at me. No idea who she was. There was a someone sitting on the stool next to the last free spot, and as I sat I recognized smiley woman from the wedding. She nodded a hello. I smiled, not wanting to seem rude, but seeing someone who maybe knew me, or at least knew Caroline, wasn’t the way I had intended to start this day.

  The waitress came to take the woman’s order, then stared at me. “Weren’t you just here?” she asked. I said no. She gave me a funny look and handed me smiley woman’s menu.

  “The pancakes here are great,” smiley woman said.

  “Thanks.” I looked at the menu, then at her. She had one of those haircuts that showed off the neck, and she had a great neck. I tried to remember if I had ever met her.

  “I saw you at the wedding,” she said, a flat statement implying that her noticing me signified nothing special. “I guess you haven’t been back here since the crap with Caroline.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. This place...just couldn’t escape things smelling of Caroline. At least Brisbane wasn’t here too. Smiley woman–she hadn’t been Caroline’s friend back when I lived here.

  “I’ve never liked her much,” she said.

  Enough with all these people knowing my past. What was I thinking, staying another day? Endless prosecutorial miasmas shook me, tendrils popping and sticking like unwanted household knickknacks, objects discarded for the associations they held–the clay figurine with the twisted face, bought on a brief trip to Mexico with Caroline the summer before I entered law school, the shirts, many shirts, bought at her insistence, an attempt to remake my image into something fashionable. I had saved one thing as a reminder, not liking the idea of jettisoning my entire past, acknowledging that it existed, deserved to exist, even the unpleasantness. So I kept the footed bowl, set it on the desk in my office, where it stood holding wrapped peppermints (because Caroline hated peppermints).

  “We met at a party.” The woman’s voice broke through my reverie, and I turned my face toward her. “Don’t remember whose party,” she said. “You were there alone. Caroline was off somewhere, doing something. Maybe you came with Michael and Deirdre. We somehow got into a discussion about fountain pens.”

  A notebook lay on the counter near her plate, and beside it a fountain pen with a dark, enamel barrel streaked with green. Seeing the pen, I made the connection. “Right–Sammy Hidalgo.” My Uncle Omar repaired fountain pens. As a child, he used to let me play with worn out nibs and other parts on his worktable. When I graduated from high school, he gave me an antique Parker.{note 10}

  I told her that I had read one of her novels after I moved away. She said she had finished a first draft of a new story early this morning and had gone to breakfast to celebrate. We chatted for a time, reminiscing about safe subjects from my years in Springdale, until her food came. Her three pancakes were spread on the plate, overlapping. She stacked them evenly and began cutting, first in half, then fourths, then eighths. The waitress brought my coffee, and I ordered pancakes too. The coffee here was good, some kind of organic shade-grown. There had been other ownership when I lived here, and I preferred this new version. I don’t know when this up-scaling–The Change (as I called it)–had occurred or why, but it was nationwide. I liked it. Sure, there’s an air of pretension involved sometimes, but overall, the good coffee, microbrew beer, fusion cuisine, beats the crap out of blandness.

  “I’m not one of these delicate women who can only order a salad,” Sammy said as she pushed a forkful of pancakes around the amber pool of syrup. “I was in L.A. last month, having dinner with some friends in a Thai restaurant, and all around me were these pretty little women with tans and tight asses, and I started speculating on how many salads are served per day out there. Greengrocer’s wet dream.”

  “Is the total salad consumption in Los Angeles greater than the rest of the country combined?” I asked.

  “It’s a fight between New York and Los Angeles. The winner is awarded a bronze sculpture of iceberg lettuce to display in city hall. The rest of the country is irrelevant.”{note 11}

  My pancakes arrived and I drizzled maple syrup over them. Her talk of salad-eating made me self-conscious about it–I didn’t want to use so much syrup that she thought I was horsely, or so litt
le that she sneered. Though why did I care? I didn’t have to impress anyone in this damn town.

  Sammy gave me an incomprehensible look (and I could usually interpret facial expressions–had to for my lawyering).

  “High fructose corn syrup,” she said. “That’s the other thing that sends me on a rant. We’re given these competing and contradictory models to follow. Processed high fat corn syrup food is pushed at us all our lives, but at the same time we’re bombarded with images of skinny asses and sculpted bodies.” She waved her fork at me, and a ribbon of syrup slid toward her fingers.

  “If I followed the model that women are given, I would need to apologize to you for my eating pancakes and tell you I’ll have to spend all afternoon at the gym to work it off. Well fuck that.”

  ~

  After finishing our food, we remained at the counter. The place had cleared out, and neither of us appeared to be in a rush. I tried to remember what, if anything, I had heard about Sammy. Besides her jacket copy. When I changed plans at the train station, I had been thinking how important it would be to spend some solitary time in the town, sorting out my memories of Springdale, which as the weekend progressed had slowly shed its malevolence. Sitting here with Sammy helped, though I still needed to be alone.

  “Dee and Michael must be on their way to Barcelona by now,” she said. I left some money on the counter and stood. She left with me. “What are your plans for the day then?” she asked. “Now that you’ve decided to be brave and stay a little longer in this terrible place.” She smiled when she said that, an open, cheery expression that I found touching.

  “Nice out now,” I said, looking at where the sun burned through a few remaining skins of cloud. “If it had stayed rainy I would have probably caught the next train out. Maybe I’ll take a taxi to the Josephine Rodgers House{note 12} and see the gardens. It was great talking to you.” I extended a hand to shake, and she gripped it with both of hers.