In note number six, he mentioned how he’d gone up to my cedar cabin on the mountain and brought Mom and Grandma a nice dinner. He said he fixed the leaking spigot on the house, too, and sat with the ladies through three game shows.
In note number twelve, he said he’d bought Amy Jo that new recliner she’s been hankering for down at Swanson’s Furniture. And I guess I did picture him in a tuxedo standing at the front of a church for a minute.
In Phil’s last few notes, he begged to know where I am. He said if I don’t let him visit, he still wants to send me a care package or two. My stomach growls…but I know that if I told Phil the address, he’d show up here, even if he promised not to.
I put his notes in a new folder called Food for Thought and get back to work.
I create a spreadsheet to enter costs so that I can track my sales against my expenses. It takes me until lunchtime to finalize what I hope will be a good starting menu.
I try out a few of my ideas by preparing and feeding them to Max and Fritz for lunch. Then I clean the kitchen until it sparkles again. Then I get right back to work at the computer.
I had taken a few graphic design electives as part of my business school coursework. After some false starts, I remember how to use the software and mock up some menus, business cards, and labels.
Just when I think that everything looks nice, I hear Fritz in the hall. I call out to him, “Can you give me your two cents on something?”
There’s only one desk chair in my room, so Fritz stands behind me and looks over my shoulder. I adjust the screen so he can see it better and launch right into showing him all the things that I’ve made.
“These actually look quite professional,” he says, like he’s surprised.
Actually. I always notice when people use the word like that. As in: that’s actually a good idea, or you actually look really nice today. It’s such a backhanded compliment!
“Except the font,” he says. “You need something simpler, more elegant.”
He tries to edge me out of the desk chair to take over my computer, but I stay put. Though he tries to, I don’t let him touch the keyboard or screen. He tells me what he doesn’t like, and he keeps complaining until I’ve tweaked things to his fancy. Nothing looks much different to me, but Fritz seems to think that it’s all way better than it was before.
Just when I think we’re done, he says, “Now switch that atrocious background color.”
“It isn’t that bad,” I say. It’s called ocean blue, which I think is just about the prettiest color going.
“It looks babyish to me. And this white scrolling border makes it look a bit like a wedding invitation.”
“Phil wants to marry me,” I say.
He stares at me like I just threw up on the floor.
“I didn’t say I agreed.”
“Of course you didn’t! That would be insane, Merry. Absolutely insane.”
“Thanks for your opinion,” I tell him, and maybe I sound a bit bratty, but he did, too. “So what color do you have in mind for the background?”
“Well, you’re trying to sell food, so you need something appetizing. You need to use green.”
“Green?” All my life, I’ve been surrounded by evergreen trees and green vines and grasses. He says green and I picture Peaksy Falls. “I’m a little tired of green, to tell you the truth.”
“Your materials should be appetizing,” he says. “I challenge you to name a non-manufactured blue food.”
“Blueberries,” I answer. I cross my arms and feel like I got the better of him for once.
“Another?” he asks.
I try, but I can’t think of more.
“By contrast, I’ll name a few natural and healthy green foods. Asparagus, artichoke, arugula, avocado…” he looks at the ceiling like there’s a list up there that he’s reading from.
“Shush!” I say, but I can’t help laughing a little.
“…bell pepper, broccoli, Brussels sprouts…”
I try to cover his mouth up, but he ducks out of my reach.
“…cabbage, celery, chives, cucumber…”
“Fine!” I yell. “You win. I’ll change the background color to green if you want, but for heaven’s sake, stop listing vegetables!”
The days fly past, like they always seem to do when I’m racing around as busy as a bee. Four are already gone.
Uncle Max acts like he’s been half-starved for months. Every time I put a plate of food down in front of him, he gobbles it up. He doesn’t leave anything behind but the garnish. I feel guilty sometimes that I like Max so well, when I know from my father’s note that he wasn’t too fond of him. But my dad isn’t here, and Uncle Max is.
Though he sometimes grumbles worse than an old lawnmower about it, Uncle Max has kept to his word and never smokes inside the house now. I have kept up my end of the bargain by feeding him like a king. He says my chocolate cake might be even better than his mother’s. The sparkle in his eyes when he says it makes me believe that he’s either the most sincere man I’ve ever met, or he’s a darn good liar.
Uncle Max complains that I’m trying to steal away his beach house. What he doesn’t seem to mind at all is me working my tail feathers off while he rests in his recliner watching the water or sits at the head of the table eating my creations. I can’t say that I blame him for wanting this place, though. And I can’t stay mad at Max, even when he’s acting like a big old baby. He’s just a lonely man, from what I can see. Maybe he wanted to be around people for a change, and this is the idea that struck him for how to do it, on account of how he’ll get the house if I fail.
He shoos me away when I ask questions, but I’ve still managed to learn a few things. For example, Uncle Max never had a wife or kids. Maybe that meant he had a lot of freedom all his life, and he could do what he wanted without answering to anybody. But I think being alone must be pretty sad when you get old.
At least my mom and grandma have each other. Yesterday when I spoke to my mom on the phone, she kept yelling everything I said back to Grandma and shouting into the phone so Grandma could hear her side. It’s a relief to me that Aunt Betty is nearby to keep an eye on them. She won’t be cozy on the cabin sofa watching game shows like Phil did the other night, but I trust she’ll make sure that Mom and Grandma are OK.
I think of Aunt Betty sitting all alone in her white living room every evening, and to tell you the truth, it makes me sad.
Out of the blue yesterday, Fritz asked me if I was lonely for my Aunt Betty.
“You claim to know everything about me, and yet you think I could be lonesome for someone I barely even know?” I said. “You’re slipping, Fritz.”
You can imagine how much he liked that, right?
I’m cleaning the bowls from Uncle Max’s cake when Fritz comes up the stairs with his iPod.
“Listen to this,” he says.
“Just let me check the cake in the oven first.”
Naturally, I think it’s going to be a Cryptodynamite song. They all sort of sound the same to me, honestly. When I start listening, though, I find out that it’s a podcast of Aunt Betty’s show.
“I didn’t know you could hear it this way,” I say. I sort of half listen to the opening while I clean the counter. I know the music by heart, and Aunt Betty always begins the exact same way. Boring so far.
The first caller comes on.
“Hello, caller. What’s your name?” Aunt Betty asks.
I once sat in the studio and watched her record a show. I was about ten, and my mom had a doctor’s appointment in the city. I think school had been canceled because the heating system went down or something; I recollect that it was a last-minute choice to drop me off there and that Aunt Betty was none too thrilled to have my mom and me show up. That was the only time I set foot in the studio.
I remember that the first thing Aunt Betty did at the beginning of each call was to find out the person’s name. She wrote it down on a pad of paper in red ink. Then she circled it
every time she said the caller’s name, which was too often for my taste. When the call ended, she crumpled up that page of the pad and threw it away, like the caller was dead to her the minute they disconnected. I bet she still does it.
“I’m Claudia,” a girl replies.
She sounds pretty young.
“Hello, Claudia. What’s your question today?”
“Well, I’ve been offered a college scholarship, but it’s far away from home. My question is: I can’t really turn it down. Can I?”
“So you’re seventeen?”
“Eighteen,” Claudia says, like it’s a whole lot different.
“So you’re eighteen. Let me guess: having grown up in a small town, you have easily beaten all your peers in test scores, gotten all the boyfriends you wanted, along with the head cheerleader role, and probably anything else that you set your sights on.”
Aunt Betty sounds like she’s staring off into space as she talks, like she does when she’s off the air.
“Wow! How’d you know all that?”
“You think you’re ready to conquer the world, Claudia, because conquering your tiny corner of it has been a walk in the park. So easy that you could have done it with half your brain tied behind your back. You think that’s how it’s always going to be, that your upbringing is reflective of the world at large.”
This is weird. I’ve never heard Aunt Betty talk like this on the air.
“Well, I don’t know…”
“You may be valedictorian, Claudia; you may be looking at a full-ride scholarship, but you’re absolutely clueless when you get right down to it. You wonder how I know you so well? Because I was you, a lifetime ago.”
“Pardon me, ma’am?”
“Decades have passed since then, Claudia, but I can remember all the emotion of being your age as if it were yesterday. Sometimes I feel that the girl in my memory must have been from a movie I saw or a book I read long, long ago. Sometimes I can almost believe that she never really existed at all. And sometimes she surprises me in the mirror.”
Whoa. This is the weirdest show of Aunt Betty’s I have ever heard. She’s always odd, mind you, but she never talks about her old self like this.
“Huh? Are you saying I should take the scholarship then? I mean, I pretty much have to…”
“You’re the one who will have to live with your choices, Claudia. What do you want to do?”
“I guess I want to take the scholarship.”
Claudia sighs almost as heavily as Fritz.
“You said that like you were spelling too easy of a word in a spelling bee, Claudia. A tedious contest that you know you’ll ultimately win because you always do.”
“I never entered a spelling bee, ma’am. Maybe you did, but I didn’t.”
“Why do you want to take the scholarship, Claudia?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. My parents don’t have much money, and this is the best scholarship offer I have.”
“When I was your age, I was also offered a scholarship from a college far away from home.”
I’m amazed Aunt Betty has said so much. She doesn’t even talk about herself when she’s sitting at a holiday table surrounded by family, let alone on her show.
“What did you do?”
It’s quiet so long that I think maybe Fritz only downloaded part of the show by mistake. Then I hear Aunt Betty again.
“I did many things; some of them were very unwise, some smarter. In short, I made choices, just like you’ll have to do.”
“But did you take the scholarship and move away, and did it work out for you?”
“If you ever listened to my show before, Claudia, you might be able to guess my response to your questions. You might also recognize it from a certain film called Mary Poppins. The only answer I’ll give is: ‘I never explain anything.’”
Aunt Betty seems to have woken herself up out of her trance and become her usual self.
“Why do you call yourself Betty Answers then?”
Go, Claudia! I’ve wanted to ask the same thing a million times. I would have if I thought I’d get an answer.
“Because it’s my name.”
See?
“But I still don’t know what to do! I guess I’m afraid to go so far away and live somewhere I’ve never been, with people I don’t know, and all that. I don’t want to eat cafeteria food and put on my freshman fifteen and throw up at kegger parties or whatever.”
“Whether or not you take the scholarship and go away to school, you certainly don’t have to gain weight or drink yourself sick, Claudia.”
“I like living at home. My parents are really nice, and they don’t bug me like my friends’ parents bug them.”
“You’re a lucky teenager then, Claudia. When I was eighteen, I hated the very sight of my mother, the woodsy nature of our house, the smell of the fireplace in winter. I hated everything about my home life when I was eighteen. I jumped at the scholarship I’d been offered like it was the last raft on a sinking ship.”
I am sad to imagine Grandma and Mom listening to this when it aired live. And listen they surely did because Aunt Betty’s show is the highlight of their days. The thought makes me want to cry.
“Good luck, Claudia. And call back to let us know what you decide, and then keep calling. I’m sure my listeners would like to keep track of your progress.”
“OK, Ms. Answers.”
“And if you’d like to leave your address in my voicemail, I’ll send you an autographed copy of my book, POPPINS! Why You Should Never, Ever Explain Anything.”
I remove the earbuds and set the iPod beside Fritz, who’s now playing chess with Uncle Max in the living room.
“Was it a good show?” Fritz asks without looking up.
“I didn’t listen to the whole thing. It was weird,” I say.
“Weirder than usual?” he asks.
“Yes, sir. Hey, since you claim to know everything about me…”
“You claim I don’t,” he cuts me off.
“Be careful of Fritz’s claims, Merry! I’m sure he thinks he knows more than he does. For example, he thinks he knows what my clever brother had planned for his London house.”
Fritz folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head in annoyance.
“Why isn’t that settled yet?” I ask.
“Claude was very cagey.” Uncle Max chuckles, but soon begins to cough.
Fritz gets up and brings him a glass of water, apparently forgetting he was mad at him just a second ago.
When Uncle Max is himself again, I make another try at getting a straight answer.
“Fritz, just tell me: do you have any idea why my Aunt Betty is so strange?”
“Can you be more specific?” he asks. Fritz is so stiff and short sometimes; he reminds me of an English butler on TV.
“Why does she have to act so superior to my mom and grandma all the time? And why did she have to say such mean things on that show just now? Why is she so darn selfish?”
Fritz looks at me like he did on that first day, when I came to believe that he’d really help me if I went along with him. He looks like he might even care a little.
“The questions you ask are complicated and subjective, and I wouldn’t attempt to answer them, even if I could. However, I will share some facts that you do not yet know. Your Aunt Betty remortgaged her house to save your grandmother’s. Now she is nearly broke herself.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Indeed.”
I shake my head, trying to take that in.
“So the money I might earn, if I do everything you say while I’m here, could save my grandma’s house and also help Aunt Betty?”
“If you chose to use it that way,” Fritz says.
“Of course I would. Those are my people.”
The oven timer buzzes. “And that’s my cake!” Max says.
Chapter Ten
IN WHICH JACK MEETS A MERMAID
As told by Jack Morningstar, man between tw
o worlds
I stare at the violently churning water through the sea-misted windows. One night last week was mild, almost serene by comparison. I even saw a woman out there, walking alone along the water’s edge. It was very late and I was bone-tired, so tired that I wasn’t sure if she was real or if I only imagined her, like a sailor of old conjuring a mermaid to stave off his loneliness or perhaps to guide him into safer waters.
The woman I either saw or imagined was so different from Katie that it shocked me. In my isolation here, I had almost forgotten that other women existed. She must have been a mirage. No real woman would go down to the beach on a cold winter night and twirl in the moonlight.
In my exhaustion, though, I thought she might be real. And I thought that if I were another man, in another phase of his life, I might even go out and speak with her. But just as I imagined stepping out onto the deck and calling to her, she slipped out of the silvery stream of moonlight and disappeared into the shadows again.
I have put out several fires at work with Jaycee’s help and have tried to assure the staff and clients that everything will be just fine while Martin is away. No one has asked me particulars about him—I guess they’ve heard enough of the story to know better.
I’ve had to throw out half of the design elements that Varun and Sam came up with for the Langdon Logistics proposal. I reviewed all their meeting notes and devised some better ideas, documented those, and plan to present the new prototypes to the customer once the guys have mocked them up. I know it’s risky to change our plans at this stage, but if we can’t do a project right, I’d rather not do it at all. Sam felt undermined and threatened to quit. I told him to go ahead.
I take a protein bar from the cupboard and eat it without registering the taste. I drink a soda that may as well be dust. I pull my wetsuit down from its peg. Chaser remains on her pet bed and follows me with only her eyes; her chin stays on the floor.
The ocean is wild and inviting. It looks like it’ll clear my head or smash it. It calls to me.
Help Yourself Page 11
