Nothing but a Smile

by Steve Amick

  They drove by the university hospital complex, a gleaming cluster of towering buildings on a steep rise with a view of the river, looking as big-city as any she could hope for. Easing up on the gas, he slowed through the hospital zone. Here the sidewalks seemed almost crowded with young, bright-looking people in white lab coats and nurse's uniforms. Wink jerked his head in their direction, swerving slightly, as if he intended to pull alongside. “So should I ask if they know where babies come from or … are we all set on that front?”

  She swatted him for this, but couldn't help laughing a little, and they continued on past apartments and dorms and signs that said OBSERVATORY and CLARK'S TEA SHOP. This last struck her as a cozy spot where she might sit and chat with a friend. Not the Zim Zam, but cozy.

  Something felt settled, and though they were far from “all set,” as he'd just said, it was clear they'd ruled out a few options already, like the possibility, regardless of what else they decided to do, that she would be giving birth on his uncle's kitchen floor, following instructions from the animal husbandry section of the Farmer's Almanac.

  94

  The retail space was right downtown, in the midst of the U of M campus. He liked the shop a lot, though there wasn't quite as much square footage as they had in Chicago. The upstairs could be used as a living quarters here, too, but he thought it would be pretty cramped, especially once the kid arrived. And, as he pointed out to Sal as they toured the shop, if they wanted a studio space here, they'd have to give up half the upstairs.

  She frowned at this, grabbing him by the arm. “Wait. I'm not sure we're going to still …”

  “Portraits, I'm talking about, Sal. Remember? People get married, have babies … customers' portraits.” He tried to be soothing about it, knowing how jumpy she was feeling. Right, he thought to himself, we're going to start cranking out the girlies real soon. Maybe Thursday …

  As he looked around again at the rear of the store, checking the alley door and heading back upstairs to get another look at the size, he left her talking to the real estate agent by the counter in front.

  “My husband,” he heard Sal saying, as if by way of explanation, “is a professional photographer.” She sounded proud of him, though God knew what for.

  He stayed up there, trying to think it through.

  So they would need a separate place to live, as well. If not right away, then soon.

  Plus, there was no El here. They'd need to buy a car once Reenie reclaimed the Buick.

  Also, they'd need to invest in a lot of advertising. There wouldn't be any regular customer base to count on, not for a while….

  Their whole life would be different here, and it wouldn't come cheap.

  He thought of the beautiful houses they'd seen coming into town today: wide porches and elm-lined avenues on the west side of town. It looked like the place where lemonade and sheepdogs had been invented. Sal had actually smiled.

  Standing on the back fire escape, he peered down into the alley. On the brick wall near the rear of the store someone had written, in gory red paint, KILROY WAS HERE.

  People here seemed to jaywalk as a matter of course, cutting across the street at will. He felt silly waiting at the light with so few cars on the street and everyone else crossing, so he took her arm and did the same.

  They'd grabbed a hamburg sandwich at a diner handy to the store called Red's Rite Spot, a friendly little place with a limited menu, and the “paring down” discussion had really taken off there with Do we need to live in Chicago?

  After a dessert of pecan rolls, they strolled toward campus, and it became Do we need to live in a city like Chicago?

  He didn't think so, and he said as much as they crossed against the light.

  Next, they stopped in Drake's Sandwich Shop. He remembered this place as a kid. They had candy, rows of it along the wall, in scientific-looking jars. Despite the pecan roll, Sal insisted the salesgirl take down five separate jars, filling little paper bags. He'd never seen her so excited about candy.

  “Quite a place,” she said, chomping on a root-beer barrel.

  “Do we need to run a camera store?”

  She shrugged. “If it's profitable. You mean is it some kind of family heritage? No. We could run a different kind of store.”

  “I could work in an office.”

  She laughed. “You could not.”

  “I might. If it was something interesting.”

  “Well, that answers itself then,” she said.

  He was thinking of Argus Camera, though he didn't tell her this. A decision like that seemed several dozen steps down the line.

  She said, “We'll need to at least secure our stuff back there, hopefully get it moved to wherever we're going to be, even if it's just for a while …”

  “Absolutely,” he said, glad she was thinking it through and wanting to keep the questions coming. “What about our friends back home?”

  “Like Reenie?”

  “For example. How do you feel about that part of it?”

  “A little sad,” she said. “But they'll visit, I'm sure. And Ree-nie's probably easier to take in shorter installments, I imagine. Would we need to sell the shop?”

  “Maybe we could rent it out for a while? I guess I'm not sure.” He countered by asking if she thought they needed to plan on never moving back.

  Through a mouthful of licorice wheels, she said, “Maybe not. I'm really not sure about that yet. But I could live with that, if we had to give it up.”

  Across from Drake's was the shady green center of campus they called the Diag, and they crossed over and walked up its angular path. There was an art museum there that was certainly no Art Institute, but looked promising.

  She had another one for him: “Do you need to keep making girlies?”

  “No.” He stopped her now, wanting her full attention. They were standing near a giant M embedded in the sidewalk, facing each other. This felt important to say. “I do need to keep making pictures, though. And I need to be with you. And you,” he added, touching her belly, hoping he'd feel the baby kick. “That's pretty much the extent of it on my end.”

  He was aware that he continued to think of it as making pictures, rather than taking—his drawing and painting background would probably never leave him, and he imagined that even if he continued farther down the path of more journalistic photography, he would continue to think of it as making pictures. Not that they would necessarily be posed or concocted, but there was a difference, he felt—something inside himself, maybe, that made him feel he belonged more in that Hopper room at the Art Institute than in a smoky saloon with the newsies, chasing the latest scoop.

  “So you don't need to watch skimpily clad ladies undress every day?”

  He pretended to ruminate, rubbing his chin. “Every day? No …” and she socked him in the breadbasket.

  Diving back up to St. Johns, the North Star twinkled dead ahead, and the whole night sky surrounded them. They had their windows down, chilly air and lightning bugs whizzing by, and Sal had her legs stretched out, propped up on the dash. He couldn't imagine how she was comfortable like that, but she seemed lively enough, already working the figures, scheming how they might finance all this.

  “Keeney's hoping to expand one day,” she pointed out. “He aims to own a chain of news shops. And since you just gave him that one, maybe he's already in a position to buy a second location. You know, with the GI loan and all.”

  He'd expected it would be more of an ordeal introducing the topic of selling off the shop back in Chicago—the place that had been her home since she was a girl and the only thing she had left that connected her to her folks. And to Chesty. But she said, no, she had plenty of things to remember them by. They would need to retrieve all the contents of the apartment anyway, and a lot of the shop. The darkroom equipment, especially, plus a lot of the more expensive inventory that would require taking a bath if they had to sell it off at fire-sale prices. She would have all her old furniture and pictures and her
“sentimentals,” as she called them. “The rest of it, that's just a building,” she said. “And you know—a neighborhood.”

  He thought she didn't sound quite as sure as she made out, but she wouldn't let him pursue it. Any attempt to further deliberate over selling out was met with firm resolve from Sal: they were moving forward. Damn the torpedoes.

  95

  Safe in the shade of the porch, she was making another list on a notepad on her lap, glancing up every now and again to watch him out there helping his uncle with something Len called “the Chicago” and Wink called “the red,” but as near as she could gather was winter wheat. It was strange seeing him roll up his sleeves and pitch himself into such a farm-boy chore. She couldn't decide if he was just very adaptable—much in the way he picked up photography and darkroom techniques so fluidly— or if she was witnessing his true and natural calling: agriculture. Picturing herself just as sun beaten and prematurely Okie-fied as Chesty's mother back at the funeral in Breakey Nebraska, Sal found the prospect of a similar life alarming, yes, but she did have to admit there was something pretty sexy about the way he hitched up the old pair of dungarees Len lent him, the way he seemed to know not only nicknames for crops but also his way around farm machinery.

  “You're in luck,” Len had teased him, clapping his arm around him and leading him to the barn. “I got a special left-handed combine outfitted just for you,” and he was operating it now, the big machine jouncing along into the hazy orange ball that was the lingering sun, throwing back a cloud of airborne chaff. She thought of getting the Argus and taking some pictures, and she was also wondering if this was the type of wheat used to make cake flour.

  Wink hadn't picked up the camera for days now, and it worried her some.

  She'd tried to get him to give her a ride on the big machine, but he wouldn't allow it. “On account of the baby,” his uncle explained, though she was pretty certain the combine didn't shake much more than Reenie's Buick.

  As much as she appreciated the way Len joshed him about his hand and made him feel as if life was moving right along, she couldn't let her husband grow too comfortable here. Not that Len's solution regarding the beds was aiding much in that regard. He'd ultimately assembled a collection of rusty piping pulled from the barn that turned out to be a squeaky army barracks cot, and he lashed this snug up against the existing single bed in Wink's old room so neither of them would slip through the crack and hit the floor. Each night in the strapped-together beds reminded her that this was not going to be their fallback position if Ann Arbor didn't work out. Not on her life … Which was why she was working on her lists.

  Len had brought her a tall glass of cold buttermilk, insisting it would be good for the baby, though personally, she'd rather have a bottle of Vernors like Wink was drinking out there. Len didn't seem to have any beer or hard liquor in the house, and she was surprised to discover this, knowing the man was related by blood to Wink, but Wink didn't seem to be kicking up a fuss about it.

  She tried to get down the buttermilk as she worked on the list on her lap.

  The list was her own attempt to remain organized. This was all happening in such a rush; she wanted to be sure to stay on top of it. Or as on top of it as she could.

  She had a couple lists going at once on this notepad, hopping from one to the other. One list was the personal belongings and store inventory they'd left back in Chicago and how best to deal with different categories of items. The biggest list was the one inspired by Len's paring down of Wink's childhood room—her “life's essentials” list. She'd made a lot of headway on that one already, thanks to her husband's willingness to really talk it through. She loved that Wink had pared it all down to just she and the baby but also included making pictures as a necessity. She wasn't sure she'd love him quite so much if he hadn't included that, too. The guy was an artist down in his bones, end of discussion. Even out there right now, working those monotonous rows of wheat, she imagined his eye was framing composition through the dusty window of the combine, grasping fleeting mental snapshots when it all lined up just right, following the rule of thirds.

  The list on top right now had to do with who, potentially, meant them harm.

  She'd resisted titling this list, unable to bring herself to write something as alarming as ENEMIES at the top. Certainly, she hadn't reached the point of cataloging her enemies, had she? But she did want to better understand where they stood.

  It was really more of a chart than a list. She'd drawn three columns. The far left column contained the men who'd first come by after Chesty's death. Federal agents, they'd decided— more military-intelligence types than the ones that followed. Their own probing questions at the naval hospital out in California had prompted that visit, fanned by her taking the Swans Down story to the Tribune—a paper run by a known isolationist who was, as Sunshine State had pointed out, no fan of the administration or America's involvement in Europe. But that sort of bled into the next group of visitors, which also seemed to be federal men of some sort, though they'd been there after Wink's allegedly “un-American” photo of Keeney standing on a corner, minding his own business, ran in the Trib and there'd been those responses to the editor claiming Wink's intention was to condemn the government's treatment of returning vets. She'd discussed that one pretty thoroughly with Mort Doerbom, back when they were dating and they all got arrested at the beach, and it was Mort's opinion that those two visits, though separate inquiries from different departments, were both part of a much larger investigation being orchestrated between the FBI and some congressional committee that was apparently really heating up.

  So. How best to organize this list … ?

  She was still a little confused, and it was fouling up her system. She wasn't sure if she should put the two incidents in separate columns or lump them together….

  In the third column, the two men that didn't show their badges—these were not local plainclothes detectives trying to “clean up” their neighborhood after the North Shore arrest exposed the secondary purpose of the camera shop. She had to assume now that they were more of Mr. Price's bunch. Or if they were police officers, they were working for Price as well, in their off-hours.

  She scratched these two out of the middle column and moved them to the third column, joining Jericho Price and his drunken contender and, now, she had to assume, every leering teenager and loiterer she'd seen on the sidewalk in recent months; every scribbler of obscenities; every threatening, little no-account vandal. Some of these, of course, could just be mindless nitwit kids, looking for trouble with no instruction from anyone else. Dirty words on the alley wall, broken windowpanes—that could simply be the work of irate neighbors or random burglars, nothing more. Sure. But at this point, just to be safe, she thought she ought to count it all under Jericho Price.

  The far-right column, it appeared, was winning by a landslide.

  The baby kicked, and Sal said, out loud, “I get it, I get it. Kicking Mommy's not necessary.”

  The guy had been very persistent about the trademarks. And were they really worth it? After all, she told herself, the trademarks weren't all that lucrative a thing; they'd just provided her with a feeling that she had a say in all this, that she was at the wheel. It had helped her feel less like she should feel exploited.

  Despite all this talk of paring it down, she had to admit to herself she maybe wasn't as carefree about walking away as she'd been putting on with Wink.

  It was difficult to stomach the notion of getting chased off a place she'd worked so hard to hang on to—originally hanging on to the shop for the sake of her parents and Chesty, then for this new growing family she'd found herself in. Heck, she'd taken off her clothes in order to hang on to that place!

  Well, not entirely. That wasn't completely fair. Honestly, there'd been other factors in doing the girlies, she knew. She couldn't have enjoyed doing it quite so much if it had merely been a matter of paying the bills and taxes.

  She thought of what Reenie liked to
say about life being what actually happened—she'd been saying that a lot since she eloped with Keeney

  And this was not exactly the same as being chased off—not if it meant taking hold of their life and planning a new path for themselves. It felt okay when she thought of it that way.

  The baby kicked again.

  “All right, already!” she said, patting her belly, then pushing up out of the glider. “I'm doing it, baby. Keep your pants on—or dress, as the case may be.”

  Out on the porch steps, she raised her hand high, hoping to wave him in. Hopefully he was at a good stopping point to take a break and drive her into St. Johns to the pay phone. She didn't want to use the one in the house and risk having Len overhear her conversation with Mort Doerbom.

  It was as awkward asking for his help as she thought it would be, though he acted very civil, as genteel as ever, even asking after her health. She admitted she was expecting, and he said, “Yes, that's wonderful. That's why I asked, actually. I uh, happened past the shop a little while ago and happened to glance in and I thought so … Well, congratulations. To both of you. That's very exciting.”

  He didn't sound excited, but it wasn't really the purpose of the call, so she moved on, telling him briefly what had happened and asking him if he could draw up a document with which they could sign over S&W Publishing and its licenses and trademarks to Mr. Jericho Price, free and clear—something they could sign and pop in the mail back to Mort and have him deliver so they wouldn't have to deal with the man directly.

  She watched Wink as she spoke, waiting just outside the phone booth, still in his borrowed work clothes, hands in his pockets. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen his arms sunburned like that. She'd always thought of him as the indoor, night-owl type. Not a lot of tanning going on in the darkroom …