by Steve Amick
Wink and Keeney roamed the far regions of the house, mostly with the loan officer—and, now, potential next-door neighbor— as their guide, stomping around and discovering all manner of manly fun, like a workshop in the basement and a den in the attic.
When they asked to see the garage, the loan officer said he'd walk them through it, since he needed to check back in with his wife anyway, and the two of them trooped out after him, talking excitedly, leaving her and Reenie alone again with the homeowner.
He seemed suddenly nervous, or maybe he'd just reached the far edges of his reserve of small talk. Finally, he said, “Now who's with whom here?”
It was so silent, she could hear the heat bugs again, even inside.
“Kidding!” he said, nodding toward her belly. “I see at least one of you is married.”
Sal snuck a glance at Reenie, who curled her lip in disgust. She seemed to be saying, What's this clown's deal?
She was standing alongside Reenie when she realized he was looking at them sideways, in profile. She recognized, too, that she'd undone an extra button on her own blouse. But why the hell not—it was in the upper eighties, she was getting ready to give birth to what was starting to feel like twins. She was entitled. The other thing was, it was so humid, she'd been afraid her hair would frizz up on her, so she had it covered with a lightweight scarf, a sort of dark lavender, and she decided, later, that this is what made him notice her: if you were to squint, she might look like a brunette. And, of course, Reenie looked like Reenie.
“Will this be your main residence or—you know—just a hideaway for the weekend?” The man actually winked. A shimmer of nausea swept over her.
As soon as he said it, he had one hand up, waving it as if wiping clean what he'd just said. “Don't mind me, ladies. See, I was in the service and, well …”
She could have taken this last to mean he wasn't right in his head, that he had a plate in his skull or was nervous-in-theservice, as they used to call it, but she knew better than that. She knew what he meant.
And she was certain of it when she looked up a moment later at the creak of the screen door and moved to the window over the kitchen sink to see him striding across the yard to talk to his neighbor, their loan officer.
Reenie joined her, peeking through the lace curtains, watching them back there by the property line, the two men peering back at the house, not taking their eyes off it as they leaned close to each other, talking low, conspiring, two citizens on high alert as if there were dangerous intruders in their midst.
100
He loved the whole house, but especially this attic den the owner had built in a walk-up garret above the second-floor master bedroom. The oval windows at both ends gave a view down to the sloping backyard and the park just beyond where kids were playing baseball and out the front window, a canopy of tree-tops running north to ring the Diag and the campus.
He imagined walking to work at the new shop up on Liberty. From here, it would be a snap. Reasonably close enough, too, if he ever got a job at the Argus headquarters—a possibility he'd been mulling over all week.
This would be a great space for a little studio, he thought, a place to work on his own private stuff.
It smelled of cherry pipe tobacco, but he imagined that could be remedied with a solid airing out. There was a bar, of sorts, at one end, with cabinets built into the eaves. In one, he found a stack of unused ration stamps, no longer any good, a Japanese flag and some other war souvenirs, and a stack of girlie magazines.
He didn't have to dig very far to find one with his wife on the cover. There were even more with Reenie. He thought he even recognized the spine of one farther down that they'd done themselves, one of their S&W Publishing specials.
He thought Sal would get a charge out of that, and he wished she could come up, but she'd said climbing that many stairs was beyond her today, that he'd have to describe the attic to her.
As he was returning them to the cabinet, he heard some sort of commotion out back and went to the rear window to look.
Down below, in the backyard, he saw Reenie glaring at the loan officer. It was hard to see her whole face, this high up, but from the set of her bony jaw and the cock of her hips, he was pretty sure she was letting him have her worst black Irish evil eye. Keeney began pulling her back toward the driveway, corralling her into the car. Wink couldn't hear what she was saying, but it didn't seem likely it would be appropriate to the neighborhood. She stuck out her tongue. He watched the loan officer cross back into the house, shaking his head, and heard the sound of him downstairs, coming up. Sal appeared in view now, hugging herself, arms crossed over her belly, moving toward the driveway, looking small for a lady expecting and more weary than mad.
He started down the stairs. Halfway down, on the second-floor landing, he ran into the loan officer. He was smiling to beat the band, wiping sweat from his forehead with what appeared to be a complimentary ink blotter from the bank, a fact which Wink took to mean the guy didn't have the sense to carry a handkerchief. “You know,” he said, leaning against the railing as if they were just shooting the shit, as if Wink didn't have loved ones downstairs clearly upset and pulling up stakes, “funny thing … My neighbor, he's just not so sure about selling right now.”
Wink was listening, but he was moving, too, heading down the stairs. The loan officer followed, still talking. “Probably why he didn't go through a real estate agent to begin with. Maybe his heart's just not in it yet … Folks live here, it ends up meaning a lot to them … you know. Anyway, I feel bad about it, but I can sure help put you in touch with some of the developers on the edge of town—some of those new ranch-style houses are quite affordable and stylish, I think …”
Wink was hardly listening now, the guy rattling off all kinds of rationales. He didn't bother pointing out that the professor had said he was moving, that he had to sell.
“Maybe this wasn't exactly your kind of neighborhood, anyway. You're probably used to a little wilder life in the big city, I imagine.”
Wink stopped and faced him. He would not punch him. They'd made some decisions about their life, he and Sal, and he was going to have to make this new chapter work, come what may. They still had to deal with the bank, and he had to be civil. But he did say, “You imagine, huh? That's what you imagine?”
101
It wasn't the beautiful elm-lined neighborhood she'd had her heart set on. It wasn't the avenues of the Old West Side, and it wasn't anywhere near that Burns Park area, in the heart of the town. It didn't feel like it was even part of the town, especially a town that made reference to trees right in its name. This was out in the open—nothing more than a cow pasture, it seemed like. A dilapidated barn was the nearest man-made structure she could see, and that was far off to the west. The only thing keeping her from feeling they might as well be back at Winks uncle's, setting up a tent in the back forty, was the graded, winding road, running all through it, and the foundations that had been poured. It looked, she thought, like a memorial cemetery for giants. It wouldn't feel as barren, once there were walls on these houses. In fact, the neighbors would be packed in on either side far closer than anything they'd looked at so far.
Most of the houses were going to be that bare-bones ranch style, but she spoke to the developer personally and insisted they get one of the few with a second floor, maybe even an attic. “It's always better when there's an upstairs,” she explained to Wink. “You and I never would have been if I hadn't had extra room upstairs.” She grinned and tugged at his coat, pulling him close, and he grinned, too, thinking what she was thinking—of the apartments above the shop back in Chicago, of course. But she could see the real estate man, standing just beyond him, hands in pockets, and looking a tad flummoxed, frowning a little, eyebrows disapproving, and she almost spoke up and explained what she meant to this eavesdropper, thinking he might have taken her “upstairs” to mean her bosom, her bustiness, not the apartment.
But she decided to just let him think
whatever he wanted to think. She knew what having an upstairs meant, and the man she loved knew what it meant, and all the rest could go to hell— or, at least, to the privacy of their own home to think their own dirty thoughts in peace.
And soon, now, they would be able to do the same.
Epilogue
She knew what was in the trunk without having to examine every last thing the boy was uncovering, digging around in it now that he'd dragged it down to the front hall, and she sat in the empty dining room just through the archway and did her best to respond as he called out questions, occasionally crossing over to show her a curled photo or piece of equipment. “That's a flashbulb … ” she said, thinking even he should know that one. She identified the safelight, the film pack tank, the remote release bulb. “Some sort of wartime pinups … ” she said.
He seemed to know what the enlarger was and not to open the packs of unexposed Kodak photo paper, though she doubted it was still any good. She knew he couldn't have been expected to identify the leg makeup or two-sided tape they used to hold the wigs and costumes in place.
“That all stays with me,” she said. “All of it.”
She didn't know the name of the facility or even what state it was in, but she knew she could take a few belongings with her, even those too big for the room they would give her. Each resident would have a storage space, Billy had told her over the boy's tiny Dick Tracy phone.
She knew this last was a cell phone, but she also knew how much it deviled her son, and the grandson, to think she was still living in an ancient time. She even knew that the cell phone could miraculously take pictures with less effort than picking your nose, though they weren't true photos in any sense, and that the boy had been using this system to send Billy updates on the house and supposed repair problems he'd discovered while emptying it, all sent through the air to California with the help of computers.
She knew that people did it this way now—they could empty and sell off a house that they hadn't set foot in for years.
There were certain things that were crisp as an amber filter with panchromatic film and still others that remained out of focus—like what this young man's name was, the one packing up her house, though she was pretty sure he was her grandson. Her son Billy's son from his second marriage. And what the boy's wife's name was. Or if they even were married and not just living in sin.
She knew the Argus C3 the boy held in his hand had been owned by two husbands. She knew it was manufactured by the Argus Camera Company, originally of this very town, that her husband Wink had used this very camera, this Brick, as it was called, to finally do better than finalist and win the Pulitzer. She knew that was in 1954, for a photo essay of Jonas Salk—an average day with his family and codiscoverers, shot all around Ann Arbor.
She couldn't remember the address of this house they were in, but she knew it was in Ann Arbor, too, and it was the only place she'd known as home since late 1947, back before the town boundaries had moved far beyond them and there were trees outside, providing cover, providing the landscaping company an excuse to overcharge her son for raking leaves because, as she also knew, you still couldn't rake leaves over the computers.
She knew that Wink had worked for Argus for a time as a consultant and executive director while still doing freelance photographic essay assignments for Life, Time, Playboy magazine …
She couldn't remember what the machine was she was hooked up to now—what it did or who had hooked it up to her. But she did know she was supposed to leave it alone and not fool with it.
She did remember the name of Wink's doctor—Zaret, it was. Or maybe Zater—the hopeful, energetic fellow up at the university hospital who'd tried, twice, to restore full use of his right hand through experimental surgery. Neither attempt worked, but neither did it make his hand any worse. And, as Wink had put it, the fellow meant well.
She knew Wink had never managed to properly retrain his own hand enough to paint or illustrate but did go on to teach photography and journalism at the U of M after selling the camera shop downtown on Liberty. Going out on the occasional photojournalism assignment, and into town for classes, he felt, took him away from their home plenty enough.
The boy had seen the girlies in the trunk, but he didn't seem as worked up as she'd thought he might be. Maybe he'd seen enough these days on the computers. He was a grown man, after all—but he did seem captivated by one shot in particular and, after standing in the archway squinting at it in the late-afternoon sun, he brought it to her.
“Gram,” he said. “This looks like the old cottage up north, but who's the lady?”
It shook in her hand, but she knew what it was. Judging by the hairdo, 1950 or ‘51; judging by the location—the sparkly ripple at the water's edge, the curve of pine trees along the beach, and the white puffs of clouds—summer. She must have just been starting to get her figure back after baby number two—Baby Manny, they'd called her at that point—and she was clowning by the lake with one side of her suit unhooked, her bazoom poking out like one large, winking eye.
She wondered where the kids were—maybe napping back in the cottage. It looked bright, like midafternoon. Maybe Billy and Manuela were off on a day trip to Petoskey or Traverse with their aunt Reenie and uncle Keeney, if they were there visiting, which they often were. They certainly weren't right there on the beach with them. She didn't think she would have carried on like that so that anyone could see.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Bob and Connie Amick, Huck Lightning, Bruce Amick, Walter Amick, the Ann Arbor District Library, the Argus Museum, Vicky Baker, the Bentley Historical Library, Guy Berard, Nan and Stan Bidlack, Bill Brown, Jere Burau, Cheryl Chidester, Bill Cusumano, Dominique Daniel, Bonnie Delaney Meg and Brian De-laney Tim Delaney, Cecile Dunham, Rachel Eckenrod, Elk Rapids Village Market, Elmers Glue, Ithamar Enriquez, Erik Esckilsen, Gina Fortunato, Dr. David Freiband, Al Gallup, Deb Garrison, Matt Garrison, Janice Goldklang, Jennifer Green, Alison Griffith, Rich Griffith, Manuela Guidi, Naomi and Ted Harrison, Carol Holsinger, Dave Keeney Leonard H. Lillard, Fran Lyman, Mike Madill, Maria Massey Matt Miller, Pamela Narins, Sunny Neater, Chuck Pfarrer, David Platzker, Steve Rogers, Eric Revels, Jonathan Sainsbury Vanessa Hope Schneider, Grace Shackman, Jack Spack Jr., Elaine Spiliopoulos, Joe Veltre, Dietmar Wagner, Deb Waldman, Suzanne Wanderlingh, Caroline Zancan, and Dave Zaret.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Amick is the author of The Lake, the River & the Other Lake. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he received a BA from St. Lawrence University and an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. His short stories have appeared in Playboy, The Southern Review, New England Review, Story, McSweeney's, in the anthology The Sound of Writing, and on National Public Radio. On walks with his wife and young son, he often passes the original Argus Camera building.
steve-amick.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Steve Amick
All rights reserved.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amick, Steve.
Nothing but a smile : a novel / Steve Amick.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37805-7
1. World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Fiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)—
Fiction. 3. Michigan—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.M53N68 2009
813'.6—dc22 2008024390
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