The Jeweler

by Anderson, Beck

  Ginger was intrigued. Molly couldn’t be smoking pot; it was too close to the ski season. Drug testing at the ski resort compelled her to be clean at least three months prior. Plus, Molly had successfully gone cold turkey all summer and seemed to be buying into the slow, local, vegan-hipster-straight-edge-whatever-it-was lifestyle. Something else was up. “What are you doing?”

  Molly stalled. “I like that shirt! Is that the one we found together at The Closet? I love that store.” She glanced behind her, into the apartment.

  “Molly.” Ginger waited for her to turn around. She gained her attention again. “What’s up? Can I come in?”

  “Hmm? Oh, oh, I’m terrible. Yeah.” She shut the door in Ginger’s face.

  It must be opposite day. It was starting to feel awkward standing in the hallway.

  The door swung open again. “Okay, you can come in, if you promise not to yell.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ginger walked into the front hall of the apartment. Molly was not usually one for housekeeping, but the place was spotless. Candles flickered everywhere, and Molly had been cooking something complicated, judging by the tower of stainless steel in her sink.

  In the living room, where her dinky black and white RCA TV had been, sat a large, white metal cage with two turrets. Inside the thin bars perched two white doves. Ginger felt her eyes widen. “Molly, they’re so cool! I love them. Where did you get them? Is this what you thought I’d be mad at?”

  Someone answered her from the door to the bedroom. “I think she thought you might be mad about me.”

  Ginger turned around. It was Sam, Fender’s friend. She held still for a minute. He didn’t belong in this picture. Her mind couldn’t figure out what to think.

  Molly put herself between Sam and Ginger.

  She must think I’m going into some sort of crazy fit. “I don’t understand.” Nothing else came to her. She waited for Molly to answer and tried not to look threatening.

  “This is who I met at the Dubliner when we went out last month. This is Sam. You’ve already met, from what I gather.”

  Sam looked awkward. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his pants and smiled.

  Ginger smiled as broadly as she could. “Hi. Uh, I guess I owe you an apology. I was a real bitch at the pool.”

  Sam walked up behind Molly and put his arms around her. “I think it was justifiable. Everybody was having a tough time.” Ginger understood he was talking about her and Fender.

  Molly seemed to let down her guard. She relaxed, and a toothy smile spread on her face. “We’ve been getting along. We like a lot of the same stuff, you know, Portland bands, nano-breweries, mustaches…I was hoping it’d be okay with you. It’s been harder and harder to keep a secret.”

  Ginger hated being the eggshells everyone walked on so delicately. “What are the odds it’d be you guys that met? But if you’re happy, I’m happy. It’s not every day a man catches the eye of my Molly.”

  Sam glowed. He’d literally broken into a sweat, his face and neck covered with tiny moist beads. “So, it’s all out now. You know, Molly and I were at three of the same Coachellas? We were even in the same tents, listening to the same bands. I mean, what are the odds of that? Good karma, I’m tellin’ ya.” He kissed Molly on the cheek. “I have to go. Don’t gush too much about me, puddin’.” He smiled warmly at Ginger as he squeezed out of the front door.

  Molly looked like she wanted to gush. “He bought me the doves. Isn’t that the most romantic gesture? He’s not a walking gym ad, but there’s more to life than six-pack abs.”

  Ginger smiled and was happy to find she really felt really pleased. She looked into herself, and that’s what reflected back up to the surface. “Do you know that the whole time I’ve known you, you’ve never had a serious boyfriend? This is big stuff.”

  Molly’s dark curls seemed to vibrate. “I don’t want to jinx it.”

  “You have to dish a little, Molly.”

  “What’s weird is that I spotted him from across the bar at the Dubliner. It’s like he was putting out a vibe. Maybe it was destiny or karma or something.” She caught herself. Ginger could see it. It made a little cloud that hovered in her eyebrows. Her sense of tact in regards to Ginger was very keen.

  “Whatever it is, it’s good.” Ginger went back over to the cage. The doves nestled closely to one another. They seemed very placid. “That’s what I want.” Ginger pointed to the cage. “I want to be that peaceful.”

  Molly sat down on the couch across from the birds. She beckoned Ginger to sit with her. “You can be. You’ve had a lot of turmoil in the last year. Maybe you’re turning a corner, with the anniversary and all.”

  Anniversary. It’s a happy word, Ginger thought. It doesn’t fit this. You don’t want to celebrate the date of a death creeping back up on you. You mark it.

  Molly put an arm around her. “I’m going to give you unsolicited advice. Brace yourself.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Fender. I can’t wrap my head around what he did. I can’t figure it out, and it still upsets me.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say. But you brought it up, now, so here’s one thought. Forgiveness is good. It especially helps when you can’t sort out why someone did a hurtful thing. But that’s that. I’m not going to talk about him. And I want it to be perfectly clear that Sam doesn’t expect you to go on double dates with us—you and Fender and us. Although he has said he thinks you were the first person Fender’s really loved.” Molly spit all this out in a great rush, lobbing it into the air before Ginger could stop her.

  Ginger finally broke in. “I’ll let that sink in later. What was it you were going to say? The thing you did want to talk about?”

  “Oh. I think you should go to Brad’s grave.” Molly stood to move around the apartment, dousing candles.

  Ginger shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, I think you should. I could give you a couple little Choctaw prayers to say. You could smudge a little sage. It might help you say good-bye to him. Maybe you can figure out how you really felt about him.”

  “You and your sage.” Ginger took a deep breath. “You’re probably right. Maybe I’ll go this week.”

  “It’d be good, since it’s a year exactly this week. I could go with you.”

  “No, I better go myself. You have someone who needs your attention.”

  Molly grinned. “I know. Doesn’t it kick ass?”

  Ginger nodded, but she couldn’t say anything. She sat and looked at the doves, dozing on their perch. She wished again for peace.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SAM WAS OVER, trying to show Fender pictures of the doves he’d bought Molly. Fender tolerated that sickeningly sweet business only because he missed his friend. He was scarce lately, busy these last few weeks building a love nest with Molly—or Miss Flake, as Fender liked to call her. But it was kind of fun, because when Sam did come by, he would relay any tidbits Molly had let slip about Ginger on their last date.

  Today Sam and Fender were at Pop’s, cutting the lawn for him. Labor Day weekend was approaching, and it was blisteringly hot. The lawn had browned out about the middle of July, but Fender was weed-whacking a few stray blades here and there. Sam sat at the edge of Pop’s yard with his feet in the neighbor kid’s pool.

  “The only thing I’m missing is my daiquiri. Oh, cabana boy!” He was out of reach to swat.

  “I give up. The battery’s dying anyway.” Fender set the trimmer down and came to sit beside Sam. The grass stuck to the back of his sweaty legs.

  Sam looked up into the blue sky. “Actually, what I’m missing is my woman.”

  “Oh, give me a break. You saw her this morning. You’ve been without Molly for all of three hours.”

  “I know, isn’t it sickening? But she’s the butter on my popcorn, baby, the fly in my soup.” Sam splashed his toes around for a minute. “I might even be so bold as to use the—” He gasped, widened his eyes, and paused for emphasis. “L-wor
d.”

  “Get the hell out.” Fender smiled. Sam really was happy. It was downright surreal.

  “No, really. Give me two, three weeks, a month or three, and I might say that word. To her, maybe even.”

  “It’s about damn time, Sam. I’m glad for you.” Oh, time for an awkward, why-isn’t-Fender-happy-too moment.

  “It’ll happen for you.” Sam looked at his toes.

  “Oh, don’t give me that shit. Who cares, anyway?”

  “You do, ’cause you perk up every time I mention Ginger’s name.” Sam looked at Fender. “See? I’ll be damned if you didn’t twitch a little just then.”

  Fender lay back in the grass and looked up, over the neighbor’s roof. He sighed. He felt a Sam speech coming on.

  “I think I have the whole thing with her figured out, you know,” Sam began.

  “Oh, really.” Fender noticed the peak of the roof was bowed ever so slightly.

  “Yeah, I do. Now be attentive. So, here’s the deal. It’s like the Jump Street phenomenon.”

  Fender smiled. Oh, Sam. “The what?”

  “Twenty-One Jump Street. Johnny Depp was on it, even though he pretends like he wasn’t. Except for the cameo in the movie version, I think he’s in denial. But he needs to ’fess up, because all of us remember when he graced the cover of Tiger Beat. C’mon!” Sam splashed a little, for emphasis.

  Fender felt the need to redirect. “Excuse me, point?”

  “The point is…Oh shit, I can’t remember…No, the point is, in the show Johnny Depp had a girlfriend, and he was going to dump her. He didn’t like her; she was bugging him. And then she got killed in a convenience store robbery.”

  “Okay.” Fender felt lost. Oh well.

  “This is the thing! After she died, he was all like, ‘I loved her, man, we were going to get married’ and everything. Until his friend, who was Dom DeLuise’s son in real life, snapped him out of it.”

  Fender sat up on his elbows. Sam, for all of his inane theories, might have struck upon something. “So, what are you thinking?”

  “Well, from what I’m getting from Molly, things weren’t all peachy with D.B. and Ginger. Ginger didn’t talk about it much, but Molly says D.B. told her he wanted to do something to ‘shore up’ his relationship with Ginger.”

  “Shore up? He said that?” Fender remembered why Brad had annoyed him in the store. Now wait, Fender, that’s not nice to think about. The guy’s not here to defend himself. Show some respect, for Christ’s sake.

  Sam was off, however; respect be damned. “Shore up. Like a brick wall or a roof. But more importantly, a roof that’s leaky. A wall that’s crumbling—you see where I’m going here?”

  “Yeah, maybe they were having problems.” Fender felt that little twitch in his stomach again. Pesky hope flipping and flopping around.

  “Just like Johnny Depp! She loses him in the accident in front of the store and suddenly her brain flips off, and it’s like ‘Oh yeah, I loved him,’ except that’s why she could like you, because things when he was alive weren’t all perfect!”

  Sam now sat up very straight in his lounger. His point had been made, and he was clearly pleased to have garnered a favorable reaction, too. “Not a bad thing to think about, huh? Maybe it’s not all over between you guys. Maybe she just needs to sort stuff out. It’s coming up on a year, you know.”

  Fender got depressed again. “Yeah, except in the Johnny Depp thing the alive guy doesn’t lie and get in trouble with her and make her feel terrible.”

  Sam waved him off. “There wasn’t even another person Johnny was interested in. That wasn’t the point of the story. The point was chinks in the armor.”

  “What?”

  “Chinks in the armor. Ginger and Brad? That was not a match made in heaven, my friend. I’ll bet you two thousand bucks she had doubts.” Sam got up out of the kiddie pool, triumphant in his logic.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve had enough of your company, Mr. Barnes. I’m going to go look for my woman.”

  Sam left, and Fender put the trimmer in the shed and stopped for a moment. Maybe the whole thing wasn’t played out yet. He smiled to the empty backyard. “Thank you, Johnny Depp.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  GINGER’S EYES BLINKED OPEN. She couldn’t get back to sleep. The birds outside the house were making a racket. Magpies hassling a cat, probably, and the noise made Zoë restless. The big dog made circles around the bed, snorting loudly as she neared Ginger’s pillow.

  Ginger gave up. The clock said seven fifteen. Zoë must have seen Ginger’s eyes open because she began to bounce up and down.

  “All right, I’m getting up. For crying out loud!” Ginger swung her feet to the floor, only to have them accosted by a slobbery dog.

  She let Zoë out the front door and sat on the stoop. In her bathrobe pocket she found a ponytail holder. She pulled the hair out of her eyes and fastened it on top of her head.

  It was cooler this early in the morning. For the last few weeks, as school districts welcomed their children back to school and the business at the pool slowed down, Bode and Ginger had split the shifts. Bode worked early, and Ginger came in around noon. He liked finishing up early so he could go out. After his attempt at a relationship with Ginger had fizzled, Bode seemed to be enthusiastically frequenting the downtown clubs.

  Ginger, on the other hand, had no interest in making the rounds. She wanted life to smooth itself out for a while. She went home to her dog and called it a good day if it had been uneventful. And she hardly ever thought about Fender.

  This morning, she thought about something Molly had mentioned: going out to Brad’s grave. The one-year anniversary of his death. It made her neck knot up just to consider it. Lately, she made a point of avoiding calendars.

  But the air was fresh this morning. Any later in the day, and it became hot like the exhaust of a truck or a blow dryer. Maybe she should go now. If she left right now, no one else would probably be there, either. She really didn’t want to run into people.

  She went inside, threw on some clothes, and got her purse. She called to the dog, who was rooting around in the neighbors’ flowerbeds, and put her inside, locking the house door. She was going to do this. She was going to visit Brad’s grave.

  She drove out the long road toward the foothills. She kept the windows down, enjoying the morning air. Ginger tried not to clutch the steering wheel too tightly.

  She ascended the steep drive to the cemetery. A bright white and red sign warned, “Unlawful to remove decorations from graves. Violators will be prosecuted.”

  “Shit.” Ginger hadn’t brought anything—no flowers, nothing to leave for Brad. She felt her palms go clammy; she was already breaking etiquette and already uncomfortable in this space. She passed the gates, engraved with the words Perpetual Care.

  The last time Ginger had been here, she’d ridden in the limousine with Brad’s mother and father. It’d been kind of a surprise, riding with them. In fact, Ginger hadn’t spoken to his family since they’d packed up his things and closed the door to the house a few days after the funeral. Just a girlfriend, they must’ve figured.

  But they’d been wrong. Ginger had been wrong. Brad must’ve been thinking of her as more. He’d bought the ring, after all. Bought it from Fender.

  She stopped the car to pull herself out of that particular train of thought. She was at the crest of the hill now, so she steered to the side of the drive and parked. An awning identical to the one that had shaded the mourners for Brad at the funeral stood tall in front of her. Maybe it was the same one. She hadn’t noticed before that it was mounted on large black wheels. Strange vehicle.

  She got out of the car and turned in a circle to get her bearings. Things looked different. At the funeral, the surroundings had been a vague background to her. She’d witnessed the service with a kind of tunnel vision. She’d noticed only a few of the odd details: the Astroturf under the chairs, the backhoe waiting not-too-subtly to the
left of the site. Fender.

  Now it was clearer. She saw much more around her. A covey of quails bobbed along between headstones in the older part of the cemetery to her right. She liked to see their lively little bodies in a place like this. They sprinted across the road like businessmen late for a train. The sun lit up their gray and brown backs and turned them lilac. The single black feather on the top of each bird’s head wiggled in urgency.

  She felt suddenly uncomfortable. It wasn’t clear to her where she was going. Driving here, she’d thought it’d be impossible not to find Brad. Now it seemed a daunting task.

  She remembered he was buried in the east section, and she remembered parking somewhere near this spot. But the graves in this part of the cemetery were marked with flat black-bronze metal markers. She had to walk up to each one to see the name of the occupant.

  Maybe it was more to the left, she told herself. A Mylar balloon drifted over one of the markers. She approached it, careful to place her feet wide of the grave itself.

  It was an infant’s grave. So was the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that. She was lost in a heartbreaking sea of tiny crypts. Little lives, ended in one day, three weeks, a year, their markers engraved with lambs and child angels. Her head swam. She came upon a white marble bench, the headstone for Angela Rabbert. She had died the day after she was born. Under the bench someone had placed a stuffed bear, white with curly ringlets of synthetic fur. A tiny bouquet of roses lay next to the bear.

  This felt peculiar. She wasn’t going to find Brad. She was lost. This had been a bad idea. She stood still and looked around, looking for something familiar. She was afraid to move her feet, afraid she might tread on a child’s grave. She felt sweat forming above her lip.

  “Can I help you find someone?” a voice asked from behind her.

  She turned around. A wiry elderly man stood on the driveway. He looked familiar. “Have we met?”

  He smiled from under a thin mustache. “I believe we have. Aren’t you a friend of my son’s?”