Pinch of Love (9781101558638) (4 page)

She turned and smiled and handed him a tall cup of chicory-flavored coffee. “Yours is free,” she said in a warm, slow drawl.

He took the cup from her small hand and thanked her. He noticed her diamond-shaped mouth.

She glanced outside at the Wippamunk interfaith van waiting in the street. “You from up north?”

“Uh, yes,” EJ heard himself say.

“Drive all the way down here to help out with the Katrina damage?”

“Yep,” his voice said again.

She smiled. “Some sort of volunteer group you're with?”

He didn't answer. Shadows smudged the skin under her eyes; batter streaked her wrists. We're made of the same stuff, EJ thought. She probably smells like coffee and sugar even after a shower. She probably relishes small talk with customers, and moments alone scraping silver bowls with white spatulas.

The bells jingled; Nick stood in the doorway. “Need a hand, Silo?” Nick asked. He always called EJ Silo, because that's his shape: tall and thick. Nick approached the counter, and Charlene handed him a tray that secured four cups of coffee.

“They're all on the house,” she said. She screwed three more coffees into another tray and filled a paper bag with creamers, sugar packets, and stir sticks.

Nick spoke with Charlene in that genuine, friendly way of his. Told her all about The Trip, their work, where they were staying, what they were doing.

Charlene nodded, eyeing EJ. “Come back tomorrow, if you can,” she said.

“Oh, we're only going to be in the touristy section today,” EJ said. “Because—”

“We'll be back tomorrow,” Nick said.

They finally left the café, each carrying a tray of coffee. Nick paused on the sidewalk. “Look at me,” he said.

“What?” EJ stopped beside the van. His eyes met Nick's.

Nick laughed in that total-body way of his.

“What?”

“You know what.” Nick jerked his head in the direction of the café. “You're totally macking on that cute Cajun coffee-shop chick. You've got the exact same look on your face as when you were twelve and France asked you to dance to ‘Stairway to Heaven.' ”

“Shh,” EJ said. He glanced at France inside the van; Russ appeared to challenge her to a thumb fight, and she was ignoring him. It had been a very long time since EJ felt anything for France, and vice versa. It had been a very long time since EJ felt anything for anyone.

He sensed his cheeks reddening. “Don't say anything,” he told Nick.

“I won't.” Nick laughed again. “You dog.”

Russ slid the van door open and took the tray from EJ. “What's funny? I always miss it.”

“Nothing,” EJ said. “Absolutely nothing.” He took his seat next to Russ. But EJ smiled as he helped distribute coffee to everybody—Russ and France and Dennis, Chief and Father Chet and Pastor Sheila, who was driving—and he smiled the rest of the day.

Every three weeks since, each shipment of chicory root from New Orleans comes with a handwritten letter from Charlene. It usually starts with something like, “Thanks for your order. How's life in the Great White North?” as if Massachusetts is all impenetrable frozen tundra.

Charlene's never been to New England. He fantasizes about hosting her, showing her around town, all his favorite spots. The summit of Mount Wippamunk (though he'd probably have to drive her to the top because he's so out of shape); the second floor of the old fire station, with its antique brass pole and pool table from 1892; the bench in his own backyard, which looks out over Malden Pond. He'll show her his mother's name carved in the back of the bench. His father made it for his mother. His father always tinkered, always made things. The bench was the last thing he made before the divorce.

EJ can't believe it's been more than a year since he's talked to Charlene in person. He can't believe that all that time, she's continued to write, e-mail, text, and even, from time to time, call. When his cell phone beeps at four in the morning, he knows it's Charlene.

He was supposed to visit her once, in August. She invited him, and he made all the arrangements; he planned to take off two weeks and drive down. He even bought an extremely small diamond pendant at the Greendale Mall, but he returned it after she wrote, in her very next letter, about the atrocities of diamond mining, and some awareness rally she attended. He fretted about not having a gift and briefly felt sorry for himself that Nick wasn't around to give him advice.

But Charlene's mother died unexpectedly, and she called and tearfully said he shouldn't come. She kept apologizing, and he kept saying, “No, no, no need to apologize.” That was half a year ago, and she hasn't re-invited him.

EJ pours himself a cup of New Orleans. He sips while flipping the chairs one-handed. Near the window, which is fogged from the ovens, he notices movement outside. He peers into the street and is startled to see a person there, a very bundled-up person. It could be anyone, and EJ squints before he notices Ahab. The Captain is unmistakable. He's the only greyhound in Wippamunk, and the town's only ninety-pound dog that wears a coat and boots six months of the year.

EJ recognizes Zell's yellow hat and mittens. The same Zell who caught lightning bugs in jars with him and Nick when they were seven or so. The same Zell—her bangs sprayed into an unmoving claw—who sat next to him freshman year in Ye Olde Home Ec Witch's class, sampled a blueberry muffin from the first batch he ever made, and said—even after Ye Olde Home Ec Witch gave her a detention for talking—“These're amazing, Eege. You should be a baker or something. Seriously.”

So this is it, EJ thinks. Zell got his note, and now, finally, they're going to talk.

Something is under her arm—the present. The oven present from Nick. Good God, EJ thinks; maybe she wants him with her when she opens it. He swallows hot coffee and stretches his free arm over his head. Good God. What the hell will he say to her?

Ahab leads Zell. They turn into the lot and approach the Muffinry. But they both stop short. They look at something, or
for
something—the source of an odd noise, maybe. EJ cranes his neck, but all he sees is blackness. Suddenly, Zell and Ahab turn around and practically run down the sidewalk, back down Main Street and out of view.

“Lost her nerve,” EJ says. He sips some New Orleans and flips a chair. “Lost her nerve.”

Moments later headlights sweep the parking lot. EJ checks the clock on the wall: The little wooden spoon is on the four and the big wooden spoon is on the six, which means Travis is late as usual. At least he's consistent.

The bells of the front door tinkle as Travis enters; the bristles of the mat make a scratching sound as he wipes his boots.

“Morning, hey,” Travis calls.

“Morning.” EJ opens the back door. He's about to toss a big empty butter tub into the recycling bin when a sort of silent command to be still grips him. His whole body seems infused with a wide-eyed and tingling awareness; if he had hackles, they'd be fully upright. It's the same skin-prickling, pupil-dilating readiness he experienced just before Nick's passage. That's how EJ thinks of it: not Nick's death, but his passage. Not something randomly, regrettably horrible, but something noble, like fate. Or at least like something Nick wouldn't protest, were he made to understand the events that would take his life.

EJ got the terminology—“the passage”—from Charlene. Early on he told her about his nightmares in which he witnesses, over and over, what happened to Nick. She wrote back that all survivors have nightmares; it's a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. She wrote about “the passage” of Katrina victims: “They didn't die. They experienced a passage into somewhere else. That's what I truly believe.”

EJ grips the empty butter tub. Goose bumps form along the nape of his neck. Something approaches—possibly the same creature that distracted Zell and Ahab moments ago. He takes a step back and thinks about black bears raiding trash barrels, then remembers it's winter, and bears are hibernating. Maybe it's a mountain lion, he thinks; they're rumored to roam the area.

Near the recycling bin, movement flashes—filmy, alien green eyes appear. The eyes are followed by a cat, lumpy and practically lopsided with fur balls, a little potato sack with legs. It sits and meows. Old Man Bedard's cat. A true barn cat.

EJ laughs. “Bastard,” he says. “You scared me.” He tosses the butter tub into the bin, and the cat scampers toward the street.

 

 

Nick

T
HE SUN'S UP,and the trash-picked stained-glass window overlooking my second-floor landing casts a reddish hue. I lean on my bedroom door, opposite the attic door. I hold Nick's nearly destroyed present. Gently, I shake it. The cube's contents knock softly. What makes that noise? Nothing, I tell myself. Nothing at all but dust, air, and melted ghost.

The doorknob opposite me is glass. It reflects a tiny me, still in coat and hat. I cover tiny me with my mittened hand. I turn the knob. I push open the attic door one inch. Two inches. I push hard, with my shoulder and arm, because the door scrapes the floor.

The smell of stale attic hits me.

Balls.

I can't do it. I can't open the door any farther. I tug it toward me until it latches and leave the cube in the hallway.

MOMENTS LATER, I shiver on the back steps, watching Ahab pee like a girl dog next to the frozen hydrangea. As he pees he swivels his pointy ears—one black, one white—and sniffs the air, which still smells of burned plastic. It also smells of winter: old snow over dead grass over frozen earth.

One mile away Mount Wippamunk is a big bump on the horizon. It's a true monadnock—an isolated peak. Nick taught me the meaning of that word, a Native American word. The trails ribbon out and down like raindrop paths on a window. Already, even this early in the day, skiers and boarders look like fleas jumping side to side.

“I like your dog.”

Ahab stops peeing and looks around.

The girl, my neighbor, leans out an upstairs window. Her hair is unbraided under the red ski hat.

“Hi,” I say. “Sorry about yesterday. I was upset.”

“It's okay. I get angry, too, sometimes. I'm Ingrid.”

“I'm Zell.”

“Five minutes,” Garrett yells from inside their house.

“Your dog is the kind that runs really fast, right?” she asks.

“Yup.”

“Your dog can't be faster than a cheetah, though, because cheetahs are the fastest land animals in the world.”

“Really?” I say.

“Yeah.”

I hear the rumble of Garrett's truck from the other side of the house; he's warming it up.