“Tired, honey?” asks Susan.
Sam shrugs. It has been a long day, but he’s not really tired. He just wants to think.
How can a person ever have time to think about all the things there are to think about?
About Elise and how when she tucked back her dark, shiny hair, a tiny blue stone sparkled in the middle of her perfect earlobe, like it was winking at him; about Harlan Dodd joking with him; and about how he, Sam, might make him some of Haze’s fudge and ask if he could interview him (would he dare ask the question he’s dying to know the answer to: How’d you go from really thinking about things to being such a dickwad?); about that church choir and how those raised voices were somehow magnificent; about how he couldn’t remember the last time he’d used the word magnificent; about understanding how the phrase poker face came to be after watching that televised tournament; about how Jacob had pointed out a bent-over old woman working in the church kitchen as someone whose groceries he carried and who told Jacob she had once been a skater in the Ice Capades. And did Elise say he looked “so handsome” or “really handsome” in his suit?
Sam wonders what Haze would think of her jam-packed funeral, or if in that “realm” where “love persists,” nobody bothers to keep track of crowd size. Still, wasn’t it a tribute to all the love she generated on earth?
Turning into the driveway, Susan says softly, “We’re home,” and inside the house, she yawns and tells Sam she’s going to take a little nap before they go to Caroline’s that evening.
Laughing as Cesar chases him upstairs, in his room Sam poses in front of the mirror—he wouldn’t say he exactly looks handsome, but he does like how his suit makes his shoulders look broad and his waist narrow, well, narrower. Pulling down the knot of his tie, he stops himself, thinks maybe he won’t change into his sweats, maybe he’ll stay dressed up for a while—he read somewhere that a sci-fi novelist he admires always wears a suit and tie when he writes, believing it makes him and his work more professional.
He takes his phone, notebook, pen, and folded service program out of his pockets and flicking the vent of his suit coat, sits down at his desk, his dog settling at his feet.
His phone chirps, and he sees the message is from Elise. In response to his invitation, she’s texted a happy face emoji and the words, “LOVE TO!”
Seconds after he sends back a thumbs-up emoji, he hears another ping. A text from Jack: “I’VE DECIDED: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, SINCE I’M SO GOOD AT THEM!”
The brothers’ recent texts (and when they want to expound, e-mails) have been about everything from Jack encouraging Sam to at least try out for a team sport (to which Sam asked, “Does debate count?”) to the likelihood of their parents getting back together (with Sam “hopeful” and Jack “doubtful,” they both agreed to be “doubtfully hopeful”) to Jack’s simple condolences upon hearing of Haze’s death, “So sorry, bro.”
When Jack wrote how much he loved travel yet how excited he’ll be to go to the University of Colorado Boulder, where he had been accepted and had deferred, Sam had texted him back, asking what he was thinking of studying, what kind of career did he want? And Jack’s reply, “HELL IF I KNOW—AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING?” had prompted Sam to text, “DON’T YOU HAVE TO BE SMART FOR THAT?”
“HA HA. LAW?”
“SEE ABOVE.”
Looking at his phone now, Sam smiles. He doesn’t doubt Jack would be good at international relations—at whatever he decides to go into—but for now he won’t offer any advice or counsel. He turns off his phone and tosses it onto his bed.
For now he has to write.
Epilogue
November 11, 2017
Dear Haze,
In keeping with your tradition of wrapping up each year by writing down its highs and lows, I’m doing the same here, with a minor adjustment. It’s not New Year’s Eve, but it is a time for reflection, as it’s been a year since we let your ashes fly over Lake Superior (almost taking down a dive-bombing seagull who thought we were throwing bread crumbs).
Here’s how I’m honoring another of your traditions: I write (and I’m talking with a pen) regularly in a notebook. I don’t address my stuff to “Dear Helen,” like you did, but to another inspiring woman: “Dear Haze.” Ha—not. I mean, I can write you this letter, but to address you in my journal would be weird, considering some of the things that occupy the mind of a normal, red-blooded fifteen-year-old player like me . . .
I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on the lows, because I don’t want to (a) be here all day, or (b) puke in a public place. But it’s bad, Haze. Everything seems jacked up—it’s like there’s a civil war brewing, with our leader-in-chief sending out crazy Us vs. Them tweets that do nothing to unite and everything to divide. There are all kinds of investigations and scandals going on, more insane gun violence, white supremacists and neo-Nazis not afraid to crawl out of the woodwork, all these men in power who turn out to be sexual predators, more weird weather that we’re not supposed to do anything to fix . . . okay, I’ve got to stop, Haze, because, to repeat (b), I don’t want to puke in a public place.
So whaddya say we move on to the good stuff?
One, I’ve got a girlfriend, and coming in a close second, I got my driver’s permit!
I wish you could have met Elise—I’m way out of her league, but she doesn’t seem to notice. At least she hasn’t called a ref over to throw me out of the game.
She’s one of an octad (I just looked that word up) that sort of rose up from last year’s Radical Hag Wednesdays. We meet once a week, and although it’s not a writing or reading group, we do a lot of both, considering Abdi, Grace, and I like to write and like to share what we’re working on. Fun fact, Haze: you weren’t replaced at the paper. Instead Mom started “Open Door,” a biweekly column that publishes anyone with a good story or strong opinion. Abdi’s already published two columns, twice as many as Grace and I have. (Not to brag, but I’ve published four short articles, and the fifth’ll be printed in tomorrow’s paper. I know, I know, it pays to be the son of the publisher; still Mom assures me she wouldn’t print anything subpar.)
A couple times we’ve met to write letters to government officials, even though we can’t vote yet (according to Abdi, our congressman is “a real tool who would like my family behind one of those walls he can’t wait to build”), and on the anniversary of Prince’s death, we spent our time reading aloud his lyrics as we listened to a mix of his songs that Kurt had made.
Mostly we meet to vent, which is satisfying by itself, but even better when it’s led to taking action, like when we caravanned down to St. Paul last January to participate in the Women’s March. Stacy and her sisters had knit us all pussy hats (don’t ask), and while the girls talked about how empowering it felt to wear them, I can’t say I felt empowered—at first I felt stupid. But then, I don’t know, I felt cool, part of something bigger than myself.
My parents were too young to be part of the protests in the sixties, but my dad says his brother Tim was really involved in the antiwar movement and even got his head bashed in at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. I don’t want to get my head bashed in, but I figure if you just stand by, you either get passed by or get trampled.
And speaking of my parents, it seems they aren’t too old to remember some of the sixties slogans though, especially “Love Is the Answer”—and act on them: they’re back together! It took a long time, and they both say a lot of work, but it boils down to my dad just started being less of a jerk and not afraid to tell my mom what he needed, and my mom, though not as big a jerk, started being less of one too and not afraid to tell my dad what she needed. Oh yeah, and then they both listened.
The six windows big as doors face south and will offer plenty of natural light when there’s natural light to be offered, but for now the sun is hidden behind a dreary veil of gray and the second floor is lit by electricity.
Sam slowly swivels left and right in one of the many forest-green club chairs—he loves these cha
irs!—that are situated in various niches, and surveys rows of book shelves. A goateed man, his hands clasped behind his back, peruses what Sam bets is the poetry section. He swivels in the other direction to see a spiffed-out older woman place an oversize book in the arms of a young, disheveled friend? granddaughter? who pretends to stagger from the weight of the growing pile she holds, and Sam thinks, Organizing . . . or Personal Hygiene. Tapping his fingers on his notebook, he looks at another row of shelves and sees someone dart behind them. Was that Elise? His heart, which like a sedan had been doing its steady, serviceable job, revs up like a Ferrari.
A second later, his question is answered in the affirmative when Elise, her smile sheepish, reappears and waves. He holds his hand up but instead of waving back, waves her forward.
“I knew you were writing,” she whispers, setting down a large case as she sits in the chair next to his. “And I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“You could never disturb me, chérie,” says Sam in a suave French accent (or facsimile thereof), and in response, Elise, holding her hands to her heart, flutters her eyelashes.
“Besides,” says Sam, “the article’s done. I already e-mailed it to my mom.”
“So what were you writing now?”
“A letter to Haze.”
That Elise’s expression isn’t one of befuddlement is a testament to their relationship and that Sam feels comfortable telling her just about anything.
“I was trying to wrap up the year for her, you know how she always did?”
“Can I read it?”
“No.”
“Then how about the article?”
“You can read it in the paper tomorrow,” teases Sam. “Just know that I did mention the jazz band.”
“And me in particular?” Elise teases back.
“Sure. I wrote about a whole page on how Elise Wahlberg’s saxophone stylings take jazz to another level.”
“Saxophone stylings,” says Elise with a laugh, which causes the man with the goatee, now seated in a chair across them and reading not a poetry book but one on electronic day trading, to look up and frown.
“Wanna go to Irv’s?” Sam whispers, and Elise nods.
On the still busy main floor, they stop near the circulation desk to read the “Celebration Events!” listed on a big erase board. Already in progress in the lower-level meeting rooms is a slide show presentation by a history professor on “Farmers and Furriers: The Founders of Granite Creek” and a talk by the owner of Sweet Buns Bakery and self-published author of the book Apple Fritter Confidential.
A story hour is in progress, and on their way out of the building, they pass the children’s library, whose primary-colored decor is further brightened with clusters of balloons. Sam smiles and waves at the reader, but Shelly, the newly retired receptionist from the Gazette, doesn’t see him, too busy asking a semicircle of rapt children, “Is your mama a llama?”
FOR YEARS, Irv, the proprietor of the eponymous ice cream shop, had ignored customer pleas to serve Shamrock Shakes year-round and not just in March, in homage to St. Patrick.
“Some things gotta stay special!” said the man, who believed that gratification was sullied when it was instant and that coddling had overrun tradition. But when his wife, who loved the mint-ice-cream-with-a-secret-ingredient shakes, survived a cancer scare, Irv decided to offer them during November, Thanksgiving’s month, in her honor. This was a heartfelt, but also savvy, move, as it brought in customers for whom an ice cream shop was not a go-to destination in wintry weather—so many customers that Irv decided that as long as the shakes were already green and therefore of the holiday season, he would extend the Shamrocks’ run through December. His wife, who’s been eyeing a new leather sectional at Schneeman’s, is thrilled.
Sam and Elise hang up their jackets on the wall-mounted coatrack, whose hooks are shaped and painted like ice cream cones. After they’ve ordered, Elise carries the shakes, and Sam her saxophone case as they look for a table in the crowded shop.
“Yoo-hoo, Sam! Over here!”
Lois moves to the end of the booth so that Elise can slide in, and on the other side her companion does the same, giving Sam room—and a surprise that makes him nearly spill his shake.
“Mr. Dodd!” he says, placing his fountain glass carefully on the table. “I didn’t know you two knew each other!”
“We don’t entirely,” says the old man. “But we’re getting there.”
Lois laughs at the look on Sam’s face. “We’re in the same ballroom dance class at the senior center,” she explains. “We were dancing, what was it, Harlan, the foxtrot?”
“The Viennese waltz.”
“Ah, yes. Anyway, I complimented him on both his dancing and on his recent column in Open Door.”
Elise stops sipping her shake to nod and say, “We read that.”
Sam says, “Yeah, we were both sort of . . . surprised by it.”
After a mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, Mr. Dodd had written a column about the Second Amendment that asked, “What part of ‘well-regulated’ don’t these gun nuts get?”
“I told him,” says Lois, her eyes shining, “Harlan Dodd, you’re turning into a radical old coot!”
Under the white hedge of his eyebrows, the man rolls his eyes. “Hardly,” he says gruffly, and they can’t help but laugh as he takes a sudden interest in his remaining shake, sucking up the last inch in a loud gurgle.
“So your mother told me you’re writing an article about the big day, huh?” says Lois, giving Sam one of those conspiratorial winks of which old people are masters.
Swallowing a mouthful of creamy minty goodness, Sam says, “I am. And I quoted you.”
“Oh, goody,” she says. “Haze must have put me in at least 10 percent of her columns, and I’ve missed seeing my name in print. Well, except for in the police blotter.”
SAM WOULD HAVE LIKED to give Elise a ride home, but in possession of her own permit, Elise declines the offer, eager to take over the wheel of her dad’s SUV when he picks her up.
“Call me tonight!” says Elise, rolling down the driver’s window. Sam, who had already started walking toward the Gazette offices, blows an exaggerated kiss, which, to his embarrassment, Mr. Wahlberg pretends to catch.
SAM DRIVES HIS MOTHER’S ACCORD (Susan yelling at him only once to “look both ways!”), and when they get home, his dad is in the kitchen, making dinner.
Little steps (coffee dates and long telephone conversations) had given way to strides (dinners at Zig’s and playing tennis again) had given way to the leap that landed Phil back in the house, with both he and Susan committed to giving their marriage a second chance.
“What am I smelling?” asks Susan, unwinding her scarf.
“The Sundown’s Famous CheeZee bites are in the warmer,” says Phil. “And my famous barbecued meat loaf will be ready in a half hour.”
Sam has had his dad’s barbecued meat loaf (one of the few dishes in his repertoire) and asks, “Famous for what?”
Phil pretends to look wounded, and Susan laughs and says, “What’s the occasion?”
“Well, the library opening, of course.” After a pause, Phil adds, his voice sly, “And Cancún.”
It had been one of those flukey turns of luck: one of Phil’s customers mentioned that he and his wife would be spending Thanksgiving weekend on the road in their brand-new Class A motor home instead of at their time-share in Cancún, and Phil had said, “Wow, Cancún,” and the satisfied customer had said, “Hey, since you gave us such a good deal, let me give you the keys!”
Susan and Phil do a little happy dance, which Sam laughs at but doesn’t join. That’d be way too weird.
“I’m going upstairs,” he says to the couple jumping up and down, and as he leaves the kitchen he hears his mom say, “This can be our honey crescent moon!”
HAZE’S PIRATE BOOTY BOX no longer holds the journal she kept while seeing Bill McGrath; that valuable historical property is kept in Susan�
��s cedar chest along with crocheted linens her great-grandmother made, her wedding album, and her sons’ baby books. Sam is welcome to almost everything in there (hands off the linen) as long as he returns it, but he is far less interested in the notations on his weekly infant growth chart and pictures of his parents surrounded by a brigade of ushers and bridesmaids in pale-blue tuxedos and magenta taffeta than he is in Haze’s journal.
Sam has claimed the stained wood box that held it, and it sits on his desk, the repository for his own important papers—letters from his grandfather, his own writing that has been printed in the Gazette, and some of Haze’s columns and journal entries (which he hand copied) that are especially meaningful to him.
At his desk, Sam opens his notebook and continues writing his wrap-up letter to Haze, telling her about Jack’s return from Europe last summer and how he claimed to have fallen in love about twenty times, “but Mila from Munich . . . mein Gott.” Jack is a freshman now at the University of Colorado in Boulder and is deciding whether to major in business or German.
Sam writes about visiting his grandfather in California and how his step-grandmother let him drive her pink (!) convertible down the Pacific Coast highway one day and all the way to Disneyland the next.
He fills her in on how Elise has inspired him to take up an instrument and how his progress with the guitar is slow but steady, and he wishes his fingers were longer.
When he has nearly finished the letter, he opens the implement he uses when he writes as a different kind of journalist: his laptop. He clicks open his article that will appear in tomorrow’s paper. He won’t hand copy all of it into his letter to Haze, only the beginning:
The grand opening of Granite Creek’s new downtown library was a celebratory affair featuring music by the GC High School jazz band, door prizes, and speeches given by library board chairman Tanesha Williams and newspaper publisher Susan McGrath.
When Mayor Elizabeth Gluck cut the ribbon, declaring, “The Haze Evans Memorial Library is now open!” a crowd of 143 (this reporter counted) teemed inside the main entrance.
Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) Page 29