He shuffled his loafers against the grain of the carpet. “Oh, it’s not urgent so much as our treasurer suspects we may have double-counted a portion of our donations. Just want to get on top of it before year-end.”
Cerise nodded. This time she saw that Kyle was blushing.
“Well,” said Rhonda, reclaiming the floor. “Call me a pushy New Yorker–type, but I think it best we all speak to the ghost in the room.”
“Are you a New Yorker yet?” said Barb. “What’s the time statute on that?”
Rhonda charged ahead, ignoring her. “Needless to say, I never would have mentioned the baby had I known.”
Needless to say? Cerise felt her face flush. Nothing about her pending apology felt needless. It felt, in fact, very, very much needed.
“Bad reporting on my part. I didn’t do my homework.” Rhonda shot an impish glance at Kyle. He reached out and stroked her hand.
“Are you for real?” Barb thumped her coffee mug down on the side table and leaned in. “Violet spent three days in the hospital with a serious concussion. You chalk that up to bad reporting?”
Kyle edged up in his seat, obviously primed for defense, but Rhonda blocked him with an elbow.
“I’m certain I couldn’t have predicted the depth of Violet’s reaction.” She flicked a dismissive hand.
Cerise and Barb exchanged amazed glances.
“I’m sure what we’re trying to say here—” Kyle managed to outswerve Rhonda’s elbow this time, but not her firm hand on his forearm. He retreated.
Rhonda’s manicure, Cerise noticed then, was the exact color of her skin. It had an eerie effect, making her pale, porcelain fingers look seamless, like they could wrap with infinite length around anything they touched.
“Look, Rhonda,” she started, and then she paused. She hadn’t woken up this morning looking for a fight. Just the opposite—she’d started her day looking to reboot. And she’d made progress on her intentions, judging from the stack of dishes drying on the kitchen counters. Plus, this crazy intervention of sorts was probably her fault, anyway. If she’d just returned even one of his phone calls.
She looked directly at Kyle and changed tack. “It was terrible for a while—my mom was pretty out of it in the hospital. And my dad—well, he’s had his hands full trying to keep her from running the world from their living room. I’m sure your mother told you how much she’s tried to help out.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You know my mom. All the news that’s fit to print.”
Cerise laughed. “Yeah. And you know mine. Never let a good drama go to waste.” The two friends locked eyes and smiled and it felt like a gear finally settling into place.
She didn’t want to not like Rhonda. Moreover, she didn’t want Rhonda to know just how hard she was having to work to get there. Rhonda and Kyle were now a package deal and Cerise liked any package Kyle came in. He seemed happy. Barb thought he was simply starstruck, but Cerise found it hard to believe that one could be struck by someone who wasn’t actually a star. The Weather Channel wasn’t exactly Oprah territory.
Plus, he and Rhonda met in his optometrist’s chair—Rhonda the patient and Kyle the doctor—which Cerise still called him even though he, as her mother liked to point out, wasn’t. Shouldn’t that dynamic put Rhonda in awe of him?
“Rhonda’s in it for Rhonda,” Barb liked to argue. “Just you watch. Flash forward thirty years and those two are going to be just like his parents, one in total servitude to the other’s ambitions. Only this time, Kyle’s going to be the one doing the serving.”
Cerise always hoped she was wrong.
“Well...” Kyle put his coffee mug down on the table and patted Rhonda swiftly—one, two—on the knee. “This one here has a plane to catch. Shall we?” He stood and offered his hand to his fiancée. She didn’t immediately take it. She paused a beat, then two, three, letting her silence fill the room like steam.
Finally she stood and she looked to Cerise as if she’d never felt anything but charmed.
“Be on the lookout for your ‘Save the Date’ card,” she said, slinging her tote across her shoulder. It looked big enough for a week’s worth of wardrobe changes. “The planning team is due to mail them on the nineteenth.”
And as quickly as they’d appeared, they were gone, the scent of Rhonda’s lingering perfume and two empty mugs the only signs that they’d been there.
“Did you get a load of that purse?” said Barb. “I bet if you looked in it you wouldn’t find anything but binged Snickers wrappers and a tube of two-hundred-dollar lip gloss.”
Cerise gathered the dishes from the coffee table and wandered with them into the kitchen. “You think?”
“Absolutely,” said Barb. “That was the wrath of a hungry woman.”
Cerise shrugged. Rhonda was hungry for something, all right.
Christmas 1978
Dearest loved ones, far and near—
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners!
It brings me such joy to sit down at the typewriter tonight. As if the thrill of becoming Mrs. Edward Baumgartner weren’t enough, I’m now able to join in the most revered of traditions: the family Christmas letter! I look forward to sharing our Baumgartner news with you as the years pass, and I pray that the dear Lord will allow me to do so for a long time to come.
Now, onto news of the wedding! Our deepest thanks to each and every one of you who joined the celebration. I really can’t believe it’s over. It felt so long in coming and then, suddenly, it was gone, over in the bat of an eye. For the briefest moment in time we were happier than we’d ever imagined.
As most of you know, it was a simple affair at dear Ed’s home church, Lake Hennepin Lutheran. Pastor Paul Berendtsen presided over the ceremony and, as the final chords of “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” rang from the organ, the Ladies Aid Society opened the doors of the Fellowship Hall for cake and punch. Guests greeted us with cheers, tears and best wishes, until finally you all bid us farewell and we ran through showers of rice and confetti to our getaway car. To say it was a girl’s “dream come true” may sound cliché, but how can I not say it when it’s the truth?!
Now, have no fear—we didn’t go far! As Minnesotans, tried and true, we elected to stay close to home, knowing that our northern lake country in June rivals the beauty and tranquility of nearly any place on earth. We spent five days at the lovely Great Heron Lodge on Big Fish Lake—swimming, boating, fishing, canoeing and watching the sun rise and set over our little piece of heaven. We were truly blessed.
While I’m certain none of you are the least bit interested in the details of our honeymoon adventures (oh, I hope you’ll excuse my bawdy humor!), I must share this favorite moment with you:
One afternoon, we decided to head over to neighboring Little Fish Lake, so I packed a simple lunch in our picnic basket (a lovely shower gift from Aunt Helen—thank you!) while Ed loaded the canoe onto the car and tightened the straps (an eight-foot canoe on a Volkswagen Beetle—can you imagine?!). It was a picture-perfect day, and as we floated, listening to the waves lap against the side of the boat, my dear Ed turned to me and said, “Violet, I may not have been able to buy you the most expensive or exotic honeymoon, but I’ll make it up to you. Someday we may even find ourselves paddling together in Hawaii.”
Can you believe it? To say that I was flabbergasted doesn’t even begin to capture the moment. Not only did I marry a smart, upstanding man who makes me as happy as can be, I married a man who thinks I deserve more than what I already have. And so I keep that moment in my heart, a reminder of my blessings as I work to fulfill the expectations of a happily married life, of being a good wife to my husband, of making a house into a home. (Goodness, I’m getting philosophical! I beg your patience!)
So now, life has begun. We’ve settled into a sunny, one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, a lovely corner flat in an ei
ght-unit brownstone. Ed takes the car to his laboratory every day, but our location allows me to walk to work. For those of you wondering, yes—I plan to keep my job until Ed finishes his degree. My salary doesn’t pay much, but I’m proud of my work and even more proud to donate to the family funds. (Although, who am I kidding? I can’t wait to leave it all behind for motherhood!)
I do struggle some days to keep the stresses of work and life from getting the best of me. Every once in a while, it’s all I can do to push my worries aside before dear Ed walks through the door, lest I spread my mood to him like a case of the pox.
So it is only fitting that I close this very first of many Christmas letters with the verse Pastor Berendtsen read at our wedding, that wonderful passage from Ruth, chapter one, verse sixteen:
“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
May we each be so blessed as to be surrounded by those we love.
Christmas Blessings to each and every one of you,
Ed and Violet Baumgartner
14
Richard
DAMN, IT FELT good to be out. Like he could breathe again. No, more than that. Like his blood was no longer sludge, a pooling residue behind his eyes, draining the color from the world.
How could he have forgotten the feel of life after dark? Life in the dark had its own vibe—did they even say vibe anymore? Who the hell could keep track?—all drawn shadows and isolated echoes in the silent air: a single car door, a smoker’s cough, a woman’s drunken laugh and her companion’s “Aw, c’mon.”
He’d known the night, the younger Richard. Lived it. Breathed it in. Not so long ago, but well before he’d grown wise to its fleeting tease.
Aw, hell.
He’d said goodbye to his cohorts close to an hour ago. Packed the equipment into the back of Ted’s minivan, ignored the cramps in their overripe muscles and pretended they weren’t glad the night was over. Cash work wasn’t as easy as it had once been. Age put its stamp on everything. But they’d done it. Finished the gig and got their money.
The rest of the crew all made straight for their car keys as soon as the evening was done, grabbed them from their pockets like paid tokens to the respectable life, passes to home and family and stability.
Not Richard. He was blocks from his car and leaving it farther behind with every step.
It was cold, goddamn January, but so what? His lungs woke with every breath. He imagined the hop-to underway deep inside him: millions of microscopic air sacs filling with oxygen, begrudgingly sending faint signals of life to cells that had been lying listless and bored for years, lifeboats without a passenger, aimlessly afloat amid the river of his veins.
He was waking up. Every night, every step, every breath. He was coming back.
And he hadn’t even known he was gone.
Eldris, though. That Eldris. Always with the worrying and the fussing and complaining about nothing in particular. Like the tile in the entryway. That was his particularly favorite nothing lately. As if he didn’t have anything bigger to worry about. As if anyone gave a damn.
He turned the corner onto Washington Avenue. He guessed he was headed for the Stone Arch Bridge, the one in all the photographs, the one that connected downtown to the north side. There hadn’t been much of anything on the north side during his previous tour of duty as night owl, but now it was every young hipster’s treasure to discover, microbreweries sharing the same square of land as a Greek Orthodox Church and the Polish butcher.
His stomach growled. How good would a Kramarczuk’s with mustard and slaw be right about now?
“What’you doing out so late, old man?” It was a kid, no more than twenty, the patch of whiskers on his face no more purposeful than a worn toothbrush. He stepped from the shadow of a storefront awning and held his palm out to Richard. The seam on his glove was torn straight down through to the skin. “You got a cigarette?”
“You got a loaded gun?” answered Richard. He kept walking, though he knew the exchange wasn’t over yet.
“What if I did?” The kid was following him now, a lonely dog on his heels hoping for scraps. “What if I stuck it right in your back and made you empty out your rich-man pockets? You’re trying to look like you ain’t got nothing, but I know better. I bet you own one of these buildings here. Hell, I bet you own more than one.”
The kid was as dumb as he looked. Richard kept walking.
He climbed, the hound close behind, onto the wide pedestrian lanes of the former railroad bridge. Down below, the Mississippi crashed lock over dam, filling the hollow night with sound—a single, monotonous roar.
Richard stood silent, awash in sensation. His pores, raw with cold, opened themselves to the great river’s power while his mind, finally quiet, closed down in contemplation of—what? Aw, hell. You couldn’t stand here and not be taken over by something.
Minneapolis had been founded right here. Good old Father Hennepin—lucky son of a bitch had found the only falls on the whole damn Mississippi. The whole goddamn river. Named them St. Anthony’s falls—or some crazy French equivalent—St. Anthony, the lone guy responsible for finding missing things and lost people.
All these ancient guys and their fascination with the saints.
Richard’s teachers had always bent themselves over backward to point out that Hennepin was a priest, a missionary and an explorer—in that order. Always in that order. Standing here, though, Richard knew that couldn’t be right. All those teachers for all those years had gotten the order wrong. Hennepin had used God, worn him as a foil on his way to adventure. Being a priest had just been his ticket to ride.
“Getting farther an’ farther away from home, old man.” For chrissake, the kid was still with him, waiting for more. “Something tells me you’ve got a secret.”
Well, hell. Richard turned.
“Here’s what I’m gonna tell you, kid, so listen up. Wherever I am—wherever it is you think you found me tonight—I sure as hell wasn’t the one who drew the X on this part of my map. But here I am. Maybe it was karma. Maybe it was luck. I don’t goddamn know. Did I do something wrong? Or, did I do something right? Nobody knows. And that’s God’s honest truth.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled a bill from the top of the night’s pile. It was too dark to see and he didn’t know if he was handing the kid a five or a twenty. What did it matter? This pup needed more than he could ever give him. “Here,” he said. “Have a Coke and smile.”
The kid took it without looking.
They stayed there for a few minutes more. The kid seemed content just for the company. Richard was content just to keep him quiet. There was too much talking in the world now. Too much I know better than you. But it all just came down to words. These days, words weren’t worth shit.
Eldris, though. She’d be wanting a few words with him in the morning. Hadn’t told her where he was going. Just out. Just back later. He should’ve done better. He knew. She’d probably lain in bed fuming herself to sleep.
Yeah, he knew.
She wouldn’t be awake when he got home, but the fact that she was there would help. Allow him to settle. Fall into his slot in the puzzle. The way it had been for Kyle as a kid. Nights he’d spent between the two of them during a thunderstorm or after a bad dream.
“Hey, kid,” he said, turning to go. “It’s the middle of the night. Where you gonna be in the morning?” He pulled his coat high up on his neck against the wind and made his way back the same direction he’d come. “Take it from this old man—strangers only get you so far.”
Whether you
Fly like Charles Lindberg
Walk like the Jolly Green Giant or
Dance like Charles Schulz’s Peanuts,
Make your way to the Land of Sky Blue Waters!
Saturday, September 1st
For the wedding of two true-blue Minnesotans
Mary Richards (aka Rhonda Nelson)
&
Jesse “The Body” Ventura (aka Kyle Endres)
Save the date.
F. Scott says, “It’s sure to be a Gatsby of a time!”
15
Violet
“I GAVE HIM a piece of my mind, all right.” Eldris was on her hands and knees, scrubbing Violet’s kitchen floor and sputtering herself into a good lather. “I said, ‘Richard Endres, if you ever disappear on me again you’ll be sleeping at Kyle’s house until he kicks you out, too.’”
Violet had never been so confounded. Should she be thankful or appalled? Eldris was at least five years her senior—though a good bit trimmer, as she’d never seen her put more than a single bite of anything into that narrow little mouth of hers—and yet here she was, risking a week of back pain just so Edward and Violet weren’t forced to walk atop the colonies of bacteria reproducing underneath their feet.
Even more, she wouldn’t soon be able to forgive Eldris if she took her marital distress out on the delicate grain of their hardwood flooring.
“Well, I can hardly blame you,” Violet said, hoping a supportive comment would calm Eldris’s growing churn. “Ed used to disappear for days on end, but at least I had the comfort of knowing he was just working out a problem in the lab.”
It was true. She never worried he’d become a philanderer—or worse—but even so. Violet didn’t think she’d ever forget the morning Ed came down for breakfast sporting a fresh head of salt-and-pepper hair. It seemed he’d left the house a young man and returned, days later, flecked with age.
Cerise had asked, “What’s in your hair, Daddy?”
Violet had answered, “Wisdom and responsibility, dear. That’s how people can tell Daddy takes such good care of us.”
Ed had only winked and tucked into his plate of food.
So, yes, many days his presence felt like nothing more than an empty seat at the family table. But that had been their bargain since the first day they’d met—Ed a young teaching assistant at her university’s chemistry department, Violet his undergraduate laboratory tech. She received a weekly stipend for washing test tubes and proctoring his exams; he found a partner capable of clearing his path toward professional success. After all, she hadn’t gone to college for the academics. She’d gone because she believed it would ignite something within her, a purpose, a picture of who she really was. Which it did, the moment she met Ed, and so their partnership began—she managed, he strove, they all won. The Baumgartner trio they created felt unstoppable.
Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners Page 10