Even as she repeated the good news, her voice was sad, and in the eerie glow the pool lights offered, I could see tears in her eyes.
“I just don’t understand her,” she said, shaking her head as if to deny herself any crying. “I know that’s not such a bad thing—a lot of parents don’t understand everything their children do—but I just don’t understand her as a daughter. I don’t understand her as a person.”
“I’m right with you there,” I said.
“I know she has her fans—legions of them—and I know they think she helps them. But can’t they see how phony she is, what a fraud she is? And don’t you think being a fraud about God is just about the worst fraud you can be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know—maybe the means justify the ends. Maybe the fact that she provides people with hope is what matters, even if the hope she provides doesn’t come from a real place.
“Hey, do you mind if I have one?” I asked, watching Martha aim smoke at the sky.
“You don’t smoke,” scolded Martha.
“Not regularly. But every couple of years or so, the urge grabs me.”
Chuckling, she tapped a cigarette out of the pack and passed it and the matches to me.
A headache swarmed through my head at the first inhale, and so I adjusted, taking the smoke into my mouth but not down my throat. For a companionable minute or so, we were just two people out on a lanai having a late-night smoke.
“I don’t know,” said Martha finally. “It just baffles me, the way people look to such nuts to show them the way.”
I had to laugh.
“You’re calling Kristi a nut?”
Martha tilted her head and offered me an older, wiser version of the smile she had passed down to her daughter. “That’s one of the nicer words I have for her.”
Twenty-three
The Florida Haugland Foods was a hit. There was no shaky start-up, no growing pains; it immediately filled a niche that apparently was more than ready to be filled.
Don was an excellent manager and faxed me weekly sales reports, product and vendor suggestions, and contest results.
Yesterday a grandmother and an Australian surfer turned into Fred and Ginger. There were about thirty people in the store, and about three-quarters of them gathered in Palm Court when I announced the dance contest. You know how you told me you sometimes skew the contests because you hope a certain person will win? Well, that’s what I did—I had a big-band tape and I told everyone we were going to have a jitterbug contest. A local landscaper had given the prize—a free garden consultation and $100 worth of plants and flowers—and I wanted Mrs. Babcock to win because she’s sort of let her yard go to pot since her husband died. I knew the two of them had enjoyed dancing together, so I figured she had a good shot at this contest.
I turned on the music and told anyone who wanted to dance to choose a partner. Well, all but six people suddenly got shy, leaving me with a married couple on the floor, two teenage girls, and the surfer and Mrs. Babcock. Well, they danced everyone off the floor, and as they’re wowing the crowd, I think how stupid I was—how can I give a prize to just one dancer in a partnered dance? So I gave the garden prize to Mrs. Babcock and, thinking fast, told the surfer that he could have $25 worth of groceries on the house.
Now get this—Mrs. Babcock asked if he’d mind trading prizes because she didn’t think she was up to planting a whole new garden but she had wanted to try some of “those expensive cheeses that aren’t in my budget,” and the surfer says, “You’re welcome to the groceries, and my girlfriend and I’d be very happy to put in your garden for you.”
Well, Mrs. Babcock just beamed and said, “Oh, no I couldn’t,” and the surfer said, “I insist. Now go get those stinky cheeses, Granny, and let’s get started on that garden.”
As they were all leaving, I heard the girlfriend tell Mrs. Babcock that the surfer’s mother teaches dance back in Sydney. “I can’t dance a lick—but I expect I better learn so I can keep rivals like you away!”
As you know, Joe, my wife, Sue, is a kindergarten teacher, and she always says she has the most fun anyone can have while working. Now I get to tell her, I beg to differ…
Dan
He also sent me enquiries from people interested in franchise or expansion opportunities, and whereas I hadn’t been interested before, the success of the Florida store was making me consider my position.
“What do you think, Jenny?”
“I’ll say it again, Joe—what do you think? What do we want to get and what are we willing to give up?”
“I know one thing I’m not willing to give up,” I declared, taking her hand and pulling her to me. Kissing her was like falling into a well—a sweet, dark well that posed no threat, only exhilaration.
“Joe, I’ve got to pick up Flora,” said Jenny, pushing herself with her big belly away—yes, she was pregnant again. “And don’t forget to get the powdered sugar for Carole.”
“Did you know Ed told me he always wanted to make love up in his office? He said his fantasy was to turn on the store mike right in the middle of it so that all his customers could hear Eileen screaming about what a stud he was.”
“Head cashier Eileen?”
“She was a twenty-three-year-old single mother when he hired her,” I said. “He always had a crush on her.”
“But he never acted on it?”
Wrapping my arms around her again, I shook my head. “Nope. He never fulfilled that fantasy with her—or anyone. So come on, in Ed’s memory.”
Jenny gave me one deep, promising kiss before she pushed me away for the second time.
“Really, I don’t want Flora hanging around at school thinking I’ve forgotten about her.” She gave me a quick sorry-but-there’s-nothing-more-to-this kiss. “We’ll see you at your mom’s at eight.”
“You alone?” asked my aunt Beth as she opened the door at my mother’s house.
“Jenny went to pick Flora up at school. She’s got play practice.”
“Oh yeah,” said Beth. “Grease, right?”
I handed her my coat. “If I hear that song about being ‘lousy with virginity’ one more time, I’m gonna puke.”
“Oh, good, you brought the powdered sugar.” Beth took the plastic bag I offered. “Now dessert’s a definite go.”
“Dad!” Ben raced toward me, and I scooped him up in my arms.
“Benjamin—qué pasa?”
“No mucho,” said my son, whose best friend in a pre-kindergarten program was Julio, a boy from Mexico. “Although Grandma’s gonna let me help her make the frosting—if you remembered the power sugar.”
“Powdered sugar,” said Beth, holding up the bag on the way to the kitchen. “And he did remember.”
The Tuesday night dinners were on again after another vacation taken by my mother and Len, who were both retired now and free to jet all over the place. They had already planned their next trip—this one to Great Britain—and both Beth and Linda and my uncle Roger and his wife were joining them. We’d been invited, but they were leaving three days after Jenny’s due date.
“Dad, Mom let me drive all the way home!” announced Flora as she and Jenny came in. Flora had just gotten her learner’s permit, but I was having a much harder time turning the wheel over to her than Jenny was.
“She did great,” said Jenny.
“And it’s really slippery out,” said Flora, stomping the snow off her boots. “I hit this patch of ice and thought, Oh no, but—”
“Please,” I said, holding up my hand. “Spare me the details.”
“She did great,” said Jenny again. “Didn’t panic, just took it nice and easy.”
“Thanks, Mom,” said Jenny.
Right after she had delivered Ben, Jenny had told Flora that she’d love to adopt her, “just to make my love official.”
Biting her lip, Flora had nodded. “Does that mean I can start calling you Mom?”
Jenny nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
“I co
uld never call you Maman, no offense,” said Flora.
“No offense taken.”
“But I think Maman would like that I call you Mom.”
“I hope that she would,” said Jenny, taking Flora in her arms. “I know I sure will.”
Sitting at the dinner table, I looked at them now, my dark-haired, brown-eyed loves. Physically, they looked like mother and daughter, although whereas my wife was curvy, Flora was lanky like Darva and already several inches taller than Jenny.
Ben resembled me—he was as blond as I had been when I was his age, but like me, his hair would probably darken as he gets older. I figured he’d be taller than his old man—I hoped he’d be taller than me, because I think a man should reach six feet. I do only if there’s a little heel to my shoe.
I was so deep into my thoughts on hair color and height that I was startled when Flora called out, “Papa mon Joe!” It was a name no longer used for everyday but brought out only occasionally, this time to get my attention.
“What?” I said.
“I asked you a question…twice.”
“I’m sorry, my dear darling forgiving daughter. Locked as I was in my reverie, I did not perchance to hear you.”
Ben laughed and told me I was funny.
“Dad,” said Flora, exasperation in her voice. “Mom says some guy in California wants to open a Haugland Foods—”
“’Tis true, ’tis true.”
“Why’s he talking like he’s onstage at the Globe?” Linda asked Beth.
“Flora’s got a Shakespeare class,” explained Jenny. “She and Joe were reading Merchant of Venice to each other last night.”
“You’ve gotten another offer?” asked my mother.
“Several,” said Jenny. “I mean, he’s had offers all along, but these are serious.”
“These?” said Len, pouring hollandaise sauce over his asparagus. “How many are you talking about?”
“Well,” I said, “there’s California and Iowa and North Carolina and another offer from Florida.”
“And what are you thinking?” asked my mother.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said Jenny.
“I love my life,” I said, feeling a lump rising in my throat. I swallowed it down, not wanting to start blubbering at the dinner table. “I don’t have much to do with the Florida store—it practically runs itself—but if I start a chain…I don’t want to get caught up in more work and a bunch of travel and…and…” I looked at the faces around the table. “And being away from all this.”
I paused for a moment, squirming under a double whammy of feelings—embarrassment, and then embarrassment about feeling embarrassed. I didn’t share any of Jenny’s pregnancy food cravings (oyster crackers crushed on top of strawberry ice cream), but man, sometimes I found myself acting like some rogue estrogen had taken over my body.
“How much time do you think you’d have to be away?” asked Beth.
“I think Joe’s in a position where he could decide that,” said Jenny.
“You can do a lot by phone or computer,” said Linda.
“Do you really think so, Jenny?” I said, turning to my wife. “Do you think I’m the one who’d get to decide when I’m away and when I’m at home? What if there’s an emergency in one of the stores?”
“Dad,” said Flora, “if you think you’re the only one who can handle whatever emergency comes up, then you go and fix it. Otherwise, you let someone else handle it.”
The little gravy boat of hollandaise sauce had finally wound its way back to me, but it was empty.
“Figures,” I muttered, upturning it and palming the bottom.
“Dad, there’s none left,” observed Ben.
“So it sounds like you’re all for this expansion,” I said to Flora and Jenny. “What about you, Mom?” Please, please, please, Mommy, tell me what to do.
“Sorry about the hollandaise,” she said. “I would have made more but I ran out of egg yolks. More potatoes?”
“Mom, I’m asking for advice, not second helpings.”
“Joe, you know I support you in whatever you want to do. And Len and I are always here for the kids if you need babysitters, and I don’t know—doesn’t it make you proud that people like Haugland Foods so much that they want to bring it to other people?”
My mother didn’t say anything Jenny and I hadn’t already talked about it, but sometimes words spoken at a certain time by a certain person are a sharp scythe through the weeds.
“Would you be with me if I decided to franchise?” I asked Jenny. “What about the baby?”
“Joe, we’ll grow our family and our business at the same time.”
One of her hands rested over her big belly, and I covered it with my own.
“You think we can?”
“Papa mon Joe,” said Flora with a dramatic sigh, “please. Why do you make everything such a big deal?”
“Yeah,” parroted Ben. “Why, Papa mon Joe?”
I looked around the table, feeling weepy again. “I make everything such a big deal,” I said, wishing my testosterone would quit cowering in the corner, “because it is.”
The question I was asked by a business consortium in Santa Barbara was “Why Haugland Foods?” I knew my investors—including three brothers from Asheville, North Carolina, and the married couple from Des Moines—weren’t suddenly doubting their interest in franchising the store, but simply asking about the name.
“Have you ever thought of changing it to something a little snap-pier?” asked a CPA from the business consortium.
“The store’s just so unique,” said one of the Asheville brothers. “Maybe a different name could reflect that.”
“Why not Andreson Foods or Joe’s Foods?” asked Mrs. Weime, one-half of the Des Moines couple.
I told each of them the same story, that Ed Haugland was a friend of mine who’d given me a store I hadn’t even been sure I wanted. “But things worked out. Better than I imagined. And keeping Ed’s name is sort of a thank-you, see?”
Our decision as to where to open stores was not dictated by market research but rather our own tastes: Would the store be in an area we’d like to vacation in?
The appeal of southern California and North Carolina is obvious, but my attorney was more surprised at our choice of Iowa.
“Why suburban Des Moines?” asked Gary. “There are more exotic suburbs, you know.”
“Jenny’s sister Joyce lives there and she’s always looking for excuses to visit her,” I said. “So when the Weimes expressed interest, it just made sense.”
When we played hockey together as boys, Gary had always been a great teammate on the ice, but it was off the ice that he really outskated himself. He became a partner in Haugland Foods Unlimited and essentially became my point man, putting together a great team of advisors, taking the burden of travel from me, and making decisions when I was too dumb or too lazy to make them myself.
He was the one who suggested Steve Alquist, former BMOC at Granite Creek High, for the manager of the Des Moines store.
“He’s had a rough time,” said Gary. “He got laid off at the feed plant a week after his second wife served him with divorce papers.”
“Steve Alquist was working at the feed plant?” I asked. That place was considered the last resort as far as employment in Granite Creek went.
“Yeah, and then he started drinking,” said Gary. “You know, one domino of bad news knocked down the next and the next. Anyway, he’s doing good now and definitely ready for a change…. I think he’d be a good man for the job.”
“But the drinking?”
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem. He’s been sober for almost a year. And you know his personality, Joe—everybody likes Steve.”
It was true. Everyone liked Blake Erlandsson, too—Ole Bull’s version of Steve Alquist—and yet neither had gone on to do anything that their high school glory suggested they might. Blake was doing fine as a pharmaceutical rep, but I don’t think his g
oal in life had been repping blood thinners and pain relievers.
Steve came down from Granite Creek for an interview, and despite the two wives and the stint at the feed plant and problems with the bottle, he had that old Alquist charm, albeit tempered with humility, and I hired him.
It was after helping him get settled into the West Des Moines Haugland Foods that I ran into another old acquaintance, the star of the PPP Network and saver of souls, Miss Kristi Casey herself.
After a full day at the new store, I was at a truck stop, eating a BLT with too much L and not enough B, reading the Des Moines Register and drinking coffee so bitter you would have thought the beans held a grudge. I choked, sputtering droplets of the bitter brew onto the newspaper, when I saw the headline: “Blind Local Artist Draws Kristi Casey.”
The waitress, who’d seen me spewing my coffee, approached me, one hand on a padded hip and the other holding the coffeepot like a beer stein, and asked, “You okay?”
I nodded as she topped off my coffee. “Fine.”
I folded the paper in half and began to read.
Herman Mitterweld, legally blind from macular degeneration, will paint Kristi Casey’s picture this morning for an episode of On TV with God, her popular show on the Personal Prayer Power Network. Herman, a retired custodian at the Bank Hill Elementary School, says he was never artistic while sighted, “but once God took my regular sight away, he gave me the power to see the divine in people, the things most people can’t see.”
His paintings, rendered in pastels, have art critics calling them “amazing in their use of space and color,” and “almost spiritual in their blasts of joy and light.”
Kristi Casey, who occasionally goes on location to do shows with people whom she calls “called by God to do something special,” will sit for Mr. Mitterweld in his garage studio.
Mrs. Mitterweld, a fan of Miss Casey’s, is thrilled.
“She’s the prettiest one on TV, that’s for sure. Plus she’s entertaining—some of those Power Network people just go on and on about the Bible and such and never crack jokes. Believe me, when you live with a blind husband who paints the divine in people, you need your jokes.”
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