Pinch of Love (9781101558638)

by Bessette, Alicia

  I wish you were here in this sleeping bag with me.

  Have titillating dreams of me.

  Your hunk,

  Nick

  3

  Zell

  MORNING AGAIN. G.d. morning. I dress as Gladys sings about hating every morning that she opens her eyes and doesn’t see her man.

  Ahab sniffs around in the backyard, as Mount Wippamunk glistens. It’s a freakishly warm Sunday, a weirdly melting world. Icicles drip, and somewhere a lone bird chirps.

  Ingrid’s in her backyard on the other side of the fence. She wears the huge red ski hat and a pink turtleneck. Mittens dangle from strings inside her sleeves. Her auburn hair hangs unbraided like frizzy curtains. “Come snowshoeing with us,” she says.

  I throw up my hands. “Wish I could. But I don’t have any snowshoes.” It’s a lie. Thing is, snowshoeing with anyone besides Nick would be a betrayal, an admittance of some sort, like getting the car fixed or shoveling the driveway or cooking an occasional meal; things Nick used to do. Winter sports were something Nick and I did together.

  “We have an extra pair of snowshoes that you can borrow,” Ingrid says. “They belong to my step-grandmother.”

  Ahab trots to the fence. His tail wags once, twice. Ingrid’s golden hand makes quick little circles on top of his head, so his ears flatten out to the sides.

  “Please?” she says. “My dad really, really wants you to come.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wish I could, but I have a lot of work to get done.”

  “On a Sunday? We’re leaving now. Hurry up.” She gives Ahab one last drawn-out scratch before she bounds inside.

  Balls.

  I think of some pamphlets Pastor Sheila handed me not too long ago, when she paid a house call. Pamphlets about grieving that stress the importance of exercise and a change in scenery, being social and making new friends.

  “Okay,” I say, even though Ingrid’s already gone inside. Ahab cocks his head and whines.

  I dig out my ski pants from the half-collapsed cardboard chest of drawers in the coat closet. I lace my hiking boots. I feel around for my fleece hat but decide against it because it’s so freakishly warm out.

  Nick’s green aluminum snowshoes lean against the closet wall. They’re dented and scratched. His ridiculous hat is stretched over the tips, a mid-1980s number with strings hanging down, a pompom on top.

  I grip the soft hat and sniff its fibrous insides, which remind me of how I might draw stringy strands of muscle tissue.

  “I’m going snowshoeing, Nick,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  GARRETT’S BACK IS TO ME. He tosses a big pair of snowshoes and a little pair of snowshoes into the bed of his pickup. He doesn’t wear a coat, either, but red Under Armour, which accentuates his muscles.

  Ingrid runs from the house with another medium-size pair of snowshoes. “Wait!” She hurls the extra pair over her head, and it clatters onto the others.

  “What are you doing?” says Garrett. He closes the truck gate. “Trudy isn’t coming.”

  “Zell’s coming,” she says.

  He swings around. I’m standing on the sidewalk, water bottle in hand.

  “Oh!” he says. “Hi.”

  He looks surprised, and it’s clear to me now that Ingrid totally made up the part about Garrett wanting me to come with them.

  I glance back at my porch, then stare at my water bottle. “Ingrid said—”

  “Ingrid says a lot of things.” He laughs. “Get in.”

  I PULL MY DOOR SHUT. “Nice ride,” I say, admiring the tidy interior.

  “Thank you.”

  As Garrett heads north on potholed Route 331, my insides churn with a crazy mixture of anxiety and guilt—as if I’m cheating on Nick or something. I stare intently out the window. We pass the stone foundation to an old farmhouse just a foot or two from the road. We pass Wippamunk Antiques, where the tips of a white picket fence poke from the snow like shark teeth. We pass Wippamunk Farms. My ears pop as we gain altitude.

  “Beautiful day,” Garrett says.

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  At the stucco Prince of Peace Catholic Church, Father Chet—Wippamunk’s first-ever Cameroonian resident—shovels slush from the sidewalk leading to the sacristy. He’s been leading Prince of Peace for a few years now, and the general consensus among Wippamunkers is that he’s sincere and kind, if a little kooky sometimes.

  At a blinking red light looms the Tudor-style Wippamunk Free Public Library. And just past it, we catch a brown-gray-green view of central Massachusetts, the skyscrapers of Boston in the far distance.

  Garrett cracks his window. He squints in the sunlight that glints off the snowbanks and the wet road. From an overhead compartment he extracts sunglasses and puts them on. “How’s your kitchen?” he asks. “Any damage?”

  “No,” I say. “No damage at all, actually. Guess I was lucky.”

  “Anything we can do to help out?”

  “Not really. But thanks.”

  “Anything at all, just say the word.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was the one who called the fire department, you know,” he says.

  I realize I never even thought about who summoned the firefighters.

  “I smelled smoke,” he continues. “Then your alarm started going off, and I didn’t know if you were in there, if you were dead or alive, or what.”

  Me neither, I think, as Ingrid adds, “It was really scary.”

  “Well, thank you. For calling the fire department,” I say.

  “Of course,” he says. He drums his thumbs on the steering wheel. I can tell he’s trying to think of something else to talk about. “So, life’s hectic for me and Ingrid,” he says after a while. “Between work and law school and Ingrid’s school, the daily grind is pretty rough.”

  “Mine, too,” I say. Which is a lie, because I work at home and have no kids, and don’t really have a daily grind. I try to smile, but when I catch Garrett’s eye, that anxious guilt roils inside my gut again. I look quickly out the window.

  We drive a ways. Past an old cemetery, where, a few years back, Nick photographed elementary school students taking rubbings of the headstones. Past the abandoned orphanage where he and Dennis once spent the night for a feature on the legendary ghosts of Wippamunk. Past stone walls, scenic overlooks, gully streams, all of which make me ache, all of which cry out, Nick, Nick, Nick, even now.

  “That’s my step-grandmother’s house!” Ingrid announces. She points to a big house with a barnlike side addition. Little plywood lean-tos protect the hedges in the yard. Stained-glass fairies decorate the windows. The fairies twirl slightly, catching the light. Near the front door a wooden sign reads, DON’T PISS OFF THE FAIRIES!!

  “Dad, wave hi,” says Ingrid. She waves like crazy to the brick red house.

  Garrett waves.

  “Dad,” she says. “Why isn’t Trudy my nanny?”

  “Because I don’t want you around all that heavy machinery. Besides, Trudy’s a busy lady.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Heavy machinery?”

  “Don’t ask. My stepmother is a . . . creative type. Crap, I missed the trailhead.” He swings the truck around.

  “Like me,” I say. I realize too late how lame that sounds. “Where did you live before?” I ask. “In Wippamunk, right?”

  “Just on the other side of town. My landlord raised the rent. That’s why we moved.”

  “Do you have a mother?” Ingrid asks.

  “She lives in Vermont with my sister,” I say.

  “My mother—”

  “Here we are,” Garrett says grandly, sort of like a circus announcer. He parks the truck at the mouth of a dirt road two-thirds of a mile from Trudy’s house.

  This road, I know, leads to a man-made lake. On its shores sits an old stone chimney. Nick and I pitched our tent there a million times and slept inside, cocooned in our sleeping bags, side by side.

  WE STRAP ON OUR SNOWSH
OES and trudge along the unplowed maintenance road, snaking up the undeveloped south side of Mount Wippamunk. Behind me Ingrid quietly sings the doo-wop Pinch of Love theme song. In front of me Garrett is silent except for steady, intent nose breathing.

  In my head I frame the photographs Nick would take: sunlight shimmering; birches glistening; a bloodred cardinal cheep-cheep-cheeping; the spots where snow melted and refroze, distorting the impressions of everything that touched it—paws and pinecones and dripping icicles.

  Snowshoeing is a trance. I lift one foot, then the other. My legs become heavy. The sun bakes my back. Sweat drips under my boobs, down into my bellybutton and waistband.

  Twenty minutes up, Garrett veers off the road. Our legs sink deeper here, just above the knees. When you snowshoe, you’re supposed to navigate these off-trail places where the snow seems forbiddingly deep.

  To the left the ground pitches sharply, drops away into iced cliffs.

  “Don’t fall,” Garrett calls.

  I glance behind me; Ingrid’s air drumming.

  We enter a clearing. He stoops, unstraps his snowshoes, and scrambles up a six-foot-tall boulder. After kicking all the snow from the top, he turns, crouches, and offers a hand.

  Ingrid kicks off her snowshoes. She throws herself at the boulder, and he pulls her up as if she’s light as a bedsheet.

  “Zell?” Garrett says. He grins down at me.

  I shake my head vigorously. “I am not going up there.”

  “Oh, yes you are,” Ingrid belts. “Doo-doo-doo, all you need—IS A PINCH!”

  “It’s a beautiful view.” Garrett offers both hands. “Trust me.”

  Ingrid tosses her red hat high and catches it. She rummages through Garrett’s backpack and pulls out a silver-wrapped cereal bar. She sings between bites: “Doo-doo-doo, all you need—IS A PINCH!”

  I unstrap my snowshoes. “I’m heavier than I look,” I say.

  “I’m stronger than I look,” he says. “Get a running start, and jump as high as you can.”

  I do, and he catches my forearms, leans back on the boulder, and hauls me up. I collapse onto his thighs.

  “See? No sweat,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say, a little out of breath. “Thanks.” I sit and help myself to a half-crushed cereal bar, which Garrett holds out to me.

  The view is south and west, sunny and clear, deep and wide, a view that would bring Nick to his knees. Foothills and streams roll below us. They make me think of torn bits of tissue paper flattened into a collage. Turkey vultures soar, black Ws against the brilliant sky. The breeze blows—slight, then strong, then slight again.

  Garrett smirks as Ingrid points out landmarks.

  “Long Pond in Rutland,” she says. “Wippamunk Reservoir. The city of Worcester. And way out there? Wicked way out? Mount Greylock. See it?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I actually do.”

  In the western distance the ridge of Mount Greylock stretches long, like the back of a sperm whale—the sight that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick. Or so the legend tells us.

  Ingrid pokes a straw into a juice box. “Aren’t I a little old for juice boxes, Dad?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. How old is too old for a juice box? You’re nine.”

  “Exactly.” Her face glistens with sweat. She sucks down all the juice, until the cardboard becomes indented. “Here.” She shows Garrett the empty box.

  “Do I look like a trash can?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  He yanks her hat down over her eyes, and she giggles. “Carry in, carry out, remember?” Garrett says.

  “I know, I know.” She puts the empty box in the backpack, then goes back to singing while tossing and catching her hat.

  “Stop singing that, Ingrid,” Garrett says. He’s on his second cereal bar. “Sing anything but that. Please.”

  “Dad. Zell and I are going to enter the Warm the Soul baking contest together.”

  “You are, huh?”

  “Uh—,” I say. When I pinkie swore that she could help me, I didn’t really think about Garrett’s reaction, or whether he would even allow it. But he doesn’t seem irritated. Actually, he seems amused.

  “Yup,” says Ingrid.

  “I am thinking about entering it,” I say. “The other day, with the fire truck? I was . . . baking.”

  “So I heard,” he says. “I’m not much of a cook, either.”

  “You get twenty thousand dollars if you win,” I say. “And an all-expenses-paid—”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Ingrid says. “Right?”

  She says it so quickly, I wonder if she doesn’t want Garrett to know about getting to meet Polly on the set.

  “What would you do with the money if you won?” he asks her.

  “I would save it so that when I grow up I could go to France and study at the famous Cordon Blur cooking school.”

  Garrett leans back, rests his head on his backpack, and throws an arm over his eyes. “What would you do with the money, Zell?”

  “I’d start a charity organization or something, for the people in New Orleans who are rebuilding their homes and communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the flood. That was Nick’s last wish,” I add.

  “Dad?” says Ingrid. “I changed my mind. I would give my twenty thousand dollars to the people of New Orleans.”

  He sits up halfway and strokes her cheek. “You’re a good girl,” he says softly.

  She sings some more: “All you need IS A PINCH. PINCH OF LOVE!”

  “If you’re going to keep singing, could you please do so quietly?”

  “Sorry.” She skips to the other end of the boulder and sits cross-legged. She slaps her thighs, humming the theme song.

  “So you’ve got a bit of a Polly Pinch obsession yourself,” he says. “No wonder Ingrid likes you so much.”

  “It’s my new thing.” The stupid truth is, I absolutely cannot wait to get home, watch Pinch of Love, and experiment with another batch of cookies. “Polly Pinch is pretty addicting,” I say, “once you give her a chance.”

  “I don’t encourage the Polly Pinch stuff. Believe me.”

  “About that contest. Ingrid offered to help me, so I said she could. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” he says. “I mean, as long as you realize that all she’s going to want to do when you’re around is bake, and bake, and bake some more.”

  I try to smile, and I think I succeed this time, because Garrett smiles back. I want to mention that Ingrid told me Polly Pinch is her mother but decide against it.

  He hums a bar of the Polly Pinch song, then catches himself and clears his throat. “I remember reading about your husband in The Wippamunker last year. That was a nice article.”

  “Yeah. Dennis and my husband worked together at The Wippamunker for about ten years, so they knew each other pretty well.”

  “I’m sorry about your husband.”

  “Thanks.” I scrape at some dead lichen on the boulder with my fingernail. “You married?”

  “Nope. Never.” He wipes his sweaty face on his sleeve. He takes my water bottle out of his backpack and offers it to me.

  “Oh no, you first,” I say. “You carried it.”

  He unscrews the lid, gulps almost half the water, and hands me the bottle.

  Suddenly Ingrid runs up to us; tears dampen her cheeks. “Dad?”

  “What is it, boo-boo? What’s wrong?”

  Ingrid points beyond the cliffs toward the sky. Her red hat is caught on the branch of an oak tree twenty feet out. Maybe thirty. A deep gulch and icy cliffs separate us from the oak, centuries old, a hundred feet tall, with peeling elephant-skin bark.

  Garrett shades his eyes and studies Ingrid. “How did you manage that one?”

  “I was trying to see how high I could throw it,” she says. “And the wind came and took it.”

  “Looks like it’s gone now.”

  “But it’s not gone. It’s right there.”

 
; High in the tree the red hat seems to shiver. Twigs poke it. It looks like some lanky-limbed creature is trying to rend the yarns and be born.

  “Time to let it go, boo-boo.” Garrett stands and shoulders into his backpack. “Maybe the wind will blow it down, and the next time we come here it will be on the ground, and we can get it then.”

  “But I want it now,” she says. “I need it now.”

  “Let me try something,” he says. He claps a snowball together. He cocks his arm back and hurls it forward, and the snowball shoots up—white dot against blue sky. It loses momentum six feet from the hat and plummets to the ground. He tries again, packing a smaller snowball. He flings his arm even harder this time but misses.

  “I can’t reach it, Ing.” He sighs. “I tried. I’m sorry.” He drops from the boulder and toes into his snowshoes. “Let’s get moving. Time to head back to the truck. We’ll get you another hat, okay?”

  “Will you get it for me?” asks Ingrid, tugging my arm. A tearful hiccup escapes her mouth. “You have to get it for me. It belonged to my—”

  “Time to head back,” says Garrett, but not impatiently.

  “Get it for me, Zell?”

  The hat is impossible to reach, of course. She and I watch it for a moment. I will the wind to release it, but the hat stays fixed.

  The cool breeze whips my hair across my mouth. I glance down at Garrett; I can’t tell if he’s looking at Ingrid or at me.

  “I think it’s gone for now,” I tell Ingrid. I swig from my water bottle and offer some to her, but she shakes her head. “But like your dad said, maybe when you come back in the spring, it’ll be on the ground.”

  “In the spring?”

  “Yeah. In the spring.”

  I guide her toward the edge of the boulder. “And until then,” I say, “you’ll know exactly where it is.”