When I finally got inside, dirt covered the knees of my pants, my hands felt gritty, and the cat was following me around like a puppy. He wanted his evening treat. The sound of the electric can-opener brought with it a yowling from Gangster that sounded like wild cats chasing a mouse.
“Here ya go, tiger.”
He responded with a sexy, breathy yow. Then, the only
sound in the house was of delicate lapping up of food and the hum of Gangster’s purr while ate his fishy dinner.
My stereo was stocked and ready to go with DVDs of Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Sachmo, Danny Kay, Frank Sinatra, and Count Basie—music Bobby had turned me on to. I set a kettle of water on the stove, grabbed the remote control off the counter, and clicked on the music. Unwinding to old-time jazz and sipping chamomile seemed like a beautiful way to relax—a charitable gesture to myself after my first day back at work since Bobby’s death—and, more importantly, a day back working along side his ex-wife.
After lounging on the sofa and trying to figure out the day’s crossword puzzle I got up to take a bath and wash off the day. In the shower I started to get riled and angry, at what, I wasn’t sure. Then it dawned on me Bobby had left me. At that moment, all I wanted was to get into bed and stay there under my blanket, hide away. Then, a sound rumbled out of me from the core of my gut and felt like it was wrenching out my soul with it, a guttural wailing echo against the hard glass and mirror of the bathroom, hit the water and cascaded onto the tile floor. A roar from a snared beast caught in a trap. I yelled with all my pain, all my fury, repeating, as if each convulsing sob freed me from the torment. Bending forward in agony, steaming water ran over my face. My voice strained out a final howl and I lost my breath. I panicked. I sucked in air. When I did I sucked in water too. Trying to swallow I spat and gagged. My hands plastered flat against the shower’s stall and I struggled to keep from falling.
I slumped onto the hard warm tile. My butt landed on broken piece of slate and it jabbed deep enough into me that I felt my skin break. I rolled off the shard and laid on the shower’s floor crying. For how long, I don’t even know. I wanted to disappear. But, leaving wasn’t an option. Anyway, I couldn’t run away from my anguish. I couldn’t leave. The restaurant would fold and then I became angrier with Bobby.
How could he do this? How could he just up and die on me? He hadn’t told me he was sick. What was it exactly the doctors said about him being ill… what did they say about nearly three years before… was it?
Nothing would ever be the same.
I sunk in-between the cool sheets with my cat curled against my side and fell asleep.
CHAPTER 7
“Hello, Mayor, Mrs. Pyle. How you doing this fine Sunday?” Though I tried to mask my Georgian drawl, the fine still sounded a little like fan. I was walking Gangster on his leash down the sidewalk in front of the Church of Christ. Services had just let out and everyone looked enlightened and full o’ smiles and kindness as they clamored around the front of the church entrance. Older folks and children wore their best Sunday clothes while teenagers sported hip-huggers and tight tee shirts and metal in their faces and dark eyeliner which made them look more like Satan-worshipers than Christians. But, there they were, pouring out of the church’s pious mouth and onto its holy steps.
“Why, we couldn’t be better if the Lord reached down and touched us on our heads, right Helen?” The mayor said it loud so everyone could hear him.
Mayor Harold Pyle seemed more like a caricature than a real person and he accentuated the parts that already stood out. The disproportion of his large forehead accentuated his pea-sized eyes—eyes that darted all too frequently about as he conversed. And, his overly oily beak-shaped nose had deep pores that covered the end of it and appeared as tiny black dots and, just when I was concentrating on his nose, he pulled out a hanky and dabbed his snout rubbing up to his forehead and down around the rest of his greasy face. His holy experience in church that morning must have gotten his follicles pumping.
And, although he wasn’t from Arizona (in fact he was from somewhere in the Midwest) he tried to put on a southwest accent, like a cowboy. Helen Pyle smiled weakly and nodded in agreement with her husband.
“Oh, but the Lord did just bless us didn’t he?” He flipped his head back in the direction of the church and the church folk and gave a big belly laugh. “See you next Sunday, Pastor! Bye all!” The mayor never only talked to one person, he kept a stage close at hand. I’d only been the conduit that facilitated a lead-in for his next line, and as he left his audience he waved at everyone, but tipped his hat in my direction, made a smooching sound in the direction of Gangster, took hold of Helen’s elbow and lead her away. She made dainty quick steps as if he was pushing her too fast.
I’d only spoken with the mayor a few times when he would happen into the diner to get lunch. He seemed pleasant enough but would talk so loudly the other customers would stop eating and look. They couldn’t help but listen to him. It seemed odd to me that so much volume could come out of such thin lips.
I’ve always said Sunnydale has only two seasons, spring and summer. And, I’ve always held there are only two temperatures, warm and hotter-than-hell. We only get couple of days of cool weather compared to other parts of the country or what others might think of as cool. Very seldom do temperatures here dip below the freezing point and only in early winter mornings. On those cooler days people don coats or sweaters, yet Mayor Pyle always wore a jacket and it seemed he only had two. One, a bright yellow and brown tweed jacket, he wore with a matching yellow tie. It looked as though when he bought it, the tie was already pinned to the lapel. The other jacket was a bright turquoise polyester number with double-stitching that he normally wore for public speaking engagements. To coordinate the turquoise jacket he’d wear a western hat and decorate his face in stripes like the traditional Mohave Indian by finger-painting stripes on his cheeks and forehead. He thought it gave him an authentic “look of the people.” Poor Mayor Pyle didn’t have a lot of hair so he went in annually to some surgeon who flayed open his scalp and inserted plugs of hair along each cut. Every year he’d have four new lines put in. And, because his own follicles never produced new hair around the incisions, his scalp looked like a quilting of tiny Xs where the plugs had been introduced. Everyone knew about it. Things like that are hard to keep quiet, especially in a small town.
Pyle was a slight man and his wife was even slighter. You rarely ever saw them together except at church and during elections when he had to show a unified front. But, if plain had a name its name would be Mrs. Helen Pyle. I know that sounds mean but she blended into a crowd. For instance, if there were three people and you were asked to tell who those three were, you’d remember two and forget Mrs. Pyle. Unless, of course, you remembered that big bag she always carried around with her—a floral crackled leather tote. It seemed so out of character for Helen to lug it around all day. She looked put together otherwise. But, the tote stood out. Helen donned it proudly. I always felt the urge to yank it off her arm, run into a locked room, and rummage through it like a girl with her mother’s purse. Helen was versions of black and white, grey and lighter grey, beige and cream. Helen was vanilla ice cream and she always carried this bright swanky purse around—with its impressionistic green leaves, red petals, and yellow stamens—like a raspberry molasses topping for tofutti.
Of course the mayor was no Brad Pitt himself. He had a degree from an offshore college in business administration and served as a city manager for a few months some two thousand miles northeast in a larger city. He used that experience to get elected here into the esteemed position of mayor. They had bought a motor home and set off to see the every state in the union. They ended up in Sunnydale.
Mayor Pyle seemed genuinely interested in issues of the town. But, every once in a while, he’d just sit in the restaurant and stare. He’d come in late for lunch, just after the shift ended, and linger until just before we started setting tables for dinner. He’d slug down a fe
w beers then head home. But, while he ate he would gaze out the window. Maybe he envisioned a crane rebuilding our little town into a larger metropolis. Sometimes he’d wipe at his eyes and nose sitting there thinking and staring. Maybe he was sad, sad he’d settled for a small town life, at the lack of grandeur being a mayor in Sunnydale. Anyway, it seemed he longed for something more. He was one of those kinds of people who appear to look at you but are really far away and spinning forever inward, thinking of, who knows what, but definitely not listening to you. And, after he finished speaking with you he’d say, Good, good. Nice talking with you. Keep up the good work, words that meant zero in relation to your discussion with him, words that easily slip off the surface into a flotsam of any meaningless conversation. When the mayor spoke he was just like the rest of the politicians, never committed to anything but himself and talking about everything.
I remember he’d driven up to the diner one particular day not long after Bobby died. It was late and I was just about ready to go home for my midday break. He stopped me before I could get into my car.
“Georgette!” He rolled down his window to yell out.
“Hello Mayor.”
“Georgette, may I have a minute of your time?” He was getting out of his car and was smoothing down his hair flat onto his head, it looked shiny when the sun hit it and a tiny line of sweat beads appeared across his oversized forehead. He pulled out his hanky and patted down his face.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“How long you been running this here lovely diner, Georgette?”
“Hmm. About fifteen-sixteen years, I guess. Why you asking, Mayor?”
“Have you ever thought about just selling—getting out of it? You know, take off and relax? This place makes good money, doesn’t it? I’m sure you’ve built up quite a healthy nest-egg. What, with Bobby’s inheritance and all.” I had a mind to think the good mayor was prying. But, I don’t believe his conversation was about that.
“It pays the bills and keeps people employed, Mayor.” I didn’t know where he was going with the sudden turn that felt like an interrogation.
“How’s it going with you and the misses?” He said like a dirty word.
“Vanessa? Oh, fine I suppose. We’re still working out a few bumps. Why all the questions, Mayor?”
“Oh, just my own curiosity more than anything, I s’pose. Hey, can I still get something cool to drink and a bite?”
“Anything for you, Mayor. Just tell ’em I saw you outside and it’s okay by me.” I unlocked my door and got into the car. Its interior sweltered from sitting under the unforgiving sun and you could smell the upholstery, it was so hot. I sat for a second while I flipped on the air to the maximum level and rolled down all the windows to help blow the heat out. My car door was still opened when the mayor got to the diner’s entrance. I was fumbling around with the keys, buttons and the visor when I briefly looked up at him. At the same moment he turned back to look at me. He glared. When he realized I’d seen him, he turned his sneer into a pressed smile, tipped his hat to me, yelled, “It’s damn hot today, isn’t it?”
And, walked inside. Looking back on it the wheels must have been in motion quite a while before that day.
CHAPTER 8
Helen grew up in the highbrow part of Stratford where she was raised a proper lady by her old Aunt Birdsey. Birdsey had married into Weller Lumber wealth when she was only seventeen. Birdsey helped seed a path to Helen’s interest in culture and the arts, and in literature, especially the writings of Flannery O’Connor. Birdsey, originally from Macon, delivered tale after tale of the sweaty southern coastal towns of Georgia. Her family migrated to the New England states when she was just about to enter high school. She fit into the stuffy society of Connecticut like a square peg in a round hole. With a drawl reminiscent of the place she was raised her schoolmates chided her and laughed when she spoke. But, at her coming out party, she was luminescent. Her southern belle upbringing had served her well. She walked fashionably late down a curvy staircase like Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind.
Birdsey had caught the eye of a wealthy miller’s son, Joseph, a big boy ruggedly handsome who played football for the school team. The couple became the most enchanting ‘item’ and this propelled Birdsey into rarified air of the popular student and into homecoming queen status. They married as high school sweethearts. But, try as they might they couldn’t raise the large family as each had hoped. Miscarriage after miscarriage left Birdsey’s reproductive system shredded and after much persuading by doctors the two stopped trying.
At age eleven, Helen’s parents were both killed while on a cruise through the Caribbean leaving Aunt Birdsey at the helm of her niece’s guardianship.
Birdsey and Helen seemed destined soul mates. After grueling games of croquet Birdsey and Helen would dine out in Birdsey’s meandering English-style garden where they sipped spiced tea with mint sprigs.
Because she missed the gardens of Georgia, Birdsey planted flowering fruit trees, built gazebos, put in cobbled walks threaded with moss and creeping jenny, alyssum and lobelia. Her favorite plant however was fuchsia and the vast varieties she hung from painted pergolas and wooden arches. After each growing season in the fall she would pull out each fuchsia from its hanger and plant them in the ground. By her fifth year, she had grown an entire garden of fuchsia reaching nearly twenty feet high. One year Birdsey felt the garden was getting unruly and she climbed a ladder herself to tie the tips of opposing plants together in an arch which made the place feel like a secluded covered path. Birdsey hired workers to set down thick slabs of green China slate stepping stones through the archway. And, then added concrete benches so a person could sit beneath the tumult of pendulous fuchsia flowers.
When Helen was a teenager, Birdsey and she used to sit in their special garden with tea and read books together. Birdsey was thrilled to have another female in the house and Helen was her confidante. It was upon Birdsey’s urging that Helen became interested in writing. Birdsey arranged for private tutors and sent her to New York for further schooling. When Helen decided to go to college, Birdsey sent her to Dartmouth.
Dartmouth was where Helen met Harold Pyle. His Barney-Fife-in-a-zoot-suit style attracted her attention. She’d never met anyone like him. The gentlemen in the families around Stratford were country club reared and knew all the right words—never acted out of manner. Harold was different. Fun. Daring and loud. He winked at Helen and called her “girly girl.” He overdid. His carriage was slanted and cocky. His clothes bagged in all the wrong places. Harold’s eyes were closely set. The hat we wore reminded Helen of a mobster’s and the oversized padding in his jacket made him look like an trapezoidal triangle. His spats were never the right match for his suit but it didn’t matter, Helen swooned in his company.
It was only after they’d been married Helen realized her mistake. Harold couldn’t hold down a job, he played cards until all hours of the morning with the boys, he drank heavily on occasion and came home with the smell of another woman on him several times. By then, Helen and Harold lived in Chicago and were planning to move again to the slow town of Ames, Iowa. Harold’s eye was on a move into the world of politics. He thought his smooth-talking ways fit perfectly with a career in civil service. And, when he failed at the county level there, they decided to make one more move out west finally ending up in Arizona. After holding several odd jobs and Helen’s refusal to make yet another move, Harold ran for mayor of Sunnydale after the incumbent announced his retirement as a public servant. As the sole contender for the position, Harold got the job.
CHAPTER 9
When Roberta walked in, the restaurant was buzzing with people talking eating and rushing to get back to work. Today’s lunch special was grilled pork set in a roasted tomatillo sauce and barbequed, baby, Yukon Gold, potatoes on the skewer. The lunch fare’s fragrance was tantalizing and permeated the restaurant and spilled out onto the sidewalk and down the strip. Each time a customer walked in they would tell Vanessa ho
w good it smelled. But, when Roberta walked through the doors Vanessa got quite a different greeting from her daughter. Her face was pinched and set into a scowl. She stood by her mother while Vanessa cashed out the party leaving.
“Hi, honey. Want some lunch?” Vanessa beamed at her daughter. But, Roberta’s face remained hard. She didn’t say anything and so I decided it was better to leave them alone.
“She acts like she owns the place!” Roberta huffed quietly.
“Well, she does, Roberta.” Vanessa kept counting her till.
“Not all of it. That’s how she acts.” Her scowl accentuated her words.
“She owns half, Roberta. I think that gives her the right to act the part, don’t you?”
“She’s a bitch.”
“Christ, Roberta. What’s eating you today? Keep your voice down.”
Roberta huffed and set her purse on the counter.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” It was a Wednesday—the middle of the week.
“I took the day off.” Roberta fidgeted inside her purse and then pushed it forward nearer the cash register. “I heard a big corporation is looking to buy some land around Sunnydale. They want to put in a fancy tourist attraction along this corridor. Right here too.”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t heard anything.”
“That’s because you hide your head in the sand. You don’t watch TV, you don’t read the local paper. You never go out! You do a great impersonation of an ostrich, mother.” Her face looked accusatory.
Vanessa reacted in her own defense. “TV is all commercials, sex, and violence; and the newspaper here is like a high school paper. Anyway, why are you picking on me all of the sudden? Get off my back Roberta. Talk to me like an adult or else leave.”
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