The TV went silent.
What seemed like too much time later, he ambled in and sat at the table with me. He picked up his fork.
‘Napkin,’ I said.
‘Oh, right.’
He shook out his paper napkin and spread it carefully on his lap.
Then he wolfed down a good half of his dinner in five or six big bites.
‘Taste OK?’
He nodded. He looked lost in thought. Whatever ‘thought’ meant to Ben.
‘What?’ I asked. I can’t imagine why I asked.
‘You were really late,’ he said.
13 October 2001
I LET MYSELF into the bakery at 6.51 a.m. But not through the kitchen door. With a distinct sadness, and a physical feeling of loss that seemed to be wedged up under my ribs, crowding my heart and making it hard to draw a full breath, I used the customer entrance.
Anat looked up from the kitchen. Waiting. Waiting, I suppose, for me to come back and talk to her. The way I always did.
I didn’t.
I took a table in the darkened seating area up front.
A long moment passed, during which she did not cut any donuts.
Then she wiped her hands on her white apron, and came out and stood behind the counter and stared at me in silence for another moment, and I looked at her in the dim light.
‘You’re angry with me,’ she said. Alarmingly, she sounded as if she was forcing back tears.
‘No!’ I said. Shouted, really. ‘No, of course I’m not! Why would I be angry?’
‘I shouldn’t have come to your house.’
‘No, it’s fine. That was fine. It’s not that at all.’
‘What is it, then?’
I looked out the window for just a second or two as a car cruised by, its headlights cutting through the civil twilight, half-necessary and half-not. I pointed to the car as I spoke.
‘People will notice,’ I said, ‘if they haven’t already. Which wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. But it’s obviously a problem for you. And I don’t want to make problems for you. I want to be a good thing in your life. I don’t want to bring you trouble.’
Then I just sat and breathed for a moment, unable to bring myself to look at her, to see how my words had been received. When curiosity overcame fear, I looked into her face.
What I saw there could only rightly be described as … it frightened me to use the word, but there’s only one word that will finish that sentence. Love. She looked at me with love. Or, if not love, something that lived close by.
‘You’re sweet,’ she said. ‘No wonder …’
I waited for her to tell me no wonder what, but she never did. Too bad. I’m guessing I would’ve liked it.
We survived a long, awkward silence.
Then she said, ‘Well, at least let me put the light on for you. Don’t sit out here in the dark.’
‘The dark is OK.’
‘That will look as odd as anything, don’t you think?’ She marched around the counter as she asked this. ‘You’re my customer. I put the lights on for my customers.’
And she did.
And so, of course, she saw. Sooner or later she was going to see. I’d just somehow been hoping for later. Not enough to make me stay home. But some.
Her mouth fell open, and she stared at my face for what seemed like an eternity. I remember thinking I must have looked even worse than I’d thought. I’d brushed my teeth and combed my hair in the mirror that morning. But I purposely hadn’t turned on the overhead light.
I just mostly knew my left eye was so swollen I could only open it halfway, and only that with great and painful effort.
‘Russell, what happened to you? Did Ben do this?’
‘Oh, no. Ben? No. Never.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you said he has tantrums.’
‘He has tantrums like a kid has tantrums. He cries and paces. And sometimes he even hurts himself. But not anybody else.’ Silence. During which I knew I had to say it: if not Ben, then who? There was nothing else waiting to be filled in. ‘This is about the butthole next door.’
‘He attacked you?’
I cleared my throat and hesitated, and as I did I flexed my swollen right hand, feeling the pain in my bruised knuckles. I did it without thinking.
She noticed.
‘I see you gave as good as you got,’ she said.
‘I don’t want you to think I go around getting in fights. I never do. I’m twenty-four years old and I never punched anybody before. I always use my words. As my mom used to say. Or I just walk away. But there’s something about Mark. He pulls my strings. And everybody’s just more on edge right now. It’s like everybody’s nerves are raw. I don’t know how to explain it.’
‘You don’t have to explain that part. I’m a member of everybody. I’ve noticed things are extra tense.’
She walked back into the kitchen, leaving me to wonder what part I did still have to explain. No, I take that back. I damn well knew.
‘What will you have this morning?’ she called out to me.
A second later she wheeled the first big rack of trays up front and began to load donuts into the display case.
I got up and walked to the counter and watched her, thinking I’d know my breakfast when I saw it.
‘The almond Danish look good,’ I said. ‘I’ve never tried your almond Danish.’ Somehow that came out sounding personal, though not for any logical reason. Still, it embarrassed me.
She used a piece of tissue paper to lift one on to a paper plate. It was glazed and covered with thinly sliced almonds, which had toasted to a nice golden brown in the oven. I could see the edges of the almond paste bulging out between the folds of crisp brown dough.
I reached out to take it from her, but she didn’t hold it in my direction.
‘Was it about me?’ she asked.
I lied.
‘No. Of course not. Not at all. Mark and I have a lot of old differences, that’s all. And we have three mutual friends about to ship out to Afghanistan, if they’re not there already, and Mark might join up, and I guess it’s bringing out our political problems. I’m not one of those “rah-rah America” types. A few weeks ago that was fine, but now all of a sudden it causes big trouble. Every time I turn around.’
She handed me the Danish.
‘Be careful what you say to people,’ she said.
‘I tell myself that all the time. But then the wrong things are out of my mouth before I can even question them.’
I sat and ate and watched her load the cases, and we didn’t say more.
Then she had to go back into the kitchen to work, and it would have been too hard to talk much over that distance anyway. And besides, we had customers.
I only stayed another ten or fifteen minutes, but that feeling stayed much longer. The one I’d had when I first came through the customers’ entrance. The one that seemed to be wedged up under my ribs, crowding my heart and making it hard to draw a full breath.
When I got back, I left the car in the driveway.
I stepped out to see Mark looking out his window at me.
Instead of heading for my own door, I cut kitty-corner across his lawn and headed straight for him. He dropped the curtain again and disappeared. But I didn’t change my path.
I just stood there for a moment or two, outside the front windows of the Jesperses’ house. Predictably, Mark looked out again to see if I had gone away. And there I was.
I waved.
He didn’t.
The curtain fell back into place again.
I walked across the lawn to the door and rang the bell.
First nothing. A long nothing.
Then, just as I raised my hand to hit the bell again, the door opened about a foot, and Mark stuck his head out.
‘What?’
‘I just wanted to say I was sorry. You know. For going straight to hitting. Without an intervening, “Please speak respectfully about her.” Or, you know. Something alon
g those lines.’
I looked at his face. The side of his jaw where I’d hit him. Nothing. I hadn’t left any noticeable mark. I was half-relieved and half-disappointed.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well. I guess it was none of my business.’
‘True. But saying, “It’s none of your business,” would also have been a better choice.’
‘Yeah. Well. Whatever. Water under the bridge, you know?’
And the door eased shut again.
I picked Ben up at three fifteen. Needless to say, I was careful not to be late.
‘You’re on time,’ he said, as he put on his seat belt.
‘I’m almost always on time. Yesterday was the only day.’
‘But yesterday you were late.’
‘I know that, Ben. I just said that. Yesterday was the only day I was late. Every other day I’ve been on time.’
‘But yesterday you were really late.’
‘Ben! Drop it!’ It was a full-on snap. I was on a short fuse. I hadn’t slept well, and my morning had left me in a strange state of unfocused misery. And I really bit his poor head off.
‘But you were,’ he said, pitifully. As if to stress how justified he’d been in mentioning it.
Then he sulked quietly, and, much as I enjoyed the silence, I felt like shit for hurting his feelings.
‘Let’s talk about something different,’ I said.
‘OK. Like what?’
‘Like … tell me about your day.’
‘OK! It was good.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Like what?’
‘Tell me something that happened at work today.’
‘I bagged groceries.’
‘Something more specific.’
‘I bagged a lot of groceries.’
‘OK. Never mind.’
‘Wait! I know! I’ve got one. I know something. Mrs Durst came in. And she bought a great big giant-size thing of kitty litter. But she had it on that bottom thingy part of the cart, and so when Eddie walked her groceries out to the car he never put it in her trunk. And so then when he brought the cart back in, there it was. This great big thing of kitty litter. So Mr McCaskill had to call her, and she had to drive all the way back, and I had to carry the kitty litter out to the parking lot so she wouldn’t have to come in again. And then guess what happened?’
‘I have no idea, Buddy.’
‘It turned out it never got rung up, either. Cause it was down below. But Mr McCaskill said to just forget it. Because he was embarrassed that she already had to come back. But he really gave everybody a talking-to about being more careful.’
‘There you go. See? It was a pretty eventful day after all.’
A silence. Then, as I turned the last corner toward the house, Ben said, ‘Oh. Oh. And another thing, too. I saw Anat. She came in the store.’
A predictable pounding from my heart. Embarrassingly, no more than the mention of her name was required.
‘Did she talk to you?’
‘Yeah. She always talks to me. She’s nice.’
‘She is,’ I said. ‘What did you talk about?’
‘You.’
I pulled into the driveway and cut the engine.
‘What about me?’
I already had the instinctive sense that I wasn’t going to like this.
‘She said your eye looked really bad, and she felt bad for you. And I said yeah, I felt bad for you, too, but Mark wouldn’t have hit you if you didn’t hit him first. And I said I told you about how you shouldn’t hit, but you said you sort of had to hit, because what Mark said about her was mean.’
I sat there for a moment, then dropped my head to the steering wheel.
‘And then what did she say?’
‘She wanted to know what he said about her, but I told her I couldn’t really remember, because even though I was there, nothing Mark said sounded mean to me, but that he was talking about her, so probably I just missed something. Are you OK?’
‘Not really,’ I said, my forehead still pressed to the wheel.
‘I wish you would be OK.’
‘Me, too,’ I said, and forced myself to rally. ‘I wish I would be OK, too. Let’s just go inside.’
14 October 2001
IN THE MORNING I stepped into the bakery at the usual time. Through my new choice of doors.
I noticed a bell that sounded as I opened the door, and I wondered if it was newly installed, or if I really could have missed that on previous days. I tended to be dazed and preoccupied on my way in, so anything was possible.
Anat looked up, then down at her work again. There was definitely something to be read in her reaction to me. But I had no idea what. Well. I had some idea. And it wasn’t good. I was just short on specifics.
I stood on my side of the counter, staring at her, until she looked up again.
‘What?’ she said.
‘I have something I need to tell you.’
At first she looked as though she didn’t intend to stop working. But in time – too much time, really – she wiped her hands on a small towel and came and stood on the other side of the counter from me. When she looked at my eye, I saw her reaction. It wasn’t literally a full-on flinch. But close.
‘That looks even worse today.’
‘I know. It hurts more, too.’
‘What did you want to tell me?’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth yesterday.’
I paused, in case she wanted to comment. She didn’t.
‘I guess I thought it would only make you feel bad to know. But it’s one of those decisions you make fast, on the spur of the moment, and then you look back later and realize it only works for the short term. In the long run I think it’s always better if everybody knows the truth. But right at that moment, yesterday, when you asked me, I just felt like I couldn’t handle seeing the look in your eyes if I told you. I guess it was more selfish than anything else. But I’ve been under so much pressure lately. I feel like I’m walking some sort of tightrope, and any little thing could unbalance me. So I ducked that moment when I should have told you the truth. And now I regret it.’
‘Because you got caught?’
‘I don’t think so. I think I would have regretted it anyway.’
‘And would you have come and told me?’
‘Probably not. I would’ve wrestled with myself about it. Because I would’ve been afraid it was one of those things that would do more harm than good. But I’m glad things worked out the way they did. So I didn’t have to leave it that way.’
‘Wow,’ she said, her eyes flickering up to mine and then away again.
‘Wow what?’
‘You’re very honest for a big fat liar.’
I laughed a little. Happy to let off a puff of tension.
‘I usually am pretty damn honest. Actually. Sometimes too much so.’ Silence. It stung. ‘So …’
‘So?’
‘Am I forgiven?’
Anat sighed. ‘It’s not that big a deal,’ she said. Not sounding like she meant it. ‘Well, it is. It is, but it isn’t. Next time I want the damn truth whether I’ll like it or not.’
I reached my right hand over the counter and offered it to her to shake. It took her a long time to notice it, and a little while longer to figure out what she was supposed to do with it.
But then we shook on our new deal.
22 October 2001
IT WAS TWO THIRTY in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep.
Then it was three. Then it was three thirty.
Ever since I’d given up going into the kitchen to be alone with Anat in the morning, I’d had a miserable time sleeping at night. It was almost as though holding back the urge to enjoy that time with her was like capping steam. The pressure just kept building, making normal things impossible. Like living.
I’d even switched to decaf coffee in the morning. In case that was part of it. That wasn’t part of it.
Then it was four, and I started wonderin
g what time she came in. I started engaging in dangerous thinking. Because if she came in at four, there would likely be no one on the street at that hour. I could tell her I couldn’t sleep, which, God knows, was true. And I could see her. Really see her.
And not like a customer.
And I could be back in plenty of time to drive Ben to work.
I wrestled with myself for a while. After all, she’d looked at me with such love when I said I didn’t want to bring trouble into her life. I should stay here.
Then again, I could tell her with absolute honesty that I was in a bad way, and needed to be with someone. Talk to someone.
Well. Her. I needed to be with her.
By about twenty after four, I lost patience with the wrestling. I got up and got dressed, careful to put on the shirt I liked best. Of my three. Of course I had more clothes. But not locally.
I turned on the overhead bathroom light before brushing my hair and my teeth. The bruise around my eye was turning sickly shades of yellow and light purple, and the eye itself was shot through with blood.
There was no way around it. I looked a sight.
But I was going.
I parked the car around the corner, rather than right out front.
My heart hammered as I walked to the kitchen door, but I kept my stride even and brave. I stepped up to the bakery window and looked into the dimly lighted kitchen, already raising one hand to wave.
And there, inside, was … Nazir.
It hit me like a mule kick to the gut. This must be Monday. Had I known this was Monday? Obviously not, but why not? How could that have been a whole week? I couldn’t make it all mesh in my brain.
Meanwhile Nazir was waving back. He shot me a broad smile and came to open the door. His smile flickered slightly when he got a look at my new face. But he didn’t comment or stare.
‘Hey,’ I said, not yet coming in. As if I had to apply for his permission first. Which was possible. ‘I can’t sleep. I’m having a hard time. With … I don’t know … everything. I needed to talk. I thought maybe I could come talk to you.’
Thankfully, somewhere in the middle of that last sentence, the fog in my brain cleared and I understood the importance of giving the impression that I had known it was Monday all along. That I had come by at four thirty to talk to him. Not to Anat.
When You Were Older (retail) Page 15