“You’re right,” I said in a commiserating tone. “They have them in all the big cities now. Makes me feel like a cog in a wheel instead of a valued customer. The companies that put those machines in always say that they’re faster and more convenient for customers, but everybody knows it’s about eliminating jobs and adding to profits. I heard that the new company plans to get rid of all the box boys.”
“So you’ll have to bag your own groceries? And carry them out to the car?”
I nodded and Mrs. Lieshout clucked her tongue.
“What are the older people in town supposed to do, the ones who have a hard time walking, let alone lifting heavy bags? And what about the young people who’ve always saved for college by bagging groceries? And Mr. Lindstrom? He’s been working as a box boy ever since he retired. He counts on that extra money to supplement his social security. Surely they won’t eliminate his job?”
“From what I heard, all the box boy jobs will disappear.”
“Well, that is just awful.”
“And, of course, on top of all that, there’s the issue of the demolition. Knocking down those buildings will change the entire landscape downtown.”
Mrs. Lieshout’s expression went from concerned to alarmed.
“Think of the precedent that would set! It’s bad enough that so many of the old cottages have been bulldozed to make way for those McMonstrosities. If they can knock down the market and Herzog building, then what’s next? The church? The town hall? Even the library?”
There it was. The connection I’d been waiting for her to make.
The thing that Joe Feeney and his deep-pocket developer didn’t understand is that a truly effective grassroots campaign isn’t a commodity you can buy. You can nurture and nudge it into being, but, as the name implies, a real grassroots movement grows organically, as a response to a genuine need within or threat to the community. And, as I had explained to Rinda, Daphne, and Celia that night at our quilt-in, the person or persons who head it up have to be insiders, energetic leaders whose lifetime of service to and residency in the community command respect, with a purity of purpose that made them above reproach.
Mrs. Lieshout fit the bill perfectly. She was one of the most energetic and well-respected women in Nilson’s Bay and also, once she was truly motivated, one of the most pushy. And, for Mrs. Lieshout, no motivation could be stronger or more urgent than thwarting a perceived threat to the beloved, historic library to which she had devoted her life.
“Well, we simply cannot stand for this!” she declared, her eyes glittering with determination, her chin jutting like a knife point. “This is not only a threat to the livelihood of many of our citizens, but to our entire way of life. We’ve got to let people know about this. We’ve got to organize and agitate and stop this cancer before it spreads!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said and reached into my pocket to pull out one of the flyers that Celia and I had designed and printed out earlier in the day. “A few of us have already started working on it.”
I handed her the flyer and she perused it quickly, nodding as she skimmed the bullet points outlining the negative effects that the proposed new market could have on the economy and character of the town.
“This is good,” she mused as she read. “Though I do see that you’ve used ‘devastate’ twice in the same document. You might consider another, more descriptive word . . . perhaps ‘decimate’?”
“Good suggestion.”
“Oh, and Lucy . . . you really must be a little more judicious in your use of exclamation points—only one per sentence. Give people a little credit for common sense. Just lay out the facts rationally. You don’t need to resort to ebullience or overdramatics.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “We’ll change that for the next printing, once I finish handing these out.”
“The sooner the better! Here,” she said, and took half the stack of flyers, “let me help you. You couldn’t pick a better time or place than here at Winter Fest—half the town is here!”
“I’ve already got people handing out flyers at all the entrances.”
“You do?”
She looked at me curiously and I grinned. Knowing that the hook was now planted firmly in her mouth, I could reveal my hand.
“Uh-huh. And if you’ll turn over the flyer, you’ll see that we’ve already scheduled an organizational meeting next week.” I grinned. “We’re holding it at the library. And you’re facilitating the discussion.”
Mrs. Lieshout flipped over the paper and started to read. And then to frown.
“Seven o’clock on Monday? In the Lundstrom Room? You shouldn’t have done that, Lucy. Not without consulting me first.”
She looked up at me with a serious expression. I felt my heart sink. Apparently that hook wasn’t planted quite as firmly as I’d thought.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lieshout. I just thought that—”
“You can’t have a meeting in the Lundstrom Room. The Mystery Mavens book group has it that night. And, anyway, Lundstrom can only hold twenty people.” She thought for a moment. “Let’s use the Carnegie Room instead.”
“Okay, sure. Good idea.”
“Right. Well, I’d better get going. My hot chocolate is getting cold. Oh, Lucy, can you drop some more flyers off at the library? I want to post some on the bulletin boards. See you Monday?”
“Yes, ma’am. Absolutely.”
Since Mrs. Lieshout had taken half of them off my hands, it didn’t take long to chat people up and distribute the rest of my flyers, which meant that I had time to walk around and check out the ice sculptures before meeting up with the FOA for the tree lighting in front of town hall.
Winter Fest, with its accompanying ice sculpture contest and tree lighting, was the brainchild of some of the local merchants who were looking for a way to lure tourists up to the peninsula for just one more weekend before winter set in. It was a good idea.
I’d stopped by The Library earlier that day—the bar, not the building—to eat a basket of wings and ask Clint if I could put our flyers up on the stalls in his bathroom. He told me they were booked solid for dinner that night.
“Couldn’t fit one more person in here unless we greased ’em up wid Crisco,” he said, the gap in his front teeth showing when he grinned. “But Roberta had a good idea. We’re gonna grill a buncha brats, put ’em on sticks, and sell ’em from a stand on da sidewalk,” he told me.
He’d also surprised me by asking if Peter would be joining me for lunch. When I said no, why would he, he’d frowned and looked flustered.
“Oh, nothin’ . . . I just thought that you and Peter . . . Well, you know. You’d been coming in together pretty regular for a while, and I just thought . . . Never mind,” he said, and started vigorously scrubbing the already clean table with a rag. “Sometimes people just decide to take a break. None of my business.”
“We’re not taking a break,” I said. Clint flashed a smile and I jumped in to clarify my statement. “You can’t take a break unless you’ve got something to take a break from. Peter and I aren’t a couple. Never were.”
“Okay. Sure.” Clint looked down and started wiping the table again. “Like I said. None of my business.”
People gossip like crazy in Nilson’s Bay. I guess it’s the same in most little towns. Especially in winter—what else is there to do? But the fact of gossip being a common occurrence doesn’t make it less annoying. Though I felt guilty every time I saw Peter’s number on my phone and ignored it—three times during the last week—keeping my distance was the smart thing to do. In the end, it would be easier on both of us.
I walked past The Library and, sure enough, the two little Spaids, Kayla and Ricky, were standing behind a card table, wearing white aprons over their jackets, selling bratwurst on sticks. Their parents were inside tending to the sit-down diners, but the kids seemed to be handling everything well, even though the line to purchase their wares was ten people deep. It was the same story outside of Dinah’s
Pie Shop, where Dinah was selling hot, individual apple or cherry pies with the crust folded to make them easy to carry, as well as coffee, hot chocolate, and hot cider. Dinah saw me walking by and raised her arm over her head.
“Lucy! I saw Daphne Olsen a little while ago. She brought me one of those flyers. You can sure count on me being there for the meeting! I’ll bring a couple of pies for the refreshment table.” She paused to take fifteen dollars from a man wearing a down jacket and one of those knitted jester hats with bells on the tassels and hand him five pies in exchange. “If I haven’t sold them all!” She laughed.
I waved and walked on.
It was nice to see so many free-spending travelers thronging the freshly shoveled sidewalks, but it was even nicer to see so many familiar faces, people who had known me and whom I had known from childhood. In the eighteen years since I had left this town behind, hoping never to return, I had traveled to every major metropolitan area in America and had met with some of the most influential leaders in the country, and during my fifteen minutes of fame after the Iowa caucuses, my face appeared on millions of television sets all over the country. But in spite of all that, there was no one city, town, or hamlet in the country, except this one, where scores of people recognized me, called me by name, and looked happy to see me.
It was a good feeling. But also a lonely one.
Everyone walking down the street, stopping to buy bratwurst, or to get their picture taken with a live reindeer brought in for the occasion and decked out in a red halter and jingle bells, or to ooh and aah over the prizewinning, incredibly lifelike ice sculpture of a mother polar bear with twin cubs gamboling at her feet, was walking with someone else, traveling in herds: families with little children or elderly parents, groups of friends, couples holding hands. It seemed like I was the last lone person on the face of the earth, the only person alive who was not connected to some other person by birth, or love, or both. I was an orphan.
It was a strange thing, and terrible to admit, but after my parents died I didn’t miss them that much. I know how awful that makes me sound, but . . . I’d been away from home for so long, almost never seeing them or talking to them—even when I did call, my father refused to speak to me—and I was so busy living my life, trying to latch on to that brass ring that would fill the constant void and somehow redeem me, that weeks could pass without my ever thinking about them.
And then they died.
I came home for a few days, did my duty, attended the funeral, comforted Alice and helped her get organized, arranged for part of my paycheck to be direct deposited into her account every two weeks, signed the necessary papers, and left. The whole thing had taken less than a week. And then everything went on like it always had. I didn’t miss hearing from them because I’d never heard from them much to begin with. Before long, the weeks that passed without a thought of them stretched to months and then to never. Almost never.
With Alice, of course, it was different. I talked to her almost every day, but I wasn’t . . . engaged. Not really. She would talk and I would listen, sort of. More often than not I was either half-asleep or working on the computer during our conversations, giving her what attention I felt was owed, paying her bills, doing my duty. Because I knew I owed her that. Because I felt like . . .
It didn’t matter. Nothing I knew, or felt, or feel could change what had been. I’d spent twenty years trying to accept that truth, or at least not dwell on it.
Now there was no one whom I belonged to and no one who belonged to me. Not even here, in the only place on the face of the earth where people recognize my face and know me by name.
I missed Alice. Really missed her. And not just the old Alice, the Alice golden child who I chased across lawns and through woods in a pair of too-big pink rubber boots, the sister I could never catch up to. I also missed the Alice I left behind, who woke me in the night and droned on and on about things and people and places I had worked so hard to separate myself from. I missed the slow and steady, pedantic and plodding sister who never gave up and who summoned home her selfish second sister in the only way left to her, issuing the invitation I could not refuse and did not deserve. I missed the Alice who disappeared under the water on a hot day in August and emerged more mortal, more simple and simultaneously more complex, wiped free of memory and malice, the one who couldn’t understand why I wanted to forget, who could not grasp that there are moments and acts that completely sever the life that was from the life that is, moments beyond redemption, and homes you can never return to.
I missed Alice. I missed everyone.
Chapter 36
It was only four o’clock, but the light was already fading from the sky.
In another hour it would be dark, and when the assembled onlookers finished singing “O Tannenbaum,” mumbling through the verses, but jumping in and singing lustily along with the chorus, and the mayor pushed the button to illuminate the thirty-foot-tall Christmas tree, making the five score strings of lights glow white-gold in the darkness, everyone would gasp and then applaud, as though they’d never seen an electric lightbulb before.
But you can’t really blame them. On a cold December night when the setting of the sun causes the temperature to drop twenty degrees in as many minutes and turns your fingers into ice pops even through your gloves, there really is something miraculous, and hugely comforting, about the existence of electricity.
The police had closed five blocks along Bayshore to traffic the night before, giving the ice sculptors a spot to work on their creations through the night and leaving plenty of room for pedestrians to admire the completed sculptures the next day. The sidewalk concession booths had been set up by local merchants.
Before making my way to the tree lighting, I bought a snow cone from Heller’s Ice Cream Haven, not because I really wanted one, but because I felt a little sorry for Mr. Heller. Though he’d tried to get into the spirit of the occasion, putting out a chalkboard sandwich board that said “Embrace the Cold!” on one side and “Snow Cones! The Original Ice Sculpture!” on the other, and offered holiday-inspired flavors like Pink Peppermint and Spicy Cinnamon, his was the only food booth without a line.
“Thanks,” he said as I handed him a five-dollar bill, his voice a little despondent. “I tried to think up something different, but in this kind of weather people want something hot. Maybe next year I’ll give hot fudge sundaes a try.”
“How about hot cocoa floats? Take the big foam cups you use for milk shakes, then fill them with hot chocolate and put in a scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
“And maybe a candy cane stir stick?” His face lit up. “That’s a great idea. Thanks, Lucy.”
I took my three dollars change and my snow cone and walked down the street toward town hall. The cinnamon snow cone was better than I’d thought it would be, but Mr. Heller was right. In this kind of weather, I would have preferred something warm. When I was out of sight of the ice cream shop, I dropped the cone into a nearby trash can.
Looking up, I saw the top of Peter’s head sticking up above the crowd on the opposite side of the street and called out to him. He turned at the sound of my voice and I started walking toward him. There was no hint of a smile on his lips, no cocky, teasing grin in response to my greeting. His expression was totally neutral. I lowered my arm to my side, feeling suddenly foolish, the way you feel when you start yoo-hooing to a long-lost friend at a crowded party who ultimately turns out to be a stranger.
We met in the middle of the street, in a somewhat less crowded spot between two ice sculptures where somebody had decided to park three snowblowers.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
I smiled and waited for him to smile back, but he just stood there, hands in his pockets, being Switzerland.
Finally, I asked, “Did you see the polar bears?”
“Yeah. Really something.”
I nodded. “Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls. It’s just been a really busy week. I’ve bee
n working to organize support to help stop the sale and demolition of the Save-A-Bunch.”
“I know,” he said. “About fifteen people have stopped me to talk about it since I got here.”
“Yeah? That’s great!” I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. Already the word was spreading.
“Listen, we’re having a meeting on Monday at the library. It’d be really great if you could stop by and say—”
He shook me off before I could even finish my sentence. “Can’t.”
“Oh. Have you got another out-of-town trial?”
“No. Just can’t make it.”
“You can’t? On a Monday? Why not? I know how you feel about these kinds of issues and about preserving the places and traditions that make Nilson’s Bay unique. Not to mention supporting small business. I mean, we’ve talked—”
“Lucy.” He held up one hand. “Stop right there.”
His expression went from neutral to stern. I did stop, but more because I was surprised by his response than because he told me to. He paused, frowned, shoved his hands deeper in his pockets, and then, after leaving me hanging for a good five seconds, looked up.
“Mrs. Lieshout tracked me down a few minutes ago. She wanted to give me her opinion about the market, which was fine. When she was done, she made a point of telling me that you were handing out flyers over by the ice-carved archway. I guess she figured I’d be looking for you. And a few minutes before that, when I was standing in line to buy my brat, Clint came out of the restaurant to resupply his kids, then came over to pat me on the shoulder and give me his sympathy, said that he’d heard you and I were taking a break.”
I felt my jaw clench. Clint! Hadn’t I told him?
“And just before you waved to me, Mr. Coates flagged me down to ask about the town getting a dog park. But not before asking how we were and if you were still planning to move to Washington.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve been dealing with the same kind of thing. But you know how things are around here. People see a single man and a single woman going to dinner or having a conversation on the street and they immediately assume that—”
The Second Sister Page 27