by Karin Tanabe
I unwrapped the thin pieces of muslin around it and placed it on the desk. He leaned down, took it in both his hands, and held it for a long time, rubbing his fingers over the light green glazed pattern. He didn’t say anything.
“Are you in the navy?” I asked, breaking the silence. Of course he was in the navy. He wasn’t like some wandering magician who just took refuge on a naval base.
“Actually, I’m a marine,” he said correcting me, and finally looking up. “I’m with Mardet. Marine aviation.”
A Marine aviator at a navy base? I felt like he was the military equivalent of a turducken but what did I know. My knowledge of the military was pretty much completely created by Hollywood and fiction.
“Oh, a marine,” I replied.
After another minute of just looking at the bowl, he looked up and smiled. “This is mine. Or it used to be.”
“Oh! Oh good. I had to ask a few people so I’m really glad it’s yours.”
“Did you want to give it back to me?”
Did I want to return it to him? No, I wanted to sell it. I wasn’t in the business of regifting Goodwill items to their original owners.
“Actually, no. I bought it at auction because I was hoping to sell it. I’m very interested in antiquities, but—”
“Yeah, I can see that, working in a place like this,” he said, looking around. “You must really like all this old stuff.”
“Old stuff? Like priceless antiques that represent the changing face of our nation?” I said. I hadn’t meant to sound offended, but Alex had called me an eighty-year-old trapped in the body of a teenager all through high school and I was a little sensitive about the word old when it was applied to what I loved.
“Yeah sure, old stuff,” he said, cracking a mischievous smile. He looked at me trying to maintain my composure, as he poked fun at my lifelong passion. Under his big winter coat, he was wearing a black sweater and jeans; the only thing giving away his career in the military was his hair.
“Oh, you’re like one of these uptight Newport types who cries over the Mayflower and stuff like that.”
“The Mayflower landed in Provincetown, Massachusetts,” I corrected him.
“Right,” he said casually. “Well, what do you need to know about this to sell it? I didn’t donate it for someone to sell it. I just thought someone might like the look of it, put it on a table or something.”
I put my hand on the bowl, ran my finger on the glaze carefully, and looked up at him.
“Well, you got a few unexpected middlemen. Do you mind if I ask where you got it? Did you get it in the Middle East? I’ve never really seen anything like it.”
“It was a present when I was in Iraq on my third tour. I was there four times. And all those deployments, I had the same translator. He gave it to me. But then a few weeks ago, I heard he died, so I just decided I didn’t want it around anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Iraq. It was from Iraq.
“Do you know anything else about it? Like when it was made? Was it something your translator had for a long time? Or something his family had?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t ask. Do you usually ask all kinds of questions when you get a present?”
My face must have gone red, because he smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t know.”
“Did you know it has an inscription of some sort on the base? In Hebrew I think. Though it’s hard to tell.” I turned the bowl around for him to see.
“I think I noticed that at first and then forgot about it. It looks nice.”
“Isn’t it weird for a Muslim translator to own a bowl with Hebrew on it? Your translator was Muslim, right?”
“Yeah, he was, but like I said, I don’t know anything about it. It was a gift, I accepted it, he died, I gave it away.”
“Do you know what the Arabic writing says? Here on the inside.”
“I do. He told me once. I think it’s something like God heals the believers. It’s really general. God heals all. I don’t remember exactly.”
“Okay, well, thanks for your help. At least I know it’s from Iraq.”
“If you can’t end up selling it, I’d take it back.”
I looked at him and looked at the bowl and said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Tyler placed it on a glass display case and put his brown suede gloves back on. He said goodbye, apologized for not being more helpful, and moved toward the door. Right before he opened it, he turned around and looked back at me.
“So, I’ll see you again?”
“Me? I’m not in Newport for long. Just a month. Well, actually now, I’m just here for another twelve days. But yes, I would like that,” I finally stammered out. “To see you again.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow then,” he said and walked out the door.
CHAPTER 7
Tyler came in the next day, just like he said he would. He came by in the morning to ask me if I would go out to dinner with him that night. William watched our interaction with interest.
“And that is?” he asked curiously when Tyler left. He had nodded a polite hello to William, but I had been too taken aback to introduce him.
“That’s Tyler Ford. I told you about him. The bowl. The auction.”
“That bowl led you to him? Lucky you. You can keep the ten dollars.”
“Twenty,” I corrected him.
“Keep the twenty then, Carolyn,” said William, replacing a chair in the window display with a small end table.
“Can I also keep the bowl at home until we sell it?”
“You can keep it until you find out that it’s valuable enough to sell. Then we’ll sell it. I read a bit about the slant on the calligraphy last night and it was popular in the Middle East pre–fifteen hundreds. I’m not saying this bowl is definitely five hundred years old, but it could be.”
“I think it’s worth something, too,” I said to William. “I’ll figure it out. I promise.”
I pulled on my coat and smiled. “I know nothing about him. Tyler Ford, the bowl owner.”
“I’m sure that will all change soon.”
And it did. It all changed that night.
Tyler came back to the store at seven, still wearing jeans and his serious, but not severe, expression.
“You know, I realized I don’t have your number and I don’t know your last name. I just knew that I wanted to see you again,” he said as he helped me open the store’s heavy door.
I told him both. He repeated my name as we walked outside, onto the icy sidewalk. Tyler drove an old black Toyota 4Runner with slightly oversize tires, and he walked over to the passenger’s door to open it for me and help me in.
“Sorry, my car’s a little—”
“Big?” I interrupted him as he closed his door. His car had not one but three Marine Corps stickers on the back window and what looked like a sporting goods store in the trunk.
“I was going to say old. And messy. I kind of live out of the thing. I wanted to clean it out before tonight but I couldn’t leave early enough. I’m sorry.”
“It’s absolutely fine,” I said as he started the car. It was absolutely fine. In high school, Alex drove a Porsche Carrera with a pristine beige interior. It was so clean you could lick the seats, which Alex had me do once in a fit of passion. But his car always seemed a little too sterile, a little too old for a kid in high school. This car was exactly what I thought Tyler Ford would drive.
He made his way through Newport’s small, historic streets over to the Brick Alley Pub on Thames Street and parked right outside.
“Is this okay?” he asked when he opened the door for me and helped me out.
“This is great,” I said, looking up at the familiar yellow and white striped awning. “I grew up coming here. It’s fun.”
Tyler followed my eyes up to the restau
rant sign and I could tell he was hesitating on his choice.
“Maybe you’d like to go somewhere you haven’t been a hundred times. Or when you were a kid. Somewhere nicer? I’m kind of a beer-and-burger guy but maybe you know someplace good. Like one of those places on the water?”
“Honestly, this is great. I like it here. Let’s go in,” I said, walking toward the door.
The thirty-minute wait that was typical at a Newport restaurant in summer was not a problem in early March and we sat down at a corner table against a wall full of military and sports memorabilia.
“Did you pick this table especially?” I asked, smiling.
“I come here a lot,” he said, looking up from his menu. “Too much probably, but you know Newport. A lot of it’s for tourists.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said, picking up my menu. “I could show you some things.”
Tyler put his menu down and looked right at me when the waitress brought us our beers. “I have no doubt. You seem like a really smart girl, Carolyn. I’m glad you said yes to coming out with me.”
We exchanged polite conversation over drinks, and I ignored the handfuls of women who stared directly at Tyler as soon as they walked into the restaurant. I had never been out with someone so alarmingly good-looking before and I sincerely hoped I was not acting the way some of the women in the place were. Plenty looked like they were about to deliver their underwear to him.
We finished our second round and I looked at Tyler, not quite sure what to say. Tyler was quiet. But not in a way that bored me.
“You’re from Newport, I’m from Wyoming,” he said finally. “But not the pretty part with all the mountains. Like none of that Brokeback Mountain shit. I’m from the flat part. The eastern part.”
“What’s the town called?” I asked, slightly taken aback. I hadn’t been on a date with a man who cursed in my face within the first twenty minutes, ever.
“Wheatland. Wheatland, Wyoming. Home of unemployed men and the women who love ’em.”
“That’s a nice name, Wheatland. It’s lyrical,” I said.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t say that if you saw the town. I mean it looks nice and all. Not like Newport. Nothing like Newport. But it’s got its own thing happening.” He looked at me and laughed. “Okay, there’s actually nothing going on there. But there are pretty nice bluffs. You know, the kind you’d see in an old western movie.”
“I’ve never seen a western movie, I don’t think.”
He tipped his head back and I noticed just how defined his jaw was. He had very nice blue eyes, but it was the bottom of his face, the definition of his slightly square jaw, that really made him stand out.
“You’ve got to watch one. Just one at least. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“With Robert Redford, right? I like him. Especially when he played Gatsby.”
“Gatsby? Really? Why are all rich people obsessed with Gatsby? As soon as a person’s got ten grand in their bank account they start talking about Gatsby.”
I laughed and thought about how much I loved Gatsby. I hoped it had nothing to do with my bank account.
“Have you ever read it?”
“Yeah, sure, in high school.” He leaned really close to my face until he was almost out of his chair. “I do know how to read, princess.”
“I’m so glad,” I said, not letting myself lean back. He stayed hovering in front of my face a beat longer than expected and then sat back down after I’d looked at every perfect inch of his face. I wanted to run my hands down the lines of his cheekbones. He may not have had time to clean his car, but he’d definitely shaved again.
The waitress brought out our cheeseburgers, calling Tyler by his first name, and between bites, I asked him about his childhood.
“What kind of stuff did you do there in Wheatland, Wyoming?”
“Drink and shoot things.”
“That’s what you did?”
“Sure. What did you do when you were a kid?”
“I was never very good at drinking,” I said, pointing to my almost-full third beer.
“Then I’m not going to let you have a fourth drink,” he said. He was already on his fourth.
“I can handle four beers,” I replied. “But I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
“So you were one of those dorky girls.”
He rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt and I tried not to look at his thick forearms. There was a tattoo under the left one that I couldn’t quite make out.
“Not really,” I said in my defense. “I mean, I wasn’t dorky, I don’t think. It just wasn’t like that in Newport. I went to a really tough high school and I wanted to be the smartest kid there. So I worked really hard. I had to get good grades. It wasn’t a choice. My parents really care about that stuff.”
“I was just teasing. But you’d look really cute with a PBR and a gun.”
Before I could blush to a color more flattering to pigs than humans, Tyler started telling me more about where he grew up. It took a few beers, but our conversation had gained movement.
“My dad worked in an auto shop,” he said. “My mom answers phones at a cattle ranch. That’s about it. The house I grew up in was a piece of shit. It sold for twenty thousand dollars a few years ago and it took six months to get that.”
I looked away, embarrassed that my first car cost more than that.
“What else do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing, everything.”
“Nothing, everything. Okay, I get it. Well, I’m Lutheran. Everyone there is Lutheran. I love my mama. Oh, and I do call her mama. I don’t love my father.”
“That’s too bad, for your father.”
“He doesn’t deserve it,” said Tyler, gripping the underside of the table with his calloused hands and leaning back farther in his chair. “So I guess it is too bad for him. It’s also too bad that he sold my guitar to buy drugs when I was eleven. I’d mowed about two hundred lawns to buy it and then a month after I got it, he took it, traded it in, and spent the cash on booze and cocaine. I ignored him for a year but then he punched me in the face when I was twelve and it was hard to ignore that. He punched me so hard they had to reset my jaw. A few weeks later he was gone for good.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. I was better off.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. I heard different things. Nebraska, Colorado. Who cares. Trust me, I’m never going looking for him and he’s never come looking for me.”
He finished the last of his fries and studied my face.
“You’re very pretty,” he said, and before I could get so embarrassed that I spent the rest of the night under the table, he said, “Do you like your father?”
“Sure I do. I love my father. We have nothing much in common and we’re not very close, but he always wanted the best for me. Still does, I think. Just sometimes his idea of the best and my idea of the best aren’t the same.”
“Well, at least he cares. That’s a good thing. The best life lesson I ever learned was you can’t choose your father, but you can choose whether to talk to the son of a bitch or not.”
“Wise words.”
“Yeah, it sounds like you don’t have to worry too much about it. That’s a good thing. People should love you.”
Tyler put his hand over mine on the table and looked at me, no trace of a smile on his face, his clear blue eyes unmoving. His hand was so big, mine was completely lost under his. It didn’t move as I tried to flex my fingers. He didn’t ask me if I cared, and he held my hand too hard for me to pull mine away.
“My dad was in the military, too,” he said, looking up at the wall covered in military memorabilia, then finally letting go. He ran his fingers across my skin as he pulled his away. “But it wasn’t li
ke he did anything honorable. That was always something that got me about the military. You’re enlisted for a day and all of a sudden you’re doing something honorable, just because you’ve got a uniform. But not my dad. He got caught when he was eighteen stealing cars and the cops said he could go to prison or he could go to the army. He picked the army.”
“Good choice.”
“Yeah. Better than prison. I blame him for a lot, but not that. Probably the only good choice he ever made.”
“What did he do in the army? Did he fight in Vietnam or the Gulf or anything?”
“Nah. He was stationed in Texas and he was in charge of handing out supplies. From what I can tell, he stole as much as he handed out. And then a few years into it, he overdosed on cocaine and was let go, but the VA gave him disability and all that crap. He was really good at rolling people. He was a drunk and a drug addict but I guess he was pretty charming. I look a lot like him.”
He turned his face toward me and smiled for the first time all night.
“Think I’m charming?”
There was no one on earth whom Tyler Ford had spoken to who didn’t think he was charming, that I was sure of.
“I think you’re something. I don’t know if it’s charming exactly, but something.”
The restaurant was getting pretty loud and we had to raise our voices to hear each other. I asked for a water and Tyler got another beer and laughed when I smacked my plastic cup against the neck of his IPA.
“We’ve got to teach you how to drink, Carolyn Everett. Go out with me at least one more time so we can work on that, okay?”
I smiled but didn’t answer.
“So what happened to you? Why are you living in Newport in March? You don’t look like the kind of girl who spends winters in Newport. Only summers.”
“Well you’re wrong there. You shouldn’t be so quick to judge. I grew up here. I spent eighteen winters in a row in Newport.”
“And then?”
“And then I left. But now, I’m back I guess. For a little while, anyway. Something happened to me in New York and I just don’t want to be there right now. I’ll go back when I’m ready.”