Tips for Living

by Shafransky, Renee

  “That SOB wedding photographer sold you out. What was the insult your aunt had for him?”

  Sina Shluha vokzal’naja ve Siberia. Aunt Lada was so enamored of her Slavic roots, she’d studied Russian language and folk dancing in the midst of the Cold War. I knew most of her sayings but had to ask her to translate that one.

  “Son of a whore who works a train station in Siberia.” I sighed. “Grace, I just don’t want people talking about me. I wanted to die last time, I was so ashamed.”

  “Don’t get confused, Nor. The shame is on him.”

  Then why had I felt like ducking under the table whenever Hugh and Helene showed up at the cafés and restaurants I frequented while I still lived in the city? Why did I sneak out of friends’ cocktail parties and gallery openings if they entered the room? I came to Pequod to start a new life. No, I wouldn’t tell Kelly and the rest. I didn’t want to advertise my past.

  Grace was still simmering as she slid into her car’s front seat. “Wasn’t it lousy enough that they bought a house here? I mean, the entire point was for you to start over without those two in your face. Now she has to come to your Pilates class? She’s a stalker!” she said, slamming the door.

  I suspect buying a house in Pequod was Helene’s idea. Hugh was nearing sixty with some health issues. He probably feared losing his twenty-seven-year-old wife if he didn’t give her what she wanted. And she wanted a house near me. I imagined their conversation—it actually worried me that I imagined their conversations so often lately—went something like this:

  “Helene, you know we can’t get a house in Pequod. Nora lives there.”

  “But it doesn’t seem fair. You said Pequod had the perfect light for painting,” she’d plead in her Texas twang. “There’s a beautiful, light-filled studio on the property. Are we going to give up our dream house on the chance that we might run into your ex-wife once or twice?”

  True, Hugh claimed the light in Pequod was “as transparent as vodka,” a result of air saturated with water molecules from the surrounding inlets and coves. We spent one idyllic August drinking it in—visiting with Grace and her crew, roughing it in a barn we rented so Hugh could work on larger paintings. We lit propane lamps in the evenings, took baths in a repurposed horse trough and loved every second of it. But the farmer sold his acreage to a condo developer the next spring, and we began renting a winterized cottage upstate to get away on weekends year-round.

  Pequod is a summer place, really. Just under three hours east of New York City on Long Island’s north shore. Our population swells tenfold from May through September, and then it’s just us again. The Piqued. At last count 3,093 of us. A really small town. Hugh and Helene were Summer People, or more specifically, Summer Weekend People—a group whose sense of entitlement draws the ire of locals. The Courier’s “Letters to the Editor” featured a typical complaint in the Labor Day issue:

  Dear Editor,

  I was born and raised in Pequod, and I’ve been proud to call myself a resident of our town for almost fifty-one years. Recently, I’ve been angered by the attitude of some who share our community in the summer months. This past weekend I was standing in a long line at the farm stand—typical during our high season—waiting to pay for my corn. I was wearing my Pequod Fire Department T-shirt, so there was no mistaking my local status. When I finally reached the register, I heard a man shout from the back of the line: “Hey, Townie! Why don’t you shop during the week, so we don’t have to stand here all fu**ing day?”

  Being a public servant, I refrained from violence. But like the bumper sticker says: SUMMER PEOPLE, SUMMER NOT.

  S. Ayers

  Pequod FD

  I’d spotted Hugh and Helene on weekends this summer. It seemed as if every time I ran a Saturday errand, I had to cross the street to avoid bumping into them. When the summer ended, I was relieved they’d finally be gone. I never expected Helene Westing Walker (luckily, I hadn’t taken Hugh’s name when we married—there was less chance people in town would connect us now) to show up in my Pilates class on a Monday morning in November.

  The class meets three times a week in an unusual location: the old bowling alley outside of town. Kelly and her husband brought the failing alley back to life after finding it for sale on Bizquest. A tragic event gave them the means: Kelly’s parents died in their sleep from a carbon monoxide leak in their boiler, and she came into an inheritance. Originally from Catskill, they changed the alley’s name to “Van Winkle Lanes” for the fabled Rip Van Winkle, who heard thunder in the Catskill Mountains and discovered ghosts up there bowling ninepins. Kelly dubbed the alley’s cocktail lounge The Thunder Bar. Her husband bartends there.

  “The Van Winkle name says bowling is awesome, bowling is timeless. The name Pequod Lanes didn’t say a thing about bowling,” Kelly explained for a story I did on the reopening. “Business is up seventeen percent since we changed the sign.”

  Until bowling hours begin, our Pilates group has the place to ourselves. Depending on moods and weather, between five and ten of us set our mats down in the shiny, oiled lanes. If you know your bowling, then you know the oil is what helps the bowling balls flow smoothly. What puts that sexy “slide and glide” on them. And if you don’t know your bowling, I understand completely. I only have this information because my father, Nathan Glasser, did a lot of business in bowling alleys and bars when I was a kid, and he often brought me along.

  I miss my dad. He died sixteen years ago, not long before I met Hugh. He was a complicated man with a big heart, and I was his “pearl of a girl.” In some curious way, spending mornings in the bowling alley makes me feel connected to him again.

  “Nor, snap out of it,” Grace called out her car window.

  I was still glued to the spot by the open trunk of my blue Toyota, having dropped my mat inside, anxiously watching the exit door of Van Winkle Lanes. I was thinking I should stay and say something when Helene came out, like, “How dare you! Go find your own damn class!” But really, I just wanted to cry.

  “Why did Helene have to come here? Why?” I groaned.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Maybe she won’t come back,” I said.

  Grace frowned. “I heard her ask about Kelly’s thirty-class card. I think she’s buying it right now.”

  “Oh.” I staggered for a second, grasping the trunk lid.

  “Nora?”

  “I’m a little thrown, that’s all,” I said, recovering. “I’ll be absolutely fine.”

  “Just tell me you’re not thinking of quitting.”

  “No way.”

  “Good. I can’t come on Wednesday, but I’ll try for Friday’s class. This week is insane. Both kids have dental appointments and I’m interviewing the mayor about the new tax increases, so I have serious prep. Plus, I promised my mother-in-law I’d help her learn how to auction off her LPs on eBay. That could take days. Love you. Stay strong.”

  “Love you.”

  Grace drove her Prius out of the lot. I slammed the trunk and plunked down behind my steering wheel. I was dreading Wednesday morning’s class already.

  The encounter with Helene left me agitated. I decided to drive directly to the Courier office rather than return home to change clothes. The oversize black sweater I’d worn to class would cover enough of my Pilates pants. I tried to think about the column I needed to write that morning, but I was too upset.

  As soon as I reached the wharf, the sight of it began to calm me down. The cheery, green-and-white-striped snack stands dotting the long wooden pier. The wrought iron benches lining its edge like front row seats for the theater of the sea. Beyond them, light danced on the water under a bright fall sky. The air smelled of salt and burning leaves. I breathed in the scent, felt my tension release and turned left at the hand-painted PEQUOD EST. 1827 sign.

  The name Pequod derives from the Pequot, the Algonquin tribe that thrived hunting whales off the coast here before the white settlers moved in. It’s also the name of the whaling vesse
l in that epic tome Moby Dick, which I’d decided to reread during my “anger therapy.” I’d tackled it in high school and remembered the story of one-legged Captain Ahab. He set out on the Pequod to kill the great white whale that cost him his limb, but he wound up going down with his ship. Given my fantasies about Hugh and Helene, I thought it might be wise to revisit a tale about the perils of seeking revenge.

  I turned left again onto Pequod Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare, and drove between the rows of historic brick and clapboard buildings. The town’s bones aren’t all that different than they were in 1827. Stately sycamore trees line both sides of the street. The immense wooden doors of the library, painted a glossy cherry red, welcome readers into the landmark building. Pequod is a picture postcard. On the surface, a gem. But when I started work at the paper, the publisher and editor in chief, Ben Wickstein, warned me not to be fooled.

  “It’s a nasty little town,” Ben cautioned. “Think Salem in the year of The Crucible. There are still wooden stocks behind the salt factory. And some people around here would like to see them get used. They’ll call the health department if they see you bring a puppy into a coffee shop. They love their rules.”

  Grace encouraged me to try for a job at the Courier when I first mentioned wishing I could move to Pequod.

  “I know the editor. I’ll talk you up,” Grace had offered. “He needs someone with your skills.”

  “You think? I’ve been out of the game for so long. And my last reference is Hugh.”

  Once we moved in together, Hugh had asked me to run his studio. “For a salary, of course.” I was barely earning a living at a free downtown paper called New York Spy, covering everything from hip-hop clubs and pop-up galleries to rent strikes. I saw Hugh’s offer as a win-win-win: a way to help him, earn decent money, and still have time to write. The studio job was demanding, but I managed to keep publishing. I even sold a feature to The New York Times on the Guerilla Girls, an anonymous group of feminists I admired. They donned ape masks and protested in front of museums on the dearth of women artists shown inside. Theypassed leaflets with slogans like DO YOU HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET?

  But the fact was, I hadn’t practiced the feminism they preached; I’d let my career take a back seat to Hugh’s. Grace’s proposal meant a chance to reclaim my identity as a writer.

  “I’ll tell Ben you worked with your husband. He’ll appreciate that—his wife ran the paper with him,” Grace said. “It’s so sad. She was your age when she died of breast cancer last fall. He’s raising Sam by himself now. He’s a great kid. They’re both just beginning to come back to life. Anyway, Ben won’t cross-examine you. I’ll let him know you had an agonizing divorce. No names. No details.”

  It worked. That was more than two years ago. I’ve been employed at the Courier ever since. I have a lot of respect for Ben; he has his priorities straight. He’s proposed a ban on plastic bags for Pequod’s stores and funding for affordable housing. He’s made it his mission to stop overdevelopment and government corruption (which often go hand in hand).

  As I pulled into a parking space almost directly in front of the Courier office’s bay window, I could see Ben working, probably on his story about a new traffic camera that was generating a suspiciously high number of tickets.

  He sat at his large oak desk, jammed between a file cabinet and a sagging bookcase, weighted with back issues, staring at his computer screen and pulling his left ear. Ben always pulled his ear when he was writing. He caught me watching him once. I could tell it made him really uncomfortable; he instantly found a reason to leave the room. He’s a great editor, but on a personal level, he’s about as open as a bear trap.

  Ben stopped tugging abruptly and turned to say something to Lizzie, the junior member of our tiny staff. She left her desk and strode over in her lace-up army boots to study his screen with him. Lizzie has Orphan Annie hair, a pixieish freckled face and a petite frame that makes her look even younger than her twenty-three years. She tends to dress like a war correspondent to convince people she has gravitas. “The more you push for answers and don’t back down, the more they’ll take you seriously,” I’ve advised, trying to be a mentor to her.

  I exited the car and entered the three-story redbrick building, formerly a bindery in the mid-1800s.

  “Morning,” I said as I opened the office’s old-fashioned, oak-and-glass front door.

  Ben and Lizzie both looked up from his computer with solemn expressions.

  “Uh-oh. Did the hard drive crash?”

  “No,” Ben said, swiveling his wooden swivel chair around to face me. As usual, he looked and sounded cranky, like he’d been yanked out of bed. The cowlicky salt-and-pepper hair, the deep shadows under his brown eyes and the stubble on his dimpled chin contributed to the effect.

  “Then who died?”

  “We just received another letter about your Tips column,” he said.

  I’d pitched Tips for Living as a creative way to give voice to the locals’ gripes. Until I lived here full-time, I hadn’t realized the impact Summer People had on the year-round community. “We need a new approach to talking about how tough things have become for the average Pequod resident,” I’d told Ben.

  I admit I came up with the idea after Hugh and Helene moved to Pequod. I could relate to the locals’ aversion to having their hometown invaded by people who didn’t treat them well. A snarky tone might let off some steam for all of us, I thought. So far, we’d run a half dozen Tips and received a fair amount of appreciative fan mail. But we’d also gotten a number of nasty letters.

  “What does this one say?” I asked.

  Ben turned back to his computer and read: “‘Nora Glasser still thinks she’s clever, doesn’t she? Her Tips are an insult to people who are struggling to get by. There’s real suffering out here. She should watch what she writes or she’s going to regret it.’ The letter is signed Mad as Hell.”

  Ben folded his arms across his chest and raised both of his unruly eyebrows. “That’s number two from Mad as Hell. I draw the line at threats. I’m not going to publish it,” he said.

  “And he’s rethinking the column, too,” Lizzie added.

  Ben shot her an annoyed look, and Lizzie stared down at her boots, chastened.

  Lizzie’s father is Pequod’s four-term mayor. All that campaigning for him has made her highly competitive. She compares word counts and story placement even if she’s only writing the week’s weather outlook. Ever since I started writing Tips, she’d been angling for her own column reviewing smartphone apps. But Ben won’t sign off. He credits the paper’s success with sticking to local angles.

  “Is that true? Are you rethinking?” I asked, concerned. I loved writing Tips. It not only added something unique to the paper, but writing it finally brought me to life again after the divorce. At least in my work.

  “Frankly, yes. I’m always rethinking,” Ben said. “That’s my job.”

  “You’re blowing this out of proportion, Ben. It’s two letters. People who write angry letters have already found an outlet for their hostile feelings.” Sobachny ne karyyty. “Barking dogs seldom bite.” That’s what Aunt Lada would say. “Watch out for the quiet one that tucks its tail,” she warned.

  “It’s the silent brooders you have to worry about,” I told Ben.

  “Don’t be so sure,” he cautioned. “I don’t have to tell you how much resentment has risen with the cost of living here.”

  It’s true. You can feel the tension in the air. Even the bar fights have escalated. Last July, an intoxicated plumber pulled a gun on a Summer Person over an unpaid fee for dealing with a backed-up toilet. The Courier’s Police Blotter used to list a few DUIs and the occasional shoplifting incident. But we’ve reported a record four burglaries already this fall—all of vacant summer homes. Still, I believed what I said about not worrying about one irate letter writer.

  “We’ve gotten lots of positive letters, too. And what about a free press? You didn’t stop writing
stories about the condo project because of the rock thrower.”

  After the Courier came out against a proposed high-end resort that threatened to pollute a tract of wetlands, a large rock crashed through the front window while Ben was working late. A note wrapped around the rock said, “Stay out of it.” Grace even had Ben on her radio show to discuss the incident. Now he keeps a baseball bat by his desk.

  Ben frowned at me, started drumming his pencil and then stopped abruptly. “Don’t get me wrong; I like the column.”

  “So does my dad,” Lizzie admitted.

  “But one event is a data point. Several data points are a pattern. The column might not be striking the chord you think it is. If you receive any more letters like this,” Ben said, pointing at his screen, “Tips is done.”

  “Got it.”

  I wasn’t going to fight a hypothetical. I’ve learned to pick my battles with Ben.

  “Is there any coffee left?” I asked, starting for the coffeepot on top of the file cabinet.

  “We’re out,” Lizzie said, sheepishly. “Sorry. I know it’s my turn, but I had to meet with my mom and the wedding caterer before work.” She mimed shooting herself in the head. Lizzie was going to marry her longtime boyfriend next month—a sweet guy she’s dated since high school. “I’ll pick up a can at lunch.”

  I couldn’t wait for lunch. I’d been waking up tired lately, as if I’d barely slept. Instead of my usual already excessive three cups to jump-start my brain in the morning, I seemed to need coffee all day long. I’d been putting off going in for a checkup. I knew I’d been mildly depressed, but was something else going on? As a child, I’d experienced this kind of fatigue from a vexing sleep problem, but I thought I’d outgrown it.

  “I’ll just run to Corwin’s for coffee,” I said. And a treat. I deserved a treat after Helene ruined Pilates class. I hadn’t bought my favorite chocolate muffin in ages. “Anyone want anything? Muffins? Cheese Danish?”