“So what’s on your mind?” I said, handing Sam his iced tea and sitting down opposite him. He gulped his drink. Vincent hit him on the arm just in case I had served Sam something and forgotten to serve him.
“Should I send him out of the room?” I asked. “Is he bothering you?”
“No, no,” Sam said. “He’s part of everything.”
Right answer.
Sam sipped at the iced tea and sipped again. I got up to pour some for myself. It looked like it was going to be a long conversation.
“I just wanted to let you know that I am looking for an apartment for myself somewhere around here so that I can move out and be more on my own.”
“That’s a good idea,” I replied. “It’s a big step for you.” Then I thought “big step” might not have been the most sensitive thing I could have said.
“And I was thinking, I really loved restoring The Wentletrap. I want to set up a shop to repair and restore boats. Maybe here or maybe in P-town.”
“I’m glad you’re planning to do something you love,” I said.
“And”—he took my hand and held it across the table—“you know how I feel about you. You’re one of the best things that came into my life.”
He stood up and held out his arms. I stood up and went to him and got enveloped. He kissed me very gently. “And then,” he said, “and then I would like to court you and Vincent properly. Real dates, and dinners, and everything you deserve.”
So I didn’t get a proposal; I got a plan.
And that was fine with me.
Chapter 41
Maybe it was the bright sparkling window and the new white marble counter, or maybe it was Larry calling it an anachronism, but suddenly the whole Galley looked tired and old and shabby in contrast. Suddenly the old wooden floors that had been trod upon since the time my great-grandfather became postmaster and decided to set up a milk and egg stand next to the mailroom looked beyond worn. They had bevels and dips and more than one customer carrying a cup of coffee had taken a funny step that resulted in a messy spill. I remember a favorite game that Shay and I played as children consisted of each of us holding a little ball and letting it go to see whose rolled downhill to the opposite wall the fastest. The food display cases had been installed around World War II so that the locals—women whose husbands and sons had been sent to war and who didn’t have transportation to the big stores—were able to shop. Though the cases still kept everything cold and fresh, their aging lights were starting to flicker and dim and sometimes turn colors that gave the food an unearthly glow. Even the flattop had problems in the form of cold spots that Shay had dubbed the “no-cook zones.”
I had two solutions. Modernize or modernize.
* * *
I discussed it with Shay and she had a dozen suggestions, like adding a café, a bakery, and a dog rescue that she claimed Vincent told her he wanted, since there wasn’t one in all of Fleetbourne. I discussed it with Larry, who was ecstatic and had a dozen more ideas: table service, Wi-Fi, a small stage up front for musicians, and possibly a large rack for newspapers and magazines from all over the world. Mrs. A was taken with the idea of a little café like the ones in Jordan, filled with pastries and jams and sweet teas and coffees that came, finally, with enough sugar. She even volunteered to run it and I knew she would be perfect, since she was naturally bossy and always more than happy to run anything. She had the drive to organize the entire Middle East, put everyone in their place, tidy up the borders, and have them all fed by five p.m.
I put a suggestion box for customers on the front counter and it was filled in two days, most of the suggestions dealing with food service: they loved the food, hated eating it in their cars.
It seemed I had no choice. We were destined to redo the Galley and build a café.
* * *
Dan’s architect firm generously donated the plans. In keeping with its name, the Galley café would be bright and nautical but not enough to make you seasick. I sent out for bids, which came back ranging from practical amounts to prices high enough to build the café on the moon and provide bus service, too. Larry helped me sift through all the offers; Sam helped me interview the contractors, his six-foot-three height and bulky muscles intimidating them into sincere contracts.
We pulled it all together and were ready to build in one month. Larry helped me secure a government loan for single businesswomen with one dog, apparently overlooked by the current administration. I chose tiles and colors and windows and light fixtures and a new flattop and several new cold food cases, and eventually I decided to keep the old-fashioned look for the original store, only with new fixtures. “Otherwise,” I told Sam, “my family ghosts might think they’re in the wrong place and get themselves lost.”
It was almost as much fun as shopping for shoes.
* * *
The construction finally started. We kept the Galley open for business while the word got around that the Galley was being turned into a spa, a car wash, and an amusement park. I said yes to every inquiry.
But the days dragged on. We went through two more full moons and one scary night when Shay had early labor pains. She was fine and spent her days sitting in her wheelchair at the construction site as honorary general contractor.
Sam found a house to buy with a veterans loan, right in Fleetbourne, with a huge garage that he immediately turned into a boat shop. His neighbors immediately complained about the noise and he turned it back into a garage, then found a garage in P-town that had been a house that had been turned into a head shop, which he turned into a boat shop.
We kept building.
The building inspector, Mr. Harry Dickman, weighed in on the project. He found that the roses that served as foundation shrubs were planted half an inch too close to the foundation and had to be moved so if there was a fire the firemen could squeeze behind them with their hoses. He decided there should be a sink behind the front counter because we needed to wash our hands before we made sandwiches and the sink by the food cases was too far away to be hygiene effective. And that we needed a second sink at the front counter for pots and pans even though I didn’t cook anything at the front counter and had a sink in the back kitchen for that. He decided that we couldn’t use the Marine Conditions Board because we weren’t an official organ of the National Weather Service and we might be endangering people with our handwritten information. He determined that the potato chip rack had to be moved away from the breads because they could cross-contaminate. “And do what?” I asked him, but he wasn’t sure.
“He sure lives up to his name,” Shay sighed one day when I was complaining/whining over Sandwiches with her.
“Harry?” I asked, baffled.
“His other name,” she said.
* * *
It was August when we got our Certificate of Occupancy. The parking lot had been moved twice because the original site hosted a nest for the piping plover and it couldn’t be disturbed. The bathroom was finally working after a three-day discussion as to where to build the septic tank if it couldn’t be built near the inlet from the bay that ran behind the store, making us the only establishment with a sewage pipe running under the roadway to a vacant lot across the street.
We even built a secure chain-link-fenced backyard for Vincent with an all-weather doghouse and security camera that transmitted to a TV monitor behind the front counter.
* * *
The end of the tourist season was upon us. We made hundreds of lunches to go, answered hundreds of questions, and gave hundreds of directions on the best way to leave Cape Cod before Labor Day. There was really only one way, we told our customers, one long road, the Grand Army of the Republic Road, but they kept hoping for a side road, a secret road, to beat the traffic. Shay and I always get a private giggle out of it when they ask how to beat the traffic. I always think, Beat the traffic? You are the traffic!
* * *
The café was finished and ready to officially open. I hung an OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign across th
e new front window and people came in to ask where the new business was. Mrs. A got everyone confused by greeting them by the front door with a bow on her head and the Jordanian custom of a tiny welcoming cup of strong, bitter Arabic coffee, which immediately killed coffee sales until I could convince her to use American coffee with milk and sugar.
Miss Phyllis donated 10 percent off coupons to everyone who came into Follicles for a haircut.
We christened the café like a ship, with me smashing a bottle of champagne across the white-painted post and chain fencing that had to properly observe town rules and match all the other establishments with white-painted posts and chain fencing, giving Fleetbourne the air of a pristine brig.
* * *
Mrs. A ran the front counter. We ultimately decided that people could order their food and carry it themselves to the café to eat and chat. I ran the kitchen, with Mrs. A’s unsolicited and chronic input and guidance, and we ran through a variety of stock clerks, cleanup crew, errand runners, kitchen helpers, and dog walkers, sometimes all on the same day.
But we had all our customers return. Mrs. Skipper and The Skipper, her homicidal husband, and Mrs. Hummings, the town clerk who dropped by on a regular basis for coffee, a buttered Portuguese roll, and a lively exchange of town news about all the other residents who made Fleetbourne the town it was. I was pretty content with the way things were going and went to bed at night, sometimes alone and sometimes not, with a sense of satisfaction.
Like the steady light of the sun and the varied light of the moon and stars, I thought things would always be so, the constant stream of business, daily and seasonal and lasting forever.
But there were stirrings of trouble.
* * *
Larry heard the news first and then there were murmurings here and there from customers. There was going to be a demonstration. Another march. Something evil was coming my way.
The success of the Galley was irking someone. Perhaps a certain car salesman with nefarious ties who skulked around in the darkness with white bricks in his hand. He had finished paying for his crime by reimbursing me for damages and had spent two months working at community service, which had really stuck in his craw. Plus I had hired a Muslim, I had a black lawyer, and it apparently gave him no rest. He felt he had been punished for accidentally breaking a window; I needed to learn a lesson and he just happened to have a group of supporters who were able and ready to teach it.
I was to be targeted for another round of hate marchers. And there was no telling what they would do.
The thought of it frightened me. I was proud of what I had built and dreaded seeing my Galley ruined in any way. The prospect of my customers being terrorized to the point of deciding it was too daunting to patronize the store anymore broke my heart. Sam steamed clean his old uniform and promised to locate and round up the men from his old unit, or at least some of the men he had met at a Veterans’ Hospital outpost in P-town where he went for therapy.
“To do what?” I asked him. He didn’t answer me.
* * *
“What if it gets ugly?” I asked Larry, remembering the torches and the clubs.
“I’m training people to respond a certain way,” was all Larry would tell me. “I’ll take care of everything. I have a few ideas.” He put his arm around my shoulder reassuringly.
I was given a list of things to bake, loaves of white bread, angel food cake, sugar cookies. Mysterious phone calls were made from the Galley kitchen and things were arranged behind my back, which left me plenty of time to agonize over what was coming.
“You’ve been through enough,” Larry kept repeating. “Let me handle this.”
“Exactly what are you handling?” I would ask him, but he never answered me.
* * *
The hate march, Larry learned, was set for Friday morning, when the Galley, as usual, was filled with customers shopping for the weekend. I made Shay promise to stay away and decided to keep Vincent home that day, for his own safety. But Larry took me aside and gave me a big hug to calm me down.
“You know how I love parties?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, this will be the best party I will ever throw,” he reassured me. “I promise.”
Chapter 42
I awoke early on Friday morning, only to find that a mist had slipped in from the bay and had blanketed Fleetbourne in a soft fog, giving the streets a benign, velvety appearance. It was deceptive. Fleetbourne is an old fishing village and fishing villages are tough. The folks are used to brutal storms and dangerous water, and boating mishaps, and tough fishing seasons, and still they thrive, optimistic and strong. There is little that can cow them, and I should have remembered that.
The hate marchers were due in front of the Galley by noon. Apprehensive, I called Larry. He had found himself a little apartment in P-town by now, as Shay and Terrell had turned their guest room into a double baby room.
“What should I do?” I asked Larry.
“Open as usual,” he said, “and get ready.”
Ready for what, he didn’t say.
Sam had spent the night with me and left even before I awakened. Vincent was sitting by my feet waiting for breakfast. It almost seemed like a normal day.
* * *
The Galley was already opened by Mrs. A when I got there. She was wearing a red blouse with her blue jeans, and a red, white, and blue hijab with a fresh apron. She had the new flattop already warming up, the two coffee dispensers that were sitting at their own new coffee bar filled with water, and a basket of coffee pods next to them. The newspapers were displayed on their new rack, the Portuguese breads were in their new cases, and a peek into the café revealed that each table had a centerpiece of red, white, and blue plastic flowers with a small American flag waving from the middle. It was a statement to be sure, but one I hoped would not be hosting the hate marchers.
* * *
Larry arrived with a clipboard filled with papers. And a whistle around his neck.
“You think the hate marchers are going to listen to your whistle while they’re burning down my store?” I said to him.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t for them.” He paused. “And the only thing that’ll be burning today is the barbecue.”
“We don’t do barbecue,” I reminded him.
“You will be.”
Hosting the hate marchers with barbecue seemed a little too hospitable for me, but before I could ask him anything further Terrell pulled up outside and parked. Terrell hopped out and took Shay’s wheelchair from the backseat, then helped Shay out of the car and into the chair.
“Oh no,” I moaned. “If there’s a problem, Shay can get hurt. Those thugs won’t respect a pregnant woman in a chair.”
Larry just opened the front door to let them in. Terrell wheeled Shay up the new ramp and through the door. Shay was wearing red and white and her chair was festooned with red, white, and blue streamers woven through its wheels. Apparently, Larry had established a dress code for the hate march.
“I had to come and support you,” Shay said to me as I leaned down to give her a hug, but my heart was fluttering with fear.
I offered to make breakfast for anyone, but everyone had already eaten.
My stomach had joined my heart flutters and I passed on breakfast as well. “Why don’t you just relax with a cup of coffee?” Larry suggested, but I was too nervous.
* * *
Of course my first customers of the day were The Skipper and Mrs. Skipper, determinedly earlier than anyone else, so that Mrs. Skipper could get first pick of the freshest cherry Danishes we had. First she needed to buy a box of Cheerios. “The Skipper likes Cheerios if he can’t have his kippers,” she told me when she placed the box on the counter. “And I’ll have two teas with my Danish this morning.”
“I like Cheerios also,” I murmured as she pored over the Danishes, selecting the two plumpest. “I also like cherry Danish.”
“Well, if you had been my child, I would have g
iven you Cheerios for breakfast instead of that awful garbage you were fed,” she said. “I felt very sorry for you.”
“I thrived on whatever I was given,” I countered. “My grandmother did the best she could.”
“I felt sorry for her, too,” Mrs. Skipper said gently. “Very sorry.”
It was a strange comment. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant; but it was something I was going to find out. She paid for her purchases and turned to her husband. “Donald, I’m ready to leave.”
The Skipper joined her by the front door. “We’re going to stay right outside,” Mrs. Skipper announced before leaving. “Brought two lawn chairs and we’re going to watch the festivities. I hear it’s going to be a hoot.”
* * *
At ten-thirty the streets outside were beginning to fill. I recognized the demonstrators. They were Fleeties, almost all of them, dressed patriotically and setting things up along the street. Someone parked an ice-cream truck and someone else parked a huge barbecue van. There were hot dog trucks and taco trucks and balloon and hat vendors. American enterprise was catering a hate march.
“No,” said Larry. “They all came here to support you. You’ll be glad later that they are here.”
* * *
Someone was setting up a table next to the Galley and somehow had all the loaves and cakes I had baked for the day. Over their display was a sign of an upheld fist holding a loaf of bread. Underneath, in big letters, it read: WHITE FLOUR, NOT WHITE POWER! GET IT HERE. An obvious mockery of the white power hate marchers.
There were other signs, too. HATE ONLY BELONGS IN THE DICTIONARY being held, of course, by one of the English teachers at Fleetbourne High. And GO BACK TO YOUR MOTHER’S BASEMENT AND GET LAID, YOU’LL FEEL BETTER. And rainbow flags all over the place. The crowd had not only come to support me; they had come to support everybody, and I felt my eyes fill with tears. The Galley started to overflow with customers who wished me luck and stayed to order Sandwiches and some of Mrs. A’s more exotic foods. Mrs. A and I worked the front counter pretty much like Shay and I used to.
And All the Phases of the Moon Page 26