by Dee Ernst
Slut. Even though she was already imagining Craig and I as a couple, she wasn’t above making a move on him anyway. I kept my head down and kept on eating.
Amanda had been eating her waffle in tiny bites. I glanced at her. “Like it?”
She nodded and leaned over to me. “Who was she?”
“Do you know what a nemesis is?” I said in as quiet a voice as possible. The last thing I needed was Maddie bouncing up and down, shouting nemesis at the top of her lungs.
Amanda frowned, then smiled shyly. “I get it. What a bitch.”
Craig, who must have had hearing like a hound dog, looked up sharply.
I smiled at him sweetly. “Amanda here was just making a very astute observation.”
He looked from Amanda back to me, stone faced. “I can imagine.”
Luckily, the twins couldn’t talk and eat at the same time, so the rest of the meal was fairly peaceful. I paid the check, waved happily at Olivia on the way out, and we all turned down Main Street away from Sam’s on Main.
Cape Edwards was built on a grid. Main Street ran east to west, fronting the marina. Behind it were tree-lined streets of mostly brick homes built by the Cape Edwards elite back at the turn of the century. Front Street was at the west end and ran all the way along the Bay beach. Homes there were newer, built for summer visitors.
The tour was, therefore, fairly short. We walked up to the water, and the twins jumped and whined and pleaded, but to no avail. Beach time would be another day. Then we walked in the opposite direction, past the well-established storefronts, as well as a few newcomers to our little commercial district. There, just across from the entrance to the marina, stood Sam’s on Main.
The door was open even though the sign said Closed. I felt a rush of emotion as I pushed my way in. I’d spent so many nights here, before and after Sam and I had married. This was the hub of social life in Cape Edwards. The old-timers all had their places at the bar. The dartboard had never been replaced. The leather that topped the stools was cracked and soft as butter. In the newer restaurant section, square tables and mismatched chairs could be pushed together for impromptu poker games after hours. The air smelled of tobacco. Not cigarette smoke, but the tobacco from Sam’s cigars. He’d quit smoking years ago, and, it was illegal to smoke anything in the bar, but it filtered down from his place upstairs.
“Glory?” I yelled. The twins ran past me and both scrambled to climb up on the stools by the bar. Craig stood in the doorway, looking around, an odd expression on his face.
Glory Rambeau lumbered in from the back. She was African-American, almost six feet tall, had stupendous breasts and several stomachs. She’d been cooking for Sam for almost twelve years, and just by looking at her you knew that her food was all southern comfort. It was, too, but with a contemporary edge that had gotten the restaurant consistently excellent reviews as far as Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
She swept me into her arms and hugged me, lifting me up off the floor. When she dropped me and stepped back, her eyes were wet. “Damn him anyway,” she mumbled. “Damn that man, dying like that, without a word of warning. Why couldn’t he get sick and pine away like a normal person?”
I shook my head. “I wish I could tell you, Glory. This is his son, Craig.”
She narrowed her eyes and walked toward him.
“You sure enough look like your daddy,” she said. She put her fists on her hips. “What are you planning, son? I gotta know because summer’s coming and things have to start happening.”
Craig came closer. “What things?”
“We need to hire more help for one thing. In the next few weeks, we need to be taking on three more waitresses at least. Sam already hired them, way back in February, and they’re all girls who worked here last year, but they need retraining. Are you going to work the bar? Because if not, you need another bartender fast. Two maybe, ‘cause Charlie’s been drunk since your daddy died and poor Mark’s been doing double time. And one of our suppliers over at the docks needs a talking to or we won’t be getting the fresh fish we need when we need it, and I am not going to go through that again.”
Glory got her training in San Francisco and had worked in some pretty high-class restaurants. Born in Boston with no tolerance for fools, she’d been Sam’s right hand woman and had loved Sam’s on Main as much as he did.
Craig cleared his throat and looked past her, where Maddie and Larissa had climbed down from their stool and were now actually behind the bar. Amanda had been looking at all the framed posters on the wall, but turned and darted after her sisters.
“I will have these three in school by next week,” he said. “Make a list of what we need to talk about. Here’s the thing, Glory.” He stepped even closer. They were almost eye to eye. “I’m an alcoholic. I need to be on the restaurant side. And I’m not planning on keeping the place. I’m an IT guy. I program computers. I know nothing about food or bars or business. But I will do whatever you tell me to do to keep this place just as it was until somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing can take over.”
Glory scowled at him, then glared at me, even though nothing here was my fault.
I held up both hands. “What can I say, Glory?”
She took a deep breath, expanding her already impressive chest by at least a foot. “Well, at least you’re honest, and you don’t look like a complete idiot. We can make it through the weekend. I know what we need, we all know what we have to do.” She stuck her finger in his face and shook it. “Don’t go selling this place without letting me have the first crack, you hear? When you decide that’s what you want to do, you come to me before anyone else.”
I’d seen Sam crumble when confronted by Glory and her finger, but Craig seemed to be made of sterner stuff. “Got it.”
She turned and marched back into the kitchen.
Craig turned, looking around at the bar, then walked into the dining room. He glanced up at the open balcony. “Does this get filled every night?” he asked.
I followed him in. “During the season, yes. In the winter, there are a few book clubs that meet up there, and a bunch of women play mahjong on Tuesdays. This is a popular place. There’s music four nights a week in season, and Sam had started a comedy night that he was pleased with.” My eyes filled with tears at the memory of the first comedy night, a night in late September two years ago, when a very drunk Cody Wylie, a local fisherman, premiered his stand-up act, skewering the regulars, and keeping us all in stitches. Sam had been in rare form that night and promised Cody a regular slot. Then he and I had gone upstairs and made love on his rumpled king-sized bed. We’d done that over the years, Sam and I, when we felt particularly happy about something. Or sad.
That had been the last time we shared that bed.
I cleared my throat. “You keep looking around like you’ve been here before.”
Craig ran his hands over his face slowly. “They met in a bar, you know, my parents. My mom’s family ran a little tavern in Brooklyn, a tiny neighborhood place. It looked just like this.”
“All bars look alike,” I said.
He shook his head. Maddie had clamped on to his leg and he lifted her, balancing her on his hip as he walked back into the bar. “Not all bars look like this,” he said. “He made this to look just like Mom’s place.”
I opened my mouth to argue with him, then stopped, because he was right. Sam’s on Main didn’t look like other bars. Sure, maybe the high tin ceilings, and the bar itself—well, long and wooden was pretty much standard, right?
But the tables were all low and round, and there were stools, not chairs, so people could not sit back, but rather leaned in, elbows on tabletops, better for conversation. The walls were covered with framed travel posters of the English countryside that Sam continued to collect over the years, each with its own little light. A narrow shelf ran down the whole side of the place, dropped down from the high ceiling, and there was Sam’s collection of oversized chess pieces, some over three feet tall. Sam had hunte
d for those, too. I’d found a wooden knight in a flea market a few years ago, dark burnished wood, about twenty inches high, and Sam had been delighted.
“The chessmen?” I asked Craig.
“My mom had over a hundred,” he said. He grabbed Larissa’s hand and walked out, Amanda following.
I ran my hand over a worn, scarred tabletop. He’d been very particular, I remembered. And in the twenty-two years of Sam’s on Main, he refused to make one change to the bar other than adding to what was already there. The dining room got a refresh every few years, but…
I hadn’t known him at all, I realized. I thought I’d been the only woman he ever really loved, but there had been a woman in Brooklyn who he’d loved and never forgotten, even before he knew she’d borne him a son.
I yelled goodbye to Glory, closing the door quietly behind me.
We stopped in at Tidal Gifts. I knew that if I didn’t let Stella have a good look, I’d never hear the end of it. Besides, her store was like a little treasure chest, and I knew the kids would love it.
She came scurrying in from the back as we entered, stopped, stared, then came at Craig in a rush, grabbing his hand.
“Oh, my dear boy, we are all so sorry about your dad. He was such a special man.” She dropped his hand and crouched down in front of the twins. “Look at you two! Thank goodness for that freckle, or I bet even your daddy wouldn’t be able to tell you apart!”
Maddie giggled. “You noticed?”
“Why, how could I not?” Stella said, beaming. “Look at it, right there, like a little drop of sunshine all curled up and napping.” She stood and looked at Amanda. “And you, darling, so glad to meet you. You’ll be going into middle school? My grandson is there. Can I tell him to find you at lunch? I know how awful it is to eat alone.”
Amanda’s jaw dropped, and she turned beet red.
Stella put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, there I go. Butting in. I’m sorry honey, but I know what it’s like to be the new girl. Just trying to help.”
“No,” Amanda stammered. “That’s okay. Sure. Thank you.”
Craig was looking around, and the twins had already made it to the back of the store where the dolls and stuffed animals were.
She looked over at me and arched her eyebrows. “Where you all off to?” she asked. “Post office?”
Craig frowned. “Why would I need to go to the post office?”
“You need a box,” I explained. “There’s no delivery for Eastville. You have to get your mail at the post office. And you’ll need a box number to register the girls, so I guess we should go there first.”
“There’s no mail delivery?” Amanda asked. “Seriously?”
“Honey, it’s all part of the charm of country life. We get delivery in town, but for all you out there in the boondocks…” Stella grinned. She was so good with kids. I wished I had her talent for making everyone and anyone like her. “But then, we don’t get to keep goats.”
Maddie came running up with a small stuffed hedgehog. “Please, Daddy? Please? We both like this one so we’ll share. Please?”
Craig made an elaborate showing, sighing, dropping his head, and slumping his shoulders.
“Please?” Larissa echoed. They stood before him, two pouting, pleading adorable tots. If I was their parent, they’d be the most spoiled twins on the planet.
“Okay,” Craig said at last. “I guess.”
The girls jumped up and down, yelling thank you as Craig reached for his wallet.
Stella held up a hand. “On the house, girls. As a welcome to Cape Edwards present.”
Craig started to protest, but she waved him away and stepped closer to Amanda. “Do you see something you’d like, honey?”
Amanda’s eyes went around the shop quickly and came to rest on a dream catcher, hanging by the register.
“Perfect,” Stella said, taking it down carefully. “Let me wrap this in something.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Craig said.
“I know I don’t,” Stella agreed, smiling. “I want to.”
He didn’t argue, and her gifts were handed over in a bright blue bag. More thanks were said, and as we walked out, Stella called my name.
“Head to the car,” I told them, and went back into the store.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well what?”
“I don’t know. Is he nice? Funny? He sure looks like Sam, but…those twins are sweet, but that older girl, oh, my gosh.”
“He’s nice. Kind of boring. I don’t think he smiles. He doesn’t have Sam’s…charm. He told me he wants to get a job, sell the bar, and find his own place, so this is all temporary, thank God. And yes, I could eat those little girls right up with a spoon. But Amanda…”
Stella nodded. “Keep an eye on her, Jenna. She’s broken.”
“I know.”
She gave me a quick hug. “Thanks for bringing them in. Now, off to the post office. Terri is going to be in her glory.”
I laughed. “Yes, she is. And thanks, Stella. For being so kind.”
She shrugged. “Sam’s family, Jenna. They’re Sam’s family.”
Yes, they were, and as I walked back outside, I felt a little tug of envy because I wasn’t Sam’s family any more.
Chapter Four
Fridays had their own special routine.
I drove across the bridge—again—but this time turned south to visit my mother and sister who shared a condo right on the water. It was a tiny place, not really designed for full-time living, but rather for vacationers who only needed space for a week or two worth of belongings. So their apartment was stuffed to the gills with books and papers, knick-knacks and photo albums, and two spoiled cats. My sister was ten years older than I, and when her husband died four years ago, she talked Mom into selling her house, she sold her own place, and they bought the condo on the beach together. It was high on the fifth floor, with a balcony overlooking the ocean. The water there was the Atlantic, and it was a different from the Chesapeake as I was from my sister Sharon.
Sharon still worked. She was hostess in the dining room of one of the bigger hotels. She worked late every night, which suited her fine, because then she could spend her days sitting on the beach. She was there in all weather, under a beach umbrella in the rain or shine, sometimes wrapped in scarves and shawls against the cold. Mom preferred the balcony. They both wanted to live on the ocean and were happy as clams. I visited them every week, not out of obligation, but because they were two of my most favorite people in the world.
We had lunch on the balcony.
“So, tell us about this Craig person,” Mom asked when we finally sat down to eat. They’d gotten the story the previous week, as well as the whole of my anger and frustration.
“He looks just like Sam, but they’re different. Craig is very nice, but a little bland. He’s a strict father.”
“With twin girls, he’d have to be,” Sharon said. Her three kids, all boys, were scattered up and down the Virginia coast. She was short and curvy, taking after my mother, who had morphed into a bit of a dumpling in her old age. Sharon was a looker for fifty, and I knew she had plenty of men circling her. But her husband had been a hard, bitter man, and she had blossomed since his death with a newfound freedom. I knew she had plenty of interest in attention, but no use for anything permanent in her life.
“What,” my mother asked, her fork taking apart her chicken salad as though looking for bits of coal, “is an IT guy?”
“Computer stuff,” I told her. “Programming and developing, I think.”
“Not much of a call for that on the peninsula,” Sharon said. “He’s better off looking over here.”
“I know. I told him that. I imagine he’ll start looking during the summer.”
“Funny Sam never talked about him,” Mom said, finally finding a piece of chicken worthy of a bite.
“Craig said Sam never talked about me either. Or about Cape Edwards at all.”
“Everyone has secr
ets,” Sharon observed. She looked up at me through her lashes. She knew most of mine, even the things my friends never imagined.
I took a long drink of sweet tea. “Yes, I guess so. I’m just really hurt. I thought Sam trusted me.”
“Trust has nothing to do with secrets, Jenna,” Mom said calmly. “That’s why they’re secrets.” She knew about those. My father left us all when I was just six, and if Mom knew why, she never said.
My sister made terrific chicken salad, but today I was not at all hungry.
“How are the goats?” Sharon asked, changing the subject.
“They’re goaty,” I said. “Eating and capering around. That’s pretty much all they’re good for. That and the tax break I get for being a farm with livestock, instead of just a big house on the water. And the milk. At least they keep me in homemade cheese.”
“That cheese you bought over to us a few weeks ago?” Mom asked. “Why, I didn’t know that was from your friend Dave. That was quite lovely.”
We talked then of simple things, my job, the garden, the people in town they both knew. Mom went in for her nap, and Sharon and I walked on the beach, talking some more, then not talking at all. We finally sat, close to the shore. The sun was hot and the wind was quiet. We watched the water in silence. One of the worst things about my job was the constant barrage to the senses: the noise, the stress, the level of concentration that was needed for a long twelve-hour shift. Which was why I valued time alone. And silence. Sitting here not talking with my sister was the happiest I’d been in a week.
She put her arm around my shoulder and scooted closer. “Did you really want the bar for yourself?”
I shrugged. “Yes. Maybe. The fantasy sure was tempting. I think the reality would have been a very different story. I really wanted the house for myself.”
“You’ll get it.”
“Eventually.”
“And in the meantime, I bet it’s nice having company.”