White Elephant

by Julie Langsdorf

  He stuck the hand not holding the leash in his pocket. A hot drink. That was what he needed, he thought, spying Lucy’s. Kaye swore by it, but to him a café in an old house was on the bed-and-breakfast spectrum: more folksy and intimate than he wanted from a business transaction; he’d choose Starbucks and a Westin any day. Still, a cold day was a cold day, and it was the only place to eat in town.

  By now the bulletin board, which he’d heard about—everyone in Willard Park had heard about the bulletin board—was outside behind Lucy’s. She’d apparently replaced the small one on the porch with a big one and nailed it to a couple of two-by-fours. She’d also brought some tables and patio heaters out back. The tables were all full, and a number of other people were standing by the board, studying it. No one said hello to him as he passed by; a few people glared. Was there something about him up there? He wouldn’t dignify it by stopping to look. He went around front and up the porch steps. The three tables up there were all empty, with neither heater to warm nor bulletin board to titillate.

  Nick tied Rex to the railing. He patted Rex’s head. “Good boy.” Nick didn’t like to leave him outside alone, but it was the law, a discriminatory one, he thought—why were dogs less deserving of the respite of a café than humans? “You’re a good, good boy,” he said and turned toward the café door without a backward glance, not wanting to see Rex’s mournful eyes and low, sad tail. Inside it was warm and there was music, something Dylan-like but not Dylan; it wasn’t loud enough to cover up Rex’s cries for help.

  “Cold day,” Nick said to Lucy when he made it to the front of the line.

  She looked at him as though he had just walked into her house without knocking.

  WTF? Wasn’t he being a good neighbor, supporting a local business by coming here? Try as he might, he didn’t get this town. He stifled an urge to give her the finger and walk back out, and instead ordered the biggest hot chocolate on the menu—a White Elephant–size Mexican, because it was pricier, not to mention spicier—along with a lemon poppy seed muffin, lemon bars for the kids, and a beautiful frosted dog biscuit shaped like a house. Kill ’em with kindness—wasn’t that a thing?

  “Do you have a mug?” Lucy said.

  “A mug?”

  “A mug.” She flicked a finger at the mugs on hooks, maybe a hundred of them, of varying shapes and sizes.

  The answer was no. No, he didn’t have a mug. Was he supposed to bring it with him? In his experience, cafés provided not only food and drink, but dishes. That was kind of the point, he thought. “No. Can I buy one? Do you sell them?”

  “Do you think you can buy everything, Cox? That everything is for sale?” Lucy snapped. The kid washing dishes snickered.

  Nick was nine years old, the teacher shaking her head at him. Didn’t you read the book, Nicholas? Or can’t you read? The other kids laughing. He had read it. He had sat down with it every day after school that week. It was just that the letters flipped and flopped on the page. Bs were Ds. Os were Es or Cs. They squeezed together and drifted apart; they gave him a headache instead of a story.

  “I’ll take a paper cup then. Don’t tell me you don’t have paper? That you’re a paper-free café?” he said, aware that he was only making things worse—but what was he supposed to do? If he didn’t have a mug and she wouldn’t sell him a mug, what did she want him to do? Hold out his cupped hands?

  Lucy filled a cup with the hot chocolate and pushed it toward him. He didn’t dare ask for a lid.

  Back on the porch, Nick untied Rex, who was grateful, beyond grateful—then, beyond even that when Nick gave him his fancy biscuit. He ate it in one enormous bite. “Know how much that thing set me back? Five fifty. Five fuckin’ fifty.”

  Why not talk to the dog? No one wanted to talk to him, that was for sure. Nor he to them. Nor he to them.

  He scratched the sweet spot under Rex’s chin. Rex’s eyelashes fluttered and he leaned into Nick’s leg, sinking into a pool at his feet, as if Nick’s scratching were a drug that he craved, that only Nick could provide—which made him feel maybe as good as Rex did. “Good boy. Good puppy.”

  He breathed in the lemony smell of his muffin, then took a bite. It was possibly the best muffin he’d ever tasted. This irritated him. He wanted to hate it, just like the town hated him. Why did everyone blame him for everything? Why was his lawn sign bad and Ted Miller’s good? Why were all the editorials in the crappy little town newsletter against him? Why did everyone assume he was behind every lousy thing that went wrong in Willard Park? Why, why, why?

  He took another bite of muffin, chewing slowly, isolating the ingredients on his tongue: the tang of the lemon zest, the minuscule snap of the poppy seeds. It was very moist, but not oily.

  One day, when he was old and there wasn’t a lot else he could do, he would take up baking. It would be his retirement hobby. He baked on occasion already: he was the one who made the family birthday cakes. Chocolate with chocolate frosting for Jakey, chocolate soufflé cake for Lindy, and, for Kaye, yellow with raspberry jam between the layers and chocolate icing. Nick enjoyed adjusting the recipes, adding a little almond extract, coffee instead of water, orange zest instead of orange juice—things like that. He decorated with fresh raspberries or even edible flowers. Who knew you could eat flowers? It was like being a chemist. He’d only recently shared his plan with Kaye, late one night in the hot tub. She’d loved the idea.

  “You could open a bakery! Call it . . . what? What should we call it? ‘Park Row Bakers’ or ‘Mr. Willard’s Bakeshop,’ or maybe after the kids, ‘Lindy’s,’ but no, Jakey would—”

  “No,” he said—apparently too abruptly or something, because she clammed up and her eyes filled with tears.

  “I just mean. It’s not meant to be a business. It’s just for me,” he said and, because a tear was running down her cheek, “Just for us. Just you and me.”

  She sniffed and smiled a tiny smile. He always managed to hurt her feelings. Was it because she’d lost her mother so young? She was like a skinless bunny.

  “It’s just for fun, I guess. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something just for the satisfaction, Kaye? Just to experiment?”

  She sighed, like she was about to say something, then she laughed—as if it was a crazy notion, as if the idea of an older Nick baking was weak, ridiculous. Which hurt his feelings. Which he did not tell her, of course, but instead got out of the hot tub and into his robe. They’d gone to bed without making love, which was nearly unprecedented after they’d been in the hot tub.

  He took another bite. Did he detect yogurt or sour cream? There was a tang that went beyond the citrus. He closed his eyes to better parse out the flavors.

  Rex stood. His tail snapped against Nick’s leg as he wagged it. He started barking in that mournful way that could mean only one thing. Nick opened his eyes.

  And he was right. There was Rex’s other true love, his canine paramour: the squatty little Miller dog, her lush tail swaying back and forth. Allison held the end of her red leash in one hand, and in her other, the hand of a little boy. Davenport’s kid.

  “Well, Mr. Cox. Fancy meeting you.”

  “Frau Miller,” he said. Frau? Frau. He tried to snatch the word out of the air, suck it back into his mouth, but it was gone, released, ridiculous.

  What made him act like a kid with a crush around this woman? She wore shoes more suited to a hobbit than a human; her coat was as puffy as a marshmallow; and her hat, made of thick knitted wool and adorned with two red pompoms, was so primitive it looked like maybe her kid made it. Maybe the treeless Jillian. He guessed Allison woke up looking pretty similar to how she looked right now: curls this way and that, eyes a little sleepy, lips just a shade up from the color of her face. Kaye was maybe her exact opposite: she woke up plain, as if her eyes and lips were something she kept in the bathroom, which she kind of did. She emerged after about an hour looking like a model, her eyes big and her lips full, her ponytail replaced by liquid gold. He might not have believed it was
the same person if he hadn’t witnessed it so many times over the years. Sometimes he envied women the way they could create themselves anew each day; but Allison Miller chose not to do all that, which he kind of admired. He was drawn to something else about her, too, a power she herself probably had no idea she had: if she accepted him, the rest of the town would follow suit.

  “Do you know my friend Adam here?”

  Adam reached out to shake hands. His grip was surprisingly strong for a little kid. “Can I buy you two a drink?” Nick said, pulling Rex off Candy.

  “Yes,” Adam said. “Ginger tea can help constrict the blood vessels when you have a headache, so I’d like that.”

  Nick looked at Allison. She offered a faint shrug and lift of the eyebrows, indicating that this was likely true.

  “All right. A ginger tea it is. Young lady?” Young lady. Was there no end to it?

  “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  “A coffee? A coffee from your coauthor. Your colleague.”

  She laughed. “Okay, an espresso. If you can expense it.”

  “I can expense anything,” he said, again not happy with his words. She already thought of him as a braggart. He started to tie Rex up to the railing.

  “Don’t worry—we can take him,” Allison said. “Right, Adam?”

  Adam, now seated in a chair, head resting on his arm, didn’t lift his head to speak.

  “You sure? He can be a bully.”

  “Candy would be thrilled.”

  Nick untied Rex and Rex ran under his arm toward Candy; he wound around Allison, then Candy wound around Nick. Then the dogs wound again, to get closer to each other, which meant Nick and Allison were knotted together along with the dogs. He didn’t find many occasions to laugh these days, but this made him laugh. “It’s like Twister,” he said.

  “Right hand blue, left foot red,” she said, and suddenly they were face-to-face, so close that he could smell her breath. She smelled like coffee. Had she already had coffee?

  “What are you smiling about?” They were so close now that all she had to do was whisper.

  “Just smiling.” He saw that she had a little bit of chocolate at the corner of her lip. Just a tiny melted bit. “Have you been eating chocolate?”

  “Are you stalking me?”

  He pointed to the corner of her mouth. She stuck out the tip of her tongue and reached it around to the edge of her lip. She worked her tongue into the crease. He felt himself heating up.

  “Did I get it?”

  “Almost. May I?” He touched her lip with his thumb, wiping away the rest of it.

  She was blushing. But not unwinding the leashes. He wasn’t unwinding either, but the dogs were starting to tumble, which threatened to knock them down. He took her right hand in his and Rex’s leash in his left, and unwound the leashes, freeing them from each other. His hand was still in hers though. They both saw, then let go.

  “So, coffee!” he said.

  “Right! And ginger tea!”

  He gave Allison Rex’s leash, then he braved Lucy again, feeling fortified.

  Lucy all but rolled her eyes at the sight of him. “Again?”

  He ordered.

  “And two paper cups, I presume.” She shook her head in disapproval as she spoke.

  “The espresso is for Allison Miller,” he said. “Does she have a mug?”

  Lucy’s expression softened an infinitesimal degree. “She has a little espresso cup too. And the tea? Paper?”

  “For the Davenport kid.”

  “Davenport-Gardner?” She pulled a red fire-truck mug off the hook and ran Nick’s credit card. She seemed a little disappointed he wasn’t getting more paper cups.

  “The muffin . . . ,” he said.

  “What about it?” she challenged.

  “Delicious. Maybe the best I’ve ever tasted,” he said, hoping to maybe, possibly, draw a smile out of her, to maybe, just maybe, begin to make a little headway in this tightly closed community.

  She shook her head, eyes half rolled, handing him back his credit card. “Kiss ass.”

  JILLIAN’S FATHER GOT OFF HIS BIKE IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE JUST AS Jillian got out of the Coxes’ car in the driveway. It was like a dance, it was so synchronized. Her door opening at the same moment he dismounted. His vest and yellow helmet shone under the streetlight. She could feel his stunned eyes on her.

  If she’d been thinking straight, she would have told Kaye just to let her out in the garage and would have snuck home around back, but she was buzzing. She’d gone for the Frappuccino at the Starbucks as they left the mall, a twenty-four-ounce caffeinated frozen coffee-flavored milkshake with whipped cream and a straw and a rounded lid. It was a shock for a girl who had just had a pink shake in the food court and was not used to an all-sugar diet. Her heart beat so quickly she thought she was going to throw up.

  Jillian said goodbye to Lindy and closed the car door. She didn’t even thank Kaye for driving. “Hi, Dad.” She walked up the path, her eyes on her feet.

  “Jill?” he said.

  “Yep,” she confirmed. Jillian Miller is a sneak. Jillian Miller is a fraud. She climbed the porch steps, hoping for a few final sweet moments with her mother before the game was up.

  Her mother was sitting on the living room couch with her arms crossed over her chest, her expression stony. Jillian froze, trying to decide whether it would be better to go back outside, to her father, or to continue toward her mother. She was like a murderer in a house surrounded by the police.

  “Hi, Mom,” Jillian said, wondering which scenario had come to pass. Had Mrs. Baxter called about the Greek temple? Had a teacher reported her absence from the after-school clubs? Had her mother, too, seen her get out of the Coxes’ car?

  “I did some babysitting today,” her mother said.

  “You did?”

  “Adam. Suzanne came by not long ago to get him, in fact. She said she saw you at Nordstrom.”

  “Oh . . .” Jillian closed her eyes and held her wrists together in front of her, awaiting the handcuffs.

  14

  DECEMBER 20

  Now. This is your entrance,” Allison whispered to Grant from behind their makeshift backstage, gritting her teeth so she wouldn’t inadvertently scream.

  “Me? Not yet. Do I?” Grant said, questioning and answering himself for so long that he missed his entrance entirely.

  “Cut!” Rainier, the director, called. “Cut, fucking cut!”

  They were rehearsing in the town hall basement instead of in the elementary school all-purpose room, leaving the school open for the public hearing that was to start in half an hour. The town hall was usually a spacious venue for town meetings, but tonight residents were going to testify about the proposed building moratorium. A standing-room-only crowd was expected.

  Meanwhile, Annie Get Your Gun was in danger of collapse. Troubles had haunted them from the start. To begin with, so few people had auditioned that Rainier had cast everyone who showed up, even the parents who’d just brought their kids to try out. Some cast members could sing, some could dance, and some could act, but virtually none could do all three. Buffalo Bill kept calling for line cues; Lucy, who was playing Dolly Tate, sounded as though she was developing vocal cord nodules—“like poor Julie Andrews,” she kept pointing out, though that was where any similarity between the two ended. She’d left rehearsal early tonight to set up a dessert table at the hearing, abandoning them midscene.

  Then there was Grant, who was having trouble remembering his blocking and the words to his songs. Sometimes something mysterious struck him as hilarious and he couldn’t stop laughing. What had happened to him? He’d been terrific, memorizing his lines and everyone else’s before the cast was required to be off book, but recently he’d been coming to rehearsals looking as though he was half asleep, and maybe he was. He had a lot on his mind, with a son having undiagnosed headaches and a baby on the way. Not to mention the addition they were planning to put on the house. Well, an addition had been the
original plan, but now Grant wanted to knock down the whole house and build anew. He and Suzanne were locked in battle over it.

  A good Frank was nearly as important as a good Annie. Was she a good Annie? Valeria would have been better. What should they do? Allison wrote desperate e-mails to Valeria, but Valeria seemed to have no advice to pass along from her perch in Paris. She was too busy sprinting off to the Louvre and the Pont Neuf.

  All of these things were happening, and Allison did her very best to care about them, her very, very best, but in fact there was just one thing on her mind. It had started last week, when she ran into Nick at Lucy’s. When he had touched her lip. She’d had to work very hard not to lick his thumb. But she hadn’t. That was the point. She hadn’t done that. So if someone at the café saw them together, someone inside or around back, there would have been absolutely nothing to report.

  She and Nick were collaborating—on the book. That was all. His interest in it had given her new energy. In the past few days they’d run into each other more than usual. She’d stood with him once in his yard while Rex and Candy tussled over a tennis ball, and they’d had coffee again at Lucy’s. Nothing remotely as line-crossing had happened. Giving her a bite of his brownie was not in the same category. They talked about photography and architecture, paper quality and text-to-photo ratios until he left to pick up his son.

  Then this afternoon . . . well. She still hadn’t let herself fully process what happened this afternoon. She’d found him parked a block away from the café. He rolled down the window. “I’m going to take you on a tour,” he said.

  It felt mildly illicit to be getting in his car, but she did it anyway—first having a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching. She sank down low in the passenger seat. It was warm in the car and it smelled like aftershave, a smell she didn’t ordinarily like.

  “Sears Modern Homes are cute, I’ll give you that, but they sure ain’t modern,” he drawled, cutting off a car as he took a right onto Wisconsin Avenue. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about preserving what’s best about the town.”