Never Coming Back(41)

Like my heart.

You have to get that fixed. You have to get that fixed. You have to get that fixed.

Words she had said to me multiple times ran along the bottom of my brain, peaking and valleying, like the readout on an EKG.

“Did she believe it was worth it, do you think?” I said to Sunshine and Brown. “Having a kid? A kid like me?”

They didn’t look surprised at the change of subject. They were used to it. And they didn’t say, Yes. They didn’t say, Of course. They didn’t say, How can you even ask that question.

“Don’t ask us,” Sunshine said. “Ask your mother.”





* * *





“I made a grid for you,” Brown said.

It was the next morning and we were at Walt’s Diner, waiting for pancakes. Blueberry for me and Sunshine, plain buttermilk for Brown. Brown, the man of logic. Brown, the writer of code so precise it almost never needed revision. Brown, who would never need the services of Words by Winter, had constructed a Jeopardy! grid, with my mother the focus of every category.



Cans and Jars

Baseball

Breakup with Asa

Choir but No Church

Out-of-State College

Self-Eviction



$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000





“From the ridiculous to the sublime,” he said. “I put the baseball one in there for me, but the others are all yours. Talk to Tamar. Talk to anyone who knows Tamar.”

Just like that, she had gone from being The Fearsome to Tamar. It felt like a demotion. No! Keep calling her The Fearsome! The exclamation marks boldfaced themselves and marched along the bottom of my brain. ! ! ! ! ! ! But the change had happened without conscious thought. It was clear from the way Brown said the word. In the face of new information about The Fearsome, a spontaneous natural event had happened, and The Fearsome was now Tamar. It was like cell division. Once begun, it could not be stopped.

“Also, Brown and I want to help,” Sunshine said. “We want to go with you when you visit her.”

“You can’t. She made me promise not to tell anyone. I owe her that. I owed her that, and I broke the promise.”

“And for good reason. What does it matter at this point if anyone else knows? We want to see Tamar. We love Tamar.”

The pancakes came, plate-size, and then the server with the special coffee-pouring technique came by and transfixed us by refilling our coffee cups. That was good, because the effort of talking about my mother this way, almost clinically, was too much. The pain of it sat there with us at the table, crowded in among the plates and mugs and maple syrup and the white bowl filled with tiny plastic tubs of butter.

“Also, when are we going to your boyfriend’s bar?” Brown said.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend,” he said again, ignoring me. “I love saying the word boyfriend in conjunction with you. All these years you’ve lived like a nun, and finally, a boyfriend. Boyfriend.”

“Also, free drinks,” Sunshine said. “Don’t forget the free drinks, Brown.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“He probably has nice hands,” Sunshine said. “You know how she is about hands.”

“Piano players,” Brown said. “They’re all about the hands.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. And I only played piano in college.”

“But does he? Have nice hands?”

The bartender’s hands appeared in my mind, fingers grazing the table where I sat. Prelude hands. That light touch. I watched my own fingers open three butter packets. Steam from the blueberries on the underneath pancake curled out when I lifted the top pancake to spread the butter.

“He does,” Sunshine said. “You can tell by the faraway nice-hands look in her eyes.”

“Do you think he’d like Walt’s?” Brown said.

“Who doesn’t like Walt’s?”

My pancakes were buttered. Time for the pouring of the syrup, which was a two-step process: first the underneath pancake, then the top pancake. Most people neglected the underneath pancake. Not me.

“The syruping of the bottom pancake has commenced,” Sunshine said.

The syruping of the bottom pancake was a crucial step that required concentration, what with the size of Walt’s pancakes—dinner plates—but I looked up halfway through. One of those times when you look up for no reason, except that there must be a reason, an animal kind of below-the-surface reason, and there he was.

“Winter, heads up,” Brown said. “You’re about to spill.”

I looked back at my plate but too late. Sunshine and Brown had followed my gaze and were looking at him, leaning against the doorjamb, waiting his turn for a seat at the counter.

“Who’s that?” Sunshine said. “Wait. That’s not him, is it?”

It was. The bartender, descended from his dark bar north of Inlet and come down to earth here in Old Forge, waiting with the other mortals for a spot at Walt’s. I said nothing. I dug into my pancakes. I did not look up again, either at the doorjamb or at Sunshine and Brown.





* * *