Never Coming Back(66)

“Nothing,” I said. “Nada. Zip. Zilch.”

“It’s better to have no expectations,” Sunshine said.

Maybe it would be an evening when Tamar was there. Maybe it would be an evening when she was gone, walking the endless hallways in search of her daughter. Maybe she would recognize Sunshine and Brown and not me, or me and not them. Maybe she would recognize the bartender even though she had never met him.

“Nothing it is, then,” the bartender said.

He shook hands again with Sunshine and Brown, put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed, then got in his car and drove off north.

“Okay,” Brown said, and “Okay,” Sunshine said, when we were in the car.

“Okay,” I said too. Because we all knew what we were saying. The conversation that was happening among us, the miles back to their house, was happening below the surface. Wordless Conversations for $400. He’s a good guy, Clara, he’s a good, good guy. That feeling went around and around the car, from me in the driver’s seat to Brown riding shotgun, his arm stretched back to hold hands with Sunshine in the backseat. And this, too, the feeling that Sometimes it’s simple. Sometimes it’s not complicated at all.





* * *





It was the bartender’s first visit. We walked in to find her at the juice station, turned sideways, her walker leaning against the wall. She held a Dixie cup beneath the apple juice spigot, then moved it mid-splash to the cranberry juice spigot. Drops of juice splashed onto the tray beneath.

“Hey, Ma,” I said.

She turned, again mid-splash, and examined me. Brown-red juice sloshed in the tiny cup in her hand.

“Orange juice,” she said.

“You want some?”

She nodded. I moved to help her but the bartender was quicker. He slid another paper cup off the upside-down stack and then moved around her to the orange juice dispenser, which was separate and next to the ice chest.

“Here you go,” he said.

She took the cup and drank it down in one go and held it out to him again.

“More?”

She nodded. He filled it, she drank it, while Sunshine and Brown and I watched.

“It’s like community theater,” Brown whispered.

“More like improv,” Sunshine said.

My mother handed the empty cup back to the bartender and shook her head when he held it up inquiringly.

“How do I know you?” she said.

“I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

“He’s my bartender,” I said.

She nodded and flapped her arm in the direction of the Green Room. “The knothole?”

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He held out his arm and she took it as if he were her squaredance partner and they were about to do-si-do. Down the hall we went, with them leading the way.

“How do I know you?”

“I’m your daughter’s bartender.”

No answer. Maybe it was one of the nights she didn’t remember she had a daughter. Then she spoke.

“My daughter hates beer.”

“She does!” Brown said, exclamation marks in his voice because she was there, she was tracking the conversation. “Who in their right mind hates beer?”

“She’s always hated it,” Sunshine said. “Remember when we used to make her drink it, freshman year?”

“It was good for her. She needed loosening up.”

“We used to make her play pool too.”

“Also good for her. Even if she could never remember the rules. Who forgets how to play pool one week to the next?”

“The same kind of person who plays piano every single night of her life for four years and then leaves it behind,” Brown said. “That’s who.”

The bartender turned around. Tamar still had hold of his arm and they were inching toward the Green Room. “She didn’t leave it behind,” he said.

Brown opened his mouth as if he were about to argue, then closed it. Sunshine, pushing the walker down the hall so that Tamar would have it nearby when she needed it, smiled. Maybe they said nothing because the bartender was still new-ish and they wanted to be polite. Maybe they said nothing because it would be too confusing for Tamar. Maybe they said nothing because they heard something true in the bartender’s words and thought, He’s right.





* * *





Lumber Days had come upon Old Forge, and Sunshine and Brown and the bartender and I were wandering the streets. Early December, pre-Christmas in the northland, and all the shops and bars and restaurants were lumber-themed. Birdhouses that looked like Lincoln Log cabins, bird feeders carved out of a single length of birch, Christmas tree ornaments in the shape of pine trees, rough-hewn bears chainsawed out of oak for two hundred dollars, extra if you wanted your name burned onto their bellies.

“Look, Winter,” Brown said. “A chainsaw bear for only two Words by Winters. Doesn’t every porch deserve a chainsaw bear?”

“Too gifty,” I said. “Just like everything else about Lumber Days. I like the Woodsmen’s Field Days better.”

“Of course you do,” Sunshine said. “You’ve always been a sucker for a handsome lumberjack.”