A father and his two daughters were now waiting behind the bartender. The smaller daughter snatched a copy of The Old Man out of the older daughter’s hands. The older daughter snatched it back. It was a grim and silent battle. The bartender moved aside to make room, but first he put his hand on the stack of books.
“When are you coming back to the bar?”
It was a question, not a statement, but it didn’t feel like one. The bartender’s hand was quiet on the stack of books. He waited for me to say something and he would keep waiting. The battling sisters sensed his power and stopped battling. They and their father waited for my answer.
“When’s a good time?”
“Anytime’s a good time.”
“Sometime, then. Sometime I will return to the bar.”
“Time” words kept coming out of our mouths, words emerging from the word assembly line within. Part of me liked talking like that because it was fun, and fun was in short supply. And part of me felt guilty talking like that because of the heavy curtain behind the light words, the heavy velvet curtain of My mother is disappearing. The bartender smiled. He couldn’t see the curtain, moth-eaten and dusty, hanging limply on the dark stage. His hand lifted off the stack of books and he was gone, past the pickles and jams, past the vintage Adirondack posters, past the hardware ladies, both of whom smiled at him.
“Is that your boyfriend?” the smaller sister said.
“That’s my bartender,” I said.
She nodded gravely, as if I had just told her a secret. Then she pushed the book toward me, her finger pointing at the title page. “Can you write my name in here?”
“Mine too,” the bigger sister said. “My name too. It’s not just your book, you know. It belongs to both of us.”
“Tell you what,” I said, and I lifted a new copy off the stack. “I’m going to give you girls another one. My treat. Then you’ll each have your own.”
The father opened his mouth, invisible waves of protest beginning to ripple outward from him, but I didn’t look at him and he stayed quiet. Sometimes you need something that’s only yours, was the thought that I telegraphed back to him, something that belongs to you and you alone.
The small sister clapped her book shut and clutched it to her chest and jumped up and down, as if she had just won a contest. The older sister took the copy I gave her and frowned, as if something serious had just happened.
* * *
That night, Sunshine and Brown and I sat across from each other at their table, the giant table that would never fit in the tiny cabin. I had brought us each a Tree Hugger sandwich from the deli at DiOrio’s.
“What’s going on with you?” Brown said to me. “There’s something weird about you. Even for a self-admitted weirdo.”
“Excuse me? Semi-weirdo.”
“You’re right, Brown,” Sunshine said, as if I weren’t sitting there. “The word isn’t weird, though. It’s happy. Or happy-ish.”
I looked down at the table, searching for the scorch mark, intent on finding the scorch mark and focusing on it instead of feeling happy, even happy-ish, given the situation with my mother.
There it was. Down the table. Hello, scorch mark. Give me the strength not to feel happy.
This table had been with them ever since they moved in together, back in Boston. Neither of them had any furniture and we were driving around on garbage night to furnish their new apartment. Curbside. That was our term for everything we found set out in alleys and in front of houses and apartment buildings the night before garbage pickup. We knew all the different garbage days for all the different neighborhoods. We preferred wealthy neighborhoods for the quality of their castoffs.
The day we found the table it was I who spotted it, one corner and one leg poking out from behind a Dumpster in Back Bay. “Pay dirt!” I shouted. “Hold up, driver!” All the windows were open and I stuck my head out for a better look as Sunshine backed the borrowed pickup down the alley.
“Now this, my friends, is what we call a table,” Brown said, once we were all out of the truck and standing by the Dumpster.
“This is a table for the ages,” Sunshine said.
“This is a table that I am personally responsible for spotting,” I said, because once someone has started a chain of rhythmically italicized words you shouldn’t break it, “and because of that I am the winner, and you guys are going to have to have me over for dinner for the rest of our lives.”
“No problem,” Sunshine said, and “Sounds good to me,” Brown said.
The table wouldn’t fit in the bed of the pickup. We angled it so that most of it fit, and Sunshine puttered along Commonwealth Avenue while Brown and I crouched on opposite sides of the behemoth.
“Hold on, Clara!” Brown kept calling. “Hold on for dear life! Dear God, Clara, hold on! Are you holding on, Clara?” and after a while I was laughing so hard that all the holding-on was up to him.
Now I kept my eyes on the scorch mark, focusing on it in order to keep the bartender from appearing in my mind, but he kept appearing anyway. There he was, standing onstage, in front of a ragged velvet curtain, smiling.
“Maybe she’s met a man,” Sunshine said.
“She already has enough men in her life,” Brown said. “Between Jack and Dog, who needs any more men?”
“How sweet. A bottle of whiskey and the ashes of her departed dog.”
“Hello,” I said. “Rudeness.”
I willed the bartender back behind the curtain, and I willed the scorch mark not to fail me, but fail me it did. The bartender kept opening the curtains to poke his head through and smile. I wrapped my arms around myself so that the thin dark wire, invisible under my shirt, would hold me together. It had been seven years since I got that tattoo and I knew exactly where to put my hands and how to crook one forearm into the other so that the beginning of the wire would meet the end of the wire. It was a technique of last resort.
“Sunshine, she’s doing the wire thing again. She’s holding herself together with ink.”
“I see that, Brown. But why? What’s she holding in?”
“Rudeness times two,” I said again. “Rudeness squared. Speaking of someone in the third person when she’s right here. Demerit.”
“There it is again!” Brown said. “I swear to God she sounds happy-ish.”
I clutched each arm with the other but the laughter was coming on strong, and “Screw you both,” I said. “I met someone, okay? This guy.”
“Whoa!” Brown said. “Did you hear that? Has she ever told us she met someone?”
“Nope. But here she is. Look at her, smiling.”
“Where could she possibly have met this guy? What do you think his favorite color is? Do you think he’s an eggs man or a cereal man?”
“Is he a boob man or a butt man? Or a mostly-neither man, given Winter’s physical configuration?”
“I bet he’s a lumberjack. You know she’s always had a thing for lumberjacks.”
“Hellooooo,” I said. “Still right here.”
“Oh,” Brown said. “What do you know? She’s right here. So where’d you meet this guy? Did you go to a party and not tell us?”
I shook my head. “A bar. He’s a bartender.”