“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.”
“Don’t make the bartender feel bad, Sunshine,” Brown said.
“Oh, I’m sure the bartender knows his way around a piece of wood,” Sunshine said, and then blushed. “Oops. Sorry, bartender.”
Adirondack Hardware had set up a Lumber Days photo booth inside their store, next to a display of decorated fake Christmas trees, before which Brown stood shaking his head, muttering about plastic trees made in China, for sale right here in the Adirondacks, what was the world coming to, it was like a silent insurgency, a dagger in the heart of the tree farm industry, and here on Lumber Days weekend, for God’s sake.
“Let’s dress up in period lumberjack costume and get our photos taken in the photo booth,” Sunshine said. She was a sucker for period costume, British, especially—Merchant-Ivory films, movie adaptations of Jane Austen novels—but she would settle for Americana if she had to. Pioneers, Old Sturbridge Village, covered wagons, the hallowed days of Adirondack guides and the estates they served. A trunk next to the booth spilled over with homespun long dresses, breeches and vests and waistcoats and fake mustaches and large lace-trimmed hats. A mishmash of generalized pioneer-ish finery. I pulled on a linsey-woolsey apron.
“Check out my linsey-woolsey,” I said.
“You only put that on because you wanted to say the words ‘linsey-woolsey,’” Brown said. “Admit it.”
It was true. Linsey-woolsey. Said often enough, it blended together into the exact sound and feel of the material it was named for. Coarse and strong. Built to last. Linsey-woolsey, linsey-woolsey, linsey-woolsey. Linsey-woolsey could be a girl’s name, a proper name that appeared on a birth certificate but from which the woolsey was left off in real life, leaving Linsey to stand alone. Linsey. A pretty name. A name that reminded me of the gauzy white embroidered shirt my mother used to be so fond of, the shirt she was wearing in the photo we had christened The Mystery.
The bartender put on a fringed buckskin vest, jammed a Stetson on his head and held his arm out to me. There was only one stool in the photo booth, so I sat on it and he stood behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. The photo countdown began to flash.
“Look straight into the mirror and look stern,” I said. “Like an old-school lumberjack thug.”
We simultaneously frowned at the mirror. My hands suddenly looked un-lumberjack-like, too smooth, too unworn. I looked for linsey-woolsey pockets to jam them into, but then the flash went off and I had missed the first photo. I stuck my unworn hands behind my back but the bartender was standing there. The next flash went off. I sat on my hands for the third, which wasn’t right either, and finally the bartender pulled me up off the stool and wrapped his arms around me. “Think thug,” he said, and the fourth flash went off.
We took off our period costumes and waited for the photo strip to emerge into the metal cage. Sunshine and Brown were arguing over who should get to wear the buckskin vest next. Brown claimed it was an outer garment suitable for males only.
“I don’t disagree,” Sunshine said, “but the fact is, I would look cute in that vest. Plus, I’m a cancer survivor.”
“Let’s do survivor smiles in our photos,” Brown said.
“Only if I get to wear the vest.”
The photo booth plunked out our photos and the bartender and I studied them.
“These are terrible,” I said. “Look at me.”
“These are great,” the bartender said. “Look at you.”
Every photo of me was disarray: me frowning at my hands, me hiding my hands, me blurry mid-turn, me swallowed up by the bartender’s arms.