Lost Art of Mixing (9781101609187) (22 page)

And then he remembered—his wedding, after the ceremony, at the reception. He had been talking to his father, when he saw his mother across the room. She'd left her second husband by that point—he was as boring as Al had always thought, apparently—and she had come to the wedding alone. She looked so uncertain standing by herself, but Al couldn't get away from the conversation he was in. And then Louise walked up to his mother and asked her to dance.

Al remembered the way the other guests stared at the two women out on the dance floor, but what he remembered more was the smile on his mother's face. He hadn't thought about that in a long time. Funny, how he could recall his mother's expression better than he could remember the woman his wife had been.

There was a time, in the beginning of their marriage, when he and Louise told each other their thoughts. Over dinner, Louise would listen, fascinated by the tales of love and deception and sacrifice he gleaned from his clients' financial information. He ignored any qualms about confidentiality, returning from his day at the office bearing stories like a hunter-gatherer, until somewhere along the line it all changed and the only plot point Louise cared about was whether or not the client had paid his invoice.

But in the beginning, Al thought, they had been different. “Had been” being, as Louise had taught him when they were in college, the past-perfect verb tense—a grammatical form you didn't want to linger in too long, as it made a paragraph cumbersome. Besides, Al thought, as a name, the term was usually only half correct.

Once, a few years back, Al had suggested to Louise that they take one of Lillian's cooking classes. He thought about it for a long time before saying anything, worried that her presence in the restaurant might ruin what had become an increasingly important part of his life, but the selfishness of that was too obvious and he asked her, hoping that some of the magic he felt might rub off onto his marriage. What would happen to Louise, he wondered, if she was given the first bite of Lillian's homemade cantaloupe ice cream, or was encouraged to make her own salad dressing from scratch, no necessary ingredients, no right or wrong.

“Don't you like what I cook?” Louise asked, clearly offended, and Al had dropped the subject with a mingled sense of relief and regret.

Somewhere along the line, theirs had become a marriage of covert agents, all the real communication in code. Al knew by the color of the nightgown his wife wore to bed what his chances were of getting lucky that night. If he saw his place at the dinner table set with a fork but no napkin, his mind would search back through the day to find where he had offended; if his laundry was folded in sharp creases, he understood the explanation was coming soon; if it was left in the basket, it would take a few days longer.

Some days, Louise would call at the office and ask him to pick up milk, or stamps, or toothpaste, any of the items two blocks out of her way on errands she was going to do anyway. He knew what she actually wanted—his clients often did the same thing, asking him for information they could easily find on the Internet or in documentation he had already supplied. Their calls almost always came after the receipt of an invoice, or when their tax estimate was higher than anticipated. A need for service, a balancing of life's perceived inequities. He responded to his clients—he wouldn't last long in his business if he didn't—but after a while, when it came to Louise, a certain obstinacy rose up in him.

He could see that it would do him no good simply to refuse her requests, or to point out the illogical nature of them. So he would claim to have forgotten when she asked, blaming the busyness of his day, his general lack of memory, hiding under a cloak of befuddlement. Every fourth request, or fifth, when he could feel the balance between his sense of self and her disdain shifting into a danger zone, he did the task she required and the scales recalibrated, a little less even each time.

The irony was that he actually enjoyed going to the grocery store, the feeling of a cold half-gallon of milk in his hands; when Louise had been out of town visiting her mother, he had gone shopping for food every day after work, just for the fun of walking down the aisles and choosing between the selections. What grated on him about Louise's requests was how minor they were, the very smallness of them just another way of telling him he was unnecessary, as if everything else he did during the day was worth nothing if this was all he could be trusted to do.

And that was it, he realized. That was the worst thing.

The mower caught on a stick in the grass and it snapped, shooting out pieces to either side. Al jumped back, and then looked, almost equally surprised, at the lawn in front of him. The lines rolled out, neat and even. The job was done.

Not without effort, however. Al could feel the sweat running down the back of his shirt. He returned the lawn mower to the garage and went upstairs to take a shower. In his bedroom, he passed his dresser and saw Louise's note. He had placed it there the night she left and somehow never moved it; he saw it every morning when he got up and every night before he went to bed. In an odd way, he realized now, it was a bit like having a wife.

Al paused, looked in the direction of the shower, and then picked up the note, stuck it in his back pocket, and went downstairs. In the kitchen, he poured himself a large glass of red wine and walked into the beige-carpeted living room, where food and beverages were strictly prohibited. As he approached the love seat, his toe caught on the edge of the coffee table and the wine slopped over the rim of the glass and down onto the creamy-white fabric.

He stopped, horrified. He turned his head to the right, to the left, listening. Silence.

Al stared at the love seat for a long moment. Its sleek arms that would never be wide enough to hold a glass, the slightly curved back that seemed to promise a soft landing but never did. The sweet little wooden feet that always snagged his toes if the coffee table hadn't done it first. With a small shrug, he took his wineglass and tilted it, spilling its dark red contents in a long, sinuous line down the length of the cushions.

It was a deeply unattractive stain; someone who didn't know better might suspect a murder and start looking for dead bodies. Al went to the far end of the love seat and shoved, using the same muscles he had just employed with the lawn mower, pushing the love seat across the carpet and then down the wooden hallway, leaving thin white scratches behind him in the cherry flooring. When he got to the front door, he grabbed the base of one end and hoisted it skyward. It just fit in the frame of the door. Louise had been right that it was the correct size for their house, after all.

Al jammed his shoulder against the underside of the love seat, propelling it forward along its curved back and down the porch stairs. It landed vertical again at the bottom. Another shove and the process was repeated, down the walk, end over end, the love seat picking up speed like a hay bale until it reached the curb, where its trajectory ended with a final, ignominious thump.

Al stood back, considering the scene in front of him with satisfaction. The love seat was a bit worse for wear; there was a line of dirt running along the top, and one of the wooden feet sported a white patch of paint where it had scraped against the door frame. He kind of liked it.

He positioned the love seat on the parking strip facing the street. Then he went back into the house, got a new glass of red wine, and returned, flopping down on the seat. He sat, still breathing a bit heavily, sweat dripping down his temples, through his shirt and onto the fabric of the couch, the euphoria of destruction simmering in his veins. He could feel years of anger leaving his body one tired muscle at a time. It was wonderful. He leaned back, throwing his arm over the top of the love seat, and the note crinkled in his pocket.

Louise's note—his paper wife. He thought of the real Louise, smashing her way through their house. The anger she must have had to do that. Funny, how after all those years, this was what they finally had in common. He took a long sip of wine.

Al knew that most people assumed the end of his marriage happened the night of Isabelle's party. But sitting there on the love seat, he realized that it probably began ending right at the beginning—that day in the cafeteria when he first met Louise. He had seen a girl with a sandwich in her hand and fallen in love with the part of her that made sense to him, that fit the particular story he knew how to read. That was the woman he had lived with for over thirty years.

But the woman who could smash lightbulbs? He hadn't known she existed—and yet he understood now that she must have been there all the time, hidden by the blinkers of his own vision. He had seen the bite out of the sandwich and missed the elbows on the table. It was, perhaps, as simple and complicated as that. It made him ponder what she had missed about him—what, in fact, he might have missed about himself.

Down the street, he saw a figure approaching, a man in jeans and a sweatshirt, with one of those lumpy marsupial carriers they used to transport babies these days. Tom, Al realized. He worried for a moment what Tom might think about the whole love-seat-on-the-curb thing, but when Al saw Tom's face, he could tell the only thing the man was thinking about was sleep.

“Al,” Tom said, as he approached.

“How are you doing?”

“She likes to be walked,” Tom replied, sitting down next to Al, oblivious to the stain on the seat, careful only not to wake the sleeping baby. “Lillian asked me to give her a go around the block. And then Clem here fell asleep so we just kept going.”

Al handed Tom his glass of wine.

“Nice,” Tom said. He drained it slowly and gratefully.

“How's fatherhood?”

“I've never been so tired. But, you know . . .” He paused and looked down at the baby, love falling across his face.

Al nodded, even though he knew he didn't.

“You know,” Tom said after a moment, glancing sideways at Al, “I mean, it's a lot to ask, but we could really use some help.”

“I think we just might need some more wine,” Al said quickly, and headed to the kitchen, hiding his grin.

He came back with the bottle and a second glass, and the two men sat side by side on the love seat, gazing out at the neighborhood, listening to the baby snuffle in her sleep. After a while, Nancy drove down the street in her gray Passat station wagon; as she passed, she slowed the car and waved, a bit uncertainly. Al and Tom raised their glasses, over the head of the sleeping baby.

L
ouise walked down the main street of the tiny coastal town. Calling it “main” was probably an overstatement, she thought, as there was really only one street, leading from the narrow highway to the ocean itself. The roads that branched off, a block or two at most, held the houses of the few year-round residents and the summer cottages of the more affluent. A quiet place, generally. It had felt like home the minute she turned off the highway five months ago, Al's blue Cadillac sputtering into a prima donna refusal to go one more mile after the seven-hour drive down I-5, across the valleys of Oregon to the coast.

She had wanted to reach the ocean. She'd heard that the coastline was jagged and windswept, with rogue waves that could reach out of the ocean and grab an unsuspecting sightseer. What she found was a small town with a string of brown-shingled buildings, none of them substantial, and yet, strung together like that, they somehow felt solid, ready to hold out against waves of water or weather or tourists.

The car had died at five-thirty on that Saturday morning back in March, bucking to a stop in front of the only lit commercial building in town—Joe's Bakery. According to Joe, who sat her on a stool and gave her coffee and warm bread even though he wasn't open yet, the closest mechanic was fifty miles away but, more to the point, was still on his winter sojourn in Mexico and wouldn't be back for two weeks. Towing the car was impossible in any case; when she got out her AAA card, she realized it was expired, which was when she remembered putting the renewal notice on the top of Al's to-do pile a few months back. And of course, no one was going to believe that she had suddenly become inspired to pay her AAA invoice at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, only to call back later with a story about amazing coincidences. So that was that. She had grabbed money when she left, but not enough to cover a big tow job and still have any left to—to what? she wondered. Have a vacation? Start a life? What was she doing, anyway?

Louise looked down and was surprised to see the piece of bread that Joe had given her was already gone. Joe looked over and grinned. He was a wiry man, probably sixty years old, with forearms solid as tree branches and a dusting of white hair across the top of his head.

“Want another slice?” he asked. She nodded. The last thing she'd eaten was the apple she'd brought along when she went to stake out Isabelle's house. While she was driving, she hadn't thought of being hungry, her mind so loud she couldn't hear her stomach. But now, she was starving.

“So, what are you going to do?” Joe asked.

What she was going to do, apparently, was get a job working the lunch shift at Joe's pizza parlor next door. The kid he had hired in preparation for the summer tourist season had figured out that the surf was better and warmer in California. Joe didn't care that Louise's pizza experience was nonexistent. That afternoon, he set her up at the industrial dough machine, adding in flour and water as the mixing blade revolved around a bowl big enough that Louise could have put a beach's worth of sand in it. He taught her how to crank open the giant cans of whole tomatoes and then crush them, adding roasted garlic and oregano. How to use the back of a soup ladle to spread the thick red sauce across the smooth surface of the dough, following it with handfuls of grated cheese and all the toppings the customers could think of. She learned the quick thrust and jerk with the wooden peel, sliding the pizza onto the hot floor of the wood-fired oven. It felt good.

During the next few months, she got her first oven burn. A small rental house. An air-dry haircut. And, in the last stretch of calm before the tourists descended, the best sex of her life, back in the prep area of the kitchen, with Joe, who, as she might have guessed, had very good hands.

As time went on, she wondered sometimes about Al. She wondered if he had fixed the taillight on her car, if he'd gotten a house-cleaner. She was surprised at how little she missed him, and how rarely he entered her thoughts. She wondered if it had always been like that or had only become so over time. If somehow she could have changed the balance, if she, or they, had tried.

But in the end, she had no desire to find out. Every evening after work, she would walk out of the pizza parlor and hear the waves landing on the beach nearby. She'd go home and take a shower, and then, hair still wet, gin and tonic in hand, she would wander out onto the sand and watch the sun moving slowly toward the end of its day, lighting the people who strolled along the beach. At first, their arms would be at their sides or clutched across their chests, protection against the cooling air, but as they made their way down the endless expanse of the beach, they would slowly but surely raise them until it almost looked as if they were flying.

•   •   •

BY OCTOBER,
the summer residents had gone, reassembling their city selves even as they packed their cars, remembering their need for brand-labeled cappuccinos and dry cleaners and dinner reservations, relegating to nostalgia the joy of a slice of sloppy pizza, the feeling of suntanned skin letting off the heat of the day, warming the sheets at night.

Louise walked down the quiet street, on her break between making dough and chopping pizza toppings. It was her fifty-second birthday, but she couldn't complain about her age to Joe, who would just laugh and call her a spring chicken. It was her birthday, though, and she decided she deserved a present, so she stopped in the bookstore. Amy, who owned it, had called to tell her that the Agatha Christie novel she asked about had come in.

The bookstore was small and elegant, its books carefully chosen to appeal to both the casual tourist and those who stayed through the long and stormy winters. A mix of bright and subtle covers, rough-edged pages and slippery paperbacks. A flurry of handwritten notes hung from the bottom of the shelves, offering recommendations and brief synopses, inviting hands to open the books above.

When Louise entered the store, Amy was already helping another customer, so Louise wandered off to look at the books. While she was browsing, a somewhat portly man with curling white hair and a black fedora entered the store and made his way to the front desk. He said something to Amy, who nodded with delight and retrieved a small stack of two books. The man took out a pen and started to write on the title page of each book, the other customer watching with barely contained excitement.

After the man and the other customer left, Louise walked over. Amy reached under the counter to take the Agatha Christie novel from its holding place.

“Here's your book,” she said. “I can't believe there's one of hers you haven't read.”

Louise got out her wallet to pay.

“No way,” Amy said. “It's your birthday.”

“How did you know?”

“Joe. Remember, you filled out an application to work for him. We all know your age now.”

“Who was that guy, by the way?” Louise asked, deflecting the amusement in Amy's eyes. “The one with the fedora?”

“Oh—that was an author.”

“Do you know him?”

“No, I've never seen him before; he just walked in and offered to autograph his books. Kind of thrilling, isn't it?”

•   •   •

AGATHA CHRISTIE NOVEL
in hand, Louise headed in the direction of her rental house. She could see the beach at the end of the street, knew before her feet ever touched the sand the way it would stretch out in front of her, the sky a great, wide arc reaching down to touch the water. She swung her arms as she walked, feeling the weight of the book shift forward and back. She thought about the man she had seen in the store, the way Amy and the other customer had watched him as he signed the books. No one had ever asked him for identification, Louise realized.

The author could have been anyone, really.

“Huh,” Louise said, and smiled.

•   •   •

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