The Northwoods Chronicles (22 page)

She successfully ignored Margie’s scorn with
head held high as she scanned those assembled. At a table for two,
over by the window, a man in a ball cap was sitting by himself. He
had his coffee and some kind of a tabloid newspaper, which meant
his breakfast hadn’t arrived yet. Mrs. Teacher made a beeline.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, putting a hand
on the empty chair opposite him. “May I join you?”

He wasn’t a local; at least Mrs. Teacher had
never seen him before.

He looked around as if prepared to see that the
restaurant was packed; that there was no place else for this woman
to sit except at his table, but that was not the case. “Sure,” he
said, then returned to his paper, then put it down, then picked it
up, then finally folded it and set it next to his silverware.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Teacher said. She held out her
hand. “I’m Emily Teacher. I so dislike eating alone. Especially on
Easter.”

“Fred Kramer,” he said, shaking her hand. “Is it
Easter?”

She nodded. “Have you ordered yet?”

Just then, Margie came with his ham and eggs.
“What can I get for you, Emily?”

“Oatmeal and tea, please,” Mrs. Teacher said
without looking up. Margie whirled and was gone.

“I don’t recall seeing your face before,” Mrs.
Teacher said.

“I’m just up checking on my brother’s place,”
Fred said, and dug into his breakfast.

“Please go ahead,” Mrs. Teacher said,
disappointed in his manners. “Who’s your brother?”

“Tom Kramer,” Fred said behind a mouthful of
eggs.

“I see your parents weren’t much with names,”
she said.

He stopped chewing and squinted at her for a
moment, then washed down his mouthful with a swig of coffee, white
with cream.

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a friggin’ brain surgeon,” he said.

She laughed. “Me, too!”

He scowled. “Actually, I work for a concrete
sawing company down in Moline.”

“Actually,” she said, “I’m a retired switchboard
operator. I live here all year round.”

“Through the winter?”

“Yes,” she said with a little pride. She knew
not too many people lived in the northwoods year round, and almost
all of those who did were young, hardy outdoorsmen. “It takes a
little planning, is all. That’s why we love spring so much.”

“Huh,” he said, and went back to his
breakfast.

“So will you be in town for a long time?”

He shook his head, and then swallowed. “Just the
weekend. My brother and his family will be up in a couple of
weeks.” His eyes kept straying toward his newspaper.

Margie brought Mrs. Teacher’s oatmeal and tea at
the same time she brought Fred Kramer’s check. He stood up
immediately, put two dollars on the table, and smiled down at her.
“Have a nice day,” he said.

My ass,
she thought. She waited until he
was out of the parking lot, and then disappointment weighing her
down, she paid for her oatmeal and went home to her lonely
house.

She didn’t want romance, she just wanted someone
to talk with. She would have been desperately happy for the rest of
the day if Fred Kramer had only asked her a question about herself.
Shown a smidgen of interest. Or if they had made some kind of a
human connection. Couldn’t he see how starved she was?

She threw her keys into the bowl on the table by
the door and, without taking off her coat, sank down onto her
overstuffed chintz chair. Everybody thought she was out husband
hunting, but that was not it, and if anybody ever took the time to
ask her, she’d tell them. “I just want someone to talk to,” she
said out loud. “Someone to do for. Some to laugh at David
Letterman’s show with.” And then the tears came again, and ran
mascara rivulets down her powdered cheeks. She was glad Henry
wasn’t peeking in the windows to see what had become of her. She
was a disgrace. Starving and ashamed of it.

Eventually, she slid out of her coat, and then
out of her clothes, leaving them in a puddle on the floor, and
climbed back into bed, pearl earrings and necklace still in place.
She didn’t care.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, a call to the
bathroom roused her, and as she walked through the living room, it
struck her. “There’s no room for a man in this house,” she said.
Over the course of the ten years since Henry’s death, she had
feminized the place and filled it up with fancy crap. A man needed
to be comfortable. A man needed a recliner and a remote control. If
she bought one, maybe a man would come to fill the space.

Maybe a man like Yul Brynner.

~~~

Yul Brynner had been the man of Emily Teacher’s
dreams since she saw him in
The King and I
when she was
still a girl with youthful lusts. She liked a bald head on a man.
Some men wore them better than others, but she had always found it
to be an attractive look.

She put on the kettle, took off the pearls, and
got to work, filling boxes with candy dishes, figurines, glass
animals, and trinkets. She rearranged a few things in the living
room and made a pile in the spare bedroom for the Goodwill. Then
she got out the JCPenney catalog and made a phone call.

The delivery truck came before the neighbors
arrived for the season, so she didn’t have any explaining to do.
The men carried in the big leather recliner and the large-screen
television set, then installed the dish on her roof and ran all the
wires. She rushed around fussing after them, but they had no time
to talk with her, either, and they declined her offers of tea and
cookies. They just made man conversation between them, while Mrs.
Teacher luxuriated in the smell of men in her home.

When they left, she was surprised to discover
that she was not at all inclined to turn the television on. She
knew she got lots and lots of stations, especially sports, but she
had been so used to just the two stations, one of them snowy, that
she didn’t even know what was on to watch. So she left it dark. A
big, dark, blank presence.

When she went to bed that night, exhausted from
all the unaccustomed activity, she felt a disappointment she was
ashamed to admit, even to herself. Somehow, she had it in her head
that with the leather recliner and big-screen television, she’d get
something else. A new life, maybe.

But no.

She washed her face and got into her nightie and
tried hard to say her prayers, but there weren’t any words for how
she felt inside. She didn’t know what she wanted, so she didn’t
know how to ask. It was a difficult time, but she curled up under
her down comforter that didn’t warm her, and waited for blessed
unconsciousness.

The light woke her. The unmistakable blue light
that comes from even a color television set, even a big-screen
television set, bounced off her open bedroom door and shone right
into her face. For a moment she felt disoriented, then she
remembered the huge television that sat like a monolith in her
living room. There must be some sort of a timing device on it, she
figured, and it had turned itself on.

She got up, pulled her robe over her nightie,
stuck feet into slippers, and wondered if she’d be able to figure
out how to turn it off. She could always pull the plug if there
wasn’t a simple power button on the remote control.

But the television hadn’t turned itself on. Yul
Brynner sat in the leather recliner watching Letterman.

“Did I wake you?” he asked when she came into
the room. “I turned it down.”

“No,” she lied. “I was awake.”

“Oh,” he said, then clicked up the volume.

“Can I get you something?”

“Do you have any popcorn?”

“No, but I can get some in the morning.”

“Okay,” he said, and went back to the
television.

“How about a sandwich?”

“Sure.”

She went to the kitchen and made him a peanut
butter and honey sandwich with raisins and sprinkled cinnamon,
poured a big glass of milk, added two cookies to the plate for fun,
and took it out to him. There was no place to set it, so he put the
plate in his lap, and set the milk on the floor.

“I’ll get some TV trays while I’m out
tomorrow.”

“That’s good, dollface,” he said, and switched
it over to Jay Leno.

She watched him for a time, amazed beyond words,
and then she went back to bed.

~~~

In the morning, the plate and empty glass were
in the sink, the television was off, and there was no sign of Yul.
In spite of herself, she smelled the headrest of the new recliner,
and while it smelled mostly of new leather, she could detect the
presence of aftershave. Old Spice, if she wasn’t mistaken, and
strong enough for her to believe that it wasn’t just a handprint
from the delivery guy. Yul Brynner had been there, had watched her
television, eaten her sandwich, drunk her milk. And he wanted
popcorn. Well, by god, he’d have it.

She dressed and drove all the way to
Wal-Mart.

~~~

By the time she had all her purchases unloaded
and set up, she was exhausted. But the house had been transformed.
A lava lamp sat atop the television; there was a TV tray on each
side of the recliner. She had beer mugs and cold can keepers. She
had beer and pretzels and chips and popcorn and cheese and chili
and hot dogs and salsa and onion dip. She had frozen pizzas and
man-sized bulky sweaters and slippers and fresh towels. She decided
against buying cigarettes, Yul’s history being what it was, and for
the same reason she passed on cigars and pipes. But she bought
lollipops and candy canes. The candy canes had been on sale.

She arranged everything, and then carefully
bathed, powdered, shaved and perfumed, and despite her efforts to
stay awake to welcome him, she fell asleep on the sofa, cozied up
in her afghan.

When she woke, he was there, watching
Letterman.

“Hi,” she said, sleepy-eyed.

He laughed at Letterman’s monologue.

“I got popcorn.”

“Got any cheese and crackers?”

“Sure,” she said, and got up to prepare it. On
the way past him, she couldn’t help herself, but reached down and
touched his shoulder. He was warm. Solid. Muscular. And his head
shone in the light of the television.

She made him a big plate of three different
types of sliced cheese and crackers, and included a cold beer, then
put it all down on the new oak tray table between their chairs.
Then she sat down in hers, pulled the afghan over her lap, and they
laughed at Letterman together.

It was the closest Emily Teacher got to heaven
since Henry had died.

When Letterman signed off, Yul picked up the
remote control, looked at her and said. “Thanks, sweet cheeks.” He
clicked the button. The picture on the screen flashed off, and he
disappeared as well.

Emily rubbed her eyes. She looked at the
decimated tray of food, at the half-gone glass of beer. She looked
at the impression his body had made in the chair, and then she
wrapped the afghan tighter around herself and snuggled up as tiny
as she could.

She was losing her mind.

Loneliness was giving her hallucinations.

~~~

And then as if to prove it, he didn’t come again
for a week. Heartbroken, she let the food spoil in the
refrigerator, and left the cracker box open, so the crackers went
stale. No fool like an old fool she said to herself over and over
again a thousand times a day. She thought about calling her
daughter who lived down in Tampa to come get her and put her in an
old folks’ home.

Yul Brynner. Good lord. What had she been
thinking?

And yet . . . who drank half of that beer? She
hadn’t. She didn’t like beer.

Just as she was about to call the Goodwill to
come and get the television and the recliner, Regina Porter called
and invited her to lunch. Emily knew that Regina called her out of
parish obligation, but she was just as happy to have something to
look forward to, so she accepted, and they met at Margie’s the
following Sunday after service.

“How have you been?” Regina asked.

Mrs. Teacher regarded the odd young woman
sitting across the table from her. She yearned to bare her soul—to
cry and wail and talk about Henry and his passing and how lonely
she was, how that terrible, debilitating loneliness had led her to
accost tourists regularly in Margie’s diner, how she, in her wanton
desperation for companionship, had conjured up a beer-drinking
apparition which couldn’t exactly be a Christian thing.

But Regina would never understand that kind of
loneliness. Regina had her husband and their church. All Mrs.
Teacher had was a new leather recliner and a big-screen TV.

“I’ve been well,” she answered.

“We’ve worried about you,” Regina said. “We’d
like you to come to a potluck now and then. Maybe help out with
Vacation Bible School this summer.”

“Maybe,” Mrs. Teacher said, already wanting to
get home just in case her mysterious visitor decided to pay a day
visit. Yet that was ludicrous. She ought to get involved with local
things, but she never had. She’d had Henry, then she’d taken care
of Henry, then she’d mourned Henry in solitude. And now . . . and
now she had her insanity to keep her company.

“It’s not good to be so alone,” Regina said.
“Trust me on that. Things happen inside your head.”

Mrs. Teacher smiled. “I’m fine, but I appreciate
your concern and will consider your invitation.”

That night, she tried to wait up for Letterman,
but dozed off, and when she awoke, it was to Yul’s hearty laughter
in the chair next to her. She was so grateful she felt like
crying.

She fixed him a snack, and watched while he ate,
strong jaw muscles chewing, sensuous lips smiling, piercing dark
eyes full of humor as he watched television.

When Dave’s musical guest came on, Mrs. Teacher
grabbed the remote and found the mute button. “We have to talk,”
she said.

“Already?” he said. “Usually, I get a year’s
worth before this crap.”