30 Pieces of a Novel (3 page)

At the bus stop he thought, Maybe she'll drive up to it as she did once after a bad argument when he either stormed out of her house with his things because he was livid at her or she was at him and had ordered him to go—one of several times that had happened, his weekend there cut short because one of them wanted it to be or even them both—and say, “Listen, let's talk about this some more”—that's what she said that one time, or something like—“You want to take a drive with me, not to the city but around here, or go for coffee or a drink or come home or something? Let's. But I don't like you leaving like this. It worries me, and your going isn't exactly what I want.” But she didn't this time. Bus came and he got on, and as it pulled away he didn't want to look back to the stop or the street her car would be on if she did drive down, since he knew she wouldn't be there, but he looked and she wasn't there and that day was the last he saw her till about fifteen months later at a Columbus Avenue fair in New York on Columbus Day or one of the weekends before when the avenue was closed to traffic from 65th to 86th and she was walking with some guy she obviously liked, and Gould said hello and she smiled and said hi and introduced him to the guy, who stayed silent though continually looked admiringly at her while they talked for about two minutes, how her daughter and father were and had she started another year teaching school? how his mother and a couple of his friends were and was he still working at Bloomingdale's? and then they said goodbye and he sort of saluted the guy instead of shaking his hand, which he didn't want to do, and they went in opposite directions in the middle of the avenue, he looking back at her a few times and only once seeing her looking back at him, though they were now about half a block apart and she could have been looking at something else in his direction and he just happened to be there.

A GIRL … A
young woman … a college student or someone of that age—when he was in college they were “coeds,” or maybe by then they were no longer called that, but even if they went to an all-girls' school?—comes over to their table and says, “The seater didn't give you menus?” and his older daughter says no, and she says, “I'm sorry, I'll get them in a flash—nobody make a movie,” the last in movie tough-guy voice, and laughs. Funny? The movie remark was clever, though she probably heard it somewhere, most likely on TV or in a movie—but sweet, charming, also pretty … very pretty … beautiful, almost … no, he'd consider her quite beautiful, and with a tall attractive figure—she must be five-nine—and sense of humor and spryness and a very nice smile, and, from what he could quickly see, great teeth: white, bright, evenly lined. Oh, boy, if he were only forty years younger, or thirty-eight years younger or –seven … let's see, she's about nineteen or twenty, he's fifty-eight, so he was right, he's got thirty-seven to forty years on her—and working in this restaurant. What a place to be for the summer. Northern coastal Maine, in the middle of a national forest, cool nights, great views, the rest of it, and excellent facilities for the staff—he spoke about it with one of the servers last year when they came here for lunch or for popovers at the two-to-five tea. Or two-thirty to five. Looks at the menu. The latter. Seemed all the servers were college students, so he asked how they got the job, just in case one of his advisees during the school year asked if he knew of a good place to work in the summer or he wanted to volunteer the information to one of them he particularly liked. “Jordan Pond House,” he'd say—he thinks he even told one but the kid never followed up on it—“in Trenton or Bar Harbor or even Hull's Cove. Just ask Maine phone Information—area code 207—for Acadia National Park and this restaurant there. But good accommodations and food for the staff, I was told, and an unbeatable setting: bubble-shaped mountains, lakes, the forest smells, and the girls”—if it was a male he was saying this to; he thinks it was. “Let me tell you, that's the place I'd go to if I were you. Good-looking, hard-working, and pleasant, and they come from everywhere: France, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and all over the States, and some from what are thought of as the best schools, which probably means intelligent, resourceful, and independent young women paying their own way at college or a good part of it. You know about the schools because each table has a little name card in a holder identifying the server and what school he or she's at.” This one's Sage Ottunburg, but it only says
PALM BEACH, FLORIDA
underneath, so maybe she's out of school or never went to one or the restaurant's stopped listing the schools. He looks at the holder on the next table but can't from here read the name and what's underneath. Maybe the schools aren't listed anymore because some of the non-college kids objected for some reason, or customers, men and women, would later try to locate the server at that school. But would that be any easier—let's say this one goes to a large state school—than finding her in Palm Beach? How many Ottunburgs could be there? If more than one, then probably a relative. So all some guy had to do if he wanted to call her in September, if she leaves here as that server last year told him most of the students do a little before or right after Labor Day, is dial Palm Beach Information, ask for Sage Ottunburg, and if there isn't one listed just ask for any Ottunburg, and if he gets one of her relatives, but not her folks, ask if one of the other Ottunburg numbers is hers. But why's he going on like this? And if some guy did want to meet her, he'd call her here, wouldn't he? Unless he was with his wife or girlfriend or someone; or even if he was: something on the sly. And maybe she goes to school but for one reason or another doesn't want to be categorized by it or doesn't want it listed, or who knows what.

She comes back with the menus. “Take as long as you like,” she says, “there's no rush; this place is too pretty to feel rushed, and it smells so wonderful here”—for they're on the outdoor patio—and takes a deep breath, and he says, “Just what I was thinking, and thank you,” and opens the menu and when she walks away he discreetly looks at her rear end and legs and when she returns for the order he quickly looks at her breasts a few times and tries to imagine what they look like under her shirt. High and young, and it's funny but when he was in his late teens and early twenties he doesn't think he ever thought how beautiful young breasts are. Older women had lower softer ones; young women, if they weren't top-heavy, had high firm ones, and he doesn't even think he thought of the firmness, but that was about the extent of his observations on breasts then, except if they were flat. Though there was an older woman—thirty-six, at the most thirty-eight, so for sure not “old” to him now; in fact, if he were seeing her today he'd consider her young—whom he went with one summer, about a half year before the Washington reporter's job, when he was just out of college and worked as a soda jerk in an upstate resort and she was the stage designer of the theater there. And another who was fifty or so when he slept with her on and off for a year and he was around thirty, and both seemed to have not lower or high breasts or soft or firm, just very big and full ones. So what does he know? Every time he thinks he's on to something, he quickly refutes himself.

They order; she comes back many times: to bring their food, refill their water glasses, see if everything's “satisfactory,” take away his plate, give his wife a free extra popover—she had something called “soup and popovers,” which came with two popovers but the kids split one of them. “How do they make those things, the popovers?” his younger daughter asks Sage, and he says, “Yeah, I've been curious about it too. Do you have a brigade of popover makers back there?” and she says, “You mean humans? No, it's all done by machine—two, actually, and a third that mixes the dough and eggs and stuff, and these big popover machines just keep turning them out all day. From breakfast through dinner,
pop pop pop
, they plop out and we just grab them if we have an order and put them in the already prepared basket with a towel around them to keep them warm.” “They're the best,” his daughter says, and he says, “Well, your mom's made some pretty good ones in that popover pan we always bring up. Did we bring it this year? I haven't seen it,” and his wife says, “I don't know, you're the one who packs the car. I know I reminded you,” and he says, “Oh, darn, I might've forgot,” and his wife says, “No big deal; mine aren't nearly as good as these, and besides, I like them best when we have them here as a treat,” and he says, “Yours are wonderful on a cold night or a foggy afternoon with guests when no one wants to go out, and it's something the kids like helping out with,” and his older daughter says, “When did we ever do that?” and Sage says, “That's how I like them best too—as a special treat. Here, I think I've overindulged on them, not that we're allowed to have all we want … but you know, if a customer doesn't eat one and you're very hungry, because you build up an appetite running around in this job,” and he says, “I can't imagine someone not eating his second popover unless one of the diners with him swiped it. But that reminds me—but you're probably too busy, you wouldn't want to hear it,” and his older daughter says, “What?” and Sage says, “It's true, I've some orders in the kitchen waiting, and all with popovers, if you can believe it, excuse me,” and goes, and his older daughter says, “What were you going to say that reminded you, Daddy?” and he says, “Oh! When I worked as a soda jerk, or fountain man as I was also called, in a resort in New York, I got so sick of eating ice cream, or maybe not so much from eating it as from dealing with it, that's the reason I don't like it today,” and his wife says, “Everyone likes ice cream; one has to be scarred by it to develop an aversion to it. For you it was the cigarette butts and other filth in it on the plates coming back to you, but you should finish your own story,” and he says, “Your mother's right. You see, I had no customers of my own, just made all the concoctions from the orders the waitresses gave me. And then they handed me their dirty dishes to stick through a window to the dishwasher behind me. And they looked so ugly with all the things the customers had done to their ice cream, the butts and stuff, sometimes stuck standing up on top of the sundae where the decorative cherry had been, that I got sick of it, ice cream melting all over and around this—well, excuse me, but this shit, and that's why I hate it today,” and his wife says, “At this place you always help yourself to a spoonful or two of ice cream, so you can't hate it entirely,” and he says, “At this place they always have at least one very unusual exotic flavor, which we always get unless it's with peanut butter, and they make the ice cream themselves, so I'm curious,” and his daughter says, “Oh, yeah,” and he says, “Yeah, I'm curious, as to how, let's say, peppermint raspberry sage might taste. Not ‘sage,' that's just because it's our waitress's name, but you know what I mean.”

He likes everything about her. He's tried to find a profile or some part of her he could dislike, a bump on the nose, for instance, or not find faultless, but it's all faultless: nose, lips, eyes, hair, teeth, legs, arms, fingers, nails (no crap on them and not choppy or uneven), breasts, hips, stomach from what he can make out, waist, rear … the name, though: Sage. Not faultless. Speaks well, big bright smile, pleasant personality, chipper, friendly, though no fake, doesn't give them the bum's rush, as his dad used to say—she has other tables, is obviously busy, yet stops to talk, listen, suggest, answer the kids' questions generously, laughs a lot but not heehaw-like … it would be nice, moonlight, cool night, the whole works, just a comfortable unsticky night, the air—smell of it, he means; sounds of the insects—not the biting of insects, though; so you slap on some repellent—even the scent of that on her; especially that scent, perhaps—walking with her, that's what he's saying would be nice: after work, around the grounds, in town for a movie, whatever the town: Southwest or Northeast or Bar Harbor, or for pizza and beers anywhere, back to the rooms they stay at on the property, but now he remembers that server last year saying the staff quarters were a short walk off; sneaking into her room if you have to sneak to do it—the restaurant management might have some proscriptions about this. Doubts it, or not enforced; keep the help happy and wanting to stay past Labor Day. Holding her hand outside, kissing her outside, furtively brushing against her at work: “Need any help filling those water pitchers?” Holding and kissing and with no constraint brushing and touching every part of her inside the room or at some hidden spot in the woods. Falling in love, swimming at Long Pond or Echo Lake or some other warmwater place he doesn't now know of on the island here. Just imagine her in a bathing suit: lying on her stomach on the sand reading, turning to the sun or him with her top off in a cove it seems only they go to, running into the cold water with him at Sand Beach on their day off if they get them on the same day. Forgot to ask the server last year if they get days off, but it's probably a law that a full-time worker has to, once a week at least, and after a while he bets you can switch around your days off to where you and your girlfriend get them together.

“What are you looking at?” his wife says, and he knows she's caught him staring at Sage passing their table and means, Why are you looking at that girl so openly? and he says, “Oh, our waitress? It's just she reminds me of someone and I can't figure out who,” and she says, “The girl of your dreams,” and he says, “You're that girl, or were when I first saw you, and still are the woman of my dreams, day and night and during catnaps, now that we're married and so on … but yes, sure, if I were younger? Oh, boy, you bet. I'm saying if I were working here when I was twenty or so, still in college, feet free and fool loose, hormones up to my ears, and you were working here too … that's what I was mainly thinking of before: how come I didn't meet you when I most urgently needed to and not so much when—no, this isn't true, but I'll say it all the same—my companionable and genital exigencies, we'll say, didn't have to be so imperially attended to? No, that didn't come out right,” and she says, “If you were twenty, I'd be nine, and I think that sort of behavior's not only prohibited here but may even be frowned upon,” and he says, “But you know what I mean,” and she says, “I think I do, and I think I appreciate some of your thoughts too, but I also think you are”—and this very low—“a liar,” and he says, “Me? Mr. Honesty?” and his older daughter says, “What are you talking of, you two, and why are you calling Daddy a liar?” and he says, “Your mother whispered that, which means even if you heard you're not supposed to give any sign you did and certainly no words,” and his daughter says, “But why did she?” and he says, “Youth, youth,
wunderbar
youth, don't lose it, enjoy it, employ it, but don't destroy it—something.” “What's that mean?” his daughter says, and he says, “Nothing, everything, some of what's in the in-between … I'm in my confusing Confucian period right now”—stroking an imaginary long wisp of chin beard—“and also don't flaunt it, I should've added,” and his wife says to her, “First of all, don't mistake Confucianism with confusion, indirectness, and unintelligibility. Your father was only admiring our waitress, Sage. Or not admiring her as much as trying to recall a young woman he knew many years ago who looked like her,” and his daughter says to him, “Do you think she's pretty? I do,” and he says, “Very pretty, and she's very nice. One day, you know, you could get a job here … in who knows how long, nine years? Eight? Then I could come here and be reminded of another very pretty girl I once knew: you at eleven,” and she says, “I wouldn't want to work all day waitressing,” and he says, “Why not? You'd earn money for college, travel, and clothes, and you'd make lots of friends and have this entire national park to live in,” and she says, “They live here?” and he says, “Yeah, I learned this from one of our waitresses last year: in dorms or their own rooms or ones they might have to share with another girl,” and she says, “Then I'd like it. I love it here, so clean and fresh and everything. But I'd hate getting sick of popovers. And if it's the same thing that happened to you with ice cream, then for life,” and he says, “Ice cream's different from popovers. And I'm sure, in a place like this, so fresh and clean as you said, customers don't stick cigarette butts in them.”