A Place We Knew Well
Read A Place We Knew Well Online
Authors: Susan Carol McCarthy
A Place We Knew Well
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Susan Carol McCarthy
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division a Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
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ANTAM
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OOKS
and the
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OUSE
colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
L
IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS
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ATALOGING-IN-
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UBLICATION
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ATA
McCarthy, Susan Carol.
A place we knew well: a novel / Susan McCarthy.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-0-8041-7654-5 (acid-free paper)
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-7655-2
1. FamiliesâUnited StatesâHistoryâ20th centuryâFiction. 2. Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962âFiction. 3. Life change eventsâFiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C35P58 2015
813'.6âdc23
2014049123
eBook ISBNâ9780804176552
Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for eBook
Cover design: Rachel Ake
Cover photograph: © ILINA SIMEONOVA / Trevillion Images
v4.1_r1
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A
s I wheel right into Dad's driveway, a six-foot chain-link fence jumps up out of nowhere. I stomp on the brakes. My car heaves to a stop within inches of the padlocked gate.
My hands, shoving the gearshift into park, switching off the ignition, are shaking. I rest my head against the wheel, my heart still skidding inside my chest.
Stupid, stupid!
I think, only now remembering Clem's phone call two weeks ago. “DEP recommends it, Charlotte,” Dad's attorney told me, asking my okay for the expense of the fence. “Plus, it'll secure the property against vandals. Or vintage collectors looking for a five-finger discount.”
But the sight of Dad's station turned
ENTRY RESTRICTED
fortress, flanked by the tall fence lined with green sight-blocking screens, is still a shock.
My entire life the busy corner of Princeton and the Trail was always wide open and welcoming, usually with Dad waving me in and striding out to hug me hello. Now, leaning over to retrieve the FedEx packet launched to the floor by my abrupt stop, I realize I've never felt so completely
un
welcome here, or alone.
After fishing out the keysâone marked
GATE
, the other marked
STATION
âI take a last look at Clement T. Grimes, Esquire's extensive Property Inventory, then sidestep my way to the padlocked gate. “We already have inquiries from CVS and Walgreens,” Clem's cover letter said, “and the Broker's Open isn't till Thursday.” This is the new Florida, I think, resentfully eyeing the Rite Aid across the street. Instead of a gas station, every busy intersection needs at least two competing drugstores.
The shiny new Master Lock opens easily enough, but shoving the gate against a stubborn patch of weeds on the other side, I have just enough room to squeeze through.
Oh, Dad,
I sigh, dismayed by the view: the once gleaming white canopy and station front are desolate and dirt-streaked. The pumps and all the windows are dingy. I'm glad you're not here to see how swiftly a lifetime of careful stewardship gives way to a few scant months of inattention.
Left of the pumps, there's an odd scattering of small dirt mounds. Suspecting gophers, I see instead they're the geologist's drill holes for the state's mandated assessments of soil and groundwater, another in the seemingly endless number of hoops yet to be jumped.
Moving quickly to the office door, I unlock it and stand still, relishing the lingering smells of petroleum, cigarettes, and strong coffee that, as long as I can remember, meant “Dad's work.” The sight of his desk, the old cash register he refused to replace, and the small porcelain-on-tin sign on its back facing every customer who ever walked through the door tightens my throat. The desk and the register are empty, of course. Cal and Steve saw to that. Both service bays cleaned out as well.
“The back room is a treasure chest,” Clem's letter said. “Three different antiques dealers are salivating over the chance to sell whatever you don't want of your father's collection. You're lucky he had the good sense to hang on to this stuff.”
Flipping on the back room's light, I have to laugh at the tin signs that line every available square foot of the walls and ceiling, most bearing the classic red-and-green Texaco star. I asked Dad once why he chose Texaco over the more popular Shell or Gulf Oil brands. “It was the star, Charlotte: same five-pointed star as on my air force uniform. To me, that star meant freedomâ¦not just to fly and fight the enemy, but to come home, marry your mom, and build our American dream. Besides, I just couldn't see myself running around with a seashell or an orange ball on my chest.”
Me neither, Dad.
I lift the latch on his locker and pull open its narrow, green metal door. Inside, a spare green uniform, cleaned and pressed, hangs next to his work jacket. I pull out the jacket and bury my face in it, rewarded by the fragrant mix of oil and Old Spice. Oh, Dad, for a while anyway, your American dream went exactly as planned. But then, when it didn't, you made the best of things better than any of us. I slip on the jacket and trace the red embroidery on front that says simply
WES
.
I poke around in search of the item listed on the Inventory as “1 floor safe, locked, contents unknown.” After a few minutes, I spot the disk-shaped dust cover in the floor. Dropping to my knees, I lift the protective cover easily enough, but the combination dial atop the sunken cylindrical safe looks rusty and corroded. “We never used it,” Cal told me. Over the phone, Steve added, “Not for years, but even then it was always your dad's private place.”
I stare at it a moment, remembering the start of seventh grade, coming home completely baffled by the shiny new black-and-silver lock that was supposed to secure my gym locker. “All combination locks work essentially the same way, Kitten,” Dad explained, patient as ever. “It's a simple three-step process; the only hard part is coming up with a combination of three numbers you won't forget.”
Silently invoking Dad's okay, I take a deep breath and reach in and force the dial left, slowly and with some difficulty, to “0.” Hoping my hunch is right, I twist the dial left again, three times around, and stop at “8.” With no idea whether I've guessed correctly, I turn the dial right, one full rotation, then stop at “3.” Almost there, I twist the dial right again and return directly to “3.” Beneath my fingers, I feel the lock disengage but, after several pulls, the safe door remains barely cracked.
I sit back on my heels. The concrete floor is cold and hard, and my knees aren't what they used to be. Who but Dad would stick with the same lucky number for sixty-plus years? Eight-three-three was Mom's factory ID number during the war. “Without it, without your mother,” he'd insisted, “I'd have probably gone back to farming, spent my life trailing the north end of a southbound mule.” I doubted that. But Dad never did.
Determined to find out what, if anything, Dad left behind in his “private place,” I lean in, grasp the edge of the door, and yank it
hard
to open it. I put my hand into the hole and grasp the only thing thereâa small brown leather pouch, zippered closed on top, and embossed on the front with the vaguely familiar logo of The State Bank of College Park, gobbled up by SunBank when I banked there in the 1970s, and morphed sometime later into today's SunTrust.
Has this been in there since the '60s? Or did Dad just hold on to it the way he held on to so many other things?
The pouch feels empty, but, steeling myself against disappointment, I open it anyway to be sure. Inside, the small white paper napkin with the black Steak 'n Shake logo (
“In sight, it must be right!”
) makes me smile. How many nights over how many years did my high school friends and I cruise the scene at “The Steak”? Way too many to count. But removing it from the pouch, I spot the handwritten note on the backâ
IOU for 4 Cokes 4 me & the twirls. XO, C!
âand am jolted backward in time. It was my senior year, late October 1962, when after cruising The Steak I drove my friends here to the station, ostensibly to raid Dad's Coke cooler, but specifically to show off Emilio to them. I shake my head against a sudden flood of memories. Not going there. Not today anyway.
Three things remain in the pouch. A white palm-sized rectangle turns out to be a business card from Bayshore Realty in Tampa.
KATHARINE AYRES, LICENSED AGENT
. Oh, Lord. No wonder he buried this here instead of at home, or in their safe-deposit box at the bank, where Mom might have found it. On the back, in loopy feminine handwriting, I read,
Call me at the Cherry Plaza,
with the phone number of what was once Orlando's ritziest hotel. “Oh, Dad,” I sigh. For the first time, I feel that invading his “private place” is a mistake.
The final two items in the pouch are a complete surprise. A small, suede drawstring sack, like a boy's marble bag, with an old, oddly broken screw inside. What's that about? I have no idea. Andâ¦Dad's dog tags? I wonder, fishing out the metal ball chain looped with two modest metal tags. Like others of his generation, Dad was mum on his World War II experiences. All he would say was, “The real heroes are the ones who didn't make it home.” Moving the tags out of my shadow into the light, however, I'm stunned to see not Dad's name, but
mine.
And not only my name, but my birth date, my blood type, and our old address and phone number on Bryn Mawr. Obviously, a specially ordered item, but one I've never laid eyes on until now. Why was that?
My brain swims with questions. And my heart hurts with the thought that these thingsâthe napkin, the business card, the marble bag, and the dog tagsâare related somehow. Remnants of the same time, the same week evenâthat singular week, my senior year in high school, when each of us, and all of it, fell apart. What was I thinking, coming here, doing this,
now
? An unsettling sense of trespass and regret overwhelms me. Are there places in a person's heart, in the private remnants of his life, where no one, no matter how loved, should presume to go?
Gently, I put everything back into Dad's leather pouch and return it to the safe. Slowly, I close the lid, spin the lock, and secure the outer door in the floor. Struggling stiffly to my feet, I eye Dad's stars on the ceiling as I switch off the light and leave. At the front door, I turn for one last look around, then, impulsively, step back to the register and pry off the tin sign that was always there, always Dad's favorite. Tears blur the words. Though, of course, I know them by heart. “Good-bye, Dad,” I whisper as I lock the station door for the last time.
Outside, the sky is darkened by clouds heavy with rain. I run to the gate, hugging Dad's jacket against the chill wind. Outside the fence, I padlock the gate and make it to my car just as the first stinging splats of rain begin to fall. I set Dad's small signâ
YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR!
âon the seat beside me, a comfort and a consolation against the long, wet ride home.