It's. Nice. Outside. (30 page)

“Nate's, a singing ice cream place,” I said. “Sounds too good to pass up. I think we should all go. Have some quality family time, explore the region, make some memories.”

“Sorry, but I'll pass,” Karen said. “I've had enough family time today.”

“Don't confuse quantity family time with quality family time,” I said. “Too many people make that mistake.”

“I'm not going either,” Mindy said. “
Naked and Afraid
is on tonight.”

“I'm starting to get disappointed.”

“Maybe the waitress will go with you,” Mindy said. “She seems like fun.”

“I'd be happy to accompany you,” said Mary.

I tried to swallow my surprise and delight. “Really? Well, thank you, Miss Ex-Wife. Ethan and I would enjoy your company.”

“Ethan can stay back with us,” Karen said. “We'll take him swimming.”

“Swimming!” Ethan finally looked up from the Etch A Sketch.

“We will?” Mindy asked.

“Yes,” Karen said. “We will.”

“Swimming!”

Mindy's eyes darted around the table. “Right, swimming, yeah, sure.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering what Mary thought of this arrangement. “You up for some singing and ice cream?”

“Sure.” She reached for her red bag. “I'm always up for ice cream.”

*   *   *

Even though it had been a while, years possibly, since Mary and I had been alone together in a car, the drive over to Nate's felt very familiar. She sat crossed-legged, looking out her window, while I drove slowly with the radio on low. It was a fine evening, warm and windy, and memories of past drives, past summer evenings together, before the girls, before Ethan, before everything, filled me.

“Nice. Outside,” I said.

“Beautiful.”

“So, how do you think Karen's doing?”

“She's still in the day-by-day phase. In the long run, though, this is a good thing. I never liked him.”

“Neither did I. That jaw of his.”

“There were worse things than that about him.”

“You're right—there's a whole list. She can do better than that. She'll meet someone else.”

“She will.”

“And I'm looking forward to punching whoever it is.”

She surprised me with a small laugh. “I have news for you. You aren't very good at that.”

I held my fist up. “Say hello to my little friend!”

“God. Please.”

I stopped at an intersection, glanced down at directions the waitress with the purple hair had given me, and made a left onto a dimly lit street. “Glad they seem to be getting along again, Mindy and Karen.”

“Yes, it is. It is.”

“Hope it lasts.”

“I think it will.” She lowered her window and hung her arm out on the side of the van. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard her softly humming along to the radio.

“Anyone else call? The cousins?”

“They're calling. But I don't want to talk. They just want to gossip, want the Roger–Karen lowdown. I don't have time for that. I just want to focus on what we're doing now. Get there.”

“Does anyone else know where we're going?”

“Just the Sals.”

We were now in Mason, a few deserted blocks of dreary-looking storefronts, half of which looked unoccupied. The streetlights hadn't come on yet, and in the twilight, the empty town looked like it was vanishing.

“Ethan had a pretty good day today, for the most part,” I said.

“Thanks mostly to you. I should have helped out more. But once you got going, I didn't want to interrupt.”

“I haven't really focused on this, dropping him off. I don't think it's really hit me, what we're doing, totally hit me. I don't have time to think. When you're with him, you can't think. You know how it is. And when you have a free minute, you're too fried to think. This whole trip is a blur.”

I guess I meant this as an invitation to talk about Ocean View—we were in the shadow of New England, getting close—but Mary didn't respond. She just raised her window and pointed. “There it is,” she said.

*   *   *

From the outside, Nate's looked as wacky as advertised. Tucked away at the very end of town, its bright lights illuminated the emptiness of the street, rather than welcomed visitors. The cluttered storefront window tried too hard, offering a carnival of salutations (
COME ON IN! IT'S DREAMY AND CREAMY INSIDE! GET IT WHILE IT'S COLD! HOME OF THE WORLD'S BEST BANANA SPLIT
), as well as a large crudely painted rainbow on top of which sat a squirrel clutching an acorn. A caption beneath the squirrel read:
HE'S NUTS FOR NATE'S!

“Interesting,” Mary said. We put our faces up to the window. Other than a life-size stuffed polar bear standing on its hind legs, the place, like Mason, looked deserted.

“I don't hear any singing,” she said.

“Maybe they hum between customers.”

“You still want to go in?” she asked.

“It's the home of the world's best banana split,” I said, opening the door. “We really have no choice.”

When we stepped inside, we were immediately greeted by the sweet smell of ice cream and a steady hum of freezers. Standing behind the counter, ramrod straight, were an older man and woman. Thin, stern-faced, and wearing spectacles, if you substituted a pitchfork for an ice cream scooper, they were a double for the figures in the famous Grant Wood painting. They did not look like singers.

I smiled, nodded. “So, is this the singing ice cream place?”

The man looked past me with a one thousand-yard stare. “We're under new management,” he said, his voice plain, direct. “Nate is no longer around.”

“Oh, so not even one song?”

The woman glared at me then disappeared into a back room.

This left us alone with the man, and I suspected he was uncomfortable. He cleared this throat and shifted his gaze just off to my right. I took a tiny step over, hoping to get into his line of vision, but his eyes kept sliding over.

“So, the singing stopped with Nate?”

“Nate was a fool,” the man said.

“I'll have to take your word on that.”

“Do you want ice cream?”

I tried one more smile. “We came for the music, but I guess we'll stay for the ice cream.”

A shadow flickered across his face.

“Let's see here,” I said.

Mary, who was not easily intimidated, seemed unnerved by the man. She stepped partially behind me. “I think I'll have one scoop of mint chocolate chip in a cup,” she said.

The man remained rigid, bracing for my choice. I took my time, partly because I couldn't decide between a banana split and the hot fudge sundae, and partly because I had decided that this man needed to be annoyed.

I tapped my chin. “Let's see now.”

“We close in ten minutes.”

“Wow, that's pretty early.”

“That's when we close.”

“Wow. Okay, well, this is going to be tough. There are so many good choices, so many flavorful options. Wish I could try them all. Yes, I do. Hey, what would you recommend?”

His chest rose, fell. “What she had.”

“Interesting.” I tapped my chin a few more times. “But I think I'll have the world's best banana split. I'm going to see if it's better than the one I had in Singapore back in eighty-five. Up until now, that one has been the best.” I winked.

The man's chest rose and fell again. “With or without nuts?”

Another chin tap. “Let's see, let's see, with nuts.”

More chest. “Nuts are twenty cents extra.”

More chin. “Fine. And I think I would like … extra whipped cream.”

Chest. “That's another twenty cents.”

Chin. “Really?” At this point, I had to work hard to suppress a smile. This guy was just too much. “Really? Twenty cents?”

“Yes.”

“Seems like a lot.” I feigned deep thought, then snapped my fingers. “Go for it.” I admit, I was putting on a show for Mary, trying to get her to laugh.

The man jerked the glass freezer open and went to work while we sat down at a wobbly plastic table near the dead bear.

I took in the ambiance and concluded that Nate's was officially the anti-Cracker Barrel; other than the polar bear and the crazy greetings on the windows, relics, I suspected, from the Nate era, it was as cheerful as the Calvinist church.

“Charming place,” I whispered.

“Very,” Mary whispered back.

The man placed our ice cream on the countertop and said, “Ten dollars,” which I thought was expensive.

I was reaching for my wallet when Mary asked, “Why don't we bring something back for the girls and Ethan?”

“Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, good idea.” With great pleasure I asked, “Can you make three more world-famous splits? To go?”

He sighed, glanced down at a bulging, black watch, the kind that offers the time in Moscow, Honolulu, Heaven, and Hell, and asked between clenched teeth, “Extra nuts, extra whipped cream?”

“Why not? I just got paid today.”

The man yanked the freezer open again, and I retrieved our treats and sat back down. I wished Mindy were there. She would have an absolute field day with this guy.

“Unbelievable,” Mary whispered as I handed her the cup.

I was in the middle of swallowing a large spoonful of the extra whipped cream when I realized I had left my wallet back at the hotel. I patted my pockets to confirm, but I knew it wasn't there. I now remembered putting it on the desk when I was changing Ethan into his bathing suit.

“Hey,” I whispered to Mary. “I left my wallet at the hotel.”

Mary stopped eating. “What?”

“I forgot it there. Can you pay?”

“I don't have my purse. I left it in my room.”

“Do you have any money?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my half-eaten banana split with extra nuts and extra whipped cream. Mary looked at her half-eaten cup of mint chocolate chip. Then we both looked at the Calvinist laboring past closing time on those banana splits.

“Shit,” Mary whispered.

We sat in silence, our ice cream melting, the hum of the freezers swallowing us. I glanced at the door then at the dead polar bear. If there had been a clock on the wall, we surely would have heard it ticking.

“Tell him to stop making them,” Mary whispered.

The man finished the second banana split, wiped his forehead with his forearm like a coal miner, then started in on the third.

“You tell him,” I said. “Tell him we have a special-needs son. Work that in.”

“Fine.” Mary stood and approached the counter but at the last second veered off to the left and pulled a napkin from a metal dispenser. She quickly sat back down.

“You tell him. This was your idea.”

“Let's call the girls.”

“We have the car.”

I nodded, considered my dissolving banana split, then carefully raised my eyes and watched as the man violently shook a can of whipped cream. He stopped, frowned, shook it hard again, then went into the back room.

“Run.” I had not planned on saying this, but I did.

“What?”

I grabbed Mary's elbow. “Run, the van is right out front. Come on, come on. Let's go. Run. We'll send him a check.”

Mary, eyes wide, pointed wordlessly to a sign by the door that read
NO CHECKS
.

“We'll send him cash. Come on, let's get out of here. He probably killed Nate. Has him stuffed in a freezer. Come on.” I half dragged her to the door.

As soon as we were outside, Mary yelled, “Oh my God! He's coming!”

“Holy shit!” I ran around the van, got in. Mary stood frozen by her door, uncertain, a former officer of the court having a crisis of conscious. Either that, or she was going to pull a Patty Hearst and claim I was kidnapping her. After staring into the shop for what seemed like forever, she dropped her cup onto the curb and jumped in.

“Hit it!” she yelled.

I pressed the gas, and we roared off like Bonnie and Clyde. In the rearview mirror, I saw the Calvinist start to run.

“He's chasing us!” I yelled. “He's actually running after us! He's nuts!”

“We're nuts!”

“Nuts are ten cents extra!”

“Nuts are twenty cents extra!”

Mary covered her face. She was laughing uncontrollably and stamping her feet. “Drive! Drive! Drive!”

*   *   *

We were still laughing when we pulled into the parking lot of the Courtyard. Mary, exhilarated, kept summarizing our grand caper, her voice and face animated and alive in a way I hadn't seen in years.

“I can't believe we did that! What if he finds us?” She kept looking over her shoulder.

“He's not going to find us.”

“We have to send him some money.”

“Fine, I'll send him a check.”

“No checks!” Mary said.

“Right, no checks.”

When she laughed again, I reached for her hand, and she let me hold it.

“We have a good story to tell the girls,” I said.

“Always an adventure with you.” I wasn't expecting what she said next. “When I married you, I thought, this guy will make me laugh. He'll keep things interesting.”

“Well, I've certainly kept things interesting.”

“I remember your saying our lives together would be an adventure.”

“I said that?”

“On our honeymoon.”

“Hilton Head.” I squeezed her hand.

“We should have had more fun. Should have done more things. Tried to do things. We just gave up. It's not his fault. It was our fault,” she said. “We should have tried harder. We had lives too. But it was hard. It was hard.”

“It won't be that hard now. We're going to have time. We can have our adventures, still have them. Everything's going to be okay. We're going to have a happy ending, you'll see. We all will.”