One Year in Coal Harbor (4 page)

“You forgot annihilating the wildlife, including those skunks you mentioned,” said Uncle Jack.

And then Miss Bowzer remembered her manners and that she was in our house and not her restaurant and toned it down, even laughed at several of his escapades. Uncle Jack had been busy developing Coal Harbor by building seaside town houses during the period when my parents were lost at sea, but after they were rescued and he didn’t have to worry about me, he turned his attention to more lucrative ventures down island. The town houses he had built by Coal Harbor’s docks had been called a lot of nasty things by people in town, including a carbuncle on Coal Harbor’s nose, which was maybe overdoing things a bit. People did get worked up when it looked like we were going to lose what we all held so dear, namely the perfection of Coal Harbor just as it was. There are so few places that are perfect just as they are. But Uncle Jack, maybe because it’s the nature of a developer, felt every thing and every place could be improved upon and it was figuring out how and then doing it that excited him. Also seeing how much money he could make. I don’t think he wanted the money per se, he just wanted to see
if
he could make it. He had made and lost fortunes many times in his life and it didn’t seem to dim one iota his enthusiasm for the romance of business.

I forgot that Uncle Jack was a lefty and sat him next to Miss Bowzer, where his cutting arm kept knocking into hers, which might have been a good thing if she’d been the sly, flirty, go-ahead-and-knock-into-me-with-your-knife-arm-you-big-lug type. But she wasn’t. She was more the I’m-going-to-try-to-ignore-the-line-of-bruises-forming-up-my-arm type. If I was less invested in their future happiness I might have found it entertaining. Well, all right, it was entertaining anyway.

“And
now
,” said Uncle Jack, continuing his anecdote as he picked hopelessly at the teeny bit of meat left on his chop. Out of deference to Miss Bowzer, I guess, he wasn’t picking up the bone and gnawing on it. But he wouldn’t leave it half-eaten either and kept trying to get at the tiny stringy bit of lamb with his knife and fork, which sometimes slipped against the greasy chop and made terrible clattering noises on the plate. I saw a splatter of ersatz gravy land perilously close to Miss Bowzer’s polka-dotted dress. And of course it all resulted in yet more jabs to her arm with his elbow, all for the sake of good manners. I wanted to scream, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, THERE’S MORE IN THE KITCHEN. Although there wasn’t more lamb. It was expensive enough giving everyone three chops. But there was a swell dessert—floating
island. I had chosen it and helped to make it myself. My mother had wanted to go with chocolate cake but we had never made floating island and I had always wanted to and it’s not the type of thing you make just for yourselves. “You ought to make something fancy so she won’t think all you know is ersatz gravy,” I said to my mother, and that, of course, sealed the deal.

I pointed out the ersatz gravy to Miss Bowzer and reminded her that she had said she wanted to try it and she said, “Ah, um, yes,” but she didn’t seem to really be paying attention. I noticed she had poured it on her potatoes and eaten it but my sense of things was that she hadn’t tasted it at all. She was still too busy being nervous and overdressed.

“Anyhow,” Uncle Jack wrapped up his last hilarious anecdote about development by Campbell River, “I’m done with that project.”

Miss Bowzer didn’t respond. Just sat there in her polka-dotted dress, looking uncomfortable, her chops half finished.

“So, Jack,” said my father. “What’s next?”

“There’s always something next with this guy!” said my mother, through a mouthful of mashed potatoes and peas, while gesticulating wildly with her knife and fork.

“Well, Miss Bowzer may have some suspicions,” said Uncle Jack.

This had the effect of making Miss Bowzer suddenly
look
suspicious. It was actually a rather attractive look for her. It made her appear all fiery and romantic. Angry and suspicious were good looks for her and I thought this was lucky as those were the two emotions Uncle Jack seemed to inspire in her the most.

“Why should I know anything about what you’re doing next?” she demanded.

“Because it’s already started right across the street from you,” said Uncle Jack. “I thought by now you might have gotten normally curious and gone and at least looked in the window.”

“Jack,” said my mother, tittering in a fake way. “I’m sure we’re all normal around here.”

Why couldn’t everyone just be
themselves
? I really felt frustrated by not being able to choreograph everyone’s behavior. I liked everyone at that table and I couldn’t believe how wrong they were all getting it. I felt I should hand out scripts.

“Are you
saying
I’m not normal?” Miss Bowzer asked, turning with steely eyes to Uncle Jack. Before he could answer, my father interrupted.

“Were you the one that bought that building across from The Girl on the Red Swing? The one where there’s construction going on?” Heretofore my dad had been preoccupied by figuring out exactly how much meat he could get off his chops. He was the only one who picked them up and gnawed. He’d study them as if he couldn’t
believe there wasn’t something he was missing. Not at ten dollars a pound. Then he’d pick them up and go at them again. It seemed like an engrossing activity, practically a new hobby, so that only now was he waking up to the table conversation.

“I’m the one,” said Uncle Jack proudly through a mouthful of potatoes and ersatz gravy. “New enterprise.”

“Wow. That place has been empty for as long as I can remember. I’m surprised it’s still standing. People have been talking for years about tearing it down before it
falls
down. Wasn’t it an old hotel back in the day?”

“Yep, and it’s not in such bad shape. The timbers are sound. I was getting tired of always traveling around down island on business. I thought it would be nice to open up something closer to home so I’d
be
home.”

Normally Uncle Jack loved to roam. My mother used to call him old hotfoot Jack. She threw him a piercing look and then turned to Miss Bowzer.

“My, my! Then I guess you and Jack will be
neighbors
!” She said this with so much enthusiasm it was as if the concept of neighbors had just been invented. By her. “Isn’t that nice? Well, this is a surprise. Jack is always such a
dark horse
. We never know what to expect from him from one moment to the next. He’s just FULL of surprises.” She shrieked this last, which made even my unflappable father look at her in alarm. But she was oblivious and looked around, pretending to be speaking to the table
in general, but really she might as well have had a megaphone pointed at Miss Bowzer’s ear, calling out, “Eligible bachelor. Tons of fun. Catch him while you can!”

My father picked up another already-gnawed chop and yawned. I wanted to pass my mother her better script because I wasn’t so sure that
general unexpectedness
was what Miss Bowzer was looking for in a mate.

“So tell us, Jack,” my mother went on with manic beaming approval, “what is it that you’re opening?”

“A restaurant,” said Jack.

And then I knew the evening was over.

“A
RESTAURANT
? A
RE YOU
crazy?” said Miss Bowzer, no longer able to retain her polite demeanor, polka-dotted dress or no.

“Are you upset? Why are you upset?” asked Uncle Jack, putting down his knife and fork and looking stunned. “I’m doing high end. You’re doing low end. Different markets altogether.”

“LOW end?” squawked Miss Bowzer.

“I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean cheap, well, more
affordable
meals.”

“
Cheap
food?” said Miss Bowzer.

It amazed me that Uncle Jack, who was the most clever and tactful person I knew, seemed to lose all these skills the second he came in contact with Miss Bowzer. It never failed.

My mother got the floating islands on the table very quickly after that. The one she slung on the table in front of my father practically skidded into his lap. You would think that would take everyone’s mind off of things—the anticipation of custard on his pants—but Miss Bowzer, who had been turning what looked to me a dangerous shade of red, didn’t seem to notice and excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she returned it was as if she had Krazy Glued her lips together in there, because she hardly said a word the rest of the night. Ten minutes after her last sip of coffee she thanked my mother for her fine meal and hospitality and left.

I was deflated. You know exactly how bad a time someone has had by how soon after dinner they leave and how formal they are about it. Jack stayed on long enough to help us clear the table and wash the dishes. He and my parents talked about other things and never mentioned the restaurant once. I think my mother was afraid that if she did, she would hit him over the head with whatever pan was handiest. When he finally left I went up to bed. As I climbed the stairs I heard my father’s voice below saying cheerily, “Well, that was a pleasant evening.”

I didn’t see much of Miss Bowzer after that. I was a little embarrassed that it was my family that had upset her with its version of
The Dating Game
. I knew Uncle Jack hadn’t intended his restaurant announcement to mean
and-by-the-way-I’m-putting-you-out-of-business-pass-the-salt, but that’s what it must have sounded like to her.

I didn’t see Uncle Jack much after that, either, because he was very busy getting his restaurant built.

“She’ll see,” he explained to me one day when I ran into him on the street. “She’s an excellent chef but she doesn’t understand the first thing about business. My business will be, if anything,
good
for her business.”

I didn’t see how this would be so. I followed him back to his restaurant on the pretext of helping him carry his purchases but really so that he could explain his reasoning to me. Then I, in turn, could explain it to Miss Bowzer.

“Listen, people get tired of the same old thing. They’ll come to my restaurant for special occasions and Miss Bowzer’s for everyday fare. Choice just makes eating out all the more enticing. There was a study, Primrose, that said people eat more when they have more choices. If it’s just two things in the fridge they won’t eat so much. If there’s twenty things, they’ll graze from taste to taste. We’re just giving people more choices, which will inspire more grazing.”

“But she has a lot of stuff on her menu already. People already
have
choices,” I argued. Then a chunk of ceiling fell right in front of us and Uncle Jack moved me over a few feet and started up the stairs to see “what the heck they were doing up there.”

“Maybe you’d better go, Primrose,” he called down, sounding all distracted, so I left.

If this was the way they were going to court, each waiting for the other to make a move, both being proud and independent, they would never connect. I couldn’t arrange another dinner. That would be too obvious, but there must be some way I could help them along.