The View from Mount Joy

  I wasn’t like Charlie Olsen, who claimed he only dated women willing to have sex at least three times a day. “And if even if they meet my quota, sometimes I go hunting for a little recreational pussy on the side.” I’d see Charlie in the store with his bossy girlfriend (“Not that pizza, Charlie, the one we’ve got the double coupon for!”) and I couldn’t quite see her agreeing to his quota, let alone meeting it. Phil Lamereau, another guy I’d played hockey with in high school, came in one day asking if we had a pharmacy in the store. When I told him no, he swore.

  “Damn, I need this prescription filled,” he said, waving around a slip of paper. “I’ve got the clap again—for the second time.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Don’t tell my wife.”

  Even Leonard Doerr, who had stopped in the store at Christmas, was getting a lot of action.

  “This is my wife, Helga,” he said, introducing me to the tall, attractive woman at his side. “We’ve been living in Munich for three years—this is her first visit to America.”

  “Well, I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” I said.

  “Vell, ve’re schleeping in Leonard’s childhoot bet,” she said, leaning on Leonard’s arm. “It’s been a bet zat’s wery hard to leave.”

  I don’t know who blushed more, me or Leonard. Then, as they pushed their cart past the butcher case, he turned and mouthed the words: “She’s an animal!”

  Darva got a big laugh out of that one.

  “Good old Leonard Doerr,” she said, helping herself to a cup of coffee.

  “You should have seen his wife,” I said. “She was hanging all over him, and you could tell she was just waiting to get him back in ‘zat childhoot bet.’”

  We were both looking out the office window to the store below, where Flora was being entertained up front by one of my cashiers. Darva walked her to the store nearly every afternoon, and Flora had become a favorite of my staff, who took turns pushing her around in a cart (“It’s cheaper than Disneyland,” Darva said) and playing with her.

  “I love surprises like that. When the guy whose nickname was ‘Class Nerd’ turns into an international playboy—”

  “Well,” I interrupted, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Darva laughed. “You sound jealous.”

  “Maybe. His Frau was good-looking.” I shook my head. “What’s happening to the world when a guy like me can be jealous of a guy like Leonard Doerr?”

  “I’d think lots of people might be jealous of Leonard,” said Darva with a little sniff. “He’s living his dream.”

  “You’re right,” I said, thinking of Leonard back in homeroom making his German-club announcements.

  “Hey, it must be Ole Bull reunion day,” said Darva. “Look who just came in.”

  Shannon Saxon was folding one crying kid into the front of a grocery cart while trying to prevent another from breaking free of her grasp and tearing off through the aisles.

  “Did you know her husband’s having an affair with his receptionist?” said Darva.

  I would have done a spit take had I had coffee in my mouth.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From Shannon. In the park yesterday. I told you I see her there every now and then. Flora and Joshua play together.”

  A question flickered briefly in my head: How do the receptionist’s breasts stack up next to Shannon’s?

  “Il est un cochon,” said Darva.

  Startled for a moment, thinking she had just read my mind, I smiled weakly before offering, “Mais oui.”

  Darva handed me her coffee cup. “I think I’ll go down and say hello. Care to join me?”

  I shook my head. I felt bad for Shannon but knew that nothing I might say was going to make her feel better. She confessed her marital problems to Darva, but that didn’t mean she wanted me apprised of them.

  Sitting behind my desk, I could still see what was happening on the floor, but customers looking up at the window couldn’t so easily see me. I watched as Darva approached Shannon and gave her that double-cheeked French greeting kiss. Flora, who was “helping” rearrange a candy display with Eileen, my head cashier, saw her mother and ran over to her. I watched as Darva swooped her up, and Shannon, smiling, reached over to cup the little girl’s head in her hand, even as one of her kids wailed and the other started jumping, as if he were spring-loaded, even as her marriage was falling apart. I was taken by these two women who hadn’t had anything to do with each other in high school but who now as mothers understood each other in a way I never would. Shannon’s big muscular chiropractor husband had once bragged to me that he liked to do push-ups with a ten-pound weight on his back, and I thought how he, how I, how men were big and strong on the outside but didn’t know crap, how the women with their soft skin and curves could take us any day, in ways that really counted.

  I thought of my own mother and how on the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death she’d taken me to see The Shakiest Gun in the West because Don Knotts had been one of my dad’s favorite actors and had said, “I think it would honor your dad if we had a good laugh.” The movie, in fact, had been pretty hokey, and my mother asked me in the car going home if I’d thought it had been funny, and I said no, and that made us both sad enough to cry, which was the only thing that night that made us laugh.

  Suddenly I switched on the microphone and spoke into it.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” I said, with the practiced congeniality I used when announcing specials. “I hope everyone’s enjoying shopping at Haugland Foods.”

  There were only three other shoppers besides Shannon and Darva, and they continued their hunting and gathering down the aisles.

  “Now, most of you know that Mother’s Day is in May.”

  I saw Mrs. Nelson, in aisle seven, look up at the window, as if by seeing me she might have a better answer to the question that was on her face: What the hell are you talking about?

  “But here at Haugland Foods, we like to honor mothers any time of the year—”

  Mrs. Kirkpatrick, whose hair I had never seen out of rollers, stopped pushing her cart to give me the same look Mrs. Nelson had.

  “—by giving you a free two minutes of shopping. Yes, ladies, whatever groceries you’ve already got in your cart, shove them to one side, because you’re going to have to pay for those. But when I ring the bell, all the groceries you’re able to grab within two minutes are free. I’ll ring the bell again when it’s time to stop.”

  Everyone, including my cashiers and baggers, looked up at the window. For a moment it seemed as if I was looking at statues in some weird shoppers’ wax museum. No one moved.

  Glancing at my watch, I rang the bell—the kind found on a motel desk, and the one I always rang to announce a special—and the wax figures suddenly melted out of their torpor.

  Darva pointed to herself and mouthed, “Me too?” and when I nodded, she raced toward the shopping carts, holding Flora under her arm like a rag doll.

  Mrs. Nelson, who was conveniently at the butcher case, began throwing steaks and pounds of hamburger into her cart. Mrs. Kirkpatrick, who was in the cereal aisle, knocked boxes of Froot Loops and canisters of oatmeal into her cart. Another woman whom I didn’t know grabbed soup and tuna and other canned goods before turning into the frozen foods aisle.

  Shannon was in the bakery section, lobbing boxes of donuts and bags of cookies into her cart. Her son Joshua was helping, standing on his tiptoes and pulling coffee cakes off the shelf. The toddler in the cart had stopped crying and was clapping his hands, urging his brother on.

  I found I was laughing maniacally, and my cackling only increased when I grabbed my guitar, turned it on, and started playing “Brown Sugar” into the mike. Darva looked up at me, laughing too.

  Even though I was into the music and watching the frantic motion below, I was keeping an eye on my watch, and after two minutes had gone by, I strummed a final chord and tagged the bell. Like extras in a science fiction movie, everyone froze, as they waited for the visiting alien
to speak.

  “Excellent job, ladies,” I said into the mike, lowering my voice like a late-night DJ. “Now remember, you’re on the honor system, so please pay for the groceries you’d already gotten before our little Supermarket Sweep. All the others, of course, are free…and a tribute to the special mothers you are. Thank you for your patronage, and have a wonderful day.”

  I turned off the mike and disappeared into the back of my office, where I couldn’t be seen. I was trying to figure out when I had felt the way I was feeling now, and then I remembered—it was when I’d scored my first goal for the Golden Gophers.

  Fifteen

  Good morning, you’re on the air with God.

  Hi, Kristi. Uh…hi, God.

  Sounds like one of the flock’s lambs is calling.

  Well…I…um…do you mean I sound young?

  That would be my meaning. Now, how can I help you…?

  Uh…Jane. My name’s Jane.

  How can God help you, Jane?

  I just…well…is it really a bad thing if you have sex with your boyfriend before you’re married?

  Is that what you’ve done, Jane?

  No! No, I…I was just wondering.

  I’m glad you’re still wondering, Jane. Now let me ask you—have you ever been on a diet, Jane?

  Sure—millions of ’em!

  And tell me—how does it feel if you’ve been doing really well on that diet and then you discover your mom’s made a chocolate cake and you think, Boy, that chocolate cake sure looks good and so you try a piece and that tastes so good that you have another, and pretty soon you’ve eaten half the cake. How do you feel then, Jane?

  Uh…pretty full, I guess.

  And maybe a little sick to your stomach, Jane?

  Yeah, I guess.

  And how would you feel if you have avoided that cake, Jane?

  Uh…that I wish I had had a piece?

  Work with me here, Jane. When you honor your commitment to lose weight, doesn’t it feel good, Jane?

  Yeah, I guess.

  Premarital sex is a temptation, Jane. If you give in to it, you might find that one piece doesn’t satisfy you and that you want more and more, and ultimately you wind up sick to your stomach. Believe me, Jane, a commitment to Christ is a lot more important than a commitment to a diet, but the rewards are deeper than you can ever imagine. So be strong, Jane. There’s really no comparison between the holy, lasting banquet that is marital love and the quick fix of junk sex.

  Uh…okay. Um…thanks.

  “Oh my God,” said Darva as I clicked off the tape recorder.

  “Darva, please,” I said. “Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain. What would Kristi think?”

  A grin finally broke the look of astonished horror that had been on her face for the entire broadcast of On the Air with God. The grin grew into a giggle, which expanded into a laugh. The mirth increased until we both slouched in our chairs, done in by it.

  “Oh man,” she said, ripping off a square of paper towel to wipe her eyes with. “Kristi Casey, a radio evangelist. The world must be coming to an end!” A snort burbled up in her and, defeated, she sank back in her chair, laughing all over again.

  “Kirk says she’s on a bunch of AM stations in the South,” I said, examining the tape he had sent me.

  “Let’s just hope sanity prevails up here.” Darva looked at her watch. “Oh, I’ve got to get ready, What’s your mom making for dinner?”

  “Flora’s favorite,” I said. “Hamburger hotdish.”

  Getting up from the kitchen table, Darva leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I wish I could join you.”

  “As far as hamburger hotdishes goes, hers is pretty unmatched,” I said. “What are you guys doing tonight anyway?”

  “Reed’s got tickets to the Guthrie. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “Well, have fun—just make sure you’re home at a reasonable hour, young lady.”

  I had dinner at my mother’s every Tuesday night, and Darva usually accompanied me. Flora always did; it was obvious she was the star attraction, the most coveted guest.

  Darva’s parents had gotten to know their granddaughter, but not for long. Initially her dad thought Flora was Darva, but it didn’t take long before he stopped confusing his generations, because he didn’t remember them at all. He died several months after Darva got back, her mom joining him three months after that.

  “Now I’m an orphan,” she had said, calling from her mother’s deathbed. The wistfulness in her voice quickly collapsed under a full-bodied wail.

  She was so sad that she reminded me of those old, old women bent over from osteoporosis, even though her burden was guilt, and physically she looked nothing like them.

  “I should have been around more,” she said as we ambled along the river. After her mother’s funeral, we’d put Flora in the stroller and taken a long walk, and we’d been walking early every morning since. “I shouldn’t have spent all those years abroad.”

  “Darva, I’ll bet your mother loved that you lived in Paris. I’ll bet she bragged to all her friends about her cosmopolitan, French-speaking, beret-wearing, wine-drinking artist daughter.”

  Darva managed a laugh. “Not wine drinking. Mom was a teetotaler.”

  “Then espresso drinking.”

  “I hope so. It’s funny—when I lived away from them, I hardly thought of my parents, but now that they’re gone, I think of them all the time. And all the things I should have done.”

  “Mama—bir!” said Flora, pointing to a bird flying from a maple tree to a fir.

  “Oui, c’est un oiseau.” Darva spoke both English and French to her daughter.

  “You know what your mother said to me the last time I went with you to see her?”

  “What?” said Darva, her voice soft.

  “Remember, it was one of her good days, when her pain seemed to be under control?” I said. Mrs. Pratt’s fingers and joints were gnarled knobs that were painful even to look at. “You were in the kitchen getting her some tea, and she said, ‘There’s no one who makes tea like Darva. I tell everyone—steep the leaves at least five minutes, and warm the milk first—but nobody listens. Except Darva—she has always listened to me. Always took the time to listen.’”

  Darva drew in a quick breath, then covered my hand, which was on the stroller handle, with her own. “Thanks, Joe.”

  Now Flora was four, and my mother and Len were only too happy to act as surrogate grandparents.

  “Grand-mère, Mme. Chou Chou couldn’t come tonight. She has the measles.”

  “Oh my,” said my mother of Flora’s imaginary friend. “Maybe she’ll feel better if we make a cupcake for her.”

  “Yes, but you do it—my face looks so mad. I want it to look pretty.”

  My mother leaned toward Flora. “It looks very pretty, honey, but here, try another piece of licorice for the mouth.”

  We were sitting around the kitchen table decorating cupcakes. There was always one part of our Tuesday night meal we had to actively participate in, by either its cooking or its decoration. Grand-mère, as Flora called her, thought it was a fun idea, and she was right, it was. Tonight she had set little bowls of chocolate chips, gumdrops, sprinkles, licorice bits, and nuts in front of us, with the objective of making faces on our frosted cupcakes.

  “Tante Beth,” said Flora, “yours looks just like Tante Linda’s.”

  “Quit copying me,” said Beth, shielding her cupcake with her hand.

  “As if,” said Linda, laughing.

  “Look, mine looks like Gorbachev,” said Grand-père.

  I squinted, cocked my head, and squinted again, but the resemblance to the newly installed Soviet general secretary eluded me.

  “Let me have that,” I said, and after he handed it to me, I tapped red sprinkles onto Gorbachev’s forehead, giving him his trademark birthmark.

  “There,” said Flora, and after showing all of us the much prettier smile she had made of licorice, she addressed her cupcake. “Why
, you look so good, I could eat you up!”

  Which she did promptly, charming us all, as usual.

  “You look so bad,” I said to my cupcake, which had a face only a very drunk Picasso could love, “I could eat you up!”

  “And you,” said Len to his cupcake, “you look so prime ministerial, I could eat you up!”

  He unpeeled the paper wrapping and took a big bite, but Gorbachev was not one to go down without a fight. A blob of frosting, with half a birthmark, dropped on Len’s shirt.

  This delighted Flora, whose laugh was a chortle too deep to come from such a little girl. The fact that it did always made everyone else laugh.

  That’s what our Tuesday night dinners were like. Inevitably, we’d all sink to the four-year-old’s level (or maybe it was Flora who sank to ours), throwing things at one another, playing with our food, and laughing so hard we might, as Beth did one night, pee in our pants.

  Flora might have incited the frosting smearing, but she was always helpful in the cleanup, clearing the table, standing on a footstool drying dishes, or sweeping up crumbs with the little broom and dustpan my mother kept in the kitchen closet.

  After she declared that everything looked très bon (my mother let Flora decide when we were done with our chores, and she took her job seriously, never letting us leave if there was a counter that still needed to be wiped down or a dish put away), we went into the living room and I sidled up to the piano bench as naturally as a cowboy jumps on his horse.

  Len couldn’t sing, but he had an adequate sense of rhythm, which he loudly shared by slapping his palms on his knees. Linda’s voice didn’t like to confine itself to either melody or harmony, but if someone looked in the window at one of our sing-alongs, they might think Norman Rockwell had come back to life and was now directing music videos.

  Flora had a clear little voice and a memory that allowed her to learn songs quickly, so that if we sang “A Spoonful of Sugar” one week, she’d come back the next knowing the entire thing. (It didn’t hurt that I had my own piano at home and always obliged her requests to jouez et chantez.) My mother was going to start giving her piano lessons, which thrilled Darva, who claimed not to have a musical bone in her body.