She pushed away from the inner tube, and Ben, wearing water wings, followed. He began paddling around the pool, pushing out his lower jaw and groaning, rolling his eyes back into his sockets.
“Genetically, I think he resembles you a lot more than Jenny,” said Kirk.
Coral was walking around the shallow end, arms held rigidly in front of her, and Gina chose to once again float on her back, although this time she waved her arms and moaned.
“And it looks like both of your girls got all your DNA,” I said.
Martha, watching the kids, laughed.
“Actually, Coral reminds me of Kristi at that age.”
“Ma!” said Kirk. “Don’t say that about my own daughter.”
Martha winked at me. She was trim and tanned and the alcohol that had dragged down her features and spirit had been burned out of her system years ago, so at sixty-five she looked better than she had when I’d first met her, when I was in high school. “Kristi was a lot of fun when she was a little girl,” she countered. She took a sip of her iced tea. “It was only after Daddy’s accident that she changed.”
“No,” said Kirk, “she was mean way before that. At least to me.”
“Well, she did always have that capability,” agreed Martha. “Of being mean, that is.” She sighed, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “I did really think she might want to see her own mother married.”
Clarence took her hand and patted it. “It’s all right, Martha. I’m sure she tried.”
“Yeah, right,” said Kirk bitterly. “She’s seen my kids twice. Once in an airport in between flights and once when she allowed us to visit her hotel room in Miami for twenty minutes.”
“She did shuffle us out of there awfully fast,” agreed Martha.
Kirk drained his glass. “I hear she has a lot to say on the subject of ‘family values.’ Which is funny, since she treats her own like shit. Honey,” he said, raising his voice, “don’t go down the slide like that. You remember how you knocked out your tooth last time.”
“But, Daddy,” hollered Gina, “that’d be good because I’ve got another loose tooth that needs to come out!”
Kirk laughed. “Turn around anyway.” Ever the good host, he looked at our glasses and refilled his mother’s and Clarence’s with iced tea and mine and his with daiquiri. “The fact that people—so many people—believe what she says,” he said, continuing his Kristi rant, “makes my skin crawl. Seriously. It makes me fear for the fate of the world if there are that many ignorant people who think a person like Kristi Casey has God’s ear. I mean, it’s really pathetic.”
There was a swish of aromas in the air—of perfume, spaghetti sauce, and garlic bread—as Nance and Jenny came through the inside living room and into the outside one, carrying trays.
“Oh, you’ve been talking about Kristi, haven’t you?” said Nance, reading the look on her husband’s face. “Let’s promise not to bring her up at all during dinner. Coral, Gina, Flora, Ben!” she shouted as she and Jenny began unloading their trays on the kids’ table. “Come and eat!”
Kristi was banned from further dinner conversation, leaving us to talk about a much brighter topic: the second reason we were here in Florida, the business reason.
“I like Don, he’s a great guy,” began Clarence after the business of plate passing and serving was finished.
“Thanks,” I said, twirling pasta around my fork. “He’s got a lot of experience in the grocery business, plus I think he’s got the right personality.”
“Oh, he’ll be perfect,” said Martha. “I can’t wait to start working with him.”
The new door that had opened in my life led directly into the second Haugland Foods, opening in three days in Cocoa Beach. Kirk had seen a For Sale sign on the grocery store and had been inspired to let me know about it, “because think of it, you’re doing so well up there—this could be your vacation store. Or your retirement store. Or just a good investment. Anyway, it would get you down here more, which would be great.”
I had been approached about expansion several times—Haugland Foods was successful, even meriting a front-page article in the business section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled “Fun with Groceries.” Content where I was, I always declined these offers, but the seed Kirk had planted sprouted, watered by Jenny’s enthusiasm and the idea of doing something different.
“Will we live in Florida, Papa mon Joe?” asked Flora.
“Would you like to?”
She shook her head, her eyes flooding with tears.
“Me neither,” I said. “I like Minnesota.”
“Your dad will fly down there every month or so until he makes sure it’s running like it should,” explained Jenny. “And we’ll go for little vacations.”
“I like vacations,” offered Ben, who thought any new place he went was “vacation.”
For fun, and to help me out, both Clarence and Martha were going to work there, Martha as a cashier and Clarence as an assistant manager.
“I was ready to hang up my shears anyway,” the barber said. “Now instead of cutting hair, I can cut prices.”
“Not so fast,” I said.
The wedding had been conveniently planned to take place just a few days before the grand opening of Haugland Foods.
“My parents are coming,” said Nance, eying the dinner table to see who needed what. “And they said they’re bringing a bunch of their friends.”
“But just watch,” said Kirk. “All those rich farts and all they’ll buy is whatever’s on sale.”
“Can we dress up for the grand opening?” asked Gina from the kids’ table.
“What is the dress code, Joe?” asked Nance, passing the meatballs to Clarence.
“Let’s just say if you don’t dress up,” I said, turning to face the kids, “I’ll be very disappointed. I want all of you in the most extravagant of party dresses.”
“Dad,” complained Ben.
“Except you,” I amended. “You, young man, can dress up as either a pirate or a cowboy,”
They took me literally. On the day of the grand opening, Coral wore a dress Nance said she had worn to a recent wedding, and Gina wore her fanciest dress from her tap dance recital. After a run to the local Goodwill, Jenny was able to make a pretty good pirate out of Ben, with a head scarf and eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder she fashioned out of an old Christmas ornament. And the old bridesmaids’ dresses she found—ooh la la! Jenny’s had tiers and tiers of pink dotted swiss, and Flora’s was a deep purple velvet with a cabbage-sized velvet flower stitched to the hip. Still, somehow, they looked beautiful.
“And don’t think you’re getting off easy,” said Jenny, handing me a hanger holding a plastic bag. “You’re wearing this.”
I tore open the plastic to find a suit jacket whose former owner was either a circus ringmaster or Edgar Allan Poe.
“What is this?” I asked, trying on the long black coat.
“It’s a morning coat,” said Jenny. “We couldn’t believe it—it was only six dollars.”
I could have used some of the coat’s length—it came to my knees—in the sleeves, but for a shiny, mildewy jacket that smelled of rancid hair tonic, it fit me pretty well.
Ben laughed. “You look funny, Daddy.”
With one hand on my stomach and one on my back, I bowed.
“I’m sure you mean in that in the best possible manner, matey.”
Kirk and Nance were not about to let us leave their house looking like nuts without looking like nuts themselves. Kirk wore his best suit, along with an old multicolored afro he’d worn to a football game. Nance wore a lab coat with a scuba mask.
“Well, now I feel underdressed,” I said.
The Haugland Foods in Cocoa Beach was about two-thirds the size of the Haugland Foods in Minneapolis, and so I had decided to make it a more gourmet grocery store. Our “fancy foods” (as my mother called it) section back home was very popular, so I thought I’d not only expand it in Florida but al
so make the general tone of the store very international.
You can get milk and bread anywhere, went the advertisement I ran in the local paper and on the radio station. But you can only get lingonberry preserves and lefse at Haugland Foods.
Sure enough, the question I got asked most during the grand opening was “What’s lefse and where can I find it?” (It’s like a Norwegian tortilla, made out of riced potatoes and rolled flat and thin, usually served with butter and brown sugar.)
The second question I got asked was “Who are those flute players?”
They were, of course, Jenny and Flora, playing in Palm Court, a little area by the produce section I had modeled after Banana Square. It was a much smaller space, but I still had managed to install a wooden cutout of a palm tree as well as a little stage, and it was on that small stage that my wife and daughter stood playing Telemann’s Sonata in F.
“My Lord,” said a tanned, bejeweled woman, “do you think I could get something like that going in the Palm Springs A&P?”
It was, I have to say, a grocery store opening like no other.
Ben manned a table with Clarence, offering free samples of lemon curd and scones with a hearty “Arghhh!” to every taker. Coral and Gina walked the aisles with trays of the German wafer cookies I had been introduced to at my aunt Beth’s house. And Kirk and Nance took Polaroid pictures of customers posing with Nawoo of the Sea, a kid I had hired to dress up like a manatee.
“I’d rather have my picture taken with you,” several old women told me, and Nance and Kirk happily obliged.
“Welcome to the grand opening of Haugland Foods,” I said into a mike that had been rigged up by Palm Court (this store had no upstairs office). “I appreciate all of you coming, and I hope all of you will come back again…and again…and again.”
There was polite laughter, but if they thought it was the usual thank-you speech, they were dead wrong.
“One of the things my store in Minneapolis has is contests. We don’t just like people to shop, we like them to compete.”
This new, Floridian clientele looked at one another, their faces all asking, What?
“For instance, if I asked any of you to name a grocery store chain in, say, California, could any of you do so?”
“Albertsons!” shouted a white-haired woman in plaid shorts. She nodded, looking at the people around her. “I used to live there.”
“Very good,” I said, walking toward the palm tree cutout. “See, sometimes we have general-knowledge contests, sometimes we have what’s-in-your-cart contests, and sometimes we have talent contests.” I lifted up the gift basket I had hidden behind the cutout. “Prizes are always given; for example, whoever wins this contest wins this lovely gift basket chock full of grocery items certain to make your next party a hit.”
It was a good present, filled with the kinds of cookies and biscuits and cheeses you’d find in a Paris or London or Munich grocery store.
A platinum-blond woman with skin the color of stained wood said to Nance’s mother, “Oh, I could bring that to the Altmans’ barbecue.”
“Because my wife and children and I come from Minnesota, I think we need to learn a little more about your fair state. Kids?” This was a cue for Ben, Coral, and Gina to pass out little notepads and pencils that read Haugland Foods.
“The notepads and pencils are your complimentary gifts, but please use the first page to write your answers to our first contest. The beautiful gift basket you see right here will go to the person who can name Florida’s state bird, its state motto, and its state flower. In the event of a tie, we will decide the winner on the basis of whoever answers this question best: Can you tell us something we probably don’t know about Florida?”
I looked at Jenny and Flora, standing on the stage in their bridesmaids’ dresses, holding their flutes at their sides like batons.
“My lovely wife and daughter—yes, folks, I am that lucky—will serve as our timekeepers. When they finish their song, your time will be up. So start your engines now. Oh yes—and remember to write your name down.”
Jenny nodded to Flora, and they lifted their flutes to their lips and began playing a spirited duet. When they were finished, I said, “Kids, please collect all entries.”
There were twenty little pieces of notepaper to read, but the judging went fast because nearly all of them had wrong answers. Everyone stood patiently, waiting for Don, the store manager, and me to read the entries, murmuring about their chances with their neighbor.
“All right!” I said finally. “We have two winners!”
“What’s Florida’s state bird?” asked the woman with the white hair and plaid shorts. “I know California’s is the valley quail—does that count?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, not for this contest. But the thing to remember about Haugland Foods is if you don’t win one contest, there’s always another. Now I’d like to introduce you to Don Quinlan, the store manager, who’ll be running most of these contests in the future.”
Don waved his hand. “I’ve already got some local businesses lined up to donate prizes,” he told the small crowd. “So make sure you stop in often.”
“So what’s the state bird?” asked the woman with the white hair and plaid shorts.
“That’s what I like,” I said, smiling, “an interested crowd. The Florida state bird is the mockingbird; the state flower is the orange blossom; and the state motto is ‘In God we trust.’ And two civic-minded people knew that: Gerta Mason and Lowell Cantwell.”
“Oh, Lowell!” The diamond bracelets of the platinum-blond woman with the deep tan slid up her forearms as she clapped her hands. “We won, we won!”
“We have two people who got those answers right,” I reminded the crowd. “And our tie breaker will determine the winner. What does Gerta Mason tell us about Florida, Dan?”
“Well, Joe, she tells us that flamingoes get their color from eating shrimp. The more shrimp they eat, the deeper pink they become.”
“Why, that’s very interesting, Dan. I did not know that before. And Lowell Cantwell tells us this about Florida,” I said, reading from his entry. “‘The singer Pat Boone is from Jacksonville.’”
“Now, by applause, who thinks Gerta’s fact is the most interesting?”
Enthusiastic applause caused the gray-haired woman with the walker to smile.
“And by applause, who thinks Lowell’s fact is the most interesting?”
Poor Gerta never had a chance given that Lowell had shown up with Nance’s parents and a half dozen of their friends. His wife, especially, whistled and hooted and stomped her feet until I wanted to eject her from the store with orders to take her rigged election and shove it. Judging from Gerta’s rumpled clothing and demeanor, I imagined the old woman would use the gift basket contents to stretch out her meager food budget; I knew that Lowell and his wife were rich and yet would give the basket to the Altmans for their barbecue, saving themselves the trouble of buying a hostess gift. But I wasn’t a social worker doling out benefits to the most deserving, and so the courtly man whose tan matched his wife’s won the prize.
This is more fun than playing the stock market, I expected him to say, but he accepted the gift basket with a simple “Thank you. That was ever so much fun.”
“That’s what we want shopping at Haugland Foods to be,” I said, even as I thought he and the platinum blonde no doubt had a household staff to do that sort of thing.
It was a long, full day and everyone retired early, except for me. I was too keyed up to go to sleep and so I swam the breaststroke (the quietest stroke), back and forth, back and forth in the small pool. When I pulled myself out, I was surprised to see an ember of a lit cigarette glowing.
“Martha,” I whispered, “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“I’ve never been one for sleeping,” said Martha. “I go to bed when Clarence does, but once he’s asleep, I’m usually up and on the prowl for an hour or two.”
I shrugged on the terry-cloth towel Nance h
ad furnished to all her guests.
“So what do you do when you’re on the prowl?”
Martha exhaled a line of smoke. “Oh, I think. Sometimes I read. And I always engage in my filthy habit.” She nodded as she inhaled, in case I didn’t know what filthy habit she was talking about.
I sat down on the chaise longue next to her. The night was balmy and starless.
“What do you usually think about?”
“Oh, you know—everything.”
“What were you thinking about tonight?”
“Oh, you know—Kristi.”
She inhaled again, and her exhale was a long sigh that generated smoke.
“I’m not proud to say this,” she said, “but I’m so relieved that my name tag at the store just says ‘Martha’ on it. I’m so relieved that I have Selwin now for a last name instead of Casey so I don’t have to deal with people asking me if I’m related to ‘the evangelist.’ You’d think a mother would be proud of her own daughter, but…” She took one more drag and then stubbed her cigarette out in the conch ashtray Nance brought out every time she visited.
I could tell by her voice how hard it was to say those words, and I reached for her hand. She took mine, squeezing it before releasing it, as if saying, Thanks for the gesture, but I’m okay.
“I have racked my brain over Kristi, wondering how she got the way she is. Oh, I know it was rough for her after Jack got hurt, rough for her when her own mother developed a closer relationship to the bottle than to her own kids, but still…look at Kirk. Look at how great he turned out.” She nudged another cigarette out of her pack and lit it. “I’m sorry, Joe, I’m just going to have to smoke my way through this conversation.” Blowing out the match, she took another long, deep drag. “Clarence, God bless him, worries about my health but doesn’t mind that I reek of tobacco—he says it reminds him of how his dad used to smell.”
“You’re…you’re feeling okay, aren’t you?”
Martha laughed. “Joe, I just had a physical and you wouldn’t believe it. I could have stayed on that treadmill for hours. My doctor says I’m one of those people who defy all odds.”