Steve was mourning the death of Gerald, his pet gerbil, when his father called and asked for his help. The Bilco door into the basement was leaking again and the sump pump had died. It was a five-hour drive from Rochester through the Adirondacks to his father’s place, a tiring weekend round trip, but Steve didn’t care. He had nothing better to do. He wrapped Gerald’s stiff little body in paper towels, put it gently in a shoe box, and stowed it next to his duffle bag in the trunk of his rusting Corolla. Friday afternoon, after locking up the donut shop, he hit the road.
He’d made the drive to his father’s place, just outside Plattsburg, a hundred times. He knew the trip by heart, which allowed him to disengage his mind on route. Thoughts rose and fell as the familiar scenery scrolled by. His sister, who had escaped the family by moving to Seattle, asked him how he could stand it. Getting there was half the fun, he told her; getting back was the other half.
A box on the passenger seat held the day’s unsold donuts. He was methodically eating his way through them. Confectioner’s sugar covered the front of his sweater. The thought of Gerald in the trunk, never again able to enjoy nibbling on a stale French Cruller, saddened him and he reached for an iced Bavarian cream. His mother had been right; don’t give all your love to one person (or, he reasoned by extension, one rodent).
“Gerald,” he said. “I miss you.” Conversations with Gerald had always been one-sided, but the silence now was somehow…silenter. Even so, the presence of Gerald’s furry corpse in the trunk was strangely comforting. He knew he had to decide what to do with Gerald, but he wasn’t ready to let him go.
He drove east on the New York State Thruway, exited at Amsterdam, angled up to Ballston Spa on NY 67, then jumped on the Northway. The Saratoga public radio station was playing Mozart’s Piano Concert 23 in A major, which had been his mother’s favorite. Northway traffic was light and fast, but as he approached Schroon Lake, the music was interrupted by news flashes about flooding and detours. These he ignored, beyond the music they displaced. The road was dry and the weather was good, warmer than usual for mid-March. A few miles later, just past Severance, temporary signs on the shoulder flashed in incandescent marquee that all traffic must exit at the next opportunity due to flooding of the highway near Elizabethtown.
He took the exit and pulled onto the shoulder at the foot of the ramp. At the corner ahead he’d have to choose which way to turn. He’d always taken the Northway to Plattsburg and didn’t know another route.
His cheap flip phone was useless for navigation. Deep in the glove compartment he found a tattered New York State road map. He determined that there was only one way to bypass Elizabethtown: route 9 to 73 to Keene, and 9N North from Keene back to the Northway. Easy enough, he thought.
He called his father, who picked up on the seventh ring.
“Hi Dad. I’m running late.”
“The fish is already in the oven.”
“Don’t wait – eat without me. I should be there …” he glanced at the dashboard clock, which had been 54 minutes off since the last time his battery died, and did the necessary math “…around 9:30.”
“The house is cold.”
“Turn up the heat.”
“I don’t mind it cold.”
Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His father had been trying to heat his 2000 square foot, 50’s-era ranch house with a small coal-burning stove in the basement. The last time he’d called Steve, it was to help him repair pipes that had frozen and burst in the guest bathroom.
“Don’t worry, I brought warm clothes.”
“I’m not worried. See you when you get here.”
He fired up the Corolla and took a left at the top of the ramp. The dark, boreal forest closed in on both sides. He switched on the Corolla’s headlights and turned up the heater. The clattering fan sounded like Gerald on his exercise wheel.
A few miles on, he took a left at a fork and was on Route 73. The road was narrower than 9, with virtually no shoulders, hemmed in by towering pines. Night fell before he had gone very far, and then he lost all sense of context and direction. He followed the headlight beams down the dark tunnel of trees, which seemed to open just beyond his line of sight and slam shut in the rearview mirror.
Keene consisted of a minimart at a flashing yellow intersection. Route 9N was clearly marked, for which he was grateful. He made the turn and felt a subtle drop in anxiety, believing that the most difficult decision of the evening was behind him.
Half an hour later he reached the hamlet of Au Sable, which followed a bend in the river of the same name. The unadorned frame buildings and brick storefronts reminded him of the old mill towns along the Mohawk that he passed on the Thruway.
He was craning his neck to see the river – he caught glimpses of something off to the right behind the buildings, but it didn’t look like water – when he hit something. The impact bounced his head off the roof liner. Steering became erratic and there was a terrible thump coming from the front on every revolution of the tires. He pulled to the curb and parked.
He swore under his breath and sat for a moment, considering all possible contingencies. At least he was in a town and not stranded in the middle of the woods somewhere. The sudden thought that he might have run someone over spurred him into action. He jumped out of the car and surveyed the road. No bodies. That was good. He walked back to examine a dark patch in the pavement, which turned out to be a pothole, nearly a foot deep and twice as wide. He went back to the car to examine the tires. The left front was flat, and the rim looked dented.
He’d never changed a tire on his Corolla. He opened the trunk, set his duffle bag and Gerald on the pavement, and then opened the compartment in the trunk floor. The spare was soft and so old the rubber was cracked.
He leaned back against the fender and crossed his arms. Dark storefronts lined both sides of the block. Just up the street, around the bend, there was a glow of neon and the sound of music. And there was another sound that puzzled him; a deep intermittent groan that seemed to come from under his feet, punctuated by an occasional pop like distant gunfire.
He put his stuff back in the trunk, locked the car, and headed up the street to the bar or restaurant or whatever it was. He called his father on the way and told him he would be indefinitely delayed.
The source of light and life was the Wobbly Moose Inn, a rustic, split-log sided establishment on the river side of the street. It stood just beyond the older business block, surrounded by open ground. The windows glowed with beer signs. Strands of twinkling, colorful lights graced the overhanging eaves. A group of smokers drinking from plastic cups stood around talking on the wide, wrap-around porch. To the right of the building, a gravel parking lot stretched away from the road into darkness down toward the river. A rusting metal sign on a pole by the driveway announced “Boat Launch.”
Steve climbed the steps and edged through the cluster of folks on the porch. A stocky white-bearded guy, with a florid complexion that matched the red in his lumberjack shirt, made way and said howdy. Steve nodded and pushed through the heavy wooden door.
A blast of tropical warmth enveloped him. The place was packed. He caught the scent of grilled meat and garlic. To the left of the entrance, people were two and three deep at the bar that ran the length of the wall – 30 feet or so – to the back of the room. Booths lined the right-hand wall, flanking a massive stone fireplace. Dining tables filled the floor between. Every seat seemed to be taken; the din was deafening.
He was suddenly acutely self-conscious. He had the sense that everyone around him knew each other – it was that kind of place. For all he knew, this was the entire population of town. He did not belong here.
But he did have to get his tire fixed. He made his way to the bar; not an easy task, given the density of the crowd and his inconvenient girth.
“Excuse me,” he said, “excuse me.” People smiled and let him through. He was sweating heavily by the time he reached the bar. Conversation was loud and animated; everyone seemed to be in high spirits. He noticed lots of middle-aged men with weathered faces and began to wonder if they weren’t members of some kind of club. The bartender, a fit-looking twenty-something with short cropped hair and a tattoo on his forearm, finally came over.
“What’ll it be?” he shouted above the noise.
“I hit a pothole,” Steve shouted back.
“How’s that?”
“My car. Flat tire, just down the street. Is there a garage?”
“A what?”
“An auto repair shop?”
The bartender stood tall and craned his neck, looking over the crowd. “Talk to Frank – over there in the hat.” He pointed to a group of guys by the door.
Steve looked, saw a hat. “Okay, thanks.”
“You want a drink?”
Steve felt he should. “Any local beer on tap?”
“Ubu.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lake Placid Brewery.”
“Oh, sure, sounds good.”
Steve had never heard of Ubu. It was good, but darker than his usual. He would have enjoyed it more but for the donuts in his belly.
Frank was easily identified by “Frank’s Garage” embroidered on his short-brimmed baseball cap and the breast pocket of his greasy coveralls. He was talking with two guys in Carhartts and work boots.
“They’re hungry this year. Gonna be a good season, I tell ya.”
Steve approached and waited for a break in the conversation.
“Excuse me,” he said, addressing Frank. The three men turned to him. “The bartender said you might be able to repair my car. I hit a huge pothole down the street…” he motioned over his shoulder.
“The one in front of Harlan’s?”
“I don’t know…”
“That’s nothing,” said the man to Frank’s right. He was tall and balding, with a hooked nose. “Seen the one down by the laundromat?”
“I thought they patched that?”
“They did, but it opened up again, bigger than ever!”
The man to Frank’s left chimed in. “Wacky weather.” He shook his head, which was crowned with a classic dead-cat toupee. “We’ve had three thaws already this month.”
There was a lull in the conversation, and the three men turned to Steve, as though noticing him for the first time.
“Yes, sir,” Frank said, smiling. He was missing one of his incisors.
“The front left tire is shot,” Steve said. “I think the rim is damaged, too.”
“Well, I’ll give it a thorough going over and get you back on the road ASAP.” He raised his mug in sort of a salute and took a drink.
Huge relief washed over Steve. “Great! Tonight?”
The three men stared at Steve, expressionless. Then Frank guffawed, spraying beer through the gap in his teeth.
“You really had me going there for a second,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “This isn’t the big city, where you can get whatever you want 24 hours a day and there’s sex and drugs on every corner.”
Steve was taken aback. “What big city?” he asked.
“Where ya from?”
“Rochester.”
“That kind of big city,” Frank said. “Things are different up here.” The other two guys laughed. “Just messin’ with your head. Rochester’s ok. Got a cousin lives there. I can take a look tomorrow.” He gave Steve his phone number and then offered to buy another round.
“Thanks,” Steve said. “I guess I should start looking for a place to stay tonight.”
“Hmmm, that’s going to be tough,” said beak nose.
“Fishermen,” said the guy with the rug.
“Ice out!” Frank shouted, punching the air. A whoop went up around them.
Steve thought, all these people are crazy.
Two Ubus later, they seemed less crazy. He had spoken to Lois, the square-jawed, steely-eyed owner of the Wobbly Moose, and she gave him a key to the bunk room out back.
“You got the last bed,” she said. “You fish?”
“No,” he said, pounding his chest. “Me human!” This struck him as incredibly funny, which worried him. He sobered, momentarily.
“Well, I hope you enjoy at least hearing about fish and fishing and reels and flies and whatnot. It’s that time of year around here.”
“What time of year?”
“The time when grown men abandon their loved ones and drink too much and regress about 30 years and raise hell for a week or two. You leave a girl behind?”
This question pitched Steve into a miasma of regret, a condition with which he had become familiar. Jeannie, the love of his life, who had always been insightful and sensitive, said it well the day she finally moved out: “You need professional help.” He didn’t get any. His solace was steady work at the donut shop and the company of Gerald, bequeathed by his mother to his care.
Lois read his face. “None of my business,” she said, taking the empty glass from his hand and walking around behind the bar. “What are you drinking?”
The next Ubu was his last of the night. He never pulled out of the funk that Lois’s question had triggered, despite an enjoyably drunken game of darts with Frank, the toupee guy (whose name turned out to Mike something) and the local taxidermist. After almost falling asleep in front of the fireplace, he decided it was time for bed.
A narrow boardwalk, illuminated by a single floodlight, led from the back door of the Wobbly Moose to the bunkhouse, a simple structure about the size and shape of a two-car garage, sheathed in T-111 plywood. Beyond the bunkhouse, at the limit of the floodlight’s range, he could just make out the sawtooth escarpment of ice heaped up along the river’s edge.
As he paused to drink in the clear cold and scent of pine, he heard the sound that had puzzled him before. The groaning, cracking sound came from the river. The ice moving and shifting.
He groped his way through the dim bunk room to his bed. Some were already occupied, the occupants snoring softly. He hadn’t slept in a room full of strangers since summer camp, as a boy of 11, and wondered if it was like riding a bike.
He kicked off his shoes and dropped into the sway-backed cot fully dressed. The sounds of the restless river and the sleeping men made him drowsy. His last waking thought was that he’d forgotten to tell his father that he would not arrive tonight.
In his dreams, he was striding across shifting tectonic plates, the earth turning like a wheel beneath him.
* * *
Steve woke with the worst hangover he’d had in years. He sat on the edge of the bed, shading his eyes from the morning sun streaming through the bunkhouse windows, head pounding and stomach queasy.
A couple anglers, older guys, were getting dressed and betting on when the ice would go.
“Today’s the day.”
“No way.”
“Ever fish the elbow?”
“What, that hole by the bridge? Yeah, but I’m going upriver this year, get away from the crowd. Jesus, I got hooked last year by some yahoo with a new rod, didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.”
“Took me two years to learn to cast flies.”
“It’s an art.”
The older one addressed Steve. “Hey buddy, you alright?”
“Yeah, just…hungover, I guess.”
“Happens a lot around here.” They chuckled.
“I only had three or four beers,” Steve said. “Ubus.” He couldn’t understand it.
“Ubu is seven percent, son,” the older one said. “You can’t just chug it down like Bud Lite or some other watered-down, piss-poor excuse for a beer.”
“Maybe I can get back to sleep,” Steve said, hoping they would leave soon.
“Get out and get some fresh air, you’ll feel better. Free coffee at the Moose til eight.”
They left then, and he lay back down. Being called “son” made him think of his father, what it might have been like to have a close relationship when he was growing up, the kind where you go fishing together. He felt guilty for not making it to his father’s place last night, but he knew that if he expressed that to the man, he would say no problem, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. His guilt was wasted on his father.
He felt worse lying down, so he got up, splashed his face in the communal bathroom sink, and headed out into the morning.
The parking lot next to the Moose was full of SUVs and pickups and guys standing around waiting for something to happen. Jagged mounds of dirty white rubble clogged the river, bank to bank, as though some maniacal titan had pulverized a thousand Parthenons and dumped them into a trench. It was hard to imagine that there was water moving under all that.
Steve called Frank, who sounded no worse for the late night and beer. They met at the Corolla. Frank put it on a flatbed and they drove together four blocks to his garage on Front Street, which was more of a dead-end back alley between Main and the river. The ice was nearly level with the top of the concrete retaining wall.
Frank examined the damage. “I got the tire you need, but I’ll have to order a rim.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means Monday.”
Steve looked around the cluttered garage. There were two bays – one with a lift. Tires hung from the rafters. A variety of rusting rims were piled outside.
“One of those won’t fit?”
“You gotta have the right width, the right diameter, and the right offset. I got nothing on hand that fits.”
“Monday, then?”
“Best case.”
Steve sighed. “Ok.” He opened the trunk and pulled out his duffle. He started to pick up the shoebox as well, but then put it back.
“Frank, there’s a box in the trunk. It’s kind of, ah, fragile.”
“What is it, a bomb?”
“It’s a gerbil.”
“A gerbil?” He came around next to Steve and looked into the trunk. “That’s like a hamster, right?”
“Yeah, kinda like that.”
“Shouldn’t you punch holes in the lid or something? He’s gonna suffocate in there.”
“He’s dead. I mean, he was already dead when I put him in there.”
Frank looked up from the box, squinted at Steve, opened his mouth, shut it, then looked down again.
“I will treat the little guy with all due respect.”
Steve quickly turned away. “Thanks Frank.” He shouldered the duffle. “Help yourself to the donuts on the front seat. Fresh yesterday.”
“Thanks. I like’em a little crispy. Good for dunkin.”
“Guess I’ll be staying around for the weekend,” Steve said, starting up the street. “See you Monday.”
“Look on the bright side – you might get to see ice out.”
* * *
Steve called his father as he walked up the narrow street. “Hi Dad. It’s me. I’m stuck in Au Sable until Monday. At least.”
“What am I supposed to do about this sump pump?”
“Do you have water on the floor?”
“The sump is full.”
“What about Dave – your neighbor’s handyman? Maybe he could help.”
“The guy’s a klutz. He almost strangled himself putting up their clothesline last year.”
“Dad, replacing a sump pump is simple. It’s so easy…” he chose his words carefully “it can be done by someone without a lot of experience.”
“You’re saying even a doofus like me could do it.”
“You buy it, you bring it home, you drop it in the sump, you connect it to the outflow pipe – couple hose clamps is usually all it takes. Plug it in; problem solved.”
“You can’t be bothered, is that it?”
Steve knew he had to break this pattern, but he didn’t know how, so he said nothing. He stood in the road, looking over the waist-high concrete wall at the ice-choked river, silent phone to his ear, wondering what 30 years of conversations like this had done to him. Moments ticked by. The ice groaned. How was the water getting through?
“I can’t get there, Dad. The car is in the shop.”
“How convenient for you.”
“Not really. I’ll call tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”
“I’ll try to hold on til then.”
Steve snapped the phone shut and resisted the urge to throw it into the river. His usual strategy for dealing with his father was one of appeasement. This time, it was prevented by a conspiracy of circumstance that began with flooding in Elizabethtown. He had no backup plan.
He reached the corner, climbed the short, steep grade up Mill Street, and was back on Main, heading for the Moose. It was midmorning, and the diner, tackle shop and hardware store he passed were doing brisk business. His olfactory sense alerted him to the smell of home fries, but his stomach, still recovering from Ubu overindulgence, told him it was too soon to eat.
He paused to gaze through a storefront window. In the dim interior, he saw a fox and pheasant frozen in a lifelike tableau. The walls were adorned with the head of a moose, a 12-point buck, and various leaping, iridescent fish. He stepped back to read the lettering stenciled in a graceful arc high on the plate glass: Taxidermist. He went in.
The place smelled faintly of chemicals and something else. A musky scent that might have been emanating from the hides of the stuffed animals. Or perhaps from the woman at the counter, who stood with her back to him and was talking to the proprietor. She was wearing a long fur coat with a bad case of alopecia. The man behind the counter was his darts companion of the night before.
“Look at this,” the woman, spreading her arms. “It’s falling apart, and it’s only been a year!”
“That’s what happens sometimes, without chemicals. Dry scraping, wet scraping – it’s just not as good. I told you then, I couldn’t guarantee it.”
“But…” her voice cracked, “this animal was very special to me. He was like a member of the family.”
“I know. Very tragic. Silo augers are dangerous devices for curious llamas.”
This sounded like code to Steve, as though it might spell something meaningful backwards.
“Alpaca,” she said. “He was an alpaca!” Then, with a dramatic sweep of her balding coat, she stormed out of the shop.
The man followed her with sad eyes. “Sometimes,” he said, “going green just isn’t worth it.”
Steve waited for an appropriate amount of time before changing the subject. “Good morning,” he said. “I enjoyed the darts last night. You were very good.”
“Oye, good last night maybe, bad this morning.” He put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. Then, as if waking from a coma, he opened his eyes wide and smiled brightly. “What can I do for you?”
Steve cleared his throat. “You do taxidermy?”
“That’s my profession.”
“Do you do small animals?”
“How small?”
“Gerbil size?”
“Possibly. What’s the condition?”
“Dead, I’m afraid.”
The taxidermist stopped smiling. His eyelids dropped to half-mast. “How long?”
“Couple days.”
“Sounds promising. Keep him cold. Bring him in Monday, I can give you a quote.”
“I’m not quite sure I want to do this.”
“See how you feel Monday.”
“Ok.” Steve gave one more look around the room; the dead animals – and animal parts – the variety of glass eyes in the counter case like a ghoulish marble collection. He wasn’t sure that having Gerald’s little stuffed corpse around would be better than no Gerald at all. He didn’t know what to do with him. “Thanks.”
He left the shop and the tinkling doorbell behind him and continued on his way back to the Moose. The woman with the coat stood on the sidewalk, half a block along, crying into her cell phone. Her straight, short blonde hair framed a pale oval face. Her eyes were red. She turned away as he passed.
It was midmorning. The sun was melting the dirty heaps of snow plowed up along the sidewalk and the ice in the gutters of the shops. He could hear water trickling all around him, dripping down downspouts and into storm drains. The Moose was up ahead. Groups of men were standing around in the parking lot, drinking coffee and leaning against pickups.
He came to the corner of a street he’d driven past with Frank on the way to the garage. It crossed the river over an arched stone bridge with iron railings. A dozen or so people were standing on the bridge and leaning against the railings, watching the ice and talking.
He wanted to join them. There was nothing else he had to do, and little else he could think of doing. He could not remember the last time he’d been alone, in an unfamiliar place, with no obligations dictating his actions.
The woman in the fur coat walked past him, still talking on her phone, and turned to go over the bridge. He followed her.
The center of the bridge was about 15 feet above the river. Kids peered through the rails and reported on every movement, real or imagined, in the glacial mass below.
“It’s moving!” shouted a tow-headed boy of perhaps 6 or 7, pointing below.
“No it’s not,” replied an older, pimply-faced girl in a white hooded fleece.
“I see water!” the boy exclaimed.
“That’s a tire, knucklehead,” the girl said.
The woman in the alpaca coat was standing near Steve. She was off the phone and watching the ice, too.
“What’s everyone looking for?” he said.
“Ice out,” she said.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say that, but what does it mean?”
She was about his age, thin, with large eyes. A prominent vertical crease ran between her brows. He thought she had the face of someone who had suffered. She looked him up and down.
“It’s when the ice breaks up and clears out,” she said, and turned back to the river.
“I see,” he said. “It looks pretty broken.”
“We’ve had funny weather this year,” she said, spinning around to take in the up-river view, her blonde hair flying out and lying back down in perfect order. He wondered if she colored it or straightened it; if she cared how she looked. If she tried to look attractive. He regretted all the donuts he’d eaten yesterday.
“The up-river ice broke first,” she continued, “and it’s all jammed up here.” She ran her hands over an invisible wall, like a mime. “We’re getting some flooding.” She pointed to some trees surrounded by ice near the opposite shore. He could see water boiling around the trunks. “That’s the town park. See the picnic table?”
By the trees, he saw what looked like an old door on end sticking out of a pile of ice.
“I think so,” he said.
She seemed to lose interest in their conversation then, and he expected her to walk off. He probably would have walked off, too, if he’d had a place he needed to go. But they both lingered in the little group on the bridge, watching the ice and listening to the yammering kids, just two more spectators in the crowd.
“I was in the taxidermy shop,” he blurted. She was only five feet away but seemed not to hear. “I’m sorry about your…” he hesitated, because he wasn’t sure what he should be sorrier about – her beloved pet or the sad coat it had become. “Alpaca,” he said.
“I loved that stupid animal,” she said, looking at her hands.
Steve didn’t know what to say. “I had a gerbil.”
“Really?” She turned to him, “I love gerbils!”
“You do?”
“I had a blue merle when I was twelve!”
Steve had heard of Blue Merle Australian Shepherds, but not gerbils. “I’ve been told that they’re very rare,” he said, cautiously.
“You have no idea!”
“I guess you could call mine a calico.”
“How interesting,” she said, her brows knitting. “Calico in cats is an x-linked trait.” She started walking back toward Main Street. He walked with her. “For it to manifest in gerbils, you’d need to find the color on the x chromosome, then a dominant color over it on the same gene, and it would have to be masked in 50% of the coat's cells. It's a long and difficult process to breed it in cats; I can’t imagine how challenging it is in gerbils.”
He felt bad then, because he wasn’t sure that Gerald technically was a calico, and she seemed to be all excited about it. “Are you a zoologist, or something?”
She laughed. “Animal husbandry. My family has a big dairy farm down in Keene Valley.”
She had a lot to say about breeding cows and milking machine technology and the price of hay, and they had walked the length of Main Street before he had to do anything but nod and make inarticulate sounds of agreement or surprise. What he most wanted to know – whether family meant husband – of course he couldn’t ask. He interrupted her only once, on the return trip, to point out the fateful pothole that altered his destiny. That’s what she called it. Everything happens for a reason, she said.
When they passed Betty’s Coffee shop for the second time, his rumbling stomach gave him the courage to pop the question: “Donut and coffee?”
She accepted. They sat at a ridiculously tiny round table in the front window and watched the world go by. The butternut donuts were exceptional. Almost as good as his own.
* * *
Her name was Cynthia. She’d grown up in the Adirondacks and loved nature and animals and family. Three of her five siblings lived at home and worked the farm. Her parents were still together and healthy, and her Dad still got up at dawn every day to do an hour of chores before breakfast. Steve loved listening to her but couldn’t help but think they had nothing in common. He’d grown up in Buffalo, his family had been dysfunctional, and he loved…well, he wasn’t sure what he loved, but he told her he loved reading the classics and listening to Mozart and going to the movies. And of course he loved Gerald, who was undeniably an animal, though on a smaller scale than cows and alpacas.
“Refill?” Betty asked, standing over them in her blue apron and beehive doo, glass coffee pot in hand.
He was glad for the interruption, because he’d run out of things to say and feared that his relationship with Cynthia had already peaked. There was nothing more to look forward to other than awkward silences and the even more awkward utterances he would make to fill them, which would only hasten the inevitable decline.
“Sure,” he said, despondently.
Psych 101 had taught him everything he needed to know about his own psychology. A textbook introvert, he could attest to the fact that interacting with people cost him more energy than it generated. As much as he liked her and found her pretty and interesting, he felt the pressure of her attention, an unintended metaphysical assault that some primitive part of his psyche worked furiously to fend off. Perhaps that was why it was easier for him while consuming high octane coffee and high calorie donuts.
“So,” Cynthia said, “you own a donut shop?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I’m still paying it off.”
“I see,” she said, taking a huge bite of her second apple fritter. “How,” she said, pausing to slurp coffee and swallow, “did you get into that line of work?”
He got into that line of work by having a nervous breakdown during finals week of his junior year at Pottsdam and going home to live with his mother, who spent the better part of the next two years nursing him back to some semblance of mental health.
“My mother was diagnosed with cancer during my junior year at college,” he said. “I left school to take care of her.” He’d repeated this protective fiction a thousand times, but now, in this place, with this woman, for some reason, he felt bad about not telling the truth.
“I’m sorry,” she said. The crease between her eyes deepened. Somehow it made her prettier. Maybe just more sincere. The red-checked table cloth was easier to look at.
“I took care of her for seven years,” he said. “The donut shop was nearby; the job helped pay the medical bills.”
He wanted to tell her how he had gradually emerged from his incapacitating depression, ventured out into the world, took a part time job at the donut shop as a form of therapy. How the years passed and the dream of finishing college became a memory receding down the road not taken. How when the shop owner decided to retire to Florida, he offered to buy him out. It seemed like the thing to do.
“Never got back to college.” It felt good to end on a note of truth, closing the loop, sealing it off.
“Your mother was very lucky.”
She was wrong, but it wasn’t her fault. He took a bite of his glazed bow tie and gazed out the window. A crowd was forming on the bridge.
“Your dad, too,” she said, in a lighter tone, smiling. “Here you are, rushing all the way up there to fix his sump pump.”
“He’s not mechanically inclined.”
“I’m sure it’s more than that.”
“Could be,” he said, before he realized that she meant more than that for his father. And for an instant, he felt pity for the old man.
“So,” she said, “Are you married?”
What he heard was, are you marriable? Either way the answer was the same. Jeannie had let him know. And he knew intuitively, from awareness of his withered sense of self, that he would be lost in any relationship he valued, with anyone he loved, with anyone who had the natural and healthy desire to embrace the world and grow. He would be subsumed, consumed, annihilated.
“No.” he said casually. “You?”
“No,” she said, with a quick shake of her head, a sip of her coffee, a glance out the window.
Now that he had the answer to the question, he didn’t know what to do with it. But it reinforced his first impression, that she was somehow wounded, and it made him feel closer to her.
“Well then,” he said.
She flashed her eyes on him and smiled shyly. “Yes,” she said. “So. How about these donuts!”
He began to laugh and she started laughing too. It was a pleasure to see the color rise in her face. Betty looked on from behind the Formica counter, frowning. But maybe she was always frowning. A family with two toddlers entered the shop and gave them a wide berth. Tears came to his eyes and he wiped them away with his left hand as he tried to catch his breath. His right hand was on the table and somehow Cynthia’s hand ended up on top of it.
When they emerged from the store, the sun was bright and the air crisp with the smell of ice and wood smoke. They stood on the sidewalk and talked about the weather for a minute, and then she said, looking away from him, that she needed to get back home, and he offered to walk her to her car. She accepted, but she didn’t start walking. Instead she became interested in the sleeve of her coat and began plucking out little tufts of gray hair – it was hair, not fur, she had explained during their morning walk through town, because only a single strand grew from each follicle, which was another reason she felt closer to alpacas than, say, horses. He was in no hurry to go and was content to stand close to her and watch the wisps of hair float away in the breeze.
He looked up at the sound of a diesel engine and saw a yellow backhoe coming up the street. It passed them and turned into the gravel lot just beyond the boat launch sign. The crowd on the bridge had grown. A man was taking video with his phone.
Cynthia stepped off the curb and began to walk toward the group. She sent one hand back for him and he took it.
They saw it all from the bridge – the ice dam down river, just beyond the Wobbly Moose, the gray water bursting to the surface, spreading out. The backhoe clawing at the piles of ice from a high spot on the shore. So this is ice out, he thought, glad to be safe and dry.
“Look,” Cynthia said, pointing.
Water was cascading over the retaining wall between Front Street and the river. The street was filling; the waterline was halfway up the storefronts. Tires floated out of the open bay of Frank’s Garage.
He turned and ran from the bridge, down the long block on Main, past the Taxidermy shop, and then down the short, steep incline to the water swirling over Front Street. The cold numbed his legs instantly. He slogged along, waist deep, until he stood in front of the garage. His car was inside, half submerged. Someone called his name; he waved and tried to say “I’m all right,” but couldn’t catch his breath. As he watched, the water rose over the trunk and its cargo. His legs stopped working.
The current tugged at him. A luminous thread, like the glowing filament of an electric light, ran up the axis of his body to the place in his head where thoughts formed. He felt himself growing lighter. It made perfect sense. He lay back and let the water carry him back in the direction he had come. The sun and clouds and eaves of buildings and crowns of trees circled lazily in the sky. His feet caught on something and hands pulled him up. Men in waders stood around him. One was Frank.
“Christ, man, cars can be replaced,” he said, breathing heavily, hands on his knees. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, yours was past due.”
Steve propped himself up to a sitting position. He was on Mill Street. A little tributary ran from his drenched clothes down the pavement to the churning water below. Someone threw a blanket over his shoulders. It smelled of wet dog.
Cynthia walked past him, watched the river for a moment, and then turned to face him. The crease was back.
“That was crazy,” she said. “What were you thinking?”
He closed his eyes. He had never felt so peaceful. When he opened them again, she was still there.
“Do you fish?” he asked.
She looked confused. “Sometimes.”
“Would you teach me?” He began to shiver.
She smiled. “I’m not very good.”
“That’s aw-aw-all right,” he said. The cold was more noticeable now that it was leaving him. He pulled off the blanket to let it escape.
“Well,” she said, sitting on the pavement next to him, “no better time to learn than during ice out.”
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