Learning to Live Again Page 3

  Horny. Plain and simple. Horny. They could help you quit smoking, drinking, even worrying, but there was nothing for horny.

  CHAPTER IV

  “My, my, what a handsome fella you are, Sam.” Allison beamed at her son. She took the arm he offered her on their way to Sam’s Taurus station wagon—booty from the divorce thanks to the Community Property law. “Never pictured you in a wagon, Sam. Always thought you’d pick one of those racy sport cars you see on TV.”

  “I did, Mom, but I didn’t get it. Neither one of us did. We had to sell it to settle.”

  “Well, never mind. It’s getting where you’re goin’ that’s important.”

  ******

  The diner was exactly as he remembered it from some fifteen years earlier. Fabricated to look like a railroad car on the outside, and not much wider on the inside, it even smelled the same. Grease flavored with fish, potatoes, and doughnut dough permeated the air. Heavy, sweet and acrid at the same time, the odor made his stomach lurch. He thought of the last time he’d come here with his dad. Karen was with him then. They’d ordered fried clams and Karen got sick and threw up all night. She blamed it on the clams, but they found out later she was pregnant. She miscarried.

  “Allison Gear, good evening to you. Good as your word, this has to be your son.” A short, round woman stopped scraping the grill and wiped her hands on her apron before offering one in a handshake. “Sam, how do you do? I’d of knowed you anywhere. Bet you don’t remember me, though. I was three years behind you in school … Hannah Brewer.”

  Sam smiled, gently shook her hand. “Nice to see you again, Hannah. This place doesn’t change, does it?” he said, looking around the customer-free diner.

  “Naw. They did some work to the kitchen about four years ago, bought a new oven and dishwasher, changed the way we separate the slop for pigs. That’s about it.” Hannah smiled, her blue eyes dancing.

  “Can’t remember ever seeing it empty.”

  “You’re early. In twenty minutes there will be a line waitin’ for tables.”

  “Well, Mom, where we sitting?”

  Allison plopped down in a booth close to the entrance and across from the door to the kitchen. “Margie’s cooking tonight, ain’t she?”

  “Oh yeah. This here’s Brenda Michelson.” Hannah ushered a starched looking woman of about forty to their table. “This here’s her first night, but she’s experienced and will do a fine job.”

  “Where’s Racine?” Allison looked doubtfully at the new waitress.

  “Run off. No one’s seen her since her shift Friday night.”

  “Goodness, has anyone called the sheriff?”

  “She ain’t missing, Allison,” Hannah said leaning over the table to whisper, “I happen to know exactly where she is.” Straightening up, she resumed her normal boom, “Never mind, Brenda here will take good care of you. Give her a chance, now. She and her family are new in town. Her husband, Bart, is the new math teacher at Green Mountain High and she has two sons—Matthew, fifeen and Billy, sixteen?” Hannah looked to the quiet woman who nodded.

  “Hmmm. Well.” Allison opened the menu. Sam noticed a twitch in her cheek. “Where’s Margie? Ask her to come out here and tell us what we should order tonight.”

  “Thought you always have scallops on Thursday?” Sam reminded her.

  “I’ll ask her, but she’s pretty busy.” Hannah said, looking at Sam. “This is Thursday, you know.” Hannah disappeared through the swinging door to the kitchen.

  “Nice to meet you,” Sam said to the still-hovering Brenda while giving his mother’s foot a push with his own under the table. Allison looked up and smiled a little sheepishly, he thought, and nodded.

  ******

  Busy? Unless there was another dining room underground, Sam and his mother were still the only diners in the place. They were early, 5:30 pm. Maybe the crowd hadn’t shown up yet. Just as the thought crossed his mind, a family of five came in. And then three couples, and a family of four. By six the place was packed and Hannah finally returned to their table.

  “Margie says order the pot roast. The scallops are too small and the clams have been frozen twice already. She’s got Yorkshire pudding ready to bake to go along with the roast and those baby carrots you like. She can’t come out and chat just now, but she’ll come soon’s the rush is over.” Hannah spoke quickly, with an eye on the short order grill where the makings for western sandwiches and hamburgers were cooking. “Orville, flip them Westerns, will ya?”

  Orville had to be eighty if he was a day. He’d been dishwasher at the diner for as far back as Sam could remember. He put the clean dishes he was carrying on the counter, picked up the pancake turner, and did as he was told.

  “Brenda, you come take the Gears’ order now,” Hannah called, “I got to babysit that grill.”

  “You need another waitress in here,” Sam told Brenda when she arrived at their table a little breathless.

  “It dies down after seven most nights, they tell me. That pot roast smells mighty good back there. What’s it gonna be?”

  They ordered the roast with the Yorkshire pudding and carrots. Not a heart patient’s diet, but Sam convinced himself that an occasional splurge was good for the soul, if nothing else. Sam would have liked a beer, but the coffee was so exceptional he forgot about it.

  “That really hit the spot,” Sam said. He sopped up the last of the gravy with a slice of sourdough bread. “I was going to have apple pie à la mode, but I don’t think I have room.” And a splurge on my diet is one thing, but pie is probably overboard.

  He’d been eyeing the pie case since their arrival. The apple had a top crust that reminded him of only one other, his Grandmother Gear’s. He could taste the memory of an eleven-year-old Sam—hot apple pie that smelled of cinnamon and melting homemade vanilla ice cream. It was the high crust, lightly browned and without glaze, that started his mouth watering.

  “I figured I was safe with the pot roast, wouldn’t eat too much,” Sam said, “That’s not a usual restaurant choice of mine. I can’t forgo pie that looks like Grandma’s, though. Stuffed or not, I’ve got to have some.”

  Allison bent over the table, cupped her mouth with her hand, and whispered, “Ought to look like Mama Gear’s, it’s her recipe. In fact, it was her Yorkshire pudding and pot roast you just put away.”

  Sam frowned. “What are you saying? Grandma gave the cook her recipes?”

  “No, of course not. Grandma died before Margie was even born. I gave them to her.”

  “You did? Why? I mean … . Why?”

  Sam could tell she was doing that irritating thing she did, where she fiddled around in the files of her mind before she came up with a carefully calculated, rehearsed-sounding answer.

  Allison folded her hands on the table. “She came to town five years ago. I met her at the drug store. She was trying to get work. Such a sweet, pitiful creature—with a son. Peter was nine then. She was on her way to her husband’s family in New Jersey. Her car broke down two miles out of town. We sent Brownie’s garage after the car.” Allison stopped her story, seemingly satisfied with the telling.

  “But she’s still here. Cooking. Using Grandma’s recipes.”

  “Yes.”

  Happily, even dreamily, he thought.

  “She’s very sweet. I just know you’ll like her, Sam.”

  “Her husband’s family? Something’s missing here.”

  “I thought I told you. Her husband was killed in Desert Storm. She was traveling to New Jersey to meet his family, whom she had never met. Anyway, it was two weeks getting the parts and her car fixed. By then she was beholden to practically everyone—Brownie, Smith, and myself anyway. So we figured out a way she could earn her keep and stay here. Make a life for herself and her boy. Brownie rented her that old house on the hill. I talked the diner into letting her fill the opening they had for a cook, and Smith put her son to work running errands for the drugstore.”

  Something wasn’t quite ringing true
about this story, but it was none of Sam’s concern, so he let it go. Still, he felt betrayal at his grandmother’s recipes given away, just like that, to a stranger.

  He let the story go with one exception. “You mean that kid’s been filling prescriptions for Old Man Smith since he was nine?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t fill prescriptions, Sam. He just runs errands, and cleans up. Stuff like that. No, no. He doesn’t fill prescriptions. That would be against the law. A Federal offense, I do believe.”

  Brenda brought Sam his pie. The ice cream was from a local creamery, not his Grandmother’s, but the pie was as he remembered it—tart, sweet, and cinnamony, with a crust that melted tender and flaky on the tongue. Yum, yum! Could anyone bake a pie like that even with his Grandmother’s recipe? He suspected a natural talent was necessary. After all, his mother had had the recipe and never baked a pie that compared. He started to ask her about that when a young girl showed up at their table, hugged his mother, looked at him.

  “Hi, I’m Margie. Your mama has told me so much about you.”

  Sam’s mouth dropped open. Margie barely looked old enough to drive, much less have a son of fourteen. If asked, he’d have had a hard time describing this first impression of her. Peter Pan, he decided later.

  “Nice to meet you,” he managed to say, taking the hand she offered him.

  “How’s Peter?” Allison asked her.

  “Fine. At least, I hope so. He’s usually here by now on Thursday night. He doesn’t work on Thursday. I’ve called home, there’s no answer. I suppose he’s stopped at a friend’s and lost track of time.” She talked in bits and spurts. A nervous, in-a-hurry habit, Sam guessed.

  Margie was a pixie, a skinny Kewpie doll with dimples and all. Her hair, the color of sand, was cropped like … what? Like someone put a bowl on her head and trimmed around the edges. Her ears stuck out between strands of it. Ears tiny, elfin-shaped and china thin. Incredible. His mother was trying to fix him up with this creature. He might have laughed aloud if the thought hadn’t struck him in such a strange way. What a cool, callous character he’d become.

  Then Sam remembered one Joe Piccolo, who had picked up a prescription for his mother. Peter had acted nervous and Joe Piccolo had not paid. Sam almost mentioned the incident, but decided against it. After all, this was Green Mountain, and Peter had been on Smith’s payroll for five years now. If anything was amiss, someone would have caught it long before Sam, the stickler, came to town.

  ******

  Sam and Allison had returned home and were watching TV when the phone rang. It was nine o’clock.

  “Please go to the house and look around. It’s just not like Peter to disappear like this. I’ve called everywhere I can think of,” Margie said.

  Sam told Allison to stay put. He’d be quicker on his own. But the dog knew her, she said. She had to go, too, or he wouldn’t get within a hundred yards of the place.

  They parked the car at the bottom of the drive. Pat began to bark frantically before their feet hit the ground. Allison ran, with Sam running behind. They almost tripped over Peter in the dark, lying on his back, halfway up the driveway. Sam felt a sticky substance that smelled like blood when he bent over and touched his face.

  “Go back to the house and call 9-1-1, Mom. Get somebody out here.”

  CHAPTER V

  Sam and Allison sat together on the plastic-covered settee in the hospital waiting room. Peter’s plight remained a mystery. His body was, as Sam suspected, bloodied, but the stickiness was in part due to something he’d been eating. Margie had been notified but hadn’t arrived yet.

  Allison blew out a sigh. “Poor, Margie, she’s had so much trouble. I swear I don’t know how she carries on.”

  “The kid’s going to be all right, Mom. I’m sure of it. Don’t you worry now.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about Peter. It’s his mother. She tries so hard, Sam, and it seems no matter what she does there’s something or someone out there that’s ready to strike her down.”

  “Like her husband’s family?” Sam tried a stab in the dark.

  “I don’t know what happened there. Asked her a couple of times—she clams up, changes the subject. I don’t believe she ever contacted them. She broke down here in Green Mountain, and here she stayed.”

  And there she was, walking toward them with eyes like Bambi’s. Now why hadn’t he noticed those eyes before? Dark brown, round eyes. He experienced Bambi’s run through the woods all over again just watching them. He saw her fear, and remembered the fawn.

  She sat on the end of the settee, next to his mother, her hands scrunched together tight, hanging between her legs. “Why would anybody want to hurt Peter? He’s the kindest soul on earth.” Her voice was small like herself. She let out an unsteady sigh that made her shiver.

  “Thank you both for coming,” she remembered her manners and offered them a wan smile.

  Allison patted her on the knee. “He’s going to be okay, dear, I just know he is.”

  They sat silent until a man in a white coat entered the waiting room.

  “Peter’s okay, Margie, just roughed up a bit,” the man in white told her. “I sent him to Xray—don’t have the results yet. His nose may be broken, but he’s going to be fine. I want to keep him overnight as a precautionary measure. You can pick him up in the morning.”

  Sam watched as the young doctor hugged her, like an old friend. Who was this guy, anyway? He was young, must be fresh out of school—decent build, flat stomach, taller than Sam. Dark hair and plenty of it.

  “Thank you, Martin. Can I see him now?”

  “He’s sedated, sleeping. Let him rest. Pick him up in the morning.”

  “I want to see him, Martin, now.”

  Sam stood up. The little girl was going to see her son if that was what she wanted.

  Dr. Martin Pharr, Sam read on his name tag, took a step backward. “They’re just wheeling him into a room. Check with the nurse’s station in about five minutes. They’ll be able to give you a room number.” He looked at Sam as he spoke, then back at Margie. “Have the nurse’s station page me when you get here in the morning.” He turned, walked to the elevators across the hall, and didn’t look back.

  “Thank you, Sam,” said the little girl. He shrugged; he hadn’t done anything to be thanked for, but he intended to go with her to see her son. He wasn’t sure why. He thought she might need him, somehow.

  ******

  Margie, Sam and Allison entered the room together. Margie gasped. Peter’s head was bandaged. Even in the semi-darkness they could see the black swollen eyes and the nose double its normal size. Sam’s heart went out to the young man and his little mother. He’d have fought a tiger that night, if it would have made the boy the efficient clerk he met at the drugstore and his mother the elfin cook that kept his grandmother’s cooking alive. But they were all those things without his help. He’d fight a tiger then to make the day go away. And the day would go away without his help, he knew.

  He had to learn to quit fighting tigers.

  CHAPTER VI

  Margie woke up shaking the cobwebs of a half-remembered dream from a corner of her mind. It was only 6:00 am, too early to bring Peter home from the hospital. She couldn’t sleep. What a strange dream. Embarrassing. She giggled, chided herself because Peter was in the hospital, suffering, and teary-eyed giggled again. It was such a silly dream, after all. “Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry, I swear, I don’t know what’s going on with me. But Hannah’s right. That Sam Gear is some good looking man.”

  It had to be more than looks. Margie was not one to be taken by a man’s looks alone. He had substance. That was it. Sam Gear had substance, or something. And hair that made her think of corn silk. And the shoulders of King Richard in a Robin Hood movie she couldn’t remember the name of…

  “You need to put Sam Gear right out of your head, Margie Merryhill, and out of your dreams,” she said aloud to the inside of her closet, where she found nothing she wanted to wear today. She clo
sed the closet door and pulled out a drawer in her dresser. “I can’t wear shorts. It’s September, too cold, and I’m not going to run into him, probably, anyway.” She stood at her dresser, in front of the mirror, still wearing the cotton teddy she’d bought herself last Christmas. “But my legs are my best feature. It’s a sin, I can’t show them off until spring. I suppose it would take much more than a great pair of legs to snare a man like Sam Gear. Still, a girl has to use what she has.”

  Margie decided on a knee-length denim skirt, a blue knit shirt that hugged her breasts, and a waist-length jean jacket.

  She drove to the hospital, paying more attention to the other cars on the road than was her habit. She would not have admitted to watching for the brown station wagon Sam Gear drove, but she was doing it. She couldn’t believe a silly dream could have such an impact on her thoughts … on her breathing. Maybe she was coming down with something dreadful. Margie Merryhill did not lose her head over men, not since she was fifteen and foolishly in love with Peter’s father. But golly, as long ago as that was, this sure felt familiarly like that. It was the dream. That darn, silly dream had her heart all aflutter. Silly nonsense. Margie Merryhill, wake up and smell the coffee! In the hospital parking lot, she took a deep breath, looked at her face in the rear view mirror, practiced her best mother’s smile, and left the car.