Pinch of Love (9781101558638) (16 page)

“Well, we do seem to stink a little less lately.”

I join her at the table. I dip my finger into the bowl of frosting and swipe it on her nose.

She giggles. “Oh no you didn't.” She scoops three fingers into the frosting and smears it on my nose. Then I smear more under her nose, giving her a frosting mustache.

Her giggles escalate into peals of laughter. Ahab peeks around the corner, curious, sniffing the air, cocking his head.

Ingrid's face is covered in frosting now, almost like a beauty mask. “Can I let Ahab lick all this off me?”

“Whatever floats your boat, girl.”

She kneels and calls for the Captain. He trots over, sniffing like crazy. She cracks up as he licks her nose clean and then searches her cheeks and chin and forehead and even her ears for more. He leans into her just a little too forcefully, and Ingrid crashes to the floor, squealing with laughter as Ahab stands over her, licking her face all over.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK, PAUSE. Knock-knock-knock, pause. A steady, unchanging rhythm. I'm in my office when I hear it, typing away to Nick. Ahab pads in and whines. Knock-knock-knock, pause.

We go downstairs and follow the source of the noise. It's loudest in the powder room. The knocking comes from the other side of the wall. Ahab stands in the doorway, tilting his head, as I call, “Hello?”

“Hi.” Ingrid's voice sounds so distant. “I've been knocking for you.”

“It's late. You have school tomorrow.”

“I just wanted to wish you good night. I know we're going to win the Warm the Soul baking contest. I just know it.”

“Where's your dad?”

“He's studying with his earbuds in.”

“You should get into bed.”

“I know.”

“Get into bed and read a book until you fall asleep.”

“Okay.”

“Good night.”

I get up and shut off the bathroom light.

Knock-knock-knock, pause. Knock-knock-knock, pause. Ahab whines.

“Ingrid?” I say. “You have to stop knocking now. You're driving the Captain nuts.”

“Just one more thing,” she says. “Love ya 'n' like ya.”

Ahab leans into me, and I scratch his ear. I smile to myself. “Love ya 'n' like ya,” I say.

 

 

423: TRUE BURGUNDY.

399: CHERISE.

314: RAINY-DAY BLUE.

My alveoli bulge from bronchial tubes like overripe purple grapes on a vine.

It's Friday, and Russ rings the doorbell precisely at one fifteen. A gust of wind sweeps through the house as I open the door. It's snowing outside, and frigid. He gives me his usual high five and mail delivery before clomping to the kitchen to dish out lunch: leftover chicken potpie, which his wife made for dinner last night.

I pour him a glass of milk as he shovels microwave-warmed food into his mouth. The phone rings, but I ignore it. The machine beeps, and my sister starts talking. “Yoo-hoo, Ze-ell. Why don't you return any of my calls? When are you coming up here?”

“That's Gail?” Russ asks, fork halfway to his mouth. He always had a crush on my sister. I think he still does.

“Yep, that's Gail.” I scrape my plate.

“Well, I'm gonna answer it.” He crosses the kitchen and picks up the phone. “Well, well,
well,
if it isn't the homecoming queen herself, Ms. Gail Carmichael-Dunbar,” he says.

“Who's this?” my sister asks; I hear because the answering machine is recording.

“It's your trusty former sophomore chemistry lab partner
and
trusty former mail carrier.”

“Oh.” Gail sighs. “Hi, Russell. I'm still married, Russell.”

“No funny business, now, Ms. Carmichael-Dunbar,” he says. “I'm married, too.
And
I'm on the clock. The
government
clock. But it's good to speak with you. I can't believe you moved away. How's ski country, by the way?”

“Beats Mount Wippamunk.”

“You can say that again.”

“Beats Mount Wippamunk.”

“Hello to your lovely parents,” Russ says. “Here's your sister.”

I roll my eyes as he hands me the phone. With his free hand he makes a fist and poses as if to sock me in the jaw. Then he cleans up the lunch plates.

“I've been so busy with work,” I tell Gail. “But I'll come up. Tonight. For the weekend.”

She squeals so loud, I hold the phone away from my face. When I put it to my ear again, she's saying, “What about the snow, though?”

“It's not supposed to be that bad here,” I say. “What about up there?”

“It's always snowing up here anyway. Can't
wait
to see you.”

 

 

MY CAR WON'T START. It hacks and chokes when I turn the key.

Fine snow falls, the flakes little slivers of ice, like fiberglass.

The car was Nick's domain. Nick's project.

Balls.

I bang on the steering wheel, the dashboard. I turn the key. Hack. Choke. Sputter.

In the passenger seat, Ahab whines.

I get out of the car and kick the door shut. Icy mud slides from the wheel well. The dislodged clump makes a slopping noise when it lands. I kick the front tire so hard, pain sears my big toe.

“Problems?” It's Garrett. He wears a fitted, stylish sweater. I can't make out his facial features because of the bright porch light behind him.

“Yeah. Car won't start.”

With a grunt he lifts the hood and studies the tangle of hoses and black boxes.

I step back into the shadows, where I don't have to squint. “I didn't know you knew anything about cars.”

“I don't, actually,” he says. He lets the hood drop. “Where are you off to?

“My sister's. She lives in Vermont. On Okemo Mountain.”

“Is it urgent?”

“No. Truthfully, it's not urgent. But it feels urgent, you know?” I think of the mural, the blank bodies with blank faces. Gail said not to worry about the bathroom, but of course, I
do
worry about it. Instead of skiing, I plan to lock myself in there until I finished what I started. It's time. “I have some work to do,” I say. “Unfinished business, you could say.”

The fiberglass snowflakes become thicker and fall faster. Polly Pinch would say the snowflakes are “really ratcheting up the action.”

Garrett toes the snow with his left boot. “If you don't mind my asking, unfinished business related to what?”

“A bathroom.”

“A bathroom?” He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Will you explain it to me on the way up?”

“What? No. You are not driving me a hundred miles to Vermont in a snowstorm at ten o'clock at night.” I meant to leave earlier, but I was working on a nasal cavity, and I couldn't resist frontal sinus, pharyngeal tonsil, anterior naris. All that space, all those labyrinthine chambers and passages, behind a face.

“This”—Garrett holds out his hand and catches a few flakes—“this is not a snowstorm. This is nothing. It's supposed to blow over anyway. It's no big deal.”

“Famous last words,” I say. “I can't let you drive me, Garrett.”

He shivers and stamps his feet. “Why not? Why not let me drive you?”

“Because it's too much to ask.”

He laughs—a deep belly laugh. “Oh please. You've been babysitting my crazy kid for weeks, indulging all her whims.”

“That's different. I like babysitting your crazy kid.”

“Well, I like driving. And you can pay me for gas.”

“But it's so late. It's a two-hour drive normally, and in this snow—”

“I don't sleep anyway. You know that. I planned on studying all night, but I'm going cross-eyed. I need a break.”

“What about Ingrid?”

“Oh, she sleeps anywhere. Besides, she'll go anywhere with you.”

“What about the Captain?”

In the car, Ahab's ears point tall at the mention of his name.

“The Captain can keep Ingrid warm in the backseat.” Garrett stands opposite me with his hands on my shoulders. “Please? Let me do this for you. I
want
to do this for you.”

“Why?”

“I just do. Plus, all I ever do is drive to Boston and back. This'll be different. An adventure.”

 

 

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER we climb into Garrett's truck—Ingrid, Garrett, Ahab, and I—and haul ass up Route 331. The snow coats the road with shardlike flakes. Hannah Montana blares, and Ingrid sings along in the backseat. Ahab rests his head in her lap, and she holds his ear between her thumb and forefinger and caresses it. At her feet is the little suitcase I packed for him.

We pass Mount Wippamunk. The sight of it hulking in the snow triggers a Memory Smack: My wedding day, January 1, 1999. I wore a thirty-dollar bridal gown—a straight, beaded thrift-shop purchase two sizes too big—over my ski clothes. Nick donned two layers of long underwear under the powder blue tuxedo his dad wore to the senior prom in 1969.

At the mountain, Nick and I took the North Summit chairlift. In the chair behind us rode the best man and the maid of honor: Nick's dad, Arthur, and Gail, dressed for a normal day of skiing. My parents shared the third chair with Gail's husband, Terry, who wore a choir robe borrowed from Pastor Sheila. Under his robe, in the pocket of his purple one-piece, he carried a stamped slip of paper issued and signed by the governor, proclaiming him a justice of the peace for one day, and granting him the right to perform marriages in the glorious Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

At the top of the chairlift, near a cluster of hemlocks, we formed a semicircle and waited for Nick and Terry to unclip from their snowboards.

“Right,” Terry shouted into the wind. “It's colder than a nun's you-know-what, so let's do this.”

Curious skiers and boarders gathered around us as Arthur produced the velvet bag from his leg pocket. Gail snapped pictures with her point-and-shoot, one mitten held between her teeth. Nick and I pulled off our mittens; he shoved a ring on my whitening finger, and I one on his. We kissed: a quick, cold peck. Laughing, teeth chattering, we put our mittens back on.

Terry said something like, “By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

The crowd of strangers hooped and hollered and banged their ski poles together. The lift operator in the booth raised his thermos in a toast. And our crazy little wedding party headed down my favorite trail—the double-diamond Look Ma, a curvy and steep narrow, with good-size bumps on the left-hand side. It leads right to the lodge, where, in the upstairs function hall, a fire roared, poinsettias decorated tables, and Russ and EJ's two-man band, the Massholes, warmed up.