Pinch of Love (9781101558638) (2 page)

I sit on the porch steps wrapped in a blanket from Engine 1747—incidentally, the year Wippamunk was incorporated as a Massachusetts town. Engine 1747 grumbles away in front of the house.

It's so cold, I can't really tell whether my nose is runny. I wipe it with the blanket anyway.

“Dogs dig me,” Russ tells Ahab. “That's why I carry the mail. In my real job, I mean.” With his free hand he gives Ahab a thumbs-up sign, then smacks his flank so hard that Ahab stumbles.

“You okay, Zell?” Russ asks.

“Well, is Ahab okay?”

“Right as rain.” He grins and gives Ahab another flank smack.

“Then so am I, I guess. Right as rain.”

“Zell? Got a present for ya,” says Chief Kent. “Literally.” He groans as he eases down next to me on the steps. Chief is older-gentleman sexy, in the way of many park rangers, bagpipers, and commercial airline pilots. But right now his face somehow reminds me of an old brick, his silver hair pokes out crazily, and his boots dwarf my bare feet. He's lived in this town his whole life, and he's been the fire chief since the year I was born.

In Chief Kent's huge hands is the object from the oven: a charred box the size of a human head, apparently made of hard plastic. The cube is deformed from heat. It looks like hardened lava coated with residue from the fire extinguisher. Its lid is sealed shut.

Chief Kent tosses it at me. I let it land, dense and heavy in my lap. I can tell right away there's something inside.

It's a present from beyond the grave. A present from Nick.

I always wondered where Nick hid his gifts for me. Several times a year, before Valentine's Day or my birthday or Christmas, I snooped around the house. Invariably I inspected the same places: behind the coats in the closet, the unusable fireplace, the clothes hamper. Nick followed me from room to room on these hunts. “You'll never find it!” he said, smiling with his mouth open.

Come to think of it, all his gifts—the small ones, anyway—emitted a certain odd, unfamiliar scent when first opened. A vaguely chemical, greasy, cavelike smell. The smell—I now know—of oven.

G.d. oven, Nick would have said. His father never allowed Nick to say “goddamn,” but he preferred the abbreviation anyway, and the habit stuck.

“Zell!” Dennis trots up the sidewalk, waving his steno book. His J.Crew barn jacket has to be twenty years old, and a
Wippamunker
press pass flaps from the frayed pocket. The press pass is purely for show, because he's the only press person here.

He stops at the porch steps. His face is ruddy with cold and adrenaline. He and Nick worked at the paper together for ten years. They were about as close as two coworkers can be.

“Zell, thank God you're all right,” Dennis says. “When I heard the street address over the scanner, when I realized it was your house, I—” He blows air through his lips, puffing out his cheeks.

“I'm okay, Dennis,” I say. “I'm just the world's worst cook. That's all.”

“Anyway.” He licks the tip of his pencil; he always uses a pencil in winter because ink freezes. “Chief, cause of fire?”

Chief Kent pats my knee. “Ask Zell here.”

“Cause of fire?” Dennis repeats.

“
Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch,
” I say.

“Polly Pinch?” Dennis scribbles. “The celebrity chef?”

“That's off the record,” says Chief.

The new guy pulls up and parks. He darts around the yard, snapping photographs, twisting his camera in all different angles. He peeks in my windows, then hurries over to Ahab, and the shutter clicks a few times in Ahab's face as Russ kisses him through the oxygen mask. The new guy photographs Chief, who, as everyone in Wippamunk knows, hates being photographed. And he gets a few shots of barefoot, braless me, slouched on the steps with a singed plastic cube in my lap. I'm wearing a camouflage apron and a neon orange blanket.

I watch him spaz around. He's got it all wrong, and that's why he's still, in my mind, the new guy, even though he took Nick's place at
The Wippamunker
more than a year ago. The contrast between his style and Nick's is glaring. Nick always strolled around casually before he took his camera out of his bag. He observed the scene, introduced himself, and asked for the homeowner's permission to take some photographs. “Let's not take ourselves too seriously,” he was fond of saying. “Wippamunkers aren't Nixon, and I'm not Woodward and Bernstein.”

The new guy bounds up the porch steps—Chief leans into me to avoid his swiftly moving knee—and continues snapping photographs inside. I hear him talk with EJ, who's in my kitchen, doing firefighter stuff, I suppose.

A moment later the new guy descends the steps. “No damage in there at all,” he says.

“Wow, really?” I say, trying to sound cheery. “That's good news for me. Disappointing for you, I suppose, though.”

He shrugs, fits the lens cap back on his camera, and walks to his car. I wonder what he knows about me. About Nick. And EJ.

A Wippamunk police cruiser pulls up to the house. France gets out, climbs the porch steps, and raps on my new neighbors' door.

“Hey, Zell,” she says over the metal railing that divides the porch. Acne scars pock her thin face. Her eyes bulge slightly, and red ears poke out from under a low-slung cop hat. “You hurt?” she asks.

Before I can answer, the neighbors' door swings open. France shakes the hand of a tall man with close-cropped hair, hazel eyes, and cocoa skin. “Officer Frances Hogan,” she says.

“Garrett Knox,” says the man. “My daughter, Ingrid, and I moved here from the other side of town last month.”

France reassures him that everything's okay; it was just an accidental cooking fire, and our shared house is no worse for wear.

“Glad to hear it,” Garrett says. “Thanks.” He waves to me—a quick flick of wrist—and flashes a warm smile before heading back inside.

My house is really half a house, a twin. During today's regular mail route, Russ accidentally slipped the Knoxes' copy of
Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch
into my mailbox. An understandable mistake, seeing as our mailboxes are side by side, epoxied to the vinyl between our doors.

Ahab and I were returning from a walk when I spotted
Meals in a Cinch
sticking out of my box. The headline promised to lift my spirits, so naturally I grasped the magazine and pulled it out, and saw Polly Pinch, midlaugh, surrounded by clean-cut teens all happily munching on carrots, apples, and a few other fiber-packed and wholesome after-school snacks. I read the teasers: PERK UP THE SPIRITS OF EVERYONE AROUND YOU! ENTER POLLY'S FIRST-EVER BAKING CONTEST AND WIN $20,000!

It was that dollar amount—Nick's same dollar amount—that did it. I headed inside, locked myself in the little powder room under the stairs, and read
Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch
cover to cover.

Garrett's daughter, Ingrid, comes outside now, clomping across the porch in knee-high Uggs. She grips the railing and does some pliés. A too-big red ski hat caps her long auburn braids. She's nine or ten, and her skin is lighter than Garrett's, the color of sunlight on oak floors. “What were you cooking?” she asks.

“Good question,” Dennis mutters, licking the tip of his pencil.

“Flourless peanut butter cookies,” I say.

Dennis scribbles.

“Why?” Ingrid leaps off the porch, clearing all four steps and landing with a crunch in the snow.

“I was making them for you,” I say. It isn't exactly true, although I might have brought over a dozen, if they turned out all right. After all, I would've had to test my contest entry on someone.

“I'm allergic to peanuts,” she says. She smacks her gum.

Russ releases Ahab to me and shoves the doggie oxygen mask back into its case. “Ahab should be back to normal in no time,” he says.

I look around and realize that I'm surrounded by the people who went on The Trip with Nick. There are Russ and Dennis on the sidewalk a few feet away, Chief Kent sitting right next to me, Officer Frances leaning against the porch railing, and inside, EJ, whom I can hear rummaging around because, to rid the kitchen of smoke, someone propped open the front door.

Ahab takes a few careful steps toward me but stops when the girl throws her arms around him and kisses his forehead.

“Ahab likes you,” Russ tells her. “You should deliver the mail when you grow up. Like me.”

“I'm going to be a chef on TV,” she says.

This cracks Russ up. He laughs like a doofus and yanks his suspenders and lets them slap against his puny chest. “Well, I'll be back tomorrow with your mail, Zell,” he says once he's collected himself. “Hey,” he adds. “Tomorrow's Friday.”

“Our standing lunch date,” I say. Russ has been bringing me lunch every Friday since Nick's memorial service. He's a few years older than me and he's always been big brotherly; in grade school he designated himself my “bus buddy,” sitting next to me even when his friends called him to the back of the bus.

“What do you want to eat?” he asks.

I try to smile, but I don't quite succeed. I mean, I used my oven for the first time in years, and I ended up with firefighters in my kitchen, a cop on my porch, and a reporter on my lawn. Granted, I've known most of these people for years. But still.

“Surprise me,” I say to Russ, even though I expect nothing other than Orbit Pizza or leftovers generously donated by his wife. Which is fine by me, because otherwise I'd probably just skip lunch, like every other day.

Russ nods. “I'm full of surprises,” he says, and galumphs to Engine 1747.

The radio at France's hip squawks. She turns the volume down and sighs. “Gotta go, Zell,” she says. “I'll call ya later, okay?”

“Okay. See ya.”

She tips her cop hat to Chief and Dennis, trots to the cruiser, and drives off.

“Thank you, Officer Frances,” Ingrid yells after her. She scratches Ahab's back. Her fingernails are chewed and sparkly with old nail polish. Ahab sidles up against her; his back meets the level of her waist.

Her eyes fling wide. “He's leaning on me.”

“Greyhounds do that,” I say. “It's his way of giving you a hug.”

Ahab's big for a grey: ninety pounds. But he's so gentle that she hardly even sways at his touch.

Chief Kent chuckles. “Nice hat, kiddo.”

She shoves the hat, which slipped to the bridge of her nose, up toward the crown of her head. “Thank you.” Then to me she says, “Do you like to cook?”

“I love to cook.” It's a lie, of course. What I love is the thought of winning twenty thousand dollars. For Nick. For New Orleans. I never met those hurricane survivors, but he did. And because of them, he was a changed man. Maybe even a better man.

“You like Polly Pinch?” she asks.

I think of the impossible-to-avoid Polly Pinch. Her glowing face decorates cracker boxes in grocery stores all over America; she “pinches” a cracker between thumb and forefinger, holding it teasingly above her open mouth. In her most recent Big Yum Donuts television commercial, her breakfast in bed arrives on a silver tray and consists of only a foamy latte. With a sleepy half smile, she blows the steam, swallows, and moans her approval.

Polly Pinch is about the furthest thing you can imagine from the bifocaled, orthopedic-shoed Ye Olde Home Ec Witch—Mrs. Chaffin, who taught home economics at Wippamunk High School eighteen years ago. And until today—as I pored over the magazine and learned all about this dessert contest—I never knew how much I liked her. Polly Pinch, that is.

“I adore Polly Pinch,” I say.

“You gonna open your present?” Ingrid asks. She points at the hard cube in my lap—the present from Nick that apparently was hidden in my oven for at least a year and three months.

I don't answer.

“Come on,” she says. “Don't you want to know what's in the box?”

“Oh, there's nothing in it,” I say.

Chief and Dennis exchange glances, which I pretend not to notice.

She skips over to me; Ahab, who was leaning against her, shuffles on the ice.

“There is too something in it,” she says. Playfully she snatches the cube from my lap, holds it to her ear, and gives it a shake. It makes a solid knocking sound, like a toddler's toy, or wooden spoons.

“Please give that to me?” I stand barefoot on the icy sidewalk. The blanket pools at my ankles.

She hesitates, giggling. But I'm not playing. “Give it back,” I say.

“Easy, Zell,” Chief says. He stands and steps toward me, patting the air.

“Come on, Zell,” says Dennis. “She's only teasing you. You need to put shoes on.”

The bottoms of my feet burn on the ice, but I can't take my eyes off the warped cube in the small, honey brown hands of my girl neighbor.

Chief positions himself between me and her. He gives me a stern look and gently takes the cube from Ingrid, who gives it up easily. As bravely as she can without crying—I know she's swallowing tears because I recognize the effort—she whispers, “I like your dog.” She stomps up her steps and slams the door behind her.

My feet are now totally numb. I kick the blanket.

And then EJ, from my kitchen, hollers, “I think we're all set, Chief.”

I hear EJ walk around inside. I hear the legs of my kitchen table and chairs scrape the floor.

“There's nothing in it,” I say.

“Okay,” says Chief, handing me the oven present. “There's nothing in it. Whatever you say, Zell. Whatever you say.”