Pinch of Love (9781101558638) (20 page)

She threw her head back and laughed—a laugh that made EJ think of clear, cool water. “Oh, I think I like this tradition very much,” she said, and sipped her coffee. “Tell me more.”

“My uncle and father and everybody, they all used to tease me that I couldn't be one hundred percent pure Finnish, because by the time I turned twelve, I was already thicker than any of the full-grown men in the Murtonen clan. I was brawny, in an un-Finnish way,” EJ said. He recalled an indelible image: the naked silhouettes of old, lithe men as they galloped barefoot through the snow in the moonlight, tossing their towels aside, roaring with laughter, reeking of
sahti,
charging for the pond, and jumping in.

“When I was fourteen,” EJ said, “a developer acquired that land in a shady business transaction, bulldozed the sauna, and built a McMansion.”

“That's a shame,” Charlene said. “A shame.”

“And that's why we're going to build a
new
sauna,” Nick said. “Adjacent to the Man-Shed.”

“It'll be hard keeping ladies out of the new sauna,” Charlene said. “Ladies like to get their sauna on.”

“Well, maybe the
sauna
could be coed,” Nick said.

“But not the Man-Shed.” EJ hoisted his coffee cup and chugged.

“That's right,” said Nick. “Not the Man-Shed.”

“It's right here.” Charlene leaned forward and pointed between the front seats. EJ liked the way her thin silver bracelets clinked. She smelled like confectioners' sugar. Her crystal earrings twinkled against her cheeks. “Pull over,” she said. “You can park here.”

“You know we're going to have to get building permits for the Man-Shed and the sauna,” EJ said. “From the town.”

Nick threw the van into park. “Screw building permits.”

They all laughed and got out of the van. The skeleton of the new church rose from the flat ground like an enormous fossil. It was far from complete, but it already suggested a big ship. An ark.

Charlene introduced them to the construction manager, a guy named Pierre, her father's good friend.

EJ took a hard hat from Pierre and fastened the strap under his chin.

Nick grinned. “I don't think the big guy here needs that,” he told Pierre. “Silo's skull's thick enough.”

“After you, Nick,” EJ said.

“Always the gentleman, Silo.” Nick's hard hat didn't fit and looked comically small on his head. But they were only going to take a short walk-through. Ten minutes, tops.

EJ fell in step behind Nick, and Charlene walked behind EJ. As the corridor narrowed, he felt her hands on his shoulders. “Wait for me, sugar,” she said. He slowed down.

They approached the framing of a big octagonal room, and Pierre pointed up and said eventually a skylight here would allow light to flood in.

“That'll be beautiful,” said Nick, stepping into the octagon.

That's when EJ felt a tingling awareness zap his whole body.

From above, men's voices shouted.

Nick turned and locked his gray eyes on EJ.

“SHIT,” EJ SAYS. The sound of his voice sometimes stops the memory.

He flips open his phone and presses 2 until her number automatically dials. Charlene will reassure him that it wasn't his fault. That Zell will talk to him in her own good time, that she couldn't possibly hate him. Nick passed instantly, Charlene will say—in one instant. He felt absolutely no pain.

Her phone goes to voice mail. “Hey there,” he says when it beeps. “I was just sitting here, thinking about you. I was just, well . . . I'd really like talk to you. If you're around. Later, maybe?” He snaps his phone shut to keep himself from saying more. “Shit.”

A paper bag sits on his kitchen table: leftover chocolate muffins. He was going to put them in his freezer. Instead he zips the whole bag inside his jacket and walks across the pond in the dark. It's easy walking; the town recreation department cleared snow from much of the ice for the annual ice-fishing derby.

The Roys' house and EJ's parents' house—three-bedroom ranchers—were the first two on Malden Pond back in the seventies. Now scores of practically identical McMansions face the shoreline, on uniform lots completely devoid of trees.

EJ'd probably make a small fortune if he sold his waterfront property to a developer, who'd clear-cut the land, destroy the house, and erect yet another McMansion. But EJ's dad made the last mortgage payment just after the divorce, before he moved to California and before his mom moved to the Cape. It's nice not having a monthly mortgage. It's nice living in a small place that suits his needs, on a small pond whose sounds and smells make his surroundings feel wild and isolated.

Besides, as his father always said, Finnish Americans don't like excess.

EJ hikes up Mr. Roy's side yard. Memories flood him: sledding in winter, catching lightning bugs in jars in summer. Every fall, when EJ and Nick were so small that apple trees seemed climbable, Mr. Roy drove them to Bedard's Orchard. If I tried to climb an apple tree now, I'd break the branches, EJ thinks. How is it possible that I'm the same person—the same being—as I was back then, he wonders. Or am I?

He rings the doorbell. A minute later the door swings open, and he steps inside Mr. Roy's kitchen. The smell of this house—the dusty smells of electric heat and earth—are instantly familiar.

Mr. Roy wraps him in a two-armed hug. “There you are, Silo,” he says. “I've been hoping you'd come pay me a visit.”

EJ hands Mr. Roy the bag of muffins. “Hope they're not too squished.”

They stand in the kitchen. Mr. Roy looks more or less the same: generic sweatshirt; Toughskin-style jeans; untrimmed salt-and-pepper beard and bushy hair, which gives his head a round, poufy appearance; deep-set gray eyes. The house looks the same, too—utilitarian kitchen with maroon backsplash; dark-paneled walls and heavy drapes in the living room, where an absolutely decrepit acoustic guitar leans against the couch.

“Want to go downstairs?” Mr. Roy asks. “It's warm down there. I don't run the heat much because the kilns take up so much electricity. I spend all my time down there anyway.”

In the basement they sit on clay-stained benches. EJ rests one foot on the opposite knee and bounces that foot spastically: an old habit of which he's hardly aware. In the corner, three waist-high kilns radiate heat. They emit an oddly soothing clicking sound. Before long EJ starts sweating. We both depend on heat to forge our finished products, he thinks.

A corkboard displays Nick's photographs: Mr. Roy on a chairlift at Mount Wippamunk; Mr. Roy dipping the rim of a small planter into a bucket of glaze. Thumbtacks pin two patches, the kind you'd sew onto a sleeve, to the corner of the corkboard. The patches show a leafless tree on a green hill against a blue sky. A trail curls around the tree to the horizon.

Mr. Roy follows EJ's gaze. “Those patches are the official Midmass Footpath patches,” he says. “Nick and I always talked about hiking it, section by section. You know about it, the Midmass?”

“It's that trail that stretches north to south across the state, right?” EJ asks.

Mr. Roy nods. “It's a footpath from Rhode Island to New Hampshire, about ninety miles total. It's divided into segments, so you can hike four or five miles at a time. Part of it runs right behind the Wippamunker Building.”

The Wippamunker Building is on Reservoir Street, a huge converted factory, where, a century ago, they manufactured dyes. The brook flowed pink on Mondays and Tuesdays, yellow on Wednesdays and Thursdays, green on Fridays and Saturdays.
The Wippamunker
occupies the building now. EJ remembers Nick's darkroom, in the basement. The new guy probably uses it these days.

Mr. Roy untacks the patches and shows them to EJ. “The Midmass Footpath was something I always planned on doing with Ilene, originally,” he says.

EJ straightens. He's surprised Mr. Roy mentioned that name. Growing up, Nick rarely discussed his mother. She died when he was very small. Somewhere in this house there probably exists a token to remember her by—a card she wrote, a coat she wore. But who knows where that token's stuffed away now.

“And then I planned on hiking the Midmass with Nick,” Mr. Roy says. “But we never got around to it. You're supposed to order the patches when you've hiked the whole thing, but I went ahead and ordered them for us anyhow. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I jinxed us.” He eyes the patches in EJ's hand. “Sort of silly, I suppose. But those patches are the kind of thing Nick would have liked.”

“He definitely would have liked them,” EJ agrees.

“Take 'em. I'll never hike the whole Midmass. Who am I kidding.”

EJ fingers the patches and puts them in his coat pocket. He feels suddenly depressed. He fights a vague urge to mourn missed opportunities, plans made and then forgotten. “I'll give them to Zell,” he says.

“You do that,” says Mr. Roy. “And give her my love.”

“See her much?”

“No.” He sighs. “Suppose I should pay her a call. But I haven't gotten around to it. She hasn't been to see me, either. How is she?”

EJ shrugs. “We haven't talked. Listen. I want you to know that we're planning a tribute for Nick. France is masterminding it.”

He tells Mr. Roy about France's idea. “We'd love for you to be there. And if you'd like to participate in any way, you just let me know.” He invites him to bring as many family members and friends as he likes.

Mr. Roy holds a hand over his brow, as if shading his eyes from bright sun. His pinkie trembles. “Does Zell know about it?” he asks.

“Not yet,” EJ says. “I'm going to tell her soon, though. I think.”

Mr. Roy stands and inspects the shelves behind him. Vases and plates line one shelf, mugs and goblets another. The objects are all in various stages of drying. “I'm not one for big productions, as you know, Silo,” he says, his back to EJ. “I don't want to participate. But you have my blessing, whether you're asking for it or not. And you can bet your ass I'll be there. So will Nick's uncle Raymond.” Mr. Roy glances at the kilns. “Nick was always blessed to have good friends.”

 

 

AS EJ LEAVES, Mr. Roy hands him the bag of muffins. “I appreciate the gesture, big guy, but I was never a fan of breakfast. Thanks all the same.”

EJ zips the bag into his coat. “Do you still have the toboggan?”

“Want to see her?” Mr. Roy chuckles. He leads the way to the garage, where the long, heavy sled hangs on the wall, seat side out. EJ runs his palm along the pad, runs his fingertips along the wood edge.

“God, you kids used to go crazy for that thing,” says Mr. Roy. “Good thing Ilene wasn't around for those days. She would never allow you to load up on that thing and get going as fast as you guys did.”

EJ laughs. He remembers the rush of wind, the catch of breath in his throat as the sled reached top speed just before it leveled out and shot over the ice.

“Brings back memories, I'll bet,” says Mr. Roy.

“Want to go for a ride?”

Nick's dad half sighs through pursed lips, as if to say, yeah, right. “I haven't been on that thing in thirty-five years.”

“Well?”

“I'll pass. But you take her for a spin. And don't bring her back.”

“What?”

“Take her.”

“I can't take the toboggan, Mr. Roy. It's an antique. It's been in the Roy family for—”

“She's yours. I insist. What am I hanging on to her for? Nothing. It's not like I have any grandchildren to pass her on to.” He whacks the seat cushion. “Nick would want you to have her. You know he would.”

EJ shakes his head.

“Now, I insist,” Mr. Roy says. He takes the sled from the wall and almost drops it, so EJ grabs the other end.

“I'll take good care of it; you know I will,” he says. Together they carry the toboggan outside and set it in the snow so it points down the hill toward the pond. Across the ice, the backyard spotlight shines on EJ's fire pit, and the bench his father made looks miniature in the distance. He straddles the sled and lines up a path next to his footprints.

“Maybe you shouldn't do this in the dark,” Mr. Roy says, the hint of a laugh in his voice. He squeezes EJ's shoulder. “Enjoy the ride.”

His footsteps fade, and EJ hears the garage door rumbling shut. Alone, he considers the steep hill before him. There's not much moonlight or starlight. The snow and the pond form an indistinguishable mass of ghostly blueish white. He ducks behind the scroll of the toboggan. He's about to lift his feet when a beep sounds from somewhere in his coat. He fishes out his phone. The small rectangle of electric green illuminates the darkness. He retrieves a text message from Charlene: “JUST GOT YR VMAIL, STILL NEED 2 TALK? RU OK, WHAT RU UP 2???”