CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rounding the
Square
A few days later, I
handed the contractor the final check for the repairs to the back
of the store. He told me it was “good doing business with me.” I
told myself that I wished I could say the same.
Tyler and I surveyed
the repairs. Certainly, I’d never seen this part of the store in
better condition: fresh carpeting, damaged displays replaced, clean
white walls. Now let the damn thing
sell, I thought. We spent the next hour putting merchandise
back up. My father had used this space mostly for paper goods and
party supplies and it was nearly comical when a man walked up to
buy some birthday napkins and winked at me, as though to say “glad
you’ve got these in stock again.” I glanced over at Tyler, who made
an elaborate display of patting me on the shoulder.
Feeling as though we
needed to mark the occasion in some way, I told Tyler I was taking
him out to lunch. He’d stepped into the breach when the water main
broke and on more than one occasion since, he’d allowed me to vent
my frustrations over the ways in which the repairmen operated, and
through it all, he’d been a real colleague, more of one than just
about anyone I’d ever worked with. Lunch was the least I could
do.
“What do you mean?”
Tab said when I told her we were going out.
“We’re going out to
get some lunch,” I said plainly.
“Both of
you?”
“Together, in
fact.”
She looked around the
store. There were perhaps a half dozen people there. “What about
the customers?”
“We thought, if you
didn’t have anything else planned, that maybe you’d take care of
them, since that’s why you get a paycheck.”
She scowled and I
decided not to take the conversation further. Ever since she failed
to open the store a few weeks back, I’d been finding it harder and
harder to tolerate her. I nodded toward Tyler and we
left.
“How go the
adventures in the Big Apple?” I said as we settled in our
seats.
“I’m making headway,
I think. I went on a follow-up a couple of days ago with an
interesting firm and I had a couple of other interviews while I was
in the City.”
“All of whom you
impressed the pants off of, I assume.”
“Yeah, maybe. I know
this sounds strange, but I’m actually kind of enjoying the
interviewing process. I feel challenged by it and I feel like I
have good answers. I know some people hate them.”
I raised my hand to
indicate that I belonged in that group.
Tyler tabulated my
vote and then added, “But I find it stimulating.”
“Since you like it so
much, you can take a page out of my book and change jobs every six
months. This way you can keep interviewing your entire
life.”
We ordered and then
Tyler leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “You know
what the best part of this trip was, though? I hung around that
night and went to see Beam at the Bowery Ballroom. Do you know
them?”
“Just that one
song.”
“They’re incredible.
It’s like being under siege. They’re relentless. I don’t think I’ve
ever been to a show this intense before.”
I made a note to
download some songs of theirs. Some of Tyler’s tastes veered toward
the sentimental, but other than that, he tended to do an excellent
job of identifying the good stuff – and Beam certainly didn’t sound
sentimental to me.
“So what did you do
this time on your midweek weekend?” he asked.
“Iris and I did one
of our walking tours of Lenox and then I made her dinner. We drove
up near the Vermont border the next day.”
“What is it with you
and this woman, anyway?”
“Just
friends.”
“You drive two hours
to see her every week and you’re just friends?”
“It’s
complicated.”
“She’s beautiful, by
the way.”
“I’m aware of that.”
I paused for a beat, wondering if I really wanted to talk to anyone
about this. “She was my brother’s girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Tyler said
elaborately, as though I’d given him all the explanation necessary.
I wondered if in fact I had.
“She’s great. I
always thought she was great. And I’ve always liked being with her.
And there are times, you know, when it sort of feels like there
should be more between us. And then there are other times – most of
the times, I guess – when I feel like that would be like moving
into the luggage compartment of a jumbo jet.”
“In other words, it’s
complicated.”
“I couldn’t have said
it better myself.”
“And you’ve been
doing this for the last ten years?”
“No, not at all.
Until I came back to Amber this time, I hadn’t seen her since Chase
died.”
“You and your brother
were close, huh?”
“Really
close.”
“It’s such a drag
what happened to him. I’ve been thinking about that more ever since
you came to town. I mean, it’s not like I knew him, but knowing you
and knowing your dad, he just flashes into my head
sometimes.”
“He has a way of
doing that. I go from thinking about him constantly, to finding
constant reminders about him, to having him on my mind a lot. It
rarely dips below that level.”
Tyler looked off into
the distance, as though he was processing what I’d said. When he
looked back at me, I just smiled and we switched
topics.
When we got back to
the store, there must have been ten people waiting in line at the
register while Tab methodically tended to the one in front of her.
She was moving even more languidly than usual and I was certain
that it had something to do with our going out and leaving her
alone. I glanced over at Tyler and the two of us headed behind the
counter to do triage. Within a few minutes, the rush had ended. Tab
grabbed her pocketbook from under the counter and walked
away.
“I’m going to lunch
now,” she said before leaving the store.
As she walked down
the street, Tyler turned to me and said, “And she was that close to a huge raise.”
The next morning, I
checked in on my father (watching The Today
Show, but with his head propped up on his right hand – a new
position for him), checked in on my mother (paying bills at the
kitchen table), grabbed the unopened box of Honey Nut Cheerios, and
went down to the basement. My mother looked up at me as I opened
the basement door, but then went back to her work.
I sat down at the
workstation, running my hand over the block of wood mounted on the
lathe again. I wished I could remember what I was planning to do
with it, though it’s entirely possible that I didn’t even know back
then. I would often simply turn the lathe on and start carving,
allowing the piece to become something while I worked on
it.
I didn’t know how I
could have so completely stopped thinking about this equipment. I’d
spent so much time with it during my teens. I’d come down here to
recharge while studying, or to decompress if Chase had pissed me
off about something, or to mollify myself if some girl brushed
aside my affections. I’d come down here when I was feeling highly
creative and when I was feeling tapped out. And often I’d come down
here because I’d begun a project that had taken hold of me and I
was driven by the need to complete it. And yet, despite the passion
I’d expended on these tools, I had spent a couple of months living
under the same roof with them without even wandering down for a
visit.
I picked up a carving
tool and wondered if I remembered what to do with it. I decided to
find out. I turned the lathe on and watched it whir, feeling a
little thrill at hearing a sound I hadn’t heard in a decade. I put
on my gloves and my goggles and I bent toward the spinning block of
wood. I touched it tentatively with the carving tool, finding
reassurance in the familiarity of the experience. But when I
pressed a little harder, the block splintered, a segment
catapulting against the wall across from me. I turned off the lathe
and looked at the damage. The wood had obviously dried from being
in the same position untreated for all these years.
I pulled the
remaining shards from the lathe and then retrieved the one that
struck the wall. I held them in my hands, unsure of what to do
next. There were a few more blocks available, but they would
certainly be in the same condition as the one that had just cracked
on me. I threw the shards in a trash basket, took off my gloves and
goggles, and went back up the stairs.
“Were you using your
tools just now?” my mother said while writing a check.
“Yeah. I’ll be back
in a little while.”
She looked up at me
at that point, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t read her
expression, which I actually considered progress since the
expression I had been reading on her face the past few weeks was so
disapproving.
I assumed that
Wilson’s Lumber Yard was still in the same place it had been when I
lived in Amber. By the time I was in high school it had already
been in the area for more than sixty years. I became something of a
regular customer there, certainly not like the contractors who
visited almost daily, but enough to trade small talk with members
of the staff. Not that I was expecting any of them to remember
me.
Wilson’s was in fact
right where I left it, though they’d painted the red cedar shakes
cream, the parking lot featured a trio of sheds selling landscaping
equipment, and there was a large sign near the front door inviting
customers to visit their Web site. The lumber department itself,
however, was refreshingly familiar. If they had made any changes to
the layout or the merchandising in the past ten years, these
escaped my notice. I browsed through the aisles of plywood, 2x4s,
and studding materials in the same way I’d walked the aisles of the
record store in Lenox my first day there. Names, smells, and
textures came back to me. It was like a class reunion.
I’m sure this wasn’t
behavior that the staff was accustomed to seeing, and after a few
minutes a guy came up to me to ask if he could help. I gave him my
order and he was perhaps a little more efficient in delivering it
to me than I would have liked. I piled the armload of wood into the
trunk of my car and drove back to my parents’ house.
By the time I had a
new piece mounted on the lathe, I had to get to the store. Still, I
felt the need to turn the machine on just for a moment. I put the
gloves and goggles back on and I picked up the carving tool. With
one smooth motion, more assured than I would have guessed, I began
the process of rounding the square block.
I didn’t have time
for this and I knew if I went any further, I could be here for
hours. I turned off the machine and looked at the piece that had
now stopped spinning. It was going to take some work to turn this
into anything, but I promised myself I’d get back to it
tomorrow.
“So here’s a little
bit of news,” Tyler said as we sat at the Cornwall. It had become
something of a habit for us to go out for a drink after work on the
nights we closed the store together and we’d decided to keep the
date even though we’d been out to lunch only the day before. “I
hadn’t wanted to say anything to you because I’m a little
superstitious about this kind of thing, but I’ve started seeing
someone. Her name is Sarah.”
“Great,” I said.
“When you say ‘seeing someone,’ does this mean you’re getting
involved with her or just going out on a few dates?”
“I think we’re
getting involved. It hasn’t been that long – you’d probably say
that it was only a few dates, in fact. But yeah, I think we might
be getting involved. She gets to me, you know?”
“Yeah, I hear you.
This is good news. How’d you meet her?”
“You’re going to
laugh, but I met her in the store.”
“Please tell me you
weren’t reading the cards to her.”
“Hmm, I’m gonna have
to think about what it means that you thought that. No, nothing
that ridiculous. She just came in a couple of times and we talked –
I took care of every customer while we were doing so, boss – and we
wound up deciding to go to a movie. It sorta grew from
there.”
“So the message here
is that if I stick around long enough my dream woman might come
through the door?”
“No, but if you stick
around long enough my dream woman might
come through the door. At least you’d get to say hi to
her.”
I raised my beer
glass in an approximation of a toast. “This is good for you. I hope
things go well with this.”
“Thanks. It’s
actually feeling good. It’s been a while, you know?”
It was nice to see
Tyler’s expression when he talked about this woman. It mirrored the
one he wore when he talked about his career. I found his
enthusiasms encouraging.
“Do you ever think
about what you would do with the store if it were yours?” he
said.
“If you’re asking if
I ever think about what’s wrong with the store, then yes, all the
time.”
“But do you ever
think about what you’d do with it? Don’t get me wrong, I think your
father has done a very good job with the place, but it isn’t what I
would do.” He shrugged. “But what the hell do I know. I haven’t
been running it successfully for thirty years.”
“The very first thing
to go would be that radio station,” I said. “I’d replace it with an
iPod dock. We’d play soft stuff, but listenable stuff, you know?
Lucy Kaplansky, Lucinda Williams, David Gray, Matt Nathanson. And
I’d turn the volume up. Maybe all the way to ‘3’.”
Tyler laughed. “You
can do that now, you know. It’s not like your father has the place
monitored or anything.”
“Except that one day
he’ll walk into the store, hear Mark Knopfler, and have another
heart attack.” The truth is, I didn’t really think about how easy
it would be to make that change. Since I’d been back in the store,
I’d followed nearly every one of my father’s hard-and-fast rules to
the letter. I didn’t even reorder the BlisterSnax after the first
box sold out.
“I’d do something
about the display cases in the front,” Tyler said. “That white
Formica finish might have looked fresh in the seventies, but now –
it just looks like it came from the seventies.”
“What about the
stuff in the display cases? I think
interest in those things faded about the same time as people
stopped using the word ‘trinkets.’”
“Amazingly, we
actually sell some of that stuff.”
“Which says
everything that needs to be said about the people who come into
this town. I’d bring in more handmade stuff. Import some things
from Italy. Go to a craft show or two. Read a catalog that’s been
printed in the twenty-first century.”
“Wackier
toys.”
“And cooler cards.
Definitely cooler cards.”
“The magazines could
be merchandised better.”
“The candy rack
should be moved.”
“Higher level paper
goods. The people around here can afford it.”
“And change the
name.”
Tyler put his beer
down on the table. He’d been holding it close to his mouth but not
drinking during this entire exchange. “What?” he said.
“You don’t think
‘Amber Cards, Gifts, and Stationery’ is a bit on the ridiculously
obvious side?”
“It tells people what
the store is.”
“In other words, it’s
pedestrian?”
“I mean if you change
the name, you still need to make sure people know what’s
inside.”
“I guess that leaves
out calling it ‘Graceland.’”
Tyler finally took a
sip of his beer and I made eye contact with Phil the
pirate.
“We could do this,
you know,” I said.
“You want to change
the name of the store?”
“Not that. But some
of these other things. Certainly the simple stuff like the music,
the candy, and the magazines. But some of the other things, too.
Bring in some new vendors. My dad’s credit line is
great.”
“What about the
sale?”
“What about
it?”
“Doesn’t screwing
around with the store at this point throw things off a
little?”
“I’m not sure that
they can be thrown off any more than they already have been. It
might even help. And if nothing else, it’ll keep me
entertained.”
“Gutsy
move.”
“Desperate move. As
long as I’m stuck here, I might as well do something with my time.
And maybe we’ll get lucky.”