CHAPTER TWO
Taking
Inventory
Since leaving Amber,
Connecticut on that late August day, I’d never stayed anywhere for
more than a year and a half and never held the same job for more
than fourteen months. I still have the dress shirts and ties from
the one ludicrous attempt I’d made at office work in Atlanta when I
was twenty-seven. Those ten months coincided with the time I spent
with Emily, and both experiments ended on the same day. Beyond that
there were five months doing telephone sales in Wilmington (three
of which were spent with Susan) and seven months making sandwiches
in Columbus. There was a year, maybe my best, with Gillian in
Richmond during which I sold real estate for ten months. I spent a
couple of seasons doing data entry in Houston and a summer at a
Public Radio station in Minneapolis (which turned into a sizzling
fall and a very chilly winter with Kristina). In one or two of the
jobs and even some of the romances, I’d given thought to what might
happen if I dug deeper. But I tended to view such notions as
fanciful, much in the way that some others would think about
running away from it all.
I’d been in New
England again, first in Concord, New Hampshire, then in Portland,
Maine, and most recently in Springfield, Massachusetts, for the
past couple of years when my father got sick. I’d been home on a
number of occasions since leaving, but never stayed very long. I
couldn’t help but get the impression that my being in the household
only served to remind my parents that Chase wouldn’t be coming for
a visit.
When my mother called
to tell me about my father’s heart attack, she insisted that it was
nothing to worry about. I nearly believed her until she mentioned
“a little angioplasty” that he’d had done the year before. For the
first time since I’d been gone, the possibility that one of them
might die while I was out looking for my next thing became real to
me.
“I’ll come down the
day after tomorrow,” I said.
“I didn’t call to
alarm you.”
“It doesn’t matter
why you called. And you aren’t alarming me. If Dad’s in the
hospital, I should come to see him.”
“That might be a good
idea.”
My father seemed
devoid of color lying there in the bed. Not simply his face, but
everything about him seemed washed out, diluted. My mother didn’t
get up to greet me, but simply reached out a hand. I leaned over to
kiss her and then him.
“What are they
saying?” I said.
My mother patted my
father’s hand. “He’s going to be fine.”
My father grunted.
“Yeah, as long as I don’t do anything strenuous – like
move.”
“Richard, don’t say
things like that.”
My father cocked his
eyes toward me. “I’m fine, Hugh. The doctor is talking about
certain ‘lifestyle changes,’ but hasn’t exactly told me what those
might be.”
I sat down on the
other chair in the room. It dawned on me that when I envisioned my
parents, I always saw them as vulnerable. Still, I was surprised at
how defenseless my father appeared.
“What’s going on with
the store?” I said.
My father looked
quickly over to my mother. “Tyler’s in charge while we sort this
out.”
“Tyler?” I didn’t
remember hearing the name before.
“He’s my
manager.”
This meant that Tyler
was no older than twenty. My father had always steadfastly refused
to staff his stationery and gift store with anything other than
high school and college kids, arguing, “What could I expect from an
adult who was willing to work in a card store?” The logic made a
certain amount of sense and it had essentially served him well. But
his business model didn’t accommodate situations such as this
one.
“Have you spoken to
him lately?”
“He called yesterday
and gave me a complete rundown. I told him I didn’t want him
worrying about calling me every day. He’s fine. He’s been with me
for two years. He knows the place.”
I looked over at my
mother, who was studiously avoiding eye contact.
“I can take a few
days if you want me to look in on the store while you recover,” I
said, knowing as the words left my mouth that this was just about
the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
My mother’s face
lifted. “You don’t have to get back to Springfield?”
“I can take a little
time.”
“Tyler’s a good kid,”
my father said. “I’m sure he can handle everything.” He stopped, as
though he wasn’t sure that the doctor would approve of the effort
required to keep talking to me about this. “But I would appreciate
it if you checked to see that everything is okay.”
I got to the store
midmorning the next day. Amber Cards, Gifts, and Stationery (rumor
has it that my father actually labored over the naming of his
store. I could imagine him considering, “Is it Amber Gifts, Cards,
and Stationery? Amber Stationery, Cards, and Gifts? If I just
called it Amber Stationery, would people surmise that we also had
cards and gifts?”) had been a fixture on Russet Avenue since before
I was born. My father spent his first few years out of college
managing a warehouse for an office supply manufacturer in Hartford.
When a couple of stock investments he made shot through the roof,
he took one of the few risks in his life and moved to the emerging
riverside town of Amber to open the shop on its main street.
Thirty-four years later, my father could never claim to have had a
windfall year (or, for that matter, another investment that scored
the way that pair in the ’70s did, even during the Internet boom).
But he would boast that his “little enterprise” had given his
family “everything they needed to get by.”
I spent enough
after-school hours and summers working in the store to know that
small-time retailing was not in my DNA. I didn’t have the
disposition to placate customers when the supermarket inserts were
missing from the local paper or when we ran out of red poster board
the night before a class project was due. That required a level of
patience and concern that I simply didn’t have. I never once felt
shortchanged.
It had probably been
five years since I’d stepped foot in the store. My father had moved
the card racks, and the merchandise at the front was more focused
on lower-priced items than I remembered. But the vibe was very much
the same. Generic instrumental versions of popular songs peeking
from the speakers, a handful of people pondering Hallmark
sentiments, the guy breezing in to buy a copy of Forbes, the woman with the three-year-old looking
at the figurines as a gift for Aunt Claire.
There was a young
woman dusting shelves who continued to do so even as a customer
asked her a question and there was a guy behind the counter taking
notes from a textbook. I walked over to him.
“Are you Tyler?” I
asked.
He glanced up from
his reading. “Yeah, hi.”
“I’m Hugh Penders,
Richard’s son.”
He tilted his head
for a moment as though he did-n’t understand what I was saying. I
imagined him thinking, Richard’s son? But
isn’t Richard’s son dead? Then his eyes
brightened.
“Oh, hey, yeah.” He
reached out his hand. “I’m Tyler – which you already know. How’s it
going with your dad?”
“It depends on who
you ask. According to him, he’ll be in this afternoon. Seems the
doctors have different ideas, though.”
“I’m sure it’s
driving Richard crazy to sit in a hospital instead of being here.
I’ve been meaning to get over to see him, but between the extra
hours I’m putting in and studying for a bunch of tests I have
coming up, it’s been tough.”
Tyler seemed to be
the latest in a line of college kids my father occasionally
happened upon who actually thought it was worth doing their part-time jobs as opposed to simply
showing up for them. It was apparent in the way he talked about my
father. I began to relax a little. I’d been dreading meeting Dad’s
latest “manager” from the moment I first learned about him in the
hospital. Some of the people Dad had entrusted with responsibility
over the years had been truly unworthy of the gift.
“I’m sure he
understands,” I said. “Listen, I’m in town for a few days and I
told my father that I’d spend a little time giving you a
hand.”
Tyler looked briefly
insulted, which I also took to be a good sign. “Yeah, great,” he
said. “Could always use a little help.” He leaned in to me
conspiratorially and gestured toward his dusting colleague.
“Leeza’s not exactly MBA material, if you know what I
mean.”
I nodded and looked
over to see her absently straightening cards. “Mind if I come back
behind the counter?”
“No, come on in. I
assume you know your way around the place.”
“I haven’t been here
in a while, actually,” I said as I surveyed the desk. “The cash
register is different from when I was last here. He still has the
hourly log book, I see.”
“Man, does he ever.
You miss a register reading and it’s like you shot his
dog.”
For the next half
hour, Tyler briefed me on the operations of the store. I rang up a
couple of sales and helped a customer find graph paper. It felt
precisely as it had when I was seventeen – like something that
stood between waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles
and shoveling snow in entertainment value.
Russet Avenue is
designed for foot traffic and browsers. There’s parallel parking on
the street and a couple of municipal lots around back. Among other
things, there’s an inn, a craft shop, a print gallery, a few
restaurants, a jewelry designer, and a chocolatier for the
tourists, and a bank, a drug store, and my father’s store for the
locals. I’m not sure which category of consumer I fit into at this
point, though I certainly hadn’t returned to Amber for its quaint
New England flavor. As the morning turned into afternoon, Tyler
returned to his books and I spent a lot of time watching
pedestrians out the window from behind the counter. I remembered
quiet afternoons such as this when I felt shackled to the store and
believed that every other teenager in Amber had something more
interesting going on.
It was while
daydreaming that I saw Iris entering the gourmet food shop across
the street. As I watched, my thoughts ranged from wondering if it
was actually her, to how I would respond if she walked in here, to
considering going to the stockroom until the moment
passed.
When I saw Iris come
out of the shop and head down the street, I decided it was foolish
to pretend (or even wish) that I hadn’t seen her. I told Tyler I’d
be back in a few minutes and went out the door. I was crossing the
street and she was about to walk into the bakery when I called out
her name. She turned in my general direction, but didn’t make eye
contact for several seconds. When she did, she seemed stupefied by
the sight, as though we were standing on a street in Bali rather
than in the town where we both grew up.
“What are you doing
here?” she asked as I walked up to her. I noticed her eyes scanning
me from head to toe. She didn’t seem to be appraising me; it was as
though she was taking inventory.
“I read about this
place in a guidebook and decided to check it out,” I
said.
“You look good. You
seem – taller.”
“Yeah, I get that a
lot.”
She looked stunning
to me. I was surprised at how my memory had failed to do her
justice. Her hair was shorter than I remembered, but her eyes
seemed even more cobalt, her skin smoother, her posture even more
approachable.
“So what are you doing here? Last I heard, you were off
wandering the globe.”
“Yeah, moving from
suburb to suburb in search of thrills. I finally got tired of the
fast lane and decided to stop by for a little small town calm.” As
I said this, I rolled my eyes to make sure that she understood I
was being ironic. “Actually, my dad’s sick and I’m here to check up
on him.”
Concern darkened her
expression. “Is he okay?”
“I think so. I’m
gonna watch the store for him for a few days.”
“Wow, things
have changed.”
“Well I guess you can
do anything for a few days, huh? So what are you doing here? You
haven’t moved back, have you?”
“God, no. I live in
Lenox now. I come down every month or so to see my mom. My dad died
a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear
that. He seemed like a good guy.”
Iris nodded and
looked up the street. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking about her
father or feeling uncomfortable about seeing me.
“Do you want to go
grab a cup of coffee?” I said.
She wrinkled her
nose. “I can’t. I’ve got a few more stops to make and I told my
mother I wouldn’t be gone long.”
I shook my head and
looked down at my shoes. “That just sounded like I was blowing you
off, didn’t it?”
“No, your mom doesn’t
like to be alone. I get it.”
“Actually, my mom is
fine being alone. She just gets irrational if I tell her I’m only
going to be gone a short while and then I come back a few hours
later. Even if I call her.” She chortled. “Mothers. You’re here for
a few days?”
“Yeah, three or four
probably, assuming everything turns out okay with my
father.”
“I’m going to be here
until the weekend. Do you want to get a drink
sometime?”
“That would be good,”
I said, disproportionately cheered by the fact that she wasn’t
blowing me off. “Tomorrow night?”
“I’d like that. I’ll
meet you at the Cornwall at, say, 8:30?”
“The Cornwall. Yeah,
absolutely.”
“It’ll be nice to
catch up. You can tell me about all of your adventures.” She smiled
and touched me on the arm. “This was a nice surprise. I’ll see you
tomorrow night.”
She headed into the
bakery and I returned to the store. It was no more active there
than when I left and I again found myself looking across the street
from the window. When Iris came out of the bakery, I saw her take a
quick glance in my direction before walking away.
For a reason that
wasn’t entirely clear to me at that moment, I found this extremely
satisfying.