Going to Bend (35 page)

Gordon shook his head. “Did he molest her?”

“No.”

“You’re sure? It sounds odd, his leaving like that.”

“It would be, in anyone else. But this is Jim Christie. He gets claustrophobic real easily and I guess maybe Carissa and I crowded him, even though we tried not to. When Petie said those things to him, I think all he heard was,
It’s time to go
. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Carissa, he’s always so careful with her. And Carissa’s so upset, Gordon. She thinks this is all her fault, and I can’t think of what to say because in some ways it
was
her fault for pressing herself on him, and Petie’s fault for thinking something terrible must be going on instead of something innocent.”

“Have you heard from him since he left?”

“No, not directly. As soon as she realized he’d left, Petie went after him, her and Ron Schiffen, which is
another
story. Anyway, they found him in Anacortes, Washington. He said he was on his way to Kodiak aboard the
Gillian
, so I’ve sent him a couple of letters there but I don’t think I’ll hear from him, at least not right now. The thing is, I might never hear from him again. Pogo left us, and he was a lot easier to hold down than Jim.”

“I can’t believe that,” Gordon said.” The man seemed to worship you.

“Well.” Rose absently stirred her cold coffee.

“So what’s with Petie and Ron Schiffen?”

“That’s another huge mess. Apparently Schiff decided to meet Petie in Portland and help her track Jim down. He and Petie have gotten to be friends lately, I guess. Now Carla—Schiff’s wife, she’s awful—is telling anyone who will listen that Petie seduced him. The woman actually took out a half-page ad in the
Sawyer Weekly Standard
saying that Petie had stolen her husband, an upstanding citizen, a moral family man—this is
Schiff
she’s referring to—and that they should boycott her. She said Petie comes from degenerate stock—those are her exact words, I swear—and that honest Christian people shouldn’t so much as talk to her if they see her on the street or accept her business if they own a store or something. Not that Hubbard has too many upstanding Christian people. She used an old picture of Petie in the ad that someone took at a picnic, one where Petie has this old bandanna tied around her forehead and is holding three bottles of beer. I think Carla’s also trying to get Schiff to fire Eddie, but I’m sure Schiff won’t do that. He’s got a couple of deep rake marks down one side of his face. He said he got them riding a dirt bike through the woods, but everyone knows it was Carla and those long fingernails of hers.”

Gordon shook his head. “My God, you go out of town for a few days and look what happens while you’re gone.”

“It’s a small town, Gordon. Things like this happen all the time.”

“Not to my friends they don’t. Look, Rose, there’s something I need to talk to you about. Do you feel like you can listen to some business talk, or should I wait? There’s not a lot of time, though.”

“Lord, I wish you weren’t leaving. You still feel like you have to?”

“Paul and I signed a lease when I was there. Yes, I have to. For Nadine as much as for me.”

Rose’s eyes teared up. “I feel like I’m losing everyone. You, Nadine, Jim, Petie. And it’s all happening so fast.”

“Have you lost Petie?”

“I don’t know. I was so angry with her. I wish we could go back a week and start over.”

“If you went back a week, you’d just repeat the whole thing again.”

“Yes, probably.” Rose looked out the window over the bay. The
Pixie
,
a pig of a sportfishing boat that wallowed even on a calm sea, was just clearing the bar. Today the tourists would be throwing up all over the place. “Anyway, what did you want to talk about?”

“Can I get you anything first? More coffee?”

“No thanks. Go ahead—you’re making me nervous.”

“Well, here it is, then.” Gordon took a deep breath. “Nadine and I have been talking about what to do with this place. We don’t want to just close it down, especially after we’ve gotten this far and people have finally begun to know about it. But we don’t really want to sell it, either, not to someone who’s going to change it all. So here’s what we came up with, that we’d like you to consider. We’d like to turn the place over to you.”

“What? Oh my God, Gordon, you can’t do that.”

“Let me tell you the terms, because you might not even want it when I’m done. We owe ten thousand dollars on a business loan. You would have to assume it and make the rest of the payments—six hundred and twenty-eight dollars a month. We haven’t had a month when we couldn’t pay it, not even December, so it’s doable. If you run the place with maybe just one other person for the summer, you’ll be fine—better than fine, we hope. There are some things we can do to help you with visibility, starting with a cookbook signing as soon as
Local Flavor
is released, which Paul thinks may be July, at least that’s what we’ll shoot for. We’ll get book signings in Sawyer, too, not just Hubbard, and maybe even ones in Portland and Eugene. Plus we’ll make sure all the newspapers and radio stations get press releases about the book. It might be a good idea to have another cook-off, too, to get people involved again. Anyway, there’s time to work out things like that, but the point is, once you’ve paid off the loan you’ll own the place free and clear.”

“I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you and Nadine are serious about this. What about you? What will you live on?”

“That’s the last thing. We’d ask you to pay Nadine five hundred dollars a month until I’ve died.”

Rose shuddered. “Oh, Gordon.”

“It will help her in the months at the end, when she may not be able
to work regularly if she’s looking after me. She’ll have plenty of money from my life insurance after I’m gone. So that’s pretty much it. We figure you should be able to clear a thousand a month even in winter, and conceivably five or six thousand a month in summer and during spring break.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” Gordon said. “Just think it over. And if you decide to say no, we’ll certainly understand.”

“You know I love this place.”

“Yes.”

“And you trust me not to fuck it all up?”

“More than I trust Nadine and me, as far as that goes.”

“I don’t know,” Rose said, and wrapped her arms around herself.

“God, my heart hurts.”

“It’s either panic or love,” Gordon said, grinning.

Rose smiled, too. “You really think I can do this?”

“No,” said Gordon. “I know you can do it. The only question is whether you
will
do it.”

P
ETIE STOOD
on the spongy old floor in her laundry room, sorting socks. She liked finding all the mates and marrying them. It appealed to her sense of order; if no sock was left alone at the bottom of the basket, then, at least on some level, all must be well. She remembered Ryan by the socks he wore and how he wore them. First, the tiny elasticized baby socks, white with blue heels and toes, making arcs in the air as he kicked and kicked until, by the time he was a toddler, he had learned to kick them right off so he could walk in his bare feet, small toes fanning and gripping every which way for balance. Within a year he rebelled against socks altogether, unable to bear even the slightest wrinkle inside his shoes. Petie still watched him sometimes when he didn’t see her, putting his sneakers on over and over again until each sock inside lay perfectly smooth.

When she and Old Man had lived in the woods, she took their clothes
to the laundromat next to the Diary Queen twice a week, soothed by the warmth and dryness, the mindless drone of the dryers, the whoosh and rumble of the wash cycles. Sometimes young women were there, mothers who folded their children’s clothes with pride, smoothing and evening and squaring corners in a way Petie never remembered Paula having done. Sometimes fishermen would come in reeking of diesel and guts, heaving mountains of filthy clothes into the commerical-size washers, smoking and flipping through the nickel ads or some NAPA Auto Parts catalog while they waited. None of these people took much notice of Petie, except once when a young woman asked her if her mother would be back soon, or did she need a ride home. Petie had lied and said her mother was just down the street, buying them ice cream sundaes. She’d slipped out the door when the woman wasn’t watching, humping her laundry basket the mile home.

Over the noise of the dryer Petie heard the door open. Eddie was supposed to be working and the boys were in school. She heard Rose call, “Hello!”

Her heart made a little jump. It was the first time Rose had sought her out since Christie left and everything turned to crap. She put the rest of the dry clothes back in the dryer and hurried into the kitchen. “Hey,” she said.

“I need to talk to you,” Rose said, shucking off her raincoat.

“No you don’t,” Petie said.

“What?”

“You don’t need to talk to me, because I know everything you’re going to say. About how wrong I was, and how I had no right to say what I did to Christie and how even when I found the man I fucked up and didn’t manage to bring him home. Did I get most of it right? Jesus, my hands are shaking. Oh, and if Jim never comes home, I’ll have fucked up your entire life.”

“Would that be an apology?” Rose asked, starting to grin.

“Yes. Wait, shall I throw myself on the floor at your feet?” Petie said, smiling the first real smile in three days.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, and that’s a fact,” Rose sighed. “Look, I need you to help me think about something.”

Petie bowed.

“Get this. Nadine and Gordon want to give me Souperior’s.” She repeated what Gordon had said while Petie watched her through a rising ribbon of cigarette smoke.

“Whoa,” said Petie, and whistled. “It’s fairy godmother time. Oops, bad pun, but you know what I mean.”

“I’m going to miss him so much.” Rose gazed off into space for a minute. “Do you think God plans our friendships, makes sure we meet certain people at certain times?”

“No.”

“No, I guess not,” Rose said.

“Will you do it, take the restaurant?”

“I don’t know. It makes my hands sweat just thinking about it. Feel.” Rose held out a palm.

“It’s panic,” Petie said.

“That’s exactly what Gordon said.”

“You should do it,” Petie said. “Souperiors, I mean. You’re already running the place. How hard can it be to own it, too?”

“It can’t possibly be that simple.”

Petie shrugged. “If you want it to work out, it’ll work out. It’s not like you’Il need to hire a cook. Plus Carissa can help waitress in the summer and on weekends. Hell, Ryan could even be a busboy sometimes.”

But Rose’s attention had wandered. “Cordon was talking about telling the newspapers and stuff when the book comes out. I didn’t understand some of it, but he said we should do a book signing. Hey, Petie, wait a minute—I’ve got the best idea. You know how the walls at Souperior’s have always seemed kind of bare? Let’s show your work there. Let’s put it up with price tags, so people can buy it right from their tables. It would make the place so much brighter, and it would be a good place for you to start. You wouldn’t need Pica Talco or anyone. Doesn’t that sound good?”

Petie looked doubtful.

“What,” Rose said.

“I have a hard time believing anyone would pay money for one of my pictures.”

“Paul did.”

“Pretty pictures in a book are much different than hanging by themselves on a wall,” Petie said.

“Well, if it doesn’t work we’ll take them down.”

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Petie said, giving Rose a look. “You’re going to own a goddamn restaurant.”

“Am I? Yes, I guess I am. Holy shit, huh?”

“No,” Petie said, suddenly serious. “It’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. If you have to go back to waitressing, you might as well do it at your own place. Hell, maybe we can get Schiff to hold the Kiwanis meeting there every month. Rotary, too. The place is big enough, and everyone’s been bitching forever about the crummy food at the Anchor.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Who?”

“Schiff?”

Petie flushed. “No. It seemed like it would be better right now if I didn’t.”

“Is that okay?”

Petie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It was nice of him to help you find Jim like that.”

“It was suicidal. Who would ever have guessed he’d turn out to be a good man. Not to mention an upstanding citizen and moral family man, in case you didn’t know that about him already.”

“Oh, right,” snorted Rose. “I read that someplace.”

“Goddamn Carla,” Petie hooted.

“Goddamn Carla,” Rose shrieked.

They laughed until it hurt.

“Oh, baby,” Rose finally said, fighting for breath. “Let’s never break up.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Petie said, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Nobody else on earth would put up with me.”

S
TEPPING OFF
the bus at the Greyhound station, Marge opened her arms and drew Petie in, enfolding her in a real hug, a generous hug, a hug you weren’t capable of until you were middle-aged and had died once or twice and risen once or twice and learned that what life dealt you wasn’t necessarily going to be good.

She had called the day after Petie returned from Anacortes. “Hon, I’m coming north,” she’d said, “and I’m scared to death to do it, so if you could keep me company a little I’d sure appreciate it.”

“You know I will, but what are you afraid of?”

“That Larry won’t be there.”

“He’s in every loop of carpet and every washcloth and pillowcase. Of course he’ll be here.”

“I’m counting on that, honey, but it scares me, too, knowing I’ll have to lose him all over again when I leave.”

“So don’t leave.”

“DeeDee and the kids, they’ve fixed up a real nice room for me here.”

“How are you getting here?”

“DeeDee’s taking me to the Greyhound in the morning. She said I could take her Camry if I wanted, but I’d be scared to. Larry, he was the driver, not me. I drive some in Tempe, but only around the neighborhood, you know—where the kids need to go, and the Safeway and that.”