Late Stories Page 3

  Cape May

  They used to go to Cape May about once every two years, mostly to observe birds at the bird observatory there. Went three times, once in the spring and twice in the fall, before she got too sick to go. It wasn’t something he much liked doing: standing on the beach for a couple of hours in the morning and then in the afternoon, sometimes when it was cold, trying to find birds through the binoculars he’d bought her. Also, dragging her in her wheelchair through the sand to a spot she wanted to see the birds from, and then dragging the chair back to the paved path, sometimes with the help of a birder or two. She didn’t mind the cold, or said she didn’t. He’d tuck in her afghan around her chest, wrap her mohair shawl around her shoulders and neck, pull her wool cap down over her ears and put her gloves on for her. “You warm enough?” he’d say, or something like it, and she’d say “Now I am. Thank you. So let’s go find a bird we’ve never seen.” There were always lots of birders on the beach, no matter how cold it was, some with what seemed like expensive binoculars and others with elaborate telescopes on tripods. Sometimes one birder would be operating two or three telescopes, all pointed in different directions. Everyone out there was very friendly and nice and most seemed to know a lot about the birds they’d come to watch and photograph. Some would ask her if she wanted to look through their telescopes: they had them focused on a bird’s nest or bird in a tree or hidden in a bush, sometimes hundreds of feet away. Maybe not that far, but a good distance, certainly far enough away where it couldn’t be seen without a highpowered telescope or binoculars, which hers weren’t. He doesn’t think she ever saw a bird through one of these telescopes, which he did, several times. For one thing, her eyes were bad because of her MS. And because she was sitting in a wheelchair she usually couldn’t get her eye close enough to the lens. A couple of the telescope birders even took the tripod off and held the telescope up to her better eye, is the way he’ll put it—he forgets if that was her left or right—but they could never keep it steady enough to focus it on what they wanted her to see. He doesn’t think she ever even saw a bird through her binoculars. She couldn’t hold them, so he held them to her eyes but could never get them aimed or focused right for her. Still, she liked being on the beach or observation platform with all those serious bird watchers. And every so often a bird would fly near them—one they’d never see around their house or neighborhood, where they also used to take walks to observe birds, or even in Maine, where they went to every summer for two months. And someone would shout what kind of bird it was and later tell her, or someone else would, or she’d look it up in the bird book she always took to the beach with her, what its identifying marks and other things about it are so she could recognize it on her own next time. But they also in Cape May, or at least he did with her, have some of their happiest moments together. Not at the bird observatory but in a restaurant which, once they discovered it, they went to for dinner every night in their three trips to Cape May. It was a fluke or just good luck, chance, whatever it was, how they got to it. The first time they went to Cape May they weren’t able to reserve a room in any of the hotels in town. All of them were booked because of a convention that week, and the bed and breakfasts, which had a few available rooms, were in old buildings with steps leading up to the front porch and more steps and staircases inside. They always brought her portable ramp with them on trips like this, but it was only good for three steps at the most. Also, the bathroom in these B&B’s, the owners told him on the phone, were too small to turn around a wheelchair in. So, because it was the off-season, the closest open lodging they could get to Cape May was a four-story motel about ten miles away. It was an ugly place, with a pink façade and an enormous neon sign in front and tacky furniture inside. But it had an elevator to their floor, a kitchenette to make breakfast in and a roll-in shower in their bathroom, which surprised them—not even some of the best motels and hotels they’d been to had that—and it kept them, along with the free reserved handicapped parking space, coming back to this motel the next two times. What he’s saying is that if they had been able to book a suitable room in a Cape May hotel the first time they went, they no doubt would have walked to a restaurant nearby—several were open—and not come upon this one on the outskirts of town. They were driving to Cape May from the motel their first night there to look for a restaurant to have dinner in and saw a sign for this place along the way. “Think we should check it out?” he said, and she said “What do we have to lose?” They went down a side road. The restaurant’s parking lot was almost filled. If they didn’t have handicapped plates, they wouldn’t have found a spot. “A good sign,” he said. He looked at the menu, liked what he saw, got her out of the van and they went inside. It was a huge place—probably could accommodate a hundred-fifty diners at one time—with a large lobby where they waited for their table to be called. It was crowded every time they ate there, and they always had to wait for a half hour or more, which was fine with them. The lobby had several buffet tables in it, one for shrimp cocktails and tiny crab cakes, another for several kinds of freshly shucked oysters on the half shell, and a third just for martinis and Manhattans. She loved oysters, maybe more than any other food. While he didn’t know how anyone could eat them raw—fried, he liked. He got a half dozen oysters for her and a martini for him and they sat beside a small end table, it seemed, and she ate and he drank. “Sure you won’t have one?” she said. “Five is plenty for me.” “Positive,” he said. “Like a sip of my martini? It’s delicious; just right.” “You know I hate the taste of them.” “Thought I’d offer, though, and same with me your oysters. How are they?” “The best, ever.” After swallowing each one—he’d first squeeze a lemon wedge over it and have to bring the oyster to her mouth with that little oyster fork, holding the shell beneath it till it was inside—she gave a big almost rapturous smile and said “Ummm … ummm …” and maybe after the second or third oyster “You don’t know what you’re missing.” “I know what I’m missing and I don’t miss it. Did I ever tell you of the time I ate a foul raw oyster at the fish restaurant Oscar’s on Third Avenue and all evening thought I might die from being poisoned by it? Long before we met. Maybe ten years before. My father was in the hospital—Mt. Sinai—and my mother and one of my sisters and I had just come from seeing him there.” “Don’t go into anymore details about it. I don’t want to ruin my eating these oysters. You survived, I’m thankful to say. And not because we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t and I wouldn’t be enjoying these oysters so much. What kind did the shucker say they were?” “Some local Indian name. Lots of syllables, half of them vowels. But okay, I won’t say anything more about my one bad oyster. Eat. Enjoy. That’s what we’re here for.” So it was that smile of total delight she always had while eating oysters at this restaurant—its name, he forgets too, but he thinks he could look it up online if he wanted to—that made the trip to Cape May for him. The ummms. The look of complete satisfaction. That she was so happy, sitting in her wheelchair in the lobby, smiling at him after being fed each oyster and he saying “I’m so glad you’re enjoying this. I really am. I think I sometimes live just to have you enjoy something and be happy.” “You’re sweet,” she said a couple of time after he said this. “And you’re beautiful,” he said the first time. “I know that oysters, and I can’t say I subscribe to this notion, are supposed to be an aphrodisiac, but I’m the only one eating them. Sure you wouldn’t like the last one?” “Wouldn’t think of it. And I won’t need it, if that’s what you meant. Do you want it to be the last one or should I get another half dozen for you, maybe of a different kind.” “Six is more than enough for me. We have a whole meal to go. And seeing what they do with oysters, I’m sure it’ll be great. Tomorrow. We should probably come here tomorrow night for dinner. Hang out in this waiting area for a while before dinner, even if they say our table’s ready right away, and you’ll have your martini and I’ll have my oysters. And next time we come to Cape May to see the birds, and we have to come back—we’re having too
good a time—we’ll come here again and have the same things. Or I’ll have three of one kind of oyster and three of another, and maybe you’ll try one of their Manhattans.” “Okay with me. I like both, and why go anywhere else? This place is as good as they come and I love this room and watching the other people waiting and the surroundings too. The things on the walls. Your personal shucker. Everything.” “And the martini’s that good too?” “I’d have another,” he said, “—by my drinking it so fast and it’s such a large glass too, you know how much I like it—but I want to have wine with dinner and be able to drive back to the motel.” “I wish I was still able to drive. Then you could drink as much as you want.” “Don’t worry about it,” and he held up the oyster fork and she smiled and nodded and he gave her the last oyster. Then he held her hand and drank what was left of the martini with his other hand and said “Cape May’s a great place. I mean, we haven’t seen much of it yet, but it certainly seems like it. Although if it wasn’t for this restaurant, I don’t know.” “I’m glad I like looking at birds so much and suggested we come here,” she said. So they came back to Cape May two more times. She gave up on taking the binoculars the last time. They also didn’t take the portable ramp. Found they didn’t need it. Went to the same restaurant for dinner every time. That would make six times they waited in the lobby there. She always had a half dozen oysters on the half shell, sometimes three of two different kinds and sometimes all of the same kind. He had a Manhattan once but didn’t like the way it was made. Too sweet. The other times he always had a martini, straight up with both an olive and lemon twist in it and made with the best English gin they had or a Russian or Swedish vodka. About a year after the last time they went he said “Like to go to Cape May in the next month or so for a couple of days?” She said “Maybe this time we should pass it up. We always do the same thing, go to the same place, so let’s try something different or somewhere we haven’t been to in a while.” “Oh, but that restaurant, whose name I always forget. How I’d miss it. By now we could find it blindfolded, and we don’t have to make a reservation for it because we actually like waiting in its lobby for a table.” “It’s a wonderful place,” she said, “but we ought to go back to Chincoteague at least once, and have dinner at that fish restaurant on the water we always liked. The one connected to a seashell shop. And we can take a drive or two through the national wildlife park there and see its birds. They’re probably the same ones as at the beach in Cape May; part of the same flyway, isn’t it?” “Okay,” he said. “Time getting there is just about as long, maybe a bit longer, but the drive’s just as easy, and isn’t the Blackwater bird observatory along the way? That restaurant you mentioned isn’t as good as the one in Cape May and not as much fun to go to. But you’re right. We haven’t been to Chincoteague for a while, and we always had a good time there. Maybe, since we were last there, there’s a new seafood place in town better than the one we used to go to, and which has oysters you’ll find as delicious as the one in Cape May had.” “Maybe,” she said. “Chincoteague oysters. They were just about my favorite at the Cape May restaurant, but no local oyster was ever in season when we went to Chincoteague.” “So we’ll do that, next month, for a weekend, or two days during the middle of the week, at that motel nearest the water—The Retreat, or something, I think it’s called. The one with a heated indoor pool I liked and handicapped facilities almost as good as the awful-looking motel in Cape May had. But I think it’s called The Refuge, not the Retreat. That would make sense for that area, the motel so close to the National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge Inn; that’s it exactly. Now I know what to look up when I make a reservation.” But she got very sick the next month and then very sick a few times the next year, and they never went.

  Alone

  He drives back from a lunch at a couple’s house. There were several other guests there. They were all couples. One woman came by herself because her husband, a doctor, had some work to do at a hospital. So he was there alone. His wife is dead. He looked at the couples and thought each person here has someone to go home with or to but him. Isn’t he used to it yet? He isn’t. He doesn’t like going home alone. Being alone at home. Going to these lunches alone. But what’s he going to do? His daughters are in other cities. The food was good at the lunch. There were turkey and ham slices on a plate. Smoked fish on another plate. A potato salad dressed with just vinegar and mustard and olive oil. A beet salad, a snow pea salad, sliced tomatoes, bread. He wanted to have a glass of wine or beer, when others were having it, but he doesn’t drink alcohol in the afternoon. Makes him too tired. He had water. He stayed pretty quiet during the lunch. The conversation was lively but he didn’t participate in it much. Once, he said, “Oh, I have an anecdote regarding that,” and everyone at the long dining table turned to him and he said “It’s about the president of the university I taught at, the fellow who you say now runs a prestigious medical research institute in Minneapolis. We had—my department—a visiting writer reading his fiction. Big crowd. This guy’s very well known. And the president came into the lobby after the reading—his residence was on campus and I suppose he was just taking a walk, saw the building lit up and lots of people leaving it, because he hadn’t gone to the reading, and … Jesus, what was I getting at? Something he said to me. Then something I said to him. I know it ends with him saying ‘What’s a hunk?’ Damn, I forget. I’m sorry. Carry on, please. I’m not very good at telling stories anymore.” “Sure you are,” the hostess said. “He’s a very funny guy,” her husband said, “or can be,” and everyone laughed. After coffee and fruit, the wife of one of the couples said “We’ll have to excuse ourselves. We have guests coming for dinner and I’ve a lot of preparations to do.” “I have to go too,” he said. “No guests coming, but something at home.” He stood up. The couple stood up. He had nothing to do at home. He shook hands with three of the men, kissed the cheek of the hostess and a woman he’d seen at this house for dinner several times when his wife was alive, and the couple and he left together. He stopped in front of a plant outside and said “I have these around my house; but all around it. They came with the house, but mine are five to seven feet tall. Any idea its name?” and the woman said “Aucuna; that starts with an ‘a’ and ‘u.’” “Boy, I really asked the right people. I should cut mine down to about two feet, the way the Pinskis have it.” “That would be about the right height for them, two to three feet. They’re great plants. Hearty; red berries. And they’re not cheap if you buy them at a garden store. I love them.” “Well, if you want some, I’ve got plenty and you can just dig them up. I’ve pulled a number of them up without any problem when they were taking over the place.” “I’ll do that, “she said. “I’m serious.” “So am I,” she said. “In the spring. We’ll both come over. We have just the right tools and know how to do it. I’ll get your phone number from Ginny and Schmuel.” Then they shook hands goodbye and they got in their car and he got in his car and started to drive home. But now, he thinks, he doesn’t want to get home so quickly. Too soon. He stops at a restaurant on the way, one that sells its own bread, and gets a small loaf of his favorite kind here, sunflower flax, and asks for it to be sliced. “That’s all?” the woman behind the counter says, and he says “That’ll have to do it. I just came from a big lunch.” Then he stops at a bookstore, also along the way home and the best independent one in the city, and for about ten minutes looks for a book to buy for when he finishes the one he’s currently reading, doesn’t see anything that interests him, and then thinks he needs a new American Heritage College Dictionary. His is so old it has a photo of O.J. Simpson in the margin, and its first fifty pages or so are curled up at the ends and folded into one another and he has to flatten them out to read them. Do they have the new edition, the fifth? They have it, one copy, and he takes it off the bookshelf. And he remembers he wants to give the new hardcover editions of The Oxford Book of American Poetry and the one of English Verse to a couple that got married this September—the bride a former undergraduate
student of his—and invited him to the wedding in Nyack, but he didn’t go. He didn’t want to be there alone. Go alone, he means, and it would have meant two days away from home. Even if it had been here, he knows he still wouldn’t have gone. He would have felt too out of place. During the reception, because his former student had told him it’d be at a large rented hall and there’d be a band, people would have got up to dance, and things like that. The store doesn’t have either book, so he orders them and they’ll call him when the books come in. He pays for the dictionary, didn’t think it’d be so expensive, and gets back in his car and continues home, but tells himself he doesn’t want to get there yet. Let’s face it, he tells himself, I don’t want to be alone there yet. That crazy? No. He stops at the market a half mile from his house, even though he doesn’t really need anything there, and gets a shopping basket and thinks of things to buy. He can always use more carrots, the way he eats them, and picks up a two-pound bag of the organic kind. And the cat likes sliced turkey from the deli department. He likes to give him a little treat of it every now and then, so he gets a quarter pound of it. It’ll last a week and he’ll have some too. And he thinks he’s out of scallions, so he goes back to the produce section and gets that. Anything else? He should have got some gourmet chicken salad at the deli department, but it’ll look odd, going back for just that and he gets the same server who gave him the sliced turkey. He gets a few cans of cat food, even though he has plenty at home, and a package of rice cakes because he thinks he has only one rice cake left. Is that it? Well, what’s he going to eat tonight? He’s had an open-faced tuna melt almost every other night that past two weeks, the cheese on top of tomato slices on top of the tuna salad he makes, on top of two slices of toasted bread—the sunflower flax would be perfect for it—which he puts in the oven for about fifteen minutes and then under the broiler for one. Has he tuna at home? He has, more than one can, he’s almost sure. Oh, get out of here, and he starts for the checkout lanes, and then thinks just a couple more items. Maybe he’ll bump into someone he knows—that happens a lot here. A neighbor, or someone from the Y he goes to every day, and they’ll have a quick chat. Or get a coffee from the coffee machine here. Only a dollar and it’s not bad. And the café au lait for two dollars is in fact good. He gets a regular coffee, black, puts a lid on the container and pays up for everything. “Plastic okay?” the checkout person says and he says “Usually I get paper. But I have so few items, plastic’s okay, and I can always use the bag in a wastebasket.” She bags his purchases, says “Have a nice rest of the day,” and he says “Thanks; you too,” and leaves. He drives home, puts away the food he bought—bananas, he thinks; forgot he’s out of bananas. Well, next time. Actually, tomorrow, maybe before breakfast, and he’ll pick up a few other things, because he always slices up a banana into his hot or cold cereal. He drinks the rest of the coffee and checks his cell phone on the sideboard in the dining room. He rarely leaves the house with it and uses it mostly to talk to his kids, who are on the same plan with him. No messages. He brings the dictionary to his bedroom and checks the regular phone there. Same thing. The cat’s sleeping on the bed or resting with his eyes closed. He sits on the bed and pets him. “So how’s it going, my friend? Keeping the joint free of mice and burglars?” The cat stands up, stretches and jumps off the bed. “Want to go out? Fine with me. Do it while it’s still light out.” He walks to the kitchen. The cat follows him. If he wants to go out he usually stays by the kitchen door and sometimes gets up on his back paws and scratches the wall next to the door or the door. He sits by his empty food plate. “Eat the kibble in your bowl. It’s not dinnertime yet. Later I’ll give you some more wet food.” The cat looks at him, stays seated. “All right, all right.” He gets a little of the turkey out of the plastic bag it’s in and drops it on the plate. The cat eats it and goes to the door. “You gonna leave me all by my lonesome? Okay. See ya later,” and opens the door and the cat goes outside. He goes back to the bedroom, sits at his work table and thinks should he continue writing what he started this morning? Still has a couple of hours before it gets dark. Nah. He knows where it’s going. Tomorrow. After breakfast. He takes off his sneakers and lies on the bed. Room’s a little cold. So what? Nah, don’t get cold. He gets the wool throw off the chair near the bed. His mother gave them it when their first child was born. From Ireland, she said. Sent away for it. She also gave them one of a different plaid when their second child was born. His older daughter used this one for a long time. Then left it behind when she moved out of the house and he had it dry-cleaned and now thinks of it as his. He unfolds it and lies on the bed and pulls it over him up till his neck. His feet stick out. So what? They won’t get cold. He has socks on. He cups his hands on his chest and thinks of the dream he woke up from this morning when it was just getting light out. In it, his wife was in a blue dress. Corduroy. Opened at the neck maybe three buttons down and belted at the waist. She had that dress before they first met and wore it a lot when it was cold out and they were going out for dinner or to a concert of play. It was one of the many clothes of hers he gave to Purple Heart and Amvets. The kids had first crack at everything of hers but over more than two years took almost nothing, not even a single piece of jewelry, though they didn’t want him to sell or give anything of that away. Her hair was brushed back and hung over her shoulders. She seemed healthy, spirited, happy, ran back and forth through the house. “Hold up,” he said, when she zipped past him again. “Where you going so fast? You’re like a cat.” He caught up with her in the hallway bathroom. She was looking at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. He got up close behind her and said to her mirror image “You look beautiful again. And when you look so beautiful I don’t want to leave you for a second.” “I have to leave you,” she said to his mirror image, and he said “No, you misunderstood me. I was talking about myself. Oh, what of it? And maybe what I said about your being beautiful was the wrong thing to say.” He put his arms around her from behind. She looked at the mirror image of his hands, then turned around in his arms till she was facing him and they kissed. The dream ended then. Wouldn’t you know it. Well, at least he got to kiss her. He shut his eyes. Maybe I’ll nap awhile, he thinks, and get to dream of her again. The cat’s banging one of the bedroom windows. There are three types of windows in this room: a long one opposite the bed, which he thinks is called a picture window, but he could be wrong; two small windows to the right of the bed, at the most two feet by three and which open and close with a crank; and a regular one, above the chair the throw was on and which the cat’s banging with his paw. “Go away,” he says. “Let me rest. You haven’t been out that long, and it’s nice out and you have your fur coat on.” The cat, standing on an outside ledge about six feet off the ground, keeps banging the window with his paw. He gets up, raises the window and then the screen. The cat comes in and jumps to the floor and runs out of the room. He closes the screen and leaves the window a little open at the bottom. He gets back on the bed under the throw, cups his hands on his chest and shuts his eyes. He’ll try again. It’d be nice to have another dream of her so soon after this morning’s. It’s happened, and maybe a continuation of that one or one where they make love. Those are the best, or equal to any deep-kissing dream with her, even if he’s never come in one. He falls asleep. He doesn’t dream, or doesn’t remember dreaming, after he wakes up.