Beneath the pea coat and the beanie and the scarf, there’s a pair of jeans with the Uggs. And a hoodie. Blue. With pockets.
Outside, day has broken. It’s another sunless day. There are leaves on the sidewalk, brittle, crumbly leaves; what remain on the trees will lose their hold by the end of the afternoon, if the westerly wind has any say in it. It whips around the corners of the redbrick buildings, sneaking under a kaleidoscope of awnings where it lies in wait for the perfect opportunity to snatch someone’s hat or steal scraps of paper from their glove-laden hands.
There’s no threat of rain. Not yet, anyway. But the cold and the wind will keep plenty of people inside, forestalling the promise of winter.
She orders a coffee. She sits by the window, sipping out of the discount ceramic coffee mug, staring out the window at the view: the brick buildings, the colorful awnings, the fallen leaves. You can’t see Lake Michigan from here. But people like to sit at the window, anyway, and imagine. It’s there somewhere, the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Harbor Country, we’re called, a string of small beachfront towns just seventy-some miles outside of Chicago, seventy-some miles that are somehow equivalent to three states and another world away. That’s where most of our clientele comes from, anyway. Chicago. Sometimes Detroit or Cleveland or Indianapolis. But most often Chicago. A weekend getaway because it’s not like there’s anything to do here that will keep you busy for more than two days.
But that’s in the summer mainly, when people actually come. Nobody comes now. Nobody but her.
Our café is far enough off the beaten path that where we sit at the far edge of town the shops and restaurants give way to homes. It’s an assorted mix, really—a souvenir shop to the north, a bed-and-breakfast to the south. On the opposite side of the sett street is a psychologist’s office, followed by a succession of single-family homes. Condos. A gas station. Another souvenir shop, closed until spring.
A waitress passes by, snaps her fingers before my eyes. “Table two,” she says, a waitress I call Red. They’re all just nicknames to me: Red, Braids, Braces. “Table two needs to be cleared.”
But I don’t move. I continue to stare. I give her a nickname, too, because it feels like the right thing to do. The woman staring out the window is building castles in the air. Daydreaming. It’s a big deal, really, something different happening around here when nothing different ever happens. If Nick or Adam were still around, and not away at college, I’d call them up and tell them about the girl that showed up today. About her eyes, about her hair. And they’d want to know the details: whether or not she really was different than the dime-a-dozen girls we see every day, the same girls we’ve known since first grade. And I’d tell them that she is.
My grandfather used to call my grandmother—also a brunette, though in my lifetime I’d never seen her as anything other than a mass of weblike gray—Cappuccetta. The nickname Cappuccetta purportedly came from the monks of Capuchin, or so my Italian grandfather claimed, something about the hoods they wore bearing resemblance to the coffee drink, a cappuccino. That’s what Grandpa said, anyway, when he looked my grandmother in the eye and called her Cappuccetta.
Me, I just like the sound of it. And it seems to suit this girl well, the modicum of brunette hair, the ambiguity that surrounds her like the hood of a monk’s cowl. But I’m not a coffee drinker, and so instead my eyes drop to her narrow wrist where there sits a pearl bracelet that looks much too small for even her small hand. It’s pulled taut, the elastic cord showing through the creamy beads. I imagine it leaves a red imprint along the skin. The pearl beads are worn along the edges, losing their sheen. I watch as she plucks habitually at the band, pulling the elastic up off the skin, and allowing it to snap back again. It’s mesmerizing, almost, that simple movement. Pluck. Pluck. Pluck. I watch for a while, unable to shift my eyes from the bracelet or her fluid hands.
And that’s what cinches it. Not Cappuccetta, I decide. I’ll call her Pearl instead.
Pearl.
It’s then that a cluster of churchgoers appear, the same ones who arrive every week about this same time. They claim their usual table, a rectangular slab that seats all ten. They’re delivered carafes of coffee—one half-caf, the other leaded—though no one asks. It’s assumed. Because this is what they do every Sunday morning: cluster around the same table, talking passionately about things like sermons and pastors and scripture.
The waitress Braids disappears for three consecutive smoke breaks so that when she returns she reeks of a cigarette factory, her teeth a pale yellow as she dribbles another inadequate tip into the pocket of her apron and moans. A dollar fifty, all in quarters.
She excuses herself and heads to the restroom.
The café takes on a vibe of normalcy, though with Pearl in the room—the lady with the ombré hair, staring out the window at the colorful homes and the redbrick buildings across the way—things are anything but normal. She eats from the plate of food now set before her: scrambled eggs with an English muffin on the side, smothered in butter and strawberry jam. A second cup of coffee splashed with two tubs of creamer and sprinkled with a single sugar substitute, the pink stuff, which she drinks without ever bothering to stir. I find myself staring, unable to take my eyes off her hands, and she raises the mug to her lips and sips.
It’s then that the sound of Priddy’s thin, metallic voice summons me by name, interrupting my thoughts. “Alex,” she says to me, and as I turn, I see her long, crooked finger draw me to her side, her fingernails painted a cantaloupe orange. Before Priddy, on the display case, is a cardboard box and a plastic cup complete with fountain drink. Inside the box are a BLT with a mountain of fries and a pickle on the side. Same as always. We don’t do deliveries, but for Ingrid Daube we do. And today it’s my turn to go. Usually I look forward to the trips to Ingrid’s home—a break from the mundane routine of the café—but today isn’t one of those days. Today I’d rather stay.
“Me?” I ask stupidly, staring at the box, and Priddy says, “Yes, you, Alex. You.”
I sigh.
“Take this to Ingrid,” Priddy says to me, with no please and no thank-you, but rather an edict: “Go.” I loiter a fraction of a second, my eyes on the woman with the ombré hair—Pearl—as Red passes by and refills her coffee mug for a third time.
Pearl has been here for an hour now, maybe two, and although she finished her meal long ago, she doesn’t go. The dishes have been cleared. It’s been a good thirty minutes since Red placed the check on the table beside the coffee mug. The waitress has asked three times if there’s anything else she needs, but the girl only shakes her head and says no. Red is getting antsy, eager to gather up another measly tip that she can complain about as soon as Pearl decides to split. And yet she doesn’t split. She remains at the window, gazing out, sipping coffee with no apparent plans to go.
I tell myself I’ll hurry. That I’ll be back before she leaves.
Why? I don’t know why. For some reason I want to be here when she goes, to watch her put the black hat back on her head, obscuring the ombré hair. To watch her wrap the scarf around her neck and gather the canvas bag in her hands. To see her slip into the checkered pea coat. To see her rise up off the chair, to see which way she goes.
I tell myself I’ll hurry; I’ll be back before she leaves. I say it again. If I time it just right, maybe she’ll be leaving just as I return—back from my delivery to Ingrid. Maybe.
I’ll hold the door for her. I’ll say to her, Have a nice day.
I’ll ask her her name. New to town? I’ll say.
Maybe. If I time it right.
Also, if I’m not being a chicken shit, which I probably will be.
I don’t bother to put on my coat for a quick trip across the street. I grab the box and the drink and slip through the glass door backward, using my backside to open the door for me. The wind nearly swipes the box from my hands as
I step outside, and I think it’s times like these that I wish I had hair. More hair. Much more hair than the burr cut on my head, which does nothing to keep my scalp and ears warm. I could use a hat, too, and my coat. Instead, I wear my café-issued attire: the cheap, pleated pants, the white button-down shirt and a black bow tie. It’s tacky, the kind of thing I’d prefer not to have to be seen in public in. But Priddy gives me no choice. The sleeves of my shirt flutter in the breeze, the wind getting trapped beneath the polyester, making it puff up like a parachute or a birthday balloon. It’s cold outside, the air temperature reaching no more than forty degrees. The windchill is another story. The windchill—also known as the one thing everyone will be talking about for the next four months to come. Only November and already meteorologists are calling for a cold winter, one of the coldest on record, they say, with subzero temps, record windchills and bounteous snow.
It’s winter in Michigan, for God’s sake. What else is new?
Ingrid Daube lives in a Cape Cod right across the street from the café, a small Cape Cod circa 1940-or 1950-something. It’s a light blue house with dark blue shutters, a roof almost as tall as it is wide. It’s a good house, a charming house. Quaint and idyllic, save for the hustle and bustle of the main street, which does anything but hustle or bustle this time of year. It’s quiet. From Ingrid’s upstairs dormer window, she has a bird’s-eye view of the café and there I see her, standing in the window like an apparition, eyes watching mine as I wait for a passing car and then scamper across the street. She waves at me through the glass. I return the wave and watch as she disappears from view.
I start climbing the steps of Ingrid’s wide, white front porch, and that’s when I hear the high-pitched squeal of a squeaky door hinge, followed by the slamming of a screen door from the home next door, a blue cottage converted into an office for Dr. Giles, the town shrink. It’s been less than a year since he moved his practice in. As I peek over, there he stands in the doorway, saying goodbye to a patient before peering up and down the street—hands in pockets—as if waiting for someone else to appear. Does he hug her? I’m quite certain he does, an awkward one-armed hug not meant to happen in plain sight. That’s what makes it weird. He checks his watch. He looks left, he looks right, up and down the street. Someone is late, and Dr. Giles doesn’t want to be kept waiting. He seems miffed that he has to wait. I see it in his squinty eyes, in his vertical posture, in the way his arms are crossed.
I don’t like the man one bit.
The patient who leaves thrusts a hood up over her head, a fur-lined hood on a thick black parka, though whether it’s for warmth or privacy, I can’t say. I don’t know. I never do see her face before she scurries away, down the street the other way. I don’t see her, but I hear her. Half the town hears her. I hear her crying, a distraught wail that can be heard a half block away. He made her cry. Dr. Giles made the girl cry. Add that to the list of reasons I don’t like the guy.
There was a whole scandal when Dr. Giles moved his office into the tiny blue cottage. A scandal because the ladies in town took to lurking around the café, to puttering up and down the street, so they could see the comings and goings of Dr. Giles’s clientele: which of the town’s members was seeing the headshrinker and why. Proving what people hated most about small-town living: there is no such thing as privacy.
Ours really is the paradigm of a small town. We’ve got one stoplight, and we’ve got a town drunk and everybody knows who the town drunk is: my father. Everyone gossips. There’s nothing better to do than throw one another under the bus. And so we do.
Ingrid opens the door before I knock. She opens the door and I step inside, wiping my shoes on the woven floor mat. She smiles. Ingrid is about the same age my mother would be if my mother were still here. Don’t get me wrong, my mother’s not dead (though sometimes I wish she was dead), she’s just not here. Ingrid has one of those short hairdos forty-or fifty-year-old women sometimes have, the color of wet sand. She has welcoming eyes. She has a nice smile, but a sad smile. There isn’t a person in town who could say a bad thing about Ingrid, but rather the bad things that have happened to Ingrid. That’s what they talk about. Ingrid’s life is the definition of tragic. She’s gotten the short end of the stick, that’s for sure, and as a result she’s become the town’s charity case, a fifty-year-old woman too terrified to step foot out of her own home. She has panic attacks any time she does, chest pressure, trouble breathing. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes, though I don’t know her whole story. I make it a point not to meddle in others’ business, and yet I’ve seen Ingrid get loaded into an ambulance and whisked off to the emergency room when she thought that she was dying. Turned out everything was fine. Just fine. Just an ordinary case of agoraphobia, as if it’s ordinary for a fifty-year-old woman to stay in her home because she’s scared to death of the world outside. She doesn’t leave her house for anything, not to get the mail or water a flower or pick a weed. Within the gypsum walls she’s perfectly fine, but outside these walls is another story.
But all that said, Ingrid isn’t crazy. She’s about as normal as they come around here.
“Hi, Alex,” she says to me, and I reply, “Hi.”
Ingrid dresses like a fifty-year-old woman should: a bright orange sweatshirt kind of thing, and black knit pants. Around her neck, a locket and chain. In her earlobes, stud earrings. On her feet is a pair of flats.
Before Ingrid has a chance to close the door, I turn around for a quick peek. There in the storefront glass I see her, Pearl, obscured in part by the reflection of nearly everything on the opposite side of the street. What’s inside and what’s outside are complicated by glass, so it’s no wonder that birds fly headlong into it sometimes, plummeting to their deaths on the porous concrete.
But still, through the marquee of trees and in the manifestation of half the world on one pane of glass, I see her.
Pearl.
Her eyes stare out the window, but not at me. I follow the path of Pearl’s eyes to a sign that hangs with scroll brackets from the neighboring home: Dr. Giles, PhD. Licensed Psychologist. And there he stands, Dr. Giles, with his dark, trim-cut hair and well-groomed style, waiting impatiently for a patient to appear.
Well, I’ll be. She’s watching him.
Does she have an appointment with Dr. Giles? Maybe. Maybe that’s it. My perception shifts, but not so much that I stop thinking about her hair or her eyes, because I don’t. In fact, they’re there every time I so much as blink.
Ingrid closes the door, and she asks of me, “Can you lock it?”
Ingrid’s home is on the small size, but more than adequate for a single occupant as I kick the door closed, turn the dead bolt, and bring Ingrid’s lunch to her kitchen table. On the marble countertop is an open cardboard box, a small reserve of novels set beside it. Something to pass time. There’s a knife set there, too, a professional-grade carving knife, used to slice through the packaging tape.
The television is on, a small flat-screen TV that Ingrid doesn’t watch, though I can tell she’s listening to it and my guess is that the sound of actors and actresses on the TV screen tricks her into feeling like she’s not alone. That someone is here even if they’re only make-believe. It’s a spoof she plays on herself. It must be lonely, not being able to leave your own home.
The house is otherwise quiet. Once upon a time there was the sound of boisterous children and stampeding feet, but not anymore. Now those sounds are gone.
“I was hoping you’d do me a favor, Alex,” Ingrid says, drawing my eyes away from a lady on the TV screen. Her home is a crisp white: white walls, white cabinets. The floors are a contrast to the rest of the home, stained plank flooring, so dark they’re almost black. Her furniture and decor are austere, shades of neutrals and gray, not much in the way of knickknacks or accessories, unlike my own home, Pops being the hoarder that he is, unable to part with anything. It’s not like he collects years?
?? worth of rubbish, piled miles high in the middle of our living room, stray cats procreating in every crevice of our home so that it burgeons with feral kittens, some living, some dead. No, not like that; not like those hoarders on TV. But he is sentimental, the type that has trouble parting with my junior-high report cards and baby teeth. I suppose this should make me feel good. Deep down I guess it does.
But it’s also a painful reminder that Pops has no one else in this world but me. If I were to leave, where would he be?
“I made a shopping list,” Ingrid says, and without waiting for her to voice the words—Will you go?—I say, “Sure thing. Tomorrow, okay?” And she says that it is.
From a window in the kitchen of Ingrid’s home, I’ve got a decent view straight to the inside of Dr. Giles’s office. Ingrid’s Cape Cod sits just above his, the window at the ideal angle to see right in. It’s not a great view, but still, it’s a view. As Ingrid sorts through her purse for two twenty-dollar bills and hands them to me, I catch sight of something shadowy and vague, just the movement of shapes through the glass. Someone is there. I stare, but I don’t stare long. I can’t. I don’t want Ingrid to think I’m some Peeping Tom. Instead, my eyes meet Ingrid’s and I tuck the two twenty-dollar bills into a pocket and tell her that I’ll go tomorrow morning. I’ll go to the grocery store in the morning. I’ve done this routine many times before.
I take the list, say my goodbyes and go.