CHAPTER FOUR

Looking For a Place to Live

A stretch of six or seven weeks has slipped by since my initial visit to Bristol, and it’s time to begin making real plans for a major move in my life. I need to confirm that relocating to a town bypassed by time is what I wish to do. A new semester is underway and I have its remaining weeks plus the following semester during which to search out a place and carry off a move, probably with a U-Haul van. Thereupon a quiet life in a fifties world more or less bypassed by the threats and violence, the impatience and noise of urban life. A place wherein I might walk and work, think and read, give my creative impulses an opportunity to thrive…if they are ever going to do so. A town, I must admit, that is exerting a pull in the form of a woman named Bert with whom, on my earlier visit, I exchanged a few friendly words.

The lone student I’ll be retaining, by correspondence, will be my mentee presently serving in the army in Germany, where he is facing a high likelihood of deploying to the Persian Gulf in a war that appears certain to break out. A candid eighteen-year-old, he’s one of the brightest students, by way of his honesty and unique circumstances, I’ve known as a teacher. I like him as a young man of integrity and intelligence and enjoy reading the steno books he’s been sending my way as installments in a journal given to his time in the army and his coming of age in the midst of individuals who appear to be better teachers for him than any puffy professors he would have encountered by going directly into college.

At heart, in truth, I worry over Jimmy Murphy like a son, hoping he won’t get hurt. At the same time I must admit that I derive vicarious pleasure in the growing-up experiences he describes. I’m good for him as a sounding board, as he is good for me in the perspective he allows me to know in my overview of existence. An honest reporter with a good eye. A quick learner. A kid who already knows more, I think, than his contemporaries, be they enrolled at Harvard or at my own Mass State. If he leaves the army for college at twenty-one (as he plans to do) he’ll have a leg up on his classmates and his classroom learning experience will be deeper than any serious curriculum planner would ever intend.

Bert is present in the dairy bar in her white and yellow uniform, and I experience anxiety confronting the nudge in our friendship I’m of a mind to advance. I doubt she’ll remember me (it’s been many weeks), imagine she’s happily married (or committed) and, if she does remember me, will have no interest in walking out for coffee at another cafe, let alone–on a subsequent day–joining me for dinner at a restaurant with white tablecloths and candlelight.

Her dairy bar counter is no more occupied than it was the last time I was here, and as I settle onto a stool and she comes along to take my order, I say to her, “Hi. Remember me?”

She looks, and says, “I think I do.”

“Six or eight weeks ago…I mentioned that I was thinking of renting a place here, within walking distance of downtown? If I l may say so, I found you to be most friendly and attractive…have been wondering if there was any chance you would join me for coffee… lunch…whatever…tomorrow or the next day? I’d like to make your acquaintance and learn more about daily life in Bristol.”

To my surprise, she hears me out before saying, “Coffee? Let me think about that. Would you like to order something?”

“I would. A grilled cheese and a Diet Coke. Wanted to get out what I really wanted to say before I lost my nerve.”

She smiles, looking surprised and pleased by my invitation.

“A grilled cheese and a Diet Coke,” she says. “I’ll think about coffee,” she adds, smiling. “You’re who?” she wants to know on turning away.

“A visitor, from Somerville. Herman Roth,” I say as she moves along to fill my order. “I’ve been teaching…at Massachusetts State. A widower. Have a grown son and daughter. New York and DC. I’ll be sort of retiring next summer…to read and write in peace. What happened…Bristol caught my fancy on some earlier trips through here to visit friends, and I’m trying to decide if moving here to live is what I want to do. Talking to you would help a lot.”

“Conversation…or a date?” she says.

“I guess both,” I tell her.

As she places my Coke on the counter, she glances at my face. “I’m a single mom,” she says. “My daughter is nineteen and lives at home. Her father–my husband–died in a car crash four years ago. I have yet to go out, if you know what I mean. Which isn’t to say I’m not ready to make friends.”

“Bert,” I reply. “You know, I like the clarity of your name. Every time I think of it, and of you, I smile. I’m asking, you know, as a stranger from out of town. Coffee, or lunch? Tomorrow? No need to think of it as going out or anything like that. Two grown-ups having lunch and talking about life in a small town in New Hampshire. The reason I like this place. The reason it’s caught my eye–besides you–is that it looks like it hasn’t changed in forty years. Seems peaceful. Which I like. I have money enough, in my pension and so on, that I can relocate to a quiet town where I’ll be able to read and write in semi-retirement. Think about it. I’ll have my grilled cheese, and if it’s something you can do, give a nod. Otherwise I won’t bother you. Who knows? We might get along. Or not. We can find out, if you’re up for a modest adventure into the unknown over coffee and a bite to eat.”

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

“Stranger enters old-fashioned dairy bar…invites pretty woman on a date for coffee. And conversation. No risk in that, do you think?”

“Eat your sandwich…on which I put some extra cheese,” she says, making me smile with pleasure and letting me know that in every likelihood she will be agreeing to the date I’ve proposed, that she is fun, that the timing in our lives is okay, that we’re going to check each other out to see what kind of friendship might lie in the cards we’re holding here in our middle years.

“Okay,” she says, standing before me and writing the check.

“Okay?”

“You better not turn out to be some kind of weirdo,” she says. “You don’t seem like that…which is why I’m saying okay. You seem like a nice man, a teacher who has no reason to lie about moving to a town by a lake to read and write. Makes sense to me. There’s a restaurant on the second corner here to the right. The Hot Skillet. I could meet you there for lunch, tomorrow, if you can arrive on the early side. I start my evening shift here at 3 p.m.”

“Excellent,” I say. “We can grab some lunch. I can show you that I am not a weirdo. You can tell me about life in Bristol. I’m pleased…that you’re as genuine as I thought you might possibly be.”

After half an hour, as I leave the Bristol Dairy Bar, I leave a triple tip on the counter with the old-fashioned greenish-white check. Given that Bert is attending to a new pair of customers, I say only, on leaving, “See you,” to which she replies with a faint 1950s smile that pleases me more than I would have thought.

The next day, as I enter on the early side of noon, I see that the Hot Skillet offers high wooden tables and chairs with views of the street and sidewalk. As I take a seat and gaze through glass, I see Bert approaching almost at once, dressed up a bit, looking attractive in a pastel blouse on a warm October day. Standing to greet her and present a high chair, I say, “Nice to see you. I checked in the mirror, before I left the B&B, to be sure I wasn’t displaying too much weirdness. You look nice.”

“Well…a small amount of weirdness may be acceptable.”

“Truth is, I have little use for weirdness. Thing that attracted me, the first time I drove through this town, was an impression that it hadn’t changed. Nor did I expect to meet anyone. But there you were…and I began thinking of you quite a bit. All at once it was a world where I thought I might fit in, in an unassuming way…where I might start off actually knowing someone! May sound like nothing much to you, but to me it’s been intriguing. I’ve been thinking about it all the time.”

“I thought for some time that I’d be better off–as would my daughter–if we moved to a bigger town. Manchester. Or Nashua. I haven’t wanted to leave the state. Not even Bristol…where I grew up. Still, it’s a small town. Was…until you came along.”

We laugh over this, and I’m so pleased to have her say something nice that I say, “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in a quite a while.”

“I’m teasing.”

“I know. Still, it’s a treat to me to talk with someone and laugh.”

“You’re going to think I’m weird!” she says.

“Weird enough,” I say.

“You’re thinking of moving here…thinking, if you do, that we can go out together?” Bert says on finishing her fizzy soft drink.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“I’m okay with that…though I’m not making any promises. What I notice,” she adds. “Not that I mind. What I notice is that you sort of speak through what might be said, and how we might say it. Do you do that because you’re a teacher?”

This time I’m the one to grin. “I guess I do that because I’m a teacher, and a writer,” I say. “It’s how my mind works. I hope it’s not disconcerting. It’s because I’ve been kind of a loner who spends a lot of time reading and writing. Truth is, I talk to myself when I’m doing either one. The way a person walks through scenes, you know, to see how they feel…what people would say. I do it all the time. You can call it my crazy dimension, if you like. I don’t mind.”

She’s watching me, and in doing so smiles with fondness enough to let me know she is accepting of this dimension in me. “If you visit next week,” she says. “I’d like you to call, not to ask if I want you to visit, because I know that I do.”

“Another nice thing to say,” I say.

“I’d like you to meet my daughter. Sometime. We come as a package. If we’re going to go out, I don’t want there to be any surprises. You’re either a dream that has strolled into my life…or you’re not. I like you. I like the things you say and how you say them. Can we go with that for now?”

“As you wish,” I tell her. “I will be visiting next weekend…and I’ll call to see if we can set up a time to get together.”

“I like your style,” she says. “Friendly stranger comes to town…invites single mom out to lunch,” she adds, over which we both laugh with pleasure.