CHAPTER
twelve
I hadn’t intended to park my car in front of the bakery, and I didn’t mean to get out and hurry to the door. It wasn’t my plan to step inside and breathe in the aroma of fresh bread. All I’d meant to do was go to the store to pick up a few things. It was Wednesday, after all. Grocery day.
Yet, there I was. Standing just inside the entrance to Sweet Family, hands hanging at my sides. I surprised myself so much, ending up there entirely by accident, that I dropped my handbag—thud—on the floor.
Old habits certainly were hard to quit.
Pop stepped out from the back, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows and tacky dough on his right hand. He seemed to have aged a decade in just a handful of weeks. I supposed that was what happened when a father lost a son.
He opened his mouth, and I half expected—or rather, hoped—that he’d say something to tease me. I wanted him to be how he usually was, clever and witty and funny. But I could tell in his eyes that it wasn’t in him.
“Hi, Bets,” he said, leaning heavily on the counter. “How are you holding up?”
It was his kindness that made my voice catch in my throat. It was how out of place I felt, standing in the bakery, knowing that Norm wasn’t going to come in with a kiss for me. It was how I wondered what part I had in this family anymore aside from still bearing their name.
I half worried they’d want it back from me now that I was a widow.
But when Pop stepped out from behind the counter, hobbling over without the help of his cane, and wrapped his arms around me like the good father he was, I knew my place. It was right there with them.
Pop left Stan and Albert in charge and grabbed his cane, insisting that he take me to get a malt from the soda fountain a few doors down.
“But it’s still morning,” I said, letting him lead me by the shoulder out the bakery.
“Bets, I get up so early this is darn near evening for me.” He winked and nodded for me to go out the door before him.
Sam’s Sodas was the kind of place that kids would go after school for a vanilla Coke or a banana split. I usually avoided it, but Pop loved finding excuses to go. Usually he’d treat the twins, letting them pick whatever they wanted—oh, how he spoiled them.
“Hey, Pops,” the man behind the counter called, tossing a hand towel over his shoulder. “How’s things at the bakery?”
“Oh, you know. Just the usual,” Pop answered. “We’re over there just rollin’ in the dough.”
The man laughed and swatted a hand in the air. I smiled politely at the joke I’d heard at least a hundred times. If not from Pop, then from Norm.
“The usual?” The man raised his eyebrows.
“Yup. Two malts, please.” Pop nodded at a booth. “We’ll just sit over there.”
“You got it.”
We had the place to ourselves, which was nice. The only sound was the whirring of the blender. Just over our booth was a framed print of a girl and boy sitting at a lunch counter, both of them dressed up to the nines. The soda jerk leaned over to smell the girl’s corsage, the boy looking on, proud of himself. Boy, could that Norman Rockwell ever tell a story for the eyes.
“This place always reminds me of Lacy,” Pop said, staring off into space. “She loved coming here for a scoop of ice cream. I’d tease her about it, telling her how much we’d save if she just had her dish of vanilla at home. But she’d say it tasted better when somebody else served it to her.”
“I have to agree with her,” I said.
“Of course you would.” He grinned at me.
“She was a wise woman.”
The soda jerk brought our malts, and we both thanked him. Pop shut his eyes and took his first sip through the straw, a satisfied “ah” spreading his mouth into a smile.
“That’s good,” he said. “You want this?”
He pulled the cherry out of the whipped cream by its stem. I pushed my glass to him so he could drop it in.
“Pop, can you please tell me about when you first met Mom?” I asked, dipping my long-handled spoon into the malt.
“I guess I could.”
“It would cheer me up.”
“Is that so? Well, how could I say no to that?” He took another drink before starting. “LaFontaine was a bit different when I was younger. It was mostly farmland then. My folks raised milk cows and grew some soybeans. Our closest neighbor was a good mile and a half away.”
“I don’t know that I would have liked that,” I said.
“Lots different than Detroit, huh?” He stirred his malt with his straw, mixing the whipped cream into it as he talked. “I think I was nineteen when Lacy and her family moved to town. They had a house just down the street. You know the place on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourth?”
“The old Victorian?” I asked.
“That’s the one.”
“I didn’t know she lived there.”
“They did for a time. Her dad was a banker,” he said. “Did pretty well until the thirties. That’s when they lost the house. Anyway, they were the talk of the town and all I heard about was how beautiful all the girls were in that family. I decided to give them a wide berth. Rich and pretty weren’t my taste back then.”
“Oh, Pop.”
“To be fair I hadn’t met her yet.” He smiled. “First time I did was when she’d come to the farm with her father on some sort of banking business. She insisted on going to the barn to see the cows, and I obliged while our dads talked about money.”
“Do you remember what she was wearing?” I asked.
“Nope. She could have been in a clown costume and I wouldn’t have noticed. All I saw were her sharp blue eyes.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I couldn’t get an intelligent word out to save my life. All I could manage was a blubber and mumble here and there.”
“Not you,” I said, grinning.
“Well, by the end of the tour she told me she thought I was nice and that I should come to call on her sometime.” He laughed. “Before she left, she told me I ought to come the next evening. Oh, but was I nervous. The next day I put on my best suit. Well, it was my only suit, if I’m telling the truth. I picked some flowers out of Mother’s garden and walked the three miles to town.”
“How sweet.” I rested my chin in my hand.
“It might have been. But it was a hot day. Humid as all get-out. But I was too nervous to think about taking off my jacket. I was afraid I’d sweat through my dress shirt. So I walked all that way, the sun beating down on my neck and getting thirstier and thirstier with every step.” He took a sip of his malt and cleared his throat. “By the time I got to her doorstep, I was feeling sick. When the maid answered my knock, I fainted dead away, falling off the porch and into a hydrangea.”
I covered my mouth when I laughed. He winked at me to let me know it was funny to him too.
“Lacy came out when she heard the ruckus, asking if I was all right.” His shoulders lifted in a sigh. “Still in the bush, I looked up at her and didn’t know if the light feeling in my head was from the heat, the fall, or how beautiful she was.”
Someone came into the soda shop and sat at the counter. Ice clattered into a glass and the man talked with the soda jerk.
“Is that when you knew you wanted to marry her?”
“Nope. I knew I wanted to hold her hand, though. And deep inside, I wanted to kiss her, although I didn’t have the courage to do something like that yet,” he said. “I was deeply infatuated that evening. Love came later. But when it arrived, it stuck around.”
“I think that’s a nice story,” I said.
“Me too, kiddo.” He drank from his straw. “It was our first story together. First of many.”
We finished our malts, swapping stories, most that started with the words “do you remember when?” None was new to either of us, but that didn’t matter. It was a comfort and a pleasure to mull over the memories.
After a little bit, we left the soda fountain. Pop walked me to my car. I stood on the other side of the open driver’s side door, my fingers resting on the window frame.
“Have a good day, Bets,” he said from the curb.
“You too.”
Someone driving by honked their horn, and Pop lifted his hand to wave at them.
“If ever you find yourself bored silly, come on over to the bakery.” He nodded. “We’ll find something for you to do.”
“All right,” I said. “Maybe you can let me try to make bread.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He winked. “I seem to remember the last time you tried, you nearly burned down the whole town.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” I shrugged. “I guess I could just tidy things up a bit. Maybe work the cash register every once in a while.”
“That would be nice. We could use a little sunshine in that place.” He half turned away from me and toward the bakery. “Welp, I’ll see you around.”
“Pop,” I called.
He stopped and looked at me over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Thanks for cheering me up.”
“Huh. I thought it was you cheering me up.” He dipped his mouth in a thoughtful frown and raised his eyebrows. “But you’re welcome, I guess.”
He waved at me before going on his way.
All the while I did my grocery shopping, I thought of Pop—a younger version of the one I knew—in a bush outside the nicest house in town, well on his way to falling in love with Mom. I imagined her standing on the porch, hands on her hips and shaking her head, but growing in affection for him all the same.
So distracted was I that I didn’t realize I’d bought four packages of potato chips until I got home.
What was a woman living on her own supposed to do with that many chips?
“Oh, Betty,” I said to myself, not even bothering to whisper. “What a doofus you are.”
I got on my step stool and stacked the bags on top of my fridge.