Whoopsie

They were ravenous. Homer Kelly was six and a half feet tall and a trifle overweight. Without a regular succession of breakfast, morning snack, coffee break, lunch, afternoon snack, tea, happy hour, supper, and a final bedtime bowl of cereal, his legs went limp. “Hey,” said Homer, zooming the car around and heading south, “there’s a pizza place in Nashoba, right there on Route Two A, next to the witchy lady’s place.”

“Great,” said Mary. “I could eat a hymnbook.”

“Watch it,” said Homer. “Some of those hymns might be hard to get down—“Rock of Ages” for instance.”

“Ouch.” Mary clutched her neck and then said firmly, “What I want is a hymn in the shape of a nice juicy pepperoni pizza with mozzarella. Hurry up, Homer.”

Route 2A was a long, winding state highway. In East Cambridge and Arlington, it was known as Massachusetts Avenue; in Lexington, Marratt Road; and in Lincoln, North Great Road. In Concord, it had several names—Lexington Street, Elm Street, and finally Nashoba Road. In the towns of Nashoba and Acton, it was a suburban strip, a narrow scar through abandoned farms. Dignified old houses had been turned into furniture emporiums. Car dealerships were surrounded by glittering wreaths of Toyotas and Chevys, and beside the parking lot of an upmarket mall, trendy outlets stood cheek-to-cheek—Staples, Trader Joe’s, Pier 1.

The pizza parlor in Nashoba was neither trendy nor upmarket. It fronted directly on the highway, and in the window the looped letters of an old-fashioned neon sign spelled Nashoba Pizza.

Homer pulled up beside a motorcycle in the weedy parking lot at the side, and Mary said, “It looks just right.”

Indoors, the place was like an old-fashioned diner, complete with a long counter and twirly stools. There was even a jukebox glittering with plastic made to look like mother-of-pearl. The jukebox was howling and thumping with some kind of pop music, but Homer and Mary were too hungry to care. They sat down on the stools and waited to be noticed by the girl at the counter, who was deep in whispered conversation with a muscular kid in a pink tank top, obviously the owner of the motorcycle. The girl showed no interest in her new customers.

Mary and Homer contented themselves with choosing from the pizza list tacked to a fancy board on the wall. Then they looked expectantly at the waitress, but she was still nose-to-nose with the motorcycle guy. Homer’s stomach clapped against his backbone, but he diverted himself by studying the pictures on the wall, a display of faded photographs tacked up between the list of pizzas and a large sign proclaiming NO REST ROOMS. One of the photographs showed a family standing beside a Tin Lizzie, mamma with bobbed hair, papa with cigar, two identical little boys in knickers, two identical little girls with bows in their hair.

Without warning, the music stopped. Pink Tank Top departed, and the waitress moved languidly down the counter, staring out the window at the motorcycle as it zoomed onto the highway with huge blats of its exhaust.

Mary and Homer ordered coffee and mozzarella pizzas and watched the girl unwrap two frozen objects and slap them in a microwave. Cars zoomed past on the highway, and then a rumbling procession of dump trucks. The rickety building trembled, and one of the pictures fell with a crash.

“Whoopsie,” said the girl, stooping to pick it up.

Homer had caught a glimpse of the picture as it fell, and he said, “Oh, please, may we look?”

“Well, I don’t give a damn.” Sulkily, the bitchy girl jerked their pizzas out of the microwave, slid them onto paper plates, dumped them on the counter, then slapped the picture down beside them.

Eagerly, Homer and Mary leaned over the old brown photograph. It was a faded image of a half-inflated hot-air balloon. Two young men in bowler hats stood beside it, their arms akimbo. Charmed, Mary asked the waitress, “Do you know who they are?”

“Don’t ask me.” The bitchy girl was too listless to hang the picture back on its nail. Instead, she leaned it against a squeeze bottle of mustard on a tiny shelf attached to an elaborate cupboard.

But there were many more pictures on the wall. Homer was delighted. He pointed excitedly left and right. “Maybe they show what old Nashoba was like. What about that one? Oh, please, might we see that one?”

“Watch it, Homer,” cried Mary, but she was too late. Homer’s sweeping gesture had knocked over his coffee cup.

“Whoopsie,” said the bitchy girl again, mopping up the slop.