Chapter 17
— Chapter 17 —
Hans works in the same office complex as Wells Realty and Development, but he’s in one of the new buildings, on the opposite side of the lot. I park by his office and get out of my car just as Hans walks out the door. He has a leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder, and he’s wearing shiny round sunglasses even though it’s overcast.
He sees me and waves. I feel so stupid. He said to stop in, but I should have made an appointment.
“Freya of the Fólkvangr!” he shouts, and I want to duck for cover.
“Hi, Hans!” I say softly, trying to reset his volume. I don’t know if I should call him Mr. Gruenberger. At what age can we start calling people older than us by their first names? “You look like you’re heading out—I can come back another time.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hans said. “I should have called you to set a meeting. But we can just go back in—actually, no—I was grabbing lunch. Care to join me? We’ll talk there.”
I stare at him, trying to figure out what to make of this situation.
“On me, of course,” Hans says. “My treat.”
I look at his tweed coat and cashmere scarf and can’t for the life of me understand why he’d want to take me to lunch. We haven’t had particularly personable conversations on the phone. I’ve been more of a pain in his ass than anything, and I’m fairly certain he knows I’m not going to be a valuable client.
“Okay,” I say, hoping the cringe I’m feeling isn’t coming through on my face. I don’t want to go to lunch with him, but I’m nervous about why he wants to see me. I thought we’d finished all of our business.
His car is parked next to mine. He unlocks the door for me and makes a grand sweeping gesture. It feels like too much conversation to tell him I’ll drive myself.
“Il Forno? Somerfields? Yorktown Diner?” he asks.
He’s paying, so I’d be more comfortable telling him to pick, but since I’m stuck getting in the car with him, I go for the closest. “Il Forno.”
“Oh, good,” Hans says. “I wanted pizza.”
If Somers had sidewalks, we could walk, but since there aren’t any and the ground is soupy, we drive the quarter mile to Il Forno. The radio in Hans’s Saab is tuned to WNYC Public Radio, and the cadence of the chatter is familiar even though I don’t recognize the voices.
I feel my quiet like a wall again. Words piling up behind it in no particular order. My palms sweat.
“How’s the house?” Hans asks.
I think of the tiny trees growing in the gutters. “Standing.”
Hans laughs. “That’s good.”
“I guess,” I say, imagining the relief I’d feel if I got back from lunch to find the whole damn house had blown over in a stiff breeze.
Hans parks his car and we walk into Il Forno. When I was a kid and Somers was what my mother called “a half-horse town,” the building was a saloon at the edge of the town’s Civil War cemetery. The year I graduated high school, someone turned it into an upscale brick oven pizza restaurant. Same view.
Lots of restaurants open nice and then drift into something else, like the garbled end of a game of telephone, but Il Forno is still nice, maybe even nicer than when it opened. It smells like burning hickory wood and melted goat cheese. Even though we’re past the lunch rush, most of the tables are full. I do a quick scan and don’t see anyone who looks familiar, but that doesn’t mean someone I know won’t come in while we’re eating. Maybe I should have chosen the Yorktown Diner. Steena and Charlie would never eat there.
I keep my head down and hope my disguise is good enough. This morning, I bleached my hair a second time. I also borrowed one of Aubrey’s black sweaters, a pair of gray jeans, and her red lipstick. The overall effect makes me feel like a stranger to myself and seems to command attention, when I’m used to fading nicely into most backgrounds.
Our waitress has the kind of cool girl smile that’s quick and bright and fades as soon as she’s done telling us the specials. Hans asks if I want to split a margherita pizza, I say sure, and the waitress stares at me. I’m scared she recognizes my face, even though I’m certain I don’t know her. Hans orders a Pepsi, so I do too, and when she asks if we want lemon slices, I say yes and Hans says no, and the way she studies his face makes me realize she’s playing the date or daughter game. It happened whenever I went anywhere with Step after I hit puberty. I was an old-faced kid who turned into a young-faced adult because my features didn’t change much as time passed. It happened a lot with Buck at The Clam too, because no one seemed to understand why I looked out for him so much.
Our waitress leaves to put in our order, and I steal a glance at Hans while he places his napkin in his lap and lines up his silverware. If I didn’t know us, I’m not sure which I’d pick. He’s maybe about five years too young to be my father. But he’s wearing a light brown collared shirt and a dark brown cardigan, and I think that even if I were into much older guys, he’s too pleated and proper to look like my date.
“I’m so glad you stopped by,” he says. “I wanted to make sure you know about your upcoming payments. That’s why I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past few weeks.”
My heart sinks to the deepest pit of my stomach. I don’t know how any of this works. I’m sure he spent many more hours tracking me down than he could have possibly been paid for—all the times I ignored him and he had to call again and again. I wonder if he’s charging me for the hour of lunch even though he’s paying for the food. It’s one of those moments where I feel like everyone else understands how the world works, but I was absent from school the day they taught us.
“Do I owe you money?” I say, too loud and fast.
“No, no, no! Of course not! I mean payments for the house.”
“You said the mortgage was paid off.”
“It is,” he says. “But you’ll have property taxes due in September and January. The good news is that when your father paid the September installment last June, he paid ahead for the January installment. I thought that was odd, but it works in your favor. You didn’t miss the bill last month.”
“It’s not odd for St—my father,” I say. Step was forgetful, so he tried to pay bills as soon as they showed up in the mail. Sometimes he prepaid or even overpaid, as if he were planning for a future lapse. It drove my mother crazy. She was always yelling about how he was giving away interest. But late fees cost more than bank interest pays, and she was also enraged when we lost power on a calm sunny day because Step hadn’t gotten around to sorting the mail.
“You’ll also have to keep up the insurance,” Hans says. “Unfortunately, it’s a rather expensive plan.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and fifty dollars a month,” he says.
“That’s not so bad.” I don’t know why it hadn’t dawned on me that I’d have to pay for more than just heat and electricity. But my rent in Maine was almost four times what the insurance costs, so I feel like I can do this.
“Well, your father was paying annually, so that bill is going to be eighteen hundred,” he says. “And it’s due again at the end of March.”
I wince. “Can I get cheaper insurance? Like if I use a company that isn’t one of his vendors?” The plans Step carried tended to be high cost, low deductible, and I probably just need the bare minimum.
Hans shakes his head. “He purchased this plan through a broker at Fayette-Stanley.”
“That part is odd,” I say. Step brokered for multiple carriers. Fayette-Stanley is a franchise that only carries their own insurance.
“I thought so too. But maybe he had a desire for separation of church and state. Didn’t want his personal business with his vendors,” Hans says. “Or, if I may be so crass, don’t shit where you eat. ”
I laugh and Hans’s eyes twinkle, like he’s pleased to lose the formality between us. “You’re not asking my advice, I know,” he says, “but if you’ll allow…”
I nod.
“The way your father set up the insurance for the estate, you can continue without interruption as long as you keep paying. But if you change the plan, they’ll want to assess the house again.”
“Okay,” I say, even though I’m not sure I understand.
Hans seems to sense that I’m lost. “Basically, if they find mold or a crack in the foundation, or the roof looks weak, you could end up paying more for less coverage, or they could decide your house is uninsurable, which would make it harder for you to sell, even after you fix it up. So, in my personal opinion, the best thing is pay the bill and make sure you never let it lapse.”
“And how much is property tax?” I am trying to keep my breath steady. I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to come up with that kind of money in a month when I don’t have a job yet and I still have to pay for food and gas and electricity and heat.
“Roughly a thousand.”
The waitress comes by to drop off a pizza stand and set plates in front of us.
“And not until September,” I say, trying to stay calm.
“Right,” Hans says. “And January.”
The waitress comes back and places the pizza on the stand.
“Do you want fresh parmesan?” she asks.
Hans looks at me. I nod.
“Yes, thank you,” he says.
She holds a circular grater over the pie, and we watch the snowfall of cheese until Hans says, “Thank you.”
“Can I serve your first piece?” she asks.
“Sure,” Hans says.
The cheese is hot and stringy, and it’s a whole ordeal to get a slice on each of our plates.
“Did you miss pizza when you were in Maine?” Hans asks after our waitress leaves us.
“They still have pizza in Maine.”
Hans looks at me, raising an eyebrow.
I laugh. “It’s not quite the same.”
“I’ve never been to Maine,” Hans says.
“Really?”
“We always took the kids to New Hampshire in the summer. Lake Winnipesaukee.”
I smile. The year I moved to Maine, rent was low and gas was cheap, so I took road trips on the holidays I didn’t work. My first Christmas alone, I drove down to Lake Winnipesaukee and stayed in an efficiency cabin that barely had heat. When I made the reservation, the woman on the phone told me I’d be their only guest and she wasn’t making breakfast Christmas morning, so it wouldn’t be included. After the sun set on Christmas Eve, I took the trail down to the motel’s little beach. It was cold, but there wasn’t any snow. The top layer of frozen sand caved under my feet, and I left careful footsteps, pretending I was walking on the moon. I sat on a frozen Adirondack chair, wrapped up in the nylon bedspread from my cabin and watched the shine of the holiday lights from the neighboring pier reflected in the choppy water. I stayed out there until my teeth chattered hard enough to hurt. It was the first peaceful Christmas of my conscious life. No yelling. No tears. I could see my breath and the stars and the colorful lights, and hear the water lapping against the icy shore. In the morning, I woke to a knock on the cabin door and found a Styrofoam container of hot pancakes, a bottle of orange juice, and a thermos of coffee on the front step. There was a note carved into the Styrofoam with a ballpoint pen: Couldn’t leave you stranded. Merry Christmas. The maple syrup was real, and the coffee tasted like it was made from fresh-ground beans.
“Lake Winnipesaukee is one of my favorite places,” I say.
When I look at Hans, his jaw is tight, brow wrinkled, and I wonder what his memories of Lake Winnipesaukee are. When we talk about a place, I don’t think any of us are ever talking about the same place, even when we think we are.
Hans tries to send me home with the leftovers, but I deflect, convincing him to take the two slices that are left. I don’t understand his generosity. I don’t understand his interest in me.
“I will certainly eat them,” he says. “My wife moved to Paris two years ago, and I’m still not used to this whole dinner for one situation.”
I want to ask if that means she’s not his wife anymore, what she’s doing in Paris, and where his kids ended up, but I’m sure I’m not supposed to, so I just say, “That’s the perfect dinner for one.”
While Hans pays the bill, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. On the way back I find our waitress.
“Any chance they’re looking for a bartender?” I ask. Even though it would feel like a risk to work here—so close to Charlie and Steena’s office—I don’t have the luxury of choice. This place is technically walkable from the house, so I could take home all my pay.
The waitress flashes her cool girl smile. “Sorry.” Her face goes back to blank as soon as she’s done talking. I wonder if she’s having a bad day. It is soul-crushing to be relentlessly congenial when you don’t have the energy for it.
“Thanks anyway. And thank you for lunch. That was really nice,” I say, before I head back to the table.
“Hey,” she calls, walking behind me. When I turn around, she’s smiling for real. Sad, but sweet. “Want to leave your number, just in case?”
I follow her to the hostess stand and write my info on the pad of paper she hands me.
“I really appreciate it,” I say when I pass it back.
“Thanks…” She looks at my name on the paper. “Freya. I’ll put in a good word.”
“She’s cute,” Hans says approvingly as we get in his car. It seems like it’s past his comfort zone to say it, and I feel a swell of warmth toward his good intentions.
“She is,” I say. “But I was just asking for a job. I’m not sure how I’ll—” I stop myself. It doesn’t feel safe to let on what a big stretch the insurance and taxes will be, even though I can’t pinpoint the exact danger. “I need to get situated here. While I get the house ready to sell.”
“If you want, I could use help filing. Nothing interesting, but four hours a week maybe? Twenty dollars an hour. You can do the work whenever.” Hans parks next to my car. “I have a meeting in a minute, but give me a call. We’ll set up a time to walk through the job, okay?”
I nod. Four hours of work that pays what I’d make pulling a double on a Tuesday at The Clam. I wish Hans had a warehouse full of files in need of sorting. “Thank you. And thanks for lunch,” I say. “And for all the stuff you did that I know you didn’t have to.”
“Sometimes,” Hans says, smiling, “there are things we have to do, because we won’t feel right until we do them.”
When I get in my car and make the turn out of the parking lot, I kiss my hand and touch the window. “Sorry, Bet.”
I dropped out of college because of Old Bet.
Freshman year at SUNY Purchase, I was so flummoxed by the registration process that I missed out on the good classes and got stuck taking American History from a misanthropic Hemingway wannabe. Professor Hutchinson was, as Jam would say, definitely high on his own supply. He wore the same three tobacco-stained Aran sweaters, pronounced silent h ’s, and had a perpetual sprinkling of toast crumbs suspended in his beard. He seemed to envision himself as the kind of movie-magic teacher who could change lives with his superior intellect, but mostly he yelled at anyone who disagreed with him, and then yelled at all of us when no one wanted to participate. Being in Dr. Hutchinson’s class gave me the exact same captivity panic I felt in grade school, but it was worse because I’d expected college to be better. And unlike in grade school, I wasn’t required by law to attend. I only applied to college because I was expected to get a degree. My parents had degrees. My sister did. My peers would. But at the core of my being, because didn’t feel like a good enough reason to endure the blowhard stylings of Papa Hutchinson, and I battled with myself every time I had to leave my sad little dorm room to go to that sad little classroom.
Then for our midterm, Dr. Hutchinson assigned us a research paper about a lesser-known historical event of our choosing, and it gave me the chance to study Old Bet the elephant.
In Somers, we were taught the fuzzy cartoon story of our town mascot all through grade school, and I always felt like the only person who saw the horror in Bet’s circumstances. I hoped there was a happy part I’d missed and thought if I could find that history, maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone. So I spent endless hours in the college library looking for answers, and when I couldn’t find them, I drove back to Somers and waded through the archives at the Elephant Hotel. I took the train to Manhattan and scrolled through microfiche at the Public Library. Then I walked to the corner of Beaver Street and Broadway where Hachaliah Bailey, who had been known to frequent the nearby Bull’s Head Tavern, saw an elephant for the very first time.
I had never engaged with history beyond trying to remember war dates for a quiz or getting dragged on a field trip to Van Cortlandt Manor to learn how people spun wool in olden times. Now I felt like a detective, a collector of ideas. I was riveted, tireless, but as I gathered more information, the story became less clear. In the conflicting accounts of Old Bet and Bailey, I started to understand the fundamental problem of history—how few facts exist without the filter of perspective.
It was like someone had given me a new pair of glasses and the world was suddenly so much more interesting. I was having a love affair with my own mind. I wanted to relearn everything I thought I knew. I focused my paper on the experience of searching for the truth of Old Bet, certain the greater lesson was what Professor Hutchinson had intended to teach us all along. I was so proud of my work that I cried on the way back to my dorm after turning in my assignment. Finally, I had unlocked the kind of learning experience that made college worth it.
Two weeks later, when I got my paper back, it didn’t even have a grade. Professor Hutchinson had written SEE ME!!! in smudgy red ink and stamped his office hours on the page.