Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bernie put the kettle on at three.
Not three-fifteen, when she usually arrived.
Three. Because the water took four minutes to boil and the steeping took three and he wanted both cups ready when she walked in—hers on the left side of the counter where she always set her bag, his on the table where he’d already be sitting.
He’d been thinking about this since noon, which was longer than a man should spend thinking about tea.
The cane was by the chair where the walker used to be.
He'd graduated to it on Monday—the physical therapist had watched him cross the living room twice and said he was ready.
The knee was better. Not good, not yet, but better.
He could get from the chair to the kitchen without stopping.
He could make his own tea if he got to the kettle before she did.
He didn't need Margo to come three times a week anymore. Probably.
He knew this. He suspected she knew it too, because Margo noticed everything—she'd noticed the cane replacing the walker, she'd noticed him getting up from the table without bracing. She noticed and she kept coming and he was not going to be the one to mention it.
The kettle clicked. He poured both cups and set hers on the left side of the counter. He settled into the chair at the table with the flamingo cards in their box and the tally on the fridge—MARGO 3, BERNARD 2, which was embarrassing but also meant she’d kept coming back, and he’d take the losses.
The front door opened at three-twelve. Three minutes early. She was always early.
She came in with a bag—paper, heavy, something that smelled like it had been in an oven—and stopped in the doorway.
She was looking at the cups.
“You made the tea,” she said.
“I can make tea.”
She set the bag on the counter. “You’ve never had the tea ready.”
“I’ve made tea my entire life. I just haven’t made it while you were here because you do it before I can get to the kettle.”
That wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was that he’d liked watching her make it—the way she moved through his kitchen like she’d drawn the map herself, reaching for the kettle without looking, pulling mugs from the shelf she’d reorganized.
He’d liked being the person she made tea for.
But he’d wanted, just once, to be the person who made it for her.
She picked up the mug and took a sip. He watched her face. She didn’t say anything about the temperature, which meant he’d gotten it right.
“What’s in the bag?” he asked.
She smiled as she emptied the bag. “Oh, just a chicken.”
“What kind?”
“Roasted. Lemon and thyme.” She pulled a foil-wrapped bird out of the bag and set it on the counter. “Garlic under the skin.”
His hands went still on the table.
She’d made his mother’s chicken. He’d mentioned it once, a while ago, between the Florida conversation and the painting question, a passing thing about his mother Helen’s roasted chicken that he’d said the way he said most things, without expecting anyone to hold onto it.
Margo had held onto it. She’d gone home and made it and brought it wrapped in foil.
“That’s Helen’s chicken,” he said.
“You mentioned it. It sounded good so I thought I’d try.”
“I mentioned it once.”
“I have a good memory.” She set two plates on the counter and started unwrapping the foil. “Are you going to help or are you going to sit there?”
He got up from the chair and came to the counter. He stood beside her and pulled the foil back and the smell came up—lemon and thyme and roasted skin—and for a second he was his mother’s kitchen on Elm Street as a boy and it was a Sunday and the windows were open.
“Margo—”
“Don’t make a thing of it. It’s chicken.”
“It’s not just chicken.”
“It’s a bird I roasted with lemon and thyme because you said you liked it. That’s all it is.”
They sat at the table and ate.
It was good. Not Helen’s—nobody’s was Helen’s—but close enough that he had to eat slowly and not look at Margo for a minute.
“No cards tonight,” he said, pushing his plate back.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re up three to two and my dignity needs a night off.” He stood and took both plates to the sink. “I thought we could watch something.”
Margo looked at the living room like she’d never seen it before.
“You watch movies?” she asked.
“I watch movies. I’m a person who watches movies.”
“What kind?”
Bernie dried his hands on the dish towel. “Good ones.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer that matters.” He draped the towel over the oven handle. “What do you watch?”
“I don’t watch movies.”
He turned around. “You don’t watch movies.”
“I watch the news. I read.”
“You don’t watch movies.”
“I’ve seen movies. I saw movies. I just haven’t watched one in—” She stopped.
“Margo. When was the last one you watched?”
She thought about it. He could see her going back through the years, looking for one.
“It might have been Out of Africa,” she said.
He leaned back in his chair and let out a whistle. “That was 1985.”
“It might have been after that.”
“But you’re not sure.”
Margo leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. “I’ve been busy.”
“For forty years?”
“The Shack didn’t run itself, Bernard.”
He went to the living room. He found the remote, turned on the television, and scrolled until he found what he wanted. He came back to the kitchen doorway.
“I’m going to put on something we’ll both like. You’re going to sit on the couch. And you’re going to watch a movie for the first time since Robert Redford was involved.”
“I didn’t say it was Robert Redford.”
“It was Out of Africa. It was Robert Redford.”
Margo went into the living room slowly. “It might have been Meryl Streep I went for.”
“Sit down, Margo.”
She sat on the couch. He watched her put her hands in her lap, move them to the armrest, put them back in her lap. Margo Turner, who ran a restaurant for fifty years and raised three generations and had never once not known what to do with her hands, didn’t know what to do with her hands.
He lowered himself into the recliner and pressed play. Black and white. A man in a hat. A woman on a train. The music filled the room.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Just watch.”
Halfway through he got up and went to the kitchen. He reached into the cabinet above the stove and then into the freezer. He found the jar in the back, behind the ice cube trays, where he’d kept it since December.
He came back with two bowls and the jar.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Ice cream.” He handed her a bowl. “And this—” He held up the jar. Dark brown label, gold lettering. “Sanders hot fudge. My old roommate at Michigan sends it every Christmas. You can’t get it out here.”
“You’ve been hiding hot fudge?”
“I’ve been saving hot fudge. There’s a difference.” He poured it over the ice cream—carefully, evenly—and handed her a spoon. “Try it.”
She tried it.
“Well?” he asked.
“It’s acceptable.”
He leaned forward. “Acceptable?”
“It’s very good, Bernard. Don’t fish.”
He settled back into the recliner with his own bowl, and they watched the rest of the movie. The woman on the screen was sharp and funny, and the man was steady and patient, and Bernie thought that some stories were just one story told over and over with different hats.
The credits rolled. The room was quiet and the bowls were empty on the side table between them.
She stood and reached for her coat. “Same time Wednesday?”
“Margo, wait.”
She turned. He was still in the recliner, the blue light of the credits on his face.
She was standing in his living room with her coat in her hands and the lamplight on her and he thought about all the things he’d been thinking about since noon, since last Wednesday, since the storm in 1979 when he’d stacked sandbags in the rain and she hadn’t known he was there.
“This is the best evening I’ve had in a long time,” he said. “And it’s not the chicken.”
She looked at him. Her hands tightened on the coat.
“Goodnight, Bernard,” she said.
“Goodnight, Margo.”
He heard her car start and pull away and the street go quiet.
He’d said it. Not all of it—not the part he’d been carrying for longer than he was going to calculate tonight—but enough. Enough for her to take home. Enough for her to hear if she wanted to hear it.
He sat in the recliner for a while. The television had gone to a menu screen. The Sanders jar was on the coffee table with the lid off. He usually saved it for college basketball, eating it in front of the television by himself. This year he'd shared it instead.
He washed both bowls and turned off the kitchen light.
The house was quiet. His house was always quiet. But tonight the quiet had her in it—the place on the couch where she’d sat, the mug she’d drunk from, the smell of his mother’s chicken still in the room.