Chapter 2 #2
“He’s looking to learn more about northern Michigan,” I said. “From me.”
“From you? Who is he?”
“He works for the Woodsmen,” I answered.
“He’s a scout so he’s been watching the Juniors play and looking for talent.
” I had my phone out to research him, Shane Bishop, something which I had avoided before because I had told myself that I wasn’t interested.
“He’s from Arkansas and he played college football in Colorado,” I reported as I read the information on my screen.
“He was the starting quarterback as a sophomore and a junior, and for most of his senior year.” I had been correct when I’d figured him as a QB.
“But it looks like he quit…I don’t know what happened.
” I was quickly scrolling, but nothing immediately jumped out about why he’d stopped playing.
“He graduated four years ago, so he’s twenty-six now.
” Just to compare, I looked up Corbin, the guy who had invited me to a frat party.
He was twenty-one, much closer to my age because I was twenty-three.
“He looks like a football player,” my mom agreed. “Could he get you tickets to Woodsmen games?”
“Why would it matter? I couldn’t go, right? I’m always here at the restaurant.”
It had been quiet in the kitchen, silent enough that I had forgotten that anyone was in there and silent enough that my dad had been able to hear every word I’d just said. “You’re an ungrateful brat, Molly,” he yelled. “This place pays for your entire life.”
It didn’t have to be that way. If I had a job somewhere else, one that actually supplied a normal salary, then that would have paid for my life instead. I looked at the register, at the roll of tape that had always worked fine, and didn’t answer him.
To my surprise, as the weekend approached, no one said anything about me coming into work on Saturday. My parents didn’t bring it up and I was aware that I also should have left the topic alone, because maybe, somehow, they had both forgotten that I was supposed to be there?
But I couldn’t help myself from warning my mom. “I won’t be around tomorrow for the lunch service,” I mentioned offhandedly to her as we added up receipts on Friday night.
“I know. I remember that boy who wants you to show him around.”
The twenty-six-year-old boy. “I also won’t be around tomorrow night.”
She stopped tapping on her ancient calculator, the same one my grandma had used. “You think the date will go that long?”
“I wouldn’t call it a date,” I corrected, despite the fact that I had been calling it a date in my own mind since Shane had invited me. “But I mean that I’ll be going out with someone else.”
Her eyes widened. “Who?”
“A guy from school.” A guy from school named Corbin.
I thought it rolled nicely off my tongue when I’d been saying it to myself as I drove alone and no one else could hear me, although I wasn’t in any danger of forgetting it now.
He was a junior, he was the social chair for his fraternity, and he was a guy who dressed like he was walking a runway.
I had already heard that the parties they threw at his frat were very fun, although I’d never personally been to one. He must have been good at his job.
“That boy who eats here is cute,” she told me next.
“Mom!”
“I have eyes. I see our customers,” she said. “Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t care about him,” I said. I played with my pen, which was probably also one that my grandma had used. We tended to hang on to stuff. “Remember when I went to the Junior Woodsmen game but I left and came here instead? It was because of him.”
“I thought you left because it was too cold.”
“It was boring, and one of the reasons was that Shane was ignoring me and…” Ugh, I sounded as mature as thirteen-year-old me.
Back then, I’d told everyone at school that I welcomed the idea of a violent death, like jumping into a volcano (we didn’t have those in Michigan).
I’d believed that it would make me sound super cool and mysterious. Surprise! My plan had not worked.
“I thought he waved at me to sit with him in the bleachers but then I realized that he was only saying hello,” I said. “He ignored me and I felt really dumb and left.”
“But then he came to Walter’s to ask you out.”
“Maybe he really wants a guide. He thinks that I know my way around the area, since I have lived here for over twelve-hundred weeks. I calculated how many I’ve been alive and subtracted one for when my class went to Washington, DC,” I explained.
“Sucks to be him, since I spent all that time in this exact spot, our restaurant.” I glanced back at the kitchen but my dad had already gone home.
“This is our family business,” she told me. “Without it, what would we have?”
I thought about that on my way over to pick up Shane Bishop the next day (I would drive, I had told him, because then I’d be in charge, and obviously my sister hadn’t cared that I’d taken our car since she was hibernating in her room).
Miraculously, my brother Max was subbing for me today at Walter’s and I was glad that the Junior Woodsmen were in Mississippi to play.
Max would need to go outside and smoke, and then he would need to answer a text, he would need to make a call…
there was always something that pulled him away from what he was supposed to be doing at the restaurant.
Even with him there “working,” my mom was always doing everything herself.
But with fewer customers, that would be ok. I hoped.
As I drove, I also thought about ways in which Shane could help me.
If he wasn’t willing or able to make introductions to the Woodsmen players, then maybe he could get me a job.
But I had looked up the team’s organizational structure and had discovered that his position as a scout was near the bottom.
It made sense since he was young and from more reading that I’d done, it also seemed as if his job was generally considered as an entry point into the coaching world.
You had opportunities for advancement, if you were good and lucky…
on the other hand, it didn’t pay great. The hours were long, too, and both things were very familiar to me as someone chained to a restaurant.
Of course, he got to travel and I did have those chains.
The place he lived reflected his income level, just as our residence also reflected ours.
Our porch was falling off into the front yard and under the snow, that yard was only a rutted dirt patch.
He lived in a little house that looked similarly decrepit, with dirty windows and two shutters that were barely hanging on.
As I texted him that I was here, several men came out, also looking decrepit and pretty angry, too.
Shane followed and I saw them all talking for a minute—“talking” wasn’t exactly the right word, because a short guy started yelling and waving his arms in a way that reminded me a lot of my father.
Three of them stormed off to the various vehicles parked around me and Shane walked over to my car.
His cheeks were flushed, maybe from the cold but maybe from anger.
“My roommates and I are having a disagreement about paying the bills,” he explained as he got in and I asked what was going on.
“This situation isn’t working out. It was cheap and it was easy when I showed up in Michigan a few months ago.
It’s less easy now that we’re arguing about money and the kitchen has become a health hazard. ”
“We could look at apartments today,” I suggested. “Here.” I opened my phone and showed him the listings I had already saved on it. “I always know what’s available and which one I would choose. I go around to look at them and do research.”
“Why do you do that? Are you planning to move?”
“No.” I couldn’t, but maybe I would be able to someday.
“Let’s do something fun. I had a great idea,” he said.
“So did I,” I told him, and then we both voiced our plans at the same time.
“Snowshoeing.”
“Touring a lighthouse.”
We looked at each other.
“You want to go walking around in the woods for a few hours?” I asked. “I’m not really dressed for it.” I was wearing my cutest clothes, not my “tramping around outside” stuff.
Shane looked over at me. “I guess I should have discussed it with you before renting the equipment. I also had to guess your shoe size but I thought you must have big feet.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re tall,” he said. “Five-ten? Ten and a half?”
I was five-ten flat, but I usually rounded up to six feet to make myself sound more impressive. “My extremities correspond to my height,” I informed him.
“A lot of my job is visual. I look at foot size, hand size, wingspan, height, weight, and everything else,” he mentioned. Then he talked about ideal measurements in sports, but he didn’t say anything else about my big feet. Which they weren’t, not really.
While he nattered away about body fat percentages, I made the final decision about our activity and since I was driving, I set our course toward a lighthouse on the Leelanau Peninsula. I remembered going there on a field trip many, many years before.
I realized that he was done talking about football bodies when he asked, “You don’t have to be at the restaurant? I thought you might get pulled back in.”
“Why did you think that?”
“They seem to depend on you,” he noted.
“You’ve only eaten there twice,” I pointed out, but I saw him in my peripheral vision and he was shaking his head.
“I came in twice more and your mom said I had just missed you,” he told me. “She was frantically running around. That’s your mother, right? She looks like you.”
My mom had the same dark hair that I did and the same light eyes, which some people called gray and others said were light blue. I didn’t want to think of us resembling each other, though. She looked tired, disappointed, and sad. Did I?