Mabel’s my whimsy. The first time I drag myself over to see just her and not her brother Chester, who’s out driving the delivery van for Meals on Wheels, she’s sitting on the front porch and doesn’t have her dentures in. She looks good. She’s been dwindling down for a while and looks thinner. She’s a few years younger than Chester and me and her face looks pretty and powdery.
I open the door to the front porch and she says, “There was a time when I could whistle. That was before I lost my teeth.” She seems sad about it. I say seems because it’s hard to measure her. She’s looking better to me but looking at herself like she looks worse.
It’s fall and she still wears a straw hat. She always punches out the tops of her straw hats during the summer so a body can see a puff of her white hair poking out. I can relate because I at times don’t lace my sneakers all the way to the top eye holes. I like the shoes to feel loose on my feet.
I have always felt Mabel looks like a heavy-set Marlene Dietrich. Doesn’t talk like her but looks like her. Mabel looks most like Marlene Dietrich in the movie where Marlene played a Mexican. Charlton Heston played a Mexican in that too. And Orson Welles was awfully thick, fat even. And Mabel’s losing weight.
It isn’t but a day or two later when Gustaf Brasheer bags my six pack of cream soda and says, “How’d you like to be my liaison, old man?” Liaison. The word sounds nice.
“Let me think on it,” I say.
“There’s good money in this. It’s a good job for you. You’ll be good at it.”
Lots of goods there.
Gustaf is an ambitious kid. Not your average bag boy. He hands me the grocery bag, the top folded over all neat in his own special way. “Come back when I’m on break,” he tells me.
“I can’t. I’ve used my ticket,” I say.
He tells me to sneak in the back of McGugger Foods, to use the back door next to the stack of milk crates. Otherwise, I’ll waste two grocery tickets in one day. I can’t visit the store without a ticket. At the beginning of each month, Mr. Wright, the manager of McGugger Foods, gives me a roll of thirty or so tickets. Each one’s redeemable for one visit to the store. He says the tickets are for controlling my yammering. ’Course I can use more than one ticket a day, but if I do then there’s a day when I can’t go in the store at all. I like to go through the store every day just for something to do. With those tickets, I always have to be thinking ahead, which is what I don’t seem to do at other times. I just let whatever whimsy makes its way down the street yank at my heart, pull me around.
I go home and look up liaison in the dictionary. The word sounds good but only two definitions are on the page and one is “illicit sexual relationship.” I try to keep Mabel back there at whimsy, but she won’t stay. I keep picturing her looking more and more beautiful. Hate to admit it, but she has the potential to be an illicit sexual relationship. And she’s my friend Chester’s sister. And they live together. Right there, just knowing she’s my friend’s sister and roommate, I figure there’s going to be a mess going on.
I sit in the back room of McGugger Foods next to the helium tank and listen to a couple meat department kids, a chunky kid and a kid with a bad hunch, complain about the T-bone steaks they stole.
“Just marinate it and it’ll taste good,” I tell them.
“Marination isn’t simple as you say,” the chunkier one tells me.
“It’s only complicated if you make it that way,” I tell them.
They shrug and get back to talking about their disappointing T-bones.
Gustaf starts talking the second he walks in the back room: “Here’s some things you’ll want to remember. Your brain better be sharp.”
“What am I even liaising you with?” I ask.
“What’s this?” he says, and points to the meat department kids.
“They’re talking about T-bones,” I say.
“You need to tell me if the room’s not cleared,” he says.
“You should just look the room over before you start yammering,” I say.
Outside, standing by milk crates stacked to the skies, we wait for the cashier to finish her smoke. Then Gustaf runs it all down for me. He’s a smart kid. He tells me he’s watched the suburbanites come into McGugger and shuffle around trying to get that small town feel. I’ve seen them shuffling up and down Edmond Street looking at the stores. Heard the suburban folks’ voices crackling in Connell’s Diner.
Gustaf tells me about an infomercial that told him how to make money by putting an ad in a newspaper.
“Just one ad in a big paper,” Gustaf says, “can make someone thousands of dollars.”
Gustaf shows me the ad he typed up:
Hourly porch rental available on small town Main Street in McGugger, Illinois. Ever want that small town feeling without moving to a small town and living next to small town people? Gustaf’s porch rentals offer you that and more. Sit on a porch and go back to a time when small towns defined America.
And then Gustaf’s address and the number and extension for the McGugger Foods meat department. (Gustaf’s family doesn’t have a phone.) The suburbanites like McGugger, but I never thought they’d want to rent a front porch on Main Street.
“I’m running this in the Sun-Times,” he says.
Chester has watched that infomercial that gave Gustaf his ideas. He says he watched it one Sunday morning, and the guy pitching this idea has big teeth.
“Some of the biggest I’ve seen,” Chester says. And I know he’s impressed. There are a lot of big teeth on television. Chester and I are having our usual morning breakfast at Connell’s.
I say, “I’m going to kind of be a tour guide today for Gustaf.”
“Is that so?” Chester says.
“Not quite a tour guide, but something along those lines.”
“What are you showing people?”
I prick the orange yolk with my fork and Chester grimaces. He takes a swig of his diner coffee. I always eat my eggs sunny side up, and it disgusts Chester when the yolk starts running all over the plate.
“Just narrating Main Street is what Gustaf calls it,” I say.
Chester shakes his head. He’s not fond of Gustaf.
Big teeth come down from the suburbs to go boating. Some of their teeth look so big and white you can almost see them shimmering. You see the suburbanites riding bicycles they rent by the marina.
I’m sitting on the porch waiting for a group of them to show up. Gustaf has talked to them over the meat department phone, given them directions to the porch. My assignment is to clear the porch of Gustaf’s family when the suburban folk show. That and talking to the folk. “Talk their ears off. Tell them about McGugger,” Gustaf said. “You’ve lived here long enough. Just say anything that comes to mind.” The Brasheers have an enviable porch. It shouldn’t surprise me that suburban folk would make the trip from Chicago to McGugger just to sit on it. The porch not only covers the front of the house, it wraps around the side, too. The best vantage point is a few feet around the corner of the house where Boob Brasheer sits in his light-blue Lazyboy. That seat gives you the best shot down Main Street. You can see clear into tomorrow, or maybe it’s that you just know who is coming down the street and at what time they are coming—so much so that it seems like tomorrow.
Gustaf Brasheer’s family, but not Gustaf himself, lines up on their porch, side by side on plastic chairs, lawn chairs, an old sofa, and some other furniture. They sit all day. Not too many of them work regular.
I’m waiting for suburbanites on bikes and listening to Gustaf’s brother Cal talk about how the United States needs a dodgeball league.
“I’m too old now, but I could have done it at the time,” Cal says.
“Done what?” his sister Sally says.
“Played pro dodgeball, god damn you,” Cal says.
“You guys are going to need to clear the porch when the porch people get here,” I say.
Cal points at me. “Why do we have to get bossed by him?”
Sally says, “’Cause Gustaf talks about him being a reliable one.”
They’re the rudest people, I think. They talk like I’m not even there. They deserve to have the porch rented out from under them.
This group of four comes up the street on their bicycles. It’s the worst bike riding I’ve ever seen. They swerve down the street, only have three bikes even though there’s four of them. One lady’s riding on the handlebars and then falls off. She rolls around on the street and I can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying. Young suburban punks, I think. And drunk punks at that.
I stand up and say to the Brasheers, “Okay, time to clear out. We’ve got tourists coming in.”
“What are we ’sposed to do all day?” Cal says.
“Probably won’t be all day,” I tell him.
“But what do we do?” Sally says.
“Play dodgeball,” I say. “I don’t know. I’m not your camp counselor.”
I can hear them cussing under their breath as they retreat inside the house.
“And keep it down,” I say, remembering what Gustaf told me to say. He also told me to tell them to stay away from the windows, but they’re all inside before I remember that.
I’m wearing a powder-blue suit and no tie. I stand on the porch and wave at them, holler, “Gustaf’s porch rentals, right here people!” The two-on-a-bike couple crash into the curb and the lady gets dumped on the front lawn.
The four of them stagger up, and I see that they’re not young and drunk but middle-aged and drunk. One of the guys socks me on the shoulder. “This is Jake,” he says, pointing to his buddy who holds the hand of a mousy woman, probably his wife. “I’m the jerk.”
The handlebar lady’s knee bleeds and she has grass stains on her white shorts.
“There’s not even a stoplight in this town,” the mousy wife says.
I say, “There’s a flashing yellow out by the highway.”
“That doesn’t count,” the jerk says.
“Jeeze,” Jake says. “You don’t even have a Starbucks here, do you?”
They get settled in on the porch furniture.
“We’ve got Connell’s Diner,” I say.
“Any theater here?” the handlebar woman asks me.
“The River Valley Players do a musical every summer,” I say.
“How do you find time for it?” the jerk asks. They all start cracking up.
“Well this is better than a play,” the mousy woman says. “Much better.”
And I wish it was only a play, only make believe. They leave two hours before the time’s up but give me a twenty-five dollar tip.
I’m crumpling and uncrumpling the bills, feeling all fidgety on my way over to talk with Mabel. The weather’s nice as you can get it. It’s early fall and the humidity’s gone and the wind hasn’t remembered to come in off the fields and blow off garbage can lids. She sees me coming up the walk and says, “Chester’s not here. He’s still doing his Meals on Wheels thing.”
“Want to visit with you,” I say. I close the screen door and sit down next to her on the wooden bench.
“How’s downtown? Boring as ever?” she mumbles.
She looks good. Sounds bad. She gives a person the real deal most of the time, but now it’s not real so much as she seems like she’s on a certified mope.
“Why’d you quit going to breakfast with us?” I say.
“I’m tired of eating.”
“Dieting?”
“You could call it that.”
“Mabel, honey—”
“Since when do you walk over here and call me honey?”
“You just look better than ever,” I say. “Pristine as a fresh peach.” She doesn’t crack a smile. “Are you going to tell Chester that I said that?”
“Why’s that give you the worries?”
“You can tell anyone but don’t tell Chester. I don’t know how he’ll take it.”
“He’s not the boss of me.”
“I better get back to work,” I say, lying. She’s sorta angling her head to the side in a flirty way and giving this little smile that shows the gleam of her dentures. I can see life in her hazel eyes whereas other times there’s been nothing behind them.
“Where you working?” she asks.
“Porch rentals. It’s the new trend.”
I open the screen door and hear her shout, “You’ve had a thing for me all these years, haven’t you?” Francine Webber’s out on her porch putting a storm door on. I hope she doesn’t hear.
It’s not at all like Mabel to shout. Still, I can’t face her. I know I’ll want to walk back up the steps, grab her, hold her close to me. I talk at the street, raise my voice so she can hear. “There’s nothing wrong with liking a person,” I say. “Better late than never.” I figure talk’s just talk but doing something’s bound to get me in trouble.
Francine slows her sweeping, and I wonder if she’s hearing what I’m saying. “Go ahead and go,” Mabel says. “You and Chester are a couple peas in a pod.”
I go. But I don’t feel good about it. I know she wants me to stay there with her.
Breakfast the next morning is like someone hit the mute button on Chester’s and my conversation. I know why I’m biting my lower lip and staring at my eggs like they’re the answer to some question I never asked, but Chester shouldn’t be clacking his teeth together and sticking his jaw out like he’s got an underbite. He should be asking me about my porch work. I have to wonder if he sensed I stopped by or if Mabel just came out and told him so.
Barb’s slopped some coffee into his saucer and she hasn’t even gotten back to the table to give me a warm-up. I say, “Barb’s off her game this morning.”
“I held out hopes for a change, but now I’m leaning toward pessimism,” Chester says.
“She looks like she got rode hard and put up wet.”
“I’m not holding out hope for a return visit from her.”
I almost tell Chester that I visited Mabel the previous afternoon, but I guess it’s okay for me not to tell ’cause Mabel’s cast a spell on me. I just sit in the diner and think sweet thoughts about her. But every time I look up at Chester, there’s guilt along with those sweet thoughts. It’s not that I don’t think I deserve them, it’s that I feel I’ve broken some sort of trust with Chester. It’s not something we’ve spoken to one another about. It’s more like when there’s a different color of paint below the surface. You scrape away the red and find yellow and think, “I didn’t know that yellow was there.” It’s there the whole time, but you don’t know it until you start scraping away at it. I’m lucky that Chester hasn’t started scraping.
I’m sitting on the porch with the Brasheer clan, waiting to kick them off. Mabel’s just a few blocks down, one street over, probably sitting on her porch. She’s been more and more on the porch lately, not with a whole clan or even with Chester but just screened in on the porch, a couple sweaters pulled on, a wool blanket and two afghans over her legs.
What I really want Mabel to do is to wear something silky and sing me a song. Sing “You Do Something to Me” the way Marlene used to, with that thick German accent. But, much as I want her to, she hasn’t done anything to me yet.
Then the spell a thinner Mabel’s cast on me breaks. The suburbanites are right on us, less than half-a-block down the street on their bicycles.
“Clear out! Clear out!” I find myself saying to Cal, Sally, Boob, and the rest of the clan. I just find myself saying this and don’t feel the tiniest bit right about it.
“Move!” I say. “They’re incoming.” They’re incoming? Sounds like stuff I’d have said in WWII if I’d fought in it.
There’s about six in this group. They’re not as drunk and they’re harder to impress.
“We have decks in Barrington,” this one guy says to me. “And we don’t have a Main Street. I mean we have our downtown and . . . Who’s that?” He sees Mildred Malone plodding down the sidewalk with her cane clicking away on the cement. “Can you get her over here?”
“She’s a busy lady. I don’t think you’d want that.”
“This is some kind of gyp,” he says.
I say, “I’m not feeling well. I need to go.”
They’re grumbling and saying “rip off” and asking me who the hell I think I am, but I just head over to Mabel’s.
She sits on the porch with blankets and afghans pulled up around her. Before I can even knock, she says, “Get in here. I’m cold.”
I like a woman with a bossy streak, yet I still find myself worrying about her. It’s warm out. Seventy degrees. No wind today. Why’s she playing Eskimo?
I’m pacing back and forth in front of her. “Are you under the weather?” I say.
“Last visit you said I was pristine as a peach.”
“So I did.”
“Sit down. Your pacing bothers me.”
I sit down on the opposite end of the bench from her.
“You look all warm, just glowing with the sun. Scoot it over here,” she says.
She’s not herself. No doubts there.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said last time.”
She says, “Cut the bullshit. Get over here.” I’ve never heard a swear come out of her mouth before.
She starts scooting over to me really slow, and I can see her grimacing with each movement. It’s so pitiful to watch that I get next to her.
She says, “I was capable of scooting to you. I’m not a charity case.”
“I didn’t wanna be rude,” I say.
She puts her head on my shoulder.
“What if Mrs. Webber’s out,” I say.
“She’s not out.”
“What if she’s at a window?”
“Let her speculate.”
Mabel says things about trees and dead leaves that don’t make any sense. She starts running a finger up and down my arm. “Want to come inside?” she says.
There are only two outlets upstairs at Chester and Mabel’s house: one on the bathroom mirror light and one in the hallway. I know about this from when Chester and Mabel were fighting about putting more outlets in.
“Mabel’d like to put a lamp by her bed,” Chester had said to me. “What’s she going to use that for? Any business you need to take care of you can take care of downstairs. You shut off your light, you get into bed.” That was Chester’s way. So the only light in Mabel’s room is the overhead light. And it’s off. The curtains are pulled shut. Mabel’s close to me and she doesn’t smell so old, doesn’t smell like moth balls or perfumey hand lotion. I find myself humming “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.”
“What are you doing?” she says.
“Just humming to myself.”
“It’s not to yourself if I can hear it.”
She’s got a point there.
I want Mabel to join in, but in all my days I’ve never been on key, so I doubt if she can make out “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” from my humming. I start to sing the words or come as close to singing them as someone like myself—tone deaf but with a nice singing voice—can. She joins in. We sing a verse or two before we break out laughing and I pull her even closer to me.
Gustaf stops me the next morning on my way across the street to Connell’s.
“Don’t you have bagging to do?” I say.
He ignores that and says, “There’s a couple coming in this morning. They’re interested in a house at Lake Thunderhead. But they want some small town feel. Don’t mess this one up. And don’t you have a worse looking jacket than that?”
“I’m trying to dress nice for these folks.”
“Nice isn’t what they want.”
He’s kind of curt with me, but that doesn’t get to me the way it normally would. What gets to me is breakfast with Chester. I add lots of non-dairy creamer and sugar to my coffee, but it keeps tasting bad and turning my stomach. Chester salts his eggs and doesn’t even look at me. I finally dump my coffee in the plastic fern that sits on our table. I think this has to get a word out of Chester. He doesn’t like anybody disrespecting someone else’s fern, even if it’s plastic. But he just keeps his head kind of down so as not to make eye contact with me.
“That porch work pays pretty well,” I say.
“Does it?”
“Ten bucks an hour. I haven’t made that much since I quit mowing. Well, with the exception of the cab service. I should still be running a cab service. How do people get around now? What’s there for those who hate driving?”
“You can get stuff delivered to you. Meals on Wheels. That gives you a good hot lunch.”
“But only if you’re a certain age.”
“That’s true.”
“Taking those meals in there, you ever get tempted?” Barb comes over and pours me a fresh cup of coffee. She doesn’t see the coffee still dripping from one of the plastic fern’s leaves or doesn’t acknowledge it if she does see it.
“’Course not. The cooks give me a meal before I go on my route. And you know I don’t like eating in cars.”
“I’m not talking about scarfing food, I’m talking about temptations by womankind.”
Chester salts his eggs again. “There’s a woman who has a lift chair and sometimes I want to kick her out of there and take a ride in it myself.”
“What if she sat on your lap and you rode the chair together?”
“I can’t do that kind of thing. I’ve got to behave myself when I deliver those meals.”
“But isn’t it hard to behave yourself?”
“They’re in lift chairs. Anyhow, those thoughts are supposed to just cease at a certain age for people, for regular people.”
“What if the woman in that chair was just your ideal? Then wouldn’t you put her on your lap and maybe recline with that honey.”
“I’d worry about the motor wearing down. Maybe it wouldn’t concern you if you broke someone’s chair, but I’d feel awful about it.”
“So it just wouldn’t phase you. There’s no one you’d get in a lift chair with.”
He dumps more salt on his eggs and now you can just see the salt mounded up on them like sugar on a sugar donut. “Maybe a gal I dated years ago when I was playing ball in Texas.”
“So you see how it can happen, don’t you?”
“If you’re wanting me to forgive you for something, you best just come out and ask. Now you got me thinking about riding a lift chair with my gal back in the forties. And they didn’t have lift chairs back in the forties.”
“Things can happen, Chester.”
“I guess they can. And they have.”
I sit on the porch and wait for the couple Gustaf wants me to butter up. When I see a Volvo pull up, I figure it’s them. They walk up to the porch holding their real estate books, both of them looking too chipper. Here we go again.
“Welcome to McGugger,” I say.
They just look at each other and snicker. They sit down next to me on a couple rusty lawn chairs. The guy’s got the neatest set of sideburns I’ve ever seen and his wife looks like an elf. She gets me thinking of Mabel and thinking of Mabel gets me thinking of how I don’t want to be on the porch.
“What’s the problem with the two of you?” I blurt out before I even know I’m saying anything.
“We’re fine and happy,” I hear the man say. “What’s with that sport coat?”
I’m wearing a white sport coat without a tie and it seems like he’s not a fan of it. It’s the type of coat Don Johnson wore on Miami Vice.
“Sonny Crockett wore this,” I say.
“I guess he did.”
“Did you come to laugh or—” And I cut myself off ’cause I’m blurting at them again. The only thing I can think is to go to Mabel’s. But I can’t because Chester’s there. It’s still morning and he’s not out delivering meals yet.
The husband says, “What’s your problem?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Lost my manners.”
“Something troubling you?” the wife says.
“Is something troubling me? What’s it to you?”
“We didn’t pay your friend sixty bucks for attitude,” the husband says.
“You wanted small town, here’s small town,” I say. “I’m about as small town as you get.”
The wife taps the husband on the shoulder. “I see what’s going on,” she says. “He’s playing the small town fool.”
“This is great,” he says.
“Now come on, now,” I say. “There’s no acting from me.”
“Of course he’s going to say that,” he says.
“This is so clever,” she says. “We’ll have to tell Diane and Paul.”
I look around for the heaviest chair I can find and see a metal chair next to the husband. I grab ahold of it and say, “You two either leave or I’m tossing this through the window.”
They finally quit smiling.
“Is there something really bothering you?” she says.
“Maybe we should call the police.” The husband starts heading for the door to the Brasheer’s house.
“I’m a school counselor,” the wife says. She motions for the husband to stop. “I really can help you.”
“I’ll take you up on that.” I drop the chair in front of her, sit down, and just hit her all at once with my troubles. “I made love to my best friend’s sister. And I think she’s dying.”
“Oh,” the wife says.
“Come on, let’s go,” the husband says.
The woman finally seems to lose interest or maybe get scared off. The both of them walk back to their Volvo, taking a look back at me every few steps. Like I care enough to go after them. I’m a lover, not a fighter.
The Brasheers try to come back out, but I holler at them, make up something about another party coming in half an hour.
I just sit on the porch and stare at the chipped, red paint on the boards. I think about what I’ve screwed up the last few days. I sold out the Brasheers. Not the most motivated family in McGugger but good people. I let my carnal desires for Mabel pull me in to her, even though she didn’t seem herself. And now I fume and the Brasheer family, some in the house and some in the back yard, fume behind me. And how can I apologize?
Then I lift my eyes from staring at the red paint and see Mabel standing in front of me. I blink a couple times thinking she hasn’t really come over here. That’s not her. The wind kicks up, blows some leaves past her. She’s waiting for me to say something. And I can’t think of the first word to make things right.
--John G. Wallace, 2004