Bang! Mr. Baxter smashed his fist on the bureau, causing his daughter to leap away from the wall. “I’m not going back there… won’t return to that house until my mother comes to her senses.”
Faye hunted down her brother in the back yard near the shed, where Ralph was adjusting the brakes on his ten-speed bike. She told him about their father’s abortive trip to Granny Baxter’s. Reaching for a quarter-inch wrench Ralph loosened a locknut screw securing the rubber brake pad and slid the rectangular section in line with the wheel’s metal frame. “What else… what else did Dad say?”
“I dunno… he was talking crazy.”
Ralph scowled and his features dissolved in a constipated expression. Balling his hand into a tight fist, he rapped the knuckles two, three times on the side of his skull. “Think hard. What else did they discuss?”
“I told you everything,” Faye insisted,” except for a couple of weird phrases that didn’t hardly make no sense… stupid stuff.”
“What stupid stuff?” Ralph tightened the nut fixing the pad permanently in place.
Faye massaged an earlobe meditatively. “Gold digger… ne’er-do-well. He shouted that Granny Baxter’s new husband was little more than a good-for-nothing gold digger and ne’er-do-well.”
Ralph flipped the bike right-side up and gingerly pumped the brakes several times. “That’s nice!” Faye wasn’t sure if her brother was referring to the refurbished brakes or her father’s commentary on the human condition. “After lunch,” he added, “we’ll take a trip to see Granny Baxter and her gold digger, ne’er-do-well second husband but don’t say anything to the folks.”
* * * * *
Around four in the afternoon, Ralph and Faye arrived at their grandmother’s home, where the older woman was laying out an assortment of pastry supplies on the kitchen table. “I’m baking a German apple strudel.” She went to the cupboard, removed a plaid apron and handed it to the girl. “You kids can help me prepare the fruit filling.”
The woman pointed to a bowl of glistening raisins. “I’m already soaking the fruit in rum to spice things up.” She handed a paring knife to Ralph. “Peel and core the apples,” she instructed, indicating four Granny Smith apples, “while your sister and I get the dough ready.”
“Why green apples?” Ralph asked.
“The tart flavor balances the sweetness of the pastry.” Granny Baxter waved a taut index finger melodramatically overhead. “One thing we almost forgot…” She removed a golden lemon from the vegetable bin in the refrigerator and handed it to Faye. “Grate a tablespoon of zest then add the rind and juice to the mix.”
Granny Baxter had a clever trick ensuring that the pastry dough would stretch paper-thin without tearing. She placed a small pot of water on the store to boil and, once the water was heated, emptied the liquid into the sink and dried the metal with a towel. After the flour, egg and water had been mixed into a gooey mass she transferred the freshly-made dough into the heated pot and replaced the cover. “The dry heat,” she explained, “will make the dough more elastic and pliable, while we prepare the rest of the ingredients.”
In a separate bowl they mixed the vanilla extract, brown sugar, rum-soaked raisins and diced apples into a sticky-sweet lump. Granny Baxter melted a half stick of butter, handed it to Faye along with a small pastry brush, then placed several sheets of parchment paper on the table. “Coat those sheets with butter.” When Faye gave her a quizzical look, she added, “We’re going to thin the dough with a rolling pin. The butter allows us to peel the pastry crust away from the parchment paper without tearing.” Setting the oven to three-seventy-five, she returned to the table.
While the women were preparing the crust, Ralph went off in search of Bernie. His newly-minted grandfather was in the living room reading a hardcover book, which he set aside as soon as Ralph appeared.
“My father had a fight with Grandma,” he said in a frank, no-nonsense tone. “Do you have any idea what it was about?”
“Yes, but shouldn’t you be going directly to the source?”
“I came to you,” he returned bluntly, “because I figured neither one would tell me much of anything.” Ralph ran an index finger over the glossy book cover. “The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton… is it any good?”
Bernie shook his head energetically. “A literary classic… not read much anymore but a classic nonetheless.” “Mrs. Wharton came from one of the wealthiest families in New York. That was back in the early nineteen hundreds. Her father was a millionaire… a multi-millionaire.” Bernie clearly much preferred talking about fictional works than present realities.
“What’s the book about?”
“Rich people and how they make themselves miserable, chasing after things that aren’t essential.”
Ralph opened the cover and flipped through a half dozen pages. “You’re not going to tell me why Granny Baxter and my father are feuding?”
“No, it’s not my place,” Bernie countered affably. Rising to his feet, he added, “Let’s go see what the womenfolk are up to.”
Before they had gone a handful of steps Bernie changed his mind. “We can join them in a moment. There’s something I want to show you.” The older man led the way into the back yard where an arbor fashioned from pressure-treated lumber was overrun with a thick mantle of clematis, the rich profusion of purple and eggshell-white blossoms having long since vanished with the November frost.
Behind the wooden structure an aged apple tree leaned at a precipitous angle. A huge limbed rested on the topmost beam and it almost seemed as though the sturdy arbor was keeping the tree in its decrepitude from collapsing altogether. Bernie plucked an apple from a low-hanging limb. With a penknife that he pulled from his pocket he cut a slice. “Taste this.”
Ralph tasted the fruit, a perfect balance between sweet and sharp highlights. “That’s awfully tasty!”
“Yes, but do you know the story behind the tree?” Ralph shrugged. “Grandpa Jack planted it shortly after they married and moved here, but the uncooperative tree never bore fruit… a blizzard of ivory blossoms every spring but never any apples.”
“According to your grandmother,” Bernie continued, “Grandpa Jack was far too busy with his business dealings to properly prune the tree so it grew helter-skelter in all the wrong directions.” “Not a single decent crop in all those years!” he repeated emphatically. “Your grandfather wanted to take a chain saw to it, but your grandmother was adamant that the apple tree be left alone.”
Ralphs eyes brightened. “The fruit for the German strudel came from the tree?”
“Yes, a meager crop but more than enough for one delightful dessert.” Bernie peered up into the topmost branches. “That vertical new growth has to all be trimmed away as well as those scraggly limbs sloping at a downward angle. They drain nourishment away from the delicate fruit.”
“You prune fruit trees?”
“Your grandmother,” the older man sidestepped the question, “is a devout Catholic.” “She claims the half-dead, barren apple tree is a miracle… a blessing from the Almighty.”
“And what do you say?”
Bernie scratched the back of his neck then pawed at the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Traveling salesmen, as a rule, don’t spend much time contemplating theological abstractions, but I’d have to agree with your grandmother on this one.”
“She went through a bad time after Grandpa Jack died.”
“So I heard.”
On, off. On, off. On, off. On, off. A fleeting image of Dr. Wasserman flipping the light switch flitted through Ralph’s mind. “You were Granny Baxter’s salvation.”
“I came at an opportune time, that’s all,” Bernie said, distancing himself from personal heroics. “In some ways your grandmother was my salvation. She rescued me from a tedious and tiresome old age.” Having said this, Bernie pivoted on his heels and headed back into the house.
In the kitchen Granny Baxter was bent over the open stove, brushing melted butter over the strudel crust, while the room was filling with an intoxicating fruity aroma. “Just another ten minutes or so.” She eased the oven door shut and drifted over to the sink where Bernie had begun clearing the counter.
“Dad came home in a foul mood earlier this morning,” Faye picked up where her brother left off. “What did you fight about?”
“An unfortunate and regrettable incident.” Granny Baxter grabbed a dish towel and began patting a freshly washed mixing bowl dry. “Nothing I care to talk about.”
The young girl would not be denied. “He called Bernie a gold digger and ne’er-do-well.”
Her grandmother winced and her eyebrows fluttered briskly. “Since he was in diapers,” Granny Baxter spoke with a droll, biting humor, “your father had a fatal flaw.” She paused to better organize her thoughts. “Your dad would lose his temper and spout all sorts of emotional gibberish. Five minutes later he’d feel contrite, but always too late. He never meant the half of what he said, but it was always too late.”
Granny Baxter took a deep breath, expelling the air in a thin stream through tightly compressed lips. “Poor Bernie!” She waved a hand theatrically in her spouse’s direction. “That wonderful man absorbed the bulk of your father’s misguided abuse.”
Bernie, who was listening attentively, glanced at the children. “No offense taken,” he responded in an upbeat, jovial tone. “During my working years, I suffered a whole lot worse.”
“Those awful things your father said… nothing could be further from the truth.” She rested a hand on Bernie’s shoulder. “My husband’s a resourceful man, accustomed to living within his modest means.”
The German strudel emerged from the oven lightly browned to perfection.
Granny Baxter brought a carton of vanilla ice cream to the table. “I need a favor,” she said as she began slicing the loaf.
“Yes?” Ralph placed a forkful of desert on his tongue. All the delicious flavors – the lemon, rum-soaked raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar and tart apples – had married, melded together and yet each remained distinct.
“Grandpa Jack,” Granny Baxter continued with a dispassionate intensity, “was a bit of a braggart and insufferable self-promoter, but he could also be absurdly generous.” Her eyes swept right to left, including both children. “Before he died, he put aside a large sum of money in a trust fund for your future educations.”
“Your father got the mistaken notion that, since Bernie reentered my life, all that changed.” The older woman scooped a mound of ice cream from the carton and deposited it on Faye’s plate. “Tell your father that we intend to honor Grandpa Jack’s wishes. The trust will remain intact.”
Ralph stared at his empty plate. “Dad’s gonna feel guilty as hell.”
“And want to rush over here,” Faye interjected, anticipating her brother’s train of thought, “to apologize for the horrible things he said about Grandpa Bernie.”
“Apologies accepted in advance,” Bernie quipped with a congenial grin.
“No need for him to rush,” Granny Baxter observed. “Let you father wallow in self-loathing and recrimination for another day or so.” She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Anyone want seconds?”
A Heart Yes, a Waltz No
Dr. Stanley Gilford, chief cardiologist at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, was not some mind-in-the-gutter degenerate. He never rented dirty movies - hadn’t bought a Playboy or Penthouse since his college days. More to the point, there were scads of desirable woman - nurses and technicians - who he saw daily at the hospital; he felt no compulsion to undress them with his eyes, to imagine lewd and lascivious trysts. And yet, here he was sitting at the counter of the Central Ave Diner in Pawtucket, Rhode Island indulging his sexual fantasies. In this latest installment, Ruby, the head waitress, was flitting about the restaurant dressed in black, see-through panties and tasseled pasties. The previous week she sported a dominatrix’s leather and chains. Since first coming to the Pawtucket diner six months earlier, he discovered that the erotic possibilities and permutations were endless. Still, it was not his fault. The waitress was a sorceress; she had put a hex on him.
“The usual?” Ruby eased Dr. Gilford’s mug across the counter, filling it with steaming, black coffee. Less than two feet away behind the counter, her hazel eyes never rose above his Adam’s apple, as though the physical effort to lift her head might provoke an hernia. Her pearly skin was flawless, the blond hair gathered at the nape with a hardwood comb. Midriff spilling over skintight jeans, the woman - she had to be at least thirty-five - exuded a flinty, hardscrabble loveliness undefiled by age.
“Yes, thank you.” Dr. Gilford had a triple bypass scheduled at 10 a.m. then a round of consultations. Afterwards, he would go back to the office to see private patients - a brutal and demanding regimen. For the next fifteen minutes though, he could thoroughly relax and enjoy his meal. What intrigued him most about the tight-lipped blond was the contrast between her perfunctory way with customers - they could collectively and without regard to race, creed or color, all go straight to Hell - and the great care she paid to the food.
Ring! The cook had a small bell which he tapped with the palm of his hand each time an order was ready. The breakfasts - two ham and egg specials, a stack of blueberry pancakes and order of poached - for the truckers crammed into the end booth were done. Snatching the first plate, she ran the rest up the inner curve of her left arm well past the elbow. Ring! Ring!
“Who’s got poached?” She set the plates on the table. As she turned back in the direction of the grill, a heavyset man with a walrus moustache grabbed her arm and muttered something under his breath.
“Only in your dreams, Romeo,” she replied. The heavyset man chuckled and released his grip.
At the cash register, Ruby made change and set a family of five up near the door. A toddler upended a glass of milk. She cleared the mess and went back to the counter where an elderly man with a face like a dried prune complained that his ‘eggs-over-easy’ were runny. “Ain’t gonna eat this soggy crap!” The old man pressed his wrinkled lips tightly together and twisted his scrawny neck to one side.Ruby hustled the plate back to the cook, who cracked two more eggs and threw them on the grill.
Ring! At the end booth, the heavyset fellow tried to revive his tasteless repartee, and the family of five finished their meal, leaving a huge mess. Sneering at no one in particular, the elderly man wolfed down his eggs and hurried off without leaving a tip.
“More coffee?” Ruby asked.
“Yes, thank you.” She filled the cup. “I’m Stan.”
Ruby gazed over his head at the row of paper plates describing the luncheon specials tacked to the far wall. “Got a job?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“What type?”
“Cardiac.” She stared at him dully. “A heart surgeon,” Dr. Gilford clarified.
“Oh, yeah.” She went off to check the food on the grill.
The product of liberal-minded Episcopalians, Stanley Gilford grew up in a tony section of Connecticut, peopled by bankers, lawyers, computer executives and the like. Blue bloods - well connected and, except for a few Johnny-come-latelies - backed by ‘old’ money. After high school, Stan chose the Brown University medical program. He met his future wife, Bernice, while interning at Rhode Island Hospital. They were divorced five years now.
Bernice, the love of his life. In later years, Bernice, the trial lawyer who let the courtroom invade their bedroom - who openly acknowledged the brain’s preeminence over the heart and all other, ephemeral organs. In the summer of 1991, a physician in the cardiac unit of Fatima Hospital, Dr. Nesbitt, was sued for malpractice by the widow of a former patient. An improbable twist of fate, Stan’s wife was spearheading the prosecution. “Perhaps you could remove yourself from the Nesbitt case?” Stan said. By this time their marriage was characterized by polite formalities.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Dr. Nesbitt’s a colleague.”
“I’ve nothing against the man,” she said frigidly. “It’s strictly a legal thing.”
Something went awry in his brain - synapses misfiring, imploding and setting off multiple chain reactions. Neurological fission. Stan headed for the hall closet where they stored the 36-inch Pullman suitcase. “I’ll pack my bags and be gone in the morning. But don’t take it personal - it’s a doctor thing.”
During the trial, the prosecution created the appearance of wrongdoing and incompetence. Dr. Nesbitt‘s flawless record counted for nothing as did the fact that the deceased had been steadily losing ground to obstructive pulmonary disease long before coming under the physician’s care.
The appearance of wrongdoing.
Through legal artifice, smoke and mirrors, Bernice persuaded the jurors to see Dr. Nesbitt as a bumbling fool. The doctor’s physical appearance only bolstered the unflattering portrait. Tall and ungainly, his pilly, brown socks trailed around his ankles. The socks you noticed; the IQ of 130 and encyclopedic, medical mind were not so readily apparent. In the end, the jury found in favor of the widow. The heart doctor protested the decision and lost again on appeal.
Limbo: the abode of just and innocent souls on the border of hell.
When Stanley Gilford was a child, a pet spaniel got hit by a car. After the accident, the dog limped downstairs to the basement where it lay listlessly on a throw rug for the next six months. Its spirit and hind limbs sufficiently mended, the animal finally hobble outdoors. A year after the divorce and his friend’s trial, Stan Gilford - his six months having long since expired - was still cowering on a metaphorical throw rug in the basement of his mind. Drifting aimlessly in a hellish limbo, he stopped attending church, let his membership in the tennis club lapse, swore off women altogether.
Dr. Gilford was away at a medical convention the following week - a new laser treatment for cardiac stenosis. When he returned to the Central Ave Diner, another women, a chain-smoking redhead, was serving the food. “Where’s Ruby?”
“Sinus infection. Won’t be back until the end of the week.”
For the next three days, Dr. Gilford ate all his meals at the hospital cafeteria. The next time he visited the diner, Ruby was back behind the counter. Dr. Gilford took a seat next to a well-dressed man in his sixties reading the Providence Journal Bulletin. Like weeds on a bone-dry, August lawn, twin tufts of hair sprouted from the old man’s nostrils. “Water’s the thing, you know,” the older man said, turning to Dr. Gilford with an easy smile.
“How’s that?”
The man thumped the newspaper with a stubby index finger. “Politicians worry about air quality, global warming, holes in the ozone, hazardous waste. But talk to any self-respecting ecologist and they’ll bend your ear about the shortage of potable water in third-world countries. Am I right or what?”
Dr. Gilford didn’t have to consider the answer. “Yes, that’s true.” At the grill, the cook was mutilating an order of bacon. He always cooked the bacon too long, and it came away with the consistency of cardboard. The fact that they favored extra-thin strips didn’t help matters.
“Desalinization,” the old man said. “A great idea in theory, but those underdeveloped countries that need the technology most can least afford it.”
Dr. Gilford agreed implicitly with his point of view. What future was there in desalination when people living in coastal areas of Africa and Asia were dying of endemic diseases such as cholera and typhus - both infectious organisms easily spread by contaminated drinking water?
The older man grinned broadly, wiped his mouth with a napkin and fumbled in his pants pocket for a wallet. “Money’s on the counter, Ruby.” With a half-dozen orders bubbling on the grill, the waitress didn’t bother to look up. Grabbing a topcoat, the old man nodded pleasantly and headed out the door.
Twenty minutes passed. Except for a booth full of townies dawdling over tepid coffee, the Central Ave Diner was empty. “Planning a vacation?” Ruby leaned over the counter with her pretty face no more than an inch from his ear.
Dr. Gilford looked up from the travel brochure he had spread on the formica surface. “Copper Canyon. It’s in the hill country of northern Mexico.” He handed the brochure to Ruby. On the cover was a picture of a steep canyon with a waterfall cascading over rocky ledges down to a boulder-strewn riverbed. “In September, I’m going on a 5-day backpacking trip with a friend from the hospital.”
“White water rafting and horseback rides into traditional, Tarahumara Indian country,” Ruby read in a gravelly monotone. She flipped the brochure over. There were pictures of dark-skinned Indians, a Catholic mission constructed in adobe style, and hikers trekking through a verdant valley. “Not taking the wife?”
“I’m divorced.”
Ruby bent so far over the counter, her breasts were almost in his face. Dr. Gilford could smell her musky perfume - a pungent scent reminiscent of English Leather. She held her left hand up, splaying the unadorned fingers. “Welcome to the lonely hearts club.”
Dr. Gilford retrieved the pamphlet. “Not a very exclusive organization according to statistics. Would you like to go out some time?”
Ruby’s features went slack. “You mean a date?” He shook his head up and down. The waitress let out a loud belly laugh, a cross between a guffaw and a whooping, straight-from-the-gut howl. Several of the customers looked up in mild surprise.
Dr. Gilford turned the color of fried kielbasa. “A simple yes or no would have sufficed.”
Her face remained neutral. “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.”
He handed her his business card. “You can catch me at the office anytime after noon most days.”
She thrust the card into her jeans pocket without looking at it and plucked a pencil from behind her ear. “So, what’ll it be - besides a romantic interlude, that is?”
Had he totally lost his mind? Cruising down route 95 toward the hospital, Dr. Gilford felt his face flush hotly for a second time in less than an hour. He should have simply shown her the brochure of Copper Canyon and let it go at that. Not that there was any predicament, no reason for self-flagellation. The waitress’ erotic good looks taken aside, Dr. Gilford understood perfectly well his own, hidden agenda: Ruby’s appeal resided in the fact that, in virtually every respect - physical, emotional, intellectual and aesthetic - she was the exact opposite of his ex-wife.
He needed a strategy to recreate a semblance of order in his out of control, personal life. The Central Ave Diner was off-limits. A Newport Creamery two miles up the road served breakfast; if he didn’t want to eat at the hospital cafeteria, he could stop there. As an additional precaution, he would instruct his receptionist to run interference; when Ruby called and was rebuffed a half dozen times, she’d get the not-so-subtle message. The burning pressure, like acid reflux, began to seep out of his chest. He felt restored, more his disciplined, purposeful self.
Around 11p.m. as he was preparing for bed, the phone rang. It was Ruby. “How’d you get my home phone?”
“It was on the card underneath the office number,” Ruby replied. “Still want to go out with me?”
He did not even pause to consider the question. “I’d like that very much,” he replied meekly.
“Here are the ground rules: if you come back to the diner, don’t expect preferential treatment. I’ll serve your number two specials and refill your coffee mug once at no additional charge. When you’re finished eating, you pay the bill and go about your business.”
Dr. Gilford placed a hand over his eyes and squeezed hard. “OK.”
“I’ve had two cesarean sections and breast fed both my kids; with all the wear and tear, these knockers ain’t holding up so well. Just so there won’t be any illusions, I ain’t half as nice to look at in the buff as I am with clothes on.” “Not that my naked body should be of any interest to you,” she added quickly, “cause I don’t put out. Not on the first date, not on the twentieth.”
His head was spinning. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re losing me.”
“You don’t get no sex without marrying me.”
Dr. Gilford considered the double negative and was almost tempted to tell her what the sentence actually meant. “I asked you for a date, not a commitment for life.” He shifted the phone to the other ear. “What are you doing Friday night?”
When he hung up the phone, Dr. Gilford was ecstatic, euphoric - out of his mind with joyful expectation; which is to say, he was more confused than ever. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Ruby’s disembodied voice - as abrasive and bruising as 50-grit, garnet sandpaper - kept floating back to him. Dr. Gilford climbed out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. On the oak table was the brochure from Copper Canyon. Next to a picture of several Indians, their skin so dark it might have been rubbed with black earth from the rain forest, was the following: