The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Author:Elizabeth Stuckey-French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307428615
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

BACK TO THE GRASS SHACK

Outside it was sleeting, and a thin glaze of ice covered the sidewalk. The umbrella was useless and so were my loafers. I minced back toward the car, holding on to the sides of the limestone buildings, and did a half-assed job of scraping my car windows, my bare hands freezing. I started the car, and although my house was only half a mile from downtown, I drove in the opposite direction, peering out of the foggy hole I’d scraped in the windshield. It was three o’clock, too late for lunch, too early for dinner, but I hoped The Grass Shack was still open. Every muscle in my body felt tense, and it wasn’t just the ice. How could I not have recognized that I was living with an exhibitionist? Look in the dictionary under pervert ! Surely it was a perversion to prance around half-naked, showing off, pretending to be somebody else? And who was he showing off for? A particular legal secretary, or the citizens of Greater Lafayette? It made me sick to picture it, and I wouldn’t be picturing it now if there hadn’t been a lighter in my fruit bowl this morning. I couldn’t believe that someone had put a lighter in my fruit bowl just so I’d find out that my husband was a Mark Spitz impersonator.

When I pulled into The Grass Shack parking lot it stopped sleeting. I noticed that the neon light was off, and the same two cars were parked there, along with a third car, a dark blue Honda.

“Hello!” I bellowed when I stepped inside. “Me again.”

A bartender stood behind the ship-shaped bar, his back to me, drying glasses and stacking them in a cupboard. “We’re closed,” he said. Before he’d even turned around I knew it was Bubbie. He looked nothing like the Bubbie of my “Unsolved Mysteries” fantasy who was sweet-talking the old woman in a bar. That Bubbie had sunken cheeks, a stubbly chin, and hard, glittery eyes. The Bubbie standing before me still had a smooth face, wispy hair, and glasses. My baby. “Hi Mom,” he said, stepping out from behind the bar.

I rushed over and gave him a hug, and underneath the smell of smoke and grease I could smell the old Bubbie, a smell like fresh graham crackers. I wiped my eyes and pushed him away.

“Cool sweater,” he said, plucking at one of the sunflowers.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I said. “What’re you doing here?”

He grimaced in his familiar way, pushing his wire-frames up on his nose. “I’ve been working here a couple weeks.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” My voice sounded whiny, like a child’s. “You planted that lighter just to get even with me. Only this was worse than anything I ever did to you. Sending me on a wild goose chase all over town.” I stopped to take a breath.

Bubbie was smiling. “I didn’t do it on purpose. Where’d you find it?”

“Right where you left it. In the fruit bowl.

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