The End of the Pier Read online

  “So what’s money, girl, I’d like to know?” asked Shirl, apparently forgetting money was her major complaint about the big creep. “It ain’t money makes a kid turn out with character and personality. Is that shake for him?” Again she nodded towards Joey. “Christ, is it his birthday or something?”

  Maud sighed and walked down the counter with the glass as Shirl called to Joey that he had enough zits already he looked like a potholed road and he could just kiss his chances with Louella Harper goodbye if he drank that shake because he’d sure never kiss Louella.

  The six faces at the counter all turned to the object of these words, and as she set down the milk shake Maud could hear Joey mumbling into his drowned potatoes for someone to fuck off. He did not look up to see Maud giving him an encouraging smile, although he did thank her and cleave his hand to the ribbed glass as if this were some way of wreaking vengeance on his mother.

  “Living well is the best revenge,” said Maud brightly, wanting to cheer him up.

  This earned her a squinty-eyed look and a request for a spoon for this “shit-thick” shake.

  Maud pulled an iced-tea spoon from a plastic cutlery tray and put it before him. She walked back down to get the coffee pot and refill Ulub’s cup. He was extending it, his oil-black thumb holding back the spoon. Shirl could have poured the coffee; all she was doing now was standing smoking, but she no doubt thought that concentrating on bad fathers was more important and picked up where she’d left off.

  “Conscience money. That’s all it is.”

  Rinsing off a Coca-Cola glass, Maud said again that Chad’s father paid for it, if that’s what it was.

  Shirl was driving home a point and she wasn’t letting Maud deflect her, even though it was Maud’s marriage and divorce and Shirl hadn’t been there.

  “I don’t care if he put all the crack dealers in Detroit”—it came out “Dee-troit”—“through Yale, it still don’t make up for walking out on your wife and baby boy”—she was shoving her close-together eyes up into Maud’s face—“for a piece of ass.”

  Shirl’s idea of conversational discretion was lowering her usual bawl to an asplike whisper that whipped down the counter, stinging each customer into looking up before they all returned their eyes to their plates and cups.

  “Tight ass at that,” Shirl hissed.

  Maud’s ex-husband had once actually walked into the Rainbow Café with his wife, and that had provided Shirl with a mother lode of conversational possibilities superseded only by God having been around at the Creation. Velda, the new—well, slightly used, given two prior husbands and three years of marriage to Ned—Mrs. Chadwick, was a model and once a Miss Universe contender. She had flyaway cheekbones, a mass of red-gold hair that looked windblown but you knew was actually blown by a hairdresser, a pencil-thin figure, and model’s shoulders accented by shoulder pads like a football player’s. Shirl said she looked like the TV antenna on top of the Rainbow Café, but Maud knew Shirl was just trying to make her feel better. The shoulder pads were stacked under a green silk designer dress. Velda glowed like neon and vibrated on and off, standing there in the Rainbow looking around at its dark booths and long counter with a “how quaint” expression, twisting this way and that—torso, chin, neck—as if Ubub might jump up and take pictures. Probably it was unconscious posing, Maud thought later, charitably, since Velda was probably never far from the cameras and strobe lights.

  When they walked in tanned like crisp toast with Chad in tow, it caused a mild sensation—as interesting an event as would ever happen in the Rainbow, Shirl had said, short of an onslaught of hooded Palestinian terrorists. Ulub and Ubub had looked up from their short stacks and eggs; Dodge Haines had nearly slid from his stool; Mayor Sims, who’d come in for a sobering cup of coffee before confronting Mrs. Sims, had stopped in the middle of delivering to Dodge what sounded like an old campaign speech on drugs. There were a few strays (as Shirl called people off the street), who’d swiveled in their booths to have a gander at Velda.

  It had been just this time a year ago, a few days before Labor Day, and Ned said they’d come “on the spur” (Maud just bet), and Velda angled her way to the counter and cut in with this super idea of taking Chad on an “island hop”: Nantucket, Puget Sound, the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard. And did Maud mind too very much if they carted this wonderful child (Chad kept his face blank, his eyes down, and looked guilty for being there) off just four days early and then they’d whisk him to school after this whirlwind vacation, and it sounded to Maud like they were all caught in a plane propeller; but Velda smiled and smiled, her long, tanned arm half-leaning, half-dropping across the counter as if she were already in the middle of Puget Sound doing a crawl stroke.

  And Ned. All he’d done was just bunch his arm around Chad’s shoulders, occasionally giving him a fatherly squeeze, playing Daddy Warbucks to a fare-thee-well.

  Mind? Of course she minded. Did Mr. Blank-Face want to go? Of course he did, though she knew he knew this was completely rotten, Ned and Velda swooping in this way and taking his mom by surprise. And it wasn’t as if they were fighting a custody battle; it was only an “island hop.” Maud had stood behind the counter in the midst of all of this green glitter and bonhomie and felt like a cow in a field, beige and dull, chewing over her response.

  She saw herself reflected in the eyes of the incandescent Velda—Maud with her shoulder-length, straight, sand-colored hair and desert-brown eyes, the ordinarily subdued freckles probably breaking out like a fresh crop of zits. Stood there with a cut-out smile while ribs of white anger shot through her.

  But the anger dissolved momentarily, replaced by an empathy for Chad, who had nearly dislocated his shoulder getting away from his father’s grip to go over and sit down and start a conversation with Ulub. This in itself was an act of desperation (though you’d never know it from his laid-back smile), since neither of the Woods talked. Ubub did act as main factotum sometimes, placing the orders at the counter. So Chad started up this monologue, offering them cigarettes (which they regarded as if they were strange Indian signs) in order to show Maud he was sloughing off these two tanned people and their offer if that was what his mom wanted.

  Maud kept on smiling and said, sure, sure, that was fine, that was very nice, she was sure Chad would enjoy that. Would any sane nineteen-year-old not enjoy going back to college with a tan like the ones Velda and Ned were sporting? Oh, La Porte had its lake, but no sand beaches, and people didn’t do much swimming, just boating of sorts. La Porte had seen better days. Once it had been a fashionable little summer resort, but it was pretty down-at-heel now.

  Velda and Ned had come to town and left with Chad, who was wearing (Maud noticed) a new pair of Gucci shoes and an Italian jacket that made his eyes look like molten gold. It was so strange, Maud thought, how her own dull coloring had translated itself into that sunlit look.

  And Shirl had rooted herself by the coffee machine, drinking in the scene like her cup of coffee, enjoying every revolting minute of it.

  It was the first, last, and only time Maud had ever seen Velda.

  When Ned had paid for their three glasses of iced tea and called to “Velvet” they’d better be going, Maud heard Shirl make a retching noise over the cash drawer, which had sprung out to slap her in the stomach.

  Ned had left a tip.

  He had folded up a twenty into a little square and stuck it under the iced-tea glass. That was Ned’s version of “discreet.”

  No one had noticed this but Chad. He had stared at his father’s departing back, plucked the bill from the counter, and looked at it as if it were a hand grenade.

  It had saved what little could be saved of the encounter when Chad had shoved it back into Ned’s pocket without a word.

  • • •

  Maybe Shirl had been thinking of this present Labor Day as some sort of anniversary of last year’s and Velveeta’s (as Shirl called her) visit, because she couldn’t seem to stop talking about the haplessness and hatefulness of husba
nds, and what she’d have done if the big creep had come back to La Porte dragging the new Mrs. Creep along. Since she was scraping out the hard vanilla from the bottom of the ice-cream container, much of this was echoing up from the nearly empty basin. But her head and hand would emerge, the scoop dipped in warm water, and she’d call down the counter to Maud, who was trying not to pay attention, cutting up the lemon chiffon pie.

  Dodge Haines, who was getting the apple pie à la mode, crusty with ice, leered over his coffee, and the others up and down the counter were equally entranced with this playback of the visit of Maud’s ex-husband and his new wife; also, it gave a man like Dodge, macho to the core, a chance to exchange his witty keep-’em-barefoot-and-pregnant philosophical views with Shirl.

  The only person who had the good taste at least to pretend not to listen was the tall brunette sitting at the counter, the one for whom Maud had just cut up the lemon chiffon. This was Dr. Elizabeth Hooper, a woman Maud could hardly say she knew, for Dr. Hooper didn’t live in La Porte, but a woman for whom Maud felt an infinite respect and empathy.

  • • •

  Dr. Elizabeth Hooper fascinated Maud. She came through La Porte exactly once a month, every third weekend, like clockwork. She was tall and elegant, wore simple suits in cold weather, simple dresses in warm. Today she had on a frosty blue linen dress. Maud always studied her dresses and accessories. To the shoulder had been pinned a gold brooch, and she wore a gold bracelet; one long, bare arm rested on the counter, but unlike Velda’s, it was pale, untanned. This alone would have sent Dr. Hooper rocketing in Maud’s esteem: she was clearly a woman who had other things on her mind besides Nantucket. Maud also liked the way she sat at the counter rather than sitting in one of the dark, high-backed booths, the way the other women who came in on their own did. It bespoke to Maud a certain confidence and carelessness, that Dr. Hooper couldn’t be bothered worrying over being a woman alone. For despite the entire feminist movement, Maud had seen absolutely no change in the mouselike withdrawal of any woman from fifteen to fifty, the caginess they felt over being in a restaurant alone, as if it were a porn movie house.

  • • •

  Since Maud considered herself terminally shy, it had been nearly two months before she got up the nerve to speak to Dr. Hooper. She could never keep up the friendly chat of Charlene or the constant complaining of Shirl as they moved down the counter and among the booths. Except for Miss Ruth Porte, who seemed so frail and quiet it would have been shameful not to be able to converse with her, Maud hardly exchanged a sentence with the customers; could not be forced to even under the constant agitating of Dodge Haines, who considered himself La Porte’s lady-killer and never seemed to look at any woman above breast level. “You’d think my tits was my eyes,” Charlene would say, but in such a salacious tone that you knew she enjoyed it. Charlene had a big smile and big breasts and bestowed herself on everyone like a basket of fruit.

  All Maud could do to make up for her lack of conversation (except for her book talks with Miss Ruth) was to smile, and her smile wasn’t like Charlene’s—no wide red lips and flash of bleached teeth. Her smile was little more than a slight upward hook at the ends of her mouth, a shy smile. She tried to smile a lot to make up for her silences—which were at least appreciated greatly by Joey and, she thought, by Dr. Elizabeth Hooper—because otherwise the people of La Porte might think she was putting on airs. It was her college education and her being favored so much by Miss Ruth Porte, also educated and able to talk to Maud about books, that she was afraid might make people think she was uppity. But even though Maud’s smile was constrained, she knew it was pleasant. An old boyfriend (a hundred years ago, when there were such things) had told her she had the prettiest smile he’d ever seen. It was the smile of a little kid, of an infant, even, the smile of someone who’d just learned and really meant it. It was the most sincere smile, he said, he’d come across. Maud had forgotten his name, this high school boy; but she remembered the grave look on his face, the effort that had gone into describing her smile just right.

  It was a compliment she had tucked away in her mind like a petal in a book and looked at again and again for thirty years. Only Chad, who’d told her she looked more like thirty than forty-seven; and Sam, who had told her (to her utter astonishment) she was the most comfortable person to be with because she was as serene as a nun (when she wasn’t mad)—only they had ever said anything as nice. Ned had never paid her a compliment she could remember.

  Maybe it was her “serene” smile that made Dr. Elizabeth Hooper react in kind. It was probably because Maud was the only one in the Rainbow (except for Ulub and Ubub) who hadn’t tried in some way to wheedle out of her why she kept coming through La Porte. Charlene had found out Dr. Hooper was a psycho-whatever because a cousin of a friend of an aunt of hers knew someone who’d gone to see her. Or so Charlene said.

  But no one could find out what she was doing in La Porte, going back and forth, and sometimes staying overnight at Stuck’s rooming house near the end of Main. There was much speculation about whether she’d been called in by Miss Ruth to pay personal visits to Miss Ruth’s crazy Aunt Simkin. Shirl, who was never hard-pressed to mind her own business, still felt “funny,” she said, about asking Dr. Hooper why she came through town.

  It was, Maud supposed, because Dr. Hooper was a psychiatrist, and people who’d never read about it or been to one (as Maud had while she was married) thought they could read your mind and probably suck your soul out of your body. The way Shirl talked about them, leaning on the counter, moodily smoking a cigarette and polishing a glass, head doctors were about as safe to be around as mass murderers or that Boy Chalmers fellow who they said had murdered Nancy Alonzo and done the same thing to those two women in Hebrides. She threw down the towel and shuddered. It hardly bore thinking about.

  So she went back to thinking about Dr. Hooper. Maud would watch Dr. Hooper’s flickering glance at Shirl or Charlene and wonder if perhaps she could see what was going on in their minds.

  It was Maud who always waited on Dr. Hooper and who always saved back a piece of lemon chiffon pie if they were running short. It was true that Shirl made the best pies of anyone around except for Jen Graham, who ran the hotel over in Spirit Lake, and this particular pie was especially popular: the filling was a pale cloud of whipped-up lemony filling, and the crust was melt-in-your-mouth baked meringue. That Shirl had begged the recipe off Jen Graham and then started claiming the pie was her original creation, just about everybody knew, although Shirl thought it was a deep, dark secret and a real sleight-of-hand performance on her part to wheedle a recipe out of Jen. The Rainbow’s big white pie boxes were always carted away by customers after eating a slice of lemon chiffon for dessert. So they often ran out of it. Even Chad loved it, and he hated lemon pie.

  Dr. Hooper was in the Rainbow Café the third weekend of every month, Fridays and Sundays, eating her pie and drinking her coffee, and often writing a postcard or two, sometimes a letter. It always amused Maud to watch Mayor Sims maneuver around behind Dr. Hooper, leaning back and staring down his nose in his attempt to make out what she was writing. Dr. Hooper always caused a mild stir, probably because she was their mystery woman. Her appearances in La Porte and the Rainbow were as dependable as the turning of day into night.

  It was Dr. Hooper herself who had finally, some months ago, started a conversation. She had asked Maud what school her son attended. It had so surprised Maud that Dr. Hooper knew she had a son, Maud had slopped coffee into the saucer when she was refilling the cup.

  Dr. Hooper said, “I heard the owner”—and here she looked off towards Shirl—“talking about him. She seems to think very highly of him.” Her smile was slow; she seemed to deliberate before every action, and she looked serious even when smiling. “That’s unusual,” she added, before going back to cutting through her wedge of pie.

  Maud held the coffee pot aloft, thinking the statement mysterious, inscrutable, just the sort of non-small talk she’d expect
from Dr. Elizabeth Hooper, if she ever spoke at all. Dr. Hooper certainly wouldn’t go in for “Well, we’re getting weather,” as Sonny Stuck had said that day. Still, to introduce the subject of Maud’s own son was a pretty heady subject for conversation.

  Forgetting specifically what she’d asked, Maud answered, “Well . . . thank you.” Then, feeling foolish with that response, she’d gone on: “I mean . . . why is it unusual?” Ignoring Dodge Haines and Sonny Stuck holding up their cups for refills, Maud had just set the pot back on the Pyrex burner and got a clean napkin to mop up the spilled coffee in the saucer. Dodge called to her, but she paid no attention. Let Charlene wriggle on down there.

  Dr. Hooper said, “It’s unusual for older people to be impressed by anyone twenty or so.”

  “Twenty. He’s twenty.” Nervously, she began to shine up the milk-shake container.

  Dr. Hooper nodded solemnly.

  “I have a son myself. He’s fifteen. He’s in a prep school up north.” She fiddled with a menu. “That’s why I go through La Porte; it’s right on the way. But I usually have to stay overnight, because it’s quite a trip. I stay at the rooming house down the street.”

  As if everybody didn’t know. Mildred Stuck, who rented out rooms, thought having a New York psychiatrist staying at her place made her Queen of the Rainbow Café, nearly; she’d even had the brass to sit right down in Miss Ruth Porte’s booth and start braying about her “clientele.” But it was clear she didn’t know a thing about Dr. Hooper or she would have told Miss Ruth.

  Maud’s mouth opened, but no words came out—that’s how amazed she was that Dr. Elizabeth Hooper had a son away at school, just as she, Maud, did. She wanted to ask about him, but before she could think of anything sensible, Dr. Hooper went on.