Wynn in Doubt (2 page)

The pillow muffles my words. “Leave me alone. I’m just . . .”

“Smelling a pillow. I’ll tell you what, I’ll peel Tabby’s label off the bottle of White Diamonds in the bathroom and give it to you, if you can just focus long enough to get the closet sorted out.”

“Hey!” Tabby calls from somewhere in the bedroom. “I claimed that.”

I turn to Franny. Her smile is conspiratorial as she leans farther into the closet. “I’ve been peeling her labels off everything.” She reaches into her pocket and comes out with a dozen folded white labels marked “TABBY.” My smile comes unbidden, but welcome. Conspiring against our little sister is the one thing Franny and I have always been able to agree on.

I return her wink and get down to business.

Grams loved her blue glass. It’s everywhere in her house, even in the closets. Blue glass figurines, blue glass jewelry boxes, blue glass paperweights. When I was little, she gave me a set of glass marbles. They were a deep royal blue. I pretended they were sapphires stolen from Buckingham Palace and entrusted to me for safekeeping. I buried them along the tree line behind her house one night—I took my duties as protector very seriously. Only, that was the summer we got a season pass to Six Flags. What were priceless jewels in the face of the Screamin’ Eagle? I forgot about them.

Years later I thought it’d be fun to dig them up, but I was never able to find them again. It’s funny, the things you miss. Those marbles probably cost two dollars and yet, I’d give almost anything to have them back. I carefully wrap each ornament and bauble in tissue paper and place it in the box at my feet. One by one, I wrap, store, and label all of her possessions until nothing remains but a stack of books collecting dust on the uppermost shelf.

I stand on tiptoes, batting at each one until it falls into my hands. The box at my feet is full, so I ask Tabby for another.

“There aren’t any more, we’re out.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do with the books?” I flip through a leather-bound volume of
Anna Karenina
.

“I dunno, don’t you read a lot? Isn’t that, like, your thing?” she asks, her tone bored.

“My thing?”

“Yeah. Like, I have Dex and the wedding, and Franny has Ben and the boys, and you have”—she gestures at the novel in my hands—“Harry Potter.”

“This is Tolstoy.”

“See?” She brightens. “You even know all the characters’ names.”

She’s going to be someone’s
mother
one day.

I turn back to the closet and sit against the wall, my grandmother’s books spread around me. My thing. Books are my “thing.” I’ve never felt more like an Austen heroine than I do at this moment.

My fingers trail across the covers: Orwell, Fitzgerald, Brontë, Melville, Dumas . . . Books about rebellion, excess, passion, adventure, and dreams. Not one of which reflects the Grams I knew. She was kind and thoughtful and I loved her, but she was also hard-nosed and put duty above all else. Did she read these stories? Did she get lost in them, as I do, or did she shake her head and wonder why anyone would want to read words so full of magic?

I stack the books gently and carry them under my arm out of the closet. I’ve got work in three hours, and if I sneak out now, I may just have time to do my “thing” before I spend the rest of Sunday night slinging beer.

Tabby diligently re-labels a silver watch. No doubt Franny stripped off the original.

“Tell Mom and Dad I have to go to work.” I head for the door.

“Alright. Tell Oliver I said hi, ’kay?”

Her words stop me like an invisible wall. “What?”

“Oliver. Tell him I said hi when you see him,” she repeats, slower this time.

I stare at her blankly.

Tabby waves her hand at me. “Oh, no, you’re right. I shouldn’t be saying hi to other men when I’m engaged.” She admires the sizeable rock on her left ring finger. “It’s not fair of me to do that to them.”

I feel like I’ve stepped out of the closet into an episode of
The Twilight Zone
. “Why would I be seeing Oliver?” I ask, my mouth dry.

“Well, you’re going to work, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’ll see him at the bar.”

I step over a pile of photo albums and kneel before my sister, grabbing her arm. “Tabby, focus. Why would Oliver be at Lucky’s?”

Tabby’s forehead, too firm and beautiful to properly wrinkle, shows the barest sign of concentration. “Because he works there now?”

I shake my head. The words issuing from her pink lips don’t make sense. “I don’t understand. Why would Oliver—rock star Oliver—be working at a Downers Grove dive bar?”

My little sister pulls her arm from my grasp and returns her attention to the label maker. “Dex said he came in last week and asked Lucky for a job. I guess he’s taking some time off from the road and moved back in with his parents.”

I draw back and stand up, the books wedged against my side feeling disproportionately heavy. “Oliver . . . is working at Lucky’s?”

Tabby applies a new label to the back of a chunky green bracelet. “Pfft. And you guys think I’m the slow one.”

two

Freshman year, fifth period lunch: I tripped over Mandy Krasinski’s backpack and fell, landing on top of my food tray. Bits of sloppy joe and macaroni and cheese dropped to the laminate floor with audible plunks when I shifted onto my knees. Oliver smiled and helped me up, pulling a piece of red ground beef from my hair as his friends behind him howled with laughter.

Sophomore year, Mr. Hill’s health class: We were learning about sexually transmitted diseases, and I was chosen to hold up the chlamydia card. The entire class burst into a loud and prolonged clapping fit. Oliver winked at me over Mike Turley’s head and flashed me his herpes card.

Junior year, badminton lessons in the gym: In an effort to appear athletic and graceful, I volunteered to make the first serve of the championship game. I whacked the birdie over the net with such ferocity it hit Oliver in the mouth and chipped his eyetooth. That afternoon, as I prepared to board the bus home, I caught his eye as he sauntered out the front door. He pointed to his newly altered smile and gave me a thumbs-up.

But those things were nothing compared to the four long, torturous years I endured because of alphabetical locker assignment. Because I, Wynn Jeffries, was the perpetual locker mate of Shannon Jefferson. And Shannon Jefferson was Oliver Reeves’s girlfriend. And she liked to French kiss. A lot.

My own kiss with Oliver was not quite so long or wet, but it remains to this day the highlight of my academic career.

Now he’s here, twenty feet away, leaning across the bar to set two beers in front of a couple of sorority sisters. Blonde, perky, and with matching purple tote bags emblazoned with the Delta Phi Epsilon symbols. I know that’s what the Greek letters stand for, not because I’m a sorority sister of the magnificent order of the DPhiE’s, but because I’m a nerd. A big, huge, Tolstoy-loving nerd.

And he wipes his hands on a white dishrag like a sex god.

“Hello? Earth to Wynn, come in, Wynn.”

Startled, I turn toward the sound of my boss’s booming Boston accent. Lucky’s thick hands are steepled against his nose and mouth. “And we have liftoff,” he says, his voice muffled to imitate an old radio. He drops his hands, grinning at his joke.

“Hey, Lucky.”

“Hey, you.” He punches me a little too forcefully in the shoulder.

I rub the spot and return his awkward smile. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothin’, nothin’, just making the rounds. You say hi to our new bartender yet?” He moves his bulky frame in Oliver’s direction.

“Um . . . no. I haven’t had the chance yet.”

We glance around. There’s not a patron anywhere near me, and the towel I’m fiddling with is both dry and not currently in the vicinity of a hard surface. In my defense, this position offered the least noticeable, most unhampered view of Oliver and his lips. I can’t shake the feeling that once I get within three feet of him, I’m going to spontaneously combust.

“Right,” he says, dragging out the vowel. “Well, go give him a welcoming hello when you find some free time. He might be here a while.”

“Really? Why do you say that? Did he say he was going to be here a long time? Did he talk about the band? About his future in music? Why would he choose to come back here, of all places, when he literally could’ve picked anywhere in the world?”

Lucky’s look conveys that he has not done any of those things. It’s possible he also thinks I’m a lunatic. “I don’t really know how long he’s staying. But having him behind the bar will be good for business.”

He shifts and rubs the back of his beefy neck.

“Right.” I twist the towel over my knuckles. “Sorry.”

“No, no, that’s alright. You’re curious. It’s what I like about you. Always thinking. But, just out of curiosity, did your thoughts possibly involve a check on the ladies bathroom? Someone’s complained about a backup in there.” He holds his palms out before him. “I mean, if you’re not too busy.”

I’m not eager to give up my bird’s-eye view of Oliver, but I can’t exactly defend my position. “What do you mean by backup?”

“Backup. A backup. In the can.”

“You want me to clean up . . . a clog in the ladies bathroom?” I don’t bother hiding my disgust at the idea.

“Yeah.”

“But I have a degree from Loyola . . .”

“And now you have a plunger from Ace Hardware,” he says, handing me the brown rubber plunger that had been sitting unnoticed near my tennis shoes. “Congratulations.”

I take it from him woodenly. He pats me on the head, then turns back toward the bar. Oliver is leaning over the glossy surface, smiling at Tweedledee and Tweedle Nose Job. Their squeals of delight carry across the dark space. I wonder how they feel about French kissing?

I push my way into the bathroom and flinch at the smell. Using my index finger to gingerly push the thin steel of the stall door inward, I avert my eyes from whatever hell is waiting for me. I notice a heart carved into the dull gray of the left wall. Within its exaggerated curves are the words “Oliver 4-Ever.”

Sunday evening at Lucky’s Bar: Oliver Reeves walks back into my life and bestows his smiles on two pert, twenty-one-year-old neuroscience majors, if my luck holds. The water beneath the plunger squelches and bubbles up over the porcelain, sloshing onto my shoes.

And all is right in the world.

“Wynn?”

I hear my name clearly. I know who’s calling me. So, naturally, I keep my head buried in the deep freezer.

“Wynn Jeffries, right?”

I straighten slowly, doing my best to convey confusion and indifference with a mask that says,
I can’t quite place your name . . . Who are you, again?

It’s funny, what your mind registers when in a superheightened state. It’s not his dark hair, cut shorter than I’ve ever seen it, or the familiar clear gray of his eyes that I notice. It’s the chip in his tooth. My chip.

“Hey, I thought that was you.” He moves forward to embrace me.

Suddenly his arms are wrapped around me and he’s squeezing me, and all I can think is,
Shit, how do you hug?

He releases me, unaware or unbothered by my robot arms, and smiles brightly. “Wow, so good to see you.”

I don’t know words or how to make my mouth work.

Oliver nods. The smile slips a bit from his face. “So how long have you worked here?”

What is work? Who works? Me?

The smile falls into a mildly polite grimace. “I just got back a few days ago. Staying with my parents until I can wrap my head around everything that’s gone on the last few weeks. Maybe you’ve heard?”

I open my mouth and Oliver perks up, no doubt waiting for me to say something, anything. But my tongue weighs a hundred pounds, so I just swallow and continue to stare at him.

He pushes a hand against the short crop of black hair on his head. We stand across from one another in complete and utter silence. After years of imagining running into him on the streets of Paris, fresh from my triumphant lecture at the Sorbonne, the reality of meeting him while unearthing a bag of nacho cheese from the deep freezer at Lucky’s Bar seems too unfair to be real.

“I should get back.” He thumbs at the door over his shoulder. “Lucky’s got me bartending for some insane reason. I don’t know the first thing about mixing drinks. I just keep giving everyone who orders anything a beer.” His laugh is exactly like I remember. Full and uninhibited.

He steps forward as though he’s going to hug me again, but changes his mind halfway. Instead, his hand connects with my arm, just below the shoulder, and he slaps me lightly a few times. It is the most unbearably awkward, exhilarating moment of my life.

As he pushes open the swinging door, I finally find my voice. “It’s just that the last time we talked . . .”

He turns to me. His eyes move down my face and settle on my lips. “I kissed you.”

I hold my breath and nod in agreement.

Smile gone, he turns his gaze to mine. “I remember.” Then Oliver Reeves disappears behind a swish of white plywood, leaving me standing beside an open freezer with my heart in my throat.

“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” Boy, you got that right, Fitzgerald. I run a finger over the imprint of letters. Mesmerized not by the beauty of the words, but by the thought that my Grams might have read them. I close the delicate cover of
The Great Gatsby
and place it beside me on the bed.

So he remembers the kiss. Does he also remember the gangly, dorky, unblossomed girl attached to those lips? No doubt I left him in a state of lustful frenzy tonight with the way I fought to pull open the door marked “Push.”

Oh, yes, a Fitzgerald heroine if there ever was one—never mind the soiled shoes and the inability to open well-marked doors. And the shockingly inappropriate response to polite conversation. Save for those minor things, of course.

From my spot beneath the lilac-colored duvet, I spy the neck of last night’s champagne bottle sitting in the sink. It’s possible there’s another swig or two. I throw the covers off and roll to the floor. My grandmother’s book falls onto the scored hardwood, landing open. A yellowed scrap of paper is wedged between the pages. I pull it out and carefully unfold it. It looks like newspaper, stiff and brittle with age.

I turn on the lamp on the small desk near my bed. The article has clearly been cut out of some periodical, although I can’t tell which one. I lower my face to the print and squint to read it.

BARDSTOWN, KY. 1931, August 18 (Special)—Federal Treasury authorities, working with the Nelson County Sheriff’s Department, Monday, Aug. 17, arrested Michael Albert Craig and Lola Elizabeth Harrison, a single woman, east of Bardstown on Bloomfield Road just before five a.m. Mr. Craig was thought to be transporting illegal alcohol. Federal agents, acting on an anonymous tip, apprehended the suspects after the car, a 1926 Ford Model T, was disabled by a road snare set by police. No persons were reported injured.

A dozen pints of corn whiskey were discovered beneath the lining of the rear seat, which had been hollowed out for illegal transportation. It is unknown at this time what role Miss Harrison may have played in the bootlegging operation. Special Agent Samuel T. Murphy of the United States Treasury Department Bureau of Prohibition, the commanding officer on the scene, said, “Let all Kentucky moonshiners beware. You may be able to distill it, bottle it, and blind the family dog with its proof, but if you drive it across the county line, I’ll be waiting for you.”

The suspects have been taken to the sheriff’s department in Bardstown, pending arraignment by the judge on Thursday morning. Investigators are now searching the Craig family home and lands for evidence of illicit whiskey stills. The home is located on the westernmost corner of

My heart racing, I turn the article over in my hands, hoping the rest continues on the other side. It’s just an old advertisement for Ovaltine. Elizabeth McConnell Druitz was Grams’s name. But Lola . . . I’ve seen that name before. The article has been torn; the last sentences at the bottom are missing. I search the book and shake it by the binding, but nothing falls out.

I turn it back over, then smooth out the folded lines, careful not to damage it. Lola Elizabeth Harrison. I stare at the words.

There’s a grainy, sepia-colored picture to the right side of the article. It shows armed sheriff’s deputies and a man, I presume Agent Murphy, leading away another man in handcuffs. The man in custody has thick black hair and a wide, careless smile, like he’s in on a joke no one else gets. Behind them is an old car, its doors open, and beside it another officer guards a smaller person wearing a fitted, bell-shaped hat. I look closer; definitely a woman.

In twelve steps, I make it from my bed to the small, eccentrically decorated kitchen. My grandmother’s obituary is pinned to the fridge by a sunflower magnet. I remove it with shaky hands and bring the strip of fresh newsprint back to the desk.

Elizabeth Susanna McConnell Druitz, 93, passed away peacefully in her sleep Sunday, May 25, 2014 at Saratoga Grove. She is preceded in death by her husband of 66 years, Isaac Zacharias Druitz, and her parents, William D. “Dutch” McConnell and Lola Elizabeth Harrison.