A Girl Like You Read online

  I liked the town official, Linda. She was a small, birdlike woman who rolled her eyes at me while Joe crammed donuts into his mouth.

  Job duties included answering phones and greeting people when they came in with questions or to pay bills. There was some filing, processing of vouchers and payments, and maintaining a database of water and sewer customers. I focused on what I imagined would be the positive parts of the job: being the face of the town, meeting new people, helping residents with questions and problems about their homes and property.

  “What would you say are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?” Linda asked brightly.

  Hmm. Good parenting skills? I make a killer guacamole? Amateur dog trainer?

  “Um, I think I’m a good communicator; I can deal with people even when I’m under stress.” I shifted in my seat.

  “Oh, this isn’t a high-stress job,” Linda said, waving her hand as if brushing away a spiderweb. “And weaknesses?”

  “Well, truth be told, math isn’t a strong point,” I said, kicking myself for choosing to share that particular tidbit.

  “You won’t be doing any trig here,” she laughed. “That’s why we have computers to do the work for us.”

  “Great,” I said, enormously relieved.

  “How long you lived here?” Joe broke in, a dribble of strawberry jelly stuck to his chin.

  “Just over three years. But my friend has lived here for ten years.”

  “Newcomers, both of ya,” Joe grunted. “I been here all my life. Parents used to own Benson’s corner store. Remember that?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “Closed twenty-three years ago.”

  No shit, I thought. No wonder it wasn’t familiar to me.

  I had been worried there would be a typing test, but my skills were pretty good from freelance writing under deadlines. Ditto for my spelling and punctuation. It was even a personal pet peeve of mine when people were sloppy with English, as in “I ain’t got none,” or “do to the fact.”

  “Well I hope you don’t mind tight quarters, because the assistant clerk’s desk is right over there.” Linda pointed to a low counter with two desks behind it, side by side, maybe four feet apart.

  “Yeah, and you don’t gotta go far for the john,” Joe said. “It’s the door right there.” He gestured to a partly opened door just beyond the desks.

  “Ladies or men’s?”

  Joe snorted. “Unisex, as they say.”

  I shuddered inwardly, trying to remind myself about the good parts of the job: an OK salary, great benefits, a commute that would allow me to get into work on time even after hitting the snooze button. The hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., were also fine by me, as a non-morning person.

  “Don’t be expecting donuts every day,” Joe said. “Unless you bring ’em!” He laughed at his own joke. “But there’s a coffee pot in the back. Pitch in $5 a week and you can be part of the club.”

  I was glad I wouldn’t be facing donuts every morning, because my affinity for glazed would add significantly to my muffin top. I wondered how two people could have a coffee club.

  “We’ll let you know in a day or two,” Linda said, standing up and holding out her hand.

  When I turned to Joe to shake his hand, he thumped me on the back the way you’d do if someone was choking, and said, “Good luck, Ms. Jessica.”

  Linda called the next day with a job offer. I took the kids and Eddie out for Mexican to celebrate. We toasted with margaritas in salted glasses and stuffed ourselves with black bean quesadillas.

  18

  Judging by Joe’s appearance at the interview, there was no office dress code, but Frankenstein leggings were out of the question. I settled on the basic black skirt, white blouse, and pink cardigan for my first day. I scrubbed off my navy-blue nail polish and used a neutral shade of pink.

  Before I left, I knelt down and covered Penny’s face with kisses, like always.

  “I’ll be right back. I love you,” I told her as I left. I looked through the window and saw her lie down, staring intently at the door. I always felt bad leaving her to lie on the kitchen floor while I was gone, waiting for me to come home.

  “Come on back,” Joe called out as the heavy front door of Town Hall banged behind me.

  It was my first view of the desks behind the counter. Joe’s desk was an abomination, cluttered with stacks of papers, three stained coffee cups, a big yellow happy face stress ball, a crumb-covered desk calendar, a photo of someone playing baseball, and what appeared to be a bag of doggie treats.

  “Here’s your desk and your inbox,” Joe said, pointing to an overflowing three-shelved plastic unit very close to tipping over from the weight.

  I could immediately see why Joe was so sweaty; it had to be 80 degrees in the office. I took off my sweater and hung it on the back of my chair. The chair at my desk was a small-backed stenographer’s seat. Joe’s was a high-backed black pleather chair with arms.

  The front door of the office slammed, making me jump. Three older men in nearly identical flannel shirts came right up to the counter. The shorter one was leading a dog on a leash. An actual dog. Inside the office.

  The three of them, even the dog, stood looking me up and down.

  “This the new gal?” asked the one with the comb-over and mustard-colored tie.

  Joe grunted in return, some sort of noncommittal reply.

  I went back around the counter and held out my hand. “Jessica Gabriel.”

  “Wesley Scranton,” the man grinned, revealing a couple of missing teeth. “Call me Wes.”

  “Lucky Salvadore, but I ain’t lucky, so I go by Sal,” said the man with the dog. “Pleased to meet ya, missy. This here is Beef Jerky.”

  “Beef Jerky?”

  “Yeah, watch this,” Sal leaned down and scratched behind the dog’s ear, which made him squirm all over and shake his back leg furiously.

  “See? He gets all jerky.”

  OK.

  “Good boy, go ahead and say hi to the little lady here.”

  Beef Jerky reared up on and planted his two front paws smack on my skirt.

  “Watch it there, Jerky,” Sal said mildly. “Give the lady some space.”

  The dog didn’t budge. We just stood that way, the dog and I, in some strange balancing act, until Jerky became bored and got down.

  “Paulie,” said the third guy, going around the counter in a way that made it clear he was at home in the office.

  Paulie headed for the coffee pot in the back corner of the office, where three cups sat upside down on the counter. “Anybody bring donuts? Donut holes? Danish? Bagels?”

  “I told her it was her turn,” Joe said, motioning at me. “Apparently she didn’t get the memo.”

  I laughed uncertainly, completely unsure if they were kidding or not.

  “They have some great pastries at Brew Coffee on the corner,” Wes said dreamily.

  The guys filled their mugs, then settled down at the conference table. Sal took the leash off Jerky, who bounded into a chair by the window to bark at pigeons on the roofs of the stately brick buildings downtown.

  Within minutes, Wes’s head dropped to his chin. I could have sworn he’d fallen asleep.

  “What’s the weatherman say about this afternoon? Rain or shine?” Paulie asked no one in particular.

  “I heard rain,” Sal said, blowing the steam on his coffee.

  “Nah, I think it’s supposed to clear up,” Paulie said.

  “Aw, somebody wake up Wes,” Joe said.

  “WES!” Paulie and Sal shouted in unison, startling both Wes and me.

  “He’s got that sleeping sickness—you know, nardolepsy,” Joe explained.

  “Narcolepsy?” I said.

  “Yeah, something like that.” Joe scowled at me.

  “Good thing they don’t let him drive the school bus no more,” Paulie said thoughtfully, sipping from his mug.

  Seriously??

  “You better get started,” Joe
said, pointing to a stack of papers piled in a box. “These are tax payments. All you have to do is input them on the spreadsheet on your Excel file, go into the account and make sure they paid the right amount, then reconcile it for the bank deposit.”

  “Excel? Reconcile?”

  “Yeah, add up all the payments and cross reference them with the spreadsheet. K?”

  Turned out, the job was all math.

  My job, that is. Joe’s job seemed to be mostly entertaining Sal, Wes, and Paulie. And Beef Jerky.

  The phone rang nonstop, interrupting my stressful attempts to balance the spreadsheets. We were supposed to share phone duties, but when it rang, Joe ignored it and kept up his conversation with his friends about lawn mowers and the height of the blades and whether watering was a total waste of time and money.

  “I’m calling about my tax bill,” a resident said when I picked up the phone.

  “How can I help you?” I knew squat about tax bills. All I knew was that I paid mine once a year.

  “Why is it so damn high? Don’t you know I’m on a fixed income? I can’t possibly pay this.”

  I put the woman on hold.

  “What should I tell this woman who can’t pay her taxes?” I asked Joe.

  Sal guffawed. “Tell her to be happy they ain’t higher.”

  I looked at Joe for help.

  “Tell her to write a letter to the town supervisor,” he said, pulling out a backscratcher that looked like a hand and shoving it down the back of his shirt. “That’s assuming she knows how to write.”

  I fielded complaints about leaves from neighboring trees blowing onto people’s driveways, gophers trapped under sheds, how to dispose of old appliances, and even if there was a good Japanese restaurant in town. Someone actually called about their too-hot breakfast tea at Brew Coffee. Another wanted to know how to find the best handyman with low rates.

  One old lady wanted us to send someone out to fix her leaky sink; another had lost her cat. An old man called because there was a torn-up green couch outside across the street where kids sat at night to smoke.

  “It’s the ugliest damn couch you ever seen,” he told me. “Can’t stand looking at it another day.”

  Joe somehow managed to eavesdrop on every phone call while simultaneously listening to his friends grouse about how deep the potholes were on Emmett Lane, and yelling at Wes every few minutes to wake the hell up.

  “Well, I hear Stan the Man’s Plumbing is good,” I told a resident who sounded elderly.

  “Ya can’t recommend any company!” Joe hollered at me while I was still on the phone. “That’s showing favoritism.”

  “I’m sorry, but it seems I can’t make recommendations,” I told the woman apologetically.

  I took another call from someone who needed a trash removal company.

  “I can’t give out any names,” I told him.

  “Well then, what am I supposed to do?” He sounded genuinely out of ideas as to what to do.

  “Have you looked at your neighbor’s garbage bins?”

  “That’s still recommending a business!” Joe busted out. “What did I tell you about that?” He waited for an answer.

  “Not to do it?”

  “That’s right, chicky, don’t do it.”

  There was a round of laughter from the peanut gallery.

  Other people called about what to do with their old TVs, where could they get a marriage license/library card/register their dog/ how to read their water meter/where was their water meter/could I go out to their house and help them find their meter.

  And this was all before lunch.

  At 1:00, Joe released me for my half-hour lunch break. Thankful for the three-minute commute, I drove home and found Penny sleeping in the same spot on the kitchen floor, still waiting for me.

  I scooped her up and held her in my arms while I ate peanut butter toast over the sink to avoid dropping crumbs.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” I told Penny. “I’m as tired as Wes.”

  19

  “So, I signed us up for some spring classes,” Eddie announced one night over wonton soup.

  “What, now? Told you I’m not making any more jewelry. That beaded necklace debacle still haunts me.”

  “Yeah, you sucked at that,” Eddie said thoughtfully. “We really should have started you out slow—some earrings, or maybe a brooch.”

  “No more jewelry, Eddie.”

  “OK, no jewelry. We’re going to try some cooking classes,” he said, rubbing his hands together briskly. “How do you feel about meatless burgers?”

  “Blech.”

  “Try to keep an open mind, honey,” he said. “It’s not exactly healthy to live on a bucket of pasta and meatballs all your life.”

  “What’s a burger without meat? Is it even a burger?”

  Eddie pulled out the continuing education catalog from the local high school. Over the years, besides the ill-fated jewelry class, we’d taken Mahjong, Pickle Ball, Tai Chi and Finding Your Animal Spirit, in which, interestingly, we’d both turned out to have the spirit of a fox.

  Eddie had gotten on a financial planning kick one year and we sat through “You Never Think About It, But You Need Life Insurance,” “Estate Planning: Not Just for the Wealthy,” and my personal favorite, “Steering Through the Winding Road of Retirement.”

  This time, he was going to make me cook.

  “Meatless burgers made from lentils, quinoa and kale, and black beans,” he read off. “They’re bursting with garlic, gluten-free and aromatic. And if that’s not enough, we get to take some home with free Kaiser rolls.”

  “Sounds pretty good,” I said, reaching for another egg roll, suddenly hungry again. “What else?”

  “Winey Chicken.”

  “What?”

  “You know, chicken marsala and chicken piccata with white wine. And no, they probably don’t let you drink the wine during class.”

  “What fun is that?”

  Thursday night’s meatless burger class was in the high school cooking lab, which we used to call Home and Careers. Walking the long, dim school hallways with Eddie made me feel fifteen all over again, from the scuffed linoleum floor to the scratched yellow lockers.

  “I remember when I was a confused freshman wandering around looking for the B-wing,” I told Eddie. “I had a map drawn on the back of my hand, which I thought was a pretty smart idea, but then it smudged, and I had to resort to asking other people for directions. They all sent me the wrong way. I was late to every class.”

  “Yeah, when I was there, we loved to make it hard on newbies,” Eddie laughed. “I remember Laura Voss coming into English lit crying because she had gotten turned around and ended up finding our room just before the bell rang and class ended.”

  “Laura cried all the time. She cried in earth science when we had to gut a worm. She cried in gym when a dodge ball barely swiped her leg. She was just a crier.”

  “Wonder what ever happened to her? Anyway, here we are,” Eddie said, opening the door for me.

  Clustered around the stoves were four twentysomething couples either holding hands or with their arms around each other. The guys were wearing black jeans and the women had cat eyeglasses and braids in their hair. These were the trendy kids in high school, all grown up.

  I looked at Eddie. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Free Kaiser rolls,” he mouthed.

  The cooking teacher, wearing violet yoga pants, handed out written instructions.

  “Any questions, just holler,” she said, sitting back down at a table and pulling out her cell phone.

  I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and rolled up my sleeves. Ten minutes later, we were all up to our elbows in lentils, quinoa, and black beans. Eddie’s patties came out symmetrical and held together. Mine were lopsided and more square than round, but they were hefty and looked like a good meal. It was messy work, and I was glad I wasn’t in my own kitchen. The mush clung to my hands and fingers, even when I trie
d scraping them back into the bowl.

  “How’d you get yours so perfect?”

  “They’re a work of art, aren’t they?” Eddie said, admiring his own patties.

  But symmetry didn’t matter when the instructor put down her phone and fired up a frying pan. She cooked a batch of meatless burgers while the others set out the promised Kaiser buns and ketchup. The room quickly carried the aroma of homemade dinner, something my house rarely smelled like anymore with the kids grown up. Dinner for me was usually oatmeal or eggs.

  I’d cooked when the kids were younger, and we’d gather for family dinners in the dining room. Meatless lasagna and chicken chili were the favorites. We had a no cell phone rule that everyone respected, which meant the kids had to tell us about their school day or eat in quiet boredom—or worse, listen to their parents talk. Family dinners disappeared as Adam and I became distant. He would often take his plate into his office to work; the kids were on the run, and food was often grabbed from the small kitchen table or taken to go.

  At the night class, Eddie and I and the cool-kid couples wolfed down our meatless burgers in record time. Even the yoga-pants teacher had one. We were officially stuffed. It was like the story of Jesus with the bread and fish: amazingly, there were leftover meatless burgers and rolls, even after we’d eaten so many. We happily divvied them up to take home.

  “Don’t forget to fill out the class survey,” the teacher said. “Please give me five stars; I’m in grad school and need the extra money. One class gave me, like, two stars and I need to get my average up.”

  It was the most she had said the entire night.

  I checked off five stars and added a smiley face for the hell of it.

  “Would have been better if she had actually instructed,” Eddie said as we walked to the parking lot.

  Winey chicken class was the following Tuesday. When we parked and went into the high school, I looked up at the clock over the front desk out of habit to see if I would be late for class.

  “I love the leggings,” Eddie told me. “Always been a big fan of werewolves howling at the moon.”

  “Thanks.”

  He held the door open for me when we got to the cooking room. Inside were six nearly indistinguishable grandmothers, from their cardigan sweaters buttoned all the way up, to their eyeglasses hanging from gold chains around their necks, to their odd choice of coral lipstick.