Page 36 of Good Days Bad Days
Shy.I hate that label. It’s been my moniker since I was a little boy who’d rather hide behind his mama’s skirt than go play with the other kids. It’s taken a lot of effort to muscle past those inborn anxieties that kept me silent as a child. I feel exposed by her use of the term.
“I don’t know about that.” I shrug, wiping down the chrome on the sink and then starting in on the linoleum.
“I do. Most men talk too much and think too little. I like that I can, I don’t know, breathe a little when you’re around. Like, I can hear myself think, you know?”
She says it like we spend hours together every day, which we do, but it’s in a room with a dozen other people. It’s not like this. To know her opinions on me and my personality sends pinpricks of electricity across my flesh and into my joints.
“And when you do have something to say, I really listen ’cause you must mean it. I like that. It’s more honest, like, no BS.”
“I ... I’m glad you feel that way.”
“Well, I do.” She hops off the counter and takes the damp dish cloth out of my hands. “Like, how you brought up the idea for a new opening song. It’s so catchy.” She hums a few bars of the new theme song as she arranges the drying flowers in rows. “Where in the world did you guys find that tune?”
“I ... I wrote it.” I know I’m blushing.
“You did?” She looks at me with wide sapphire eyes like I’ve admitted to being the president of the United States. “It’s so good. I didn’t know you were musical. What instruments do you play?”
“Piano. Since I was five or six. My mom was a piano teacher.”
“So she taught you?”
“Yeah, and my brother and both of my cousins.”
“So you were like the von Trapp family?” she asks, putting the now-empty sticky, dirty metal bowl to the side. I place it in the sink, filling it with water and adding soap.
“No, no. Not even close.” I laugh a little easier this time. “I’m the only one who really took to it. My cousins stopped taking lessons after grade school, and my brother ...”
My brother. I don’t talk about my brother, not since that call and definitely not since his funeral two months later.
“Your brother quit, too?” she asks, laughing. I turn off the water and start drying the bowl, the ache in my chest as monumental as the day I tossed dirt on his grave.
“No. He died, actually. Two years ago.” I blink away tears. Crying in front of Betty is completely unacceptable.
“Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry.” She touches my arm. No butterflies this time.
“It’s the way it goes sometimes.” I put the bowl on the counter, my empty hands cold and damp.
“It is, but it shouldn’t be. We lost my youngest sister, Eliza, when she was only four. My mom made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, Eliza’s favorite, on her birthday for years after she died. We’d gather round and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and blow out the candles for our baby sister. It was nice and all for a while, but at some point I think I came to dread it, you know? It was like I was watching the rest of us grow, which only reminded me of all she missed.” She slips the loose lock of hair under her scarf, untying her apron and folding it on the counter. “Then we lost Mama, and that year we let Eliza’s birthday come and go with no cake. I thought it’d feel better to let her go, to let her birthday become just another day, but I felt like I was betraying her and my mother. So, the next year, I made Eliza’s carrot cake, put a candle in it, and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ all by myself.”
“That’s really sweet.” Somehow, I’ve been leaning against the counter and watching her without a touch of anxiety. “I wonder howmany cakes I’d be making by the end of it all.” My father, my brother and—my mother.
“That’s true. We all are gonna die one day. Can’t make cakes for everyone,” she jokes ruefully. “Not unless you want to gain twenty pounds.”
She grows quiet and lets out a little sigh. I don’t know what it means, but I want to ask. I think of touching her shoulder comfortingly, letting her know she’s not alone. But as I try to will my hand forward, grappling for the right words, the silence expands between us and she finishes her arrangement.
“By the way, I know you saw me,” Betty says, rinsing out a paintbrush covered in Mod Podge. She picks at the bristles with her long nails, staring at the column of water pouring over them. “At the club.”
I blink, her unexpected confession hitting me like a sucker punch. I’d nearly convinced myself I’d been hallucinating that night.
“I didn’t tell anyone . . .”
“I know. Thank you,” she says, shaking out the brush. “I didn’t know they were coming, and if Don had seen me ...”
She looks at me with worry in her eyes.
“I know,” I say empathetically. I know her job is on the line.
Without letting on why, I’d casually questioned Mark about the club, how they treated the women who worked there, and what would happen if one of the Bunnies tried to get a job here in Janesville. After winking and grunting and making all kinds of jokes, he confirmed what I already knew—the men of EBN and WQRX could happily visit the club, but there’s no possible way they’d allow a woman who’d worked there to join their self-righteous and clearly hypocritical staff.
