Story Hour: The Salad Maker Listens to the Piano, Part Two

In which I present a (brief) second installment of my serialized story.

Lobby, The Hotel Durant, Flint, Michigan

          

I decided yesterday to publish the draft of a story that’s been resting in my computer for years, and to do it in serialized form. Find Part One of The Salad Maker Listens to the Piano here. I woke up this morning compelled to continue. Now it is nearly noon and I am still in my pajamas. I’ve accomplished little besides tinkering with this next section, drinking too much coffee, and baking a pan of Snickers brownies I really should not be eating. My dog snores loudly in defeat, clearly thinking, She is The Most Boring Human on the Planet and she is Never going to take us Outside. (I will, Dog. I promise. Soon.)

I had ideas about how to revise Part One this morning, too. I wouldn’t let myself start that, however. The plan is, I’ll work along to the end, then loop back and see about the beginning, letting those revision ideas marinate. Hopefully I won’t let them go so long that they evaporate.

Such is the life of a writer. I hope you’ll find this peek into the way it works for one writer interesting.

I also talked to my eldest brother who lives out in Oakland, California. He told me that he and my sister spent an hour on the phone last night reminiscing about family stuff, due to the story. That made me happy; my work sparked what sounded like a good conversation. He mentioned that our Flint cousins always considered Grandma Airgood fun. I liked her and enjoyed spending time with her, and yet ‘fun’ is not a word I associate with her. So, Flint cousins, if you’re reading along here, I’d love it if you chimed in with your thoughts in the comments section below.

Truly, I’d like all you readers to chime in with your thoughts. Comments are good for writers. They’re especially enjoyable if they’re positive, but potentially they are useful and helpful in various ways even if not.

I subscribed to a new publication the other evening, Wordloaf. I read a piece about Detroit-style pizza, and I was hooked. I was hooked deeper yet when I went to investigate the “About” page. I burst out with a laugh at the quote the creator, Andrew Janjigia, placed square at the top. It’s from “A (former) reader,” who had apparently summed up his work as, “Pedantic crap!”

That right there, folks, is the kind of humor and sense of perspective I aspire to in all facets of life.

By the way: any typos or confusing spots: let me know. It’s hard to see such things once you’re close to the work.

And, now, Part Two of our story.

The Salad Maker Listens to the Piano

Part Two

Helly had Edith making Mackerel en mayonnaise from eight until noon on Saturday, a job Edith disliked because it could go wrong so easy. Cleaning the mackerel wasn’t bad, it was only sixty pounds, but the mayonnaise caused her jaw to set in a way that had always frightened her children.

“You look like you’re chewing upholstery tacks,” Ida said as Edith separated eggs. Ida’s man worked in the Buick factory finishing seats.

“They should buy the mayonnaise already done up. Though I guess too much of that and I’d be out of a job.”

At the next work table, Ida boned smelt, her eyes squinted in concentration. “Doesn’t sound half bad to me.”

Edith could have told Ida, “This job is the best thing ever happened to me.” Instead, she cracked another egg on the edge of the table and tipped the broken shell so snotty white could string itself down into the bowl. Six dozen of them needed, and she was only through two. It made her head ache to know that one wrong move and the whole mess would be ruined. Then she’d have Helly’s wrath to bear, boy howdy. Though that wasn’t much compared to how Harold used to get.

Crabmeat and pineapple salad were next on the docket after the mackerel was done, always a slow task because the pineapples was so slippery, and after that, a raft of oranges and bananas waited for her to peel and slice, and then would come the cucumbers and lemons to chop for garnish, and finally the celery to curl for tomorrow’s brunch buffet.

Ida, finished with the smelt at last and now on to paring turnips, an ingredient so humble you wouldn’t expect to see it in a place like this, but they dressed it up by turning it into croquettes, chattered beside her. She and Mack was going to see Ben Hur at The Palace tonight; she was going to wear her new dress, a bold plaid with a whirly skirt.

Edith pictured Ida in it, and nodded. Bold, plaid, and swirly was right for her. As for herself, Edith would have to stick to solid colors and plain lines, as always, but maybe it was time for a new outfit. A skirt, at least, or else a spring top. She might be plain as a stock pan, but there was no reason to appear disheveled in life, not anymore.

“Over Easter, we was thinking we’d run up home to Mohawk,” Ida went on. “Have dinner with the folks after church Sunday, then get on back down here so we don’t miss a day of work.”

“That’s a hike.” Mohawk, almost in the northernmost tip of the Upper Peninsula, was so far north Edith could not truly imagine it. It seemed almost as far as Washington State had been when she took the train west to see Dwight after he got injured by that mortar round going off on accident. And crossing that new bridge above the Straits? Ida could have it. If Edith took such a trip, which she wouldn’t, she would keep her feet on the deck of the ferry boat, thank you very much.

“Bah, it’s nothing. We’d get in by daybreak. Drink a little extra coffee Monday, that’s all.” Ida banged her hip against Edith’s, which she was prone to do whenever she sensed Edith was not really paying attention. “Can you believe that Elvis Presley?” She pursed her lips and wiggled her brows, and Edith stopped separating eggs just long enough to flash her a smile. “That is some kind of music he’s making, you ask me. Mack don’t even like me to have it on the radio. Says it makes him nervous.”

Edith pushed her spectacles up with the back of one hand and reached for another tray of eggs. In truth, through most of the morning she had been thinking about another kind of music entirely, one she’d never given thought to, before. She saw when she arrived that another concert was advertised on the marquee for tonight, so most likely, that piano player was in the hotel. In his room, maybe, resting up for his next performance. Or in the lobby, sitting in one of the brocaded wing chairs, reading a newspaper. Edith pictured him with his knees crossed like a woman, a narrow ankle inside a thin dark sock, a polished shoe tapping out a tune that only played inside his own head. Or maybe he was in the bar, drinking coffee— or something stronger. 

At four o’clock, Edith pulled her coat on. Every cut on her hands was screeching from the three dozen lemons she’d left until last to cut. She did her buttons up slowly, then cinched her scarf under her chin and made her way along the corridor toward the grand lobby. She felt the hostesses behind the counter tracking her progress, but she didn’t meet their gazes. Instead, she walked as if she had some business being there among the customers, the men in turtlenecks and heeled ankle boots, the women in skirts that took less fabric than Edith’s underthings. She did not bother herself with opinions about these matters. Auto executives and their wives stayed at the Hotel Durant. Politicians, lawyers, business tycoons. Celebrities: movie stars, crooners. Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Doris Day: they all stayed at The Durant when they were in town. But she and they were nothing to each other. There was no point in thinking about them.

And in truth it was not really the man that drew Edith away from the service entrance and into the front of the building, or not that alone, not exactly. Partly, it was the music he’d made. The music and something different about him she had to see again. She had to be sure she hadn’t imagined it.

Edith made her way around the perimeter of the marble-floored lobby with its glittering chandeliers and high, gilded ceilings, looking at every settee and armchair. She studied the men, the slopes of their shoulders, the curves of their necks. None was the brown-haired pianist. 

Disappointment settled on her heavy as she neared the closing of her loop. She wouldn’t have talked to the man if she had seen him, wouldn’t have smiled, even, but she’d wanted to see.  She had wanted to study his face and his eyes. Most of all, she had wanted to find out if the air around him shimmered in the same colors by day as it had last night: silvery blue with streaks of purple shot through it. She’d never seen a shimmer like it before. Most were plain. Ida’s was pink as a cat’s tongue and as sturdy. Helly’s was mauve. Edith was recalling Harold’s shimmer, piney green when they married and close on to black by the end, when she heard the sound of music from up above, off the mezzanine. She grasped the balustrade and hauled herself up onto the stairs. She was one of them mackerels like she’d cleaned today, with a hook in her lip and an invisible line reeling her in.