"Mrs. Snyder's downstairs in the living room and wishes to speak to you." Standing just outside her daughter's bedroom, Paige Bryant's mother wore a constipated expression as though the somber woman waiting below was more intruder than guest.

"About what?" Paige Bryant had never passed more than a half-dozen words with Phyllis Snyder who lived two streets over. Sometimes she visited the bank where Paige worked, but a year earlier the girl had been promoted to the loan department and had few dealings with regular customers

"Norman’s been acting weird, emotionally unbalanced, and she thought…" Paige's mother never bother to finish the sentence. Norman Snyder, class valedictorian and president of the Brandenburg High School scholastic honor society, could have been a lawyer, brain surgeon, nuclear physicist or anything else that sparked his prodigious intellect, but following graduation the nerdy teen flashed and went up in acrid smoke. Failure to launch was the operative term. Accepted to a half dozen Ivy League colleges, he attended none. Rumor had it the boy was washing dishes for minimum wage at Ryan's diner, had no friends, no social life. When his parents went ballistic over his cataclysmic descent into mediocrity, Norman quietly moved out of the five-bedroom house and into a sardine can of an efficiency apartment in a rooming house just outside of town. "Have Mrs. Snyder come upstairs," Paige suggested.

Her mother went off and a moment later Paige heard the creaking of the risers as the heavyset woman trudged to the second floor landing. Phyllis Snyder, a dour-faced woman with a hook nose and saccharine smile that didn't quite mesh with her lugubrious disposition, lumbered into the room. "I see you at the bank," she remarked absently, her almond eyes flitting distractedly about the tidy bedroom. "How's that going?"

"Fine." For a fleeting moment, the thought occurred to Paige that Mrs. Snyder might want her to find an entry level position at the bank for her discombobulated son, but the woman quickly laid that unnecessary fear to rest.

"Maybe you heard, Norm ain't doing so hot these days." She made a sniffing sound and rubbed her longish nose. Paige held her tongue. Better to wait her out, let the woman play her hand. Somebody always needed something. At the bank it was a loan to cover a spiffy new car or maybe a mortgage for a bigger house than the absurd behemoth they already owned. Enough was never enough. "Look, here's the deal," the middle-aged woman threw formality out the window, "I need someone with a head on her shoulders to talk horse sense with Norman. His brains got all muddled what with all the crazy books he reads and that god-awful German poetry."

"Norman speaks German?"

"No, not a word," Mrs. Snyder clarified. Reaching into her purse, she withdrew a scrap of paper and handed it to Paige. "He reads this mystical gibberish in translation and then the poor boy doesn't know which end is up anymore." She began to cry, making horrible snuffling sounds, her pendulous lower lip quivering under the burden of grief.

Paige laid the sheet on the bed without looking at it. "You brought me something that belongs to Norman with neither his knowledge nor consent."

Mrs. Snyder slumped down on the edge of the bed and shrugged dismissively. "It's just some lame-ass poem by Rilke that he downloaded off the goddamn internet."

Paige lowered her eyes and read silently.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
Rainer Maria Rilke

"So what the hell is a church that stands somewhere in the East?" Mrs. Snyder fumed. "It's a lot of malarkey, right?" The woman rose and began pacing the room, getting more agitated by the minute. "I mean, who reads this sappy shit?"

Sometimes a man… sometimes a Noooorman…

Paige's brain was beginning to spin out of control, to free associate in perverse and unimaginable ways. Phyllis Snyder had that deleterious effect, but she opted not to share that bit of miscellany with the distraught woman. "The church in the East," Paige replied diplomatically, "probably refers to some spiritual quest or Holy Grail."

"My son's washing dishes in a greasy spoon. The Holy Grail don't figure in the grand scheme of things." When there was no immediate reply, the woman added. "In recent weeks, the boy's become morbidly depressed… mentally unstable. He's turned his back on all his friends from high school."

"And now he goes away, disappears for days at a time." Mrs. Snyder jutted her flabby lower lip in a theatrical scowl. "I say, 'Norman, I tried to reach you a dozen times over the weekend. Where the hell were you?'"

"And?"

"He says he traveled north."

North - what did that signify? North to Chelsea, which was a crummy handful of miles beyond Boston on route one, still further north to New Hampshire or Vermont, north to the polar latitudes?

"So what do you want from me, Mrs. Snyder?"

"The few times your name came up during high school, Norman always had flattering things to say about you. If he wasn't so painfully shy and tongue-tied, Norm might have…" The woman cut herself short, abruptly sallying off in another direction. "Maybe you could drop by the diner after work and give the poor boy some moral encouragement… lift his broken spirits."

Paige felt overwhelmed. With her gloom-and-doom pronouncements, Phyllis Snyder was a blight, an emotional pestilence; she sucked every molecule of nourishing oxygen from the air. "I'll go by after work tomorrow."

Mrs. Snyder reached out tentatively and squeezed her hand. "You're a kind-hearted soul." Without another word she retreated to the doorway and lumbered back down the stairs.

*****

At six-fifteen the following afternoon, Paige wandered into Ryan's Diner, took a seat at the counter and ordered coffee. A moment passed and Norman came bustling through the door from the kitchen with a plastic rack full of clean water glasses. Noticing the girl, he hurried over.

"Hi,Paige. How you doing?" The boy stood on the far side of the counter grinning good-naturedly. He had grown a full beard and let his wavy blond hair cascade down over his ears. He could have passed for a West Coast beachcomber or hippy with mystical affinities or an ax murderer. "I heard you got a plum job over at the bank."

"In the loan department," Paige stumbled over several words as though she suffered a speech impediment. "Got bumped up from head teller last August."

"Well that's just great!" In no great hurry to stack the glasses, Norman rested his fists on the countertop.

Earlier in the day, Paige had rehearsed several equally distasteful strategies for finessing the encounter. She would open with innocuous pleasantries. Once the conversation hit a snag, she would cut her loses and disappear out the door. Properly understood, the visit was nothing more than an empty formality, a bit of misplaced altruism foisted on her by a manipulative, blatantly neurotic and over-protective mother. Mrs. Snyder had resorted to emotional subterfuge, whining and wheedling until Paige agreed to do her bidding. But Norman wasn't morbidly depressed or emotionally unhinged! His sour-pickle-of-a-mother duped the girl into doing her bidding. "Actually, I'm here under false pretenses," Paige blurted.

"Excuse me?"

"I came under your mother's auspices, to talk you off the ledge… a mission of mercy to save you from a horrible fate."

She hadn't intended to say anything of the sort. Norman rolled his eyes. "Mother came to see you?" Paige nodded. "I'm so sorry! You're the fifth sacrificial lamb." Norman reached out and patted her wrist, a reassuring gesture. His expression turned reflective. "Look, I go on break in ten minutes, if you don't mind waiting around."

"I came here expressly to see you," Paige reminded him. Norman cracked a boyish grin and went off to unload the drinking glasses.

*****

"In answer to you unspoken question," Norman noted, "I'm not quite sure what I'm doing bussing tables, scrubbing dirty pots and pans. Think of it as a rite of passage."

"To a church somewhere in the East."

"Yes, something of the sort." Norman didn't seem the least bit ruffled by the literary allusion. "What with the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the trillion dollar debt, ten percent unemployment and gridlock in congress, America's falling to pieces."

"You were the smartest kid in high school. We need people like you to set things right."

Norman shook his shaggy head. "Eggheads like me only muck things up… make a calamity ten times worse."

"And scrubbing pots and pans… how does that make sense?"

"Sometimes doing nothing can be proactive." His tone remained cordial if a tad flippant. "Say, what are you doing next weekend?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm going north on a little adventure Friday afternoon and was wondering if you'd like to join me."

There was nothing salacious in his tone or body language. It was the indefinite, murky, unsettling and ill-defined 'north' that put Paige's nerves on edge. "Where exactly north?"

"Scarborough, Maine. It's on the ocean just over the line from Old Orchard Beach and the boardwalk. I walk the beaches and contemplate my navel among other things."

"It's the middle of November, a week before Thanksgiving. Isn't it freezing up there?"

"Brisk… maybe a bit chilly," he countered. "But on the plus side, room rates are dirt cheap and coastal Maine is especially scenic this time of year."

"No, but thanks for the invite."

Behind the counter, a waitress was gesturing frantically. She needed Norman to finesse a five-gallon milk carton into the chrome dispenser. "If you have a change of heart, here's my cell number." He scribbled the digits on a napkin and headed back to work.

*****

A week passed. Paige had all but forgotten about her clandestine visit to Ryan's Diner. In the kitchen the telephone clattered. "It's Mrs. Snyder," Paige's mother yelled up the stairs.

"Aw, shit!" Paige blew out her cheeks. She counted to ten and did a couple deep breathing exercises to compose herself before reaching for the phone.

"Well?" The tone was belligerent - borderline confrontational, as though the woman had expected Paige to fax a twenty-page, confidential report as soon as she had returned from the diner.

"I met with Norman last Thursday and can assure you he's not the least bit distraught about his personal situation."

"Well, he ought to be, considering what that boy put me through these past few years." The sarcasm was palpable. Without skipping a beat, the woman demanded, "So tell me what he said."

"No, certainly not! I don't appreciate cloak and dagger intrigue or being blackmailed into becoming your surrogate. Goodbye, Mrs. Snyder." She hung up the phone and promptly burst into tears.

"Your fingers are shaking something awful." Mrs. Bryant pulled her daughter close and bussed her cheek, quickly rubbing the wetness away with the heel of her hand.. "In the future when that witch calls, I'll simply tell her you're not available."

"No, it's not Mrs. Snyder's fault." Paige insisted, blotting her eyes with a napkin. "There was some ugliness at work earlier today and I'm still feeling a bit shaky."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

"No, it's over and done with." She pushed her mother away at arm's length. "What's the weather forecast?"

Mrs. Bryant eyed her uncertainly. "Chilly… below freezing by dawn but warming up midday."

Paige retreated back upstairs. She took a bath and steeped in the warm sudsy water for a half hour before finally washing her hair. Choosing a pair of flannel pajamas, she got ready for bed. Closing the bedroom door, she reached for the cell phone. "Hello, Norman? Your mother's a royal pain in the ass, but that's not why I called." Perched in a lotus position on the top of her queen-size bed, Paige took a deep breath and blew all the air out in one sinewy thread. "That escape weekend you were telling me about… is it too late to reserve a room?"

"Probably not." His tone was relaxed, nonplussed. "I'll call and see what they got." He hung up the phone. Ten minutes later, Paige's phone twittered. "I reserved two adjoining rooms on the first floor with baseboard heat. The place is rustic… no frills but very clean."

"Okay." Paige could feel her mood brightening.

"I can pick you up at the bank after work if you like."

The girl flinched. "I'm calling in sick tomorrow. Drop by my house instead."

"Be ready by five and bring a warm sweater. Evenings can get downright frigid." The line went dead.

Paige studied her hands that, in truth, had been trembling quite violently only a few hours earlier. The supple fingers lay placidly in her lap. The worst was over, thank God!

*****

During the trip north, Norman avoided downtown Boston, swinging west of the urban center. The detour added another half hour to their final destination but proved a wash by avoiding the late afternoon, home-bound traffic. Reaching the New Hampshire state line in just over an hour, they cruised through Kittery with its bargain outlets a scant twenty minutes later. Close on to seven-thirty they reached downtown Old Orchard Beach. The boardwalk and theme park that normally bustled with thousands of bikini-clad tourists was boarded up tight, not a single shop or burger joint open for business. "Where do we eat?" Paige's stomach began gurgling restively several miles back.

"There’s a seafood restaurant within walking distance of the motel." Norman took a hard right onto East Grandview and skirted the ocean. The temperature had dropped another ten degrees since leaving Boston. Shortly they passed into Scarborough. The motel was three blocks down. "I'll check in and we can grab dinner."

Paige followed Norman into the motel lobby where a lithe blonde assigned their keys and took the deposit. Norman headed back in the direction of the car. "Shouldn't we at least view the rooms?"

"The rooms are clean and tidy and small and dowdy and a bit old-fashioned. Let's eat!"

*****

At the restaurant, Paige ordered lobster, while Norman settled on the seafood medley with baked scrod, scallops, shrimp in a béarnaise sauce. "Maddie Etheridge got married last year."

"Really?" Maddie, a WASP’y blonde with translucent skin, drove a fully-loaded BMW convertible to school her senior year, courtesy of her father, a stock broker with a firm on State Street in Boston. A pampered twit, Maddie looked down her nose at anyone who didn't shop the exclusive boutiques at the Chestnut Hill Mall.

"The wedding was at the Park Plaza overlooking the Charles," Norman reported dispassionately. "Forty thousand bucks… that's what they spent on the wedding ceremony and all the trappings."

She tried to picture Maddie traipsing down the aisle in the swanky Georgian Ballroom of the Park Plaza, to the dulcet tones of a classical string ensemble. The waitress returned with a basket of warmed bread rolls and their salads. "Thirteen months and three days.”

Paige spread butter on her roll and teased the onions to the side of her salad with the tines of her fork. "And what does that represent?"

"How long the debacle-of-a-marriage lasted. Maddie and Mr. Right are presently in divorce court undoing what they did at the pricey Park Plaza." Norman speared a cherry tomato with his fork. "A hundred dollars a day - that's what it ultimately cost them." He wasn't being judgmental or vindictive. On the contrary Norman’s tone was laced with regret that Maddie's life had veered so badly off course, fallen to pieces. After the meal arrived, he leaned across the table and thumped Paige on the forearm. "I read an article on bride kidnapping."

"Okay." A trip 'north', Maddie Etheridge's train-wreck-of-a-marriage, bride kidnapping - the problem was that Paige never quite knew what Norman was going to throw at her. But then, in a perverse sort of way, that was half the fun.

"In the Asian republics such as Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, the family of a young girl sets a bride's price and expect payment from prospective suitors."

"The opposite of a dowry," Paige noted.

“If a man is poor and can't afford a wife, he may simply grab one off the street and take her home to his family, where they hold her prisoner until the fellow can meet with the parents to try to negotiate an acceptable arrangement." He stared at what was left of his baked potato. "Apparently the practice is widespread throughout patriarchal, Moslem societies where women have little say in the matter. Half of all Kyrgyz marriages include bride kidnapping. Two thirds are non-consensual."

"What about the rest?"

"Sometimes couples love each other, but the parents object to the marriage so they 'elope' under the guise of bride kidnapping."

"Romeo and Juliette," Paige interjected, "with an Asian twist." The utterly absurd notion that Norman Snyder might be planning such a daring feat flitted through her sleepy brain.

He raised a forkful of butternut squash seasoned with honey to his lips. "Yes, a perfectly good analogy."

"And how do these bride kidnappings work out?"

Sipping at his draft beer, he made a wry face. "A hell of a lot better than Maddie Etheridge's matrimonial fiasco."

*****

After supper they returned to the motel. "I'm going for a walk on the beach," Norman announced.

"It's pitch dark," Paige blustered, “with the temperature bottoming out in the low forties." The baseboard heating, which came up immediately when she adjusted the thermostat, was making a ticking sound as forced hot water coursed through the metal fins. The room was warming nicely and she wanted to go to bed.

"I won't be long." He reached for a wool jacket.

Bone-weary, she didn't want to be left alone in the no-frills cabin. "On second thought I'll join you."

A path through a cluster of salt spray roses and rubbery sea grass in back of the motel lobby led down to the beach only a few hundred feet away. Although the sun had gone down hours earlier, a harvest moon hung like a fluorescent bulb in the star-flecked easterly sky. High tide at night - neither the thought nor physical imagery had ever occurred to her before setting foot on the frigid beach. And yet, the churning, wind-swept waves accompanied them, like a soothing prayer on their late night stroll.

Wave after wave crashed down on the blackened sand. Paige felt infinitely happy. Even the chilly sea breeze couldn't dampen her newfound courage and sense of resolve. Certain things needed attending to as soon as she returned home. What had seemed insurmountable - utterly hopeless just a few hours earlier - was suddenly of no great consequence.

Norman walked a mile and a half in the damp sand before reversing direction and heading back. Feathery plumes of frosty air tumbled from his nostril. Several times he stroked his beard and she thought he might say something, but nothing came of it. When they were back at the motel, he said, "We'll breakfast around eight and then plan our day."

The room had warmed to a comfortable seventy degrees. "What do you think your mother would say if she knew I was aiding and abetting her deranged son?"

"Let's not go there," he quipped and retreated back to his own room, chuckling lightly while running a thumb and index finger along the wispy beard where it curled up under his chin.

*****

In the morning they doubled back through Old Orchard, which resembled a ghost town, and Norman veered right at a flashing yellow light. A half mile down, the parking lot at Michelle's Breakfast Nook was full to overflowing. "The savvy local yokels eat here. Breakfast special's the best deal, but you choose whatever you want."

After breakfast, he drove to the Len Libby chocolate factory, a famous tourist attraction a few miles up the road back in Scarborough. In nineteen ninety-seven, the owner of the candy store commissioned an artist to fashion a seventeen-hundred-pound, life-size moose. Sculpted from milk chocolate, the antlered beast was constructed on premises in four weeks. From when they opened the doors at nine a.m. until closing, the store ran a video showing visitors how the animal came to life

Len Libby featured dark chocolate prepared with pure butter and heavy creams. The glass display case held a huge selection of truffles stuffed with real fruit. There were marzipan honey almond, pecan buds, butterscotch squares, peanut brittle and a butter cream concoction laced with brown sugar. The girl behind the counter recommended the toffee molasses chips and Bordeaux dark nougat. Paige bought an assortment of chocolates, taffy and fudge.

Back in the center of town, the boardwalk was all locked up for the season. Norman indicated an elderly woman sprawled on a beach chair. "That's Mrs. Bryant over there with the two Lhasa Apsos. Her husband died a few years back. She has grown children in Bangor but prefers her independence." The lapdogs were running amok in the shallows. Norman waved and Mrs. Bryant returned the greeting.

Paige suddenly felt weary. Regardless how many new adventures Norman had up his sleeve, they would be heading back in less than a day - he to a dead-end, meaningless job and her to…

Paige wasn't terribly sure what she was heading back to, and the short-lived, manic confidence of the previous night had dissipated, gone to seed. "What's the matter?" Norman demanded.

She was standing next to him with her head down crying, the wetness dripping on the powdery sand. "A customer came to the bank looking for a mortgage she could hardly afford, and I turned her down. The woman had lost a good paying job around the beginning of the year and only recently found new work. There were outstanding bills… maxed out credit cards. She was a single parent, head of household and the loan was too risky."

Up ahead a man with a Great Dane was heading in the direction of Mrs. Bryant, and her dogs began barking like twin lunatics. "You did the right thing. Nobody could fault you for that."

"The branch manager overruled my decision, authorizing the questionable mortgage. He didn't care that the woman's finances were stretched to the breaking point." She swiped at her tears. "He set a quota for sub-prime loans that the branch had to meet. The ends justified the means."

"She lost the house?"

Paige shook her head. "I should have resigned before he processed the paperwork… told him he was a money-grubbing shithead. Should have but I didn't. And now I'm here walking the beach by moonlight and gallivanting off to Len Libby's to ogle the seventeen hundred pound, life-size chocolate moose."

"Welcome to the real world." His tone had lost its flippant edge, and a sober lucidity overspread his features. "So what are you going to do?"

"Resign on Monday - no notice. My career in finance is finished." She began to giggle uncontrollably. "Maybe when the dust settles, I could become your understudy at the diner."

"In all seriousness, Ryan's is looking for a waitress three to eleven. I could put in a good word."

"I might just do that… at least until I get my nerves back under control and decide what I want to be when I eventually grow up." As she was standing there with the lapdogs in the distance, surf hurling relentless waves scudding across the sand and cawing seagulls circling overhead, a fragment of the Rilke poem floated across Paige's mind:

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

Reaching out, she placed a hand on his chest. "Why haven't you tried to kiss me?"

Norman's eyes narrowed. "Until a moment ago, I didn't know any upwardly mobile, banking executives who dated dishwashers."

*****

Two hundred yards away, the dogs were becoming fretful and ill-behaved, yipping, yapping and lurching about aimlessly. Mrs. Bryant decided to head home. She folded the beach chair and leashed the dogs before turning one last time to wave at the twosome, but, unfortunately, the young couple was preoccupied and missed the gracious gesture.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 09.08.2011

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