The Rules of Love & Grammar Page 17

  I follow Mitch into the workroom, where a guy who I’m guessing is in his mid-twenties tinkers with a green Cannondale suspended from one of the repair stands. His long, blond hair is sun-bleached in places to the color of white corn; his green Downey’s Pickles T-shirt sports a drawing of a pickle jar. He’s pulling a wiry cable from one of the hand brakes. I glance around the room, at the boxes and bins, the rims and frames overhead, the table of tools and parts. It feels as though the mess and clutter have grown overnight. Or maybe it’s just worse than I remember.

  “Kevin?” Mitch says.

  The blond guy turns. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

  “This is Grace. She’s the girl who’s going to be working here for a couple of weeks.” He pauses. “Organizing us.” He glances at me, and I feel a sudden sense of responsibility. I need to do a really good job on this.

  “Oh, right,” Kevin says.

  “So I told her you’d show her what’s here.” He motions across the room. “Explain how things are set up. She can watch you work on some bikes, too. Then we’ll go from there.”

  “Yeah, okay. Sure,” Kevin says, and Mitch leaves.

  Kevin looks me up and down, and I realize I’m way overdressed. I should be wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, like the guys are. I put my notebook on the table and stash my handbag on the shelf underneath.

  “So, what bike shops have you worked at?” he asks.

  “Bike shops? Me? Oh, no. I haven’t worked at any. I mean, this is my first.”

  “Oh. Are you a racer or something, then?”

  I laugh. “No, I’m not a racer.”

  “But you ride a lot.” He says this in a hopeful tone, and I feel bad about disappointing him.

  “Uh, not technically,” I say. And then I add, “Although I did sign up for the Dorset Challenge.” I don’t need to tell him I’m probably not going to ride in it. That I must have been out of my mind when I signed up to ride fifty miles.

  He peers at me. “Then how do you know about bikes?”

  I start to line up the cans of spray paint on the worktable. “Well, I don’t exactly know about bikes. But I do know about organizing things. I’m pretty good at that. And I really think I can help here, make it easier for you guys to do your work.”

  “Hmm,” he says, opening one of the brakes of the Cannondale and threading the cable through it. “So why are you working here, anyway? I mean, if you’re not into bikes?”

  I throw an empty spray can into the trash. “Scooter and I are doing a trade.”

  “What kind of trade?”

  “Scooter said if I worked here for a couple of weeks, he’d have my bike restored. It’s that Schwinn over there.” I point to Renny’s bike, leaning with three others against the wall.

  “Oh, that one. Yeah, I was checking it out yesterday. It’s cool. Pretty old. What year is it?”

  “’Seventy-seven.”

  “Was it your dad’s or something?”

  I walk to the bike and run my hand over the word Paramount on the top tube. “No. It belonged to my sister. She died when we were young.”

  Kevin looks up. “Oh man. Sorry.” He looks away. “Really sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I say, staring at the deflated tires and rusty spokes.

  “It’s going to need a lot of work.”

  “I know.”

  He shifts the Cannondale’s gears with one hand and uses his other hand to pedal the bike. “Just give me a minute to finish this, and I’ll try to explain what’s here.” He removes the pedals with a wrench, and the bike looks odd, like someone missing a pair of feet.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m replacing the cassette.”

  From the worktable, he takes an object that looks like a shiny metal funnel with rows of tabs on the outside. “This is a cassette.” He hands it to me. “It’s also called a cog set. It works with the derailleur.”

  I turn the cassette over, running my fingers along its bumpy surface.

  “I know what the derailleur is. It’s the thing that switches the gears.”

  “Uh, sort of,” he says, taking the cassette from me. “Okay, see, even though people call them gears, they’re actually sprockets—these things here.” He rubs his thumb over the metal tabs. “Because they’re driven by a chain.”

  “Sprockets. Chains.” I need to remember this. I jot down a couple of things in the spiral notebook. Then I rub a spot of dirt off my pants.

  “You know,” he says, “white pants aren’t too good in a bike shop. Jeans are better.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

  He flicks his hair from his face. “And you might want to spend a little time learning about how a bike works. It’ll make it easier for you.”

  “Do you have any suggestions?” I can hear Mitch and A.J. out front, talking to customers.

  “Sure. There are some dynamite YouTube videos. I can forward them to you if you want.” He pulls a dog-eared paperback from the pocket of his jeans and hands it to me. “And you might want to check this out.”

  “You and Your Bike. Catchy title,” I say as I flip through the pages, stopping at diagrams of bicycles, sketches of tools, tables of God knows what. “This looks pretty thorough.” I don’t think I could ever learn all of this, and I’m hoping I won’t need to, but, at the same time, I’m touched by his thoughtfulness.

  “It’s a little worn out,” he says. “But the pictures and drawings are decent, and it’s a pretty short book.”

  “Brevity is good.”

  “What?”

  “Um, being brief,” I say. “Being short. It’s a good thing.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  “Thanks, Kevin,” I say. “I really appreciate this. I’ll give it back to you when I’m done.” I smile, and he starts to blush.

  “Dude,” he says. “You can keep it.”

  “I’m going to Eastbrook to drop off a bike,” Mitch tells me as he walks into the workroom later in the morning. “I thought you could come with me. I’ll be driving over part of the route for the Dorset Challenge. You can see what it looks like.”

  I don’t really care about seeing the route for a ride I’m probably not going to do. On the other hand, he’s being nice. I shouldn’t turn him down. I look at the blue notebook, filled with my scribbles. “Are you sure you don’t want me here working?”

  “You will be working. We’re delivering a bike.” He jingles the keys. “Come on. Let’s go.” I follow him as he wheels a teal-blue beach bike out to the parking lot and loads it into the Bike Peddler’s van. “Hold on,” he says, and I watch him go through the back door to the shop and return with two bottles of iced tea.

  I step into the van, trying to avoid the junk on the floor—empty coffee cups, half-filled water bottles, catalogs, plastic grocery-store bags, and a baseball cap with Falcon Sports on the brim. I take a seat, tossing the cap into the back and nudging the cups and bottles away with my foot.

  “You know,” I say, looking down, “you might want to throw away all this trash.” I realize too late that I shouldn’t have said this. He’ll probably have me clean the van next.

  He pulls out of the parking lot. “You always seem to be concerned about the state of other people’s stuff. First it’s our flyers, then the workroom, now the van. What’s next?” He peers at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Sorry. I just think there’s a lot to be said for being neat. And organized.”

  “I can see why a job correcting computer translations, or whatever you said you did, is perfect for you. You get to fix all the mistakes.”

  I think he’s getting back at me for insulting his van. “That’s not all I did. I wrote promotional materials, product manuals, things like that.” He doesn’t say anything. “I don’t have the skill to be a poet or a novelist or that kind of writer,” I say, jumping in to fill the silence. “There are practical considerations, you know.” Something jabs my thigh, and I realize I’m sitting on a small pair of pliers. �
�Anyway, I think being organized makes it easier to get things done. If everybody was organized, the world would be a better place.”

  Mitch gives me a skeptical look. “Why would the world be a better place?”

  “Because things would move more efficiently, more quickly.”

  We stop at Thistle Lane to let a man walking three Irish setters cross the street. Mitch rolls down the window and rests his elbow on the sill. “Don’t you think the world moves fast enough already?”

  “Maybe it’s fast enough, but it’s not orderly enough.”

  “So you think there should be order for its own sake,” he says, stepping on the gas again.

  “Well, sure. We need rules. Rules are the mark of a civilized society. Without them, everything collapses.”

  “Look, I’m not advocating anarchy here. I’m just…Well, haven’t you ever heard that saying If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun?”

  “Of course I have. Katharine Hepburn said it. I thought you didn’t like Hollywood.”

  “She’s different. She was her own woman. She was never the Hollywood type. You know, she lived in Connecticut, not that far from here.”

  “Sure, I know.” Any self-respecting resident of Dorset knows where Katharine Hepburn lived.

  “Anyway, she was right.” He glances at the floor, where I’ve somehow managed to find a place for my feet amid the clutter. “So if the van’s a little messy, well, okay. And if the workroom’s a little messy—”

  “A little? The workroom’s more than a little messy. Maybe you just don’t see it, but if you guys kept that place neater, I guarantee you’d get a lot more done.”

  Mitch doesn’t say anything. He turns onto Plum Ridge, and as we head away from Dorset, it feels as though the temperature in the van has dropped a few degrees.

  “Look,” I say, “I didn’t mean to criticize.”

  He stares straight ahead. “It’s fine.”

  But I know it’s not. I can tell by his voice. “Okay, I guess I did mean to criticize. I’m sorry. Sometimes I get a little carried away.”

  “So you said the day you corrected the flyers.”

  I feel my face getting warm.

  “But,” he adds, “I accept your apology.” He’s quiet for a minute, and then he says, “In fact, I wanted to apologize to you for last night. At Ernie’s.”

  I didn’t expect this.

  “I was out of line,” he says. “I know that. I was just frustrated. My dad loaned money to someone yesterday, and I know he’ll never see a penny of it. People take advantage of him because he’s such a good guy. But that didn’t have anything to do with you. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “It’s okay.” I roll down my window. “And you’re right. Your dad is a good guy. I can see why you’d want to protect him.”

  The breeze catches my hair, sending it dancing around my face. The road narrows, and we cross an estuary, where water snakes through tall, yellow-green marsh grass. A giant white egret takes off in front of us, wings extended, long legs dangling beneath its slender body. I grab my handbag and hunt for my phone so I can take a picture, so I can remember what an egret looks like when I’m back in the city. By the time I find it, the bird is gone, a speck against the sapphire sky.

  We leave the bike with Mrs. Rudolph, a woman in her forties who bought it for her twelve-year-old daughter. On the way back, Mitch makes a detour to Miller’s Orchards so he can get a peach pie for Scooter. As we turn into the driveway, the van wheels rumbling over dirt, I try to remember the last time I was here—five or six years ago, maybe. I came with my parents to get their Christmas tree, something we always used to do when Renny and I were young.

  Mitch parks in front of the store, a long, red building with white trim. Clay pots, bursting with purple and white impatiens, form a border along the wall. Behind the store are one hundred and fifty acres of apple trees, row upon row of assorted varieties.

  We step inside the store, and I stare at the long tables packed with bushels and crates of corn and cucumbers, tomatoes and string beans, peppers and zucchini. There are endless boxes of strawberries and nectarines and packages of rhubarb. And there are pies—cherry and blueberry and peach and raspberry, with flaky, golden crusts—and freshly baked coffee cakes with crumbly toppings.

  Shelves crammed with jars of local honey in varying amber hues, and glass bottles of dark, mysterious-looking maple syrup, catch my eye. There are cupboards overflowing with fruit butters and jams and jellies and boxes of fudge. Framed prints of country scenes—red barns, covered bridges, horses in fields, hills of sunflowers—adorn the walls, along with an assortment of painted signs for sale: No Whining, It’s Good to Be Queen, Grandpa Knows Best, Bad Decisions Make Great Stories. I don’t remember the signs or the prints or the other home-decor items I see, but everything else looks pretty much the same.

  Mitch selects a pie from the table and carries it to the counter. A woman with plump, pink cheeks packs the pie in a box and wraps the box with red and white checked ribbon. Outside, Mitch puts the pie in the van, but he doesn’t get in. Instead, he stands quietly, gazing at the sloping hills of the orchards.

  “It’s pretty here,” he says finally.

  I nod. “It sure is.” Somewhere behind us, a bird sends a three-note song into the air, and another bird answers.

  “You know, only two different families have owned this property during the past two hundred years.”

  “Really. That’s amazing.”

  “During the Revolutionary War, the owners had two sons in the militia, and both of them were killed.”

  “You’re quite the local historian.”

  “Not really. Just bits and pieces. Arcane stuff.” A man walks out of the store carrying a grocery bag, corn husks peeking from the top. “Do you want to take a walk? Up there? See the view from the top?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. “I haven’t been in the orchards in a long time.”

  We make our way across the parking lot to where the grass begins, and after a hundred feet or so, we enter a wide path between two rows of trees, where the land starts to slope gently upward. Green leaves and tiny, yellow-green apples cloak the trees’ branches, and fallen apples lie scattered on the ground. Most are no bigger than acorns, but I know in a couple of months, maybe sooner, some of the apples will be ripe enough to pick.

  “We used to come here a lot,” I say. “When I was little.” I reach out and touch a branch as we walk by. “Apple picking in September, pumpkins in October, Christmas trees in December. Did you come here as a kid?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “My dad used to bring me.”

  “I liked apple picking the best,” I say. “When the fall weather was crisp but the sun was still warm.”

  He nods, and we continue up the slope. Birds chatter, their songs piercing the blue silence. I think about Renny and myself and my parents, riding over these hills in the hay wagon, a long, red cart with rails on the sides and hay on the floor, pulled by a throaty tractor. The driver, an old, whiskery man with a red cap and a plaid shirt, would stop at each orchard where the apples were in season. Riders would jump off to pluck apples from the trees and scoop them from the ground and walk back to the store or catch the wagon on its return trip. McIntosh, Macoun. Honeycrisp, Red Delicious. Cameo, Jonagold. Renny and I used to study the people in the hay wagon and ask each other, If they were apples, what varieties would they be?

  Mitch stops and turns and looks down the path. I stop as well. “I used to love the hay wagon,” he says, as if he’s read my mind.

  “Me too.” I gaze down the hill at the rows of trees, and I can almost see the wagon making its round, almost hear children laughing.

  “I remember coming here once on a school field trip,” Mitch says. “I think it was third grade.”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “Howe Elementary,” he says.

  “Oh my God. You went to Howe? Me too, but I don’t remember seeing you there.”

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nbsp; “I don’t think our paths would have crossed. Don’t forget, I was in fourth grade when you were in kindergarten.”

  I have a sudden flash of myself as a kindergartener—straggly hair and a couple of crooked front teeth—and I give a sheepish smile. It’s doubtful any boys would have wanted to hang out with me. “So then, you were at Baxter Middle School,” I say as we start up the hill again.

  He nods. “Oh, yeah. Was Mrs. Hawes still the principal when you were there?”

  “Yes. She was nice. But I couldn’t stand Mr. Sulio.”

  “The assistant principal?” Mitch asks. “He was mean. Maybe they had a good cop–bad cop thing going.”

  I laugh and watch an oriole hop across the path ahead of us, its bright-orange plumage a beacon in the grass. “You must have gone to Dorset High, then.”

  “No,” Mitch says. “Actually, I went to Thatcher.”

  “Thatcher?” This surprises me. I didn’t realize his connection to the school ran so deep. “So you were a student there, too?”

  “Yeah, my aunt wanted me to go. She paid for it.”

  “That’s very nice.”

  “Well, she kind of felt she needed to step in.”

  I wonder what he means by that, but he doesn’t explain, and something about his tone tells me I shouldn’t ask.

  “My sister, Renny, loved this place,” I say as we walk through speckled patches of shade cast by the trees. “When we were kids, she used to run up and down the hills for what seemed like hours. My father wrote a poem about it.”

  “I’m sorry about your sister,” Mitch says. “My dad told me.”

  “Thanks.” I pick up an apple from the ground. There’s a dark spot on one side where it looks as though it’s starting to rot.

  “How old were you when she died?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “What happened?” he asks, startling me with the directness of his question. People usually couch the query or wait for me to share something more on my own.

  “She died in an auto accident. But I guess your dad probably told you that.”

  “Yeah, he did.”