C Hribal - The Company Car

“Cute kid,” I said. “And so serious. A boy after my own heart.”

“Yeah, he’s sensitive,” she said. “I’m hoping he grows out of it, but I think you pretty much have to take them as they come.”

“My mother once told me, ‘Emmie, you’re the most sensitive, highest-strung of all my children. You’re going to feel higher highs and lower lows than any of them. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”

“Did you?”

“He will, if that’s what you mean.”

Dorie had a slug of beer. “It’s not. I was asking you.”

“Not really.”

She smiled. “I didn’t think so.”

We both turned to look at Woolie. “His father’s in Greece,” she said, as though that explained everything.

“On business?”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him since the conception.”

“He run out on you?”

She laughed. “Nobody runs out on me. I left when my mom died.”

I didn’t know what to say except “Sorry.” She waved that away. Everybody in town had known what her mom was like. Dorie had been raised mostly by her grandmother. After a minute’s silence Dorie raised her beer. “So, what do you do?”

“Work at a bookstore for an old guy with a bad hip who wants to move to Florida. I run the place, and he putters around.”

“What’s keeping him here?”

“Books.”

“What, he can’t bear to part with them?”

“He can’t unload them.”

“What’s the name of this place?” she asked and I told her: “Rare and Used Books. We Buy, Sell, Trade.”

“Catchy title. No wonder he’s packing them in.”

A week later she came to the shop, poked around for a bit, then asked, “You free for lunch?”

We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant on Water Street. “So, Czabek, why don’t you buy that musty old store from that musty old guy and go into business for yourself?”

I stood and dog-eared my pockets. Then I sat down again.

“Money,” she said, “is not a problem. The question is, can you make a go of a bookstore like that?”

“I don’t think I’d want to own a bookstore like that.”

“What kind would you want to own?”

I told her. One that sold CDs as well as books, because the two places I liked to linger in were bookstores and record stores. And new stuff, because the margin was better. And there should be stationery, and coffee and pastries, and a decent kids’ section. A place where people could just hang out. “More of an intellectual houseboat,” I said, “less like a mausoleum.”

“And you think you can make a go of this?”

“With the right people, sure. I’d want people who feel about books as I do—that opening a box of books from a publisher or a distributor is like Christmas morning. You never know what you’re going to get, but you know it’s going to be special. You don’t even look at the invoice until you hold them in your hands, turn them over, sniff them, feel the tangible charge of yes ! by God, yes ! This is a book ! With a staff like that, you’ll get all the customers you want.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Czabek. I’ve got about eight or ten houses I own that are in need of some serious rehabbing, not to mention my own. You help me with the subcontracting—working with all the independent contractors, making sure stuff is actually happening when it’s supposed to, and pitching in with some grunt labor when it’s not—and I help you with financing your little bookstore. What do you say?”

“I say, Why would you be doing this for me given that I don’t know squat about houses?”

“I like you, Czabek. You’re the first person who noticed I had a kid who didn’t get that Christ-she-has-a-kid look in his eye.” She poked around her vegetables and rice with her chopsticks. “Plus I’m pregnant, and in about six months I’m not going to be feeling like doing a whole hell of a lot.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t ‘oh’ me, Ace. You interested or not?”

We became partners, then lovers, then parents. I would rather not go into what I felt making love to a woman with another man’s child already in her belly, and there was an unspoken rule between us that I was not to ask questions re: the fathers of her—our—first two children. She had taken me on as a partner, and my silence was part of the deal. We fixed houses, had Henry, opened the bookstore (Feed Your Head, my choice, was nixed in favor of Van Loon’s, the name of her cat), got married, had Sophie. To keep pace with the competition, we eventually opened two more stores and a website. In hindsight, I can see that was a mistake. The website does great with textbook sales, but two of the three stores are floundering and threatening to take down the third; like my father, I’m a victim of my own exuberance.

I also made the mistake of hiring people who were too much like me. If my staff had their druthers, they’d stay in the back indefinitely, opening boxes, marveling at their contents, taking their 10 percent on their greatest treasures, and scooting for home. I have to urge them to wait on people, to take their turns at the cash register. “You’re customer service representatives,” I tell them. “ Customer service! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” And my best employee, Jillian Kowalska, a single mom with two kids, early thirties, somebody who really needs this job, tells me, “This place would run a whole lot smoother if we didn’t have any customers.” “Well,” I tell her, “you just may get your wish.”

Dorie was busy, too. Tireless. Her days were spent working with tenants, finding buyers for her homes, meeting with folks from neighborhood associations. She had Veedon Park on its way to being “an urban success story,” the kind featured in city magazines about neighborhoods on the rebound.

Then, a few years ago, everything changed. Her businesses were fine, but nothing else was. She turned thirty-nine, her father died, and she’d about reached the end of what she hoped to accomplish in the neighborhood. All of this coincided with Sophie turning four and going to half-day kindergarten. We had done the domesticated bliss thing since before Henry, but now Dorie was restless. She mulled a run for city council but decided not to. She spent a lot of time staring out the window. Sighing. She’d look at me, and there was something in her eyes I didn’t want to acknowledge was disappointment.

Her thirty-ninth birthday was one of those watershed events better spouses than I know to roll with. She bought a road bike and a mountain bike on consecutive weekends. She started hanging out at REI and the various cycle shops around town. Bookmarked all the online gear and touring sites. Pored over catalogs and magazines and cycling books. Found new friends. Did not seem particularly interested in introducing them to me. Our front hall became a staging area. For training runs she’d bike eighty miles to Madison, stay overnight, then bike back the next day. This anniversary trip for my parents is the first time in months that we’ve been in the car together for more than twenty minutes.

Dorie marks her place in her magazine with her finger, stares out the window. She asks again, “What was it like for your mom, I wonder?” Then she answers her own question. “If it’d been me, I’d have gone crazy.”

We were prosperity babies, but even prosperity has a price. Our mother recognized that when, just moments removed from her victory over the lascivious border guard, she burst into tears and our father had to pull off the road to console her. “It’s over,” our mother kept repeating as she wept. “It’s over, it’s all over.”

What did this mean? Our father didn’t have a clue. How could he? The most he’d had to deal with our mother during the last four years was a week or two on his leaves, and most of that time was spent in bed making little Czabeks. Billy Ray King would have been pleased.