She touches the top of her head. Your crowning glory was one of the few compliments Ursula granted her. Her crowning glory has stayed glossy and thick through thick and thin—the roller coaster of ten pounds up, ten pounds down, adolescent acne and adolescent angst, pregnancy failures, and one unfortunate perm. On a medical spreadsheet of debit and credit, the loss of her hair would result in little gain.
“I feel fine now,” she protests.
“Glad to hear it. Though that dry cough of yours is worrisome.”
“It’s February. In Maine!”
Exasperated, he frowns. “You’ve got an answer for everything. Did you ever consider law school?”
“And deprive Passamaquoddy of Paul Bunyans?”
“Oh, Annie,” he sighs. “Well, at the very least, please stay away from researching symptoms on the Internet. Even my most stalwart patients tend to overidentify. Not to mention all the misinformation out there.”
She remembers her obstetrician’s moratorium on Googling stillborn babies and multiple miscarriages. “Okay,” she agrees. “See how I’m taking your advice,” she adds. She thrusts out her forehead as if she expects him to stick a star on it.
Despite himself, he smiles. “And if you won’t talk to Sam, then talk to your mother.”
“My mother!”
“She is your mother, Annie.”
A mother missing the maternal gene. Annie can just picture Ursula’s reaction. How can you do this to me? How can I lose a child? She’ll wail and prostrate herself on her fringed chaise longue and then order a wardrobe of black mourning clothes from Saks.
“If you were my daughter …” Dr. Buckley begins.
“With all due respect, Dr. Buckley, I’m not.”
She offers him a concession, vowing to schedule a visit a week from now.
In return, he promises to water his schefflera plant. “And don’t wait too long to tell Sam” is his parting command.
* * *
Of course she won’t tell Sam.
Not yet. She’s got three weeks until her appointment, three weeks until an official diagnosis.
First, she has to make sure he’s going to be okay. First, she has to write the manual. And when it’s finished, as soon as it’s finished, then she can begin to train him according to its rules.
Chapter Seven
Annie sits at her desk. She’s taken the day off. Earlier this morning, she stopped by the shop, where Megan was scrubbing out the large industrial coffee urn. Sam was at the bakery picking up rolls, Megan explained.
“Do you need me to help?” Annie asked.
“No, I’ve got everything under control. It’s fun being in charge. By the way, I’ve been discussing updates with Sam,” Megan went on. “Like a cappuccino machine. Make the place more hip.”
“Hip won’t sell in Passamaquoddy, I’m afraid,” Annie said, despite having entertained similar thoughts of improvement herself.
“Why not try? I’ve got tons of ideas. Scrabble tournaments. Karaoke nights. We could run poetry readings. How cool would that be?”
The only poet in town Annie knows is the self-named Longfellow Clark, who peddles his “oeuvre” door to door, each stanza written in a cursive so spidery and dense you can’t even read it. Though she owns twelve volumes, they could all be the same poem—how would she tell? “Let’s not shake the boat,” Annie insisted. “The Paul Bunyan is perfect as it is.”
“I couldn’t agree more. But”—Annie recognized the familiar set of her goddaughter’s jaw, just like Rachel’s when protesting an injustice—“there’s nothing wrong with thinking ahead.”
“People around here don’t like change,” Annie said. Except for a coat of paint, her flea-market finds on the walls, more local baked goods, a new refrigerator, and replacements for the chipped mugs, she and Sam have hardly tinkered with the original Doughboys template—a policy that food reviewers, local businesses, customers, and tourists applaud.
“We’re not talking about adding piped-in Buddhist chants. Or orchids and candles and serving, you know, like, caviar and fifty shades of kale,” Megan said.
Annie switched the subject. “Sam reports you’re doing a great job.”
Megan filled the urn with water and plugged it in. “Annie, I owe you and Sam big-time for hiring me. I was way, way sick of school.”
“You may think that now; however …”
“Mom only agreed to the gap year because I’m the youngest in my class.”
“Because you’re so smart. Because you skipped a grade.”
“As if smart counts in high school.” Megan rolled her eyes. “Right. Okay. I promised Mom I’d go back in the fall. But working here is way more real.” She turned to the man who’d just sidled up to the counter, Ray Beaulieu, one of the indistinguishable regulars in anorak and work boots who can extend two cups of coffee into a six-hour marathon. “I’ll have a fresh pot up and going in a minute, Ray,” she said.
“Best decision you made, Annie, was to hire this kid here.”
Annie remembered a newspaper piece about a group of senior citizens who hung out all day at a burger joint in Queens, nursing cold coffee and free water, monopolizing the tables and causing lost revenue. The owners wanted to find a way to kick them out without being labeled ageists. She gazed at Ray Beaulieu chuckling with his cohorts. Not that you could ever kick anybody out in Maine, except for the drunk and disorderly.
“We’re not Queens,” Sam had pointed out when she showed him the article. “Besides, the old-timers give us local color.”
Back in the sandwich shop, Megan pushed a mug of hot coffee across the counter.
“No, thanks,” Annie said, “I’ve got stuff to do.”
“Take the afternoon off. That cough sounds nasty. I’ve already started the sandwiches. We’re in awesome shape. I’m working the whole shift today.”
“Won’t Sam need …?”
“He’ll be fine with it. Any problem, he can blame me.” Megan paused, brightened. “Hey, how about this for a proposal? A date night here at Annie’s?”
* * *
Now Annie turns on her computer. There’s nothing wrong with thinking ahead, Megan argued. But, let’s face it, how far ahead is Annie going to be able to think? She opens Microsoft Word. She can’t dwell on the bad stuff. She’s going to write the manual today. She’s postponed her appointment with Dr. Buckley to start it. As with most dreaded tasks, once she gets to work, she’s sure she’ll feel better. She’s been scribbling notes on Post-its, which she’s stuck in the pockets of her jeans, in her purse, in her jewelry box—ideas for the list she’s about to compose. But when she gathers them all together, arranges and smooths them out, they’re as indecipherable as one of Longfellow Clark’s rhymed couplets. Handwriting may be a lost art for those who grew up in the digital age, yet these smears of black ink are Rorschach tests of her mental state, a testament to a tangled mess of tangled thoughts.
No matter. She’ll write without a safety net, the way she’s been living ever since the diagnosis. Lucky she’s not in school anymore. No need to structure a formal outline indexed with Roman numerals and subsidiary letters. Or perhaps she should, to add verisimilitude. The important thing is to set it all down on the page. She can refine it later if she needs to.