Wuss.
“And he wears glasses.”
Four-eyes.
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But if I did, McKenzie, I’d keep it to myself.”
“Why?”
“Why? So you won’t go over there and slap the guy around. I gotta tell you, that’s not the way to a girl’s heart, if you know what I mean.”
“Jenness, would I do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know. Would you?”
Good question.
I pushed the beer away.
“Bourbon,” I said. “No ice.”
Jenness frowned at me.
“Don’t give up, McKenzie. So what if Nina dates this guy? It’s a onetime deal. In a couple of days she’ll cool off and the two of you will get back together.”
“You think so?”
“I’m betting on it.”
“Make it a double,” I said.
When people ask where I’m from, I answer St. Paul. If the question comes from someone who actually lives in St. Paul, I tell them I’m from Merriam Park and they know immediately what I’m talking about. True, I actually live in the suburbs. When I came into my money I bought a house for my father and me that I thought was in St. Paul’s St. Anthony Park neighborhood, only to discover too late that I was on the wrong side of the street, that I had accidentally moved to Falcon Heights. Still, I’ll always be a Merriam Park boy at heart.
St. Paul is a city of neighborhoods. There are seventeen in all not counting the neighborhoods within neighborhoods that are loosely defined by parks and churches, and the attitudes of the people who live in them can best be described as parochial. Take the Greater Eastside, an island between Interstate 35E and the City of Maplewood. It’s a neighborhood of working-class people and immigrants who tend to stay close to home. The big joke there is that the city ends at Lexington Parkway, which cuts St. Paul roughly in half, because no Eastsider has any reason to go farther west. At the same time, you have the folks who live in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood, just west of Lexington Parkway. They believe they’re the intellectual and cultural center of the city for no better reason than that three liberal arts colleges—Macalester, St. Thomas, and St. Catherine—just happen to be located within its boundaries. And if you think these people like each other, you haven’t been around for one of our more hotly contested mayoral races.
As for Merriam Park, it was developed in about 1885 by John Merriam as a commuter suburb since at the time it was located midway between what was then downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis. It attracted upper-middle-class residents because he insisted that every house built there cost at least $1,500. Many of those homes are still standing. So is Longfellow School, where I chipped a tooth falling off a playground slide, and Merriam Park Community Center, where I discovered hockey, baseball, and girls, not necessarily in that order. As for our attitude toward St. Paul’s other sixteen neighborhoods, it’s simple: If we ignore them, maybe they’ll go away.
I had two more drinks at Rickie’s—which, by the way, is located in the Summit Hill neighborhood—and drove to Bobby Dunston’s house. Bobby lives directly across from Merriam Park Community Center in a home that he and Shelby bought from Bobby’s parents when they retired, the house Bobby grew up in. I knew it as well as my own childhood home, an old Colonial with an open wraparound porch. Despite the heat, Bobby and Shelby were sitting on the porch when I drove up, sipping lemonade, looking like an old married couple in a Norman Rockwell painting.
We tend to lose our friends as we grow older. Without the glue of shared experiences—school, sports, the job—they drift away despite our best intentions to hold them close. Instead, we turn to family. Only I had no family, unless you count an aunt and uncle who send me Christmas cards from Colorado and a few distant cousins I’ve met maybe twice in the past three and a half decades. Bobby, Shelby, and their daughters were my family and my heirs.
I parked and made my way up the sidewalk. As I reached the porch Bobby said, “How’s the Audi running?”
“Okay, but it hasn’t been the same since the snowplow ran me off the highway.”
“At least the insurance company paid for the damages.”
Bobby was on his feet. I shook his hand.
“Those damages, sure, but they wouldn’t pay to fix the bullet holes.”
“I can’t believe your policy didn’t cover that.”
Shelby was also standing. She winced at the word “bullets,” but then she always was a worrier. I hugged her and kissed her cheek.
“Where were you the other day?” she asked. “The girls wanted to go over to your house and play with the ducks.”
“Listen. You guys have a key. You’re welcome to come over anytime. Feed the ducks. Feed yourselves. Use the mini-donut and sno-cone machines. Hell, if you’re alone, use one of the bedrooms.”
