You Wandered Down the Lane

I sat at the bar and ordered a double cheese burger, fries, and a beer. St. Pauli Girl on tap! I'd almost finished my pint when the food arrived. The bartender drew another without my asking. "This one's on me. I don't get much call for The Girl, and you still looked thirsty."

That was encouraging. It looked like I'd found my fount of bartenderly wisdom. I decided to draw his curiosity, maybe even concern. I finished my food, then slowly sipped my second beer, morosely staring at the bar top or the bottles in the backbar. It took almost half an hour, but he finally came by when just a couple of inches were left in my glass.

"Another?"

"No..." I tried to sound lost and alone. "I don't think I'd better. I can't drink away my problems."

"That's for damn sure, but I'd be out of a job if everybody felt that way." He looked to make sure there were no unserved customers. "What's wrong, for fuck's sake? No, wait, lemme guess. Your wife is fooling around, you don't know what to do, and you want somebody to tell you how to handle it."

"That's...amazing! How'd you know?"

"Easy. You were wearing a wedding ring until a day or two ago, your clothes look like you slept in them, you're acting like your dog just died or your pickup crapped out. You're too old to cry and too young to know it probably can't be fixed."

He shrugged. "I only see it once or twice a day. More on weekend afternoons."

That didn't sound wise, it sounded depressing as hell. My disappointment must've showed.

"I don't even know you, so how the hell am I supposed to help? I'm only 36 and I'm 0 for 3 in marriage. Every fucking one of them swore they loved me, promised to be true, and every fucking one of them cheated. I thought I learned and was getting better at choosing, but the last one banged my best man in the handicapped pisser at the reception."

He went back to the taps and brought me another pint. "Here. This one's on me, too. You earned it. We got it backwards, you had to listen to my sad story." He started to step away to serve another customer, then leaned down and spoke quietly.

"The band starts in 20 minutes. Get a table before they fill up and watch the tits and ass jiggle on the dance floor. Who knows, you might get lucky." With a swipe of his bar rag over the ring from my glass, he was off to dispense more homespun wisdom to some other poor little lamb who had lost his way.

I CARRIED MY PINT to an empty table next to the dance floor. While the band set up, the place started filling. As the quickly gathering crowd had implied, they were pretty good. The bartender was right: some of the tits and asses wiggling and jiggling to the music were definitely worth watching.

I was so absorbed in my critical observations that I didn't see her approach. "Well, aren't you ever going to ask me to dance?"

She was a nicely put together blond on the shortish side of medium, mid-to-late twenties. I'd never seen her before, but she was acting like we were old friends. Her eyes sort of twinkled when she giggled, and she giggled a lot. I couldn't tell whether she was drunk or maybe just a little crazy. Or both.

She was dressed for a fun night out dancing, but not slutty—skirt just above her knees, loose blouse with a few buttons undone, not much makeup, little teardrop ruby earrings that looked like...drops of blood? That struck me as an odd touch.

I stammered a bit, but before I could say anything coherent she flashed a wicked smile, then leaned down and grabbed my hand that wasn't holding the glass. Her blouse gapped enough that I couldn't help but notice the lacy-edged swell of her breasts. She noticed my noticing.

"Oh come on, you know you want to do it. So do I." With that, she yanked me up so fast I almost spilled my beer, then dragged me out on the dance floor, giggling all the while. When she put both arms around my neck and plastered her body against me, I wondered just what the "it" was she wanted to do. One of my heads found that line of thought disconcerting, but the other one was starting to think it was swell.

"You just took your wedding ring off and you're here alone. Why is that? Is there trouble? Doesn't she understand you? Maybe I could help." With that, she laid her head on my chest and began caressing the back of my neck.

"Oh, she understands me, all right, all too well. I'm not so sure I understand her any more, though." I'd been out of circulation for over 20 years, but best I could remember this woman was coming on to me. Why on earth? If I were any more ordinary I'd be invisible. I needed to cool things down.

She jerked her head back, flashed that wicked smile again, and cooed. "Ooooh, there is trouble in paradise! Tell me about it. I'm such a good listener." To show me how well she could listen, she pressed her lady bits against my little swelled head. Despite my firm sense of right and wrong and against my better judgment, it swelled some more.

"See how nice it is when someone listens to you and cares?" She burrowed her head back into my chest and ground against me. Just then the song ended, thank God. I quickly stepped back, inspiring a pretty pout. "Why won't you tell me what's wrong? There must be something, anything I could do to ease your mind."

I had to derail her before things got out of hand any further. "Didn't I see you sitting with someone?" That was both a lie and a calculated risk. I hadn't laid eyes on her before she showed up at my table, but surely a hot number like her didn't have to go clubbing alone.

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, him! He's probably on the internet with his phone researching work possibilities. We've only been in town a few days and he's already working like the Devil. I swear, one of these days his job is going to be the death of him. Or me." She paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. "Or both of us."

Her mouth curled back into that wicked smile. "So we don't have to worry about whether he cares what I do, do we? And right now, what I want to do is learn why your marriage worries you so much. Why don't we go to your place so we can have some privacy?" She waited a beat. "For talking, I mean."

This was getting ridiculous. I had to put a halt to it. "Who said anything about my marriage being in trouble? And besides, I don't live here—"

"I said it was in trouble. Trust me, I just know these things. You must have a motel room, then, or at least a mattress in the back of your van. This place is too noisy, too crowded, too public. We need privacy."

It was time to get the hell outta Dodge. I stood up and gave her what I hoped was a stern look. "There is no we, lady—"

She giggled somewhat lewdly. "I'm no lady, but you can call me Andye. That's with a y and e, not a cutesy-poo i. And there certainly is a we. There's you and there's me, and we have been talking about your marriage problems."

"We have not been talking about my marriage problems, you've—"

"Is there a problem here?" A tall, thin guy all in black—boots, jeans, T-shirt, leather vest—appeared at our table... no, make that my table. I looked around, trying to figure out where he had come from.

She frowned at him and got all pouty again. "That's so insightful of you. Yes there's a problem, and the problem is you. His marriage is in trouble and I'm trying to help. I can't help him if I don't know what the trouble is, and you're keeping me from finding out. Couldn't you leave me alone for just a few minutes?"

He sighed. "You mean like last week? That one took me over two hours to clean up, and another day to make it go away. Then we had to move here, remember, and change telephone numbers. Now I've got to have new cards printed, and they aren't cheap."

Her voice picked up. "Would you put my name on it this time? It's Andye. You know, with a—"

"Yes, I know, with a y and an e, not a precious i. I guess that would make me Kurt, right? With a K."

She actually clapped her hands and bounced in her chair. "Exactly! You're Kurt! You always know everything!"

He raised an eyebrow at that, then his voice lost its chastising note. "Wouldn't you like to settle down for a while, Andye? You know, picket fence and flower garden, all that?"

She started to fidget and got all whiny. "Well, sure, you know I want all that, but why won't you trust me right now? If you'd just give me a little more time, I'm sure I could get to the bottom of his problem."

"If I gave you a little more time, you'd wouldn't just get to the bottom of his problems, you'd probably end all of them. But that would just begin mine, and right now I don't need any more problems. So bid farewell to the nice man. It's time we took our leave."

It was unnerving. They were talking as if I weren't even there. I couldn't follow whatever they were talking about, but it sounded alarming. Neither one of them sounded much like a marriage counselor. Whoever he was, though, I liked his idea about leaving.

"I think this gentleman is right, it's time we all got out of here." I moved to stand up, but he waved me back down. I started to sweat a little.

"No, you don't understand. She's not a lady, I'm not a gentleman, and you don't decide what she's going to do, she decides. My responsibility is simply to try to help her find the right decisions." He looked at her and smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "It's a Hell of a job, but I'm just the guy to do it. Right, Andye?"

She nodded eagerly, then got all chirpy. "You always know the right thing to do. I count on that, more than you know. You're right, it's time to put an end to this." She unzipped her purse and put her hand in, but he gripped her wrist. Firmly.

She briefly sagged back into her chair, then sighed and stood. Taking her hand from her purse, she held it out to me. "It's been nice talking with you, but it could have been so much nicer." When I took her hand to shake it, she pulled me forward, kissed my cheek, and whispered loud enough for him to hear, "You have no idea what you missed."

She dropped my hand, then turned to him. "Ooh, you're going to get such a good gift when we get home."

He broke out his own wicked smile. "Will I like it?"

She nodded eagerly, almost twitching in her impatience to get going. "Oh yes, you always like it."

He turned to me. "She's right, you have no idea. Trust me, you don't want to know." They turned and disappeared onto the crowded dance floor.

That was too weird. I didn't know what I had missed, but I was pretty sure that I wasn't sorry. Even though he was taller than most of the others on the dance floor, I couldn't keep track of them. That was weird, too.

I slugged down the last of my beer, hit the men's room, and went back to the motel, feeling no wiser than when I left home. Next morning I turned east and headed to York.

FORT WAYNE TO York is a solid day's drive. I pulled in mid-afternoon and drove around for a while refreshing memories. After checking out the old neighborhood, York Catholic High School, and a couple of other hangouts, I checked into a motel. Tired after the long drive, I opted for another early dinner, a little TV, and bed.

Thanks to the early bedtime, I woke up at 5:30. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep, so I showered and shaved and headed for Round the Clock Diner on Arsenal Road. It not only had a catchy name, it served the best breakfast in Pennsylvania.

When I finished eating it was still pretty early, so I lingered over coffee and tried to work out what I was going to do. I had grown up in York, but I wasn't here just to tour my old stomping grounds. I had to be honest with myself and admit that the main reason I came back was my first love, to see if there was any chance of healing my aching heart.

My first girlfriend, at 16, was Lily Qi. Her dad was Chinese—their name was pronounced "she"— her mom was a native Buckeye from Akron. We went steady all through my sophomore and junior years, but agreed not to go all the way. For reasons I'd never understood, our romance didn't survive the summer before our senior year.

At the time, I wasn't sure whether I loved Lily, but I sure fell in love with the idea of being in love. That probably led to my downfall. All that love of love transferred too easily to love of Shelly when we got together that Fall at homecoming. We fell for each other quickly, then a bit later we fell into bed—well, into the back seat of my mother's Buick. Showering all that love on Shelly is why I fell so hard when she blindsided me.

Shelly and I married a couple of months after graduation and left for Slippery Rock. Shelly gave birth to Lisa and Tanner while I was in school. I graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering, but carrying a heavy course load and working left precious little time for Shelly and the kids.

Lily'd gone to Pitt, got her MBA, then married some guy named Spooner. They divorced a few years later and she moved back to York, but no phone number was listed for L. Spooner.

A Qi was still listed, though: Lily's mom Iris. I'd been at their house so much I'd gotten to know her really well. She was funny and kind, she didn't treat me like a kid, and she made the world's greatest lasagna. No, we didn't have to eat it with chopsticks, but she threatened a few times—then laughed at our expressions.

She was my other mother. I was always Lucas to her—she teased I'd never be mistaken for one of the apostles—and she was my Mrs. Q. We got along so well because she didn't have to put up with my irritating teenage-boy habits, and I didn't have to suffer her nagging me to do my homework or clean my room.

Figuring that she could tell me how to reach Lily, I called Mrs. Q. She said she was delighted to hear from me, and I returned the sentiment. When I asked about Lily, she said if I'd come by for a cup of tea she'd give me Lily's cell number. I'd sort of hoped she'd say that, because I really wanted to see her almost as much as I wanted to see Lily. Almost.

I knew the way to their place, of course, I'd already driven by. As usual, we wound up in the kitchen—a place I'd spent many happy hours—while she made a pot of tea. Mrs. Q was almost as tall as I was, and still pretty at 71. Mr. Qi had died almost 10 years earlier. She said she'd not only gotten used to living alone, she'd come to rather like it.

We chatted about this and that until she poured our tea (teacups, not mugs), then she sat down and fixed me with the I'm-your-mother-so-pay-attention look. "Okay, Lucas, enough small talk. You're back here in York all by yourself, you asked about Lily, and I can see you're sad. Tell Mrs. Q what happened."

When I was a teenager, Mrs. Q had always listened to my angst-filled (and sometimes imagined) lamentations. She never made light of them, and more often than not managed to make me feel better. I trusted her with my sordid tale even more than Mark and spilled out everything, from the painful conversation with Shelly to the telephone calls with the kids, including their f-bombs.

That was my exact wording: f-bombs. I couldn't bring myself to say "fuck" to Mrs. Q. Then I told her about my talks with Mike and cousin Susan, summarizing their descriptions of today's youth (I admit sanitizing his a bit). I skipped over the bartender and weird gal at the Dew Drop Inn, didn't think they were pertinent.

She'd refreshed our tea once while I talked, and did it again after I finished. After a couple of sips—and a few minutes of silence—she put her cup down and shook her head sadly. "I was always sad that you and Lily didn't last, but I never thought you and Shelly would have such problems. Do you have any idea what happened, why Shelly did this?"

She could always bring my defenses down, and before I could answer my eyes filled with tears. "I don't have the slightest idea, Mrs. Q. I thought everything was okay, then bam! I couldn't believe it. Still can't, really."

She reached across the table and took both my hands. "Oh, it sounds real enough, Lucas. I assume this journey is to help you decide what to do. You can't, though, without some understanding of why it happened. If it's something you've done, maybe you can fix it, but if it isn't..." She shrugged.

We sat in silence for a few moments, then she walked around the table, knelt by my chair, and took me in her arms. I couldn't help it, I hugged her back and started crying. I was a teenager again, a stranger and afraid in a world I never made, but safe for the moment in the arms of Mrs. Q.

I remembered after a couple of minutes that she was on her knees on the hard linoleum floor. I stood, lifted her to her feet, and stepped back. "Mrs. Q, I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you how much you've helped me over the years. I don't deserve you, but I'll try my best."

She pulled me into a hug, then tilted her head back and laughed. "In today's parlance, Luke, that's bullshit! You deserve whatever I can do, and more." She tried and failed to look solemn. "But you keep believing it, and don't stop telling me. It keeps me feeling young." She had tears in her eyes, too, but they looked as much happy as sad.

We both felt awkward after such an emotional outburst. She moved back to the other side of the table as I drank the rest of my now-cold tea. "What happened to you and Lily that summer? What broke you up? Lily never would tell me, just said she didn't want to talk about it. I never could get her to open up about it."

"She wouldn't tell me either, Mrs. Q, just said she thought it was better if we stopped spending so much time together. Two weeks later she went out with Joey Gentile. Broke my heart." The memory was still painful.

She didn't comment, just said "Hmmm."

I wanted to move on, so I smiled to ease the change of subject. "Well, Mrs. Q, I came by for my cup of tea and drank it. Now it's your turn. What's Lily's phone number?"

She smiled right back. "Instead of calling, why don't you just go knock on her door when she gets home from work at 5? She lives in the apartment over the garage." She winked. "I called her at work and told her you were coming over. She insisted that I not tell you where she lived until we'd had a chance to catch up."

Her grin grew even bigger than mine. "I think we've caught up, don't you? Now get out of my kitchen and let me get some work done!" We hugged, said goodbye, then hugged again. She kissed my cheek and told me she loved me like a son.

"Whaddya mean like a son, Mrs. Q? You know you've always been my other mom." I left before we both start bawling again. I grabbed a quick snack, then crashed in my motel room for a self-indulgent nap.

AT QUARTER AFTER five I got back to Qi's. I must have stood at the bottom of the stairs to the garage apartment for a good two minutes, trying to figure out how to explain to Lily why I was back in York. After I trudged up the stairs, the door opened just as I was about to knock. I took one look and stood there gawking.

Lily'd been a beautiful young girl, but now she was a drop-dead gorgeous woman. Her exotic beauty came from the blended features of her parents. She had rich chocolate-brown eyes, a honey complexion, and straight, jet black hair to the middle of her back thanks to Dad. Mom Q bequeathed her high cheekbones, voluptuous figure, height (she was 5-8), and long, shapely legs. The combination was stunning.

It turned out I didn't have to explain to Lily why I was back in York. Mrs. Qi'd had lunch with her and repeated the whole sordid story, saving Lily and me a lot of catching-up time.