THE SHOP

Christmas is a slushy season, but for most the holidays make up for the outward cold and damp by adding gayety and warmth to the heart.  The season’s lights and garlands transform Main Street at night into a glittering promenade.  Children love the atmosphere, though they lack the nostalgia that moves their parents, many of whom were born here, like their own parents, and can remember the glittering town in former days. 

     What has kept the town from disappearing was its core of residents whose families could trace their histories back to the territorial days.  These were numerous enough to make a difference, for they seldom left.  Such families took pride in their having stuck it out through the awful years of depression and drought, and they took pride in what was passed on to them and educated their children to be receivers of this heritage.  But people have always come to the town, in a slow trickle, for a whole world of reasons, and some stuck.  Most didn’t.  But over time the town had grown.  When it reached a respectable population of some fourteen thousand, it acquired the necessary critical mass to suddenly grow faster.

     Fourteen thousand people with money in their pockets, especially at Christmas, may not be an economic magnet big enough to attract department stores like Dayton’s or Younker’s—megastores that ply the Midwest—but it is magnet enough to draw in the more modest second-tier stores like K-Mart and Shopko.  And so, these came and anchored the town—Shopko in the north, K-Mart in the South, and like little economic fiefdoms, each lorded over its banner-crowded realm, having gathered to itself a host of smaller concerns—hamburger joints, used-car lots, gas stations, gift shops, antique stores, roadside Christmas-tree stands in winter and produce stands in late summer and fall (tomatoes, melons, corn, squash), motels, cafes, arcades—all the sorts of things that attract people to and keep them moving around the area.

     It is a familiar story, this pattern of growth, with consequences that are also familiar—the old settled merchants on Main Street who knew their customers by name and knew their histories, who sold on credit based on trust, and who prospered in proportion as the people did and suffered declines in the same proportion—these began to see their ways of life uprooted and transformed and had to find new ways of doing business or die.  Many closed up their shops, so that for quite a while Main Street was a dead zone, with empty buildings announcing sadly to passersby the fates of many a long-time resident.  The Christmas season was often a time of pain, when the cold and slush were all the heart had to feed on.

     Their was one shop on Main Street, however, that remained unchanged.  It was located at the extreme south end, in the most disreputable neighborhood of the town, sandwiched between two seedy bars, which were, perhaps, responsible for the atmosphere in that area of disreputability.  This shop was unchanged, for it, alone, in that town specialized in trading with the destitute, exchanging money for lost hopes and dead dreams, selling to the same a woman’s fallen world in the pathetic circle of a diamond ring, purchasing for airy nothing a young—or not so young—man’s disillusioned attempt at independent living, exchanging, in the dimness of a clustered corner, for some glinting valuable a Smith & Wesson, a cloud of emotional fatigue hanging in the exchanger’s face, only the eyes alive to whatever burned in the breast.  In this shop, the holidays were more a time of heartache than of joy. 

     This shabby shop did not change, for the people from whom and to whom it bought and sold are always with us, and the economic development that swept over the larger world, and thus swept up in the process our little town, had no affect on these—the fallen, the cast-outs, the run aways, the down-and—outers, the dreamers with golden rings in need of fifty bucks.

     And now, after the turn of the century, when new ways of commerce are making large incursions into the snowy gay fiefdoms of the north and south, this little shop, adding to its regular stores shelves packed with electronic goods, still plies, as always, its regular trade, its customers as furtive as they have always been.  The family of its proprietor, the Wahls—out of the country around Stockholm—is one of the town’s oldest, a family that has always been marginal, always tainted by a certain sordidness in the makeup of its men, and always uninvited.  The present Wahl, named euphoniously Warren, is a widower, over fifty, whose only daughter left the family years ago.  He is a tall, spare man with long blond hair turning gray, large, droopy eyes, and a full, graying beard. 

     If you came in out of the cold, you would see this man sitting on a stool behind a counter of glass cases, whose two sixty—watt bulbs, one at each end, illuminate the entire store as well as the watches and rings, necklaces, bracelets, leather wallets, gold pens and pencils, earrings, belt buckles, snake skins, tie tacs, pocket knives, and other belongings dearly purchased in the sweat of the brow and traded for coin enough to buy a bus ticket or fill a car with gas, their owners never to return to redeem what they had parted with.  As you entered, old Warren’s droopy eyes would fasten upon you, and you would see in them the recognition of life’s pathos, and the sympathy that always said, “We can do business.”

     On this occasion, the person who had poked her head in the door was the aforementioned daughter, herself a run away, long ago having settled differences between herself and her parents by making out for the coast, where she found work and marriage and hardship and degradation and tragedy enough to fill many an hour recounting.  She had been hardened by experiences her father could not imagine and was now coming home to start anew in the town of her birth.  She came in the holiday season the better to reconcile with him, for he was the sole reason for her homecoming.  She was, for her part, ready to make peace and hoped the many years of absence had worked their balm in him.  She shut the door behind her but stood in the musty dimness of the entrance, awaiting a sign of recognition.

     This came after a few moments during which father and daughter each took the measure of the other.  He knew when she stepped in that she wasn’t one of the people who typically seek his services.  She was expensively dressed, wearing a dark full-length coat over tan woolen slacks, a gay colored silk scarf around her neck and throat, and her short, wavy blond hair speaking of salon styling.  At first he stared, wondering who she was and why she might have come in, but the surprise gave way to recognition, and his face hardened.  He said, finally,

     “Ahhh, you didn’t come all this way after all this time just to visit me.”

     “Yes, I did,” she affirmed, and walked in, stopping at the counter in front of him.

     “Well,” he said, uncertainly, suspiciously, “you look good.”

     “You look the same, a little gray now.”

     “Nooo, a lot gray now.  A lot you care, anyway.  Don’t say you do or I’ll get angry, and I won’t be responsible for what I’ll do.”

     “I don’t want to make you angry.”

     “Why have you come?”

     “To stay.”

     “To stay?  You mean you’re coming home?  Moving in?”

     “Not in on you, if that’s what you mean.  I’ve been wanting to come home.”

     “Home,” he said sarcastically, “you can’t come home.  Your mother’s dead, she’s buried in the cemetery where her grandparents are—she’s home.  There’s no place for you there.  The house is gone.  I live upstairs now, in the apartment.  There’s room only for me, none for you.  The town has changed since you left.  Changed a lot in the last few years.  Nothing is the same.  There’s no more ‘home.’”

     “I’m not leaving.”

     “Suit yourself.”

     He sat down again on the stool, looking over the counter at her, his droopy eyes filled with sadness and anger.  She couldn’t tell by his attitude whether he was more angry or hurt, but she knew she would have to heal the wounds that gave rise to both those feelings before she could consider herself “home.”  He was, after all, the only thing that connected her to this place, the town where she was born, where her mother died, where he, himself, was born and lived and will die.

     “I’ve been in town a couple of days, dad.  I’ve already found a place.  It’s one of those new apartments in that complex by the highway.  I’m looking for work, now.”

     “Fine, fine!” he ejaculated, as though he didn’t want to hear.

     “This is the address,” she said, writing it on a page in a little notebook she took from her purse, tearing it off and leaving it on the counter.  "It’ll be Christmas soon.  We should be together.  We have to start somehow.  You’ll come?  Tonight?  Tomorrow?  Come tonight.  Please, dad.  When you shut up here, come.  I’ll have dinner ready.”

     He said nothing, looking past her towards the door.  He did reach for the page and held it between thumb and index finger, like he had a butterfly by the wings. 

     “Why?” he asked, his eyes turning up at her face.  “What’s the point?  Dinner?  Like. . .like. . . .”  He didn’t or couldn’t make himself finish the thought or utter it aloud.

     “I’m sorry,” she said tearfully, turning and walking to the door.  She looked back at him, his droopy eyes following her and looking sadder than she could bear.  He was mumbling something she couldn’t make out.  “Six,” she said in a raised voice, “Come at six.”

     When she stepped back into the cold, the brightness of the day blinded her.  She stood a moment to adjust.  An unshaved man in bluejeans and a green down coat and seed cap walked past her and entered the Longhorn bar.  When its door opened she caught a whiff of beer and heard the sounds of video poker being played and the loud cursing of someone within, a certain prelude to violence, she thought.  That night her father didn’t come.

     She thought about him all through the evening—her  father, the pawnbroker, the dealer in cash; she thought about the seediness of the shop and the people who came and went from it, the suspicion, always there, that he fenced stolen goods, the dimness and furtiveness, the meager living he derived from it, the contempt people felt for him in town, especially the merchants.  She thought about him because he was what she ran from all those years ago, because she was ashamed of him and of herself through him.  Ashamed of his droopy eyes, of the stories he would tell of the desperate people he bought from or traded with or loaned money to, of the squalid look of the shop, which always filled her with the feeling that her father was a scavenger, a jackal who fed off the misfortunes of those life dealt most harshly with; ashamed of what she knew, through him, she was herself.  But it all was different, now.  She had to make him know that.

     Two days after her first visit, she returned to the shop.  It was late in the afternoon.  He was sitting, as before, on the stool behind the glass cases.  He didn’t acknowledge her.  He just stared, with those sad eyes that made people, strangers, who came in feel like here was one who understood all.  She looked across the distance at him and he returned her look, silent, as he would be for anyone who walked in. 

     Finally, she walked to the counter and said, “You didn’t come.”

     “I didn’t,” he returned, and said no more.

     “Does that mean you won’t come?”

     “It means. . . .”  But he didn’t finish what he started to say.  Taking that as a good sign, she pleaded:

     “Will you come tonight?  At six?  I want to talk.  We can talk, can’t we?  And have dinner, too?”

     “Why?”

     “I don’t understand what you mean, ‘Why?’  Why, what?  Why can’t we talk?”

     He was silent.  He looked away from her as though it pained him to see her.  She could feel it. 

     “You have so much sympathy for the down and outers who come in and trade their wedding rings for cash but none for your daughter?”  She didn’t want to say that, but it came, and the comparison struck her.  He looked at her, unsympathetically.

     “I haven’t thought of you for ten years,” he said, evidently having gnawed on his resentment during the last two days.  “For ten years I have had no daughter.  Why?  Why was that?  Because for ten years my daughter has had no father—she has not called, she has not written, she has not visited, she has not thought about me or her mother.  I buried your mother and went home to an empty house.  I had no daughter then.  I have no daughter now.  I have no daughter.  No daughter.  No daughter.  None!”  He had risen from the stool, shouting into her face, and then turned and went into the little back room which was divided from the shop by a black curtain that hung from a cord stretched from wall to wall behind him. 

She was speechless; the blood drained from her face.  She stood, staring at the black curtain, dry-eyed, but overwhelmed with guilt for the way her father felt so betrayed.  She knew she deserved it, and she knew, also, that the only way to get around this impasse was to tell him everything that happened to her during those ten years.  But she had to get him to agree to listen, to come to her.  She couldn’t tell him here.  The shop affected her now exactly as it had when she was eighteen.  And he knew it.  She could tell he did by the way he looked at her.  His resentment was stirred by it, made much worse than it might have been.  She took the notebook from her purse and wrote a short note, saying only that she was sorry and that she wanted to make up for the ten years and wouldn’t he let her try?  She tore the page out and put it on the counter and left.

The town had grown dramatically since she left.  There was work wherever she went to look for it.  In New York she had worked at many jobs, but the one she had taken to the best was as manager of a women’s boutique.  She knew the business well: the fabrics, colors, and styles that would sell and those that wouldn’t; who to buy from and who not to, and how to make terms.  She found work readily.  In a weeks’s time she had a routine which she knew she could live with and which would provide her a decent income.  During the week, however, she had not been back to visit her father.

She thought about him every day.  Christmas was drawing near, and she thought she should go to the apartment above the store one night, knock, and when he opened the door, just step in and force herself on him and refuse to leave.  Wouldn’t the season make him charitable? she thought.  He would have no choice then but to listen.  But she was afraid to do it, afraid her father would do something irrational out of the intensity of his feelings, in spite of the season.  As she mulled over what to do, she had an idea.  She sent him a present, a box of chocolates wrapped in Christmas paper with a red bow.  She added a note, which read: Dear Dad, I have not told you I love you since I was a child.  I’m saying it now.  I love you.  Enjoy the chocolate.

She hoped that by asking nothing of him, she would arouse no resentment, and, in the spirit of Christmas, he would accept the gift.  Then, after a decent time allowed to pass, she would send another.  Then another.  He would, by degrees, come to feel a little something of the old warmth, enjoy the gifts, and perhaps soften a little towards her, maybe, even, more than a little.  This seemed like a good plan.  She went to work cheerfully the next few mornings.  But one evening, when she got home, she found the package on the floor in front of her door. 

It had been opened and the note torn to pieces and then the whole thing rewrapped.  At first, she was devastated.  But when she thought about it, she realized her father was curious enough to open the package and read the note—the return address was on the outside and he had to know it was from her!  He could have just rejected it and had it returned.  He didn’t do that.  She took it as a good sign, even though it wasn’t the sign she wanted.

So, the next day, she sent another present—this time a tie—with another note.  It was returned exactly like the first one.  A day after that, she sent another, with the same result.  But before she could send a fourth, she got a note in the mail from her father which begged her to leave him alone—he didn’t want to be reminded of her, he wrote, and if she really cared for him, as she said she did, she should stop bothering him.

That note was like a knife in her chest.  She felt wounded to the core.  Why was he so determined to hate her?  She acknowledged her fault and begged to be forgiven, but he was cold and unfeeling toward her.  She stopped sending presents.  She hoped that he would write again, perhaps to thank her for not annoying him.  But he didn’t.  Apparently, he seemed content to live his life as he did before, as though she didn’t exist.

Days passed.  She desperately wanted to reconcile with her father, but the prospects of that happening had now grown dim.  She would be alone for Christmas, again.  It was at this time that the nightmare of her life in New York began to torment her.  Alone, she could not bear it.  She wanted to tell her father of the marriage, of the beatings and the divorce, of the prostitution and the drugs, of the loss of her children, of the long rehabilitation, of the loneliness during which she worked herself back to health, and of what her future might hold and how important to it he was.  But she despaired of all this now.  He wouldn’t and probably couldn’t help her.  She thought of those eyes and knew there was no sympathy in them for her and never would be.  He lived his whole life in the squalor of that shop, where sympathy was gold and destitution was entered in his books as profit and loss, and seediness was the very atmosphere of success.  It was her very own soul.  She despaired. 

On December 23rd, she wrote a last note, “Dear Father, you cannot know how I have suffered and still suffer.”  She sealed the envelop and mailed it and went to work.  She spent the day in a dream—like trance.  On her way home, she resolved to do as she had planned.  She turned off all the lamps in the apartment and plugged in the Christmas tree she had put up in the corner of the living room, then she filled the bath with hot water and placed a kitchen knife beside the tub.  Then she put Christmas carols in the CD and turned the volume low, undressed, and sat in the water, letting her hands sink to the bottom.

After a long time, when she was overheated and sweating, she picked up the knife and put it to her wrist.  The warm colored lights of the tree dimly illuminated the bathroom.  Bing Crosby’s voice crooned at the threshold of her hearing.  And once again, the blackness of the void troubled her heart.  She thought of her father, of his resentment, of the life he lived in that shop, and the turmoil of her heart was subdued.  If she could break through to him, she thought, they could rescue each other.  Had he not been waiting for her all these years?  She put the knife down and let the water out of the tub.  When she crawled out, she felt so drained she went to her bed and fell asleep.

When the letter came on the day after Christmas, Warren Wahl didn’t open it.  He placed it on the counter, and there it sat all afternoon.  It was a busy day for him.  People came and left: a teenager wanting to hock a shiny new pocket knife; a young man looking for a wedding ring he could buy with his few dollars; someone wanting to sell a digital camera; another a computer.  A young woman came in last, pale and thin, and tremblingly tore her engagement ring from her finger with a tearful jerk.  She held it out to him, and he gave her seventy-five dollars.  She swore she would be back next week to redeem it, but he knew he would never see her again.  The aftermath of Christmas was  filled with creatures like her.  When he locked the shop and had only to close the lights in the glass cases before going upstairs, he picked up the letter and tore it open.  When he read the brief lines, he sighed aloud and said, “At last, my daughter is home.”