Please Don't Thank Me With Salad

Mercy Chapter 8

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4:00 a.m. Dave turned the key in the studio lock that Perry had, with many loud sighs, restored to working order for him. He turned on his Goodwill lamp, creating a tiny warm oasis at the end of the vast dark void that would become his studio, his sanctuary. He plugged in his electric tea kettle, his hand hovering indecisively over his motley mug collection, passing over the others for an ugly orange one with an odd iridescent glaze and a small chip. When his tea was ready, he sat on the floor and sipped while he planned.

Today he would start the changing room. In that regard, Phil had had doubts. “It’s going to take more than a couple of YouTube videos,” he said skeptically. But Phil was underestimating Dave. Dave had watched, for hours and hours, his Dad’s hands, rough and blackened, working deep into the night after a fully day at the plant turning planks into furniture that was beautiful in its simplicity and soundness.

Dave’s hands were so different, smooth and slim, but he too could build something strong and beautiful. His movements through the morning were graceful and rhythmic, a dance, and by mid-afternoon, the skeleton of the small room was taking shape, all the rough patches sanded down to silk, all the joints tight and elegant.

The days followed this pattern, except on Coffee Club Mondays: up early, quiet walk to the studio with a clear head, solitary days of quality work, until the changing room was finished. The wooden floor shone, and the drywall painted a gray that was not too warm, not too cool and accented with crown molding, showed no seams. The lighting was soft, and he had splurged on the softest, fluffiest shearling throw rug. He tossed together a shoe rack to place by the door, its size determined by the scraps of lumber he had left. But even this little craft was done with precision.

At last, it was time for the pilgrimage.

The next afternoon was sunny, and he caught Phil in the yard.

“Hey!” he began.

“Hey yourself! How’s it going?” Phil said as he continued tinkering.

“Not bad, not bad.” Dave smiled too casually. “Hey, what are you up to this weekend?”

“More of the same, I guess.” Phil gestured at his car lot.

“Hey, I uh, I don’t suppose you need to take a trip to, uh, well down south a bit.”

“Rochester?”

“No, I was thinking more like . . . Tremain?” Phil put down his wrench and looked at Dave in shock and dismay.

“Massachusetts? Now why the heck would I need to do that?”

“Oh, uh, you know . . . you might need some, ah . . . I don’t know, some tool?”

“I don’t need any tools I can’t get here or online. Thanks, though.”

“Well, the thing is, I need a ride.”

“Do you? I can get you to the bus.” Phil’s voice was warm and generous.

“No, well, I need a truck to bring some stuff back in and maybe . . . maybe some extra biceps. Not to mention good company!”

Phil squinted at him. “Huh. Well. I don’t think I’ve been further south than Kittery in five or six years.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope, just don’t see the need.”

“Ok. Well . . . I will ask around. Maybe Perry . . .”

Phil laughed heartily. “Perry!? Ha, oh, man. Good luck. No . . . I’ll take you. It won’t kill me, I guess.”

“Thank you so much. I’ll get you some gas money. I’ll take you to lunch!”

“Not a salad place. Please don’t thank me with salad.”

“Haha, ok. Not salad. Not just salad, anyway.”

Saturday morning was drizzly. They’d set an early departure time; when Dave knocked on the kitchen door, he saw Phil get up quickly from the table, hat already on. Dave stuck his head in.

“Come on in,” Phil invited. He was pouring coffee into two coffee-stained travel mugs that bore the logo of a long extinct gas station chain. “Sugar and cream?”

It didn’t seem like the right time to tell Phil that he didn’t drink coffee. “Just a bit,” he smiled. “Thank you.” He wondered if he was committing himself to many future cups of coffee as well as this one.

“We gotta pick up my buddy Dan Fisher on the way. I hope you don’t mind. He wants to poke around a big junkyard down that way. Find a couple of odd parts.”

Dave nodded, overly agreeable in order to mask his anxiety. “Of course, of course.” After all, he was at Phil’s mercy. He hoped these parts were small, if Dan Fisher found them. He pictured car doors bashing into what he was getting from his dad’s, and the car doors definitely won the match in his imagination.

It turned out that Dan Fisher lived up the hill on the way out of town. He smiled warmly at Dave and shook his hand before Dave climbed into the back seat of the truck cab. He was taller than average, but not as tall as Phil; you wouldn’t quite describe him as plump, but a couple good meals could nudge him over the line. He had a pleasant bearded face and wore a Red Sox hat and blue t-shirt. His hands were black in the crevices like Phil’s. Dave felt awkward and small, sticking his clean-shaven face forward between them to be in on the conversation. Phil did most of the talking, spinning many a tall tale as they passed local landmarks, stories from his own past and others’. Dan laughed and called BS on him more than once, and Phil swore to the truth of his statements. That’s how it is with the truth sometimes, Dave thought, too big, too crazy to be believable.

Dan wanted to check out the junkyard on his way down just in case it got crowded later. Dave was surprised when they drove in; he had pictured haphazard heaps of rusting vehicles, but instead they were in neat rows, and Dan picked up a directory by make and model from the shack at the entrance. He tried to mirror Dan and Phil’s enthusiasm when they came across a relic or rare gem, but he just didn’t know what he was looking at. Still, it was moderately fun to watch them, kids in a toy shop. They each came away with everything on their lists and a few things just for fun, and Dave was relieved to find that it all fit in two recycled boxes that they grabbed from a pile in a shed near the entrance.

In twenty minutes, they were almost to Dad’s. Dave directed them down side streets to a neighborhood full of little white sagging houses built close together.

“It’s just up here on the right, after the one with the plywood on the porch.” Neighbor Frank’s broken porch windows had been replaced with plywood for as long as Dave could remember. It wasn’t much good for sitting in a rocker, with no natural light, but Frank used it mostly for piling trash in, anyway.

Phil pulled into Dad’s driveway. It was paved, long ago; now the pavement was all broken up and hardly different from a gravel driveway, except maybe worse. “I gave Dad a call, he should be expecting us.” Dad’s old blue sedan was there. Beyond it was a free-standing garage that needed a bit of paint. The doors were barely wide enough for a car and you had to open them by hand, so Dad had always used it for his shop.

The small lawn was slightly overgrown. In the corner, under a tree, was a little white plastic fence around the spot where Mum’s daffodils would come up in the spring.

Pencil Art by Katie Chalmers

Dad was in the doorway, holding open the heavy old storm door for them. He smiled shyly at the men and shook their hands as Dave introduced them. “Good to meet you,” he said to Phil. “Good to meet you,” to Dan.

Dad sat them down at the table in the small kitchen—Formica® with a chrome band around the edge, from the 1950s or 1960s probably. Dave guessed that some lover of vintage things would pay a pretty penny for it, which he didn’t tell Dad. It would have hurt them both to sell it.

“Can I get you fellas coffee?” Dad asked. His voice was always a bit higher pitched and gentler than people expected it to be.

“Absolutely!” Phil’s personality grew more boisterous when he was uncomfortable , while everyone else in the room shrank into a corner a bit.

“Please,” said Dan, smiling genially.

Dad didn’t look right at anyone much, but he put in front of Dave his mom’s mug with a tea bag in it, citrus green, his favorite. Probably some he had left here. Dave smiled and remembered Nonna giving him coffee-flavored milk in that mug before school every morning. Phil, noticing the big “MOM” on the side, smiled and was about to say something jokey, but picked up on a mood that halted him.

“I thought you fellas might, uh, be a little hungry.” It was 11:00 a.m.; they could eat. Dad moved around the small kitchen slowly, a bit painfully. He didn’t use his left hand a lot. It hurt Dave to watch him, but he knew Dad would want to go through the formalities of hosting, so he didn’t rush to his aid. Dad had made some egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches, and the empty tuna can was still on the counter. Dave wondered if he should still offer the promised lunch to Phil and Dan. Also, was he obliged to feed them both when he had only expected one, and how could he handle it graciously? Maybe the sandwiches would solve the problem.

The kitchen was old and a little grimy in corners where the linoleum was peeling up and where the cupboards met the counter. There was a stain in the ceiling from a plumbing episode. He didn’t think that Phil and Dan cared. He remembered how as a child he hadn’t seen the imperfections, and even thought those were golden years. He didn’t mind seeing them now either because he understood the work it had taken to shelter him within even these shabby walls. There was happiness and love inside them. That’s what mattered. It had hidden the blemishes when he was small and beautified them now that he was grown.

Dad was setting the white Corelle dishes out, the smaller ones, and passing around napkins, apology in his every motion. “Please, help yourselves.” Dad’s voice was so thin, so unimposing, “Do you want some tonic?” He put a two-liter of DeMoulas cola on the table.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. A.,” said Phil. “We’re enjoying getting to know Dave here.”

Dad smiled as he pulled out a chair for himself with his good arm.

“You lived in Tremain long? What do you do?” Phil continued, always looking for a story.

“Yes, all my life,” Dad smiled. “I worked in the clock plant for most of it. Then they went out and I’ve been bagging at DeMoulas for a while now.”

Dave crunched down on a shell in his egg sandwich. Anyone could miss a shell, but it hurt him that Dad, with his arthritic knuckles, had done so. Even the egg shells left in the sink hurt him. Dave wanted to make Dad’s life easier—the present, the past, the future—but the only thing looking good was his intentions.

Phil was shaking his head and off on a tirade about disappearing American industry, expecting to be agreed with.

“Well,” Dad put in, “it was good to have work, but I like bagging about as much as clocks.” The men chuckled, nodding.

“But the plant was a trade,” Phil said.

“Not really. I was basically a button pusher. I guess true craftsmanship has been going out since before my time. I like talking to the people in line at the store. I bring Tootsie Rolls for the kids, or some stickers. It’s nice.” Dad smiled and Phil nodded thoughtfully.

“Interesting. Interesting. That’s a good perspective.”

The stack of sandwiches, a couple of soft, white loaves high, disappeared quickly, as did the bowl of chips. Dave worried about the lack of vegetables but he would never bother Dad about it. Dave started gathering plates and napkins, but Dad stopped him.

“Go ahead and take these boys up to the mirror,” Dad said, pushing himself up with his right arm, “I’ll clean this up.”

“The mirror, is it?” Phil said. “Dave didn’t say.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You need a truck for a mirror?”

Dave grinned. “I do. I think I’ve got a couple bags of books, too. But the truck is for the mirror.”

“This I gotta see.”

Dave led the way through the entryway by the unused front door. Dad had a bag of birdseed and a bag of rock salt in there, leftover from winter. Light shone through the frosted glass (one of the four panes replaced with clear glass some time ago.) Dave glanced beyond it into Dad’s dark living room, the orange curtains drawn. His simple handmade sofa bench was still there, with the brown and orange variegated cushions still covered with Papi’s hair. He wished Dad would get a new dog, but he said it just wasn’t time. It had been three years.

Phil was testing a squashy bit of floor with his foot, bouncing his big frame on it gingerly. Dave glanced at the kitchen, but Dad wasn’t looking. “It’s right up here,” he gestured. The walls of the stairs and the bedrooms were covered with faux wood paneling and the carpet was yellow. Nonna had hated that carpet; Dave wondered what Mum had thought of it. Did she pick it? Maybe it came with the house.

The room on the right was Dad’s, though he slept in the recliner many nights now, dozing off while watching the Sox or whatever else was on. The room on the left had been Dave’s. It was slightly smaller than Dad’s, which, since they were both up under the eaves, meant there was a fairly narrow strip where all three men could stand without stooping. And that’s where the mirror was, occupying all of the wall that wasn’t closet.

Phil and Dan were speechless for a minute. “Well, that will need a truck,” Dan said at last. “Can we even get it out of here?”

“It got in here,” Phil countered good-naturedly, “so it’ll go out. It won’t go up to your place, though,” he said to Dave.

“No, it’s going to the studio.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right then. Before we take it down, let’s figure out our strategy, though. Is anything else going? How about this beauty?” Phil ran his hand over the perfectly sanded and finished lines of a small pine bookshelf. “This would go up to your place.”

“Dad made that for my 16th birthday,” Dave smiled, “but I’ll leave it for now.”

“He made that? And the man says craftsmanship is long dead!” Phil laughed, “Maybe there’s hope for your little project after all, if you’re his apprentice.”

“I try,” Dave said, “I watched him a lot.”

“Watching isn’t doing.”

“He showed me a few things.”

“Well then I hold out a lot of hope.” Phil clapped Dave heartily on the back. Dave heard Dad’s slow steps on the stairs, landing both feet on each step.

Dan was eyeing the mirror. “Where’d this thing come from?”

“I don’t know. We’ve always had it. My mom worked at a department store before I was born; maybe it came from a remodel?”

“I don’t know,” Phil was taking a close look at the intricately carved frame. “Seems too nice for a department store, even back then when people cared and didn’t change the store’s look every three years.”

“It wasn’t from the store,” Dad poked his head into the room. “Her family had it. I don’t know how far back or how they got it.”

“Is it possible that anyone in our family ever had space for something like this?” Dave laughed.

“Well, you do, so who knows?”

Dave smiled. “Good point.” Turning to Phil and Dan, he began pulling a soft plush blanket out of his bag. “I thought maybe we could wrap it in this?”

Phil nodded slowly. “Let’s wrap it in the blanket, and then in a tarp. I think I’ve got one in the truck.” While he was gone, Dave and Dan struggled to put the too-small blanket around the mirror without room to lay it down.

When he came back, Phil said, “Sorry I was so long. I took a few minutes to wipe down the bed really good. This thing is special.” He put the blanket and tarp around it tenderly and took the lead in coaxing it around the corner. They had to lift it up and over the banister to get it down the stairs.

Dave was on the other end. Dad had backed into his own room and sat on the edge of his bed with his hands clasped and his lips squashed together in a pleasant but not quite smiling expression. Dave smiled back. He saw the dusty backs of Mum’s shoes sticking out from under the bed just like they had for 25 years or more. Dad was a sentimental guy.

It was slow-going but they made it. Dad stood in the doorway. Phil and Dan assured him it had been nice to meet him. Dave lingered as they got in the truck.

“Good to see you, son,” Dad said. “Do you want to stay for supper?”

“Aw, I’d love to, but it looks like they’re ready to get going.” He shrugged towards the truck.

“Ok. Well . . . good to see you. I want to get up to your place and see how it’s coming.”

“That would be great, Dad. I’d love to show you the studio.” Dad would barely stay awake for the two-hour drive alone and they both knew it. Still . . . it would be nice. They’d have to find a way. Dave waved from the backseat of the truck as they pulled out.

The ride home felt long and the road so much bumpier than on the way down. Dave feared for the mirror the whole way. He suggested lunch, out of obligation, but the men turned him down. A coffee, they would accept, so they swung through Dunks. Dave sipped an oat milk chai as he leaned back and listened to the banter of the friends in the front seat. Suddenly he realized that Phil was addressing him.

“Think Isla will be satisfied with your studio now?”

“We’ll see,” Dave smiled agreeably.

“Who’s Isla?” Dan asked.

“She’s the business liaison at City Hall. Coincidentally, my wife’s best friend. She has a crush on Dave so she’s overseeing his business veeeerrrry closely.”

“Ahhh, I see . . .” Dan said at the same time that Dave began protesting.

“Did Kim tell you that? What makes you think so?”

“I can tell. I’ve known her for a long time. Don’t worry, it’s just a little one. It’ll pass. She’s fickle. We could point her in this guy’s direction if you want her diverted. He’s just a sad lonely man.” He jerked a thumb at Dan, who rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“I’m all right,” Dan assured them.

Phil laughed longer and louder than this comment warranted.

Phil put his blinker on for Dan’s, but he told him to go on, he’d help them get the mirror out. When they were halfway up the rickety staircase at the mill, Perry came out to be entertained, leaning, arms crossed, on the door of his office. He looked skeptical, but he usually looked skeptical. You couldn’t take it to mean anything.

It was a close fit getting it into the changing room. Dave thought he should have left a wall open, but fortunately the doorway was wide. He hurried to push the fuzzy white rug to one side; he couldn’t ask people who’d given up their Saturday for him to remove their boots.

“There,” Phil said with a grunt of satisfaction as they stood it up. “Yes. That does it.”

The glittering ceiling fixture was the life of the room and the mirror was its soul. Phil and Dan weren’t the kind of guys to admire interior decoration, but no one could ignore the difference that the mirror made. “That’s a job well done,” Phil spoke again.

“It’s not bad,” Dan agreed.

“Thank you so much, guys, I couldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“Our pleasure. Anytime. As long as it isn’t Massachusetts again.” Phil winked.

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Next Chapter: The Right Kind of Business

Copyright 2025 Jennie Robertson