Moe Rosenberg is 62, a retired high school woodshop teacher who left his suburban Chicago home two years after his wife Linda passed, tired of the sideways glances from neighbors who thought he should still be wearing grief like a hair shirt. He’s stubborn to a fault, still refuses to use a smartphone for anything other than calls, still keeps a chipped ceramic mug Linda painted for him on his workbench at all times, still leaves every Friday’s coastal Oregon community fish fry after 45 minutes flat, no exceptions. He’d rather sand a slab of black walnut for three hours than make small talk with strangers, and the idea of letting anyone new get close makes his jaw tight, like he’s swallowing something sour.
The April wind off the Pacific is sharp enough to make his ears pink when he walks into the fire department picnic pavilion that Friday, plate of fried cod and hushpuppies in one hand, can of root beer in the other. All the empty spots at his usual half-empty table are taken by a group of teen surfers still dripping salt water, so he heads for a rickety four-top in the back, the one with a crack running down the middle of its pine surface. He’s halfway through his first bite of cod when a woman carrying a plate heaped high with coleslaw and catfish trips over a folding chair leg, her elbow slamming into his forearm hard enough to make him drop his fork.
She smells like lavender hand lotion and fried batter, her dark hair streaked with gray pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of ink on her left cheek. She apologizes so fast the words trip over each other, and when he looks up, her hazel eyes are crinkled like she’s half laughing at her own clumsiness. He mumbles that it’s fine, goes back to picking at his fish, fully expecting her to move to another spot, but the rest of the pavilion is packed, so she slides into the seat across from him, setting her plate down with a thud.
The band off to the side starts playing a rusty cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” kids are screaming as they chase each other with water balloons, and for five minutes they eat in silence, Moe pointedly staring at the crack in the table, his throat tight. He keeps thinking of Martha, Linda’s best friend, who called him six months back to yell at him for “acting like Linda never existed” because he’d donated her old winter coats to a thrift store. The idea of even being seen sitting across from a woman he doesn’t know feels like he’s breaking a rule he didn’t even agree to, his skin itching like he’s got sawdust stuck under his collar.
She reaches for the plastic bottle of malt vinegar at the exact same time he does, their knuckles brushing. He yanks his hand back like he touched a hot router bit, his face flushing so hot he’s sure his ears are bright red. She snorts, twisting the cap off and sliding the bottle over to him first. “Relax, I don’t bite,” she says, nodding at the dusting of sawdust on the cuff of his flannel shirt. “Unless someone tries to steal the last of the tartar sauce. You work with wood?”
He lets out a huff of laughter before he can stop himself. He tells her he makes custom cutting boards for the local cafes, fixes up old furniture for people in town in his garage workshop. She says she’s Clara, the new town librarian, moved here three weeks ago from Sacramento, still hasn’t found a cutting board big enough to roll her sourdough out on. They talk for 20 minutes straight, Moe forgetting to check his watch, the hum of the crowd fading into background noise. She leans forward when she talks, her elbow propped on the table, her knee brushing his under the table once, twice, so soft he’s not even sure she notices. He keeps waiting for the guilt to hit, for the voice in his head that sounds like Martha to yell at him, but it doesn’t. He feels light, like he did when he was 22 and first asked Linda out to a drive-in movie.
He almost chickens out when she stands up to leave, the words stuck in his throat, but then she pulls out her phone to show him a photo of her three-legged tabby rescue named Sawdust, who likes to chew on scrap lumber she brings home from the hardware store. Linda had a three-legged tabby named Splinter when they first met, the cat she’d rescued from a construction site near their apartment. It feels like a sign, not the cheesy kind, the soft, quiet kind that makes his chest feel tight for a different reason.
He asks her if she wants to come by his workshop the next afternoon, pick out whatever slab of wood she wants for her cutting board, he’ll even show her how to sand and finish it if she’s interested. She grins, leaning in so close he can smell the lemonade she drank on her breath, and says she’d love that, she’ll bring a jar of her sourdough starter as a down payment. She scribbles her phone number on a scrap of receipt from the library bookstore, shoves it into his hand, her fingers lingering on his palm for half a second before she turns to walk to her car.
He stands there for a minute, the salt wind stinging his cheeks, holding the crumpled receipt in his hand. He tucks it into the front pocket of his flannel, his fingers brushing the worn, folded photo of Linda and Splinter he’s kept there since she died, and he smiles.
