Shopgirl

visitor

“CAN I TAKE YOU TO LUNCH?”

Mirabelle stands at her post, and before her is a man in his mid-fifties, a bit overweight, with short-cropped hair and dressed like someone who never thought one way or another about dressing in his life. Everything he wears is in the wrong fabrics for a Neiman’s devotee, his belt is not leather, his shoes are catalogue-bought. A porkpie hat sits atop his head. He wears a synthetic palm tree shirt, cotton pants, and well-broken-in work boots.

“You’re Mirabelle Buttersfield?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Carter Dobbs, I’m looking for your father.”

Mirabelle and Carter sit at the Time Clock Café. This time, her admirer, Tom, is missing from the tableau, but most of the regulars move in and out of their spots, as though an unseen movie director has yelled, “Places every-body.”

A few minutes into the conversation and Mirabelle knows why this man does not belong, nor care to belong, in the matrix of Beverly Hills.

“I was in Vietnam with your father. I have been trying to locate him, with this address…“ He slides a paper toward her over the metal tabletop. Mirabelle sees that it is her home address, which has remained unchanged in twenty-eight years. “I’ve written him, but I never get a response,” he says.

“Does he know you?” asks Mirabelle.

“He knows me well. There’s never been a problem between us, but he won’t answer me.”

“Why not?”

“I think I know why, but it’s personal, and I’m guessing he needs to talk to me.”

“Well,” says Mirabelle, “that’s our address. I don’t know why he won’t get in touch with you, but I’m…“

“Are you going to see him?” Carter interrupts.

“Yes, I’m going to see him at Christmas and I can give him your card, whatever you want.”

“Thanks. It’s the ones that don’t call back that need to talk the most.”

“It was so long ago.”

“Yes, sweetie. So long ago. Some do better than others, and I’ve just made it a mission of mine to reach my brothers, see if they’re okay. Is your dad okay?”

“Not always.”

Mirabelle tries to size up Carter. She has seen his type in Vermont, although Carter is clearly not from Vermont, with his Midwest nonaccent, flavored occasionally with a subtle drawl. Well-mannered, kind, moral. Like her father. Except that Carter Dobbs wants to talk.

Mirabelle’s father, Dan Buttersfield, has never spoken to her about one emotional thing. She is kept in the dark about family secrets; she has never seen him angry. She has never been told anything about Vietnam. When asked, her father shakes his head and changes the subject. He is stoic like a good WASP from Vermont should be. The household was shaken when Mirabelle was seventeen when it was revealed that her father, whom she adored, had been involved in a sexual affair that had lasted for seven years. Mirabelle’s emotional age was always five years behind her real age, so this information was received as if by a twelve-year-old. It struck her hard and made her bluff happiness for the next eleven years. This event fits exactly into Mirabelle’s jigsaw puzzle of sadness still being assembled inside her. Having watched her mother’s struggle, Mirabelle keeps a fear harbored inside her of the same thing happening to her, and when anything occurs in her life that is even similar, like a current boyfriend going back to an old girlfriend, she breaks.

Carter Dobbs walks her back to Neiman’s. He gives her his card from Dobbs’ Auto Parts in Bakersfield, California, and he squeezes her arm good-bye. As he turns away from her, she finally can name what disturbs her about him. He doesn’t laugh.