Linger
Authors: M. E. Kerr
M. E. Kerr
FOR VIVIAN SCHULTE
longtime friend and favorite poet
with love
A Personal History by M. E. Kerr
Time is slow, do not go
From here.
And the scheme is a dream
In here.
So linger awhile, let’s see that smile,
Secrets are mysteries still.
You’ll have your way, you will.
—“Linger” by Jules Raleigh
H
OW WOULD YOU FEEL
about having a Gulf soldier for a pen pal?
my brother wrote to Lynn Dunlinger.
If the answer is no, don’t write back.
Lynn came up to me near Christmas, at the employees’ party Linger always held.
That was when she told me about it.
She said, “Gary? Guess who I got a letter from! Your brother!”
“
Bobby?
” I said. I only had one brother. But I couldn’t believe it: Bobby writing Dunlinger’s daughter! He’d never mentioned
that
in his letters home.
“Yes, Bobby! I’m the only girl at Faith Academy who’s heard from a serviceman in the Gulf!”
“He’s the only one from Berryville to be over there.”
“And the only Linger alumnus. Daddy’s real proud of Bobby.”
“
Now,
” I said. Lynn ignored my sarcasm. Since she went away to school and wasn’t around the restaurant that much, maybe she didn’t know Bobby’d had a major falling-out with her father. No one but those two knew why but Bobby said he’d never work for Dunlinger again, never set foot inside Linger again, either.
The Dunlingers behaved like parents of the holy child they had to keep safe and sheltered for some special destiny. Lynn couldn’t date until she was seventeen, and by that time she was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school ninety miles from Berryville, in the middle of nowhere. If she did date, she had to double date with Gloria Yee, daughter of Lung Yee, Linger’s maître d’. Summers Lynn went to a camp called Le Soleil, where they spoke only French.
Take advantage of your advantages, Mr. D. liked to say. I guess that was what my brother was doing.
It’d have to have been a war or something like it to get my brother’s toe in Lynn Dunlinger’s front door.
I don’t know if you remember those days, but there were yellow ribbons hanging off everything, and more flags around than you see on July Fourth.
Who was going to answer that kind of letter saying no, thanks, I’ll pass on writing one of you guys?
Preppies and college freshmen from Philadelphia and its outskirts would get in line at holiday time to date Lynn. I never saw her date anyone from Berryville.
Before Saddam Hussein turned the world upside down, no one could have told me the one guy from Berryville Lynn would be bragging wrote her a letter would be my big brother.
At the party I could see Thayer Drake out on the porch waiting for her, his ears red from the cold. He was in his last year at Choate, a little preppy prince in a Paul Stuart tweed suit, a rep tie, and jazzy boots with spurs, long hair tied in back with a silk scarf.
Thayer Drake wouldn’t be comfortable coming inside for a drink with the waiters, busboys, cooks, and clerks who worked in the restaurant Lynn’s father owned.
The big sign outside said:
LINGER
PROPRIETOR, NED DUNLINGER ESTABLISHED 1959
Inside there was a smaller sign saying:
YOU DON’T HAVE TO PRAISE US
OR LAUGH AT OUR JOKES.
EAT HEARTY, COME OFTEN,
YOU’RE ONE OF THE FOLKS
Dunlinger said he wanted his customers to feel that Linger was unique, that there was so much more to it than a meal out, with some musician entertaining…. He also said his marriage was that kind: unique, much more than he’d expected.
Dunlinger adored Lynn, of course—she was his only child—but he also talked about his wife all the time, in glowing terms. He came off as a romantic character, certainly where Natalia Dunlinger was concerned.
He’d built this special apartment for her at the top of Linger, with a cupola above it, and a small square balcony outside, enclosed with a little white fence.
Mrs. Dunlinger sometimes rested there, or watched the sunset from a white wicker rocker with a glass of champagne. It was her private little area. She called it Lingering Shadows. Sometimes I sneaked up there when I knew she wasn’t at the restaurant.
It smelled good there. I knew it was a perfume called Red. I’d seen the bottle in the bathroom. I’d sprayed a little in the air and looked out at the hills of Berryville, and I’d wished I had a great love. Not some dumb little meet-me-by-my-locker thing, but something that would be once-in-a-lifetime, earthshaking, secret, dark, and possibly even deadly.
I would close my eyes and try to imagine the face of this beloved female, but nothing ever came … except Lynn Dunlinger. Everyone’s Dream Girl. Berryville’s one world-class beauty.
And I would tell myself: No Way! … Nooooo Way! It wasn’t just that I was sixteen and she was seventeen, or that I was a sophomore in high school and she was a senior in boarding school. It was what Bobby always said: Why line up with the sheep and drool over
her
? That’s not for the cool, cool Peel brothers! There’re a lot of fish in the sea; you just haven’t swum from the little pond into the big sea. Wait till you get your butt out of Berryville, Gary—she’ll look like nothing to you.
Both our parents thought Berryville was paradise.
They loved Berryville and they loved Linger.
My dad, Charlie Peel, was Linger’s manager, and Wanda, my mother, did the books for the place, from home.
Dad thought The Boss hung the moon, and Mom talked about the Dunlingers the way the English rave about The Royal Family: Every little thing they did fascinated her.
It used to embarrass Bobby when he’d fall into the family rut. Working up there as a waiter, same as I did after he joined up, Bobby’d rave about how smart Dunlinger was, then say something to play it down, like “Now I sound like Dad and Mom!”
But Bobby often fought with Dunlinger, too. He hated the way Dunlinger controlled everything about Linger. Bobby griped about the rules, and the way Dunlinger saw that they were followed.
When Mr. Yee sat people in the dining room, he had to seat unattractive customers back by the kitchen doors (unless they were on Dunlinger’s A list of old, well-heeled regulars). No men without ties, or ladies in pants, ever in The Regency Room. They went into The Grill, as did customers with children in tow. Jules Raleigh, the musician, had to play upbeat songs until after dinner, when he’d go into The Grill and the bar drinkers would sit around the piano and request blues.
No drunk, ever, no matter who it was, could stay at a table or on a barstool; he or she had to leave. Fresh flowers on the tables, clean windows, and in the smoking section no more than two butts in an ashtray before you emptied it.
There was a long list of rules.
Dunlinger had the only real restaurant in town. The hotel dining room was a tacky place that couldn’t keep a cook more than six months. The others were fast-food joints like Waffle Waffle and McDonald’s.
Linger paid a lot of attention to Berryville, too.
It wouldn’t seem like Christmas in our town without the Linger tree. We all went up there to watch the lights go on and sing carols every December fifteenth … Easter there was the egg rolling out on the lawn, for the kids … and on the Fourth of July, Linger’s fireworks could be seen and heard for miles.
Linger was the best thing about the town. Bobby said it was all due to Dunlinger, until their fight turned Bobby against him.
After that, Bobby joined the Army, and it was as though Linger didn’t exist where he was concerned. He never once asked about Linger or the Dunlingers. If we mentioned them during our phone calls, he changed the subject.
But once there was the threat of war, and Bobby was shipped over to Saudi Arabia, once he’d finally swum from the little pond into the big sea, what did he do first thing?
He wrote Lynn.
—F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF PRIVATE
Robert Peel
Saudi Arabia
First thing at Fort Hood, this black guy in a Smokey the Bear Hat barked out, “On your face!”
I was right off the bus with the other new recruits.
I stared back at him, didn’t have a clue what he wanted.
He called himself Kali Andala, black as the Dunlingers’ cat, Joan, and just as angry.
Behind me this guy whispered, “He wants you to do push-ups.”
“Beat your face, asshole!” Sergeant Andala introduced me to the Army’s pretty talk. His lips practically touched mine, he was so close, and I could smell his morning coffee.
I got down and started going. It was just like the old days out behind Berryville High on the football field, the coach barking at me to save some energy because I’d do some laps next.
“I want twenty!” Sergeant Sweet Talk told me.
A guy behind me muttered, “Jesus!” like he felt for me, and the drill sergeant got on his case next.
He said you’re going to beat your face, too, greasehead, because the guy behind me was Spanish, and Sergeant Andala liked to call you the worst thing anyone could. (Italians were wops, and he called a German Sauerkraut Breath.)
Next he asked this guy his name, and it went like this:
“Augustin Sanchez, Sir.”
“You a little Spic girl from Porto Ricko, Sanchez?”
“No, Sir. I’m a Mexican from New York City.”
“You this Yo-Yo Peel’s girlfriend?”
“No, Sir, Drill Sergeant! I’m a male, Sir.”
I was at their feet, up to five and already feeling it.
“You look like a girl or something, a movie star or something, pretty boy!”
“I’m sorry, Sir. I can’t help how I look, Sir!”
“You can help how you act, Movie Star.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“If you ever try again to help out that Yo-Yo down there beating his face, I’ll have your ass!”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Now
you
give me fifty, Movie Star!”
“Yes. Sir!”
What is it with me? All I need to do is show up anywhere and someone there will hate me on sight. Dunlinger used to say I had an attitude. He’d say, You could be my younger self with your cocky strut and your smirk. You’ve got to bury it, kid! Always pretend to be a bigger fool than you are, Smart Guy, or someone’s going to nail you.
Movie Star and me are laughing about it now, sitting on a cot near our tank. I never saw so many stars in one sky.
“I only got to do twelve push-ups,” Movie Star says. “Then I caved in. You did all twenty.”
I tell him I was something of a jock in Berryville High, and not much of a student. One reason I joined up: for the $5,000 bonus, yes, but also for the chance to go to college, since the family savings should go to the brain, not the brawn. I tell him Gary’s going to be a lawyer.
Movie Star says he’s no jock, but he’s got four brothers, so he joined up for the same reasons. He says instead of sports at the school he went to in New York City, he danced.
I tell him Gary and me are the cool, cool Peel brothers. “We don’t dance, we don’t
have
to.”
He says he’ll teach me if I don’t know how.
I tell him he’s too pretty to dance with. I’d get a name dancing with him. We
all
call him Movie Star now.
He calls me Roberto.
I tell him the only word I know in Spanish is Mañana.