CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A FEW MINUTES BEFORE ELEVEN, Amelia feels a rush of anticipation, the same way she has on every opening day. Peeking around the door, she sees that the line for ice cream is out to the road. There are couples, packs of kids straddling their bikes with their allowance tucked into their socks, teens looking down at their phones, families on vacation with fresh sunburns, a group of women in hospital scrubs, even four old men listening to a baseball game on a small handheld radio.
Grady is in the office, filling the two register tills with cash. He’s showered and dressed up in a pale-gray cotton blazer over a white oxford shirt and tan chinos that are snug to his legs.
Cate hooks her chin on Amelia’s shoulder and whispers, “It looks like he’s dressed for a yacht christening.”
Amelia covers her mouth to keep the laugh in.
Though he doesn’t look up, Amelia senses that Grady knows they’ve been talking about him. His cheeks flush pink.
Sheepishly, Amelia retrieves a cordless drill from the supply closet and presents it to Grady. “Would you like to do the honors and take the plywood down?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.”
It’s tradition that the most senior girls work the windows on the first shift of opening day, with two girls standing by behind them to assist in making the orders. Amelia and Cate take their positions. And as the clock ticks over to eleven, they high-five, hip-check, slide their windows open, and take their first orders of the season.
No matter how fast Amelia and Cate scoop, the line doesn’t seem to get any shorter. It’s partly because everyone who comes to the windows wants to talk, saying things like “I was so worried the stand would close forever!” or “It wouldn’t be summer without Meade Creamery!”
And for the first time, Amelia doesn’t feel sad when she thinks of Molly’s death. In fact, she hopes Molly is up in heaven, somewhere in that perfect blue summer sky, sitting with Wayne Lumsden on a fluffy white cloud, looking down on her stand, able to see all the happy faces and hear the compliments.
Meanwhile Grady walks the line, snapping pictures and shaking hands. Even the mayor shows up, with her husband and new baby, and introduces herself to Grady. He brings them straight to the window and benevolently instructs Amelia and Cate to, for the rest of the summer, put whatever the mayor orders on his personal tab. Mayor Heller looks embarrassed, and politely declines Grady’s offer for freebies and the chance to cut the line.
“That was awkward,” Amelia says quietly to Cate.
“His personal tab?” Cate snarks back. “What a cheeseball.” And then she pokes Amelia in the side, making Amelia bend and squeal; however, she manages to keep the top scoop of strawberry on her sugar cone from rolling off.
She and Cate do this a lot, see if they can get each other to mess up an order. They’ll banter with each other’s customers, joking with them that they picked the wrong window, teasing that they’d have put way more sprinkles on a cone than the other would have, two cherries instead of one on the top of a sundae. Both of their tip jars fill up fast, more dollars than change by a long shot. The younger girls see it and are in awe. Happy awe, because tips get split equally at the end of every shift.
Amelia feels her most confident here next to Cate—the best, shiniest version of herself. Today the summer feels long. She won’t let herself think of the opposite of this day, in August, when they’ll be close to saying goodbye.
Instead, she serves their friends, former teachers, neighbors and cousins and old babysitters. Cars zip by on the road and people honk and wave. Little kids spin around the picnic tables on a sugar high. Parents teach their sons and daughters the proper way to lick a cone, from the bottom up.
“I don’t ever remember it being this busy,” Cate says from her window. “This is like Fourth of July plus Labor Day weekend times a heat wave.” She calls out for one of the girls to bring another drum of Home Sweet Home from the walk-in freezer.
She’s right. Thankfully, it’s not disgustingly hot, the way it’ll be come July. The zip of cold air that hits her every time she opens up the scooping cabinet keeps her cool.
The next man at Amelia’s window has on a purple paisley shirt and a porkpie hat. He’s an older gentleman, but the people he’s with are younger and fashionable and snapping pictures of the place.
“I like your hat,” Amelia tells him.
“Thank you!” He orders two scoops of Home Sweet Home in a waffle cone.
His friend pops up next to him and asks Amelia, conspiratorially, “So what’s the deal with Home Sweet Home? Can you really not tell us what’s in it?”
“I don’t know myself.”
“What if I’m allergic?”
“We tell people that if they’re concerned about any potential allergens, they should order something else.”
“He’s not allergic to anything!” one of the girls says, swatting him with her woven clutch.
“He’s just nosy,” another says, and the whole group laughs.
The man in the hat tells them, “Order a waffle cone. They’re homemade and they put little mini-marshmallows in the bottoms to keep the ice cream from dripping out!”
Amelia punches his order into the register. “That’ll be five dollars, please.”
The man turns to his friends. “Can you believe how cheap this is?”
This always seems to happen with city people. Amelia isn’t sure why. Do normal things like ice cream really cost so much more there? She hands the man his order and, after dropping a five into the tip jar—for which Amelia gives him a heartfelt thank-you—he takes a lick of his cone.
“Oh my God, this takes me back.” He closes his eyes, and Amelia can see him work the ice cream around in his mouth before he swallows. To Amelia he explains, “I grew up not too far from here. Chesterfield.”
Amelia smiles. These are her favorite customers. The locals who’ve long since moved away, who take one lick and are transported back to a particular summer, a moment, a feeling. She’s sure that’s why the ice cream stand becomes the center of the universe during summers. People wanting to find, even in the smallest taste, something they’ve lost.
Maybe fifteen minutes later, Grady pops into the stand, equal parts excited and concerned. “I can’t even see the end of the line. Can we pick up the pace? Maybe do a little less of the chitchat? I don’t want anyone to give up and go home.”
“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Cate says, like he’s a cloud passing over her sun.
“Okay, okay.” And then he calls out, “Girls, I just want to say thank you. You ladies are killing it.”
Amelia ushers Grady away and motions for another girl to take over her window. This, she realizes, will be part of her job this summer. The good thing is that Grady will need to be up at the farmhouse soon, making the ice cream the way Molly used to.
“Hey, Grady, before you go,” Cate says, and Grady stops. “I’m not sure if Amelia mentioned this or not. . . . It’s tradition that Molly Meade bought us pizzas on the first day of the season.” The other girls, including Amelia, raise their eyebrows because this isn’t at all true. But Cate is smooth. She reaches down into a tub and keeps scooping. “Call Pizza Towne. It’s on Main.”
Grady, to his credit, doesn’t hesitate. “No problem. Everyone cool with pepperoni?”
“Liz and Jen and I are vegetarians,” Cate informs him.
“Okay, one plain, one pepperoni. I’ll get some sodas, too.”
Though she swats Cate, Amelia only feels relief as Grady steps outside and places an order. Between the two of them, they can manage Grady and also the stand. Everything’s going to be just fine.
* * *
Amelia spends her break going through the register tape. She’ll do a full accounting when her shift ends, but she’s curious to see how much business they’ve done. She’s never been the most senior person on a busy day, like opening day or the Fourth of July, so she has no idea what to expect.
There are two shifts per day, and each one averages anywhere from six hundred to eight hundred dollars. On weekends, they’ll do double that. But today they’ve already gone through four drums of Home Sweet Home and three of everything else. It might just be a record breaker.
Grady comes in with the pizzas. “I feel like a celebrity out there in that pink Cadillac. Everyone’s waving at me.” He comes around the back of Amelia’s chair. “How it looking?”
Amelia punches some numbers into the calculator. She almost can’t believe what comes up. “We’ve already done over fifteen hundred dollars and we’ve still got two more hours to go on the first shift.”
She looks up to share a prideful smile with him, but Grady is staring into his phone. “Fifteen hundred dollars,” he says, typing it out. “Don’t wait too long. Pizza will get cold.”
Glumly, she puts the calculator away and stands up. “I’m going to empty the trash cans first.”
Hearing this, Grady rushes to finish his text and then darts over, deftly putting his body between Amelia’s and the door. She finds herself suddenly standing so close to him, she can almost feel the vibrations of his cell phone buzzing with a text back, now that it’s tucked inside his blazer pocket. “No,” he insists, almost parentally. “You haven’t taken a break yet. Eat first. What kind do you want?”
“Plain.”
He opens the box and surveys. “Okay, you want your slice more on the saucy side? Bigger crust? Those burnt cheese bubbles?”
“Saucy and big crust, no burnt cheese bubbles.”
He selects her slice and delivers it to her, then starts ripping off sheets of paper towels and folding them up. “Enjoy.”
Cate walks in and grabs a piece of pizza. Between bites, she says, “Grady. We have napkins. This is an ice cream stand, remember?”
“Right.” Grady seems to sense the coldness. To Amelia, he says, “Hey . . . So, you’re going to stay through to closing?”
Amelia checks the face on the punch clock. By the time the first shift ends, she will have worked eleven hours. She’s already planned to stay a little later. But the way Grady asks, it feels less like a question and more like an expectation.
“Yes.”
“And can you text me more frequent updates on the registers? Hourly, if you can?” He takes out his cell phone. “I should have asked you for your number yesterday. What is it?”
Amelia tells him and she feels embarrassed, even though it is clearly a work ask.
Once he’s gone, Cate says, “Don’t let him guilt you into staying until closing. The juniors can handle it. They closed plenty of times last summer.”
“Yeah, but I figure I can knock out the schedule for the rest of the week and that sort of thing. You should totally go home, though.”
“I’m not in any rush. I’ll stick around for a while,” Cate says. “But before we do anything”—she comes to sit next to Amelia—“we’re eating more pizza.”
* * *
Second shifts feel different from first shifts for a few reasons. Things get quiet around the dinner hour, between four thirty and about seven, but then it’ll be busy until closing.
And once the sun goes down, the stand turns into a stage, and it’s impossible to see past the floodlights mounted under the awning. You can’t tell who’s next in line until they reach the window. It’s less families and more couples. For the last hour, ten until eleven, it’s nearly all teens.
Amelia texts Grady the hourly register updates he asked for, and he doesn’t show his face again. She fills out time cards for all the girls and then gets to work on the weekly schedule while Cate lies on the love seat. She stayed a lot longer than Amelia thought she would, though mostly she’s been hanging out here in the office. Not that Amelia minds. She likes having Cate’s company.
“Don’t you dare put either of us on first shift tomorrow,” Cate says with a yawn. “We deserve to sleep in. Otherwise, our seniority is worthless.”
“Cosigned.” Amelia opens the top desk drawer and takes out three keys that open the stand. These copies are hers to divvy out to the most senior girls, who’ll also be opening and closing. She tosses one to Cate. “Catch!”
“Why do I need one? Won’t I be working every shift with you?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I just thought you might want one anyway.”
Cate shrugs, and Amelia thinks back to last summer. It’s not the key Cate wanted. This one doesn’t come with the Head Girl pin.
“Give it to Mansi or Liz,” Cate says, tossing it back.
“Oh. Okay. Sure.” Amelia decides to make the girls flip a coin for it. So it’ll be fair.
At eleven on the nose, they lock the service windows and flip off the outside lights, releasing the moths that have been trapped in their glow. The girls cover the open ice cream drums in plastic wrap and move them from the scooping cabinet back into the walk-in freezer.
There are other chores that everyone is expected to do at closing time. Windex the service windows so they aren’t smudgy with fingerprints, restock the toppings, empty the trash cans. The whole circuit, with four girls on, can take as little as fifteen minutes.
Amelia’s about to get started, but Cate tells her and the other girls, who look like zombies, “Let’s not even worry about it.”
Amelia hesitates for a second, but everyone’s so beat, and already walking out past her. Anyway, it’s not like the place is trashed. She follows the girls out and flips off the lights.
That they didn’t have any newbies on changed the feeling of the first day. There was no impromptu little ceremony when new pink polos were passed out, no going over the rules, no challenging the newbies to try and do a dip-top and let them think they’ll be fired when their scoop of ice cream inevitably falls into the vat. Which it always, always does. These rituals aren’t just for newbies. They make all the girls feel like they’re part of something bigger than just a summer job.
But there was so much anticipation leading up to today; they didn’t know if they would even get to open on time, let alone have such a banner day. The girls came together and accomplished something huge, something practically impossible.
Amelia sends a text to Grady.
All closed up. I’ll bring the deposit bag up in a sec.
He responds almost immediately.
Don’t worry. I’ll come down and get it.
The younger girls are already scattering. Amelia clicks the padlock shut. Cate leans against the stand, picking away some peeling white paint.
A car pulls in. Amelia’s mother.
“Am I too late for a cone?”
“Any other day, I’d say no, Mom. But today, the answer is yes.”
Now that Amelia has a ride, Cate says with a yawn, “Peace,” and climbs into her truck. Amelia’s a little relieved that Grady doesn’t appear until Cate’s pulled out onto the road.
“Oh. Hello.” He leans down into the window of Amelia’s family car. “Are you Amelia’s mom?”
“Yes.”
“Nice meeting you. I couldn’t have done this without her today. She’s invaluable.”
Amelia’s mom beams at the compliment. Amelia blushes shyly.
She steps a few feet away and hands him the deposit bag. “We did it.”
“I kind of got the feeling that the girls were uncomfortable having me around.”
Amelia feels bad. There were a lot of laughs at Grady’s expense today. She keeps it simple. “It’s just not what they’re used to. Molly pretty much left us to our own devices.”
“I want to give you girls your space, but I want to be a part of this too.”
Grady’s earnestness catches her off guard. She quickly nods. “Of course. Totally.”
He nods, grateful. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Once they’re in the car, her mom says, “He’s quite handsome.”
“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Ahem. Well then, I’m happy to report that I was able to schedule another candidate for your interview slot at the bank today, even with your last-minute notice. We had several terrific applicants, actually. Not that you were worried about leaving me high and dry,” Mom says playfully.
Amelia presses a finger into her left bicep. Her scooping arm is tender to the touch. The soreness makes her smile.
Her mom is right. She wasn’t. Not one little bit.