Lucy Peterson wouldn’t describe herself as the kind of girl who teaches Russian men how to walk the plank, plucks old ladies’ whiskers to gussy them up for dates, and avoids parallel parking…but she was that kind of girl.
Lucy’s life circled around four entities. The first was taking piano lessons from the aforementioned Russian man, because she liked piano and music helped her escape from the day to day insanities of her life. It was an unusual perk that Dr. Sabanov thought the KGB was after him and, because of his almost-but-not-quite-fluent English, constantly asked the meaning of phrases like, “You drive me bonkers” and “Walk the plank.”
“What is this walk the plank?” Patrick told me to walk the plank, what means this?”; “What is this ‘bonkers’?” Patrick was Dr. Sabanov’s other piano student. Lucy shared classes with him sometimes. He seemed nice enough (other than ordering their teacher to walk the plank), but she could never tell if he was smiling or not, due to a beard the size of a small mountain lion that smothered half his face.
“It’s like…a pirate thing,” Lucy explained, sitting at the piano. “You know pirates?” Dr. Sabanov gave her a blank stare. “They put a wooden board off the edge of a boat and…make you walk across it until you fall. Into the ocean. You know. Walk the plank.”
Dr. Sabanov gaped at her, his face broadening into an incredulous smile. “Heeheehee….heeheehee!” he giggled. “Walk the plank! Heeheehee! Lucy, walk the plank!” For some reason, he never quite grasped her explanations.
In between lessons, she used her piano skills, which included a repertoire of Russian war songs and Broadway hits, at the second entity in her life, Black Bear Country Club. This stint at the restaurant helped her fund entity number three: acquiring a degree at UNC, so that one day she could get a real job—one that didn’t involve hecklers and paid more than a few bucks and a free dinner. If she did something worthwhile with her time, maybe she could raise her standing in life. Where she stood now, she was a poor, boyfriend-less twenty-three year old who could never get a date because of the fourth and final entity in her life: her grandma.
“Pluck my whiskers!” cried Grandma Peterson. She cornered Lucy against the mirror, brandishing tweezers and a chin overrun with black, spiky hairs.
“Grandma, no!” Lucy flung up her arms.
“Pluck my whiskers!”
“Grandma—”
“It won’t hurt me!” her grandma assured her. “Pluck them! My hands are too shaky!”
“Don’t make me do it, Grandma!”
“Pluck them!”
Conversations like these were normal in the Peterson household. With no family nearby but each other, grandmother and daughter had a responsibility to look out for each other. In Lucy’s case, that meant plucking her grandma’s whiskers and chauffeuring her on dates with strange, old men. In Grandma Peterson’s case, that meant fulfilling her matriarchal destiny to find Lucy a husband.
“Lucy, are you sure you won’t come with us to Bingo night?” her grandma pleaded. She sat, whiskerless, in the passenger seat of Lucy’s pickup truck, clutching her seatbelt like it was a life jacket. “You’re driving us all the way there. You might as well come inside. You might meet some handsome, young men.”
“Grandma, I’d be the youngest person there by centuries. Do you honestly think I’d meet someone my age?”
“The bingo caller is young,” said Grandma Peterson, her voice sly and fox-like. “You should marry the bingo caller.” Lucy opened her mouth to speak, thought better, and clamped it shut again. “Oh, turn here, dear. This is Borya’s house.”
Lucy frowned. “Borya? Where do you meet these old fogies, anyway?”
“Bingo night, of course. All the hunks go to bingo night. Hello, Borya!” she crooned out the window as the pickup truck pulled to a stop. Lucy caught a glance of the man out the window and choked.
“Lucy, slow down! You drive me bonkers!” Dr. Sabanov gasped, clinging to the door as they sped towards the community center. “Why you drive so fast?”
“Oh, Lucy, look,” her grandma said, pointing to the curb in front of the building. “There’s the perfect parking spot. Park the car and come inside with us.”
“That’s a parallel parking spot,” Lucy protested. “You know I…avoid…parallel parking.”
“Lucy, park the car!” Dr. Sabanov cried. “I make you walk the plank!”
It wasn’t fair, Lucy thought. It just wasn’t fair. Her truck sat at the head of ten, honking cars, back angled out into the road and nose wedged to the curb. No matter how hard she tried to make her parking job “parallel,” her truck got in worse and worse positions, the cars behind her honked louder and louder, and Dr. Sabanov shouted American catch-phrases over and over, in hopes that the words would bestow her with magical parking abilities. She knew one day she’d pay for doodling her high school geometry teacher as Jabba the Hut. If only he could see her now: a parallel-parking challenged, twenty-three year old spending her Saturday night plucking whiskers and driving her grandma around on dates.
Someone tapped on her window. “Hey, Luce. Need some help?”
Lucy turned—and felt her insides drop out of her feet. A Han Solo-type hottie leaned against the truck, flashing a smile that made her heart somersault off the plank. Big time. “H-hey,” she said, cranking open the window. “How do you know my name?”
The man raised his eyebrows—and she gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Hello, Patrick!” Dr. Sabanov called from the other side of the truck. “Lucy is driving me bonkers!”
“Patrick? Patrick from piano lessons?” He swept a bow. “You—you shaved your beard! You have a face!” A very nice face, she thought. With a very nice, hidden smile. “What are you doing here?”
“I volunteer as a bingo caller,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for weeks, ever since Dr. Sabanov told me they needed a new one.”
“I told you he was a hunk,” Grandma Peterson whispered, poking Lucy in the side. Who knew Grandma had taste? She should’ve guessed from how willing Grandma was to watch Star Wars and Indiana Jones three times in one week.
Patrick’s lips quirked, betraying a smile. Her grandma needed to learn how to whisper. “So, d’you want help? I can, uh, teach you about parallel parking.”
“Parallel parking!” Dr. Sabanov wailed. “Why we no parked yet? What means this ‘parallel parking’?”
“It means I’ll teach Lucy to park her truck, in exchange for which she’ll play Bingo with us and let me take her out to dinner.”
Lucy’s the kind of girl who loves parallel parking.