Of Masks and Men

Every once in a while I play a game where I squint into the not-so-distant past and try to remember what I was doing on that particular day of the pandemic. What did my August 11 look like? What was a I doing all day on October 16, 2020? Three years is not a long time, yet it somehow seems like it belongs to a different decade entirely.

My partner and I were fortunately (veryveryvery fortunately) okay. He works in the video game industry and had just started at a new studio before the world hung out a colossal “gone fishing” sign. Within what felt like 29 seconds of lockdown demand soared for anything that you could download to a device of any kind. Even those hold out parents who were once so religiously strict about their kid’s screen time developed a necessary form of amnesia about those rules. Media exploded. He was busier than a frog trying to cross the 605, tuning out the posts in his Facebook feed of people building canoes and teaching themselves amateur astronomy with all their free time.

I had a little paid work, but not too much. I wrote some, I think. I read, a lot. I spent too much time obsessing over the hunt for toilet paper, the similarities between Ahab and the white whale pretty much write themselves. I felt helpless and powerless except for being able to spread a few of those dollah dollah bills around where I could.

I would love to say that I took a stand against the Bezos empire and shopped small and local and indie only, but that is the stuff of speculative fiction. I lined the coffers of the House of Bezos, ensuring that the next nine generations of that line will never have to work a day in their lives if they don’t want to. I am still waiting for my thank-you note. Who raised you, Jeff? Rude. But I did give as much as I could to small businesses, especially bookstores from all over the country. It didn’t matter to me if they charged double for shipping or couldn’t guarantee I’d have the book in less than a month. Order on, I replied to these emails, the panic sweat shimmering off the screen. It felt, “good” is not quite the right word, maybe more like “useful” with an underpinning of “regular.” Isn’t that a lot of what we were seeking out as the pandemic took hold? Sign posts leading the way back to ordinary?

At the end of March we decided it would be okay to drive up to New Hampshire to check on our family’s lake property. This is not at all a Downton Abby situation, but more like a modest piece of land that has been in my family for several generations. Okay, maybe that does sound like Downton Abbey only without Mr. Carson and minus 100% of the wealth. Our place is located in a small New Hampshire town a little under two hours north of Boston. The drive up that early spring day was a lot like living the opening sequence of a Stephen King novel: deserted highway, darkened, shuttered rest stops, an atmosphere of the unnatural hanging over everything making it all seem doubly foreboding. I scanned the barren brown forests for zombies or the red eyes of the Chupacabra.

“What are the odds that Lucky’s is open?” I asked somewhat jokingly on the ride. Lucky’s Coffee Garage had become our favorite place for coffee and breakfast fare; it was by far the best café within a 15-mile radius of our place. Lucky’s was a converted Exxon service station. The woman who owned and ran it kept a bunch of features from the garage like the giant service bay doors that opened during warm weather. Vintage license plates from every state, some going back to the 1950s, covered the front counter like wallpaper. They almost always had signs at the register to “round up” the total for an area woman’s shelter or an LGBTQ advocacy group or to support a green initiative. If you’re from a city or more progressive town, these things might not seem like a big deal. But in a rural community where teens may readily miss out on a few school days in order to take advantage of the hunting season with their family, a business like Lucky’s standing behind their values in this way was no small or easy thing. I love them for this and, if I’m being completely honest, for their breakfast sandwich served on a homemade spinach and feta biscuit, which would be worth spilling sensitive government secrets for.

I almost didn’t want to pull up the website, afraid of finding out that this small, but vital (in my opinion) business was another retail casualty of The Bad Times. Happily wrong. The site directed me to an app for online orders and contact-free pickup.

This brief bit of normalcy in our surreal “getaway” tasted almost as exquisite as that damn breakfast sandwich. Because we had not actually “gotten away from” anything. It wasn’t like crossing state lines ended the pandemic, though that would have been a very satisfying magic trick. The signs were simply a little less visible here than they were closer to the city.

We pulled into Lucky’s empty parking lot. There was a narrow take-out window with a shelf. Had that always been there? A brown bag and two drinks with my name scrawled on the outside of the containers sat on the shelf. You couldn’t see inside because of how the building was constructed. All of it had a speak-easy vibe to it, very clandestine: Make the drop. Talk to no one. This never happened.

In the months that followed we spent more time in New Hampshire. We merged our quarantine bubble with that of my mom, my brother and his family who were also up at the house as much as possible. Lucky’s became our highly-anticipated ritual; a simple delight to interrupt the gloomy run-on days. Most times the order was already on the shelf waiting for pick-up along with other orders. Every once in a while I’d retrieve the order and the window would open for an arm to snake its way out, deposit another order, and just as swiftly retract itself.

One day we rolled up and there was no order waiting at the take-out window. I walked over and stood in front of the glass, assuming someone would eventually notice. I thought about lightly tapping and then worried that seemed aggressive or invasive and then thought about how weird it was to have that kind of editor running through my mind—evaluating every action and gesture. The glass slide open and a pair of eyes belonging to a male, situated between a brown skull cap and a maroon mask appeared.

“Hi! What’s the name on the order?” I gave him my name. “Cool. One sec.”  He disappeared. Maybe it was a rare live interaction with someone who either didn’t share my DNA or was legally bound to me. Maybe I had finally reached the point of emotionally short-circuiting after being veryveryvery okay for so long. Maybe I had just forgotten everything I knew about social etiquette or having casual interactions with strangers, but when the man came back with our brown bag of feelings-baked-into-biscuit-form and coffee drinks, I opened my mouth in my mask and this is what came out:

Hey thanks so much and I just want to say thanks for all you’re doing and everything to you know stay open and do this like your stuff is the best so good like I can’t tell you what it means to be able to come here and get this and look forward to and it’s just awesome you’re doing an awesome job and are you all okay and is everyone safe and everything?

He laughed. I believe he said something like, “Aww. Wow, hey thanks so much. That’s really nice to hear. Yeah, yeah, we’re all okay, you know, hanging in there, but thanks.” When I got back in the car I was a little flushed, maybe hyperventilating as that was probably also the most I had ever tried to say while masked up.

“You gonna make it?” my partner asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I just got a little….I don’t know. It’s just been a lot and people should know the little stuff matters, you know?” He nodded because he is kind and wonderful and has learned enough by now that sometimes agreement will cost you nothing and mean everything.

And so began a convivial kind of back and forth between me and the Lucky’s guy that tends to develop when you accidently broadcast your harmless weirdness to someone nice enough to accept it and roll with it. I learned his name was Gavin; he already knew my name because I had essentially become a regular. We chatted about what seemed “normal” then—mask designs, how the contact-free thing was working out (good for customers, lonely for the staff), finding stuff to do outdoors—but looking back I realize how deranged we probably both sounded.

Cool mask!

Thanks, a friend of mine is a fashion designer making them to keep his business afloat and help out essential workers and such.

It sounds like dialogue you’d write if your screenwriting class was taught by a ChatGPT bot.

Another time our order went a little sideways because they ran out of a different type of biscuit for the breakfast sandwich. Gavin apologized and offered to take some money off the order, which I adamantly refused. “Hang on,” he said. He came back with our bag, which included our order as well as a complimentary muffin. Gavin, you sly, sly minx, taking care of your regulars like that! The little stuff matters, especially when you begin counting on it to keep you tethered to a reality that still exists just underneath the one you’re required to accept.  

And then vaccines rolled out and a lot of us began to breathe again, if not any easier. And then cafes and eateries began to test the new waters with in-person ordering, but closed to in-person dining. And then masks became optional. And then one day we went to Lucky’s and we walked inside where we hadn’t been in over two years. And we didn’t have to wear masks and neither did the staff, which we could see hustling behind the ordering counter and kitchen.

It was a typically busy Saturday on a really lovely warm spring day. As we inched closer to the counter, I felt weirdly nervous, the way you feel when you’re waiting for someone to deplane. I could see Gavin in this telltale brown skull cape at the espresso machine. I was smiling broadly before we stepped up to the counter.

“Hey there!” I said brightly and with, I felt, was just the right amount of familiarity.

“Morning,” he said in the same tone you use to greet the receptionist at the doctor’s office. My smile fell down around my shoes. What just happened? Did I imagine the banter? Did I exaggerate the quality of wit? (No. NEVER, don’t be a fool!) And then it hit me:

He didn’t recognize me without the mask.

I still carried it with me in my bag. For a very (blessedly) brief instant I thought about taking it out and kind of waving it like, “Hey, remember me? Extra muffin that one time?” But the woman not starring in this rom-com, (directed by Amy Poehler and featuring Paul Rudd as Gavin the Lucky’s guy) the one who remembered she had some dignity left, put her smile back on and enjoyed waiting in line with other people for her order, like a regular.

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Lens Zen!

New England is in a little bit of a bind right now: the calendar and drink menu says FALL, but there is still plenty of green on the trees, mild days, and summery-seeming blooms a’bloomin! What’s a gal to do? Roll with the changes, (respect, Kevin Cronin and 80s high school dance super group, REO Speedwagon). Many of the area’s sunflower fields got hooped from all of the rain, but others posted they were able to salvage crops for a late bloom, and this makes me happy. I am at the ready with my cute scarf and leaf-pile-frolicking boots, but cameling up some sunshine in flower form is also never a bad thing. X! -S

Don’t worry, no flowers were actually mowed down in the staging of this cheery sunflower field scene. Thanks prop tractor! You rock! (Taken at Verrill Farms, Concord MA ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography