One

Mariel, 1996

Mariel Prager believed in heaven, because she'd been there once, so far. She'd like to report that it looks an awful lot like Minnesota. The next best place to heaven, in her experience, was a type of restaurant found in the upper Midwest called a supper club. When she walked into a good one, she felt both welcome and somewhere out of time. The decor would be old-fashioned, the drinks would be strong, and the dining experience would evoke beloved memories, all for a pretty decent price.

Since she was a kid, Mariel had spent countless days at Floyd and Betty’s Lakeside Supper Club on scenic Bear Jaw Lake, Minnesota. The place wasn’t particularly scenic itself, just a one-story brown wooden building with bright red front doors and tall windows on the side facing the lake. The sign outside read fine dining at a fine value since 1919, and because everyone trusts neon, fulfilling that promise was the duty of the owner, which, for the past two weeks, had been Mariel. On her watch, a proper supper club meal began with a free relish tray and basket of bread, followed by a round of brandy old-fashioneds, and then a lavish amount of hearty cuisine, with fish on Fridays, prime rib on Saturdays, and grasshoppers for dessert.

Before he died, Mariel’s grandpa Floyd had told her that she was ready to take over sole ownership, but this morning, she wished that someone else-anyone else-were in charge instead. After locking the front door of her house, Mariel wanted to hurl her body into the lake and float away.

For a long time, she'd simply managed the Lakeside's bar. It was a job she'd kept since becoming the owner, because it was the greatest watering hole in the north. It was loud and smoky, her hands were never dry, she never sat down, and she loved it. Every summer weekend, the horseshoe-shaped bar and its wood-paneled lounge were packed with people fresh from fishing boats and softball games and cars that had driven up from the Cities. It was a place where people chose to be on the most memorable nights of their lives, and it was a pleasure to be at the center of it all.

After what happened last night, though, she wasn't up for any of it, but that didn't matter. If she wasn't standing behind the bar when it opened at 5:00 p.m., people would talk.

Mariel’s quiet, peaceful commute to work had always been her favorite part of the day. From door to door, it took exactly fifty-four seconds-the time it takes to make a perfect old-fashioned-to walk at an ordinary pace down her driveway, across a county road, up the gravel shoulder, and into the paved parking lot. It had her two favorite smells, the sharp, earthy tang of pine trees on one end, and the stubborn mix of stale cigarette smoke and fry grease on the other, smells she’d always associated with belonging and pleasure. If she spotted an animal en route, she’d give it a name, like that day, when she saw a squirrel she named Pronto. Most important, if she could make it from home to the supper club without any interruption, it’d be a good day, guaranteed. The day before, her husband, Ned, stopped her in the driveway to kiss her before he left for the weekend, and it had been the worst day in a long time.

That morning, Mariel almost made it. She was a few steps into the Lakeside's parking lot when someone ruined her day.

"Mariel!" a woman's voice bellowed from a white station wagon. It was Hazel, the oldest of her regulars from the bar.

Mariel sighed, and turned to face her. "How ya doing, Hazel?"

"Better than I deserve," Hazel replied. "So, where'd you go last night? You just up and vanished on us."

"I was feeling sick, so I went home early." That's all Hazel needed to know.

"Oh, jeez. Food poisoning?"

Mariel just decided to nod.

Hazel responded with a brief, exaggerated grimace. "Well, you look all right today. By the way, nice T-shirt."

Mariel had to look down to remember what she was wearing. It was a Bruce Springsteen concert shirt from sixteen years ago. Maybe the last time she'd been to a concert.

"Thanks. Well, I should get to work."

"One more thing. Your mother called me. She needs a ride home from church, and wants to know if you can do it."

Mariel hadn't seen her mother for more than a decade, until two weeks before at Floyd's burial and wake. They'd made eye contact, briefly, but still hadn't spoken to each other.

"Why didn't she just call me?" Mariel asked.

"She said she tried three times, and it rang and rang."

Mariel had been to see her doctor that morning, so it's possible her mother's claim was true, but when she'd been at home, no one had called.

"Why can't whatever friend she's staying with just drive her?" The last Mariel heard, her mother had been hopping around the guest rooms of various childhood friends since Floyd's funeral. The fact that Florence hadn't gone back home to Winona by now was unsettling. Something was up.

"She specifically wanted you." Hazel looked pleased, which was a bad sign. "I've known your mom for sixty years. It's time, Mariel. At our age, none of us knows how much time we have."

Mariel hated it when older people played that card, especially on behalf of other older people. In her experience, it was true of everyone, at every age.

"I'll think about it."

Was she really going to do this today? She noticed a yellow-bellied sapsucker in the tree above, its red-capped head darting around, no doubt planning even further destruction of her trees in its godless little mind. Then she noticed another, one branch above. Maybe they were gathering their forces, and would soon descend in a cute fog of pestilence, and wipe out the forests, the buildings, the people, everything. Then it would be a lot quieter around here, and she could finally have a relaxing Saturday.

"Don't think too long," Hazel laughed. "Can't keep Florence Stenerud waiting."

Despite not living anywhere near Bear Jaw for fifty years, Mariel's mother was still widely known, somehow loved, and often feared there. It was well known that anyone who disappointed Florence in the slightest, anyone who inconvenienced her or failed to meet her expectations, would have a swarm of baseless rumors unleashed after them in retaliation. Consequently, Mariel was certain that not collecting her mother in a timely fashion from the Our Savior's Lutheran Church pancake breakfast would mean half the town would soon hear that Mariel had been badly injured in a car accident, or was trapped beneath a fallen tree, or had caught a rare, incurable illness, or was getting a divorce, or some heady cocktail of the above.

Mariel checked her watch. It was ten o'clock. "How long do I have, Hazel?"

"The pancake breakfast goes until eleven, but she'd like to be picked up by ten thirty."

"Okay, I'll do it," Mariel said, surprising even herself.

When thinking of how she'd eventually speak with her mother, Mariel had long imagined a tear-streaked deathbed reconciliation, followed by a few decades of regret, and that sounded fine. But maybe it was time, as Hazel said. Mariel was bound for a bad day anyway.

The actual town of Bear Jaw was seven miles from Bear Jaw Lake, in a move the region’s invasive Europeans clearly did to confuse future tourists, of which there were now many. At this hour, at least most tourists and lake people were at their cabins, so traffic into town wouldn’t be unbearable. Besides a green Borglund Services septic truck up ahead of her, the only other person Mariel had seen going her way was a fiftyish woman with bright silver-streaked hair on a silver bicycle.

Mariel's car radio was playing an interesting song about a guy who wanted to be killed because he was a loser. She flipped through the stations until she landed on a song by Mariah Carey, which was fine, or at least better.

Mariel had actually braced herself to speak with her mom at the funeral. There was just never a moment when Florence was standing alone without people around. Over the years, there were times she'd felt an urge to call, when a normal, well-adjusted person would've called a normal, well-adjusted mother. But Mariel could never bring herself to do it. Two weeks ago, Mariel had important news, news she didn't want her mother receiving from another source. She was pregnant. Or had been, until last night.

She hadn’t told her husband yet. Ned was still down in the Cities, watching ball games with his college buddies through the weekend. She would wait. Ned saw Tim, Erick, and Doug only once or twice a year, and she didn’t want to ruin his good time with them.

Her doctor, Theresa Eaton, had said if a miscarriage happened, it would likely occur in the first twelve weeks. Hers happened at six weeks and two days, at work, right after the kitchen closed. She'd seen spotting earlier that day, and called Theresa, who said it was normal.

"See you in a few days," Theresa had said. "To check for the heartbeat."

But that night, as Mariel was making a Midori sour for a customer, she started feeling a sudden, stabbing pain. She ran to the bathroom, locked the stall door and sat down, her head spinning. It felt like her insides fell out. She knew before she could bring herself to look. Her entire body wanted to scream. She put her fist in her mouth, and cried as quietly as possible, to not bother anyone.

Once she cleaned up, Mariel snuck out the back, without telling anybody. She’d apologize later and tell everyone she got sick, she told herself. Mariel thought of her two seasonal bar employees and hoped they wouldn’t think poorly of her. As she pushed the rear door open, she’d never felt colder or lonelier.

Outside, she smelled fresh cigarette smoke. She was relieved to see it was Big Al, who'd been a chef at the Lakeside since before Mariel was born. Once, she'd wanted to be a chef herself, and Floyd and Big Al had taught her how to cook everything that kitchen served. He was probably the closest thing she had to family, apart from Ned.

"Leaving early?" Big Al asked, surprised.

"Stomach bug," she told him, intentionally looking away. If he saw her face, he'd know she was lying. Why had she told him about the pregnancy so early? She knew better. But she'd been so happy, and that was impossible to hide from him too.

"Need me to close up?"

"Yeah," she said, but couldn't keep the sadness from her voice.

"Oh no," he said, as if he knew.

She almost broke down and told him everything. Instead, she apologized, and walked home in the dark.

Maybe she wouldn't tell anyone. She'd lost a baby, but that's not the way most people would see it. They'd respond in ways that would be crushing. They'd hug her and say It just wasn't meant to be. They'd say It happens all the time. They'd say You can try again! They'd say that her friend Cathy's mom had nine miscarriages over twenty-five years. But they didn't know all that Mariel and Ned had been through just to have this single brief pregnancy. And Cathy's mom had seven kids. Mariel had none.

What was most devastating was that Mariel had been fine without a child. And she would've been, indefinitely, she knew it. For years, it was just Ned and her, and everything was good. Once they decided to have a baby, it was all Mariel could think about-even after learning about each of their fertility issues and how difficult it would be. After all the time and money spent, and procedures they endured, here she was. Not back to where she started, because there's no such thing. Her body would either bear a child or bear a loss. Either way, the space was made.

Unspoken, then, the loss burned through her memories, desperate for blame. She'd found one culprit. Mariel never touched the bar garnishes other than to serve them, but Friday night, two hours before the miscarriage, she felt suddenly hungry, and with her usual healthy snacks twenty feet away in her office, she lazily ate three green Maraschino cherries. For months, she'd ingested only things that were specifically good for fertility, and never touched anything artificial. Much later, she'd find out that they wouldn't have made a difference, but that didn't matter then. It was her single break from a routine. Now all the green cherries were in the trash, and would never appear in her bar again.

It was all because of those cherries, she'd told herself. It wasn't that Ned's sperm had almost no motility or that she had a vanishing number of follicles. It wasn't the extra pounds they carried or the excessive alcohol they'd once drunk or the fact that she was almost thirty-nine. She could forgive her faulty, mutinous body and move on, because she must. But until then, she'd tell no one.

Mariel was sure that if her mother ever found out that she'd miscarried, Florence would subject her to a blizzard of reasons why it was Mariel's fault, and that was the last thing she needed. For the first time since she'd agreed to pick up her mother, Mariel wondered why she was in such a hurry.

On the radio, Mariah Carey was singing about how a baby will always be a part of her, and the love between her and the baby will never die. Mariel had heard this song a thousand times, but now it was obvious: the person who wrote this song had lost a child. And oh boy, she could hear in Mariah's voice that she wanted a baby again.

Mariel glanced down to change the station, and when she looked back up, she saw the most beautiful deer running across the road, a flawless Terry Redlin ten-point buck. The instant she pressed the brake, she heard and felt a loud thump, and saw that perfect deer flip in the air and vanish. Then everything went black.

Where was she? Mariel unclenched her hands from the steering wheel and opened her eyes. Her car was idling and on the shoulder, but she didn’t remember pulling over. Was she dead? Someone else would have to pick up Florence. What an inane first thought as a dead person. Maybe this was hell. Or, less intriguingly, maybe she wasn’t dead after all.

Mariel looked in the mirrors; no vehicles were coming from either direction. She didn't notice her neck was sore until she bent over while exiting her car. When she surveyed the front of her little blue Dodge, she saw the passenger-side headlight and turn signal were smashed, there were scrapes on the front of the wheel well, and part of the radiator grille was busted, but then something else seized her attention.

Excerpted from SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE LAKESIDE SUPPER CLUB by J. Ryan Stradal. Copyright © 2023 by J. Ryan Stradal. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.