Part Thirteen: Gil

For eighteen years, I had watched Gil run that bar the way his dad did.

Loud. Generous. First to buy the round.

He’s the kind of man who knows everybody’s name. Who remembers your kids’ birthdays and your mother’s surgery and your dog’s name. Who sends a free basket of cheese curds to the table when a couple comes in on their anniversary.

He’s the kind of man who carries a mill worker’s tab for six months when he’s laid off. Who hosts a free funeral lunch in the back room when a regular dies with no family. Who sponsors the Little League team and the bowling league and the Lions Club Christmas party.

He’s the kind of man who can’t say no either.

He was not loud now.

He stood behind his father’s bar, under his father’s discharge papers, with his face red and his hands flat on the oak.

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I can’t give it back tonight, Flossie,” he said finally.

His voice was barely above a whisper.

“I don’t have it,” he said.

“I didn’t ask for it tonight,” Grandma said.

Gil looked up.

“I asked how it was doing,” Grandma said.

She folded her hands on the bar. Her old, spotted, arthritic hands. With her wedding ring still on the left one, worn thin after sixty-six years.

“And I would like to hear your plan,” she said.

Part Fourteen: The Menu

Gil looked out at his Friday regulars.

At the mill guys at the end of the bar, forks down, staring at him. At the bowlers. At the couples in the booths. At old Hank Wierzbicki, who’s been coming to Pliska’s every Friday since 1972, sitting in the corner booth with his walleye going cold.

At thirty years of people who’d watched him be loud and generous.

He didn’t say anything.

Then he reached under the counter.

He pulled out a menu.

A paper one. Laminated on the front. PLISKA’S TAP — FRIDAY FISH FRY — EST. 1971. Walleye, perch, bluegill, cod. Potato pancakes or fries. Coleslaw. Rye bread.

He pulled out a pen. A cheap blue Bic from the cup by the register.

He turned the menu over to the blank side.

He set it on the bar between them.

He uncapped the pen.

He stood there, holding it over the blank paper.

His hand was shaking.

Grandma slid the second bottle across the bar to him.

The second Coke. The one she’d ordered.

It slid across the smooth old oak and stopped right in front of Gil.

“Take your time, Gilbert,” she said.

She smiled at him.

“I ordered one for you,” she said.

Part Fifteen: The Plan

Gil looked at the Coke bottle for a long time.

Then he picked it up. He took a drink.

He set it down.

He started to write.

The whole bar watched him.

Nobody went back to eating. Nobody put a quarter in the jukebox. Nobody went to the bathroom.

Old Hank Wierzbicki stood up from his corner booth and came to stand by the end of the bar. So he could see.

Gil wrote for a long time.

He crossed things out. He wrote them again. He did math in the margin.

Twice, he stopped and looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes.

When he was done, he turned the menu around.

He slid it across the bar to Grandma.

She put on her reading glasses. The ones on a chain around her neck.

She read it.

I read it over her shoulder.

PLAN — Gil Pliska — owes Flossie Duda / Russ & Shari — $43,000

1. Sell the bass boat. Lund, 2018. $14,000. (Craigslist, this weekend.)
2. Sell the Harley. $9,000. (Dealer in Wausau said he’d take it.)
3. Rent the apartment upstairs instead of living in it. $900/month. (Move in with Mom’s sister in Rothschild.)
4. Close Mondays & Tuesdays. Save on staff + utilities. $1,200/month.
5. Pay $1,500/month from bar profits. Starting April 1.
6. All of it back in 12–14 months.
7. Never borrow from Russ again without Shari at the table.

At the bottom, he’d signed it.

Gilbert S. Pliska.

Grandma read it twice.

Then she took off her reading glasses and let them drop on their chain.

She looked up at Gil.

“Your boat,” she said. “You love that boat.”

“I do,” Gil said.

“And the motorcycle. You’ve had that since you were thirty.”

“I have.”

“And you’d move out of your own apartment. Into your aunt’s spare room. At fifty years old.”

Gil swallowed.

“If I have to,” he said.

Grandma looked at him for a long time.

“That’s a good plan, Gilbert,” she said.

Then she picked up the pen.

Part Sixteen: Grandma’s Plan

She turned the menu back around.

She crossed out number four.

Close Mondays & Tuesdays.

She drew a line through it. Neat. Straight.

Gil frowned.

“Flossie,” he said. “That’s twelve hundred a month.”

“Your father,” Grandma said, “never closed a day in his life. Not when his wife left. Not when his knee went out. Not the week after his heart attack in ‘98.”

She looked up at the photograph behind the bar. Stan Pliska in 1971, grinning, holding up his walleye.

“You close two days a week,” she said, “and people will find another bar. They won’t come back.”

She wrote something underneath. In her careful Palmer Method handwriting.

4. Fix the fish.

Gil stared at it.

“Fix the fish?” he said.

Grandma took another sip of her Coke.

“Gilbert,” she said. “How long have you been buying frozen cod from the Sysco truck?”

Gil’s face went red again.

The mill guys at the end of the bar laughed. Not mean. Just surprised.

“Since 2015,” Gil said quietly. “After Dad died. It’s cheaper.”

“It’s terrible,” Grandma said.

The whole bar laughed now. Even Hank Wierzbicki, standing at the end of the bar. Even me.

“Your fish fry used to go out the door,” Grandma said. “When your father was alive. When I was cooking it. People drove from Wausau. From Stevens Point. From Marathon.”

She looked around the half-empty bar.

“Now look at it,” she said.

“The cooler didn’t break your bar, Gilbert,” Grandma said. “The frozen cod did. Ten years of frozen cod and a batter out of a box.”

She set down her Coke.

“Nobody drives twenty miles for frozen cod,” she said.

Gil didn’t say anything.

He looked at his menu. Walleye. Perch. Bluegill. Cod.

“So here’s my plan,” Grandma said.

 

Click here to continue reading PART 5: My Husband Secretly Gave His Brother the $43,000 Grandma Gave Us for a House, but She Found Out and Confronted Him