As I took the dishtowel and dried our cups and plates -- a useless, time wasting activity that was momentarily comforting -- I thought about my grandparents and uncle who I had visited last fall in England.
I saw my grandfather his bowed legs and wide stance as he ran the towel over tea-cups and saucers. And my grandmother’s braceletes jangling, her meaty arms flapping as she wiped a breakfast plate clean. Like all activities they enjoyed together – tv watching, Guinness drinking, fish and chips eating – they like to rip into one another mercilessly.
“Harry, you keep rubbing that plate, you’ll bloody wipe the pattern off,” I heard my grandmother clearly. I saw her red lipstick applied outside the natural contours of her thin upper lip -- to make her more “gorgeous” my mother would say.
I couldn’t wait to leave them. I counted out the days on a sheet of paper and put large Xs through each day when it was done. Killing time.
Much as I was doing these days.
They were both dead now, Mabel first, then Harry a year later. Dennis was still there and sometimes we received a Christmas card from him. A large gaudy sort with glitter that my mother couldn’t resist calling tacky and placing in the back row of the small collection of cards she arranged our old dining room table in her studio at the corner of Blossom Hill and Snell.
My dad's tapping on his computer, like a bird's steady pecking, brought me back to the present. I put the dishtowel down and went down the hall and stood at the entrance to his study. His back was toward me, slightly arched as he typed with two fingers.
“Daddy,” I said. “Im gonna go out. Get some coffee or something.”
“We have coffee,” he said pushing his glasses onto his forhead and leaning in close to the screen.
“A new poem?” I asked moving behind him. His last one, tacked to the door of his study (breaking yet another HOA rule: no tacks shall be used to hang pictures, etc.):
“Excessive packaging”
a Kraft cheese sandwich
on Wonder bread,
greased with Mayonaise
really does not need
to be encased in plastic
given that
the unwholesome ingredients,
petroleum at best,
will surely survive
far into the next millenium
sweating in the sun
if there still
is one
then.
“He hasn’t changed a bit,” my mother said when she read the poem the last time she was at the his condo.
I glanced at the screen over his shoulder and read “Dear Lord, Who has entered my Garden?”
It was always startling to hear him mention God outside of “god damnit” “or “Jesus bloody Christ! when he whacked his head, or whacked a wall with his car, or was fed-up with my mother who was fed up with him for whacking things and messing up her life.
Epi turned him on to God and he became a Catholic. They went to church and before she left him she would hold his hand before a meal and issue a quiet prayer with her head tilted downward. I would seize the opportunity to pick at the food, or rip a chunk of bread and stuff it into my mouth.
I tried to read more of his current poem. Did he mean “garden” metaphorically, I wondered. Or was this a literal and paranoid poem to the Dear Lord about the people he thought were casing his condo? And then another thought shot through my head. Perhaps I was the one who had entered his “garden”. Was that how he saw me? Had I invaded his paradise. A graduated snake with a useless degree slithering in his midst?
“Daddy?” I said.
His back was rounded and his face was aimed directly over the keyboard as he hunted for the correct letter key. Why hadn't he ever learn to type in sixty-five years?
Typing was the one uselfull skill I’d acquired in my twenty-one years on the planet. Couldn’t cook, sew, or do any of the so-called female things.. Didn’t know how to apply make-up without looking like Lon Chaney, or style my hair beyond fluffing it with my fingers.
I knew none of the stuff cool women know like how to change car oil, or spark plugs or fix a flat. I didn’t know how to prune plants or grow flowers. House plants committed suicide under my care. I knew nothing about health and the human body beyond the basic monthly thing but I never really got that right, Each monthly visitor arriving like an unexpected guest without any clean towels. And I always made up the answer when nurses asked, “When was the first day of your last period?” --the question alone confused me. And all the stuff I learned in college: California geography, Calculus, Greek Tragedy, Music appreciation: I was like a big black hole of knowledge. Information went in and just vanished.
“Do you mind if I take your car?” I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I just wanted to get out, sit behind the wheel and feel some kind of movement. Drive up Highway 9 to Skyline maybe.
“It's low on gas,” he said as if reading my mind.
“I’ll fill it up,” I said.
He reached into his back pocket and took out his lump of a wallet and stared into it’s empty insides. If my head was a black hole, then most definitely his wallet was an even bigger one. I’d seen this look before usually after he’d promised my mother something. “Here,” he’d say, “Let me get that,” and finding no bills he’d pull out a credit card. “Ray, watch how much you put on that thing,” my mother would always say. But he never did seemed to care about debt until we had no money.
I got in his car and rolled down the car windows to let the cigarette odor out. I drove down Hgwy 9 heading toward downtown Los Gatos then down University. All the boutiques and antique stores were closed up. It was time for the restaurants to do business. I drove past the Champs Elysee restaurant, my favorite and looked at the diners seated inside. There was a mural on the far wall of a Parisian street scene with tiny lamps bolted to the wall giving the interior a cozy, inviting feel. I saw a waitress standing in front of a table talking an order. She wore a black skirt and white blouse. I bet she knew how to carry more than one plate at a time. I bet could remember the menu and not mess up orders. Not much else was open except for the Blackwatch Tavern -- some absurd imitation of a Scottish pub -- and the Double Rainbow cafe. But I remembered that odd guy who had breathed in my face -- not something I was in the mood to repeat at the moment. I drove slowly by and looked in. I couldn't see if he was there but the thought of going back to my dad's place, and having him see me lazing a round doing nothing much of anything was worse.
The stupid neon double rainbow was buzzing like before. I didn't know which was worse, the rainbow or the bright white neon lights that gave the interior a kind of emergency room feel. Was was I doing in there? I thought as soon as I entered the place and saw the same guy from before leaning against the counter.
"What can I do you for?" he asked.
I wandered along looking down a the tubs of ice-cream. It all looked good and I could have eaten a scoop of anything they had with a thick blanket of fudge, sprinkles, nuts, whipped cream but I knew I shouldn't, especially since I was just bored and slightly depressed so I looked up and tried to figure out what the cheapest item was as fast as possible so he couldn't see what I was up to.
"You have juice?" I asked. I figured a juice should be cheap and sort of good for me even if it was the last thing I really wanted, especially if it was apple which I really didn't like at all.
He pointed to the small refrigerator that came up to his knees. Through the glass all I could see were bottled juice.
"Nothing fresh squeezed?"
"Nope," he said. He made a popping sound with his lips.
"I'll take a coffee then," I said. I didn't even want that. How would I ever find happiness, I wondered, if I couldn't even find a food item that satisfied.
"You know what?" I said, stopping him as he reached for a styrofoam cup -- the kind that makes whatever you drink out it taste like car seats -- "I'll take a malt. A chocolate malt."
"Two scoops?" he asked tossing the icecream scoooper in the air and catching it.
"Yes," I said. As soon as he ducked his head below the glass, I could swear my butt started growing larger. It was hard for him to get to the ice-cream and I felt a little bad that I hadn't ordered the Pistachio which from the looks of it wasn't so popular but would have been easier for him to scoop out. He came up with two a smear of pale green ice-cream on his checkered shirt which only added to it's pastel ugliness. I took a seat at one of the many empty tables in the place and watched him open a container of malt and put in two scoops, then as if an afterthought, adding one more. The low rumble of the milkshake mixer blended with the background music. What was that song? I knew it I thought. Not a song you'd really hear in a ice cream palor.
"One chocolate malt," he said at last and I went over to the counter to pay.
I reached for it but he said, "Oh-oh-oh!" and put his hand out to stop me. "Forgot," he said and ducked down below the counter and came up with a jar of those horried red cherries and plucked one out by the stem with two fingers like a pair of tweezers. As it fell through the air and sunk into the top of my malted chocolate milk shake I suddenly wished that I had ordered it in a to go cup so that I could take it outside, out of his sight, and toss it in the trash. I was such a mess. How would I ever figure my life out if I couldn't stick with a decision as simple as a malt.
I took it over to one of the five empty tables dotted with dried drips from other people's sundaes and placed it before me. I plunked the straw into the stuff and sucked, watching the guy behind the counter.
He leaned over a magazine spread out by the ice-cream toppings. As he read I could see his lips moving. He didn't look too smart to me. Perhaps it was wrong of me to peg him in this way, but I had nothing better going on besides growing fat so I sucked down the malt in long deep inhalations and sized him up. I guessed he'd not graduated from highschool. He probably owned a hot-rod type car that was kind of a junker but he was proud of it because some engine part was big and shiny and made a lot of noise when he pressed the gas. He probably didn't have a girlfriend dressed the way he was, or perhaps she had very poor vision. But I sensed he was a nice guy -- maybe it was just the lips moving while he read
How did this place stay in business I wondered with its wretched rainbow color-scheme and the clutter of rainbow items f
-- cups, wind-up toys, packets of gob-stoppers --filling up every empty available space . It overloaded my senses.Why on earth was it open this late, too. For losers like me probably with nothing else to do but eat 5 thousand calories I was such a loser
This stupid town and its stupid boutiques, faux bars and dump antique stores was filled with small town losers and I would soon become one too -- a fat waitress loser. How could my life have fallen into such a loser rut so fast? Unless you tried not to be one, it was probably life's natural course.
But i had been trying hadn't I?
Here my mother's voice chimed in uninvited as usually does, especially when i'm examining my unique fucked-upness.
"Oh, you don't know trying," it said. "None of you kids have tried very hard at all. Not one of you."
"I have too tried," I said to myself. The malt was coming to an end and I was seriously considering getting another.
"It's all been so easy for all of you," she continued.
"Would you please not," I said to her, "lump me in with the rest of them." It really pissed me off when she did this. How was I like Denny, or Rachel, or Fraser? And if none of us knew anything about trying, if we were all lazy bums wasn't there a reason we were all this way?
I glanced up to see what the guy behind the counter was up to. I'd hoped that I hadn't said anything outloud.
I wondered, did he eat ice-cream all evening long? Did he dip his fingers into the fudge and put sprinkles on it? He was still reading his magazine. I looked away when I sensed he might see me staring. It was a bad habit of mine and sometimes gave the wrong impression that I was interested in the person in an admiring sort of way which in this case I was clearly not. But I stared too long and he saw me looking.
"What's this music?" I asked. I could only just barely hear it from somewhere behind the counter but it sounded familiar and I liked it.
"Cat Stevens," he said and reached over and turned up the volumn.
"Trouble, oh trouble," he sang softly, "trouble set me free."
Okay, time to go and never come back, I thought.
I carried my empty parfait glass which I unfurtunately noticed had a pink lipstick stain on the edge, to the counter.
"You came in here the other day," he said. "I'm really good with faces. Yours stood out. You have those chipmonk cheeks," he said and pointed his finger to either side of my jaw where, if I was a chipmonk, I'd have some nuts stored.
And then he pointed to my chin
I reached for a napkin and wiped my face. Most often ater a meal, I carried a portion home somewhere on my face. It was a bad character flaw and wasn't helped by my habit of using my sleeve to wipe it clean -- my dad once asking in all sincerity "Do you think there will ever come a time when you don't wipe your face with your clothing?"
"There's not much open around here at this time, is there?" I said.
"Sure there is," he said, not elaborating. Where could he mean, I wondered but I was reluctant to start up what might be thought of as a conversation. Cafe life was a very delicate thing, Rachel always said. "Don't make small talk to anyone," she instructed the last time I spoke to her before she quit her job packed up her apartment and went travelling Mexico and Guatemala six months ago. "Too many a good cafe is wrecked that way." It was like the only words of wisdom she could impart. Not much, but it stuck with me.
So I didn't ask him what else might be open but he pushed a magazine in front of me and tapped with his finger to a photograph of a bike.
"'I'm getting that bike. Weighs 16lbs" he said. I looked at it and thought of my old bike in Santa Barbara. A junker that weighed a ton but had a worn leather saddle, leather toe straps and new handlebars with orange grips. I would ride for hours along the bike path out to the beach. A backpack to hold my Walkman. Al Jareau singing, "Morning Mr. Cheerio."
"Looks fancy." I said and then breaking Rachel's rules of cafe engagement added, "Mine was stolen. I miss it."
"Probably misses you too," he said not really paying attention to me anymore, looking down at a page of bike wheels.
"Well thanks," I said and pushed the empty glass closer toward him.
"No thank you," he said.
As I headed out the door, he said, "If you get a new one, I'll take you on some gorgeous rides."
"Maybe," I said, "thanks."
Out in the car, put the key in the ignition but didn't turn it on. Instead I just sat there and stared straight ahead.
Where to go?
What to do?
What did I want to do? Tomorrow was another day in my terrible career as a waitress. I could feel my jaw tighten thinking about walking into that place, the familiar smell of burned bacon and bad coffee. Wayne and his stupid cowboy mustache banging the bell, hollering , "Up Honey" or "Up babe". I turned the key in the ignition, and put the car in gear. I drove along the quiet streets past the Broken Egg. It looked so quiet and dark without the people seated outside waiting to eat. Maybe it would burn down I thought.
"Get another job, if you hate it so much," Rachel said as she rolled up her clothing into cylindrical wads and shoved them into her oversized backpack.
"But I'll just hate the next one and a brand new kind of way," I said. "At least I know what I hate at the Broken Egg. No suprises, you know?"
"okay, stay there. Rot."
Rotting, I thought as I made a right onto Hgwy 9 toward my dad's condo. I would surely rot in this town. "Oh you are so dramatic," my mother's voice snipped. "I suppose you call what I do -- holding a dull job, paying my bills -- as rotting?"
I supposed I did and I supposed she knew I did.
I was starting to understand why people stayed in college, took more classes, delayed graduation. I should have applied to grad school, like Elizabeth and Greg. That's what the smart ones with money did.
I pulled into my dad's parking space. The sight of gash he'd created in the cement post made me smile. "Maybe if it was your post it wouldn't be so funny," my mother would say.Perhaps I thought. But it wasn't my post and the sight of the mesh and and the crumbling cement pleased me.
I unlocked the door to the central condo grounds. The sprinklers were on, still. I cut across the lawn instead of taking the cement path. My feet squelched in the swampy thick blanket of grass.
Was my Broken Egg shirt clean I wondered? Where was my scarf? I tried to recall where I'd last seen them and remembered that I'd peeled them off two days ago and kicked them into the back of the closet in the spare room. A pile of brown bacon smelling polyester. I'll smell them tonight, I thought. And if there were any stains on them, I'll wash them in the kitchen sink. They should dry by the morning.
I climbed the stairs and stopped at the top to look back. The moon was full and it's glow silhouted the trees on the Santa Cruz mountains. I stared for a moment at the sky and thin clouds sliding across the moon's path. At least I was here, I thought. There's beauty here at least. I wouldn't have lasted very long at my mother's on Capitol Hill Expressway a block off of the auto row with the enormous American flags billowing in the wind. I put the key in the bottom lock and turned it but it didn't open. The top lock, the one my father didn't have a spare key for, was bolted. I could see the thin sliver of it barring my entry. All the lights were off. I stared at the lock. Had he forgotten? Or had he locked me out on purpose?
"Just like your father," my mother's voice said. I leaned over the railing to see if I could see inside his place. Maybe he was sitting up snoozing, sleeping off a package of Pepperidge farm cookies?
I took my key and tapped on the door lightly.
