3. the place where
i was me
Lana was on
vacation. It was an annual event, one that I tried to talk her out of hating
every time it rolled around. I had not yet succeeded. I don’t know why she
disliked leaving so much, but she always did. Caesar’s situation was not much
better.
“It’s so stupid,”
he had announced to us. “My stupid cousins are coming over. Which means that
mom will make me wear that stupid freaking mask, so I don’t get sick.” He had
kicked the foot of the locker as he said it. We should have been hurrying off
to class, but we were lingering in the hallway trying to wish away third
period. “I hate that mask,” he’d growled.
I had seen him wear
the mask before; it was like putting on a lead jacket. It dragged his soul into
the ground, even as it pulled his thin eyebrows into a scowl. The elastic
straps made his ears stick out even more than usual. I suppose it was his
version of Lana’s rain, but as he said, “At least rain doesn’t make her look
like a chimpanzee.”
“It’s better than
getting sick,” Lana said, when we got to the café.
“Sure,” he replied,
“remind me of that the six-millionth time my cousin asks me why I’m wearing
it.” He kicked the locker again. “It’s just…”
“Stupid?” I suggested.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I nudged him.
“You’ll be fine. I can come over and play God of Conquest if you want.
I’ll even wear a mask.”
In light of this,
Lana had not complained much, about her own predicament. I only hoped that,
wherever she might be, just then, it was not raining like it was here. The rain
had not let up since the last time we had sat together at the booth, which I
now occupied alone.
The smiley face on
the window had been wiped away long ago I noticed as I sat staring through the
window it had once decorated. The protocol, I decided, did not apply, when I
was the only one present, as I was that day. My notebook was still sitting in
front of me, patient as always. But so were a stack of other books, all tapping
their metaphorical feet and wondering how long they’d have to wait their turn.
I was in no real hurry.
A coffee cup snared
my attention back to the real world as it slid across the table in front of me.
“Hey there, Champ.”
My mom slipped into the booth across from me. The blue of her little dress
nearly matched the blue the seat behind her. In some bygone age, they probably
would have been exactly the same. I accepted the coffee happily and she stared
out the window with me, and I wondered what she saw there. I wondered whether
her eyes and mind settled in the same places as mine, or if we were both just
restless.
“How was your day?”
She asked. Her breaks were never long, but she always made the best of them
now. Three years ago she’d begun to trade a cigarette and a half, behind the
building, for ten minutes with me.
One of many things
she had traded, over the years.
I think that’s why
I started coming here first. But now it was because I belonged in that booth,
and the whole world knew it. That spot, in that place, was everything that I
ever could have called home: the tear in the padding beside my leg with the
yellow foam oozing out and the initials (RD), carved into the tabletop by
someone’s fingernail. (We’d once spent a solid month trying to discover whose
initials they were. But they might as well have been mine, now.)
There, in the
flickering shadow of the neon light, where the air smelled like safety—and coffee—and
the world was securely on the other side of the glass—this was where I
belonged.
The place where I
was me.
I shrugged in
response to her aging question. “Yours?”
She returned the
gesture identically but bobbed her eyebrows in that way I knew. “Tips are
good.” She winked over a mug of her own, as I smiled.
“Did you write
another one?” She asked.
“No,” I shook my
head. “I can’t decide what to write. And it’s not as fun alone.”
“Well you’re not
alone now,” she said, and then frowned. “I should tell you, though; Angelina’s
called in sick and I grabbed her shift. It’ll be good for us, but I won’t be
done until late tonight.”
“No worries,” I
said. This made little change to my day.
“Want me to swing
you by Caesar’s later?” She asked. “I could take you on my lunch break if you
want.”
I shrugged again,
but chuckled. “He’s not answering my texts. Which probably means his mom took
his phone to make him play with his cousins.”
My mom had known
Caesar practically as long as I had, and this just made her smile. There was a
little, birdish laugh that I’d observed before, sometimes stuck in my mother’s
throat; it chirped out, alongside or between her words, . I suspected that it
was shaking itself awake now. Coffee always seemed to bring it out. And I suppose
I did, as well.
“When did Lana say
she would be back?” she asked.
“A week, I think.
Maybe longer. It depends.”
“Well I hope she
comes back soon,” she said, and there was the little laugh I’d expected. “You
boys always fall apart without her.”
For a few moments
we enjoyed the comfort of the silence, easily as worn and familiar as the
cushions, before she checked her watch, sighed slightly, and slid out of the
booth. “Are you hungry for anything?” She asked.
“No,” I shook my
head. “But thanks for the coffee.”
“You bet, Champ.”
She gave another wink and tossed her curly hair back over her shoulders.
“Any ideas what I
should write?” I mumbled.
“You could write
about this place,” she replied, straightening her nametag and smoothing her
apron. “See you soon, Honey.”
I watched her leave
and then returned my attention to the window and beyond. But the nametag
remained at the forefront of my mind.
It was my mother’s
name. A very old, dusty name, handed down in lieu of any actual inheritance.
She had never been fond of it, but it grew on her, very slowly.
Like this place.
Like black coffee.
I sipped again and
cracked open the notebook. The blankness in my mind snapped with it, and I felt
that I could breathe a little more easily. The words bled out black and
natural, like a sigh spilled into the afternoon.
the society of
esthers
In another time,
she might have made an excellent Viking. In another, an excellent sort of
nursemaid for unruly young boys, a drill-sergeant for cats. Her yellow coat, the
color and smell of apricot marmalade, she wore like armor. Her black umbrella
she carried something like a sword, with which she seemed more likely to
threaten away the raindrops, than shield herself from them.
She was, at barely
over five feet, not the most impressive figure. But whatever she lacked in
height, she made up for with her wardrobe shoulders and the flat-lined mouth
that she kept tightly closed, even when she smiled—which she didn’t very often.
And yet, despite the collective ferocity of her countenance, it was a somewhat
understated one. When she approached the Café, it was in a quiet way. She did
not stand out with her steel gray hair and her sturdy chin.
The café was tiny
from the outside. She could only assume that it was just as tiny within. The
aging, flickering sign, traded winks with the throbbing yellow traffic-light
across the road; they had been flirting in the same manner for years.
It was a humble
little place, she thought. A ridiculous little place that, even from a distance,
smelled like unbearably cheap coffee and ketchup and grease. But there was the
smell of pie, too. And for pie, many unbearable things could be endured.
She enjoyed the
rain as much as a household cat, and as she stepped inside the café, the bell
on the door yelled a greeting in her ears. A little brown-haired woman in a
little blue dress wiped off a table and smiled over at her. “Good mornin’,” she
said.
The woman grunted.
She scanned the café briefly, taking in all the smells and sights that
indicated life, in any of its numerous forms. An old man was sitting in one
corner, armed with a newspaper and a veteran’s hat and facing an oversized
cinnamon roll. A pitiful variety of cacti decorated the counter (dreaming of
dust and heatstroke). Apart from these and the little bustle she sensed from
behind the kitchen door, the whole place seemed empty.
She made her way to
the first booth beneath the window with the painted letters and sat down. This
was a matter of ritual—with no room for deviation—as the woman propped her
umbrella up beside her. From her great coat with its many pockets, she drew out
a very severe-looking pen, a pair of ancient spectacles, which she perched with
both hands upon the tip of her nose, a pocket-watch roughly the shape and
weight of a doorknob, and a small notebook, very black and very square.
Each of these she
laid in its intended place all squared to one another before she took a deep
breath (for which she opened her mouth a small, catfish amount) and opened the
notebook delicately. The words on the page looked back at her without blinking,
and she read them over again. This was the page that had brought her here, with
its scribbled address, and the very bold name:
Esther Hollens.
Waitress/Cook.
She closed the
notebook and set her spectacles down with the utmost care.
So she had come for
a pancake-flipper, a coffee-pourer. A floor-sweeper. She may as well have been
dressed in rags and sporting a pair of shackles. But this was of little
consequence really, and no real inconvenience; the name may as well have read
Cinderella. And the woman in the marmalade jacket may as well have been a
Brick-Shaped Fairy-Godmother. She felt rather like one, and she rather liked
the feeling (though she allowed no indication).
So this was the
palace of Esther Hollens. The woman looked up at the roof.
The radio was about
fifty years behind the times. Posters of assorted celebrities were looking at
her over microphones or automobiles or sports equipment, with a dusty lack of
interest. Most of them—if not all—were dead by now. But the notebook had
brought her here, to this little place that time forgot. This dustbin.
A roadside museum
curated by the lonely.
It took only a few
moments for the dark-haired waitress to trickle over to her table, all dimples
and cheap hairspray and re-hemmed uniform. Her nametag said Katie. “Good
mornin’ Shugga,” she said, in an accent so thick that the woman was almost
surprised that it made it all the way out of her throat. “What’re we havin’
today?”
“Tea,” said the
woman stiffly, “with lemon, an egg, fried, and pie.” She sniffed deeply.
“Blackberry?”
“You bet, Shugga,”
Katie nodded, still smiling.
“The whole pie, if
you don’t mind.” The woman looked the waitress in the face. “Are the berries
fresh?”
“Fresh delivered,”
Katie said. The order of the pie had rattled her; it had stopped her pencil, on
its pad, but it took to moving again.
The woman in
marmalade returned her eyes to the roof. “They will suffice,” she said. “Tea
first.”
“You bet, Shugga,”
Katie continued to nod. “Anything else for ya?”
“Is there a woman
here by the name of Esther Hollens?”
The incessant nod.
The woman wondered if Katie might not actually be a bobble-headed ornament
tossed from some trucker’s dashboard. “Oh yes ma’am, she’s just in the back.
You a relative a’hers or somethin?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“I hoped I might have a word.”
“You bet, Shugga.
I’ll send her right out.”
The woman looked
back down at the little notebook and twitched her nose. Secretly, she was beyond
glad that the nametag had said Katie rather than Esther. She
might not have survived an entire day of nodding and Shugga. Of course,
women like herself tended to curb the enthusiasm of whimsical youth.
She could only hope
that Esther Hollens was a more sensible creature.
Cinderella. She entertained the thought again.
Soon, her tea and
egg came to keep her company. The tea was weak, the lemon old, and the egg more
scrambled than fried. But she pushed them each away only after she’d finished
them, and waited with her hands folded for her pie to arrive.
For something so
bright and yellow to devour so much of something so dark purple, without slowly
turning to some shade of green, was remarkable. For the woman had nearly
finished the entire pie when the bouncing curls and serious blue eyes of Esther
Hollens presented themselves.
“Excuse me, ma’am,”
she said. “Katie said you wanted to speak with me?” She held out her hand. “My
name is Esther.” She was perfectly and delightfully devoid of any kind of
ridiculous accent. This pleased the woman very much. For the first time, she
produced a smile, dabbing at her square mouth with a napkin before speaking.
“Yes,” she said.
“The baker of pies.”
“Yes ma’am,” said
the young woman, her smile quiet.
“Your pie is excellent.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
And then, more hesitantly, “Katie said that we were relatives…?”
“In a manner of
speaking, yes,” said the woman. She offered her hand. “I am Esther Mae
Melbourne.”
The young Esther,
looking somewhat uncertain, took the hand that was offered to her. It was warm,
but oaky, and made its up-and-down bob almost mechanically. “Pleased to meet
you,” said the young waitress. There were no dimples, here; but there was a crease,
across her nose, that appeared when she smiled. The older Esther quite liked
it.
“I don’t meet many
people with my name,” said the younger.
The older looked
woefully at the sky. “Indeed. The greater generation is behind us. A dying
breed, but faithful.”
She reached into
her jacket pocket and drew out a single rectangle of paper, crisp and sharp as
metal. She looked the young Esther in the eyes and handed it to her. “I have
come a long way to meet you,” she said.
A line formed on
the young Esther’s forehead. It was nothing a little discipline couldn’t iron
out. “Not just to eat my pie, I hope,” she chuckled.
Esther Mae smiled
very faintly. There were certainly no dimples here; only creases of
concentration, like slips from a chisel. “We Esthers need to stick together,”
she said. “There are more of us than you might think. But less than there once
were.”
Esther Hollens took
the card with a very confused expression. When she looked back up, the
confusion had settled into her voice. “Is…is this a business card?” She asked.
The other Esther
smiled again. “An invitation.”
The young waitress
said goodbye, very briefly, and slipped back behind the counter. Miss Melbourne
finished her pie and pushed the plate away. She clicked the doorknob watch
open, examined it for a moment, and then tucked it back into her breast pocket.
The spectacles went back around her neck; the notebook and pen to her thigh.
The umbrella was sheathed under her arm as she stiffened and walked back out
into a world too gray to fully support her coat’s choice of shade.
On the other side
of the road, at a ruin of a bus-stop, not far from the winking traffic-light,
Esther Mae sat down beside a very tall woman with hair the texture and shape of
cotton candy and the definition of periwinkle. Her lips were ridiculously red,
and her dress—and shirt, and stockings—a ridiculous clash of plaid.
“Good day, Esther,”
said the tall, thin woman.
“Good day, Esther,”
said the woman who was brick-shaped.
“Will she join us?”
Asked the woman with the blue hair.
“Not yet,” replied
the one with the steel. “But we shall see. In time, when she realizes that she
has nowhere else to go, perhaps we may make the acquaintance of young Lady
Hollens once again. Desperation shall, as ever, be our ally.”
The bus trundled
in. And the bus trundled out. And the town was two Esthers less.
