Breakfast at Sally's

by Richard LeMieux

  “Okay,” replied the girl. “But if you need help, just ask.” Then the girl looked at me. “Are you going to be here awhile, sir?” she asked.

  “I am,” I assured her.

  “Would you look out for her until her husband comes?” she requested.

  “Sure!” I replied, thrilled to be given legitimacy for my presence in the lobby. A commercial for the local Indian casino was just winding down as the girl made her departure: “Come and play the night away!” A picture flashed of a player hitting 7-7-7 on a big slot machine.

  “Oh, I wish I could get there,” my new companion said, looking at me. “I feel real lucky,” she added, smiling. She had a distinct accent. “My Filipino lady friends are probably there tonight, losing all their money!” She laughed. I smiled in return.

  Pictures of a news reporter standing on the bank of a raging river came on the screen next. “We have three rivers that are swollen and rising fast,” the reporter said. He was wearing a bright yellow rain slicker and was under the cover of a large umbrella. “And there is no end of the rain in sight. We expect the Tolt River and the Skagit River to both reach flood stage by midnight tonight.”

  “Too much rain,” the lady said, shaking her head.

  “I know,” was my simple reply.

  “But this is nothing, really,” the lady continued. “It really rains in my homeland, Guam. Monsoons! Oh, my God—the monsoons. That’s when it really rains. But it is beautiful there, too. It’s warm. The rain is warm. We used to go back every year on vacation to visit, before I got sick. But now, medical bills are so big—so, sooo big—that we can’t go. There is not enough money.”

  I was scanning the room and the entrance area for security guards as she spoke.

  “I’m waiting for my husband,” she told me. “He works at the navy base and is supposed to get off at six. But sometimes they keep him over. My name is Marcia.”

  “I’m Richard,” I said, nodding. “Is there anything I can get you?” I asked.

  “Well, maybe a cup of coffee,” she said, reaching down and opening her purse. I wanted to say “I’ll get it,” but for obvious reasons, I didn’t. She pulled five dollars from her small black purse and held it out to me. “Buy yourself one, too,” she offered as I got up from the sofa, accepting the bill from her.

  “Do you want cream and sugar?” I asked.

  “Lots of both.”

  I set off, grateful for the errand, and returned with the two cups of coffee.

  “I’m not supposed to be drinking this,” she said, as I handed her the steaming paper cup. “My doctor would kill me if he knew.”

  I laughed, as a good conspirator should. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “This is my second home,” she began. “I have been in and out of here so often in the past three years. They are sending me to another hospital tomorrow morning to see some other doctors. I am going to Fred Hutchison in Seattle.” I knew it was serious when she told me where she was going. Fred Hutchison was the regional cancer center, and local doctors sent patients there whom they could not cure. “I have cancer,” Marcia said. “They thought it was gone, but it’s back, and, oh—worse than before.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” I said, quietly.

  “I have to tell my husband the bad news when he comes,” she said.

  I sat on the sofa in silence for a moment, searching for some words of consolation. But no words came. “Thank you for the coffee,” I finally said, reverting to small talk.

  “And what about you, Richard? Why are you here?” asked Marcia. “Do you have someone here?”

  I hesitated before deciding to tell her the truth. I leaned toward her and said, “I really came in here to get out of the rain. I’ve been living in my van for a few months and just needed to sit down someplace warm and dry.”

  Marcia was quiet for a moment. She said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I’ll have to leave when the security guard comes around,” I added.

  “How did this happen to you?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s a long story, Marcia,” I said with a sigh.

  Marcia sensed my reluctance to talk, and we lapsed into silence again. Then, with disarming brightness, she announced, “Well, if I die... well, I die! I have had fifty-two good years. I have seven children and twelve grandchildren, and I have had a lot of fun.”

  “Seven children! Wow!” I said. I had three, though I might as well have had none.

  “Would you like to see their pictures?” Marcia asked, opening her purse again.

  I got up from the sofa and moved closer to her. She took out her wallet and opened it up to the plastic inserts filled with pictures. I positioned myself beside her.

  “This is my first son, Corazon. He was in the navy and now has a good job working on computers in San Diego.” Marcia flipped to the next photo. “And this is my second boy, Rafael. Isn’t he handsome?”

  “Yes, he sure is,” I concurred.

  “He takes after his mother,” Marcia laughed. “Then we had a girl. This is Cristina,” she said, flipping to the next picture. “She is a nurse in Dallas. She calls me a couple of times a week. She loves her Mama.”

  “She’s very pretty,” I said, leaning over a bit more to view the picture.

  “Then we had another boy, Jaypee.” Marcia extended the wallet to show me. “His name is spelled J-a-y-p-e-e, but he calls himself just ‘JP,’ like the initials. He was the toughest one. He wanted to be in a rock band, then a race-car driver. He got in a little trouble now and then. But you know what he is doing now?” she asked.

  “Nope,” I replied.

  “He teaches history in high school back in Agana, Guam. It is a big city!” she said, proudly. “He writes me a letter every week or so. And this is our next baby, Marcella.” Marcia moved on to the next snapshot. “She weighed...”

  The picture of the baby was black-and-white, and it sent my mind back in time. I was about six years old. My mother was making dinner in the kitchen, humming a song and dipping and rolling chicken in egg and flour. We were going to have fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner because it was my dad’s birthday. I wandered down the hallway and into my parents’ bedroom. The sparkling earrings and white pearl necklace lying on my mother’s dresser caught my attention. I picked up the earrings and held them up to get a closer look at the shiny stones, and put them back down gently. I looked at the big white wooden box sitting in the middle of the dresser; then I glanced toward the door to see if my mother was coming.

  I was just big enough to pull the box to the edge of the dresser and push up the lid. It was full of black-and-white photographs, so full that several came tumbling out of the box and fell to my feet, startling me.

  “Now, this is Joey,” she continued, holding up her wallet for me to get a closer look. “He was born in...”

  Again, my mind wandered back to my parents’ room, with the pictures scattered on the floor.

  I sat down on the rug and picked up one of the fallen photos. It was of a young boy all dressed up in a wool suit, his pants just coming down to his knees. He wore a white shirt with a black bow tie and black knee socks and shoes. His jacket was buttoned and his dark hair was slicked back. He was handsome and wore a broad smile, as though someone had just told him to say “cheese” before snapping the picture. There were several pictures of the boy, one with him standing between my mother and dad. A few others showed a dog I had never seen. And one was of the boy in a bathing suit at a beach.

  As I shuffled through the pictures, I saw a picture of a baby. It appeared to be in a crib and wore a tiny ruffled bonnet on its head. There was another picture of my mom holding the baby in her lap. And there was a photo of another girl with a round face and curly hair, with a barrette holding her hair on the right side of her head. She had a big smile and lots of freckles on her dimpled cheeks.

  I knew I was likely getting myself in trouble, but I just had to know who these children were; they were st
rangers to me. So I picked up a few of the pictures and headed back to the kitchen. Mom was still humming and had started mashing potatoes when I came in with the pictures, but she quickly recognized what I had in my hands and the humming stopped abruptly. “Richard, have you been in our room?” she asked sternly, putting down the potato masher and wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist.

  “These accidentally fell out of the box,” I said, holding them out to her as she walked toward me.

  “They fell out because you opened the box!” she said, reaching down and taking them. “I’ve asked you not to snoop around in our room,” she said, as she got on her tiptoes and slid the photos to the back of a shelf. “It’s your dad’s birthday, and he’ll be home soon, so we are going to forget you did what you did this time. We don’t want to spoil his birthday. But you can’t get into my jewelry or other things again. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. Then she picked up a carton of milk, poured some into the bowl of potatoes, and reached for a spoon to stir with.

  I stood there watching for a minute and then I asked, “Mom, who are the people in the pictures?”

  She was quiet for a moment as she stirred the potatoes. Then she stopped, wiped her hands on the apron again, walked over to the shelf, and took down the pictures she had just placed there. “Sit down at the table,” she said. I did as she asked and she laid the picture of the young boy down before me. “This is your brother, Larry,” she said. “And this is your first sister, Alice,” she added, placing the picture of the baby in the crib beside the first one. “And this is your second sister, Shirley,” she continued, putting down a photo of a girl with freckles.

  I lifted my head and looked at my mom. “Where are they?” I asked.

  “They went to heaven,” she replied.

  We heard the sound of the front door opening. “Hello. Hello,” my dad’s voice called out. He was home from work.

  “Now,” said my mother, quickly gathering the pictures together. “Go give your dad a hug and a kiss and then go wash your face and hands before dinner. Wish him a happy birthday. We’ll talk later.”

  “... and this is our first grandchild!” Marcia said. “They named her after me: Marcia-Anne. Look at all the hair she had when she was born!”

  I leaned forward and looked closely at the baby picture. I had five grandchildren of my own, but had not a single picture to show. “She almost needs a hairdresser!” I offered.

  “She takes after her grandmommy,” Marcia said, proudly. “I used to have long, flowing hair.” She continued flipping through the photos. “And this is our second grandchild...”

  I remembered my mother’s long, flowing black hair as Marcia continued.

  I remembered the day she finally told me about my sisters and brother. It was eight years later—eight years after I had found the pictures in the big white box. I was fourteen.

  I had been playing with my friends—Jimmy Shy, Billy Caldwell, Freddie Seeberg, Jimmy Eaton, and Carolyn Parker—in Mr. English’s apple orchard. We would park our bikes by the road and climb the fence. There were three big oak trees that bordered the orchard, and we would swing from the limbs to the ground below, bellowing out a “Tarzan” call. Billy liked to climb, and we would dare him to go higher and higher, until we all got quiet as we began to fear he had climbed too high. Carolyn was always the voice of reason; we had learned that the hard way, through many exploits that needn’t have ended in scrapes, cuts, and bruises had we only listened to Carolyn’s warnings. “That’s high enough, Billy,” she would yell, looking up through the branches and leaves of the big oak. “You’re going to fall.” And Billy would come down.

  It was a hot day in Ohio, and it wasn’t even noon yet. My mother had told me to come home for lunch when I heard the whistle sound from the paper company on the edge of town, as it always did at high noon, signaling lunch break for the workers. The whistle blew, and I said goodbye to my friends and raced to my bike. Mom didn’t like me to be late.

  When I got home, Mom was sitting on the swing on the big front porch of our house. She had just washed her hair, and it was drying in the sun and the breeze. I put the kickstand down on my Western Flyer and climbed the steps to the porch. The white box was sitting beside my mother on the swing.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Hi, honey. Here, give me a kiss and sit down,” she replied. I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, noticing how fresh and clean her hair smelled. Then I sat down on the swing beside her. She told me it was time I learned about my sisters and brother.

  I sat.

  She reached over and opened the lid on the box. She took out a picture of the baby in the crib and handed it to me.

  “This is Alice,” she began. “She was such a pretty baby. She was our first child. Your father was so proud. She was born just one month before the Depression started. We lived in Chicago, in an apartment building in the German neighborhood. Times were very tough. People struggled every day just to eat and stay warm. Your dad lost his job and we struggled to put food on the table. We were behind on our rent and feared being evicted every day.”

  We swung quietly for a moment.

  Then she told me the story. My father was out looking for work, as he did every day. My mother asked the teenage girl next door to babysit Alice while she went to stand in the bread line. There were hundreds waiting that day. She knew it would be hours before she would be at the front of the line, and she didn’t want to leave her baby with the sitter that long, so she begged from people on the street. A dozen or more said they were sorry they didn’t have anything to give, but eventually a nicely dressed man walked by and overheard her plea and handed her ten dollars. He said, “God bless you,” and walked away. Ten dollars was a fortune in the Depression, and she went to the store and got milk, cheese, potatoes, chicken, and even coffee for my father. She rushed home, but when she got there, the apartment door was standing wide open. Alice and the babysitter were gone.

  Mom’s voice was quavering, and I could tell that she was trying not to cry.

  “I ran to the apartment next door, but the girl’s parents didn’t know where she was. We searched frantically for hours, but couldn’t find them. The police came and the search went on for days... and months. But we never found out what happened to Alice, or to the babysitter.” The tears were trickling down her cheeks. “Every day, I think about Alice. I wonder if she is alive somewhere, somewhere out there—maybe in California, or Oregon, or Washington. Today is her birthday.”

  Mom took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Then she reached over and picked up a picture of the boy. She held it close for a moment and then passed it to me. “Larry was such a joy,” she began again. “Your dad would hold him and rock him at night in an old rocking chair we had. He was a strong baby, with big hands and feet, and we knew that he was going to be big and tall like his father when he grew up. Larry was so full of life; he liked to get dirty and would take on any dare. He was a lot like your father in so many ways. He was a strong swimmer—just like your dad.

  “I was home making dinner one day when a policeman came to the door. He asked, ‘Ma’am, do you have a son named Larry?’ I froze, but managed to nod my head yes. Then he said, ‘You had better come with me, ma’am. There has been an accident.’ He took me to the Chicago River. Larry had drowned while swimming, and they had just recovered his body.”

  Again, she fought back the tears. She covered her eyes with her hands for a moment, then reached into the box yet again, this time pulling out the picture of the other girl. She handed it to me. “And this is your sister, Shirley. Shirley died of diabetes.” She could no longer hold back her anguish and grief. She buried her head in her hands and began to sob.

  I realized in that moment that my mother and father had given me the great gift of innocence all those years. They had chosen not to put the black-and-white photographs of the children who had died on the walls. They had chosen to shield me from their sorrow. They h
ad let me grow up chasing and collecting lightning bugs in a jar, pedaling off to the factory pond on my bike with my friends to catch blue gill and sunfish, living without the knowledge of their pain and anxiety. But all of this time they had been holding their breath every time I was ten minutes late getting home.

  My mother finally sat up. She picked up the towel, which she had used to dry her hair, and wiped her face. Then she took the photographs from my hand and put them back in the box, closed the lid, and moved closer to me. She put her arm around me and squeezed my shoulders. “You were born here in Urbana on April 25, 1943. We moved here from Chicago, because we had to leave some of those memories behind. You were a miracle for us, and you still are.” She hugged me.

  I felt sorry for my crying mother that day. But I didn’t cry. I don’t know why.

  My mother hugged me once again, and then sighed. “What do you say you and I have some lunch?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied, like the child that I was.

  My world changed that day on that swing. I didn’t know how much at the time. It was only now, here with Marcia, that I was just beginning to take it all in.

  I focused all my attention back to Marcia, just as she reached the final branch of her family tree. “And this is our little Angelee,” she said. “She was just born five months ago, Our twelfth grandbaby. Isn’t she pretty?”

  “That is one fine family!”

  “Big, huh?” she asked, as she closed her wallet.

  “Yes. Big!” I replied.

  “For a while we did it, you know, like rabbits,” she laughed, tossing her head back in the chair.

  I returned to the sofa and sat down. We were both quiet for a moment.

  “They can’t do anything more for me here,” she said. “I feel sorry for the doctors who have tried so hard. I am going to be a guinea pig, now, at Fred Hutch. They have new experimental drugs they want to try on me. More powerful, they say.” She paused. “I am ready to die, I think. I am ready to go soon. God has been good to me. And when I die, I guess I’m going to be homeless, too—at least until Jesus comes and gets me and takes me to his home.”