Her daughter patted the old woman’s hand and said something, at which time the others appeared to start getting ready to leave. The boy pushed his chair back, though he still sat on his hands. He was smiling, though, Bruce noticed, even though he was still looking down, so at least he must be able to see the humor in it all. The man helped his wife into her coat and then picked up the baby. Right before standing up, the boy reached for his napkin and wiped his mouth in a careful circle, no doubt worried that his grandmother might start a discourse on the state of his mouth, too. Then he pulled out his grandmother’s chair and helped her arrange an enormous cape around her shoulders.
As the family filed by Bruce and Kimberly’s table, Bruce took a good look at the baby, who, he was pleased to notice, couldn’t hold a candle to Madison in the looks department. The old woman, who was bringing up the rear, stopped by their table and said jovially, “Well, I hope you folks enjoy your supper as much as we did. It’s my son-in-law’s birthday, you see, and we came here to celebrate, even though Jewel was originally plannin’ to make him his favorite meal of pork chops and fried onion rings at home, but Willard said no, no, no, he didn’t want her slavin’ in the hot kitchen, so he brought us all here, and lo and behold, when they found out it was his birthday, why, they brought out the prettiest little chocolate cake you ever did see for all of us to share at the end, so if you ever have you a birthday, be sure and tell ’em, and you’ll get you a good meal and some free birthday cake to boot!”
She glanced up toward the front door. “Oh, Jewel’s wavin’ me to come on, so I better go so’s we can get my grandbaby in bed. Little folks shouldn’t be up too late, you know.” She cut her eyes over at Madison, who was staring up at her with the fascination she usually reserved for semitrucks and police cars. “You sure are a pretty little missy,” she said. “Why, you’re pretty as a china doll!” And she smiled down at Madison, one quick beam of scary intensity, then turned and moved away slowly.
“Thank you,” Bruce managed to say as she lumbered off. He wondered what kind of ratio that was, his two words to her . . . how many? A hundred? Two hundred? His mind, usually so nimble when it came to imagining what kind of girl an older woman had been in her youth, was absolutely paralyzed. He couldn’t begin to come up with even an inkling of an idea. Before tonight he had been so sure he had met every kind of woman there was, but here was one in a league of her own.
The old woman’s son-in-law was standing by the door waiting to receive her, a patient smile on his round face.
“She walks kind of like you do these days,” Bruce said to Kimberly. “She’s got the waddle down pat—just needs to work a little on the limp.”
“Thank you very much,” Kimberly said. “At least you didn’t say she talks like me. Then I’d really be mad.” Madison was still staring at the woman’s back. It made Bruce think of the time they had gone to a circus in Greenville and Madison had seen a real elephant up close.
All of a sudden the waitress was there again, placing their drinks on the table. She was sixty if she was a day, with hair that was unnaturally black, lips too carefully outlined with red, and dark penciled eyebrows. Along with her black uniform and sheer white frilly apron, she had on a little cap like nurses wore and squeaky rubber-soled shoes. The clothes didn’t match the face—she looked like somebody who had come to a costume party as a waitress. One look at her face and Bruce could see this woman had led a hard life.
He glanced back to the door and saw that the old woman was finally exiting. Right before the door swung shut behind her, she looked back into the restaurant and gave a gracious little nod, as if leaving a stage amid wild applause.
Bruce gave his head a single brisk shake. He briefly considered the possibility that the woman could have been putting on. Maybe she liked to act that way to see what kind of response she would get from people. The whole family could be in on it. Well, if that was the case, they had gotten about as much response from him and Kimberly as from a couple of tree stumps. Maybe they were all laughing about it right now in the car on their way home.
He heard Kimberly giving her order to the waitress and tried to turn his attention to the menu. But all he could think of was the old woman. What had she been wearing under that cape? Was it something big and purple? Or was he getting her mixed up with the calliope over by the wall? She did have on big red earrings, he remembered that, so surely she hadn’t been wearing a purple dress. And her shoes—they had squeaked, hadn’t they? Or was he thinking of the waitress’s shoes?
Suddenly he sensed a long pause and felt Kimberly nudge his foot under the table. “You’ll have to excuse him,” she said to the waitress. “He turned forty today. I think he’s having trouble accepting it.”
Well, he wasn’t about to let any over-the-hill waitress think he was brooding over turning forty. “I’ll take the sirloin,” he said, looking up with a smile. “Medium rare,” he added, and as he started to say, “baked potato with butter and sour cream,” he remembered all of a sudden exactly where he had seen the old woman’s son-in-law before.
It was at the library—the Derby Public Library. The man worked there. Maybe he was even the one in charge. Bruce did remember now that the man—Willard, the old lady had called him—had ordered a new collection of children’s plays for him two years ago when he first started the after-school drama club at Berea Middle School.
The waitress cleared her throat. “Baked potato, fries, or rice, sir?”
“Yes,” he said.
Kimberly laughed. “Sure, bring him all three. The birthday boy can have whatever he wants.”
“Just kidding,” Bruce said. “I want a baked potato with butter and sour cream.” And then before the waitress could ask, he added, “And honey mustard dressing on my salad. On the side, please.” She gathered up the menus, a little smirk of a smile on her face as she looked Bruce right in the eye, as if to say, “I know your type, sweetheart, all tensed up and preoccupied. I’d sure like to help loosen you up.”
Well, Bruce knew her type, too—he could tell her more about herself than she could. And he knew exactly what she had been like as a girl, too—the kind with a reputation among all the football players. He wondered if she had told her name while he had been daydreaming. No doubt it ended with an i—Tawni or Nikki or Brandi. He closed his eyes briefly and scolded himself. He used to be so proud of the fact that he never stereotyped people, especially women.
* * *
The waitress left, and Kimberly unwrapped two crackers for Madison. “Hey, you’re okay, aren’t you, Bruce?” she said slowly. “You’re not back into drugs again, are you?” She laughed. She sometimes poked fun at Bruce, but usually kindly, about his new standards of behavior since he’d “turned religious,” as she called it. “You’re sure not the wild big brother I used to have,” she had said more than once. She stopped laughing now and grew serious. “No, I mean, really—you’re not worried about anything, are you, Bruce?”
“Me? Worried?” He shook his head. “Naah, I’m just hungry is all. It is almost seven, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” She started playing with the cellophane wrapper from the crackers. They both watched Madison for a little while, bent over her place mat and coloring furiously, changing crayons frequently and pausing every now and then to enlighten them as to what she was drawing right on top of all the other already-printed pictures: “Unca Buce,” “titty tat,” “bunny wabbit,” and so forth. Bruce thought it must be a sign of intelligence and creativity that she preferred drawing her own pictures, such as they were, instead of wasting her time coloring somebody else’s.
When she pointed to a red squiggle and said, “Dack,” he glanced at Kimberly and they smiled. “Dack” was the jack-o’-lantern Bruce had made for her. It was sad, Bruce thought, that it wasn’t until after the jack-o’-lantern that she thought to add “Daddy” to her place mat. He wondered how Matt would like it if he knew he came in after a pumpkin in order of importance in his daughter’s life.
As the waitress came back with their salads and a dish of applesauce for Madison, Bruce realized again how they must look—the three of them sitting at the table together like the well-adjusted all-American family: daddy, mommy, baby, and another one on the way. He was suddenly filled with an unspeakable sadness that he was sitting here instead of Matt, that it was Kimberly instead of somebody else who was with him—not that he had any specific names, but just somebody else, somebody who was his wife, not his sister. And Madison, beautiful funny smart little Madison, would always be only his niece, never his own daughter.
He thought back to the family who had left a minute ago. How was it that a tub of a man like Willard whatever-his-name-was could get married and have a kid and look absolutely pleased with life, while he, Bruce Healey, who had always had his pick of girls, was still single and not getting any younger? How had it happened that he had been alive forty whole years already and was living in his sister’s basement, eating pathetic meals every night and watching movies on his VCR to make up for the life he didn’t have? He looked down at his tossed salad and wondered how he could get through the next couple of hours until bedtime.
“Happy birthday to you; happy birthday to you,” Kimberly started singing before the waitress had even taken two steps away from their table. Madison lifted her head and looked back and forth between Kimberly and him, a yellow crayon poised in midair. “Happy birthday, dear Brucie; happy birthday to you!” Kimberly finished.
Madison dropped the crayon and clapped her hands. “Birfday!” she said.
Bruce looked at his sister’s bright face. He saw Madison’s dark eyes sparkling and thought of the hymn they had sung at church on Promotion Sunday back in September when all the children came forward and stood up front to be officially assigned to their new Sunday school classes. “When he cometh, when he cometh to make up his jewels,” the song started. “All his jewels, precious jewels, his loved and his own.” Jewel—wasn’t that what the old woman had called her daughter? What a nice name for a woman.
They hadn’t sung the song before, nor since, but it had stuck with Bruce. Little children—it would be hard to think of them as “precious jewels” if you only mingled with middle schoolers all day every day. But he had Madison to remind him of how they started out—sweet and innocent and trusting. So full of awe at anything new, which was almost everything. Soaking up your love like little sponges, then pouring it back to you so generously. Madison was smiling at him now, laughing actually, her little white teeth all lined up like beads on a bracelet.
Okay, you can do this, Bruce told himself. You can rise above yourself and act happy for their sake. He smiled and bobbed his head several times, as if to a whole roomful of well-wishers. “You’re really wanting to make sure they bring us one of those free cakes, aren’t you?” he said to Kimberly.
The waitress heard him, for she said, “I’ve already told ’em in the back we got another birthday.” She jerked her head in the direction of the table where the old woman and her family had sat. “People over there had one, too.” She gave a little sigh, as if the people over there had worn her out.
Though he wasn’t sure why he asked it, Bruce said, “Do you know how old the guy was?”
The waitress narrowed her eyes and appeared to be thinking hard. “Nope,” she said, shaking her head, “but I’d say several years older than you, for sure.” She raised her dark eyebrows and winked at him before leaving again.
Bruce was mortified. Now without a doubt she was convinced that he was all stressed out over his age. Which he wasn’t! He definitely wasn’t.
Kimberly had already gotten a good start on her salad, Bruce noticed, and Madison had abandoned her place mat and crayons in favor of the applesauce. Whereas all her playing was done with great exuberance, she had grown into a curiously tidy little eater. He watched her fill her spoon with applesauce and carefully lift it to her mouth.
Bruce picked up his little cup of honey mustard dressing and drizzled it over his salad. “Forty years old—just think,” he said. There, if he talked about it openly, Kimberly would see how unbothered he was by his age. “I think it’s a great age. You’ve gotten over trying to impress people, so you can focus now on what’s really important.”
“Yeah, in the few short years left,” Kimberly said. She daintily picked a slice of cucumber from her salad bowl and popped it into her mouth, then munched contentedly, careful not to make eye contact with Bruce. He had often wondered how he would view Kimberly if she were somebody else’s sister instead of his. Would he have been attracted to her, say, if she had been another single teacher at Berea Middle School when he started teaching there a couple of years ago? Probably not right then, not after what he’d just been through with that other woman in Montgomery, but how about later?
Kimberly had a lot going for her. Maybe she was a little undisciplined in some ways, but she was very funny and very big-hearted and very good-looking in spite of her extra weight right now.
“Hey, I just thought of something,” Kimberly said. “Wasn’t Daddy around forty when he ran in the Memphis Marathon that year? Wasn’t that the picture Mom always kept on her nightstand?”
It was true. Bruce had a fairly distinct memory of it, though he had been only five at the time. Kimberly hadn’t been born yet, but somehow she knew her father’s history better than any of them.
They had made a family vacation out of it, or tried to. Suzanne, who had been fifteen, had pouted all the way to Memphis and back because she was missing some party somebody was giving back home in Mississippi. She had complained about everything he did in the backseat, had even kicked him once when he was clicking two Popsicle sticks together, making harmless little noises.
He still remembered her bare foot, with its bright red toenails, swinging suddenly out of nowhere and landing a good one on his leg. And though he was only five and the kick was entirely unjustified in his thinking, he hadn’t set up a wail about it, which must have stirred Suzanne to remorse, for she had immediately handed him a Milky Way candy bar and put a finger to her lips so he wouldn’t tell. Even at five, he knew she was talking about the kick not the candy, and he had kept quiet about both. Already he was learning some important things about getting along with women.
“He was something, wasn’t he?” Kimberly said.
Bruce nodded. “They both were.” Poor Kimbo, she had been only eleven when their father had died. She had worshiped him, had cried for weeks after the funeral.
It was a subject Bruce never brought up—his parents—though Kimberly was always looking for opportunities to do so, always trying to analyze what went wrong and why. For Bruce it was a subject that opened up too many if onlys and never led to anything productive.
What went wrong was very simple—his father had gotten cancer in his early fifties, had wasted away over the course of three horrible years, and had died an agonizing death at fifty-six, after which his mother had simply given up and willed herself to join him. At eleven, Kimberly had suffered more than any of them, for she had not only lost her father but her mother, also, whose emotional erosion began the day her husband died but dragged out over the next seventeen years.
The why of his father’s death had been an awful question to wrestle with, the kind of question there’s no answer for. Added to the enormous unfairness of it all, when his father had been such an all-round great guy—virile, handsome, strong, friendly, could pick up anything and do it well—was the ugly guilt that still reared its head during weak moments, even though Bruce knew in his heart that God’s river of grace was broad and deep enough to carry away even that. If only I had been there that last day to say good-bye—that was the biggest if only concerning his father, the one that invariably started thrashing around inside his head at the very mention of his father’s death.
And he could so easily have been there. That was the part that gnawed at his soul. His mother had called him that morning, had told him his father probably wouldn’t last the day. S
he had said it before, had urged him home on numerous occasions, but she sounded different this time, more desperate and sure. He had started up Highway 49 from Jackson, meaning to go straight home. It was his senior year at Jackson State, with only three weeks of classes left before graduation. He had dinked around for four years, but, as he liked to tell it, he had perfected the art of dinking to the point that he could still pull a B average.
If he had just kept his eyes on the road driving through the town of Belzoni, maybe the impulse to wander wouldn’t have struck. Maybe he would have made it all the way up to the junction of Highway 82, where he would have turned west at Indianola and headed home. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he slowed down going through Belzoni, which was wise, considering the fact that he had already gotten two speeding tickets in towns along Highway 49. But approaching the Phillips 66 gas station, he had slowed down even more, had in fact turned in to get gas even though he still had half a tank.
And she was there, as he had figured she would be. The only woman he had ever known named Fiona. He had loved to say it when he first met her at Jackson State their freshman year—“Fiona from Belzoni.” That’s how he had introduced her to everybody when they went out, which was an off-and-on thing practically all year. She had had a jillion boyfriends herself, so it didn’t bother her that Bruce came and went.
She was almost engaged to somebody back home, she had told them all, but she sure didn’t act like it. She meant to have fun, she said, since this was her only year for college. Her daddy ran a Phillips 66 gas station in Belzoni, she said, and she was taking it over next year after she took a couple of classes in business management and computers and accounting. She had a raspy voice that always sounded like the onset of laryngitis and a faceful of freckles you could play dot-to-dot with. Not your typical southern belle.
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