Dancing on the Edge of the Roof

by Sheila Williams

  “I'm sorry, could you repeat that last item? I didn't quite catch what you said. Wild rice with … what?”

  I took a deep breath and started again.

  “Wild rice with shitty mushrooms, the oh juice has wine in it,” I repeated. “Salads are à la carte, and we have two of them. A Caesar and a fresh spinach salad with warm honey bacon dressing.”

  I smiled. Mr. Yup was still coughing and turning red. He reached for his water glass. Mrs. Yup looked like she wasn't feeling well.

  I smiled.

  “Would you like to order now?” I asked politely.

  They ordered the trout and two spinach salads.

  By eight o'clock, the place was packed, and Jess was in a tizzy. Just about everybody had ordered the trout or the lamb roast, which was disappearing in a big way. He had tornedos of beef coming out of his ears, but nobody was ordering it.

  Jess caught me returning from the Yups' table after dropping off their dessert. One of those “flambay” things: pretty to look at but not much there.

  “Juanita, I'm in a situation here,” he told me, a worried look on his face. “No one is ordering the beef. I don't understand it. It's one of my best dishes.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Can you try to talk some of them into getting the beef? I'm gonna run out of trout if twenty more people order it!”

  “Well, if you ask me, it's those shitty mushrooms you're serving with it,” I told him, tossing the Caesar salad for the two couples who were sitting next to the old stove. “I don't care what you say about these Continental dishes, Jess. Nobody wants to eat something that sounds funny. What kind of mushrooms got shitty in its name? What's the matter? What's so funny?”

  Jess's sister, Mary, who was also working that night, was grinning from ear to ear, tears coming out of her eyes. Jess was doubled over the counter, his head in his arms. I could tell by the bobbing of his body that he was laughing.

  “What's so funny?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “What … what did you call those mushrooms?” Jess asked, coughing as he laughed.

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “Shit-tay. I pronounced them just like you told me to. With the ‘e’ on the end, which sounds like ‘a’ in French, you pronounce them 'shit-tay.' ” I looked at Mary, who now had tears streaming down her face, and at Jess, who could barely stand up. “It is French, isn't it?” I asked, now suspicious. It looked French.

  “Juan … Juanita, it's Japanese or maybe it's Korean. I've forgotten which. They're known as ‘Chinese black mushrooms.’ Anyway, it's 'shee-tah-kay' mushrooms, not 'shit-tay' mushrooms. No wonder people haven't ordered the beef. You've been telling them that the mushrooms are shitty!” He was laughing so hard his face was turning red.

  Of course, I didn't think any of this was funny. But we did sell a lot more of the beef tornedos after that.

  I called home one evening shortly after that, after my first month or so in Montana. Rosetta had gone home early because her little boy was sick, and I filled in for her. Fortunately for me, the crowd was light, and Jess's menu was pronounceable.

  “Give me change for a five, Jess, I'm gonna make a phone call.”

  “You can use the phone in the office.”

  “No, I don't want it on your bill. The pay phone will do just fine.”

  “If there's a more stubborn woman around, I don't know her.”

  “Just give me the quarters, Jess.”

  He shrugged, punched a few keys. The register dinged, and the drawer opened. Jess handed me a fistful of quarters.

  “Long distance, huh.”

  “As if it's any of your business, yes. Calling my kids back in Ohio.”

  Mignon flew by with a tray overloaded with dirty dishes. The diner was closed, and she was rushing because she had a date.

  “I didn't know you had any kids, Juanita. How many do you have?”

  “Three, ages twenty-five, twenty-three, and twenty,” I answered, shortly, heading toward the pay phone. “Two boys and a girl, in answer to your next question.”

  “Hummph,” said Jess. In Jess's language, that means “very interesting.”

  “I bet you're a great mom,” Mignon remarked, washing her hands. “They probably miss you, huh.”

  I thought about Bertie sitting on the couch, asking me for cigarette money, telling me to watch Teishia so she could go out. I thought about Randy sitting in the penitentiary, watching the calendar. I thought of Rashawn, and the apple-sized bankroll he kept in his pocket. No, I wasn't a great mom. And I doubted if they missed me at all. My throat got a little tight, and I quickly turned away toward the wall and picked up the receiver of the phone. But not before I caught Jess's eye.

  “Not really.” I dialed the familiar number.

  I got Rashawn, who was still pissed off. He cursed at me. Said that Randy called … something about him getting out. I knew I was hearing things. Rashawn said I was selfish and stupid for “runnin' off like that.” He said Bertie and the baby were fine and was I going to send them some money. I said he could give them money; shoot, he makes more in one night than I ever did in a week. He told me to forget it, that was “business.” I hear the way he talks to me, see his flashing gold eyes in my mind. I wondered what I did wrong with that boy and why was he so mean. Rashawn asked for the number here, but I wouldn't give it to him. Told him I didn't know it. Rashawn said, “Momma, are you so stupid, you can't axe someone?” I told him I'd call again in a few weeks and hung up. Ignored Jess who was watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  I put down the pay phone and came back to the counter. Waved at Mignon, who had grabbed her stuff and was headed out the door. Sat down on a stool and lit me a cigarette. I must have looked a little blue. I felt Jess watching me as he swept the floor but I ignored him. Heard him fumbling around with something in the utility closet.

  I thought about Randy in jail. Wondered if Rashawn would live to be twenty-five and if he'd ever give up dealin'. Wondered if I'd been a good mother to Bertie. Couldn't think of any good answers. Couldn't think of any answers at all.

  “You OK?” Heard the swishing of the broom, back and forth.

  I blew out the smoke and nodded. Thinking hard.

  “Yeah.”

  “Kids all right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered him in a low voice. My face still stung from Rashawn's heavy voice and mean words. I felt as if he had slapped me. I didn't look up at Jess. Just blew the smoke out. Studied the glowing orange tip of my cigarette and felt like I wanted to crawl under the counter and stay there for a week.

  “You've got three of 'em, right?”

  I looked up.

  “Yeah.”

  “Two girls and a boy? Or two boys and a girl?” His question was left hanging in the air as I felt anger—and shame—rise up in my chest.

  What the hell was this? Twenty questions?

  Just all of a sudden, I was mad as hell.

  “You doin' a background check on me, Jess? A little late, ain't it? What is it you really want to know? Let's just stop fartin' around here and get to it!”

  I was shouting now and Carl, who was in the back finishing the dishes, peeked over the top of the swinging doors, his eyes wide, his eyebrows raised.

  Jess stopped wiping down the counter.

  “Juanita …”

  I stubbed my cigarette out so hard into that ashtray that I broke my nail down to the quick.

  “Three kids, two boys, one girl. Randy's in the state penitentiary and I don't know when he'll get out. Rashawn is an entrepreneur—he sells recreational drugs to the rich kids in the suburbs and to the poor kids down the street. Bertie is a stay-at-home mother, and I have one grandchild, Teishia. And I left because I couldn't stand it anymore. I felt like I was all worn out, emptied out, torn up, fed up, and used up. That tell you what you want to know?” I caught sight of something out of the corner o
f my eye. Carl. Still peeking at us over the top of the doors. “Carl, do I need to come back there?” His head disappeared. “No, ma'am,” I heard him say. Then I turned my wrath back on Jess. But his expression was still calm and he looked as if he was slightly amused. That ticked me off more. “Juanita, I wasn't trying to get into your business. Just making conversation …” I lit another cigarette and glared at him. “Well, this is a conversation I don't want to have.” “I can understand why you left.” “I don't think so,” I bellowed, blowing the smoke out in his direction. “And we are not having this conversation.” Jess chuckled. Chuckled! I felt the color rising in my face. He was laughing at me? “Is there a joke or something that I didn't get the punch line to?” “Juanita, I …” I hopped off that stool in a flash and confronted him, my hands digging into my hips. That fool cigarette fell out of my mouth and onto the floor.

  “Don't 'Juanita this 'n' that!' ” I was shouting now. “I guess you think it's pretty damn funny. And pretty damn typical, huh? One son in the pokey, one on the way?”

  Jess's eyes widened for a moment, but he didn't answer right away. 'Course, he couldn't. I was still screaming at him.

  He came around the counter and grabbed me. I was so

  startled—he moved so quickly! I swatted at him and pushed him away.

  “Juanita, I wasn't laughing at you. But you're right, I was thinking about how typical your situation is. Too damn typical.”

  I glared at him.

  But I was listening.

  “You think your neighborhood has the market on young men wasting away in state prisons or dealing drugs? You think you're the only sad, beaten-up woman who's wondering what she did wrong? The rez is full of mothers like you.”

  I was still listening.

  And I knew that I wasn't the only one. I guess that I never thought there were so many of us. And I was very busy feeling sorry for myself.

  But my old belligerence came back. I cocked my chin up at him. I know I had a glint in my eye.

  “If this is such a sad story that you've heard so many times before,” I challenged him, “then why were you smiling like it was something funny? Or cute?”

  Jess chuckled.

  I liked the sound of Jess's chuckles. And I wasn't minding too much the feel of his warm hands against my skin.

  “You don't read me too well,” he said, beginning to grin. “I wasn't laughing at you, or at your situation. I was laughing because you had the nerve to try to do something about it.”

  I just stared at him.

  Then I pulled away from him. Reached for the pack of cigarettes that I'd left on the counter. I was smoking too much. Again.

  My heat was gone.

  My anger was suddenly gone, too.

  Now I just felt sad again.

  I sank down onto one of the stools next to the counter.

  The sound of the match striking was as loud as thunder in my ears. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

  “Most people wouldn't call leaving home a solution, Jess,” I said in a smoke-filled voice. “They would call it walking out on your responsibilities.”

  “How old are those kids, Juanita? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Isn't it time for them to try life without you?” He snorted caustically and went to get the mop. “I call it saving your own life. Those kids are young, they'll figure it out.” The utility closet door slammed. Something in there rattled again. “Or they won't. But you and me, we're working on the end of the story now.” The mop made a soft, wispy sound on the old linoleum floor. “We don't have a lot of time to fool around trying to figure out which party to go to.” He stopped mopping for a second and looked over at me, his black eyes serious and penetrating.

  “We got to pick a party and go.”

  I looked away.

  What party had I picked exactly?

  I felt his eyes studying me but I wouldn't look up. I heard the soft, swishing sound again.

  I didn't say anything. Listened to the sounds of the old Hobart dishwashing machine running in the back, and Carl's rap music playing on his cassette player.

  “Well, you feeling OK? You don't look so good. Take your pill today?”

  I shook my head. Maybe I should go back, I thought.

  Maybe I ought to be watching Teishia so Bertie could have a little fun in her miserable life.

  Or maybe I should listen to Jess.

  “Naw. I'm fine.”

  “Husband misses you, huh.” Swish, swish, swish.

  I blew out the smoke again. Shook my head, no. Maybe Rashawn was right. What was I doing here? What right did I have to try to have a life without trying to help my kids? But then I had tried to help my kids, hadn't I? Hadn't I? They were grown now, and had to make their own ways. God knows, they had never listened to anything I tried to say. I went back and forth with myself.

  I was so wrapped up in my thoughts, that I barely heard Jess's voice. Heard the words, and answered him, but didn't really catch the meaning. Then it came through to me what he was really asking.

  “Sorry?”

  Swish, swish, swish.

  “I said, your husband misses you, probably wants you to come back.”

  I turned around to look at Jess. Found two very black, very curious eyes studying me carefully. I decided to study him back.

  “Jess, I ain't had a husband in seven years. Now you knew that.”

  “Hummph.” Jess's cheeks colored. I like that in a man. He quickly looked down at his mopping. I took a long draw on my Kool. Began to think of things I hadn't thought of in years. I decided to play along.

  “I know Miz Gardiner wishes you'd quit this diner foolishness and get a real job.” Now I knew there wasn't no Mrs. Gardiner, Mignon had made sure that I knew that.

  Black eyes flickered for a second.

  “Ain't no Mrs. Gardiner.”

  I turned around on that stool. Smiled to myself and watched the smoke curl up in a silver ribbon to the ceiling.

  “Hummph,” I said. Very interesting.

  Jess? And me?

  I heard that mop go “swish, swish.” Dreamed a little dream.

  I called Peaches that night, too, left my name and where I was staying on her answering machine: “Hello. P. Bradshaw Trucking Company. Your message is important to us. Please leave your name, telephone number, date and time of your call, and we will return the call promptly. Thank you.”

  I closed up that night. Jess just left me there, sitting on that stool, smoking and thinking. About what had changed. And what hadn't. And about the party that I had decided to go to.

  Life at Millie's was not like life anywhere. I was one of three permanent “boarders” as she called us—me, the teacher who was out of town for the summer, and an Episcopal priest who was working out of a storefront church in Mason. I could do what I wanted as long as I didn't “do it in the street and frighten the horses” as Millie says. And as long as I didn't bother the cats—or the ghost.

  Mignon was right about Millie's cats. Millie talked to them constantly. And the funny part was, they seemed to understand her—and talk back.

  It's crazy to think of these animals as reincarnated ex-husbands, but when you live at Millie's, it's easy to fall into that trap. Stay with her a couple of days and you'll start talking to the cats, too.

  The small, mild-mannered gray one was William, Mil-lie's first husband, who was a seventy-year-old English lawyer when she married him in London. She was twenty-six. I guess his family threw a fit. William was an easygoing, lazy little cat who liked to sleep on the window seat in the parlor. He only really springs to action when Millie calls him to eat. She says that her husband used to sleep during his legal trials, but that he was a nice old man. Left her a fortune.

  Antonio is a sleek, black short-hair, long on temperament, short on litter box skills. He doesn't like me for some reason, so we stay out of each other's way. Millie calls him “Romeo Anto
nio” and chides him for his wanderings, which have left him with descendants as far away as the next county. The real Antonio was also quite a character, according to Millie, who divorced him after she found him carrying on in her bed with her best girlfriend and the butler.

  Louis is a tabby: friendly, fat, and lively. According to Millie, his human counterpart was a count whose vineyards in Provence were declining in fortunes until she arrived and helped him develop a new wine with a different mixture of grapes, or something like that. The wine was a success, and Millie and Louis got rich. He and Millie divorced on good terms after he found her in his bed with the butler. Of course, she was also seeing the portrait painter at the time. Now that's a story I'd like to hear more about. Louis is my boy. He and I share the porch swing in the afternoons, and he eats kitty snacks from the palm of my hand.

  Paul is the white Persian, fat, spoiled, conceited, and disagreeable to everyone but Millie. Paul doesn't know that he's a cat now and not an oil baron. At dinner, he sits at the head of the dining room table and Millie serves him his dinner there. Believe it. Paul Hillman Daniels was a Texas oil baron and Millie's last husband. I think it's his money that allows her to live so well. I guess she still owns oil wells in east Texas somewhere. That's probably why Paul acts the way he does. He figures this is his house and his stuff. Sometimes Millie calls him “Mr. Daniels” out of respect.

  There's another cat that I've seen only once or twice out of the corner of my eye, standing in a shadow or in a dark corner of an empty room. It's a sleek Siamese who howls at night, a really eerie, mournful sound. Millie says that he's just a stray who comes around occasionally and that he has no name. But there's more to it than that. I've seen her pet and cuddle him, talk to him in a language I don't understand. Mignon says that there's a town story that Millie was kidnapped by an Indian maharajah and had a love child who died. Really romantic and tragic at the same time. Maybe the Siamese is the maharajah. All I know is that cat is real mysterious—and he is the one subject Millie will not talk about.

  As for the ghost, I've only seen her once, and believe me, once was enough. The really scary part is, at the time I saw her, I didn't even know she was a ghost.