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October Snow

Page 4

by Jenna Brooks


  After the divorce, when she worked at the center, she tried with everything in her to help the countless women with their horror stories about losing their children to a father who abused them. It seemed that the only way to protect the children was for these women to stay with their abuser, and Jo thought that to be the equivalent of state-sanctioned domestic violence. The mothers couldn’t tell anyone, except the advocates like Jo–duty-bound to keep it confidential; if anything, the mother who remained with an abuser had to make absolutely certain that outsiders knew nothing, because if the state found out she was “allowing” abuse in her home, she’d lose her kids for failure to protect. But if she tried to leave, and raised the issue of abuse, she’d lose her children for alienating them.

  She decided that in the end, the state had certainly gone the distance to force battered women underground.

  In her own life, she found it to be a darkly fascinating paradox–that in making sure she couldn’t be accused of alienation, it was she who had been alienated. Fascinating, and quietly devastating: she, like so many other women, had been caught in the catch-22 of being forced to let the monster come back, or lose the boys to him. But because John and Matt had turned on her for letting Keith back in, she lost them anyway.

  Those years were the most painful of Jo’s life, watching her children slip away, knowing their contempt for her. There were many nights back then, right after Keith had come back, when she would jolt awake from a restless sleep. She would go first into Matt’s room, and then John’s, and talk softly to them as they slept, hoping to imprint their subconscious minds with a remembrance of her. Of the mother they had once loved, and the family they had been.

  Even after the boys were out, she tried hard to be understanding, and strong, supporting them however she could; however, she was at the same time dealing with recovering from the decades of Keith’s abuse, and she knew too well how often she had messed up. Sometimes, trying to hang on felt like such a desperate thing–and even when she knew that she was failing to meet that impossible, untenable standard of stability that dogged all battered mothers like a curse, she faked it to the best of her waning abilities. She had so wanted to be their hero, because they needed one so badly. As did Jo, but May had been right: there was no such thing.

  At some point, she didn’t recall when, she began to understand that the hanging-on was the thing that hurt. Letting go, that was a relief. It made room for resolution. At the very least, she didn’t have to fake the motherhood thing anymore. It wasn’t that it was getting too hard to fake it now–it simply didn’t matter. No one needed her to fake anything, not at all. Not anymore.

  She vaguely wondered why she wasn’t more bothered by the distance that was growing inside her. All she knew was that when her defiant anger rose up, it felt good. Powerful. It was a strange experience, foreign to her when it came to her children. Perhaps, she thought, she was finally acknowledging the truth of how she had felt for a very long time: the anger, until now, would have been just too painful to allow, the worst thing of all. Until Keith came back, they had been a close little family, the one that all their friends had wanted to be a part of, the family that other mothers had envied. Now, not even Jo wanted to be a part of it.

  Daisy was tugging to go back inside. Jo reached down and stroked her head. “Yeah, let’s go. I need to get to work.”

  They called her name as they always did when she walked into the kitchen. She blew them kisses, and slipped her apron over her head as she looked around for Barb.

  “Where’s Big Barb?” she asked Kaleen.

  “In the office. With Max.”

  “Any idea what’s up?”

  “No. They’ve been in there a while.”

  Sam was gesturing from the doorway to the dining room. “Jo, c’mere.”

  “Hey.” She pulled the elastic band from her pocket, wrapping it around her wrist. “What’s going on with Max?”

  “I’m not sure. Barb came out to a two-top she was at, told her right in front of the guests to get in the office. Gave the table to Mary, told us to split the rest of Max’s station until you got here.”

  Jo frowned, looking toward the office. “You and Mary handle things. I’m waiting here for Max.”

  “Barb…”

  “Screw Barb.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide. “Okay. I’m gonna go bus. Don’t get in trouble.”

  She was still looking at the office door. “Yeah, okay.” She pulled two dollars out of her pocket. “Kaleen, ring up a cup of coffee for me.”

  “We have to pay for coffee?”

  “You pay for everything here.” Jo handed her the money. “Keep it.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to tip me.”

  “Just keep it.” She pulled a mug from the rack, inspecting it carefully before pouring coffee into it. Leaning against the industrial-sized ice machine, she sipped her coffee and waited.

  Barb emerged from the office a few minutes later. She glanced down at Jo, her eyebrows raised. “You better have proof that you paid for that coffee, missy.”

  Jo pulled the receipt from her pocket, holding it too close to Barb’s face. Barb looked first surprised, then annoyed as she backed away. “Coffee break already?”

  “I’m not on the clock yet.”

  Barb glanced at her watch. “Going to pull your hair back?”

  Jo stared her down, one side of her mouth turned up in a sarcastic grin. “See previous answer.”

  She had never seen Barb stammer before. “Uh…Do you have…an issue, Jo?”

  She didn’t answer, her smile almost imperceptible as she raised her cup to her lips. Barb finally looked away, grabbing some papers from the file folder that hung by the office door and bustling back into the office, slamming the door harder than usual. Jo thought Barb looked like she was diving back into the womb.

  As she studied the narrow kitchen, and the five or six servers who were rushing in and out of the dining room, Jo thought of an ant colony. They reminded her of worker ants, clamoring and climbing all over each other. Servicing the queen.

  At the same time, she was suddenly aware of the cooks yelling at each other. She realized that their fighting was such a constancy that she rarely tuned in to them enough to hear how ugly they were. When she first started working there, the raging bad language had been jarring, even depressing; at some point, she had simply stopped hearing it.

  Sam came around the corner to ring in an order. “Jo, you sure you don’t want a table? It’s filling up out there.”

  “I’m not officially here for…” she pulled out her cell phone as the office door opened, “four minutes.”

  “Put that phone away or I’ll take it!” Barb was standing in the office door. Max rushed past, her face wooden, looking as if she’d been crying.

  Jo watched her hurry out of the kitchen, then set her cup on the counter as she turned back to Barb. She could feel her face getting hot, but not from embarrassment. It was exhilaration. It was, finally, the end–of three years of scurrying, and groveling, of sucking up to Barb, and the cooks, and the taskmasters they called “guests”. Three years of filthy, backbreaking work, and of hoarding her money. And her anger.

  After a few moments of staring her down, she said softly, “Barb, I wouldn’t try that if I were you.”

  As if on some kind of cue, and by some sort of radar–that instinct that develops among people who work together under too much stress–the kitchen got very quiet. Jo could feel the eyes on the back of her head.

  Barb glanced beyond her, at the crowd of workers in the kitchen; Jo, her eyes still directly on Barb, thought that the woman actually gulped.

  Jo folded her arms, her cell still in her hand. She thought about her favorite piece of art, which hung over the front door of her apartment: a black-and-white sketch of a shadowy male figure, screaming at a terrified child. An obviously enraged woman stood behind him, her fists raised above his head. The caption read, Nothing like the moment when reality hits the bull
y. She often thought of having someone draw part two of that picture; and, as she stood there watching Barb, she thought the look on the woman’s face at that moment would be perfect for “The Bully, Part Two.”

  I’d name it “Comeuppance.”

  She raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “Well?”

  Barb inhaled deeply, puffing out her fleshy cheeks, which vibrated as she exhaled. “In my office. Now.”

  “Uh, no. Not a chance. I’m not going anywhere with you, and especially not alone. You look kinda homicidal at the moment, and well…You’re a whole lot bigger than me.”

  She slowly, deliberately opened her phone again to check the time. “A lot bigger, yup,” she murmured.

  The staff was busying themselves as close to the office door as possible, and Jo made sure they could hear her clearly. It was a parting gift to them all.

  “So, Big Barbie, I need you to either fire me or let me clock in–but this you-say-jump-I-say-how-high crap, well, that’s over.”

  Barb’s face was deep red, and she seemed to be exhaling more than she was taking in air. Jo wondered if she’d be held liable if the woman had a stroke, and the thought broke her grin into a laugh. “You don’t even have the guts to fire me.” It occurred to her then: Barb had just fired Maxine.

  Barb opened her mouth to respond, but said nothing and then snapped it shut again, her expression that of someone whose pants had been pulled down to her ankles in front of everyone. She was looking earnestly around the kitchen, but no one there was about to say anything, and certainly not in her defense.

  Amy, the assistant manager, suddenly appeared from the dining room. “Jo, maybe you’d better go home.”

  She held up her index finger toward her, never taking her eyes off of Barb. “Hold on.” She pulled the elastic band from her wrist. “One more thing. You,” the smile left her face as her eyes narrowed, “go find the next servant to hustle your meatloaf and kiss your massive ass, Barbie.” She finger-flicked the band at Barb’s feet.

  She backed toward the doorway to the dining room, exaggerating a feigned wariness of what Barb might do. She heard some of the workers laughing. In the dining room, on her way to the front door, she pulled her apron over her head and tossed it into the fireplace. It was May, so there was no fire there, but Jo liked the message it sent.

  Sam stood beaming by the big windows at the back of the room, and Jo extended her thumb and pinkie into the “call me” sign, and then a thumbs-up, as she jogged to the front door.

  It was a warm, cloudy day; yet, everything seemed to be oddly defined, with strange, sharp lines, and the jog became a sprint to her truck.

  She slid into the driver’s seat, breathing hard. She felt good. It all felt right. It was time.

  A hard-rock song about survival was playing on her CD, and she turned the stereo all the way up as she sped out of the parking lot.

  At the apartment building, Jo sprinted down the hallway to Max’s first floor apartment. After knocking hard a few times with no response, she went up to her own place. There was a note on the door:

  I’m at Barley’s. Probably till close.

  She unlocked the door quietly, so Daisy wouldn’t bark, and shut it carefully. She slipped off her dirty, torn black work shoes, then smiled as she picked them up and put them in the waste can by the door. “Daisy?”

  She heard the thump at the other end of the apartment as the dog jumped off the bed, then the jingle of her tags as she trotted out to greet her. “You’re getting slow, Daize. Treat?”

  Daisy’s ears went up as she recognized the word, and she led Jo to the kitchen cabinet where the bacon strips were stored. “What’s up, baby? Where’s all the jumping…?” The dog started coughing, a hoarse, hacking sound that came out with such force that Daisy sank to her haunches. She looked up helplessly as Jo crouched and studied her carefully.

  “Daisy?”

  She wagged her tail slowly, and put her paw up as if asking for her treat.

  Jo studied her, suddenly afraid. “Here you go, baby.” She put the strip in Daisy’s mouth, and watched the dog amble back to the bedroom, laying on the floor and gingerly nibbling at her treat. She looked up at Jo a few times, wagging her tail as if to tell her not to worry.

  “You can’t be done yet, Daize.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Not yet. I can’t lose you.” She sat on the floor beside her, her hand on the dog’s back, massaging between her shoulders. “You’re all I have left.” Daisy licked her face. She seemed better.

  She put Daisy’s favorite furry throw on the bed, and patted it so the dog would jump up. Eventually, Jo had to lift her; she sat with her while she dozed off, stroking her head. “You sleep, baby.”

  She ran her fingers through the graying fur on Daisy’s neck, thinking about the years gone by, for both of them: they were both getting old.

  Somehow, watching Daisy age, and knowing–but not really acknowledging–that the dog was likely in the last part of her life, Jo sometimes felt hopeless for herself. She felt cheated in her own life, which she saw as mostly having been spent by others, while she had come away with nothing to show for it. She felt like she was done. Or getting there. But it was a curiosity to her, how–especially in recent months–that very thought was one of the few concepts that she could consider which actually calmed the adrenaline she was always running on.

  Every now and then, she would have that same strange, electric sensation she felt as she ran to her truck that day: something fleeting, ethereal, that felt like she was floating in some realm of unreality; where the outline of things was sharper, brighter than it should be. Then, she’d notice that she wasn’t, for that moment, kicking out adrenaline.

  She grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator, deciding against lunch. In the bedroom, shedding her work clothes for the last time, she rolled them around each other and stuffed them into the garbage can in the kitchen. She retrieved her shoes from the waste can by the door, putting them with the clothes, and then set the bag by the front door.

  Back in her bedroom, she slipped on her favorite old jeans, faded to a pale blue and ripped at both knees, and a T-shirt that read, I don’t have an anger problem. I have an idiot problem.

  Her cell was beeping with a text from Max.

  You have time to come to the bar after work?

  Yup about an hour

  Max responded with a question mark.

  Explain when I get there

  Hurry up then

  Jo didn’t respond, turning off her phone and leaning her back against the kitchen counter. The fact of having cut the oppressive ties to Barb, and walking away from needing the approval of customers whom, for the most part, she hated–it all was just starting to sink in. She wanted a little quiet time, some space to relish her new reality.

  Freedom.

  Really? She laughed out loud, delighted. She resisted the impulse to clap her hands. She felt like a child seeing fireworks for the first time.

  Looking around her tiny apartment, she felt like she was truly experiencing the entirety of the moment she was in. As she stood there, in her second-floor walkup on the iffy side of Manchester, New Hampshire, she realized that she was entering the very first time in her life that no one–no one at all–could tell her what to do.

  It feels like I worked for this forever. She sat on the floor, feeling like she could finally cry, should do so, actually. It would be appropriate.

  She got to her feet, filled Daisy’s dish with fresh food, and reached for her car keys.

  Bobby was behind the bar. “Hey, beautiful. Max is on her third already.”

  Jo rolled her eyes. “I’ll look after her. Got my beer for me?” She looked around. Max was sitting at a table at the far end of the narrow bar, staring into her mug.

  “Here ya go. What happened at The Crate today?”

  “Personnel adjustments.” She grinned.

  “Uh oh. I asked her, but she said she’d tell me after a few drinks.”

  “Yeah. Hey, one f
or Max, too.” She looked up at the old stereo speakers, suspended from the ceiling in each corner over the bar. “Crank that, will ya, Bobby?”

  He slid another mug to her. “Can’t hear it over the crowd?” There was only one other person in the tavern, a tired-looking woman with orange-red hair. She checked her cell phone every few seconds, looking disgusted.

  Jo laughed and picked up the drinks, then danced her way to the other end of the tavern.

  She put Max’s mug next to the empty on the table. She reversed the chair opposite her, swinging her leg over the seat and leaning her arms on the chair back, and then looked pointedly at her friend. “So…?”

  “Fired.” Max chugged half the beer. “Thanks.” She looked up then, making a face that was somewhere between indifference and depression.

  “I figured. What happened?”

  She shrugged. “Apparently I had two other write-ups that she never mentioned.”

  “Ooh. She got you good, huh?”

  “I suppose. Anyway, some guy called this morning, said I was rude, and slow, and pretty much an incompetent bitch who’s responsible for him never coming in to another Crate ever again.”

  “Nothing like saving a life.”

  Max snorted. “Yeah.” She looked over to Bobby. “Hey Robert, mind if I have a quick cigarette?”

  “Just stand near the vent.”

  She nodded, taking her drink with her to the exhaust vent at the back wall. “I guess the guy was all pissed off because his meatloaf was soggy.” She looked back at Jo, her eyes wide and miserable.

  But Jo was starting to laugh, looking away, shoulders shaking. “His meat was limp, you mean?”

  Max considered it for a second, then burst into laughter. Within a few seconds, they had managed to relay the story to Bobby, and the three of them spent several minutes thinking up double entendres and laughing helplessly.

 

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