Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter

by Lisa Patton

  “Nein! Vermont Haus Inn has been changed. It looks one hundred percent different. My customaz vill never recognize dis place; they vill turn around and leave.”

  “I am unaware of dis,” Rolf told her. “Nev’a mind!” For some reason he always said “never mind” when he was frustrated, upset, or angry.

  My moment of truth had arrived. This was exactly what I had been dreading ever since Alice, Virginia, and Mary Jule insisted on revamping the Vermont Haus Inn. My body went limp at the thought of what she would say next. The day she screamed at me about Gracie pooping in the dining room was minor compared to this and all I wanted to do was sprint out of that kitchen. The fact that she spoke to Rolf in English instead of German told me that her comments were intended for all ears.

  Mary Jule had been helping me with the seating chart for the evening when the embittered Sergeant stormed into the kitchen. Since it was a holiday weekend, Memorial Day, we had eighty dinner reservations already for each night. I had painstakingly mapped out both the 6:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M. table sittings with regard to where each customer would sit, trying my best not to give Helga any other reason to be annoyed.

  Mary Jule pinched me right above my elbow when she got her first look at Helga Schloygin. We’d been pinching each other since the third grade. I pinched her right back to acknowledge her uneasiness, and leaned in closer to her, pressing my arm against hers for protection. Helga marched right up to me, unflicked cigarette in her hand, never bothering to acknowledge Mary Jule.

  “Hi, Helga, how was your trip?” I said, almost trembling. My tiny bit of hope, that she might consider the transformation a plus, had completely vanished.

  “It was vedy good, but unfortunately all dat good is ov’a,” she said, seething like a pot ready to explode. She lifted her reading glasses from the chain around her neck to her nose. That movement caused her ashes to drop and I watched as they splattered and then dissolved into the ice that was in a bucket on the floor next to the bar. “First things first. Vhat have you done vis my hippo collection?”

  “My friend Virginia packed it up and she has it all ready for you. Just a minute and I’ll go get it,” I said, and hurried out the door. Mary Jule trailed right along behind me. There was no way she was going to be left behind to face that woman alone. What must Peter think! I had never warned him about the tension between Helga and me and now it was worse than before she left.

  Mary Jule resembled a frightened teen in a Freddy Krueger movie as we pushed past the six-top table and ran for cover in my apartment. Sarah and Issie were upstairs with Mandy watching cartoons. Alice was in front of the mirror in the bathroom and Virginia had my makeup mirror propped up on my dresser in the sitting room with a chair pulled up to it. Both were primping for opening night.

  “Virginia, where are Helga’s hippos?” I cried. “She’s having a stroke. I told y’all she would be furious. Now what am I gonna do?” I paced around the apartment, frantic.

  “They’re right there,” she said, and pointed to a stack of boxes in the corner. H’S HIPS was scribbled in big black letters on the side of the box.

  “She’s scary,” said Mary Jule. “Poor Fiery, I see exactly what she means; Helga is the Wicked Witch. Bless your heart, Leelee, I feel so sorry for you.”

  “Now wait just a second. Be calm, both of you. What can she really do to us?” Alice said, as she stepped out of the bathroom. “I’m not that scared of her—just give her back her stupid hippos! Follow me, Leelee.” She grabbed the box of neatly packed away hippopotami and led the way to the kitchen.

  Virginia and Mary Jule tagged along, too, not wanting to miss a potential showdown. If there is one thing my friends love, it’s watching a confrontation, any confrontation, as long as it has nothing to do with them. Here’s a secret about my friends. Not a one of them would have had the nerve to confront Helga alone. As a group, we’d always been able to do anything. Roll a teacher’s house, back up a tall tale told to a parent, create an alibi for each other, or even assume each other’s identities. I fired Mary Jule’s housekeeper for her once over a three-way telephone call. I just said I was her. I’d never have been able to do that if Mary Jule hadn’t been secretly on the phone with me or if I had had to say I was really Leelee.

  Alice, chicken all of a sudden, made me go in first once we got to the kitchen door, claiming it was the least I could do since she was the one holding the hippos.

  The two of us approached Helga, with great trepidation of course, while she was slicing lemons for her bar garnish. “Helga, I’d like for you to meet my best friends from home,” I said as nice as I could, “Alice, Virginia, and Mary Jule.”

  “I’ll take zat,” Helga said, and snatched the box out of Alice’s arms before she had a chance to hand it over.

  “Sure,” Alice said anxiously. The foreboding sight of Helga frightened even her.

  Helga shoved the box under the sink and went straight back to her bar prep—never acknowledging my friends. All four of us slinked back to the apartment.

  “I can’t go back in there,” I told my friends. “See how mean she is to me? I can’t stand that woman!”

  “I am totally in shock, is all I have to say,” Virginia said, and handed a bottle of wine she had snuck out of the basement over to me to open. None of them had a clue how to properly open a wine bottle. They tried, but their efforts always ended in broken corks. At least I’ve mastered this, I thought, as I popped the cork right out.

  “I say we should just ignore her. We don’t have to speak to her, either. What can she do to us? Spank us? Scream at us? So what if she never talks to us, I couldn’t care less,” Virginia said. She took the bottle of chardonnay out of my hands and poured us each a glass.

  “All I know is, I don’t know what I’d do if y’all weren’t here tonight,” I said, and held my glass up to toast my closest friends.

  All the rooms in the inn were full with guests from all over the New England area. The phone had been ringing feverishly for days. Many of the old customers were coming back in town for Memorial Day. Why? I wondered. It’s not the least bit warm. There are still no leaves on the trees and only crocuses and a daffodil or two have even started blooming. Why would anyone want to visit this time of year? To mud wrestle? Eat weeds?

  When my friends and I walked into the kitchen around 5:30 P.M. on opening night, ready to work and decked out to the nines, we looked more like we were arriving for a cocktail party. All of us wore heels and pretty cocktail dresses. The waitstaff at the Vermont Haus Inn wore black pants or skirts and white shirts. None of my friends thought to pack restaurant uniforms, but I’m sure they wouldn’t have worn them anyway. Helga was on the phone next to the makeshift bar on top of the washing machine when we walked in. She looked up at us and sneered before returning to the reservation book.

  Jeb took one look at the girls and about had a stroke. His mouth dropped open and his eyes followed them every step they took around the kitchen. Virginia couldn’t help herself. She had to get Jeb to show her how the big Hobart dishwasher worked.

  She strolled right up to where he stood in front of the Hobart. “Look at you, Jayeb. If you aren’t something else.”

  He just beamed, God bless him.

  “Oooooh, Jayeb,” Alice said, jumping in with Virginia, “I am mighty impressed with you, sugar. Just look at you with all those big pots and pans. We are all fascinated by the way that big machine runs. Can you show us how it works?”

  “Yuup.” Jeb proudly demonstrated for the girls how he arranged the dirty pots on the rack. He then slid the rack inside the washer and gave the big arm, which let down a door and started the cycle, a hardy push. “Not much to it,” Jeb said, and wiped his hands together after the cycle had begun. The boy was wrapped around their baby fingers.

  After that, every time the girls would come in the kitchen, Jeb would overemphasize the way he pressed down the big arm and look over at them, whistling “Whistle While You Work.” Jeb was a brand-new man. He had three So
uthern belles making all over him. My friends justified their mercy flirting by saying, “We’re only helping him. Think how popular he thinks he is now. We’ve changed his whole life.”

  Pierre Lebel can be one charming guy. When I introduced him to the girls it was obvious he, too, was goo-goo-eyed. I caught him out front in the fireplace room as he was filling a sugar jar.

  “Pierre, my . . . best . . . friends . . . from . . . home . . . want . . . to . . . meet . . . you,” I said slowly, and pointed at them and then back over to him.

  “Ahhh, bonjour, mesdames,” he said with a huge grin, and then got down on one knee. He kissed each of their right hands one at a time. As fate would have it, Helga happened to be rounding the corner at that very second. Once he caught sight of her his whole demeanor changed. He scrambled back up straight and his eyes filled with dread. “Eh, pardon, mesdames.” Pierre bowed, and scurried off to one of the dining rooms. Helga smirked at us in disgust but went on out front to rearrange the menus.

  Pierre took great pride in his position as maître d’, an honored profession in France. Before the customers arrived for the evening Pierre had quite a bit of “side work” to do. Making sure there was plenty of chilled white wine and cold beer for the evening was number one on Pierre’s prep list. He and Kerri were in charge of setting the tables and making sure there were glasses for both red and white wine on each table. “That encourages wine sales,” Baker once told me. Each table had to have fresh flowers and the salt and pepper shakers and sugar jars were to be filled to the top. The art of napkin folding was Pierre’s pleasure. He painstakingly spent time designing a beautiful work of art that he twisted and folded into a creation that stood tall atop each plate.

  The restaurant business was just as foreign to the girls as it had been to me, but they thought working there for a night or two would be a riot. They really wanted to help Pierre and take the orders but I assured them that Helga wouldn’t stand for it. After our earlier confrontation, they could see why following her rules wasn’t such a bad idea. Upon meeting the Sergeant in person, Alice had to let go of her dream of “fill-in bartender for a night.”

  The first dinner reservation of the evening was always at 6:00 and the restaurant was usually full by 6:30. Occasionally we would take a 5:30 “res” but that was rare. Most people didn’t like to go out to eat that early anyway. Our second sitting was around 8:00 or 8:30. It’s the period of time between the two sittings that can become quite hectic, even chaotic on the extremely busy weekends. That’s when we had to “turn the tables,” as they say in the restaurant business. The tablecloths had to be changed and the tables reset after the first party left and before the second party arrived.

  We had it all planned. As hostess, I would be seating the customers and helping with turning the tables. Mary Jule would assist me, and Alice and Virginia were going to help Kerri and the other food runner, Jonathan. On a really busy night, we normally had to employ three extra people to deliver the food and bus (clear) the tables. The runners also filled water glasses and helped me with resetting the tables for the second sitting, so this job was most important.

  We had a numbering system for each table. I drew out a seating chart for my friends and posted it in the wait station leading out into the restaurant so they would know exactly where to deliver each meal.

  “Piece of cake,” Virginia whispered to me early on in the evening as I walked by her on my way to table ten with four customers. “I’m not in the least bit worried. Pierre and I are like this,” she said, and held up two fingers.

  Virginia and Alice spent most of their time chatting with the customers instead of running food. Kerri and Jonathan ended up doing most of that. The girls loved filling the water glasses for people. When the customers would ask them about something on the menu, they interjected their two cents’ worth, even though they hadn’t the slightest idea. “The veal is to die for but the head cheese, I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole,” Virginia told one group of customers. When Alice delivered a bottle of wine to one of the tables and began opening it, she got so frustrated that she handed it to one of the men at the table and said, “I’m not that sure how to do this, would you be a love and show me how it’s done?” If Helga had seen that, the earth may have split open.

  Their accents opened the door for conversation about the new look of the Vermont Haus Inn. Many of the customers commented on the changes and how lovely the place looked. “Don’t you think the inn looks so much better?” I heard Virginia say. “We’re Leelee’s best friends from home. We surprised her to help decorate and get this place southernized.”

  I knew Helga couldn’t stand it that my friends were socializing with her customers, but what was she going to do? There were three of them and only one of her. Helga managed to hold her tongue but I suspected there was a storm brewing on the inside.

  The restaurant was crazy busy that opening night. Pierre was running around as usual and before long I noticed that his coffee cup was back on top of the fridge. I never once saw him refill it. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how he did it when no one was watching. I expected the poor thing to be soused by the end of dinner. God knows I couldn’t blame him. Twenty years of Helga would be enough to send anyone “down cellar.”

  At one point in the evening, I caught Roberta on her way to the dry storage room in the basement and followed her down. “What’s going on? How is Helga treating Peter?” I asked her.

  “Okay, I s’pose. She asked him who he was and when he told her ‘the new sous-chef,’ she didn’t even seem surprised. Then she asked him where he had worked before. I’m sure she was impressed. The Wild Duck has quite a reputation.”

  “So she’s being civil to him?”

  “Why, sure she is. Why wouldn’t she be? She can’t blame Peter for Baker’s mistake.”

  “I know, but she hasn’t said a word to my friends. I was just curious. I’m worried she’ll do something to make Peter want to quit.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about a thing. Peter seems like he can handle just about anything. He and Rolf have been shooting the breeze all night. You concentrate on having fun with your girlfriends.”

  When the evening finally wound down, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Peter was doing an excellent job and my friends certainly, if nothing else, livened up the place. I was feeling good, so good that I got up my nerve to venture into the kitchen, just as the staff was wiping down their stations. Mary Jule, who had been stuck like glue to my side all night, tagged right along with me. As soon as we walked in I heard Issie crying on the baby monitor. I told Mary Jule I’d be right back, and hurried off to the apartment.

  Once inside, I saw Mandy had already gotten to Issie. She only wanted me though, so I held her in my arms and rocked her back to sleep. Just as I was sneaking out of her bedroom and closing the door behind me, the apartment door blasted open. Mary Jule was frantic.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  “Stay right here and don’t move.” She grabbed me by the shoulders. “I’ll be right back with Alice and Virginia.”

  Mary Jule never talks that way to me. She was so upset, for a moment she had me worried I’d done something wrong. Too anxious to sit, I walked around in circles wondering what in the world had happened. I slipped into the bathroom and nervously fluffed my hair in the mirror and put on some lipstick while I waited for my friends to show up.

  When she finally made it back, Mary Jule was crazed. So were Virginia and Alice, who were not happy about being yanked away during the middle of a conversation with the last table of lingering guests. But the devastated look on Mary Jule’s face told us all that the urgent news she had was dire.

  “Y’all are gonna die,” she said. “And I mean die.”

  “What in the world is it?” Alice asked impatiently.

  “I gotta sit down.” Mary Jule slowly steadied herself onto the wicker love seat outside my bedroom. Virginia and I crammed in on either side of her. Alic
e grabbed the floor and put her hand on Mary Jule’s knee.

  “Tell us,” Alice commanded.

  “Okay.” Mary Jule gets frustrated at Alice when she rushes her. “I’m trying to remember all this from the beginning.” She let out a big sigh before continuing and held her face in her hands for a few seconds.

  “I overheard Helga talking to Pierre in French.” Mary Jule, the most intelligent of our group, spent her junior year abroad at the Sorbonne and is nearly fluent. “She spoke so fast it was hard to understand her, but I got the gist of it anyway.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “She started out by saying that she thinks we all look like idiots working in a restaurant in our nice dresses and high heels.”

  All of us gasped for air on that statement alone.

  “And she’s mad as hell that there are three more just like you, Leelee.”

  I had that figured out already, but just imagine for a moment how disgusted we all felt at hearing it. We glanced at one another in outrage before urging Mary Jule to keep going.

  “Then, she told Pierre that she never thought she’d come home and find you still here. She thought you would have gone home right away when Baker left you.”

  “She knew about Baker leaving?” I asked.

  “It gets so much worse and I don’t even know if I can say it, it’s so bad.” Mary Jule placed her hand on her heart, paused for a few seconds, and finally said, “Helga set you up.”

  “What do you mean, set me up?” I felt heat rising to my head and my heart starting to pound.

  “She planned the whole thing with Baker and the fifty-year-old.”

  “YOU’RE LYING!!” Virginia yelled.

  “Oh God, how do you know? What’d she say?” I felt the blood leaving my head.

  “Helga told Pierre that she knew Barb Thurmond was looking for an operations manager for her resort and that she had told Barb all about Baker and that he’d be perfect for the job. Helga also told the fifty-year-old—and I hate, hate even repeating this—that Baker was married to a weak, mousy girl and that he was very unhappy.” She said the last part really fast as if she couldn’t even bear to hear herself repeat it.