“Did you just ‘ma’am’ me?”
“Huh?” he said and looked away, his hands shaking as he held his order pad and pen.
“How old are you?” Tammy asked.
“Nineteen, ma—I’m nineteen.”
Not yet twice his age. And he was good-looking to boot. Tammy laughed to herself and smiled at the waiter. “How old do you think I am?”
“Are you ready to order yet?” he half-whispered and wiped sweat from his brow. He clearly wanted to run away.
“I know what I want, but I want you to answer the question first,” Tammy said and smiled warmly.
The waiter melted and stared into her big green eyes. “Twenty-nine?”
“You’re getting a big tip,” Tammy said and handed him the menu. “I’ll have the cheeseburger and cheese fries and a Diet Coke.” Tammy turned to her daughter, who was focused on coloring a bunny in her coloring book. “How about chocolate milk and some fries, baby?”
Her daughter nodded without looking up.
One more awkward glance at her chest, and then he was pulling away.
I’ll take twenty-nine any day of the week, she thought. Better than the thirty-three that she actually was. After all these years, she’d gotten used to men staring at her chest, and she loved to fuck with them and make them uneasy. She could remember doing it as far back as junior high once she started developing. High school was filled with peaks and valleys as well: the boys paid attention to her because of her great hourglass figure, sparkling eyes, killer smile, and long brunette hair. At five-foot-nine and with a set of long, sleek legs to accentuate her hips and butt, she knew she was attractive, and she was witty and sarcastic and… That was probably why, even in high school, not many boys asked her on a date. Tammy was tough, and she always had been. In second grade, she’d beaten up one of the annoying boys, Jeffrey, and did it easily. She supposed that her reputation as a hard-ass had followed her through life. College had been one awkward dating experience after another until she’d met Randy.
She unconsciously touched her empty ring finger and sighed. Her food was placed before her, and she picked at the fries, thinking about the mistakes she’d made in her life. Randy was one of the major ones.
At first she’d been aloof, unaware that he wanted to be more than friends with her. After almost two years of friendship, they’d gone on vacation together to Cape Cod as friends but came back as lovers. Six months later, Tammy found out she was pregnant, and a quick courthouse marriage was performed. They both worked at Red Bank Memorial, her as a nurse and Randy as a surgeon specializing in neurology.
At the same time that Stephanie was born, Randy had been offered and accepted a job in Phoenix, Arizona as a Chief Surgeon, his pay rate increasing three-fold. She didn’t want to move to Arizona, didn’t want to move away from her mother and father, and didn’t want to quit her job.
Tammy went and became a stay-at-home mom while Randy—everyone now called him the more respectable Randall—brought home the bacon and worked long hours. She grew restless and bored, withdrawn into her life dealing with the baby, cleaning the house, watching soap operas, and exercising once she didn’t drop the weight from the baby.
When her mother called that night to tell Tammy that her father had had a heart attack and he was gone, she was stunned. She spent three frantic hours trying to reach Randy, but he wasn’t answering his pager, his office phone, or repeated calls to the hospital to locate him. She thought she knew where he was and who he was with. When he finally did come home, she was packed and ready to go. Randy handed her a credit card, kissed his daughter on the cheek, and told Tammy to have a great life, told her how cold, nasty, and demanding she was. He’d gone on for several more minutes, but by then, she’d shut him out like she always did and walked out. She got an apartment in Flagstaff with a job at a nearby clinic after the funeral.
Her biggest regret was not being there to help her father.
Shaking her head to clear the past thoughts, she gripped her cheeseburger and attacked it.
“Tammy? Tammy Kelly?”
Tammy looked up and stared at the woman before her. She looked familiar, but she couldn’t place the name. Tammy ground another French fry into her mouth and smiled. “How are you doing?” she asked. Who the hell is this?
“You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“Nope,” Tammy admitted. The woman was about her age with short blonde hair and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the crook of her nose. She looked like a teacher or librarian, but there was something behind her eyes that spoke of mischief. The woman sat down across from her and called the waiter over.
“When the fuck did you get back to Jersey?” the woman asked. She covered her mouth and glanced at Stephanie. “Sorry.”
Tammy hesitated and took a bite from her destroyed burger. Why was she here? Fifteen hours ago, she was about to drop off Stephanie at the sitters so that she could go to work, but instead, she had been drawn to the airport. Her mind had screamed to stop this madness, just move and get to work, but she couldn’t. She landed in Newark, rented a car, and started driving, the entire ride getting closer and closer to her old neighborhood and the thought of her father…
“I got here a couple of hours ago,” she blurted. The waiter took the new order, a pork roll sandwich and a Coke, keeping his eyes away from Tammy’s cleavage.
“Have you been to your old house yet? Is there something going on? I heard you moved to California with a doctor.”
“I moved to Arizona with a surgeon, and we’re divorced.” Tammy picked up her last French fry and waved it in the air. “Who the hell are you?”
“Let me give you some hints.” The woman laughed and took off her glasses, her smile wide like the Cheshire Cat. “You know my brother.”
“Who’s your brother?”
“Nah, too easy. You’ve hung out with me a bunch of times; we both went to North together.”
“I graduated with like five hundred people. Give me another hint,” Tammy said.
“The fire in the summer of 1987 in Long Branch. My brother’s band was playing that night in Long Branch—”
“Brother’s band?” Tammy thought for a moment. The opening band that night was called Sadistic Aggression, made up of members from North High School, and the guitar player was… “Stan! You’re Michelle, right? Holy shit, you look so good.”
“Did I look like shit back then?”
“That’s a bad word, mommy and lady,” Stephanie said.
They both laughed as Michelle’s food was brought to the table. “It’s really weird because I woke up this morning with an incredible urge to come to the Marina Diner. I fought it as long as I could, but here I am. I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Same here.”
“It’s like fate or something along those lines, right? Do you remember when we were in high school and we thought that the jerk we were dating was going to be the man of our dreams forever? Do you remember that bullshit?” Michelle dug into her food.
“Not really.” Tammy was getting uncomfortable for some reason. Michelle spoke a mile a minute, but she seemed to remember that from her past. What bothered her was the fact that they seemed to both be drawn here. “It seems weird that we would both end up at the Marina at the same exact time, doesn’t it?”
“I guess,” Michelle said with a shrug and kept eating.
Tammy looked around at the familiar sights in the diner. It looked like the same well-worn counter she remembered as well as the same faded pictures lining the walls. There were new appliances scattered here and there as well as a remodel of the main dining room, and the ancient cash register had been replaced with a new computer system. Overall, the place still had that familiar nostalgia that she remembered.
“Pork roll sandwich? Excellent choice.”
Both women looked up to see a handsome man with curly blonde hair standing before them. “Mind if I join you lovely ladies?”
Before Tammy could respond, Mic
helle moved over and patted the empty spot next to her. “Have a seat, bro.” Michelle laughed. “How odd is this? You remember my brother, Stan? We were just talking about you.”
“Speak of the Devil, right?” he said and stared intently at Tammy.
Tammy looked away, fussing with Stephanie’s food, helping her to finish her fries.
“This is too cool. We should try to get the old gang together, you know? See who can hang and party tonight, maybe hit the Depot Inn or the Village Pub and get our drink on,” Michelle said, laughing.
Stan turned his attention to Stephanie. “Where were you born, honey?”
Stephanie finished picking at her fries and drained the chocolate milk. “I was born in New Jersey, right, mommy?”
Tammy pushed her plate away from her and stood. “Yes, baby, that’s right.”
“Where are you going?” Michelle asked.
“I’m not really sure.”
Stan suddenly put both of his warm hands on her arm and smiled. “It was nice to run into you, Tammy. I hope to see you again soon.” He winked at Stephanie. “And I’ll see you again, too, little Jersey Girl.”
Tammy ignored him and the chill that shot through her body, pulling away from him. She turned to Michelle. “It was great seeing you again. Maybe we’ll run into each other soon.”
“Sure. I’ll catch you later.”
Tammy went to the counter and asked for her check, watching as Michelle and her brother shared a laugh. When the waiter handed her the sheet of paper—getting one more glance at her chest—she asked him if he knew the Zielinskis.
“I’ve seen her before, I think, but Stan is a regular. He’s been in a lot lately. He always strikes up a conversation with random people and seems to stay for hours. I once waited on him, and he spoke with three different girls and ate three pork roll sandwiches in like an hour.”
“So he’s a ladies man?” Tammy asked and handed him her credit card.
“Nope.” He ran her card and asked her to sign the slip.
She glanced at him again. There was something creepy about Stan and the way he stared at Michelle, like a predator.
“He never leaves with anyone, which is the weird thing.”
“Never?” she asked.
He shook his head. “He’ll hit on girls, chat with guys for an hour, but in the end, he excuses himself and heads to the bathroom. Most of the time, the people run out of here without waiting for him.”
“I guess he has to get rid of all of those pork roll sandwiches,” Tammy said.
“I guess so.” The waiter took a lingering look at her chest again.
Tammy put her finger gently on his chin and lifted his face to stare eye to eye. “The free show is over.”
“Mommy, are we going in to see Grammy?”
Tammy stared at the house she grew up in and wondered for the hundredth time why she was here. The last time she’d been back to New Jersey was for her father’s funeral, and that had been an emotional breakdown for her. I swore I’d never come back here and swore I’d never talk to my mother again.
“Mommy?”
Tammy, reluctantly, opened her car door and looked over the sensible ranch house of her youth: the trimmed bushes that her mother loved, the cracking brick sidewalk to the gravel driveway, and the peeling-paint garage door with the dent to the left where Tammy had slammed her younger brother John and his bike into it all those years ago.
She remembered playing kickball and jump rope in the street and the neighborhood kids always gathering in front of her house to play. She wondered where all of those childhood friends had gone to now and if they had kids of their own and bills and divorces and were being led by unseen forces.
Stephanie ran to the door and knocked. God, please let her be at work or out, Tammy thought and walked up to her daughter. After another round of knocking, Tammy put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I don’t think she’s home, baby. We’ll have to call her when we get back to Arizona.”
The door opened a crack. Her mother, face red and nose dripping, was there. “Tammy?”
“Grammy!” Stephanie cried and pushed the door open. As they hugged, Tammy kept her distance, carelessly spinning her keychain.
“Come in. What a surprise,” her mother said. She locked eyes with Tammy as she wiped her nose with a tissue. “Grammy is a little bit under the weather right now, so don’t get too close.”
Stephanie ran inside, and Tammy stood still outside.
“Come in if you want. I don’t hear from you in months, and now, you show up on my doorstep.”
“Stephanie calls you every week,” Tammy replied.
“She does, but how about my daughter? John calls me every week.”
Tammy bit her tongue. The last thing she wanted to do was to have to justify her life against her “perfect” brother. If her mother only knew…
Her mother went inside and slammed the door behind her, leaving Tammy outside to collect herself. She realized that she had been clenching and unclenching her fists since getting out of the car. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and walked back into her past.
The living room was exactly as it had been when she was a child with the same faded couch covered in throw pillows and blankets. Her father’s favorite chair sat in the corner facing the television with his TV dinner tray and his favorite mug set in the middle of it. If her father had shuffled out of the bathroom at this moment carrying the sports page, she wouldn’t have been surprised. In his last years, he seemed to move between his chair and his “throne” quite often. Tammy could still recall the last time she saw him alive, sitting in his chair complaining about his baseball Mets and his football Jets and the inflated contracts that their players received.
“Are you going to sit down?” her mother said, pulling her back to the present. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’m good.” Tammy sat down on the couch as Stephanie ran in from the kitchen with two soda cans, handing her grammy one and putting hers on the coffee table. As Stephanie commandeered the remote control and opened her soda can, Tammy looked over the pictures of her youth hung around the room.
“Remember that?” she asked without thinking, pointing at the picture of her and John paddling a rickety rowboat in the creek. “We got almost to the bay.”
“Your father kept ahead of you kids and had to clear the way since the creek was strewn with branches and brush.”
Tammy laughed. “He finally gave up when he saw that tree up ahead. There was no way he was going to move that.”
“If I hadn’t yelled at him, he would’ve tried and pulled out his back.” Her mother dropped her smile. “What do you need?”
“Nothing.” Tammy wanted to say “nothing from you” but stopped herself. “I…I just came to visit some friends.”
Her mother snorted. “Where are you staying?”
“I got a hotel room in Hazlet,” she lied.
“You can stay here; I want to spend time with my granddaughter.” Her mother rose and patted Stephanie’s head. “Maybe by morning, you’ll tell me why you’re really here.”
That was her mother: always to the point, no beating around the bush. Tammy knew that you could never be cryptic around her; she always cut to the chase and wanted the bottom line when it came to stories. I’m just like my mother, Tammy realized.
“Are you planning on staying for dinner?” her mother asked before blowing her nose.
“No.” Tammy watched Stephanie as she channel surfed, her face calm, with a look of content, leaning against her grammy. “If you haven’t started cooking, we could go to dinner.”
Her mother waved a tissue in the air. “I’m too sick. I can’t get over this cold; I’ve been like this for four days.” Her mother glanced at her husband’s chair. “Sometimes, I wish I had gone before your father. He could take care of himself.”
“So can you.” Tammy rose and tried—and failed—to smile at her mother. “Is there anything I can do for you before we
go?”
“You can leave Stephanie here with me and go visit your friends.”
“But—”
“Can I stay, mommy? Please?”
“You’re very sick, and I don’t want you to have to watch her,” Tammy said.
“She’s my granddaughter. I insist. It’s so rare that I get to see her anymore since you moved across the country from your home.” Tammy’s mother smiled at Stephanie. “You can help me make soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. We’ll curl up on the couch and watch cartoons for the rest of the day.”
Tammy wanted to snatch her daughter by the arm and leave, but knew she was being unreasonable. There was no danger here; there was no reason that she needed Stephanie to go with her. It was a control issue, and she knew it. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Take your time. I’d like Stephanie to stay the night if she wants. You can come by for breakfast and pick her up. I’ll make French toast and sausage.”
Tammy kissed her daughter goodbye and hugged her fiercely.
“Have you talked to your brother lately?”
Tammy shuddered.
“He’s doing quite well in Boston; he called again last night. He calls me every few days and lets me know what’s going on in his life.”
Tammy took a step to the door and tried not to scream. “I call you quite often.”
Her mother shook her head. “Not as often as Josh. He’s seeing a nice Irish girl, who is an art gallery owner, and I think it’s serious. His job is great, and he’s going to come and visit for Christmas. He asked if I had spoken with you. I don’t know why you don’t give your own brother a call once in a while and see how he’s doing.”
“He’s doing great; you just told me. Dating an art gallery owner. Impressive.” And every word of it a fucking lie.
Tammy left, sheer willpower helping her to not slam the door as she did. She was positive that Stephanie would be sick by the time they left for home.
When will that be?
She drove to the top of her block, looking both ways down Leonardville Road. “Left or right?” she asked. She was hungry, so she made a right and headed for the center of her small town, a place they simply called The Junction. A nice slice of pizza or a stop at the Seven Eleven for a drink and microwave hot dog might work like when she was a kid. Her and Josh used to walk the mile and hang out with other kids, eating ice cream at the Carvel or reading magazines and comic books at a place called Wassermans.
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