My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850)

by Short, Sharon

  He turned and walked back to his easel, sat down, started sketching. “Yes,” he said firmly, “we will be talking about your potential. That will be part of your job. Maybe while you’re cleaning. But not while you’re modeling. So now, turn your head to the left, lift your right arm over the back of the chaise longue—that’s right, but a little farther back—now stop. Stay still. And be quiet!”

  Chapter 6

  After an hour of posing, my neck was stiff and my head heavy. Still, I washed the dishes piled in Mr. Cahill’s sink. Then he insisted I show him my sketches. He demonstrated how to make thick, velvety lines with the side of my pencil to illustrate a heavier fabric, and thin, wispy lines for lighter fabric.

  A few minutes after six, I ran down the alley to the back entrance of Dot’s Corner Café. I’d just grabbed my smock—an awful white-and-red-checked cotton print—when Grandma emerged through the dining room’s swinging door. The kitchen hushed. Big Terry, the cook, and Ralph Seward, the dishwasher, stopped their work. Even the hamburgers seemed to sizzle more timidly.

  “You’re late. And what on earth are you wearing?” Grandma stared with her judged-and-found-lacking gaze at the cap sleeve that Mr. Cahill had just admired.

  “Home-ec project,” I said. The answer was automatic, defensive—a lie.

  I was still giddy from the drawing techniques Mr. Cahill had shown me, my mind buzzing with ideas about how to improve my designs. I had three dollars carefully wrapped in my handkerchief in a corner of my book bag. My only worry, flitting across my mind like a familiar dark moth, was that after my stint at Mr. Cahill’s I hadn’t had a chance to go by our house and check on Will.

  But surely he was fine. He’d seemed fine after our strange visit with Trusty and MayJune. I wondered what he would think about Mr. Cahill saying I should consider fashion design school. Will—with his crazy desire to visit one measly square inch of Alaska—would probably just shrug his shoulders and say, Sure, why not?…

  “Donna, I asked you a question!”

  I snapped out of my reverie and looked at Grandma. She was shorter than I, and yet even in heels I felt as though she loomed large.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Why are you wearing those ridiculous shoes?”

  I thought fast. “Today we modeled what we’d made over the summer for home-ec class.” I held back a smile at modeled. I’d definitely modeled….

  “In my day, we learned how to make proper items befitting a lady.”

  Like fussy little tea towels? But I just repeated, “Yes, ma’am,” and quickly tied on the ugly smock. I started toward the dining room door, eager to get out of the kitchen, away from Grandma, but she stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “Your heels are going to be as bloody red as those shoes by the end of your shift,” she said with a pleased little smile. I thought, I don’t care! I made it through the day in these shoes—high-heeled, cranberry T-straps that had been Mama’s and that went perfectly with my reconfigured dress—driving a car, getting a job with my art teacher that will help me get away from Groverton for good, forever, and…

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, again fighting back a smile. Grandma interpreted all my smiles as mockery.

  “Those aren’t appropriate shoes for this establishment!” she hissed, a bit of spittle flying from her lips. Big Terry pressed down extra hard on a hamburger patty, making it sizzle. Ralph Seward clinked together the dishes in the sink. Those little tics of sound were Big Terry and Ralph’s way—they never let me call them “Mr.”—of wordlessly expressing their sympathy.

  “I should send you home, dock your pay, tell your father—”

  Shirley Wyland, the other waitress on duty that night, whisked into the kitchen through the swinging doors. “Mr. and Mrs. Leis are here,” she said. Shirley was old enough to be my mama but had said—out of earshot of Grandma, of course—that I should just call her Shirley, because I was doing a grown-up woman’s work. She grabbed two slices of pecan pie and two cups of coffee and whisked right back out.

  Mr. and Mrs. Leis were regulars, and Mrs. Leis always wanted me to wait on them. Thank you, Mrs. Leis.

  “They’ll want the blue plate special,” I said. “What is it tonight?”

  “Shit on a shingle,” muttered Big Terry. Even cooks as good as he was had prepared creamed chipped beef on toast in World War II army kitchens, and Grandma never let him forget his service. Jealous that her customers loved Big Terry’s food as much as they loved her pies and cakes—delectably sweet and tender, just the opposite of the bitter person who made them—Grandma insisted that Big Terry’s least favorite food be offered as the blue plate at least twice a month, just to rile him. He riled her right back by using the crude nickname for the dish.

  I grinned as I poured cups of coffee for Mr. and Mrs. Leis, even as Grandma glared at me, and I kept grinning as I carried the Leises’ coffee out into the dining area of Dot’s Corner Café.

  On that Friday night in September, most everyone in town was at the Groverton Senior High School football game, so the café’s few customers were the older regulars. I hadn’t been to a football game since Grandma demanded two years ago that I give up being a cheerleader with Babs and start working Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights—the better to keep an eye on me, she’d told Daddy.

  I put the cups of coffee down near Grandma’s idea of a centerpiece, a pair of whimsical salt and pepper shakers. Mr. Leis was playing with the ceramic Dutch boy and girl, holding them face-to-face, muttering under his breath. He was in his eighties, but there was something lost and young in his expression as he played with the figurines costumed in native dress.

  “My dear, you’re looking particularly happy tonight,” Mrs. Leis said.

  I smiled at her. “It’s been an interesting day.” I pulled my order pad and pencil out of my smock pocket.

  “Oh, interesting days are always the best,” Mrs. Leis said. “Speaking of interesting—how is Mr. Cahill doing?”

  I froze. Did she know I’d been to Mr. Cahill’s house? Had a neighbor seen me coming or going?

  Mrs. Leis looked perplexed. “You did say last week that you were going to be in his art class?”

  Relief rushed through me. She was just making chitchat. Still, my hand shook as I finally jotted “Blue Plate special x2” on my order pad.

  “Yes. We’re learning about shading.” My voice shook a little and I wondered if Mrs. Leis would notice, but I was saved by Mr. Leis reaching into his inside jacket pocket for the gospel tract “Are You on the Right Road to Salvation, Or…” The images completed the rest of message: In a wood-paneled station wagon, Dad cheerfully drove a beaming Mom, Sis, and Brother toward the lovely angel-inhabited cloud at the top of the pamphlet, while a bearded man drove his hapless companion, a buxom woman swigging from a liquor bottle, toward the flames at the bottom. Mr. Leis always left this tract, plus thirty-five cents, as the tip.

  Mrs. Leis directed her attention at her husband. “Not yet, dear; Donna has just brought us coffee. She hasn’t taken our order yet!” Mr. Leis was a deacon at Grandma’s church, the Groverton First Church of God. The Sunday before, he’d tried to eat the flowers from the top of Mrs. Whitstone’s hat, mistaking the silk rosebuds for some kind of fruit. I’d figured cherries, but I wondered—ripe persimmons?

  “I’m so glad to hear that Mr. Cahill is doing well,” Mrs. Leis said to me. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You know, I’ve been pushing for an art teacher to come to Groverton Senior High for years.”

  Mrs. Leis was on the school board, the only woman who’d ever served. Grandma said she put on airs because of it, but I think what she really meant was that a woman didn’t have any business sitting in meetings with men.

  “What’s more essential to humans than art?” Mrs. Leis was saying, while gently moving Mr. Leis’s hands apart—he was clicking the Dutch boy and girl shakers together, like they were kissing. “Even the cavemen knew that art was essential.” She laughed. “Well, I couldn’t e
xactly make that argument, now, could I?”

  “No, ma’am.” The hint of evolution wouldn’t have gone over well, especially from the sole female board member. I had to smile, even with Grandma glaring in the background. I liked Mrs. Leis’s pluck. I wondered if I’d ever have it…or if maybe I already did.

  “Fortunately, the Dentons came to town.”

  My mouth pursed in a silent oh-no. What did Jimmy’s family have to do with this?

  Mrs. Leis mistook my alarm for curiosity and said, “Oh, I met Mrs. Denton at one of those boring Groverton Women’s Club lunches. Luckily, we hit it off. Her love of art came up, and I pointed out that Riverdale Senior High has had an art class for three years now.” Riverdale was our town’s biggest football rival. “And, much to my delight, she said she knew from her college days the perfect person to fill the job of art teacher.”

  I stared at Mrs. Leis. Mrs. Denton—Jimmy’s mom—was the reason that Mr. Cahill had come to town to teach art? I searched for a subtle way to inquire further. But Mrs. Leis was again gently pulling apart Mr. Leis’s hands, in which the Dutch boy and girl shakers had heightened their ardor. Mrs. Leis distractedly ordered the blue plate specials, plus butterscotch pie for her, coconut cream for Mr. Leis. And more coffee—whenever-you-get-a-chance-dear.

  I turned from their booth, stopped by one of Shirley’s tables, just vacated, and gathered up the plates, glasses, and silverware. I felt generous for having taken my time with the Leises—I noticed at church that more people were starting to avoid them as Mr. Leis became more bizarre—and for clearing Shirley’s table, but Grandma had a different view. As I went into the kitchen with my armload of dishes, she followed me through the swinging doors.

  “What were you doing, loitering at the Leises’ table?” she nagged, keeping her voice low so no one in the dining area could hear her. “And look at you, carrying a lazy man’s load!”

  Ralph and Big Terry stopped chatting. Shirley grabbed a cloth and trotted out to the dining area, more eager than usual to wipe down her table.

  “You have too big a head on you, girl,” Grandma hissed. “Just like your mother.”

  I looked at Grandma, this small, round, soft-featured, puffy-haired woman—everyone’s idea of a grandma, if it weren’t for the perpetually sharp, angry set to her mouth. Everyone made excuses for her—poor-Dot-if-only-her-lazy-husband-hadn’t-lost-her-family-fortune-in-bad-deals-in-the-Depression-but-those-cakes-and-pies-and-diner-of-hers-are-so-good….

  Suddenly, I didn’t see her as that.

  I saw her as just plain mean.

  Big Terry’s sizzling griddle, Ralph’s dishwashing clinks, the chime over the front door as a new customer entered—suddenly all of these sounds seemed muted, coming from a great distance, separate from this moment between Grandma and me.

  “I don’t remember much about Mama,” I said quietly, “but I don’t remember her having a big head. I just remember her as sad. Maybe because you always made sure to tear her down.”

  Grandma’s hand whipped toward my face, but this time, instead of taking her slap, I jerked back. I lost my balance and my hold on the armload of dishes.

  The plates spun on their edges on the hard concrete, ringing out in the split second before the crash, like the hum that comes after the last chord of a hymn on the church organ. Grandma lunged toward me, again trying to slap me as the dishware disintegrated, but I grabbed both of her wrists, stopping her hands in front of my face.

  I was amazed by how thin and frail her wrists felt in my hands.

  Her skinny fingers wiggled, like bird claws trying to gouge my face, even as she hissed in fear, “The good Lord punished your mama for her uppity ways—”

  Shirley’s voice fluted through the order window. “There’s a customer here, says he specifically wants Donna Lane to wait on him.”

  I immediately thought, Mr. Cahill. My face flared. Grandma’s eyes narrowed. My moment of triumph was over.

  “He wants to see Donna?” she said, with lewd emphasis on that one little syllable. “Tell him I’m not running a brothel. If he wants that, he’ll have to go to Tangy Town.”

  I still held Grandma’s wrists, but my head snapped back as if she’d broken free and slapped me after all. Tangy Town.

  The old chant I’d taught Will played in my head: Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me. But I knew the chant was a lie.

  Big Terry was saying, “Dot, now you’ve gone too far,” and Shirley was saying, “But it’s Jimmy Denton who’s asking for Donna!”

  At that, Grandma’s fingers stopped writhing. Her hands went still, limp, like I’d strangled the life out of them. But she gave me a long look, reassessing me. Of course I didn’t have to explain who Jimmy Denton was. Everyone in Groverton knew he was the son of Roger Denton, CEO of Groverton Pulp & Paper.

  Grandma said slowly, “Well, Donna, you just go see what the young man wants.”

  I headed out through the swinging kitchen door, and there was Jimmy, perking up in his booth at the sight of me. But I almost stopped in my tracks as I caught myself wishing that he was Mr. Cahill.

  Chapter 7

  I took my time getting to Jimmy’s booth.

  He looked both shy and eager as he asked, “What’s today’s special?”

  “Shit on a shingle,” I blurted. My hand went immediately to my mouth, as if I wished I could stuff the words back in, and I dropped my order pad and pencil.

  We burst out laughing, then went for the pad and pencil at the same time and knocked heads. That just made us laugh even more.

  Finally, Jimmy quickly scooped up the pad and pencil and handed them to me. I caught my breath and said, “That’s what our cook—the one besides Grandma, I mean—calls today’s special. Chipped beef and cream gravy on toast.”

  Jimmy wrinkled his nose. “I think your cook has the right name for it.”

  Suddenly, something inside me tightened. As if you’ve ever eaten chipped beef and cream gravy on toast. Or leftover stew on rice. Or wondered how you’d make one supper’s worth of soup stretch into two watery suppers….

  I pressed my pencil to the pad and snapped, “The cook makes a great club sandwich.”

  “That sounds fine. And coffee.”

  He couldn’t just be here, missing the football game, for a sandwich and coffee. This had to be about that scratch on his car, after all. But I played along. “You want Sanka?”

  “Regular coffee is fine. I’m going to be up all night anyway, thinking of you.”

  I snorted at that cheesy line. Hurt flashed in Jimmy’s eyes. He forced a self-conscious laugh, as if his attempt at flirting was just a joke. But he flushed.

  It hit me: Jimmy Denton, son of the most powerful man in town, who had driven his own car all the way across the country, who seemed so worldly and sophisticated, was, without Hank’s bravado to hide behind, really just shy and awkward. So different than smooth, cool Mr. Cahill…

  I flushed, stammered, “Cream? Sugar?”

  “No. Just plenty of refills.” He smiled, encouraged by my flush and stammering, thinking it was about him. “I’m just looking for an excuse to stay here until you get off work.”

  “Oh. Dot’s doesn’t close until ten o’clock, and then I’ll need to stay to help clean up.”

  “Fine with me. I’m hoping I can give you a ride home—” Suddenly, Jimmy stopped talking and his flush flamed into a bright red. I caught that faint whiff of Grandma—grease, scouring powder, and too many dabs of Youth Dew perfume applied in an unsuccessful effort to cover the kitchen smells that were now part of her skin. She had just sidled up next to me.

  I steeled myself for her anger, sure I was guilty of some sin or another, but not quite sure which one—saying shit on a shingle? flirting too much? not flirting enough?—but when I looked at her, I was startled to see that Grandma was smiling.

  “I was just about to let Donna off work. She deserves time—with pay, of course—with her friends.” Grandma gave me a chummy
little pat on my forearm, leaving her thin, knotted fingers lightly on the top of my arm, while her thumb-dig into the back conveyed, Stand up straight! Carry the Lane name with pride! And a host of other admonitions usually reserved for Sunday-go-to-church-best. “Go ahead, dear. Sit down with your friend. I’ll have Shirley bring Jimmy’s club sandwich, and pie for you.”

  I didn’t want pie. I didn’t want to be shoved at Jimmy like this. If it weren’t for Will, I could just walk out of here, out of town, away from Groverton, Ohio, forever.

  With that thought, guilt swooped down on me like a heavy cape, and I sank into the booth across from Jimmy. I put my notepad and pencil next to a rooster (pepper) and a hen (salt). Mr. Leis would have a lot of fun with those. I smiled a little at the thought.

  Jimmy mistook my smile for encouragement. He said, “I hope you won’t hold it against me that your grandmother approves of me.”

  I did like him. But I wasn’t about to make this easy for him. “I can think about getting over that, if you think you can get over the fact I didn’t instantly know how to handle your car like a pro race car driver.”

  “I was a jerk, I know. That’s why I came in here, to apologize. I was worried about how I was going to explain that scratch to Dad.”

  I could understand that—being afraid of an angry dad.

  “I decided to tell him the truth—sort of. I said the accident happened after school, that I tried to teach this pretty girl who has me completely entranced how to drive, that the scratch on the car was really my fault.”

  Pretty girl…completely entranced…That made me smile, this time genuinely, at Jimmy.

  But then fear washed over me again, and I drew in a sharp breath. “What did he say?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer. Please don’t say he’s going to call Daddy.

  Jimmy shrugged. “That I’d have to pay for the repairs.”

  Oh. Maybe this was really why Jimmy came in, after all. “I can pay,” I said, keeping my voice strong, even as tears pricked my eyes at the thought of how much that would set me back.