Drift

by Victoria Patterson

  The kitchen counter would be set up for their breakfasts with two green cloth tablemats and a bottle of fake sugar. Their grapefruit spoons lay upon green-checkered napkins, and he would rub his thumb along the sharp ridges, amused that a spoon had this jagged feature. The wooden salt and pepper shakers were between the mats. Inside the refrigerator, he found grapefruit halves, wrapped in cellophane with half cherries bleeding in their centers.

  It smelled like Grandma Dot. He loved the smell: part perfume, cigarettes, and something sweet and stale, something purely Grandma Dot. His meal she left for him near a warming oven, covered with tin foil like a Christmas present. He ate at her barstool, as close to her leftover spirit as he could get, careful not to disrupt their morning setups. He became well acquainted with Grandma Dot’s taco special, her meatloaf, and her pork chops. He felt privileged, and he loved the meals, as much as he imagined anyone would ever love Grandma Dot’s food. There was always a cold beer in the refrigerator. He knew it was his because it was the only bottle of Coors, just one, every time, in a sea of Schlitz.

  Grandma Dot’s stack of cards sat beside a glass ashtray and a cheap plastic Bic lighter near the telephone. He respected these objects, passing his fingers lightly, reverentially over them. Her cigarette stubs had her bright lipstick prints, like flowers of pink and coral.

  Afterwards, he left his plate and his utensils by the sink, where she washed them properly in the morning.

  Once in a while, John Wayne would sleep in the small twin bed in The Daisy Room near the hallway, even closer to Grandma Dot. A light sleeper, he left the glass sliding door cracked open so that he could hear the bay. He named every room. The Green Room had wallpaper in the bathroom with green fish on it. The Daisy Room had large daisies across the wallpaper and a magnetic plastic daisy plant where the magnets held the daisies’ heads.

  He would leave long before the grandparents woke and go back to Uncle Stan’s apartment, after making the bed, but leaving the pillow above the bedspread, a signal to Grandma Dot that not only had he eaten her meal, he had slept downstairs. He would lock the front door behind him.

  One morning, waking from a deep and safe sleep, he didn’t make it back to the apartment before the grandparents woke. He listened patiently to their morning ritual. Grandpa made coughing noises; the newspaper rustled. They never spoke, not even a good morning or goodbye or have a good day. There wasn’t hostility; John Wayne would have left. He was done with that. It was as if talking were unnecessary.

  The back door slammed. The house shuddered when the garage door opened and shuddered again when it closed. John Wayne and Grandma Dot were alone.

  He sneaked back to Uncle Stan’s apartment while she washed the dishes, and it was as if she took her time with the dishes, giving him the leeway. She turned off the faucet, hands sudsy with dish soap. He saw her listening for the tip tap of his feet.

  Holloway’s: Part One

  WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN years old, just out of high school, I was a waitress for a restaurant near the Newport Beach Golf and Country Club called Holloway’s. The entrance had a graceful ivy-covered arch, and a small brass understated nameplate—easily missed—engraved with the restaurant name; but people in and around the country club knew where Holloway’s was, and that the well-to-do dined and socialized there.

  Earlier that same year, my father died from a heroin overdose. He’d been estranged from my mom and me for several years, and I thought I’d prepared myself for this outcome, but it still came as a shock. I moved out of our house soon after his funeral, even though Mom wanted me to stay. When I went to collect my clothes, I made sure to go during school hours (she was a high school chemistry teacher), but she was waiting, standing in the hallway. “We need to be together,” she said. “This is too much to go through alone.” Carrying hangers full of clothes, I pushed past her, shoved her a little. She started crying, loud enough for me to hear. When I did turn around, the tears were coming down her face, and when I shut the front door behind me, I felt an overwhelming sense of remorse, but I left anyway.

  I got my job at Holloway’s soon after. Julie Anne, owner and boss, was in her early sixties and she only hired young pretty waitresses, women with an eagerness to please. Getting the job was a coup, after an extensive process requiring three separate interviews; the final interview included a timed thirty-minute test on wines and cuisines, and three questions based on Julie Anne’s “personal philosophy of service,” answered in no less than a paragraph each (most of the applicants were weeded out, proving the maxim that beauty and brains typically do not coexist). The combination of exclusivity, immaturity, proximity to privilege, and instant cash contributed to the waitresses’ arrogance and greed. Theirs was a self-contained little world, complete with cliques and gossip and subdivisions of friendships, and I was no different from them.

  On my first morning, I “shadowed” another waitress, Jennifer, standing directly behind her, silently observing. Businessmen occupied dark oak tables covered in white tablecloths, sipping coffee, eating bowls of oatmeal, scrambled egg whites, and dry wheat toast, and shuffling newspapers. Julie Anne was a late sleeper, and because I ended up working the morning shift, I rarely saw her—besides, she worked the least of everyone. Her office was a side room, separated from the kitchen and restaurant. She shared the office with Sheila, an overweight and sullen accountant who drove a brick-red Buick with the bumper sticker “It’s a child, not a choice” to the bank every other day, to deposit cash from the safe.

  I was following Jennifer to a table when she stopped and said “Shit.” A tall, angular man was leaving Julie Anne’s office, shutting the door behind him, wearing an expensive-looking dark suit, and carrying a tan leather briefcase. His shoulders were stooped, and his hair—yellowish gray and wispy—was flapped out at the sides like bird wings. Even before I saw him up close, I could tell he was an old man who had probably once been handsome. His cheeks were sunken, giving his face a skeletal quality, and covered in grayish stubble. As he got closer, he saw us, and his face transformed into a fierce smile.

  “Willy,” Jennifer said, her tone harassed, “meet Harriet.”

  Willy put his hand out. When I put my hand forward, he swept his back, pretending to smooth his hair, which simply flapped to its original position. “Ahh,” he said, “got you!” He set his briefcase on the floor; he was smiling desperately, his gums pink and receded; I caught a whiff of peppermint on his breath.

  “What”—Jennifer’s voice lifted, in time with her raised eyebrows, as if reprimanding a child—“were you doing in Julie Anne’s office?”

  Willy nudged my arm with his hand. “Business, just business.” I was stunned that he included me. The corner of his mouth was red and cracked in what appeared to be a painful canker sore.

  I’d already been warned by Julie Anne, told not to accept Willy’s credit cards, personal checks, or to let him sign for meals (regulars had accounts). I’d been told that Willy harassed customers, sitting down to dine with “friends,” making them listen to hopeless business proposals, and leaving early—an appointment, an important phone call—forcing them to pay. I’d been told about his connection to Holloway’s. Julie Anne, some thirty years before, after a bitter divorce that left her as close to destitute as any woman born and raised in Newport Beach could be, had gone to Evelyn Breen Holloway, longtime friend and heir to the impressive Vanderkemp fortune.

  Thus, Holloway’s was born from hard times, funded by the Vanderkemps. In honor of Evelyn’s generosity, a portrait hung beside the bookshelf—Evelyn, in muted, dark colors, hands crossed at her lap, sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair (she looked much like Julie Anne: coiffed hair, prideful expression, impressive jewelry). Five years ago, Evelyn had died from bone cancer, and William J. Holloway, Willy, as he was called, was in the process of pissing away the final dregs of Evelyn’s fortune, that is, what little the Vanderkemps had left to him; a journey that he’d begun thirty-eight years before, I was bitterly informed, when h
e’d proposed to Evelyn, and she’d said yes, despite her family’s disapproval and Willy’s gambling, playboy, alcoholic ways. Julie Anne had tolerated him all these years, “for Evelyn’s sake,” but her charity was all used up, and even Willy’s grown children were through with him.

  “Listen,” Jennifer said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t go in the office. Okay? Just don’t.”

  “I made one phone call,” Willy said.

  Jennifer shook her head grimly.

  Willy turned his attention to me. “My wife”—he nodded at her portrait—“decorated this place.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  Willy looked past me. “Well if it isn’t Henry Wilson,” he called out. “What luck! Henry, I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  I heard shuffling and glanced over my shoulder: Henry had set his newspaper in a position to block himself from view.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Jennifer said. It was like watching an old stray dog get kicked. Her voice had lost all animation.

  “Hold on,” Willy said, leaning over, opening his briefcase—but Jennifer was already leaving. Being new, I didn’t yet know how to summarily dismiss customers, and I watched Willy shuffle through his briefcase; the inside was lined in a softer tan, pockets at the side stuffed with papers. There was Trident gum, a silver flask with some kind of engraving—possibly a family coat of arms—and one book: The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

  He glanced up with a sharp smile. “Aha!” He pulled out an eight-by-ten-inch glossy photograph, held it to his chest. “Did Julie Anne say bad things about me? What’d she say?”

  I kept my face neutral.

  He paused, letting his fingertips touch his canker sore. “You’re a cutie”—he drew my name out—“Harrrrieett. Tell me about yourself.”

  I told him that I’d graduated from Fountain Valley High School, that I had plans to attend El Camino Community College, about my accomplishments, my goals, blah, blah, blah—it was the same spiel I’d given Julie Anne on interview number one, but Willy seemed bored, like he didn’t believe anything I was saying, and then he interrupted: “What’d she say about me? C’mon, c’mon.”

  When I didn’t answer, he said, “Lies! All lies!”

  “I’m being trained,” I said.

  “Let me ask a question,” he said, “and I want you to think long and hard before you answer: What’s the name of this restaurant?”

  “Holloway’s.”

  “That’s my name!” he said, as if in shock.

  He still held the photograph to his chest. The long fingers of his other hand brushed my arm. “You watch out,” he said. “She’ll suck the skin right off, eat your flesh, chew you up, suck suck suck, until there’s nothing left.” He made a sudden movement with his hand—photograph flapping. “They’re all like that, every single one.” I didn’t know who he meant, but I assumed he was talking about Julie Anne and the entire clientele of Holloway’s.

  He nodded toward Julie Anne’s office. “I know the combination.” His voice was low, referring to the safe. The safe required both the combination and an unlocking by key. “I wasn’t making a phone call. I was looking for the key. Looked everywhere.”

  When I didn’t answer, he said, “You got a key?” He poked his finger at my arm. “You holding out?”

  There was a long pause and he continued to stare. “You think I’m kidding,” he said.

  “I’m being trained,” I said.

  “Guess who?” He handed me the photograph, and although I knew the answer, I stared at it silently, ashamed for him, my face heating up. It was a young Willy, of course, the same fierce smile, wearing an old Stanford football uniform—the leather helmet had long ears like a ski hat, his pants were laced; he was kneeling on one knee, probably in the same position he’d proposed to Evelyn, and the thin fingers of his right hand were balanced at the tip of a puffy-looking football.

  I handed back his photo, avoiding his eyes, and moved away without saying goodbye.

  “You don’t know me,” he called out.

  Jennifer was placing an order that showed on a computer screen and I came up behind her.

  “He’s a total freak,” she said, not looking at me. “Next time, ignore him.” She laughed, so I laughed with her, but when I looked back, Willy was watching me, his lips in a thin frown, and he set his photograph in his briefcase without looking away.

  I soon learned that our tips were collected and guarded religiously in ceramic containers beneath the cash register, labeled with each waitress’s name, and decorated individually, with peace signs, hearts, and the like. We divvied out cash from our tips at the end of our shifts. There were constant complaints (warranted and ignored) about our dishonesty regarding tip totals, and tensions over percentages (2 percent dishwasher, 3 percent hostess, and 10 percent busboy, give or take, at our discretion). I made minimum wage, same as the dishwashers and busboys, but my income skyrocketed beyond theirs because of the tips.

  Later, I calculated that in a year’s time, I made more money than my mother. She’d been trying to get in touch with me, but I avoided her, never answered my phone. She’d leave messages, an almost inaudible, strained, earnestly stuttering “uh uh uh . . . Harriet, we need to talk,” and I’d delete them, without listening to the rest. I missed her throat-clearing cough, and how she smelled in the mornings, a musty coffee smell, but I resented her; I didn’t want to live a compliant life: she was always cleaning up after my dad, making excuses for him, giving him money, and after she kicked him out of the house for the thousandth time, and he really left for good, she never got over it. She used to insist on “family dinners” when Dad was around, as if to prove that we were normal, that we’d be just fine; he’d sit there, listening, trying to eat, but he always looked like he was scarcely there, like he didn’t quite belong. As a kid, and even when I was old enough to know better, it seemed to me that I was somehow to blame, that if I could just say the right things, smile the right way, he might settle into his skin and be okay.

  Once, when I was a freshman in high school, I heard these assholes making fun of Mom’s “camel-toe”—her slacks buttoned high at her waist, accentuating her stomach, thighs, and the crevice between her legs. When I walked past their lockers, I could still hear them laughing, and I hated them, but at the same time, I willfully denied any biological connection to her. And I pretty much continued to do so, for the rest of high school: I completely avoided her. She wore sad-looking blouses, tucked tightly into her pants, and a thin leather belt with a turquoise-studded belt buckle shaped like a four-leaf clover; and I hated her for being so practical, for balancing the checkbook and paying the bills at the kitchen table, for having sallow skin, for the way her neck and chest speckled pink with emotion, for her brownish gray hair, and even for how she wore her reading glasses low on her nose.

  Having been raised in a house bereft of luxuries, I was hungry for what I thought Holloway’s represented. Along with a dusky green Ford Fiesta and an improved wardrobe, I was able to afford a small apartment near El Camino Community College, which I attended part time, in hopes of one day obtaining a business degree, or at least some type of practical degree that would advance my position in the world; but I secretly imagined one of Holloway’s wealthy male customers whisking me away from a life of servitude and four to six years of academic drudgery, landing me in the existence that I felt I deserved. I, of course, would reimburse my husband and benefactor with children—heirs to his fortune—as well as with companionship and the simple aesthetic reward of my presence.

  So I really didn’t understand it when I sabotaged my chances by becoming involved with an El Salvadorian dishwasher named Marlon Dominguez, a twenty-one-year-old art student and self-described modernist painter, whom everyone called Lobo. Like the other dishwashers and kitchen workers, he wore Levi’s, a thick cotton white shirt that fastened with metal snaps (Holloway’s embroidered in red thread at his chest pocket), and an ugly black net over his
longish dark hair. Behind the heavy swinging doors, separating the white patrons and waitresses on the restaurant side from the workers on the kitchen side, most everyone was dark-skinned. A continuous sexual tension hummed between the waitresses and the kitchen workers, fomented by race, power, and income disparity, and I was accustomed to inappropriate comments regarding my anatomy and whistles whenever I passed through the doors. But with Lobo, things got out of hand quickly.

  I was working a morning shift when my busboy disappeared, forcing me to bus my table. As soon as I went through the kitchen doors, a steamy heat overcame me. I wasn’t used to witnessing the amount of work that went into creating the dishes that I presented—it was like glancing behind the curtains at a play. When I set my plates at the sink, Lobo gripped my arm. He had on yellow kitchen gloves and the fingers were damp. He was tall, thin, intense, and his shoes were these crazy, greasy-looking moccasins. “Hey,” he said, “hey; hey there; I haven’t seen you before.” My uniform consisted of black slacks, a white oxford shirt, and a slim black tie—not sexy at all, and I was insecure about it.

  “I guess not,” I said, which was a stupid thing to say. My hair was in a bun at the back of my head, a loose strand plastered to my cheek. I wanted to swipe at it but was too self-conscious.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Harriet.”

  “Seriously?” he asked, his head going back; the other dishwasher snorted and said something in Spanish—something lewd and suggestive—but Lobo didn’t laugh, his eyes on me, dark and serious. “Can I call you Harry?” he said. He didn’t appear to be joking.

  “No,” I said, which was also a stupid thing to say. I shook my arm from his grip.

  He put his yellow-gloved hands in the air, as if I were a wild horse. “Easy, Harry. Easy now.”