Back to the Good Fortune Diner

by Vicki Essex

  He pulled onto the long gravel driveway in front of the main house, which his grandfather had built. Chris’s father had added cedar shingles and siding to the two-story brick home, but the place was sorely in need of some TLC. A decorative shutter hung at a precarious angle from a second-story window, and one of the eaves troughs had come loose, swinging off the corner of the house. The roof would need to be replaced soon, too, and the house could use a coat of fresh paint. Unfortunately, fixing up the homestead was low on the priority list.

  The storm door banged open. “Where have you been?” William Jamieson demanded, crutches thumping across the veranda.

  “I was at Frank’s getting parts.” Chris didn’t look at him as he unloaded the white 4x4’s bed.

  “For two hours? I could have been there and back in one. Just because the days are getting longer, doesn’t mean you can waste time lollygagging around town.”

  Chris groaned inwardly. Preempting another diatribe, he asked, “Where’s Simon?”

  “Barn. I assume he’s doing his chores.”

  He ignored the dig. “Did you work those numbers out for me?”

  “You mean the ones that say we’re going to have to sell our kidneys to make it through the winter?”

  Chris closed his eyes briefly. “I mean the numbers for delivering to Greenboro Market.”

  “I already told you, selling to them’s a waste of time and resources. They’re too far out. They won’t order enough to make the trip there and back worthwhile.”

  “Do you have the numbers to support that?”

  “I don’t need numbers to tell you it’s not going to work. Greenboro’s full of regular working folk who want good, cheap food, not these fancy organic vegetables you want to sell them. You have a hard enough time in the market competing against imports.”

  Chris tugged off his work gloves and slapped them down on the truck bed. He did not want to drag himself into another argument about market competition. “Look, Dad, I asked you to do this one thing for me. I appreciate your advice—” yeah, right “—but I’m the one in charge.”

  “You think because you run the day-to-day, you own this place? Back in my day and my father’s day, we knew who our customers were and we gave them what they wanted. We didn’t try to sell them chichi designer vegetables for rich snobs.”

  A headache pressed at Chris’s temples, and he pinched the flesh between his eyes. “Organic farming isn’t chichi, Dad. It’s practical business sense.”

  “It’s environmental bullshit, is what it is. It’s a way for the government to pull subsidies away from honest farmers. You don’t know anything about the farm life, boy. It isn’t about numbers and marketing, it’s about heart and sweat and hard work, and I haven’t seen you give an ounce of that....”

  Chris started to walk away.

  “Where do you think you’re going? Don’t you turn your back on me. Just because I’m missing a leg doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass, you disrespectful—”

  “I’m leaving before I hear something you’ll regret. Now, get me those numbers. I want them by the end of the day.” He stalked off before his dad could get the last word in.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHRIS HEADED TO THE BARN, a stiff, dust-laden breeze stinging his cheeks instead of cooling him off. His dad really knew how to push his buttons. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say his father enjoyed riling him up, probably because it gave him something to do.

  He rounded the paddock where the horses stood soaking up the sun. One of Simon’s jobs was to clean out the stalls, but when Chris walked into the barn, he could see it hadn’t been done yet.

  “Simon?” His voice echoed through the stuffy enclosure. Electronic bleeps and bloops from above caught his attention. He climbed the ladder into the loft and found his son slouched in the straw, his earbuds blaring some raspy, bass-heavy music while he played on his handheld video game.

  Chris thumped the floorboard, and Simon jumped. He glared through his dark, shaggy bangs as he removed his earbuds.

  “What are you doing? The stalls haven’t been cleaned out yet.”

  “I’ll do it in a minute. I just got back from school. I need a break.”

  “You shouldn’t have your music turned up so loud,” Chris told him. “You never know who might be calling for you, or if there’s danger.”

  Simon’s lip curled as he returned to his game. “Whatever.”

  A low moaning meow emanated from the corner of the loft, drawing their attention. Chris went to investigate. In the far corner, the straw had been loosened and dug into a nest. Chris crouched down and found the big black barn cat Simon had named Shadow lying in the straw, panting hard. “Simon, come here.”

  “What?” He scrambled from his seat and peered over his dad’s shoulder.

  “If you hadn’t had that music so loud, you would have heard her. Look, Shadow’s having kittens.”

  And right then, a slimy ball of fur slid out of the cat and landed in the soft straw.

  “Whoa.” Simon backed off. “Should we call a vet or something?”

  “She’ll be fine. This is perfectly natural. She’s probably getting ready to give birth to a few more.” As the cat licked the newborn clean, Chris peeked up at his son’s slightly green face. Simon had never been much for watching the miracles of life, even though he’d grown up on the farm. “Why don’t you get a few towels and see if we can’t make Shadow more comfortable?” Though Chris had other things on his plate, Shadow was Simon’s cat, and his son looked slightly panicked. He couldn’t abandon either of them now.

  They fashioned a bed in the straw for the cat. Within the hour, Shadow gave birth to five kittens, a mixture of tabbies and solid black with white markings. Simon wasn’t given to oohing and aahing, but once the grosser parts of birth were over, his eyes shone.

  “Can we keep them?”

  Chris grimaced. “We can’t afford to have them all spayed and neutered—” he was already regretting not getting Shadow fixed “—and I don’t want them running amok. We’ll probably have to give them away.”

  Simon’s shoulders slumped, and Chris felt a twinge of guilt. He might as well have told him he’d canceled Christmas. His son didn’t understand that animals were a huge responsibility. Despite working with chickens, pigs and horses, he had very little interest in their lives and well-being. His 4-H project hadn’t been anything special, either—in fact, Chris was almost certain the whole thing had been pulled off the internet.

  Maybe looking after the kittens would be a good lesson for him.

  “Tell you what. If you want, you keep an eye on them. Visit them regularly, feed them, clean up their messes, make sure they’re safe. It’ll be a few weeks before they’re ready to go to new homes, anyhow, and if things go all right, you can keep one of them.”

  “Deal.” Simon plunged into the straw to caress Shadow’s head. The cat meowed plaintively as she gathered her babies closer. A smile softened his son’s face, and Chris was reminded of the baby Simon had been, the sensitive child he’d raised. Lately, Simon had morphed into a surly, defiant teen. He had no idea where he’d sprung from.

  “By the way,” Chris ventured, knowing his next question would shatter their tentative truce, “did you get your report card yet?”

  Simon’s smile vanished. He shoved away from the kittens and started pitching straw down from the loft without meeting his father’s eye.

  So much for bonding time. Chris hated it when he ignored him like that. “I asked you a question, Simon.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” he answered gruffly.

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know how you did.”

  “What does it matter? It’s not as if I need good marks to run this place.” He tossed down a heavy bale then flung the pitchfork into it before Chris could stop him.

  “Jesus, don’t go throwing tools around like that. What if someone had walked in? You could have hurt them
.”

  His son glanced down belatedly. “No one’s there.”

  “Simon.” He glared hard. “Don’t throw tools. I mean it.”

  His son shrugged as he started down the ladder.

  “And of course you need good marks,” Chris continued, following him. “And who says you have to run this place?” But of course, he knew the answer to that. He stared icily through the open barn doors toward the house.

  “It’s not like I have a choice,” Simon said. “If all I’m going to do is shovel shit and dig around in the dirt for the rest of my life, what the hell would I need Shakespeare for?” He rolled the wheelbarrow around to the first stall.

  “Shakespeare?” Chris flinched. “You failed English?”

  “It was a stupid class. Why would anyone need to learn that stuff? No one talks like that anymore.”

  “You failed English?” Chris asked again incredulously. They were more alike than he thought.

  Simon stabbed the pitchfork into the dirty straw. “Yeah, I failed English. I’m a dummy. You happy?”

  “Of course I’m not happy. And I didn’t mean it to come out like that.” Chris raked his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t realize you were having trouble. Why didn’t you say something?”

  He snorted. “Like you would’ve been able to help.”

  “Maybe I could’ve.” Although that was unlikely. Shakespeare had been his Achilles’ heel, too. But that wasn’t the point. “All you had to do was ask.”

  “Well, it’s too late now.”

  The hopelessness in his son’s voice made Chris ache. He didn’t want to give his Gandhi-inspired take-charge-of-your-future lecture again. It obviously wasn’t working. And yelling at him wasn’t going to do him any good. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and tried to act casual. “So, do you have to retake the course?”

  “Why should I? I’m turning sixteen in January. I can quit school and work here like you want me to.”

  “What I want is for you to be happy. If you want to stay and work on the farm, that’s fine, but I still expect you to finish high school. And I’m not making you choose a future you don’t want.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” Simon attacked the mounded horse droppings as though he were digging a trench in enemy territory.

  Chris was steadily losing patience. “Listen, this is part of your chore list. You chose it, remember? I need you to help out where you can. With Grandpa’s leg—”

  “Yeah, okay, I know, whatever.” Simon flung a pitchfork full of manure into the wheelbarrow, scattering dung all over the ground. Chris compressed his lips.

  “You’re making more work for yourself by doing that.”

  Simon skewered him with a look as sharp as the pitchfork. He put his earbuds back in and continued shoveling, letting crap fly.

  * * *

  TIFFANY STARED AT THE BOWL of soup Poh-poh set in front of her. A chicken foot waved to her from the thin, murky concoction of ginseng and herbs. “Good for you,” Sunny urged in broken English. “For your bruises. Make your skin nice, la.”

  Tiff sighed inwardly, but obediently sipped the broth, avoiding the pale, clawless fingers poking up at her. What she wouldn’t give for a bagel and lox and a plate of latkes from the deli near her old apartment. Sunny only ever cooked traditional Chinese food for the family, and Tiffany was starting to get tired of white rice every night. This evening, her grandmother had made braised soy sauce chicken, steamed grouper with ginger and scallions and a stir-fried vegetable medley including snow peas, carrots, celery, onions, water chestnuts and cashews. Tiffany ate without complaint—her grandmother’s cooking was good, after all—but she longed for something that hadn’t been made in a wok.

  When she was ten, Tiff had complained how their family never ate pizza and chicken fingers and fries like the other kids in school did. Most of the lunches her grandmother had packed had consisted of leftovers, with their colorful pieces of meat and vegetables on rice. To her classmates, most of whom had bland-looking sandwiches, her lunches had been strange and exotic, garnering a lot of the wrong kind of attention. They’d started asking if she ate dog meat, or if their family caught stray cats and turned them into chop suey.

  “Just ignore those kids,” her mother had told her. “Our food is part of our culture. This is part of who we are.”

  “But I don’t want to be who we are,” Tiffany had cried in frustration. “I want to be normal.”

  Silence had fallen at the table, and she’d been buried beneath her parents’ flinty glares. It had been years before she’d understood what she’d really meant.

  “You eat what we eat,” was all her father had said.

  Her mother joined them at the table. Dad and Daniel were working the dinner shift. Mom worked the lunchtime rush and stayed later if needed. On weekends, the whole family worked together. That schedule hadn’t changed in the twenty-five years the Good Fortune had been under their management. It meant they rarely ate together, but Poh-poh still cooked as if they did.

  “Are you still using a fork?” her mother asked, exasperated.

  Tiffany shrugged. She’d always preferred a fork over chopsticks, even as a child. She gave her mother a look that dared her to comment further, but she didn’t.

  “So, what did you do today?” Rose asked, slurping her soup down and deftly attacking her chicken foot.

  Tiffany spooned her own chicken foot into her mom’s bowl. “I’m still going through my stuff.” Daniel had retrieved the bags from her car earlier. She’d left a lot behind, yet still had a ton of stuff to go through, most of it clothing. She hadn’t gotten very far in the culling process.

  “How’s your wrist?”

  She held it out, turned it gingerly. “Not bad. It still hurts to lift anything heavy.”

  “Your face looks better,” her mom remarked as she inspected Tiffany carefully. “The bruises are pretty light. A little makeup and you won’t see them at all.”

  Dread filled her. Rose wouldn’t be asking after her well-being unless she had something on her mind.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Oh, you know. Sitting around the house and eating bonbons. Watching bad TV until my eyeballs fall out.”

  Her mother cut her a disapproving look.

  “I’m kidding. I’ve been looking for a job. Updating my résumé, that kind of thing.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll be busy interviewing for a job. Probably driving back to the city for those interviews, in fact.”

  “Well, no one’s going to be so impressed by your résumé that they’ll call you in for an interview tomorrow.” Good old Mom. A realist to the bitter end. “You should come and work at the diner.”

  “I can’t come in,” Tiff argued, panic setting in. “I’m going to be busy. Finding a job is a full-time job.” At her mother’s stiff silence, she blurted, “I’ll find a job in town.”

  “Doing what? Bagging groceries? Waiting tables? You can do that with us.”

  Tiffany sucked in a breath, forcing patience into her tone. “Look, Mom. I appreciate that you want to help me. I know I’m costing you and Dad groceries and stuff. As soon as I get some cash, I’ll write you a check to cover my expenses.”

  “It’s not about money or rent or groceries.” She sighed disparagingly. “I don’t see why you’re so against working for us. We could use the extra help. And we’re only trying to help you.”

  Tiffany knew that, and guilt made her resolve waver. But there was more than one reason she wanted to avoid the family restaurant. “I need to do this my way.”

  “Humph. You do everything your way, Tiffany, just like when you went off to college.” She spooned a piece of fish into her bowl, talking without meeting her eye. “You wasted your intelligence on an English degree. What has it gotten you except a bunch of low-level jobs?”

  “I haven’t found a good fit yet, that’s all.” She hated how defensive she sounded. Since finishing college, Tiff had held thr
ee jobs, all as assistants. She’d been at her most recent junior assistant’s position for the past two years. The problem was that upward mobility in the industry was limited, and senior positions rarely opened up. “But I was living in Manhattan and making okay money. I loved my work. I loved my life.”

  “You were probably living in a shoe box full of cockroaches, and ‘okay money’ to you means mac and cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

  “I like mac and cheese,” Tiff said defiantly, though she had to admit that was only because instant ramen noodles had been getting tiresome.

  “You should have gone into medicine,” Mom said. “You never see any doctors getting laid off.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she snapped. So, live with it. Tiffany gripped her fork hard. “I don’t want to argue about this over dinner.”

  Her mother gave her a long, inscrutable look, then stopped talking altogether as she ate. Tiffany’s appetite waned.

  “Only one bowl of rice?” her grandmother asked, alarmed when Tiff pushed up from the table. She hadn’t said a single word during the exchange between her and her mother, though usually Poh-poh broke up any arguments and made everyone save it until after meals.

  “I’m full. Thanks. I need to work on my résumé now.”

  “Ai-ya. Always working.” Sunny cast her own daughter a disapproving look. “Just like your mother.”

  Rose shoveled rice into her mouth as if she were trying to dig a hole through her bowl.

  Tiffany quickly washed her dishes and left the kitchen. It’s like I’m a teen all over again. Only back then I used homework to escape the dinner table.

  * * *

  SHE HURRIED THROUGH THE HOUSE. Nothing about it had changed since she’d left. The decor was trapped in an awkward era between the seventies and eighties with faux wood cabinets, faded gray carpets and textured wallpaper that was stained in places. The only thing fresh and new about the place was the vase of red and yellow carnations on the mantel by the picture of Kung-kung, her grandfather, who’d died before the whole Cheung family left New York.