Smart Mouth Waitress (Romantic Comedy) (Life in Saltwater City)

by Dalya Moon

  Courtney waved her hand in front of my face and asked me why I was so quiet.

  I told her I was thinking about my overdue library books, but the truth was, I'd been having a little fantasy about Adam Levine, Marc, and Cooper fighting over me, all of them wearing nothing but pajama bottoms.

  What can I say? I'm a sick girl.

  At home, my family was not impressed with dinner that night. We were out of peanut sauce for the stir-fry, so I made my own, using peanut butter and the other things typically listed on the side of salad dressing: oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and salt.

  Garnet pushed his still-full plate away. “Bro, I'm not gonna say it's the worst thing I ever ate, because at least there's no eggplant in here.”

  My father grabbed the salt shaker and gave his plate a liberal coat. “It's fine for tonight, but I think I'll buy my lunch tomorrow. I do applaud your effort and ingenuity, though.”

  I finished chewing my broccoli and swallowed. The sauce was on the sweet side, but teriyaki is sweet, and both of them loved teriyaki. They're just scared of trying new things, I told myself.

  “What does authentic mean to you guys?” I asked.

  They stared back blankly.

  “This guy I like, he's into authentic girls. What does that mean?”

  “No padded bra,” Garnet said, grabbing some bread and buttering two slices.

  “Be yourself, Perry,” Dad said. “Be your own lovely self.”

  Garnet laughed hard, chunks of bread flying out of his mouth.

  “Dad. I'm always myself. I was just thinking … it's like on American Idol when the judges tell the contestants to just have fun with it. What they really mean, according to Mom, is to rehearse your butt off until you have every note and move in your muscle memory, then smile while you're doing it and make it look easy. They're not having fun so much as they're crazy prepared.”

  “How does this relate to dating?” Dad asked.

  “I think I have to act like myself, but toned down, so I don't seem to be trying so hard. In reality, I'll be trying harder than ever, because I'll have to not say whatever pops into my brain. Plus I'll smile a lot and that'll make it look easy.”

  “Maybe you should get a padded bra,” Garnet said. “All's fair in love and war.”

  “My boobs aren't okay? I thought I had nice boobs.” I squished them together, much to my brother's horror.

  My father smacked the palm of his hand on his forehead. “Is this really appropriate for a normal family dinner?”

  “We're not babies,” Garnet said. “Besides, we're not a normal family. Our mother's all over the internet with half-naked rock stars.”

  I kicked Garnet under the table.

  “Bro!” Garnet said angrily. “He's going to see the photos eventually.”

  Dad's face looked even worse than when he'd first tasted the stir-fry.

  “She was at the taping of a TV show,” I told my father. “So she posed with some music industry people. She sent a picture to me last night.”

  Dad got up from the table without a word and went to the fridge. “Don't you have homework, Garnet?” he called back.

  “You're so lucky you're done school,” Garnet said to me, getting up from the table with two more slices of buttered bread.

  “Hey, enjoy yourself,” I told Garnet. “You don't realize it when you're there, but life's a lot simpler in high school.”

  “Yeah? If high school's so great, why don't people stay in it forever and ever?”

  Dad's beer made a psht noise as he cracked it open. “We do stay,” my father said. “We are in high school forever and ever. The pretty girls are always flirting with the jocks, and the nerds are at the bottom of the heap, socially irrelevant.”

  Garnet gave me a wide-eyed look and then scurried out of the room. We try to avoid my father when he's in one of his poor-me moods.

  “Dad, I'm sure it's nothing. You should call her. We're in the same time zone, right?”

  He sat at the kitchen island counter across from me, letting out an oof sound when his bum hit the bar stool chair heavily. “You're eighteen. You're practically an adult. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.” He took a long drink, swallowing half of his beer. “Your mother and I aren't doing so well.”

  My pulse rushed in my ears, trying to block out his words.

  “Dad, did you take your pills today?”

  “It's not your job to pester me about my damn pills.”

  “So, that's a no then.”

  “I forget.”

  “Do you wanna watch a movie with me? Get an early night and see how things look tomorrow?”

  He guzzled more of the beer. “You don't have to look after me. That's your mother's job.”

  “Dad. Don't be like this.”

  “You know, at your age, you have so much hope. You think things are going to get better. You think people are actually capable of change.”

  “People can change.”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on the granite counter, and looked unwaveringly into my eyes. “Nobody changes for shit.”

  I tensed my legs, shifting ahead on my chair so I could rub my big toe back and forth on the floor, searching for the gap in the floorboards.

  My father takes a pill for his Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and a pill for his anxiety. My mother can tell by the timbre of his voice alone whether or not he's taken the pills. I don't pay that much attention, but when he starts talking about people changing, that's a pretty clear sign something's wrong.

  “We can watch that awful Adam Sandler movie, where he plays a female twin of himself,” I said. “Jack and Jill. I think it's his lowest-rated poopfest to date. It's like a parody of a bad Adam Sandler movie.”

  My father rubbed his hairline, his face looking like mine before I cry. Seeing him like that made my own throat close up.

  “All this restructuring at work is no fun,” he said.

  Repeating the phrase he'd used on me so often, I said, “If it was fun, it wouldn't be called work.” I stood and cleared away the plates. “Come on, I'll get the popcorn started. You could probably use a few more calories for your dinner.”

  “Do we have any chocolate?” he asked.

  I was already getting the step stool to reach the top cupboard, where Mom kept our junk stash.

  Ten minutes later, we were stretched out on the sectional in the TV den. Garnet wandered in to tell us how stupid the movie was and paced back and forth for a bit before caving in and joining us on the sofa.

  My father fell asleep before the movie was even half-over, confirming that he had definitely not taken his pills that day. He's a night-owl, often up until at least one in the morning, but when he doesn't take his ADD pill, he crashes right after dinner.

  With Dad snoring away lightly, Garnet and I kept watching the movie.

  Garnet whispered to me, “Are Mom and Dad going to get divorced?”

  “Don't be silly. This is normal stuff. Relationships are hard sometimes, and people go through rough patches.”

  “This is normal?”

  “Completely normal.”

  He nodded and shoved more M&Ms into his mouth.

  Even though I'd never had a relationship of my own, and was only three years older than Garnet, he seemed satisfied with my expertise. I guess we all hear what we want to hear.

  Before I went to bed, I sent Mom a quick email update, telling her about Dad not taking his pills that day and being grumpy. I suggested she send him an edible arrangement or a food basket to his workplace to show she was thinking about him. In the email, I even included some links to things he might enjoy, like chocolate-covered pretzels. Like me, Dad loves things that are both salty and sweet—my weird peanut-butter stir fry being an exception.

  When Garnet was ten, around the time of my father's ADD diagnosis, they worried he might have it too, because it often runs in families. The psychiatrist met with the three of them and determined that Garnet might benefit from medication as he got older, but hi
s grades were fine and his teachers weren't having behavioral problems with him, so he probably didn't have it. Unlike something like high blood pressure or thyroid disease, there's no physical test for ADD. I wondered for a bit if I might have it, because apparently saying whatever you want without filtering is a sign, but my parents didn't bring me in to the psychiatrist, so I didn't mention it.

  I took one of my father's ADD pills once. I knew it was wrong, but I was studying for final exams and lots of the other kids at school take each others' pills during finals. I know I'm making our school sound like Drug Poppin' High, but most of the kids didn't do much more than smoke a bit of pot.

  At the time, I'd convinced myself I definitely had ADD and that was why I couldn't study. I took one of his pills and sat down to get to work, expecting it to help me the way a Starbucks Mochachino does, but it didn't help at all. Instead, I had an irresistible urge to be chatty. I got on my phone and started calling people—not just texting, but actually phoning. I talked to people all night long.

  The next day, I found out increased sociability is a side-effect of the pills. It really helped me understand why my dad is so pleasant when he's on the pills and grouchy when he's off. His anti-anxiety pill probably makes a big difference too.

  I immediately confessed to my mother that I'd taken one of Dad's pills and swore I'd never do it again. She didn't tell him, that I know of, but said I could go visit the psychiatrist and get my own prescription if I wanted. I chose not to go, because I was afraid of changing. I worried I might become a completely different person if I took mood-altering drugs. Say what you will about the benefits of modern medication, but you can't deny it changes how a person acts, which means it changes your personality.

  Funny how the way we act comes down to chemistry, isn't it? And it isn't just drugs that change the way we act, but food and water too. At the restaurant, I've seen people come in miserable and hungry, only to light up after a cup of coffee, then become the Happiest People on Earth after a big meal. Which version of them was the truth?

  When I crawled into bed on Wednesday night, the day after the art show, I was still chewing over the concept of authenticity, as Marc had called it.

  My father took two pills that radically changed how he interacted with others. You could say they changed his entire personality, since that's basically what personality is. Was he being authentic? Was the real him the guy who honked impatiently at people in traffic or the guy who waved everyone into his lane ahead of him?

  Dad on medication was certainly a lot happier and more pleasant to be around. My mother said when he first got treatment, the fighting stopped. I didn't have to take her word for it, because much of the fighting they did was around us. It wasn't ugly stuff, with name-calling, but he did raise his voice, and he wouldn't let stuff go. She'd go quiet to let him get the last word, and he'd become irritated by the silence and keep arguing, even though it was one-sided.

  According to the book Dad's psychiatrist recommended the whole family read, people with ADD actually enjoy confrontation with others, because it stimulates their minds and makes them feel better. Arguing makes them feel normal. How someone can feel better when people are ticked off at them, I'll never know.

  I had a hard time falling asleep that night, and I had a series of upsetting dreams where everyone was yelling at me to be more authentic and to be more like myself, but not how I usually am, because everything I did was wrong.

  In the morning, my eyes looked tiny and beady. Using the giant box full of eyeshadows my aunt gave me for Christmas from Sephora, I searched for colors that would make me look fun and authentic.

  Until then, I'd avoided shades of green, especially peridot green, because it seemed self-centered to match my name. However, what could be more authentic?

  I went for the green—three shades—and wore the matching dress I'd borrowed from Courtney, figuring it had at least another wear in it before dry cleaning. This time, I remembered to use the zipper, getting angry as I remembered Britain laughing at me.

  What if Courtney didn't smarten up and realize she was dating a total douche? I'd be stuck with Britain forever.

  I stuffed my overdue library books in my bag and rushed down the hall to the big bathroom, the one my parents and Garnet use. Dad was in the shower, so I knocked and asked if I could come in.

  “How did the movie end?” he asked from behind the shower curtain.

  “How do all movies end?” I replied, opening up the medicine cabinet door to cover the mirror and expose his medication. “Don't forget to take your pills today.”

  “Yes, dear,” he said, the way he does to my mother, which made me feel both proud and uncomfortable. When I agreed to looking after the family in Mom's absence, I didn't know it would be like this.

  On the way out of the house, I raided Mom's closet again for one of her Anthropologie scarves, which I tied around my head as a hairband. The feeling of the tassels on my back reminded me pleasantly of my dreadlocks.

  When I got to work, Toph looked up from his half-peeled bowl of potatoes and told me I looked hot.

  “Hot? Toph, are you flirting with me? Do you think you could handle all of this?”

  He blushed at his potatoes.

  Donny, who was oiling up his grill station, said, “Don't lord your unfair womanly advantage over him.”

  “What advantage is that, exactly? The ability to do more work for less pay?”

  “Have you been on those feminist blogs again?” Donny asked.

  I grabbed some blueberries from a nearby crate and sampled them for quality. “Maybe. Seriously, though, do I look nice today? Do I look authentic?”

  Donny came over to the island to stir the pancake batter and said to Toph, “Should I tell her she has blueberry skins all over her teeth?”

  Toph laughed at me as I gave them both a proud grin.

  After I rubbed my teeth with a napkin, I said, “Donny, what are your wife's best qualities?”

  “That she doesn't request foreplay.”

  Toph laughed like a hyena.

  “How about when you first met? What did you like about her? What made her different from all the other girls?”

  “She liked me, and she was easy.”

  “You're a pig. I'm going to tell her you said that.”

  He shrugged.

  Toph said, “My brother likes insecure girls because they get so jealous, and they try harder.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I'd say my type is Megan Fox.”

  I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my own saliva. “Really. Why am I not surprised? If Megan Fox is your type, then good luck.”

  Drop it, I told myself, but I couldn't.

  I said to Toph, “Why is it guys like you, who look the way you do, think you deserve someone who looks like Megan Fox?”

  Toph frowned at his potatoes. “I have a lot to offer.”

  “Toph, honey, tens don't go out with ...” I paused because Donny was giving me a stern look, so I added two points to my assessment of Toph's date-ability. “Sevens.”

  “If the kid here is a seven, what am I?” Donny asked.

  “You're also a seven, seven and a half.”

  “So are you,” Donny said to me.

  “Six and a half,” Toph said.

  I put my hands on my hips, playing up being mock-offended to cover the fact I really was hurt. “Toph, I'm half a point less attractive than you? How can you say that with a straight look on your face?”

  “I'm being generous,” he said. “Courtney's an eight, that's why she always gets better tips than you.”

  “You don't have to rub it in my face,” I said.

  Donny ducked his head to peek out the window-opening to the dining room. “You have a customer, Little Miss Seven.”

  “Call me that again and I'll tell everyone about how you had plantar warts on your hands and spread them to everyone in the kitchen via the utensils.”

  Toph threw the potato peeler on t
he floor and jumped back.

  “They're cured now,” Donny said to Toph. “We all had them burned off last summer. You're safe.”

  I giggled as I went around the dividing wall to the dining area.

  Courtney was running late that morning, as she did about half her shifts, so I sat the first few tables on my side.

  Be authentic, I told myself as I was telling the customers about the specials.

  “What would you recommend?” the gentleman asked.

  Typically, I would quip something about the place across the street, but instead, I said, “Today's special, with the french toast, is the best thing we offer. I tried to get it put on the permanent menu, but the price of fresh strawberries fluctuates too much. If you see it on our specials board, you should go for it.”

  “That sounds terrific!” he said.

  His friend, another gentleman in a sporty polar fleece zip-up, asked me about a hundred questions about ingredients, all of which I answered dutifully and authentically.

  As I walked back to the kitchen with their order, I could feel my face frowning. Sure, I'd answered all their questions, but I felt used, cheap. Subservient. How dare they act so delighted at my answers and keep pressing for more, more, more? They weren't the bosses of me. I wasn't going to drool and jump around like a performing walrus in the hopes of getting a $4.50 tip instead of $3.00.

  When the whistle blew with their order, I brought them their french toast and sides of crispy bacon, saying, “I want to see clean plates next time I come back.”

  They completely ignored me and carried on with their conversation.

  Courtney finally showed up, just as I was sweating over sitting four tables at once, and she took three of them. She'd done something new to her hair—feather extensions. Feathers! I had to touch them.

  As we crossed paths over the next hour, she told me all about how wonderful and exciting her new girlfriend Britain was, and how they'd had a shopping spree the day before, after work, including a trip to Anthropologie.

  I adjusted my mother's scarf I was wearing as a headband and tried not to show my shock over the betrayal. The betrayal! Anthropologie was our store; since it had opened the previous year, we always went together to look at the clothes to get ideas, while promising ourselves we'd go on a big thrift-store or H&M hunt for similar (but cheaper) items, then we'd cave and buy stuff like eighty-dollar blouses.