by Lisa Unger
“Let Angelo get it. The order for your four-top is up. You fetch that, and I’ll get more ice water,” Carol said. Her tone was weary but not unkind. Carol was never that. “Try to pull yourself together, Emily. I don’t know what you have on your mind today. But it is definitely not your work.”
Emily nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Carol looked at Emily over the rim of her glasses. She had a nice face, round and pink-cheeked, with pretty, darkly lashed blue eyes. Her body was short and soft—a mother’s body. Carol was, in fact, a bit henlike, Emily thought, zaftig and proud, strutting about clucking. Emily wanted to put her head in Carol’s lap and cry her a river.
“So, what is it, hon?” said Carol. “You need to talk?”
“No,” said Emily. She tried for a smile. “I’m fine.”
Angelo was already on his knees, picking up big shards of glass with calloused hands.
“I’m sorry, Angelo,” said Emily.
He looked up at her with his dark puppy-dog eyes, big, devoted, and a little lovesick. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Angelo had a crush on Emily; she knew that. He gave her a wide grin, as though he liked being down on his knees for her. She felt a hot blush spread across her cheeks, and then she was chasing after Carol, who was talking to her. Carol had a fast, soft, but no-nonsense way of communicating. She didn’t care if you participated, only that you appeared to be listening.
“When you get orders wrong, especially for someone like Barney, who comes here every single day at the same time for the same meal, it makes people feel like we don’t know them, don’t care about them. And if you work at T.G.I. Friday’s or Chili’s, maybe that doesn’t matter so much. But here, at my restaurant, it matters—because it’s precisely that kind of personal interaction that separates the chains from the independents. Also, when you give people the wrong change, it makes us seem either untrustworthy or incompetent. Do you understand that, Emily?” Emily knew this wasn’t an invitation to chime in. Carol went on.
“Now, dropping things? Well, it happens. But it usually happens when we’re not present. You’re all flustered from a morning of mistakes. So I want you to take a few minutes, after you bring the food to your four-top, and go out back and take a break. I’ll cover your tables. Then come on back in like it’s a brand-new day, okay?”
Emily found herself nodding vigorously, then running the four-top order over to the family by the window. Pancakes for the girl, French toast for the boy, an egg-white scramble with broccoli for the mom, and a chili-cheese omelet with home fries and an extra side of bacon for the dad (boy, did he ever get a look from Mom over the menu when he ordered that). He looked like he could afford to take off a few, but not in an unhealthy, worrisome way. He was just a beefy guy who liked to eat. He probably had high cholesterol; that’s why his wife had that kind of angry-worried look on her face when Emily placed the plate in front of him.
“Wow,” the mom said. “That looks good.” But what she meant was: Oh, honey, are you really going to eat that? At least that’s what Emily thought. She was good at that, reading faces, body language. She felt like, a lot of the time, she knew what people were thinking even when they were saying something else altogether. She’d always been that way.
After she ran a bottle of ketchup over to the table, she went out back like Carol had asked her to. She sat on the bench where everyone went for a smoke break, and looked up into the sky. The day was warm and humid, clouds high and white. A light breeze made the leaves of the tall oaks that towered above the parking-lot fence dance and hiss. She took a deep breath, trying to shake it off, like Carol wanted.
Why do you want to go to that place and run around for that stupid cow?
That’s what Dean had said to her this morning. He hadn’t wanted her to go to work. He’d wanted her to stay with him. He didn’t like Carol. Dean didn’t seem to like anyone Emily liked. She wasn’t sure what that said about him.
“You’ll make more in a morning with me than you will in a week at the Fat Hen.”
“The Blue Hen.”
“Whatever,” he said. He’d lit a cigarette even though he knew the smell made her sick in the morning. “You don’t need to run around like that.”
He didn’t like the idea of her waitressing. His mother was a waitress, and Dean didn’t like Emily to do anything that reminded him of his mother.
“It’s low-class work,” he said.
Emily didn’t think any honest work was “low-class,” whatever that meant coming from Dean. Carol treated her with respect. The customers, maybe because the Blue Hen was not the cheapest restaurant in town, were mostly polite. They tipped well. And usually, Emily was not half bad at the whole waitress thing. She liked talking to people, being friendly, and chitchatting about this and that with the regulars. Carol always made sure Emily had a meal before or after her shift and told everyone to help themselves to coffee and hot chocolate. The Blue Hen was the nicest place Emily had ever worked.
Dean was mad at her when she left. That was why she’d shown up to work all shaky and upset. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. She didn’t like it when he was mad, but if she didn’t go to work and bring in a regular paycheck, they didn’t always make it week to week. Then she’d have to borrow from her mother—which she couldn’t do right now. And that was a whole other set of problems.
It was true that Dean could make a lot of money. But he didn’t always, and somehow it seemed to be gone as quickly as it came in. Then, of course, there were the times when Dean disappeared for days. Once for a week. She hadn’t expected him to come back that time. She wasn’t as happy as she thought she’d be when he finally did come home.
“Feeling better?”
Angelo had come to stand beside her. She looked up at him, and he smiled shyly, turned his eyes toward the sky. He was always sweet to her, and she felt an odd desire to slip her hand into his. He smelled like the lemon soap he used to clean the dishes.
“Thanks for cleaning up my mess,” she said. She folded her hands in her lap.
“No problem.”
She sensed that he was about to say more but changed his mind. He’d asked her out a couple of times. She told him she was living with someone. He’d given up asking, but he still smiled at her a lot, hopeful. She’d expected him to get angry or mean when she turned him down, but he didn’t. He was just as kind to her as he always had been. For some reason, that made her think that he had a nice mom, someone who had taught him to respect women. She really liked that about Angelo.
“I think Carol’s going to need you back inside,” he said. “She has paperwork to do in the office.”
“Okay,” Emily said.
Carol kept the week’s cash receipts in a safe behind the desk in her office. She did all the paperwork during the day on Friday. On Friday night after closing, she took the money to the bank’s after-hours deposit slot. Emily had heard Carol’s husband, Paul, complain about that. He thought they should take it every night on the way home, so there wasn’t as much cash lying around. Carol had agreed. But as far as Emily could see, she hadn’t started doing that.
Emily had noticed that Carol was a creature of habit, and everything had to be done the same way every day. She didn’t like change. From setup to close up, everything—making the coffee, squeezing the orange juice, refilling the salt, pepper, and sugar dispensers, wiping down the counter and tables—was part of an exact ritual.
Emily liked that about Carol. She was predictable, reliable. There was no mystery to what she wanted, how she would react. It was such a comfort, because Emily seldom had any idea what was going to set Dean off. Or her mother. Emily never knew whether to expect kindness or cruelty from either of them. At the Blue Hen, there was only one rule. Work hard and be nice, and everything would go just fine. That should be the rule for life, too, Emily thought. But, of course, that wasn’t how things went.
Once she was back inside the restaurant, it did feel like a new day. Emily let the rhythm
of the place take her, and she was in the groove for the rest of her shift. No more mistakes. At the end of her shift, Carol made her a meat-loaf plate with mashed potatoes and gravy and a big helping of sautéed vegetables. Emily wouldn’t have said she was hungry, but she finished every last bite and felt like she could have eaten more. She saw Carol looking at her, and then the other woman came to sit across from her in the booth.
The Blue Hen was in the lull between breakfast and lunch, a few customers lingering over their meals—a mom spoon-feeding oatmeal to a little boy, an old man reading a paper, a couple holding hands at the two-top by the window.
“How was it?” asked Carol. She tapped on Emily’s empty plate.
Emily would have lifted it and licked the gravy clean if she’d been alone.
“Horrible,” she said. “I’m sending it back.”
Carol smiled at her and patted her hand. “You didn’t have breakfast.”
“No,” said Emily. She thought of Dean sulking and smoking at the table over a cup of coffee. She’d left without eating rather than keep fighting. The cigarette smoke, his attitude, both toxic enough to drive her away.
“Everything all right with you, honey?” Carol asked.
“I’m fine,” Emily said. “Really. I’m sorry about today. It won’t happen again.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Carol leaned back, and Emily saw her eyes make a quick scan of the restaurant. If she saw anything out of place, she’d pop up, fix it, and hurry back. Apparently, everything met with her approval. “We all have bad days. How’s school?”
“Good,” Emily said. “Great.”
Carol kept her eyes on Emily for another second, gave her another light pat on the hand, and then got up.
“Okay,” she said. “Good.”
Emily watched the older woman go, heading to the kitchen to make sure everything was ready for the lunch rush. She fought off the urge to call Carol back. She wanted to confess that she’d had to drop out of school, that it hadn’t worked out and that she’d try to sign up for a class or two again in the fall when money wasn’t so tight and Dean didn’t need her help all the time. Emily’s mother had stopped paying tuition because she didn’t like Dean and hated that he and Emily were living together. And Emily wasn’t making enough for rent, food, whatever else, and classes at the community college.
But she couldn’t say all that, because Carol wasn’t her mother or her friend. Carol was her boss. It was better to remember that, because she’d made the mistake before of getting too close to the people for whom she’d worked. It hurt a lot more when they had to let her go for whatever reason. And they looked so much more disappointed when she let them down, which she always seemed to do eventually.
“I can stay for the lunch shift, if you need me,” Emily said. Though she could use the money, she tried not to look too hopeful.
Carol turned at the door, seeming to consider. “I have Blanche on the schedule. But thanks, honey.” Then she made a sweeping motion with her hands and said, “You’re young. Go enjoy yourself today.”
Emily gathered her things from the back and left. Outside, there was a sudden light drizzle, even though the sky was blue in most places. A sun shower but no rainbow that Emily could see. Dean was supposed to pick her up, since she’d let him borrow her car and taken the bus to work this morning. But he wasn’t there. Big surprise.
She waited for a while off to the side of the restaurant. She could have stayed under the awning to avoid getting wet. But she didn’t want everyone to see her standing there waiting—again. Finally, after nearly twenty minutes, she headed for the bus stop.
On the bus, she used her cell phone to call her mother. Her mother wasn’t speaking to her, but Emily left a message on the machine every day.
“Hi, Mom,” she said. “I’m just getting off work, riding home on the bus. Dean had a job interview today, so he took my car. I was just wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner on Sunday. The house is looking really nice. I’d like you to see it.” She paused, hoping her mother would pick up. “Okay, well. I love you. Call me.”
Emily had thought that at some point, her mother would have to bail on the silent treatment. But so far, no. Their last fight had been a screaming match, or maybe it had just been Emily screaming.
“There’s something wrong with that boy,” her mother had said. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Whenever Emily thought about her mother, Martha, that’s where she thought of her: at that table, elbows on the vinyl, staring off at who knows what, smoking. That was why she hated the smell of cigarette smoke so much.
“Living with him is the worst thing you can do. He’s going to hurt you bad. And don’t you dare get pregnant. That will be the end of your life.”
Then Martha told Emily that she wasn’t going to pay for school unless Dean found his own place. Emily didn’t understand that. If her mother was so sure Dean was going to ruin her life, why did she want to take away Emily’s chance for an education, which her mother always said was the key to success? “I won’t have that money going to him.”
It was true that last semester Emily had dropped a class and then given the tuition reimbursement to Dean. Yes, she had done that. Martha had found out about it because the bursar’s office had sent her the receipt. Emily should have known they’d do that. But she’d never been good about thinking things through. Dean had needed that money; she still wasn’t sure for what. But he’d seemed so desperate at the time. And it was a film class, an elective, not important at all to her degree in early childhood education.
Her last visit with her mother had ended with Emily screaming, “He loves me!” There was a part of her that had stood above it all, disbelieving the level of her own rage. Emily wasn’t one who normally resorted to shrieking. But she felt like something was going to come bursting out of her chest.
“You’re jealous because no one ever loved you like he loves me.”
Her mother had just sat there, staring at the wallpaper, cigarette dangling between her fingers. She looked so old and tired, used up. It was Emily’s worst nightmare to wind up at a kitchen table, looking like that—as if she’d been ground down by life and couldn’t even be bothered to care.
The old lady sitting next to Emily on the bus patted her on the leg and handed her a tissue, which Emily took without thinking. Then she realized that she was crying.
“Thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“It’s hard to be young,” said the woman. She wore a neat blue raincoat and had silvery-white hair. There was the slightest tremor to her hands. “I remember. You want so much.”
“Does it get easier?”
The other woman chuckled a little and put a dry, soft hand on Emily’s. “Not really, dear.”
Great, thought Emily. That’s just great.
chapter two
How do things start? How does your life begin? How do you go from being a child shuttled from school to soccer to playdates to the mall, then on to college and your first job? How do you go from the first job, to your first date with your future spouse, to whatever it is you wind up doing with your life, to being a mom with two kids, paying bills on your laptop at the kitchen counter? Is it that one event or choice connects to another until the next thing you know, you’re looking at the chain of your life? How do things start? Chelsea wondered, looking at her mother. How do they end?
“You are not wearing that.”
Her mother hadn’t even looked at her when Chelsea came down the stairs, hadn’t even glanced up from her papers spread out across the kitchen island. How did her mom even know what Chelsea was wearing—a black mini and knee-high boots, a purple knit sweater that failed to cover her navel? But her mother knew. Though there was no anger or heat to her sentence, it was unwavering in its tone. No discussion. Chelsea understood on a cellular level that there would be no whining, weeping, or begging her way around that sentence.
“Fine,” Chelsea said. Not a “fine
” with attitude, just a regular “fine.” She spun around and walked back up the stairs.
Chelsea didn’t want to wear the sweater anyway. Not really. She didn’t feel that great about her middle. It was fleshy, doughy. She’d just be folding her arms around her belly all afternoon, self-conscious. Not like Lulu, whose body was OMG perfect; not an ounce of fat anywhere on that girl. She strutted around like a cat, every line of her in perfect symmetry with the universe, not one thing about her—skin, eyes, lips, perky breasts—flawed in any way. Next to her best friend since kindergarten, Chelsea felt like an oaf. She flipped through her closet inspecting and rejecting a denim shirt, a pink graphic T-shirt, a ruffled, flowery shirt her grandmother had sent but which Chelsea had never worn. What would Lulu be wearing?
Lulu never ate a thing—she was a size zero. On the other hand, Lulu was not smart. But no, that wasn’t entirely fair. Though Chelsea was forever helping Lulu with her homework (sometimes doing it for her), and the girl could barely spell, Lulu was smart—in certain ways. Even if things like math and English seemed to elude her, she always seemed worldlier, more knowledgeable, than Chelsea did. Lulu just didn’t care about school.
Lulu’s other defining feature: She had a tongue like a blade. Didn’t it seem like really thin, gorgeous people were always so mean? Where did they get that aura of entitlement? And didn’t it seem like people always fawned over them even though they behaved badly? Why was that? More questions in what seemed to Chelsea an endless stream of questions that had no satisfactory answers. Too many.
Chelsea pulled her favorite soft lilac tunic top from its hanger and slid that on with her black mini instead. She felt more comfortable instantly, more relaxed. There was nothing special about the outfit—it was neither slutty, nor super-cool, nor dorky and lame. Therefore, it should call no attention to her whatsoever. Neither would her passably cute but not really pretty face, nor her straight, shoulder-length wheat-colored hair, nor her boyish body. And that was fine, really. That was just fine.
