“Listen,” he says, his face in my hair. “Share your worry with me. Marry me, and we can tear our hair out worrying about Hope together.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Jack,” I say as I twist out of his arms. “You’ve got little enough hair left to lose.”
He laughs, and I’m glad I lightened his mood. I kiss him and run out the back door, hollering, “See you at three! Don’t be late! I’ve got a million things to do for Hope’s birthday today!”
I started working for Jack twelve years ago, right at the end of the summer straight from hell. See, Ma died in early June that year; then, about three weeks later, my brother Bobby’s wife died in childbirth; then Bobby just plain took off, too grief-stricken to stay and look after his baby daughter. Everything happened at once that crazy summer. It was like a goddamn soap opera, it truly was. I walked through it like a sleepwalker, just putting one foot in front of the other with no clear idea of where I was going. But one good thing did come out of all the crap, all the sorrow: I got Hope. Sara Lynn and I did, that is. Bobby gave her to both of us, and we decided between us that I’d move in with Sara Lynn because her house was bigger and she had her mother to look after. Hell, I didn’t mind. It had been only Ma and me living in her little house on South Street. Bobby and his wife, Sandra, had been up in Maine for a little less than a year, and my other brother, Tim, had already gone off to Montana to find himself. You know, it’s something, it really is—all the men in my family who have felt the need to run off and find themselves. It’s my opinion they’d have been better off squinting real hard to locate themselves right where they were.
Once I moved in with Sara Lynn, I thought I’d continue to clean the houses Ma and I had been doing together. My friend Gina Logan said, a little jealously, as is her way, “Oh, I guess you won’t be needing to work now that you’ll be living high off the hog over at the Hoffmans’ mansion.”
I looked her hard in the eye and said, “I have no idea where you’re getting your information. I am not a charity case. This is a business arrangement between me and Sara Lynn Hoffman regarding what’s best for little Hope. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’m going to keep up the cleaning business Ma and I worked so hard to build.”
But I couldn’t do it. I was tired from being up nights with Hope. I missed her every second of the day I was away from her. And I hate to admit this, but I was damn mad about the fact that Sara Lynn was getting more time than I was with my own niece. She’d taken a leave from her magazine job and was just pleased as punch about it. “The magazine has a maternity leave policy, and I talked them into applying it to my situation,” she explained. I just nodded and smiled, trying to act thrilled for her, trying not to mind that she was cooing over Hope while I was out vacuuming and dusting and polishing. I was so afraid Sara Lynn would win Hope over to her, that she’d gain Hope’s love as easily as she’d gained everything else in her life, and that, as always, I’d be left with the short end of the stick.
There was also the fact that I saw Ma in every nook and cranny of the houses we’d cleaned together for so many years. I knew I had to find another way to make a living when Mrs. Oliver set out her silver set of 120 pieces for polishing, including fish knives and asparagus tongs and other nonsensical items. I burst into tears when I saw those pieces lying on the dining room table, and it wasn’t because I dreaded the way my arms would ache after polishing them. No, I cried because I was remembering the last time Ma and I had cleaned that silver and she had held up a serving spoon with flowers twirling up the side. “Oh, Ruth,” she’d said softly, “look how lovely this is. Sometimes I wish I had something like this.”
I’d felt a lump in my throat when she’d said that, thinking of everything in her life that she’d probably wanted and had never got. “Oh, Ma,” I’d scoffed, “you’d hate having this dumb old silver set. Think of how the boys would come over on holidays and eat with it and scratch it up.”
“You’re right.” And she’d laughed, gently setting the spoon down. “Besides, getting to keep all these pretty things in order is the next best thing to owning them for myself. I’m awfully lucky, Ruth.”
Well, not me. As I cried over Mrs. Oliver’s silver after Ma’s death, I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life looking at other people’s pretty things and thinking I was living. After work that day, I drove right down to the diner, where I’d seen the
HELP WANTED
sign in the window for the past month.
I parked my car, got my courage up, and walked into the diner and right up to Jack. “I’m inquiring about the job,” I told him. I knew Jack because everyone in this town knows everybody else, although I didn’t know him well because he was so much older.
“You’re the Teller girl, right?”
“Ruth,” I said, sticking out my hand. “Ruth Teller.”
“I was sorry to hear about your mother,” he said, and he really did sound sorry, so I had to narrow my eyes and clear my throat to prevent myself from crying. He told me years later that he’d decided to hire me right then. He always was a soft touch.
“So,” he said. “Let’s sit down and talk.” He led me to a booth, sat me down, and asked about my waitressing experience—a big fat zero—and my requirements. I remembered how Sara Lynn had told her magazine what she would and would not do now that a child had been dropped in her lap, so I took a chance and decided to do the same.
“Well,” I said, sitting up straight and trying to sound self-assured like Sara Lynn, “you may have heard that I’m taking care of my brother’s baby girl. I’d like to see her as much as possible, so I’d prefer to work out some flexible hours.”
“Hmm,” said Jack, drumming his fingers on the table and thinking.
“Or not,” I said, filling the silence. I started talking a mile a minute. “I mean, I don’t really care. All I know is that I’m desperate to get out of cleaning. It makes me think of my mother, and I’m not getting to spend any time with Hope, and I’m going crazy for wanting a change. It’s all right for every member of my family who feels like it to take off for California or Montana or God knows where, but I need to stay right here. I have responsibilities now. I have this child to think of. So what I’m telling you is that I really need a new job, and this job sounds tailor-made for me. I’m friendly and I work hard and I’ll do whatever you say. And just forget all about my need for flexible hours.”
He looked at me like he was trying to hold back from smiling. “You got it,” he said. “Job’s yours. And we can work out the hours that make sense for you and your baby.”
“Really?” My face must have lit up like a neon sign; that’s how happy I was. Not only did I get the job, but he’d also called Hope my baby. It was the first time anyone had acknowledged Hope as mine, as my little girl.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Thank you. Thanks from me and from . . . from my baby.”
My baby . . . God, she’s twelve today. I shake my head to imagine it; it was truly yesterday that she came to me and I started working for Jack. It’s like I blinked my eyes and suddenly she’s twelve. Better watch it—I’ll blink again and she’ll be thirty-two.
Dammit! I squint hard and shake my head to get rid of the tears misting up my vision. Sweet Jesus, it must be the menopause coming on early. Ma’s revenge from up in heaven, I think as I rub my eyes hard. But how can I not be sad for Sandra, who didn’t live to raise her own daughter? Or for Bobby, who ran away from his heartbreak and left his little girl behind? There’s a flip side to my happiness at having Hope to love as my own child, and that’s the losses that led to her becoming mine.
“She’s doing great, Sandra,” I say out loud as I pull into the back lot of the diner. I’m crazy as a loon, talking to a dead person as if she’s sitting beside me, but I don’t care. Sandra died and her baby was born twelve years ago today. That’s important. “Thank you,” I whisper to her. “Thanks for having Hope.”
I park the car and roll up the windows—the goddamn AC’s on the blink again—and I wonder about Bobby for a minute. The last letter from him came, oh, four or five years ago, postmarked California, no return address. It just said, “Hi, Ruth. Things are good. Give my little girl a kiss for me. Bobby.” That was it. I haven’t heard from him since, but I don’t doubt I will one of these days. That’s Bobby, sort of breezing in when you least expect him.
I lock up my shitbox car out of habit and then unlock it again, hoping God will see fit to have someone steal the damn thing. I wonder if Bobby doesn’t come back because he doesn’t want to face Sara Lynn. She hurt him real bad when she broke up with him. Not that I thought it was a great idea for those two to be carrying on together. But he did love her in his own weird way, and she broke his heart when she told him good-bye. Of course, if Sara Lynn hadn’t broken up with Bobby, Bobby wouldn’t have got together with Sandra and made Hope. Poor kid! I shake my head. So much trouble and sorrow bound up in her coming into the world.
Well, there’s no trouble now. I narrow my eyes as I walk up the cement step to the diner. No more goddamn trouble on my watch.
Jesus! I straighten up and look around, hoping nobody’s watching me nod and mutter in a public place like a crazy person.
Oh, hell, I’m just being paranoid. It’s six-thirty in the morning, for Christ’s sake, and I’m standing here alone in the teeny back lot of the diner. I laugh out loud as I turn my key in the door and punch in the alarm code. That’s what I like best about getting up a little on the early side—no one’s around to see me acting like the lunatic I surely am. I laugh again, and the sound echoes in the empty diner. I whistle as I get the coffee started.
S
ara Lynn tries to hold my hand as we cross Main Street to go to the diner. She actually grabs on to my hand like I’m a baby who might get hit by a car, for crying out loud. I just pull away from her as fast as I can and walk a little ahead. She’s so clueless. I’m twelve years old today, which is practically being a teenager. I don’t need my hand held to cross the street.
I walk up the stone step to Ruth’s diner and scuff my sneakered toe in the worn spot in the middle. As I open the door, the smell of hamburger grease makes my mouth water. Yum! I think no matter where I end up in this world, I’ll get a whiff of this particular smell and it’ll bring me right back here, to Ruth’s diner.
Well, technically it’s not Ruth’s diner. But even though Mr. Pignoli owns it, he’s always saying how Ruth is his right-hand woman, how there wouldn’t even be a diner without her. Whenever I come in and he’s working, he always yells, “Ruth, get this little lady a huge chocolate sundae. My right-hand woman’s niece deserves the royal treatment.”
“What about the right-hand woman herself, Jack?” Ruth will snort.
“Oh, you,” Mr. Pignoli will say, waving his hands like he’s shooing her away. “Hmm. I’ll figure out your royal treatment later.”
I try to catch Ruth’s attention as Sara Lynn and I slide into the red vinyl seats of the last free booth, but she’s busy pouring coffee for a table, laughing as one of the men points to his cup and says, “Load me up with some more of that diesel fuel, too.”
“This is the best diesel fuel in town, I’ll have you know,” Ruth says back as she pours.
She sees me when she walks behind the counter to put the coffeepot back. She wipes her hands on her apron as she comes back from around the counter, and she grins wide so all her teeth are showing.
“Hi, birthday girl.” She bends down to squeeze my shoulders and kiss the top of my head. “Have you had a good day so far? You were fast asleep when I looked in on you before I left.”
“
I
was still sleeping when you left,” says Sara Lynn.
“Yeah, well.” Ruth shrugs. “I like to get up early, have a little time to myself before the craziness here starts.”
“Can we order?” I ask. “I’m starving.”
“You wouldn’t be so hungry if you’d eaten a good breakfast,” Sara Lynn says, looking up from her menu. She thinks I don’t eat right just because I won’t wolf down two eggs and a side of bacon every morning. She keeps telling me how a growing girl needs more than just a piece of toast to start the day. She’s even shown me studies proving that kids who eat a full breakfast get better grades in school. So go raise one of those kids. That’s what I feel like telling her.
“I want a cheeseburger and fries and a Coke,” I tell Ruth. “Please,” I remember to add.
“I’m assuming you want that medium-well,” Ruth says matter-of-factly, looking at Sara Lynn. Sara Lynn strongly disapproves of undercooked meat; she says it can cause a host of evils.
Sara Lynn nods, then points to the menu. “I’ll have a BLT dry on white toast, and a seltzer water, please.”
“Okay, girls, let me go put that order in and I’ll come back and talk for a minute.”
Ruth hustles away in her red waitress uniform with a white apron tied around her waist. She looks like Olive Oyl, her bony knees and elbows sticking out as she scurries off behind the counter to the kitchen. I look like her—tall and thin and dark—but I hope I’m not quite so Olive Oyl-ish as she is. For one thing, I’m only just starting to develop my figure. I hold out hope that my boobs will be bigger than Ruth’s. Lots bigger, please God. For another thing, her brown hair is a little darker and straighter than mine, and she wears it real short, even though Sara Lynn is always suggesting that a nice shoulder-length cut would be very flattering.
“Who am I trying to impress, Sara Lynn?” Ruth will hoot when Sara Lynn brings up ways Ruth could improve her appearance. “You? Hope?”
I sink into my seat and think about how good my cheeseburger is going to taste. Chet, the cook, always makes me extra-big ones and piles on the fries. When Ruth comes back to our booth, she slides in next to me.
“You look different,” says, looking me up and down and pretending to be serious. “Older. More . . . mysterious. Are you by any chance . . .
twelve
today?”
I laugh at her silliness, and Sara Lynn leans forward to say, “I can’t believe she’s turning twelve. Ruth, we’re old.”
“Speak for yourself,” Ruth says, grinning.