“Dad?” I say. His breath is foul and full of noise. I talk to him about the diner, about all the food we served up. He doesn't respond much. Once, he looks at me and says “business,” his fingers shaking, and I come to understand that the decline of the last year has not occurred in his body. When I mention anyone from the old days, he nods quickly and squints, but this has become his response to nearly everything, and I know there is no real memory tied to it.
I had done a half week's worth of good work I knew would please my father. Sunday morning I got up, slicked my hair, drew on my suit and overcoat, carried my mother's red-letter Bible to church for early service. It was a bright fall day; my black shoes kicked through tatters of blown leaves on the sidewalk. I sat beside Mrs. Mashburn, so word of my attendance would find its way back to my mother. The regular morning service had been given over to “Teen Day.” Rick Turner, from my geometry class at the Junior High, stood at the front and played “Amazing Grace” on his Sears electric guitar plugged into a shoebox-sized amplifier. Then came a Biblical skit rewritten in teen slang (“Hey, man,” Buddy Greenwell as Jesus said, “cast your nets on the other side and everything will be cool”). I walked home and opened the diner, cooked myself a lunch of chicken steak, gravy, and white bread, then settled in at the grill to ready for the after-church crowd.
The next morning at six, Joe Whelan stepped in behind the feed store group. He stood looking around the diner and fingering his plastic shark's tooth. My eyes stung; I looked down and began scraping the grill.
“Joe T. Whelan, my best, long-lost friend!” Ray Wilson said, baiting me. “Pull up a stool here, Joe.”
He sat on the stool, placed his hat on the counter, pulled a crinkled five-dollar bill from inside the hatband and straightened its creases. He'd never before had more than a few pennies in hand; I wondered where he'd come by five dollars. Enough money to buy anything listed on the menu.
“Coffee,” he said, “Black.” Sandy shook her head at me, and Ray grinned, excited. I rested the spatula on the grill, wiped my hands on the white apron.
“Listen,” I said, “Your money's not welcome here. Take your business somewhere else.” He breathed through his mouth, the matted ends of his hair quivering like leaves.
“Paying customer,” he shouted. “I say I'd like some goddamn
coffee
” He smacked his hand on the counter, knocking one of my father's napkin dispensers to the floor. The spatula rang against the grill as I yanked it by its wooden handle and drew it up, sizzling with grease, in front of Joe Whelan's face. The ring of metal on metal hung in the air.
“Out. Now,” I told him. Over and over I repeated to myself rule number seven, that we had the right to refuse anyone. My hand shook as if the spatula handle were electrified. Joe Whelan backed off the stool and stood frowning, scratching his beard. He spat on the floor. “Leave,” I said, then watched him pick up and replace the napkin holder, put his hat on his head, and walk out the door.
During the afternoon lull, I carried an armful of grease-spattered aprons toward the laundromat, uptown. I walked breathing diner smells out of the cotton bundle, bumping into people. As I turned the corner by the cafeteria, I nearly tripped over Joe Whelan. He was on his knees, his head pressed against a newspaper machine. Beside him sat a halfempty bottle of cheap fortified wine with roses on the label, and along cracks in the sidewalk ran a stream of reddened vomit. Joe retched, the plastic shark's tooth tapping his chin, his face as gray and parched as old corn husk dolls. He retched again and brought up a wash of air, then fell on his side and began to shiver. Coins rolled out of his jacket pocket onto the walkâhis change from the bottle he'd bought with the five dollars I'd refused not three hours before. My heart shook. I dropped my load of aprons, believing Joe Whelan would die at my feet, that it would be my fault. I pulled him up by his corduroy coat, patched bare in spots, stiff with cold and grime.
“You come with me,” I told him.
I led him back to the Tast-T-Cup, propped him on a stool and got him to swallow black coffee till he stopped shaking and could hold up his head. I pulled a menu off the counter and opened it under his nose.
“Order something,” I told him. “Anything.” He held the menu in his hands, staring at me.
“Coffee,” he said slowly, “Black.” I wrote it down. Sandy walked out of the back holding a cigarette.
“What in hell is this?” she said. “It's a can of worms, is what.” I ignored her, nodded to Joe Whelan.
“Plate of pancakes,” he said. “Lima beans and buttermilk. A hamburger, hunk of pie and a roll. Toast with honey.”
I fixed it all, faster than my father had ever fixed anything, and laid it out on three plates before him.
“Eat,” I said.
And he did. Mouth nearly level with the counter, shoving in the food with his fork, breathing deeply through his nose as he chewed. He downed two more cups of coffee and the buttermilk; I watched the color and heat return to his face. When he finished, he pushed against the counter, drew a deep breath with his eyes closed. He slapped coins from his pocket onto the counterâeleven centsâand walked out the glass door into the sun. On his way out, he shouted back, “Keep the change.” I dropped his dishes in the big stainless sink.
“Black and blue,” Sandy said, staring at me through her thick glasses. “Your daddy will beat your behind.” She shook her head.
My parents returned with their hams, honey, apples, and corn husk dolls. Sandy kept her mouth closed about what had happened, and I didn't volunteer it. My father roughed my hair and squeezed my bicep, told me I'd take over as head grillman someday. My mother gave me a geehaw toy she bought at the Tweetsie Railroad gift shop. My father showed me how to work it. I rubbed the notched stick; the propellers spun first one way then the other.
Much of the time, my father cannot remember that Jackie is my wife. When he speaks he calls her Meg, my mother's name. He insists the cafeteria of the nursing home is his diner; his nurses tell me that twice during the past year, before he was confined to his bed, they caught him in the kitchen of the cafeteria, pulling pots and pans out of the racks. I pretend concern, but as I sit in the dim light of his room at night, closed inside the thin curtain with him, I think of how good it would be if he could get out of bed and rough up my hair, he and I could sneak down to the cafeteria in the dark, whip up a few egg sandwiches and short stacks and then stuff ourselves. But by now he is beyond even standing. I never made grillman.
At the diner, things were soon back to normal, my mother running the counter two days a week, me in school, working weekends and afternoons. Ray and the feed store gang bragged on how I'd thrown Joe Whelan to the dogs. School let out again for Christmas break; I strung lights around the windows, taped a cardboard angel to the inside of the door.
On a Monday morning, out of a cold rain, Joe Whelan walked in. It had been more than two months since I'd seen him. The Tast-T-Cup had a crowd, the men from Westin's Feed, people out early to catch Christmas sales downtown. Joe scraped his shoes on the tiles, drug his hat off his head so it pulled his hair straight down toward his eyes. His eyes bulged, swollen and yellowed. The hat moved in his fingers.
“Pancakes,” he said. “Coffee, toastâ”
“Get the hell out!” my father yelled from the grill. Grease from his spatula dripped. Outside, rain hissed on the sidewalk. Sandy looked over at me; my face burned, and I quickly rang up the check of a gray-haired lady standing before me at the register.
“Out, “Whelan, before I call the law,” my father said.
“Sic the young'un on him,” Ray Wilson said, grinning. I took a five from the woman, my head down.
“That boy'll feed me. Anything I want.” Without looking, I felt Joe Whelan point at me.
“You know this man, Jess?” my father asked me. “He a friend of yours?” I handed the woman her change. My eyes watered.
“Best meal I ever had that boy fixed me.”
“Oh, I don't imagine that's true, now is it, Jess?”
The gray-haired lady smiled and pressed a quarter into my hand. “Here's a little something for you,” she said. I looked at my father.
“You feed those dogs,” I said under his hearing, my lips barely moving with the words.
“Want to feed him, Jess?” He winked at me. I squeezed the quarter into my palm.
“No, sir,” I said. I looked at Joe Whelan. “Get on out of here.”
The cardboard angel muffled the sound of the sleigh bells as the door swung shut behind him. I dropped the quarter into the pocket of my apron.
Our way home, we are delayed by trouble with the car, and do not start back for New York till afternoon of New Year's Day. “We said our goodbyes the night before at Seven Springs, where the nurses gave my father a noisemaker and strapped a tiny fireman's hat to his head. At midnight, they brought grape juice in plastic champagne glasses, and Jackie kissed his cheek. I shook the thin bones of his hand, and noticed the anchor tattoo on his forearm has faded away. The nurse whispered to us that visiting hours were long since over, that we would have to leave. My father slightly raised his head off the pillow and looked at me. “Rules,” he said, and then tried to say it again. I knew it might well be the last thing I'd ever hear him say.
On the road at dinner time, I look for one of my usual places to stop, ignoring a cafeteria with a sign that promises “Open New Year's,” and the bright fluorescence of the fast-food places Jackie points out to me. Jan's House, Sarah's Diner, and Marvin's are closed, dark except for twinkling lights and a lit-up, plastic nativity scene on the counter of Jan's. Dusk turns to night, our oldest begins whining, the baby crying. Jackie draws Danny out of his car seat, opens her coat and blouse to nurse him. I give Lisa animal crackers out of the glove compartment and turn up the heater to lull her to sleep.
“Please,” Jackie says. “Can't we stop for a burger?” She sounds angry and tired. I don't answer her but keep driving, my own stomach pangs deepening. I pass the golden arches, Burger King, and the others with their blinking signs advertising drive-thrus open till three. Of all the things my father taught me to hate, first among them was fast-food restaurants, which in his mind closed us down. When the first fast-food burger stop was put up in townâa red and white tile prefab assembled in pieces off the backs of trucksâmy father stood on the sidewalk across the street to watch the construction, smoking and spitting flecks of tobacco off his tongue. He stood there till dusk. The Burger Palace, as it came to be called, was not built on Main Street, with my father's diner and the other restaurants, but right among the houses in our neighborhood, where Mr. Corgison's place had been torn down. I could see my father through our living room curtains. He stood watching until long past the time the workers had left. His cigar, I noticed, had gone out.
“I know you don't like McDonald's,” Jackie says, interrupting my thoughts, “but would just one time kill you?” Danny makes small sucking sounds.
I remember a cardboard sign inside EAT:
Open 24 Hours a Day, 365 Days a Year
. But the diner is outside Dover, still more than seventy miles away. I look at Jackie in the dim light. She rests her chin atop Danny's head, her eyes watery and dark-circled. In a small voice, Lisa says, “Daddy, I'm still hungry.” The road we are on runs past another strip of fast-food joints; I turn the wheel to steer us into the parking lot of one.
Through its glass front the restaurant is a loud mix of yellow and red plastic, cardboard clowns dangling by strings from the ceiling, a stainless steel counter lined with computer registers and inflatable Santa Claus dolls. My father would despise it.
I think of what I will miss not stopping at EATâthe inside full of grease and steam, waitresses sliding past in slippers and white nurse shoes, old men with their shoulders bent over the counter, the smell of my father's Dutch Masters and Old Spice. Reflections off the yellow plastic shine through the windshield, illuminating the shadowed faces of Jackie with Danny held close, Lisa sleepy-eyed in the back seat. I shut off the car and sit, hearing the engine tick. Such simple things I long forâwarm food and hot, bitter coffee. Jackie looks up and smiles, her eyes full of the easy gratitude that hunger allows.
“You're disappointed,” she says. I shake my head. Now seems like the right time to stop. It's late, and we're all hungry.
O
UTSIDE her house Etta Cayce wears her tattered housecoat without its matching slippers. She is naked except for the housecoat, the open front of it parting and snapping with the breeze. The housecoat and slippers were the last gift from Garrett, in the year before he put the gun in his mouth and ended his days. She remembers that he wrapped the present in butcher paper sealed with freezer tape, that when she modeled the housecoat for him, twirling the silky blue-green folds around her, he laughed and chased after her calling
chickie chickie
âthe name he gave the dozen peacocks that roosted in the trees of their yard.
Etta drags the plastic bucket of kerosene out from the crawl space and hauls it to the side yard. She breaks through the paraffin covering the kerosene, dipping in deep with her soup ladle while rotted crabapples squeeze up through her swollen toes. The sounds of the trees start up, so to shut them out Etta sings the best song she ever knew straight through, “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” She brings up the ladle of kerosene and throws it high into the top branches of the trees. Ladle after ladle she flings in the air, the kerosene raining in drips, filling the air with its oil smell, the smell of their boy, Garrett Junior, long ago sent home from school. She remembers a note he carried from the school nurse, bending him at the sink, pouring the kerosene over his scalp and scratching it in with her fingernails.