Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (25 page)

She wanted to say,
But you’re white
. She wanted to say,
In another
generation, your Lazybones son will change his name from “Stutz” to
“Stuart” or “Star” and the rest of America will have forgotten where you
came from
. But she couldn’t say it. He coughed and this time unfolded the handkerchief and spat into it, so instead she said, “And I suppose you had to walk to school, twenty miles, uphill, in the snow.”

His face brightened, surprised. “Aha! I see you are familiar with Lithuania!”

S
HE WALKED
from Stutz’s and up along Fourth Street. When she got to Claremont, the street where she lived, she kept going, past Walnut and Chestnut and all the other streets named after trees. She hit the little business district, which was still lit for New Year’s, the big incandescent bulbs on wires like buds growing from vines, entwining the trees and lighting the shop façades. When she walked farther, she felt, for the first time, some purpose other than solitude
motivating her. She rushed, and did not know why, until she found it. Clovee’s Five and Dime. As soon as she saw it, she knew what she was doing.

It was warm inside, and she made her way to the soda fountain, even warmer from the grill’s heat. A white man stood at the ice cream machine and whirred a shake. Two white men sat at the counter and talked in low, serious tones, occasionally sucking up clots of shake through a straw.

There was one waitress, hip propped against the side of the counter, wiping the countertop with a rag that had seen cleaner days. Without looking up she said, “Sorry. We don’t serve colored people.”

“Good,” Doris said. “I don’t eat them.” She remembered Helen telling her that this was the line someone had used during a sit-in, and Doris was glad to have a chance to use it.

The waitress frowned, confused, but when she finally got it, she laughed. “Seriously, though,” the waitress said, turning solemn, “I can’t serve you.”

The two men talking looked over at her and shook their heads. They began talking again, occasionally looking over at Doris to see if she’d left.

“What if I stay?”

The waitress looked to the man making the shake, eyes pleading for help. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t make the rules and I feel sorry for you, but I don’t make ’em.”

The man walked over with a shake and gave it to the waitress, who bent the straw toward herself and began to drink it. “Look,” the man said to Doris, “I wouldn’t sit here. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

She sat. Shaking, she brought out her World History book. She’d
made a book cover for it with a paper bag, and she was glad she’d done it because she was sweating so much it would have slipped from her hands otherwise. She set it on the counter, opened it, as if she did this every day at this very shop, and tried to read about the Hapsburgs, but couldn’t.

It occurred to her that other students who did sit-ins were all smarter than she; they’d banded together, and had surely told others of their whereabouts, whereas she had foolishly come to Clovee’s all by herself. She stared at her book and didn’t dare look up, but from the corner of her eye she noticed when the two white men who’d been talking got up and left.

The man at the ice cream machine made himself some coffee and beckoned the waitress to him. When he whispered something to her, she swatted him with the rag, laughing.

Once Doris felt the numbness settle in her, she felt she could do it. She tried at the Hapsburgs again.

The waitress said, “Student? High school?”

“Yes, ma’am. Central.”

“My daughter’s over at Iroquois.”

“We played them last Friday.” Doris didn’t know what the scores were, didn’t care, but had heard about the game over the intercom.

“Well.” The waitress started wiping the counter again, going over the same spots.

When Doris closed her book, about to leave, she said, “I just want you to know I’m leaving now. Not because you’re making me or because I feel intimidated or anything. I just have to get home now.”

The waitress looked at her.

“Next time I’ll want some food, all right?”

“We can’t do that, but here’s half my shake. You can have it. I’m done.”

The shake she handed over had a lipstick ring around the straw, and a little spittle. Doris knew she wouldn’t drink it, but she took it anyway. “Thanks, ma’am.”

O
UTSIDE
Clovee’s Five and Dime, the world was cold around her, moving toward dark, but not dark yet, as if the darkness were being adjusted with a volume dial. Whoever was adjusting the dial was doing it slowly, consistently, with infinite patience. She walked back home and knew it would be too late for dinner, and the boys would be screaming and her father wanting his daily beer, and her mother worried sick. She knew that she should hurry, but she couldn’t. She had to stop and look. The sky had just turned her favorite shade of barely lit blue, the kind that came to windows when you couldn’t get back to sleep but couldn’t quite pry yourself awake.

This collection would not have been possible without support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the Wallace Stegner/Truman Capote Fellowship program, and the MacDowell Colony. Much love to my two families, the Northing-tons and the Packers, both of whom raise storytelling to an art.

Many thanks to my mentors at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Frank Conroy for his ever-vigilant eye; Marilynne Robinson for her infinite wisdom; Stuart Dybek for his unflagging support and friendship; and James Alan McPherson, who is an example to us all.

I am forever in the debt of Connie Brothers, Deb West, and Paul Meintel, all of whom preserved my sanity and made Iowa a happier, brighter place. John Barth, Stephen Dixon, and Allen Grossman at Johns Hopkins University were incredible models of how to live a
“writer’s life.” Special thanks to Francine Prose for her sharp wit and constant support.

John L’Heureux, Tobias Wolff, and Elizabeth Tallent at Stanford were invaluable to me in revising this manuscript. Thanks also to Gay Pierce, who kept the Stegner program running smoothly.

My thanks to friends and peers who have read these stories in their numerous incarnations: Julie Orringer, Edward Schwartz-child, Adam Johnson, Bridget Garrity, Doug Dorst, Ron Nyren, Malinda McCollum, Katherine Noel, Lysley Tenorio, Jack Livings, Otis Haschenmeyer, Rick Barot, Jane Rosenzweig, Carrie Messenger, Brian Teare, and the glorious Salvatore Scibona.

Thanks to Mara Folz for being my first reader and fan; to Felicia Ward for those many “writing dates.” Faith Adiele, LJ Jesse, Angela Pneuman, Cate Marvin, and my sister Jamila are the best friends a girl can have.

Special thanks to the fine editors at
The New Yorker
, Cressida Leyshon and Bill Buford, who took a chance on a young unknown; to Colin Harrison and Barbara Jones at
Harper’s;
and last but not least, to the wise and intrepid Lois Rosenthal at
Story
.

Finally, heartfelt thanks to the wonderful Eric Simonoff, who does triple duty as agent, reader, and friend; to Venetia van Kuffeler, the fab assistant to my editor at Riverhead, Cindy Spiegel, whose time, patience, and skill made this book what it is; and to Michael Boros, without whose love I wouldn’t be.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following magazines, where these stories first appeared, some in a slightly different form:
Harper’s
: “Brownies”;
Ploughshares
: “Every Tongue Shall Confess”;
Story
: “Our Lady of Peace”;
The New Yorker
: “The Ant of the Self,” “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”;
Zoetrope All-Story
: “Doris Is Coming.”

“Brownies” also appeared in
The Best American Short Stories 2000
; “Our Lady of Peace” in
Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts
; “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” in Here Lies, edited by David Gilbert; “Speaking in Tongues” in
The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Work
shop
, edited by Tom Grimes. “Geese” originally appeared in
Twenty-five and Under
.

ZZ PACKER
is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’
Award and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’
Award, and was selected for the
New Yorker
’
s
debut
fiction issue in 2002.

A graduate of Yale, she was a Jones lecturer at
Stanford University. She lives in the San Francisco
Bay area.