Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress

by Ginsberg, Debra

  I spent only a couple of weeks at home with Blaze before coming back to Peppy’s to resume my position behind the counter. We came back to a warm welcome from everyone in the neighborhood. The ladies from the bank presented me with a tiny blue suit and the request that I bring the baby in to see them as often as possible. Kev, Mike, and Jeff brought over a bag of toys and the Bens sent flowers. I was genuinely touched.

  I brought Blaze with me every day and kept him beside me at all times. He always had a full bag of teething rings and toys, but he preferred playing with paper cups, rolls of tape, and takeout containers. He was never as happy as when the restaurant was full of people, noise, and the smells of pizza.

  In the months following his birth, I couldn’t have been more besotted with Blaze or happier in my new identity as his mom. That was the easy part. The difficult part was knowing that the quality of another person’s entire existence depended on me alone. Peppy’s, as it turned out, was the perfect buffer. As long as I was there, surrounded by family, food, and the endless sound of the pinball machines, I felt secure. For a short period, I not only ceased waiting for anything but sought to freeze time as it was, wrapping myself in the warm glow of new motherhood. And for a little while, Peppy’s allowed me to do just that.

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  I believe now that the comfort I experienced at Peppy’s is shared in some small way by everyone who spends time in restaurants, whether dining or working. A restaurant is a place where several basic human needs are met all at once. Within these walls there is food, shelter, and warmth. Often, there is a sense of family. At the very least, there are plenty of people around. One is never really alone at the table. There is certainly some security in this, even if it is only temporary.

  Unfortunately, not everyone in my family was feeling the same euphoria as I following Blaze’s birth. My father’s initial disappointment in the lack of business had deepened into something resembling disgust. It had become evident, after a year of operation, that Peppy’s was not going to take off anytime soon. Maya was wearying of making pizza day in and day out, and everyone had the feeling that Peppy’s was highly underappreciated. The neighborhood was just too tough for the business to work, my father felt, and he didn’t have the time, resources, or energy to keep flogging it. What’s more, he and my mother had become heartily sick of Portland in general and were thinking of moving to California, where life, they were sure, was easier.

  Morale finally hit a low point when Peppy’s was robbed one brisk autumn evening. A scraggly thief held a penknife to my nine-year-old sister’s throat and demanded she turn over the contents of the cash register. My father and Maya, discussing an order in the kitchen, never saw a thing. What kind of place was this, my father later questioned, where a man would hold up a little girl in a pizza place? Shortly thereafter, he put Peppy’s up for sale and all of us started thinking about what we were going to do next.

  It was around this time that my long friendship with Belinda began to falter and eventually fade away. I found it ironic that after spending so much time together, both working and playing, and sharing the most intimate details of our lives with each other, it took motherhood, an experience that could have bonded us even further, to expose the most fundamental differences in our personalities.

  Belinda’s daughter, Celeste, was born a few weeks after Blaze. I took my infant son to visit her in the hospital and the two of us laughed at the fact that our lives seemed to be running on such parallel tracks. We talked on the phone almost daily at first, comparing notes and exchanging information on any number of the topics that new mothers are singularly consumed with. We saw each other frequently as well, going out for walks in the park with our babies secured in front packs. After the first few months, however, Belinda seemed to tire of full-time motherhood. Perhaps she was more interested in the idea of having a child than in the actual child. Her attitude toward her daughter seemed alarmingly like her attitude toward her many jobs: when things ceased to be interesting enough for Belinda, she found a way to move on. It was this, more than anything, that upset me. I knew that my feelings toward Belinda were very critical, and the last thing I wanted or felt qualified to do was to stand in judgment on my friend. Belinda had come to my aid many times and had asked for little in return. She was very accepting and always gave generously of herself. I couldn’t stand harboring negative feelings about her.

  We began to see less of each other in part because of this and in part, I believe, because Belinda probably felt similarly about me. The last time we saw each other, Belinda told me that she and her ex-boyfriend, softened by the birth of his daughter, had started dating again and that she was hopeful that they’d end up getting married. He was worth a lot more money than she’d originally thought, she told me, and he was starting to part with some of it for the baby. And why shouldn’t she be getting some of it, too; she’d had the baby, hadn’t she? It would work out for the best, she believed, and when it did, she planned to

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  have at least one more child, maybe two. We toasted our futures with cups of herbal tea and promptly drifted into noncontact.

  I think of Celeste every time Blaze has a birthday and I remember the two of them dressed up in blue and pink bunny outfits, ready for a stroll in the park. I think of Belinda almost every time I open a bottle of wine at a table and offer her silent thanks for all the help she gave me. I wonder, too, if she’s happy and if she’s found a way to satisfy her restless spirit. And I wonder if she’s still waiting.

  After several months on the market, my father finally got a prospective buyer for Peppy’s. He’d listed the restaurant’s price in the paper as a “sacrifice” and was so eager to be rid of it and move to California that he was throwing into the cost every piece of equipment (including the kitchen sink, which he’d bought), training on how to make the pizza, and all of his recipes.

  Our buyer was in his early twenties and went by several different names, Bud being the one he used most frequently. He drove a very expensive sports car and dressed in silk jackets and tight black jeans. He came with a buddy who had followed him up to Portland from Los Angeles. The two of them couldn’t have looked more out of place behind the counter. When they donned aprons and apprenticed under Maya, we had to stifle our laughter at their total ineptitude. We had no idea why Bud and his partner wanted to buy a pizza place, and we were all afraid to ask. Our wonderment at the whole scenario only deepened when Bud paid for Peppy’s, not with a check, but with a large brown paper bag filled with crumpled tens and twenties.

  “Hmm,” Maya mused, “small bills.”

  “Dug up from the backyard?” my mother speculated.

  “Sshh,” my father warned.

  My parents packed up everything they owned along with my three younger siblings and drove to California within a fortnight of the sale. We heard nothing from Bud or his friend, and after spending almost every day of the previous eighteen months in Peppy’s, we never set foot in there again. We heard that Peppy’s lasted a scant few months after we left and was replaced by a video store, which in turn went out of business shortly thereafter. Years later, however, I found myself working in a restaurant with a waiter who had recently relocated from Portland. It turned out that we were truly ahead of our time at Peppy’s. The district, so amorphous and scattered when we were there, turned into a happening hangout a few years after we left. Apparently it is now one of the busiest thoroughfares around.

  A few months before the sale of Peppy’s, Maya moved in with me and Blaze. My apartment managers, as it turned out, did not mind at all that I was adding a new tenant to the building. In fact, they had been trying to conceive a baby of their own for some time. When Blaze was about nine months old, they moved out of their roomy but gloomy three-bedroom basement apartment and offered it to me and Maya. My sister and I have been living together ever since.

  As soon as Peppy’s had been sold, Maya found a job in a bakery near the apartment and rose before dawn every m
orning to prepare dough of a different kind. My savings were long gone and I was well on my way to amassing considerable debt.

  I went in search of another job.

  The experience of Peppy’s had represented something different for everybody in my family. For me, Peppy’s had provided a bridge between two very different phases of life. I had a new identity, that of a single mother, and all of my decisions from that point on would be predicated on the needs of a person other than myself. I was no longer an observer of my own life, I was an active participant. I was amazed at how irrelevant the “problems” I thought I’d had before having Blaze seemed. Self-indulgent crises about my place in the world seemed meaningless when

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  compared to the visceral reality of a baby’s midnight fever. Blaze’s health and well-being came first, and everything else would have to get in line behind it. I had become, in effect, one of the “real” people in the world around me.

  Then, of course, there was the question of my writing.

  When John and I had first started seeing each other, he had encouraged me to submit my novel to the literary agent whose lecture we attended. The agent had returned my manuscript with the comment that it was long on creativity but short on content. Part of the reason that it was, in her words, “seriously flawed,” was that I was too young and had not experienced enough of life. “Love, separation, birthing, poverty, etc.” were the words she used to describe the kinds of experiences I would need in order to effectively tell a good story on paper. Strangely, although I felt I’d pretty much experienced all of these in one fell swoop with Blaze’s birth, writing about them was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, I wouldn’t write a thing for five years. This wasn’t a conscious decision, more a shifting of priorities. Survival was now paramount on the list. As for my creative energy, all of it went into Blaze. Perhaps if I’d been married and financially secure, I would have found the time to devote to what had always been my passion. I suspect, however, that I would have done the same no matter what my circumstances. From the first seconds of his existence, I knew that Blaze was not a project to be worked on sporadically or when I felt inspired. He could not be gone back to later, and I couldn’t edit my mistakes. I could never rewrite my part in his life. He was, therefore, my work. Everything else would have to wait.

  Once again, restaurant work seemed like the only option, but this time for very different reasons. Waitressing would now provide me with the greatest financial return for the least amount of hours. My goal was to spend as much time as possible with Blaze during his waking hours. Working nights, I’d be able to accomplish this and also make more money than if I worked lunch shifts. Maya and I would also have opposite schedules, and I was most fortunate that she was not only willing but happy to take care of Blaze while I worked.

  Whether out of a desire for the familiar or a need to avoid a protracted job search, I packed Blaze into his front pack and went directly to Molto’s. To my extreme disappointment, Barry had recently quit Molto’s and was planning to move back to New York. I couldn’t imagine the restaurant running as well as it had without him. I also noticed that Pamela had hung on and had gone from being an occasional lunch waitress to a full-time dinner waitress with quasi-managerial status. Almost all of my former coworkers had moved on to other restaurants, and as I sat and waited to talk to the new manager, I noticed very few familiar faces. Even Sonny had gone off to parts unknown. Wes, I learned from the bartender, was still working and had been promoted to kitchen manager.

  “He’s here today,” the bartender told me. “Why don’t you go in and say hello?”

  If it was strange just sitting in the restaurant where I’d spent so much time in what I considered my former life, it was downright bizarre walking through the swinging doors that led into the kitchen with a baby in tow. Wes was standing behind the line contemplating a recipe when I walked in and it took him a minute to look up. He went a little pale at the sight of me and Blaze together.

  “How are you doing?” I asked him.

  “Pretty well,” he responded. “You?”

  “Well,” I said and gestured to Blaze, “I’ve been busy.”

  “Yes, well . . . and how’s, er, John? That’s his name, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s not around.”

  “Oh?”

  “Long story,” I said. “This is Blaze, by the way.”

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  “Blaze. Cool name.” Wes walked around from behind the line and stood next to us, awkwardly studying my son’s face.

  “So, I think I’m going to work here again,” I said.

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Right, why not?”

  “Maybe you could put in a word for me with the new guy?” I asked. “He doesn’t know me.”

  “Yeah, OK.”

  “OK,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “Nice seeing you. Maybe I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

  “Hey, uh,” Wes faltered, “so when was he born?”

  “End of July,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “Oh.” I watched as Wes did some calculations in his head. He laughed finally and said, “He’s a beautiful kid. Congratulations.”

  I didn’t need any help from Wes, as it turned out. The new manager was happy to hire me based on my prior work history at Molto’s and confirmation of my abilities from Pamela. I experienced a feeling of déjà vu when he told me I’d have to start on lunches and work myself into dinners when shifts opened up. For the sake of my financial survival, I hoped this wouldn’t take very long, but I was almost relieved to have a few “training” shifts before going back into the fray. I felt seriously out of shape and, after speaking nothing but baby talk for the previous year, didn’t know if I could have a sustained conversation with an adult, even if it were just to take an order.

  My return to Molto’s was a perfect example of why you can’t go home again. Although the physical structure and menu of the restaurant were the same, everything about the mood inside had changed. There was no longer the camaraderie among the waiters and waitresses that I had found so appealing. Nobody sang and danced in the kitchen. Servers argued over sections, tables, and who would go home first. I was moved to dinners fairly quickly and felt a subtle wave of hostility from those waiters who had logged many more lunches. Aside from Pamela, who had taken a very proprietary attitude toward the restaurant, I was the only server with a child. This placed me immediately in the “no fun” category, and absolutely nobody was interested in hearing my tales of the old days at Molto’s. I went through the motions at my tables but felt curiously out of place and uncomfortable. It was as if I was attempting to wear clothes that no longer fit.

  I began thinking that a major lifestyle change was in order. After years in Portland, I was tired of constantly having wet feet and waking up to gray skies. Our basement apartment was starting to become downright depressing with its insidious mold and lack of light. Maya began complaining of hearing snoring noises in the middle of the night. Although I laughed at her and dismissed her forbodings as hallucinations, I considered them to be another bad sign.

  My parents called frequently from Southern California and raved about the quality of life there. They told both me and Maya how beautiful it was and how much easier things seemed to be. We had to move, they insisted.

  “There are plenty of restaurants down here,” my father insisted, “and they’re all busy.” Still, Maya and I were slow to start packing up our lives and kept putting off a move until “next month.” It took an event that was both comic and frightening to finally spur us into action.

  Maya burst into my bedroom at three o’clock one morning and screamed, “I’m not crazy! There is someone snoring outside my window! And he’s about to roll into my bedroom!”

  I followed Maya into her bedroom, unsure whether to laugh or cry, and saw something that, at first, my sleeping brain refused to accept. There was a vacant parkin
g lot on one side of

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  our building, which ended in a shallow ditch at the level of Maya’s bedroom window. One of Portland’s many homeless people had taken up his nightly residence in said ditch and, in an alcoholic stupor, had managed to roll right into her window. The windowpane, in fact, was all that was keeping him from crashing right into her bed. He lay peacefully against the glass, snoring loudly, an empty bottle beside him.

  “What are we going to do?” Maya asked me.

  “What can we do? He’s not going to fall in. Probably.” I had to laugh.

  “Sure, very funny. It’s not your bedroom. I don’t think you’d be laughing if a drunk fell on you in the middle of the night.”

  “Look,” I reasoned, “he didn’t exactly fall on you.”

  “I’m sleeping in your room,” she said, turning out the light and grabbing the blanket off her bed. “And you know what else?”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “We’re outta here,” Maya said. “This is the last straw.”

  I had to agree with her. Within two weeks, we had shipped everything worth keeping to our parents and given away what wouldn’t travel. I gave notice at Molto’s for the last time, taking some photos of the place on my way out even though I knew I’d never forget it. Again, I finished my last shift with no fanfare. Only hours after it ended, Maya, Blaze, and I boarded a midnight flight to California and were gone for good.

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  eight

  a diner in califor nia

  Diners have a certain image in the collective imagination. Soda fountains, for example. Endless coffee. Inexpensive but filling meals. Bright Formica and stainless steel. Waitresses in pink outfits, on roller skates. Red Naugahyde booths. An innocence of the all-American variety. There is something comforting in the warm glow of a diner, a feeling of safe haven. Diners evoke nostalgia, sweet as cherry pie, of a time when some things, at least, were simpler.