No one ever told me how useful a backpack could be. You can keep your valuables in it, carry it around with some modicum of ease, and use it as a weapon if need be.
Well, he reacted like any man would who wanted to protect his penis—he forgot what he was doing. I could see cars reflected in my side mirror slowing behind us as the big truck squirreled from one lane to the next.
The trailer he pulled wagged in and out of sight. Vehicles split off of the road behind us. As I clutched my backpack tight, I could feel the outline of the only book I was carrying with me, the Bible. When I looked up again into the mirror and saw those cars peel off onto the roadside it reminded me of a bad version of Moses in the Old Testament parting the Red Sea.
Then, I held on for dear life to the seat and the dashboard in front of me. We slowed to about forty- five when we careened off the shoulder next to the fast lane. He ended up burying those big truck tires deep into the thick silt of the median. Through the whole thing, his dick was out.
Can you imagine what they would have thought had we crashed and died? Christ. I wanted out. That’s all I was thinking. I unbuckled my belt, held my backpack tight, and jumped from the high seat nearly into a tumbleweed that had partly jammed under the front tire. He was tucking his Johnson back into his pants and yelling at me like it was my fault. Calling me a slut and words like that.
I waved down traffic to let me run across to the other side and set off on foot for nearly three miles. After about five minutes, I heard state patrol cars approaching. They passed me fast coming from the opposite direction en route to the accident behind me. My momma always told me not to hitch rides with strangers. Guess she was right.
I swear I was getting a tan as I walked farther south.
And, the shoes I wore that day weren’t meant for too much walking. They were espadrilles with a floral design and a yellow that matched my summer dress. I’d found them in a Sears catalog at this little gin joint where I served drinks in a dreary overcast fishing town along the northern California coast. When I saw the outfit on that pretty model, I made my decision right then and there to leave for a warmer climate. That’s how I came to Sunnydale.
* * *
Fifteen years passed and a lifetime passed with them. During the early spring of 2007, at forty, I buried my only husband.
Bobby was quite a bit older than I was. He was fifty when I walked into his diner and I was twenty-five. I met him the first day I sauntered into Sunnydale. I didn’t feel like catching another ride to some place I’d never been before, and I wanted a glass of lemonade with lots of ice in it like a hot-weather person might drink.
My dress clung to me like gauze sticking to a honey jar. Bobby noticed me through the window (he told me a few nights later when we first made love). I fell for him hard and he returned the favor—something his wife and daughter didn’t quite appreciate. But, he was my first real love. He’ll be my last too. I miss him like a child misses hard candy at Christmas time.
His seducing eyes and soft touch make me quiver just to think about. He liked to wash my hair and brush it out after it dried. He treated me like an angel. Bobby used to tell me my skin reminded him of cream-freckled coffee. He said my big boobs were too big but that he could learn to live with it.
My name changed to Georgette Carlisle. When I arrived here, it was Georgette Daniels. My long hair is still long but I keep it pulled back now and I have crow’s feet that show the many times I smiled with Bobby.
Our relationship was organic, if you will, like it was meant to be. Although Vanessa, Bobby’s ex-wife, tried to stop it, we married soon after their divorce. But, he left her side the moment he saw me and I joined his the moment I saw him. Vanessa was a good woman. She only did what any other woman who still loved her man would do. She fought to keep him. But, there was no keeping Bobby from me.
Vanessa knew she’d lost the battle and finally agreed to a divorce.
Bobby moved us into a new house where we made a lovely home. It had a nice big fireplace where we’d camp out in an oversized sleeping bag on cold winter nights and it’s where I still live today.
We’d pull blankets off the bed to cushion the cherry floor under us. We only had one bedroom. The house wasn’t big but it wasn’t small. It was perfect for the two of us.
Bobby wanted our place to blend with the desert. He helped place thick wooden beams over each of the doors and the arbor. The Indians and Mexicans used to build their walls from adobe. Adobe is a mud mixture formed into bricks and baked in the hot sun. It takes on the colors of the earth—warm sienna’s with hints of rose. There’s a lot of clay in the desert earth. That’s where the rose color comes from. We built our house with adobe and together we lived in a pink house. Pink, being one of my favorite colors and having an entire house in that hue, delighted me no end.
Bobby loved to cook and was real good at it too. That’s probably why he started the diner in the first place. It was his passion. On the back patio of our home, he built himself a barbecue with a brick fire pit where we cooked many dinners. The garden was mine. He helped me rototill a nice big spot and he built around it a sturdy wooden fence, gave it a coat of honey-colored stain, and we decided there we’d grow a vegetable garden.
Vegetables, I love vegetables. So, in they went! All sorts of seeds—broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, carrots, celery, lettuces, parsley, chard, garlic, onion (green and sweet yellow onions), green beans, snap peas, tomatoes—everything a person needs for a salad and a side dish. Then, Bobby built me another box—a special box—one that snaps together for potatoes as they grow tall rather than using old tires by stacking one ugly tire upon another ugly tire.
We ate well because of that garden. And, Bobby built all of it for me. I never imagined life could be so sweet.
After daddy, through the parade of men momma brought home, she never once brought home a man like that. I never knew a man like that existed, until Bobby, that is.
When he died, I was completely alone. Momma had long since passed on during one particularly bad Georgia winter a couple years after I’d moved away to California. Bobby and I didn’t have many friends, being fifty when we met and me being twenty-five. Well, people my age were a little immature for him and his a little too mature for me plus, I don’t think anyone ever approved of us. Still, we never felt lonely because we always had each other.
His daughter, Roberta, disowned him when he left Vanessa so our holidays were not spent at big family get-togethers or the way most folks think of spending holidays. We’d still fix huge dinners with our cold crop of root vegetables—sweet potatoes and squash. Our turkey was small but mighty and always moist. I’d learned from my grandma at a young age how to fix a turkey proper. You always baste every thirty minutes and you roast it slow and evenly until the last hour when you crank up the heat high to four hundred degrees to brown. My turkeys always turned out moist enough to fall off the bone. The trick is never to cook a turkey with stuffing inside, breading dries it out. You shove citrus inside instead—lemons, tangerines, oranges, limes anything you can get your hands on. Cut them in half and stuff them inside. Citrus are natural tenderizers ‘cause of their acid. I’d slip leaves of sage in-between the skin and the breast meat and butter—lots and lots of butter—slathered inside and outside the bird. Rub salt and pepper hard into the skin, and you’ll have the best damn turkey this side of the Mississippi. I’d lay money on it any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Bobby loved my cooking. He’d come home from the diner and tell me my cooking could outdo his but he always had nice things like that to say.
Vanessa cooked for the diner before they divorced.
He handled the business side of things and she handled the kitchen. When they split half of the wait-staff quit with her. Bobby had a hell of a time trying to make ends meet. We were building a new home and the diner seemed like it would fail on more than one occasion. After a couple of years, people forgot about all the nasty gossip and things smoothed out. I was w
orking too. I’d gotten a job at the gas station. It was just down the road in the same strip mall as the diner.
This gas station wasn’t your normal gas station. This one had a curio shop with all sorts of knickknacks for people visiting and vacationing in Arizona, specifically Sunnydale. T-shirts that said, “I survived Sunnydale, closer to Hell than anywhere!” And, “You haven’t lived till you’ve spent the summer in Sunnydale”—funny stuff like that. Cups, mugs, forks, spoons, gold-nugget bubble gum, cactus locked inside snow balls, scorpion resin paperweights, little fake saguaro cactus magnets, tiny pots with real ‘old grandfather’ cactus. All sorts of crap that you can pick up easy and give away as mementos of your time spent here.
Since I arrived, I’ve fallen head over heels in love with Sunnydale. The folks are honest and good and the earth is real. Bobby and me survived the lean times and built up quite a nice little diner, restaurant really. After he’d prodded me enough times, I decided to leave the gas station and help him out in the kitchen. Slowly, I started to add recipes of my own to the menu, ones that would cost little but present well. The first new dish I added was fettuccine alfredo. It included a side salad of organic greens and tomatoes and a chunk of garlic toast. We first served it as a special to see if people would go for it. When we’d sell out night after night, Bobby decided to add it to the menu. It went on like this for years and now that little diner has been named Best of Sunnydale for the past five years. People travel north all the way from the big city just to have dinner with us.
I’d worked the diner for going on fifteen years.
Vanessa and Bobby ran it for thirty years before that.
Never once, since I’d been around, has she come in and, now, that was all about to change.
CHAPTER 2
Two large women working together in a tight kitchen looks a lot like a herd of hips and breasts throwing food around. Mix in one woman who has an attitude and stir in another who cries uncontrollably as the wind blows, well, it’s not a pretty sight at all. We found our newly formed partnership trying.
The first day proved disastrous. Vanessa wanted to do things the way she used to, the way she’d done them over fifteen years ago. I tried as diplomatically as possible to explain we’d changed the menu considerably—no more mashed potatoes and gravy or
creamed hash on toast. We’d updated the fare to suit a finer palette. She didn’t appreciate the implication that her food wasn’t up to standard and took to pouting but continued to work nonetheless. I had to force-feed the new menu down her throat. She spit it back at me like a baby in a high-chair.
“What the hell is radic-chee-o ?” She said it phonetically—the way it looks. My mistake was correcting her.
“Radichio. It’s pronounced radeekyo.” I went on. “It’s a purplish-red leafy kind of vegetable. Sort of looks like cabbage. It can taste mildly bitter. And, it’s great for Italian dishes.” I was explaining all about the proper pronunciation and everything a person might want to know about or do with raddichio, on and on. I was chopping up something at the time and didn’t pay attention to the offense she’d taken from me telling her all the radicchio facts that filled my pin-sized head. I was just chattering along like a chipmunk after a nut.
“I don’t need you telling me how to pronounce words, young lady.” Vanessa barked out her objection, untied her apron, threw it onto the counter, and walked off. “Vanessa, I didn’t mean…”
She didn’t break her stride and left the kitchen before I could finish my sentence. She went straight for the bathroom, disappeared inside and slammed the door. Hard.
We were prepping for lunch and dinner. We were both trying to work the kitchen, the way we had when we each worked with Bobby. He had always done the rest—host, cashier, supervise the wait-staff and bus- people, do the books, marketing and promotion… all that was Bobby. The name, “Bobby’s,” for heaven’s sake, represented the brains behind the organization. The diner was all about Bobby. I was just a glorified worker in the back and as the day plodded along, I realized that’s all Vanessa ever was during their marriage. A fear gripped me while Vanessa threw her temper tantrum in the john.
“Vanessa! Come here please.” My voice must have sounded a bit panicked because she popped out almost instantly.
She was wiping her nose with her hankie and sniveling.
“What?”
“Have you ever worked the front?”
“That was Bobby’s job. Why?”
“We don’t have a front person.” I looked at her in terror. “Do you think you can handle the front, Vanessa?”
“Are you trying to get me out of the kitchen?”
“Vanessa, I’ve never worked the front. You’ve never prepared the new menu. What else can we do?” We looked at each other helplessly.
“Shit. I haven’t run a cash register in more than twenty years!”
“Do you think you could figure it out?”
“Well… I do have this sweet little laptop at home with all the bells and whistles. I even have wide-band Internet. I can do almost anything on my computer. I don’t see why I can’t figure out a silly old cash register.” Her defiant demeanor gained momentum as she spoke and filled me with hope. “I just need the operating manual and I can learn how to run it. Sure. Why not? Can you see people’s faces when they see me at the front door? Ha! What a hoot. Yes sir. What will people think now? Ha! This is getting weirder every minute.” She giggled and, at that, turned, and left.
I laughed out loud and for the first time since Bobby died. I shook my head and smiled. We had no idea how bad the night would get.
***
The first phone call came only an hour before the doors opened. Glenda, the head waitress, was down with some grizzly infection that made her sound like she’d gone down on a cactus. Vanessa and I figured that with the three other waiters we could manage. We had José bussing and, if need be, Vanessa could serve some of the tables. Bobby decided long ago that he only wanted a restaurant with sixteen tables. He told and retold me why only sixteen tables. I used to say to him “Yes, dear.” I figured it was better than saying “Shut up.” You see, with sixteen tables, only three waiters were necessary. If one couldn’t make it, two could definitely handle the room. They’d work a little harder, make a little more money in tips, but could handle the room.
Unfortunately, the second call came a half hour later.
Billy, a sweet sexy transient thing with a propensity toward overimbibing called in drunker than a skunk. She said she’d make it in if she had to but she might puke on a customer. She laughed. I fired her. This left us desperately short with only one waiter for the grand reopening.
“Vanessa!” I screamed as if I’d cut off my finger. She came running in.
“What is it?”
“Billy just called in drunk. I fired her. We’re down to one waiter.”
“Have you called anyone else?”
I nodded ‘yes’ but shrugged my shoulders that I couldn’t find anyone.
“No one’s available. What are we going to do? This was supposed to be our big reopening night since Bobby died. What are we gonna do, now?” That’s when I lost it. I thought I’d been strong up until then. I was proud how well I was holding up through everything— Bobby’s sudden death, the funeral, loneliness, Vanessa getting half the restaurant, all of it. The pressure had built and built to a level I couldn’t contain. I just went off. I cried like a baby. I didn’t make much sound. My shoulders shook and I caved in.
“Georgette.” Vanessa said it in a whisper. “For crying out loud, Georgette, I know this seems bad now.”
I stopped momentarily to see if she was joking but she wasn’t. I started to cry audibly.
“Oh, now, now. Look, things will be fine.”
“No they won’t. They’ll never be fine again. Everything is over. I can’t do it. I thought I could but I just don’t think I can.”
“Please, Georgette, don’t cry. You’re going to make me cry. I have to greet people
in less than a half hour and I always look like a lobster when I cry.”
Vanessa came over to my side. She held me with one arm around my shoulder and tried to console me. I still couldn’t stop crying but in those few minutes, I felt how kind Vanessa could be. Her perfume smelled like jasmine tea. She was petting my head and talking me down. I finally lowered my hands from my face and took in a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Vanessa. I guess all the stress just got to me.”
“You gonna be okay?”
I nodded I would.
“Good. That’s good.” Then she grabbed me face front and said, “Now, what the hell are we gonna do with only one waiter?” She smiled at me for the first time since I’d known her.
Well, needless to say, every dinner was late coming out and getting to tables. The waiter, José and Vanessa served tables, bussed and earned every dime they made that night. I cooked over seventy dinners. Vanessa was warm and greeted everyone with a smile. And, she was a whiz on that cash register. I overheard her proclaim to a customer, “Well, stranger things have happened I’m sure.” As she commented, she patted Mr. Rigger on the back as he was leaving. Mr. Rigger had lived in Sunnydale nearly sixty-five years. He and his wife, Bethany, frequented the diner often when Vanessa and Bobby were still married. They stopped coming in after the divorce, but started back up about seven years ago. I guess they forgave Bobby.
Never once had they spoken to me.
CHAPTER 3
Going through my husband’s belongings was one of the saddest times in my life. Prolonging the advent of this task was my first desire. Let It Be, the Beatles song, came to mind. “Mother Mary where are you?” I’d poke my head into his closet and smell his scent. Then, I’d shut the door. Time after time, I’d go through the same thing. Sometimes when the mood hit, Gangster, my cat, and I would sit on the floor and rummage through old pictures, newspaper clippings and letters he’d mailed to me. He was funny that way. Instead of handing me a card or note, he’d mail them to me instead. What a thrilling way to receive someone’s love, federally!
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