Backseat Saints

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “You ain’t got drugs in here, do ya?” Kim’d said that time.

  “Of course not,” said Rose in her best pep-squad girl voice, picking up her towel. She was trying not to glance at her bed. A pair of red fuzzy dice was lying beside Rose’s uniform. The dice were Kim’s, and Rose had stolen them out of the coat closet. She planned to take them to work and sneak to hang them in the short-order cook’s car. He seemed like he was a single pair of fuzzy dice away from lighting out for Vegas, and since he couldn’t keep his hands off her ass, Rose Mae wanted to give him a nudge.

  Kim didn’t notice the dice. She didn’t seem to notice Rose’s state of undress, either, even though Rose Mae Lolley laid bare was worth seeing: long waist, tightly curved hips, creamy skin. Kim turned laboriously and began her drunken shuffle out. Some lesbian, thought Rose, tossing the towel over the dice in case Kim looked back.

  “I don’t do drugs,” Rose called after her, still working the perky, and Kim grunted in a way that could have meant satisfied or disappointed.

  With no safe space, Rose kept her smiling shell on all the time, but some days it felt as thin as the candy pink cotton of her retro fifties waitress uniform. The uniform had a white Peter Pan collar and a miniature apron. It was cut to fit and the skirt was short, and when Thom Grandee came in on a double date that first evening, his girl didn’t like that uniform one bit.

  The sign by the door said, “Seat Yourself,” so Thom did, sliding into one side of a four-top booth. His date followed, and the other couple sat down across. Rose was the only waitress on at this hour. She could tell by looking they were from the A&M Kingsville campus. She’d pegged them as sports boys, taking their dates for eggs after the victory party.

  And it had been a victory. Rose Mae could smell it on the boys as she came around the counter bringing the coffeepot and four plastic-coated menus, a mix of pheromones and beer and fresh male sweat. The smell of win.

  They were both good-looking boys, but her eye went right to Thom. He was six feet tall with a thick, meaty build that said football to her, and she liked the Roman nose. She also liked the way he eyed her as she swayed toward them. To the other couple she was a vague pink waitress shape, bringing menus. Thom looked.

  Thom’s date had a high ponytail that was beginning to unravel into fronds onto her pretty neck. She had a mound of bangs, flat on the back side, teased into a rigid foam of curls that humped over her forehead. This late, her Breck was beginning to fail her, and the bang puff was listing to starboard.

  When Thom spent too long looking at Rose’s face before the inevitable stealthy eye slide down her body, Rose could feel the girl bristle up. Rose was only twenty-one, but this girl looked young even to her. A freshman with a glamour shot fake ID. The girl narrowed her eyes, venomous, telling Rose plain that she wasn’t used to chapped-lipped waitrons with no tan stealing her male gazes. She’d no doubt been the prettiest girl in her high school, but Rose was willing to bet that it had been a small school.

  “Good morning!” Rose gave them her best three A.M. cheerful, passing out the menus. “Welcome to Duff’s. I’m Ro. I’ll be taking care of you this morning.”

  They all had flipped their mugs right-side up, so Rose leaned across to pour coffee, first for the dark-haired boy, then for his date.

  “Morning,” Thom said back.

  He was the only one who spoke to her. She turned to pour his coffee. And then, because he was looking at her face again, not her tits and not his date, looking at her like she was a person, she found herself saying, “So, what position do you play?”

  “Outfield,” he said. “Sometimes third base.”

  She shook her head. “I asked what position you played, mister. I didn’t ask what you did in spring to stay in shape.”

  He grinned then, giving her an assessing nod, like he was adding smart and sly to the pretty. “Strong-side safety.”

  “Oh. Fast boy,” she said, and started filling his date’s cup.

  “What the hell are you doing?” his date demanded, bangs atremble.

  Rose stopped and tipped the pot upright, smile fading. “I’m sorry?”

  “Did I order coffee?” Bangs asked.

  Rose said, “I’m sorry. You turned your cup over.”

  “Yeah. Because I want hot cocoa.”

  “Sure thing,” said Rose. “I’ll get that while y’all look over the menu.”

  “What can I get for you today?” the girl said to her friend across the table. “What would you like to drink? Would you care for a beverage? You’d think you’d get those lines on, like, the very first day of waitress school.”

  Rose felt the fever of a blush rising in her cheeks, and she knew it was painfully visible on her pale skin. Dropping her eyelids, she focused on her feet so that none of them could see the furious deeps in her eyes. She held her hand very still to keep from pouring scalding coffee over that bang puff. She could practically smell the ashy scent the girl’s hair products would release, could hear her surprised cry as the hot liquid seared her scalp and ran down to blister that smug face. While the girl was screaming and clawing at herself, Rose would say, calmly, “You turn your cup over in a diner, it means you want coffee.” Then she’d call an ambulance.

  “I apologize,” Rose said. Her voice was trembling with the effort that it took to stay her hand. She picked up the cup with the small splash of black liquid in the bottom. Made herself pivot. Forced herself to walk away.

  Duff’s was quiet. She heard her every footfall on the floor. There were the two obligatory old drunk guys silently nursing coffee at the counter, yellow-skinned because they had maybe half a working liver left between them. They hadn’t asked out loud for their coffee, just flipped their mugs over and waited to be served. A couple in the back had cuddled up on the same side of their booth, whispering to each other. No one was feeding the juke. She could hear Bangs saying something low and giggly. She caught the word Casper.

  Her blush was traveling, flushing the backs of her pale, bare legs. The girl’s friend was laughing with her now in a high-pitched trill that sounded to Rose like a mean pig squealing.

  Back behind the counter, Rose dumped a packet of Swiss Miss with minimallows into a clean mug. That girl, Bangs, was wearing a sundress, crisp green and new. She had a sheer white sweater thrown around her shoulders. It was a frivolous sweater, the kind a doting mother would buy along with new bedding and a tiny dorm refrigerator. Rose would bet her week’s tips that that same mother kept Bangs’s girlhood room intact, waiting for Christmas and spring break.

  And meanwhile here was Rose, prettier and smarter and nicer in public, drifting motherless from town to town. Rose lived alone in her dank room with no lock on the door. Even Kim’s damn cat, Boo, could open Rose’s door. He’d stand on the back of the couch and bang the knob with his scabby paw. He was all over scabs. A flea allergy, Kim said, but she never took him to the vet. He’d creep into Rose’s room when she was sleeping and slide under her blankets to press against her side, desperate and moist. Rose was allergic to cats, but she dry-swallowed Benadryl and let Boo press and press against her, because she was that desperate right back.

  She acted like a girl in hiding, but her father was too busy, what with his part-time construction work and his full-time drinking, to ever come looking. No one else came, either. She daydreamed her long-gone mother would burst in, crying, “I’m so sorry! This time I’ll take you with me!” or that her high school boyfriend, Jim Beverly, would reappear to shoo the foul cat away and say, “Here you are! Thank God, I finally found you!” They never came. The room, the cat, the diner, the chafing mask of a happier girl, they were her whole real life, and she was living it.

  It should be me in that booth, Rose thought, a college girl like Bangs, smart and busy and worthy, going places with a sharp-looking sports boy watching. For half a minute, bantering about football, the smiling girl with the sass and the bouncy step hadn’t been a skin. Rose had really been her, and it had felt like coming home t
o someplace new and clean.

  Bangs could have spared her that thirty seconds, because Bangs had all night. Hell, Bangs had all year, and more years coming. Rose poured hot water and watched the cocoa foam to life. All Rose had was prettiness, a spoon, and the right to stir the cocoa of bitches until it was smooth. It was too much to swallow, and Rose found she had literally built up a fine and bitter coat of spit inside her mouth.

  She couldn’t help it. She had nothing, and her thirty seconds had been ruined. She crouched down, her sweet second skin finally off, disappearing behind the counter. She pursed her mouth into a kiss and bent her head over the mug. The long wad of spit drooled down into the cocoa. Rose stirred it in. She was smiling now, a genuine and ugly thing, so wide that it showed her back teeth.

  When she looked up, Thom Grandee was leaning over the counter. She froze, more naked in that moment than she had been the day Kim came barreling into her room. He saw her. He saw the real Rose Mae Lolley, no longer hidden by Ro-the-perky-waitress. His face wasn’t readable.

  She stood up, slow, holding the mug, trying to call back her sugary smile.

  He said, “I came to get change,” and his smile was plain and open.

  She blinked stupidly at the dollar he held out, uncertain. Maybe he had only just poked his big head over the counter when she looked up?

  “For the jukebox?” he said.

  “It takes dollars,” Rose said, her voice rusty. “It’s one song for a quarter, but if you put in the dollar, you get five.”

  “That’s cool,” he said, retracting the money.

  The closest drunk said, “Refill?” It seemed he was blessed with the power of speech after all. The red vinyl on his stool creaked as he shifted his butt, backing away from the surprise of his own voice.

  Thom said, “Want me to tote her cocoa back to the table for ya?”

  He couldn’t hold the plain face he was making anymore. His eyebrow quirked and his bland blue eyes changed. They filled up with enough devil to match her. He had seen.

  She felt another blush coming. “I’ll make her a new one.”

  She pulled the spoon out, but he was already reaching for the mug.

  “I’m Thom Grandee,” he said.

  “Ro,” she said. She let him take the mug.

  “I saw that,” he said, and for a second she thought he meant the spit. Then he gestured with his free hand to the gold name tag pinned north of her left breast. “Rose Mae,” he read. “Go ahead and get that guy his coffee. No worries. I’ll take this over.”

  She went to pour for the drunk, peeking out from under her lashes as Thom Grandee walked back to the table with the cocoa. He handed it to Bangs.

  The second drunk was pointing at the doughnuts in the cake stand. Rose got him one and then picked up her pad, prepping to check on the couple in the back booth and then go take Thom Grandee’s order. All the while, she watched him watching Bangs sip spit.

  As she came across to their booth, Thom pried the mug from Bangs’s fingers. All four were laughing and talking now. As she came toward them, Thom was saying to Bangs, “Didn’t you go to kindergarten? Didn’t you learn to share?” and as Rose came close he lifted the cup and drank, and his eyes met hers over the rim. He was drinking in her spit, greedy, taking all of it, though the cocoa was still so hot that it must have been scalding him. He opened his throat and drank it down and didn’t for one second look away from Rose.

  “Oh, my God! You hog!” Bangs said, laughy-teasy. “Now you have to buy me another.”

  “What can I get y’all to eat?” Rose asked cautiously.

  They ordered their breakfasts, and at the end Thom Grandee said, “And Caroline wants another cocoa.” He grinned at Rose. “Exactly like the first.”

  She recognized him then. He was every boy that had ever belonged to her, from her daddy on down. He’d recognized her, too, when he’d peered over the counter and seen what was under the sweet waitress. He liked the whole package. He would be back. Rose smiled and walked away.

  She’d been the prettiest girl in her high school, too. Maybe she didn’t get her diploma, but she’d damn well learned how boys worked. He’d come back to the diner alone, soon, hoping to follow the blush he’d seen on the backs of her legs all the way up, as far as she would let him. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, she would see him coming toward her through the big front window, moving fast in his swingy athlete’s gait. She would have to stay ahead of him and keep him coming toward her, fast and sometimes angry. She’d stay in sight but out of reach. If she kept him on the far side of that window glass long enough, she could keep him always coming toward her.

  He was coming toward her now.

  I could hear him, his big feet pounding up the trail.

  My lips were moving soundlessly, but I recognized the shape of the words. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. My mouth was getting a jump start on the thousand rosaries I’d have to say to get clean after killing him.

  I felt the vibrations of his pounding run, heard his sure and steady gait. I socketed the barrel into the well-oiled cradle of the gun. I felt more than heard it slide home while my lips shaped, Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  I saw the top of his head clear the gentle upslope of the trail. I pulled the hammer back, waiting for the cool metal to shift in my hands and come alive. This gun, put together, was stronger than the sum of the lumps that had bounced around in the bottom of the bag. I’d brought it with me all the way from Alabama, an object stolen directly from my childhood. It belonged to Rose Mae Lolley, not to me. Rose Mae had held this gun a thousand times, and each time, it had felt as if her blood was circulating through it. It had always done her will as surely as her own hands did.

  But not today. Pawpy’s revolver was a dead bird cradled in my fingers. No heartbeat.

  I could feel the air Thom Grandee pushed ahead of him wafting past me, bringing me his scent. I looked down the barrel and saw that it was shaking. I was Ro Grandee, righteous in my bruises, shaking my hands to save my husband from myself. I tried to steady them, breathing in so deep it felt like I pulled the air past my lungs into my stomach, swallowing the next words. Pray for us sinners, now, and the hour of our deaths.

  As the prayer ended, I thought to myself, Put the gun down. These days even Catholics get divorced. But if I left or started up with lawyers, he would kill me. The airport gypsy had told me so, and I’d believed her to the marrows of my ill-mended bones. God help me, I believed her still.

  Thom Grandee himself had told me he would end me, many times: Across the table during breakfast. With his big hands wrapped around my throat, flexing to close me at his will, then granting me the barest sip of air. When he moved inside me like a savage and I wept with it, it felt so good. Those times it sounded like the sweetest promise ever made. Don’t you ever leave me, Ro. I’ll see you dead before I’ll let you leave me. I’d long known I couldn’t simply pack a bag and call a lawyer.

  But the gypsy had told me he’d also kill me if I stayed. I hadn’t ever allowed myself to think that. When she said it out loud, I heard it ring in the deeps of me, true as gospel. One day, and soon, I’d push him so far he couldn’t come back. He would put all of his big weight behind his fists and break me and be sorry later. Shooting him was only jump-starting some self-defense. Yet my weak hands shook, and my fingers felt rigid, unable to squeeze, and my mouth was shaping out another silent plea to Mary.

  He was rising over the slope like the sun. Two more of his huffing steps and I could see his shoulders. Two more brought me a view of his trim waist, and it was then I realized that he sounded wrong. Thom kept fit, so why that huffing breath? Was it my breath? Was I so loud? His footfalls had a shuffling echo.

  I had no time to be distracted by his noises. I sighted him down the length of my trembling barrel, and my vision blurred. I might have been crying. It seemed to me that he left a thin red wake, like he was trailing a single, mournful streamer. I let him be blu
rry, let the gun come into sharp focus. When I was little, before he even let me shoot a pellet gun, Daddy had shown me this very revolver in two pieces, innocuous. He let me look down the hole and put my finger in it.

  “Rose Mae, this is the only safety lesson you will ever need,” Daddy said. “But I’m going to tell you ever’ time you shoot. Until you know it in your guts. You see down that hole? You must never, never point that hole at anything, at anything, ever, unless you want to see it utterly destroyed.” He said it with no irony, while he and I together looked down that very hole, its dark eye looking back at me, the barrel cradled in my daddy’s hands.

  Now I was sighted on the center of Thom’s chest, where I had so many times pressed my ear to hear the boom of his large, red heart. He was ten feet away. I was stiff, half-blind with tears, and I knew then that I would let him pass, unharmed. I was spineless enough to let him kill me, when it came to that. My eyes closed, the gun pointing at air or the owl or Thom or nothing.

  I could see my own death, accept it, see his hands close around my throat too hard, too long. But I could not see Thom. At once my hands were loose and easy and my own, and I could squeeze the trigger. So I did.

  It seemed only half a second passed between aiming and my eyes closing, between looking at the backs of my eyelids and my hands easing enough to let me pull. I was squeezing even before I felt the scalding tears that were pushed out of my closing eyes on my cheeks. The suddenly living gun contracted in my hands, once, twice, spitting bullets that I felt leave me before I heard the fierce crack of splitting air. Eyes still closed, tears dripping off my jaw now to spatter down my shirt, I heard a terrible, hupping yelp, surprised and not quite human.

  A great calm took me, and the gun became so massive and heavy that my hands dropped. The hole pointed into the earth.

  I opened my eyes. For a minute I could not understand what I was seeing. Thom was standing, jaw unhinged, still trailing his thin red streamer. He was whole and unshot, upright on the trail. The noise grew, became a howling, and as Thom yelled, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” I saw the streamer was my old red leash, saw the tan, crumpled body behind him, at the very apex of the slope. I had missed him, missed him entirely. I had shot my dog.