No Defense

by Rangeley Wallace

  While Cleo, Doris, and two other waitresses prepared for the breakfast rush, I climbed the five stairs to the restaurant office, a small room with windows on all four sides built on a raised platform in the hallway between the front and back dining rooms. A customer once told Howard Bledsoe that the office looked like a glass elevator from a Hyatt hotel stuck between the first and second floors.

  I liked being up in the office, particularly during the busy hours at the Steak House. Inside the office was quiet but not too removed, and from it I could see both dining rooms and the kitchen.

  I sat down at the beat-up wooden desk. From my large shoulder bag I pulled two pictures, one of Eddie and me on our wedding day, one of Jessie and her twin brothers on the side-porch swing at our new home. I placed the photos on the desk between the old Smith-Corona typewriter and the phone.

  Gazing at the handwritten list of lunch specials Roland had left on the desk, I opened the typewriter and began to type. At the top of “Today’s Specials” I typed the date, “June 5, 1978.” For appetizers Roland had listed tomato juice, cabbage and carrots, fried oysters, and a quarter head of iceberg lettuce; the main dishes were chopped steak with onions, fried catfish, barbecued chicken, sirloin patty, and corned beefhash; the vegetables were mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, onion rings, fried okra, and black-eyed peas; and the desserts were key lime pie, pudding parfait, pineapple upside down cake, rainbow sherbet, and Boston cream pie.

  I had talked to Roland about introducing more interesting and healthy food-”city food,” he called it-and he’d agreed to give it a try, slowly, maybe one new entree a month. At the end of this month he’d agreed to try a pasta with salmon and asparagus. I knew he could cook it. The question was whether anyone would eat it.

  I was halfway through typing the list of specials when a busload of gospel singers arrived for breakfast. I saw the line of customers filing in at the same time Cleo appeared at my office door begging for help. This was a part of the job I definitely knew. I had a ball.

  A few hours and nearly two hundred breakfasts later, the dining room was quiet, deserted except for a few late breakfast customers. The Coffee Club members would arrive soon. Everyone else was off to work and errands or back on the road. I turned the “Hostess Will Seat You” sign inside the front door around so that it read “Please Seat Yourself.”

  I glanced behind the beige plastic lattice barrier that separated the dining room from the waitresses’ station to check the progress of lunch preparations. In the glass-fronted refrigerator were four chocolate meringue, three lemon meringue, two key lime, and three Boston cream pies. The coffee creamers were cleaned and refilled. Plenty of chocolate and regular milk cartons were neatly stacked inside.

  Only six of the twelve brown plastic butter tubs had been filled. I peeked around the comer into the back dining room, an area that didn’t open each day until lunchtime. Two waitresses sat at a table finishing that job with the remaining butter tubs, sheets of butter squares, and a pail of crushed ice.

  In my office, I completed the list of daily specials and copied it, clipping each copy into the menu of items we served every day. The menu cover featured a drawing of the main block of Tallagumsa, including SP Drugs, Smith Hardware, the Steak House, and Bowe’s Department Store. I was considering a new cover one day, maybe something with an art deco design. A black, gold, and red geometric pattern would be nice, but I didn’t want to make too make many changes too fast.

  Like Perrier water. I’d asked the Bledsoes what they thought of adding mineral water to the menu.

  They laughed. “Nobody in his right mind would pay more for water with bubbles in it than they pay for a Coca-Cola.”

  “Good point,” I said.

  When I’d assured myself that I had time to relax for a few minutes, I sat down in the Bledsoes’ booth-now my booth. With one leg tucked under me, I chatted with several customers who stopped by the booth, looked at the morning newspaper, and drank a cup of coffee.

  Every table was set with table mats, flatware, and napkins, ready and waiting for the lunch customers. Only three tables were occupied. One of the busboys was mopping the foyer. Outside, the rain fell steadily.

  I had always loved the morning lull. It was like the eye of a storm. We knew the peace and quiet was only temporary, usually lasting about an hour and a half, maybe two. Then, suddenly, a steady stream of people would rush in, eat, and leave. Just as suddenly calm would again prevail, and we’d all collapse. People seemed to magically appear and disappear.

  I felt content in a way I had not in a long time. This was the ideal job. Was is it possible to know something so quickly, so surely? I did.

  When my father came in early for his coffee break, I jumped up and greeted him at the door. “Thanks,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck.

  He kissed my cheek, grinned, and asked, “For what?”

  “My job, the house, Jolene. Everything!” I gushed.

  “It was my idea, wasn’t it?” he said. “Damn, I’m smart. Now get me a cup of coffee and sit and talk to me for a while-if you have time.”

  “You’re so modest, Daddy,” I joked. “Coffee coming up.”

  The other Coffee Club members arrived within ten minutes. After a brief visit, I went back to my booth to eat something. Ben Gainey came in, waved hello to me, then sat down with the group of men for thirty minutes. He took notes in his steno pad and recorded some parts of their conversations on his tape recorder. The members of the Coffee Club obviously loved the attention. There was more than the usual laughing and loud talking from the wall booth that morning.

  After the last of the Coffee Club members left, Ben walked over to my booth.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked. He set the tape recorder and steno pad on the corner of my table.

  “Why, if it isn’t Mr. See No Evil.” I covered my eyes with my hands.

  “Are you going to give me a hard time about that forever?”

  “Maybe. You’re an easy target. How are your allergies?”

  “Much better, thanks. The pharmacist took pity on me Saturday and gave me a miracle drug.”

  “Is this an official or an unofficial visit?” I asked.

  “Both: I need a good breakfast, and I’d like to start talking to you for the book.”

  “Have a seat then. I have a few minutes. It’s pretty late to be eating breakfast, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that you’re eating?” he asked, referring to the slice of cinnamon toast I’d fixed after my visit with my father.

  “Just a snack. I ate at five-thirty.”

  “I must admit I was sound asleep then-at six-thirty too.”

  “You didn’t just get up, did you? What a cushy job.” I smiled at him.

  “I’ve been up-awhile, anyway. I swam in the lake, reviewed some notes, called the Star and rushed over here to catch those guys before they left.”

  “The Coffee Club, you mean.”

  “Is that what they’re called?”

  “That’s what most people call them.”

  “How long has there been a Coffee Club?” he asked.

  “Forever, I guess. I know some of them were coming here when I was in high school Different ones over the years, but there’s always five or ten men sitting there, same time, same place, every day.”

  “They’re helpful”

  “Good, because from the looks of this morning they’re going to make you talk to them again whether you want to or not.” I laughed, then stood up. “You better tell me what you want for breakfast. It’ll be too late to get it in a minute.”

  He gave me his order.

  “Study this map while I’m in the kitchen. When I get back I’ll answer questions about hot spots,” I said, pushing the Steak House placemat toward him.

  The placemat displayed a map of the state of Alabama outlined in black against a mustard background (the same mustard as the waitresses’ uniforms) and included numerous points of interest, such as the capitol building in Mont
gomery, the Ave Maria Grotto, Vulcan, and the Boll Weevil Monument. Across the bottom border of the mat were the words THE HEART OF DIXIE in bold black letters. The same design had graced the placemats for over a decade. Mimi Bledsoe told me that one of the placemat salesmen had wanted to put the Steak House on the map, as if it were a state monument, but she’d thought that would be tacky.

  When Estelle got to work at two that afternoon, I left the Steak House. As much as I wanted a nap, I wanted more to spend the time I had at home before the dinner rush with the children.

  The rain had stopped during lunch, and the air was warm and muggy as we walked around the neighborhood. The twins were in their double stroller and Jessie was next to me. The neighbors we passed stopped and admired the children, receiving in return wide toothless grins from Will and Hank and a glowing smile from Jessie.

  Not all the homes were Tudors, like ours. A few were colonials, and a few old southern Victorians. On each side of the block there were only three or four homes, each with spacious, beautifully maintained yards full of huge old azaleas and dogwoods, their blooms gone weeks ago and replaced by the flowering crape myrtles, hydrangeas, and delphiniums.

  Darrell, Jolene’s son, was doing our yard work when we returned to the house. He was bent over the lawn mower, pouring gas into the tank.

  I fed Will and Hank bottles in the den, then put them in their cribs upstairs and watched for a few minutes as they tried to figure out what their hands were. The week before they’d discovered they had hands, Hank a day before Will. Since then, both of them were obsessed. They brought their hands together, spread them apart out of sight, brought them back again, and pulled on the fingers, repeating the process again and again until they grew sleepy.

  I put Will’s pacifier in his mouth. We’d finally gotten him to relax a bit with the pacifier. Of course, when he couldn’t find it you could hear him all over the house, but sometimes the pacifier seemed to calm whatever was irritating him.

  I left the boys to sleep and sat with Jessie in her room, surrounded by her collection of Barbie dolls. We played “Barbie moves away” over and over again until Caroline Cook, Jessie’s new friend from next door arrived to play with her.

  Jessie was adjusting to the move beautifully. She had her Granddaddy and Glady, her aunt Jane and uncle Buck, and Jolene, all heaping gobs of attention on her. She was only away from home three hours a day, compared to the eight or ten she’d spent in day care in Atlanta. Her camp and nursery school friends were also neighbors, and she’d quickly become part of the gang. She had everything to be happy about.

  I went back to the restaurant at six, about the time Eddie was due home. When I left, Jolene was cooking dinner for the children and him. She’d leave when he arrived.

  Driving to the Steak House, I felt as though I were deserting the children, leaving them at dinnertime without me or Eddie. I didn’t plan on keeping this schedule forever, but had little choice for the time being. At that moment, I wished Eddie hadn’t taken the teaching job, or that he could have waited until fall to begin. Then he could have been home while I put in all the hours at the restaurant.

  I didn’t allow this minor concern to dampen my enthusiasm, however, and when I walked into the Steak House for the dinner rush I paused briefly at the door to watch the scene inside. Waitresses were bustling around the front dining room, serving the forty or so diners. Two busboys were cleaning the remains from dinners already completed.

  When a guest enters a busy, successful restaurant he is drawn in by the smell of good food, the sight of content diners and happy waitresses, and the sound of animated, interesting conversations. He sees a club he wants to join.

  I shivered with delight. My restaurant. My hometown. I was back where I belonged.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Why did the biggest, most important event in Tallagumsa history have to be in the upstairs dining rooms of the Steak House barely a month after I took over? I tried to convince my father and Buck that Daddy should announce he was running for governor in Birmingham, the closest big city, or in Montgomery, the capital, or anywhere else. I told them I wasn’t ready after only a month, that the event might be a disaster. Neither listened to a word I said. I viewed their response as either a great vote of confidence or a sure sign of madness.

  It was settled, though, and as the days of preparation passed, Buck nearly drove me mad too. He came by the Steak House daily, sometimes two or three times, with this or that screwball idea, order, or concern. This menu, that wine. This seating arrangement, that schedule. His demands never seemed to end.

  Two days before the dinner party Buck rushed into the kitchen looking as if he might be on the verge of a sunstroke, his face beet-red, his shirt wet with sweat.

  The dog days of summer in Alabama had begun. Every day was over ninety degrees, dead still and humid. The dog days were said to last forty straight days. If that was true, we had thirty-five to go, and Buck didn’t look as if he’d last that long.

  “We have to find a movie star to come to the dinner,” he proclaimed.

  “We don’t know any,” I pointed out.

  “Everybody gets stars or country singers or somebody,” he insisted.

  “Wait here, Buck,” I said. I went to my office and called Daddy, asking him to come over and stop Buck before I killed him.

  Daddy appeared within ten minutes, lectured Buck on the difference between a campaign manager and a Hollywood sent, and ordered him to leave me alone.

  Buck finally calmed down a tiny bit after I talked Ben Gainey into writing an article on the election and my father for the Washington Star.

  I didn’t understand what Buck was so frantic about. My father had been elected mayor four times, with eighty percent of the vote each time. A result of his generous work on behalf of most of the Democratic candidates in other parts of the state, he was well known outside Tallagumsa. There was no other credible candidate running for governor. The Democratic party was solidly behind him, and no Republican had been elected governor of the state in over one hundred years.

  I wasn’t worried at all about my father getting elected, but I was haunted by all the things that could go wrong at the dinner. The morning of the event I couldn’t sit still, and I left Ben, who often joined me at my booth during the morning lull, sitting alone eating his late breakfast.

  I rushed through the kitchen doors to check once again on preparations for the party.

  Inside the kitchen, Estelle was removing large rectangular aluminum trays of dinner rolls and sweet rolls from the oven and dumping them, tray-by-tray, into the bread warmer. She looked a little silly wearing the oversized silver and red oven mitts on her small hands.

  Behind the stainless-steel island that separated the waitresses from the ovens, the grills, and the cooks, I saw evidence of Roland’s presence. Bacon and meat patties were frying on the grill, com was cooking on the stove, and piles of French fries sat next to the grill, waiting to go into the deep fryer. But there was no Roland.

  I walked up behind Estelle and gently tickled her back. “I don’t think I’ll survive until tonight,” I said.

  Estelle turned around. “It’s going to be fine. No different than the Lions Club dinners.”

  “Except it’s twice as big and four million times more important.” I pretended to hyperventilate and patted my chest.

  “I mean the food and the logistics,” she said. “We’ve done this thousands of times. Don’t worry.”

  “But you’re working on lunch now, not the party,” I said. “Shouldn’t you do something about tonight? Just forget lunch! Maybe we should have closed for the day.”

  “It’s not even eleven, LuAnn. Relax. Take a break. Go home.”

  Roland came out of the walk-in refrigerator, carrying a pack of chops. He walked to the grill and picked up a large spatula. As he flipped the meat patties over, grease splattered on his white apron. He moved the hamburger patties off the grill and snapped his fingers. “Shit!” he said. “I forgot to c
all that new fish distributor.”

  “Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “That’ll be interesting. A dinner with no main course.”

  “All is well,” Roland said, but I didn’t believe him.

  Estelle watched Roland walk out, appeared to think about something, then spoke. “Can I ask you something?” she asked softly, moving up close to me.

  “Sure.”

  “What’s going on with you and Ben Gainey?” Her mouth was set in a determined line.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He’s here all the time, sitting with you at your booth, talking to you in your office. You go off with him all the time, and, well, it’s starting to look funny.”

  “Are you saying I’m not working hard enough or that you think I’m fooling around with Ben Gainey? Or both?” I asked angrily. “Maybe I’ve cut back a little on the hours here, but not much. The restaurant’s running smoothly and doesn’t need my constant attention anymore. So what if I spend a few of those freed-up hours with Ben, helping him with his work?”

  “I’m concerned, that’s all, and I thought you should know,” Estelle said. “Seems like when you aren’t at your booth with him, you’re off helping him meet people or showing him the town or riding horses with him or something. You do some of his typing. You make calls for him. You set up his appointments. You’re always together, LuAnn.”

  “I can’t believe you of all people would be worried about me.”

  “Look, I just felt like I had to bring it up, friend to friend.” She removed her oven mitts and hung them on the wall hook.

  “This conversation is helping me remember why I wanted out of Tallagumsa, Estelle,” I said. “Remember when we were seniors? We talked about how you can’t breathe around here without everyone knowing and then gossiping about it. First of all, he’s a customer, and it’s my job to be nice to my customers. I also think his work is fascinating. He needs my help, and I’m happy and flattered to give it. I enjoy listening to his interviews and hearing about his work. That’s all. He’s smart and he’s fun and we’re friends. Period.”