Vinnie's Diner

by Jennifer AlLee

  Mom: “How could this happen?” The words are delivered in a kind of sob that removes almost all the consonant sounds.

  Aunt Bobbie: “Calm down, Georgie. At least talk to the doctor before you go to pieces.”

  Good advice, but Mom goes on like Aunt Bobbie hasn’t said a thing.

  Mom: “What am I going to do?”

  Aunt Bobbie: “What are you talking about? You don’t have to do anything but stand here. Or go sit in that chair. And pray, if you can remember how.”

  Ooo, nice dig from Aunt Bobbie. As usual, Mom continues to ignore her sister.

  Mom: “But she’s been unconscious for so long. What if the doctor makes me decide?”

  Aunt Bobbie: “Decide what?”

  Mom: “About pulling the plug. What if it comes to that? How can I do it? How can I make that kind of decision?”

  “What?” I propel myself from the booth, scrambling for the radio. My toe catches on something and I almost fall, but I jerk my body upright and regain my balance. I end up hunched over the radio, screaming into one of the speakers. I really hope this thing works both ways.

  “Don’t touch the plug!” I’ve got one hand on top of the radio, the other on the side. It’s the closest I can get to making physical contact with the crazy woman standing next to my body in some sterile hospital room that I can’t see. “Stay away from the plug!”

  Aunt Bobbie: “For heaven’s sake, Georgie, get a grip. Why would you even say such a thing?”

  Jake: “Both of you, stop. I think she can hear us.”

  His voice is low, but his words have the same effect on the women in the room as if he’d pressed a mute button. The only thing I hear for the next few moments is the monotonous background noise of the medical equipment. When Mom and Aunt Bobbie do start talking again, they’re practically whispering.

  Mom: “What?”

  Aunt Bobbie: “Why do you think that?”

  Jake: “Because right after you talked about pulling the plug, her heart rate spiked.”

  A little glimmer of pride sparks to life in my chest. Jake is pre-med, but even so, he has to be paying pretty close attention to me to notice something like that. Then I remind myself that I cut Jake loose, so I have no right to have any feelings about him anymore, proud or otherwise. Like a candle doused with water, the spark fizzles, crackles, and dies.

  There’s more jumbled conversation coming out of the speakers. Watch what you say and How was I supposed to know? They’re speaking in hushed, almost reverent tones now. I guess none of them wants to be the one responsible for pushing me over the edge.

  I turn back to Vinnie. He has that “I told you so” look on his face. He doesn’t need to say a word for me to know what he’s thinking. See, you can control more than you think.

  I raise my hands in surrender and take a step toward the booth. “Okay, so I can make my heart rate spike. Good for me. If I ever get out of here, I’ll have another skill I can list on my resume. Or maybe I’ll pull it out at parties. It oughta be a real crowd pleaser.”

  “You are a very sarcastic young woman.” He looks at me through narrow eyes, but his voice is warm. He reminds me of a grandfather who knows he should be scolding his grandchild, but he’s just too fond of her to do so.

  I stare him down, waiting for him to give me more information about what’s going on at the hospital, but I can’t intimidate him. He simply stares back, unblinking and unfazed. Eventually, I’m the one who has to look away. And my eyes fall right on that blasted chest. I sigh. There’s no escaping it.

  The thing is almost glowing. It seems to pulsate, inviting me, calling me to take a look. Come on . . . one look won’t hurt. No matter how certain I am that I don’t want to open it—and I am one hundred percent certain—it sucks me in. I move forward, like a cat inching in, whiskers flicking and muscles twitching, trying to get as close as possible without actually touching it, and curiosity gets the best of me. I need to see what’s in there. I start to put my hand out, but I’m frozen where I stand. Like I stepped into wet cement at Grauman’s and let it harden around me.

  “I’ll bet this is how Pandora felt,” I say under my breath.

  “It’s probably how she would have felt,” Joe says from behind me, “if she’d been a real person.”

  Right. Lucky Pandora was just part of a Greek myth. But here I am, part of a . . . whatever this is.

  Joe puts his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Don’t be afraid. You can do this. You’re not alone.”

  At the touch of his fingers, a sensation slides through my being, flowing from limb to limb, until it permeates every part of me. It’s something I’m incapable of explaining. It’s more than warmth. It’s more than peace. It’s a certainty that even though I’m about to embark on a very rocky road, I will make it through to the other side. But just as soon as I grasp the feeling, it starts to fade. I close my eyes and soak up as much of it as I can before it totally slips away and leaves me empty again.

  Joe gives my shoulder a squeeze. “You can do this,” he repeats.

  I believe him. Even though I don’t want to do this, now I know I can. And even though I don’t understand why, I know I have to.

  There’s nothing left now but to face the chest.

  I take a step toward the booth. Another. Another. I ease myself down onto the vinyl seat. It squeals and squeaks as I slide myself over. I place a hand on either side of the chest and let out a long, steady breath.

  Vinnie still sits in the seat across from me on the other side of the booth. Joe grabs a metal chair with a red and white striped seat and pulls it up to the edge of the table so he’s sitting between Vinnie and me. I look around the diner. Norma Jeane is standing behind Vinnie, her lips pursed and eyes expectant. On the other side of Vinnie, Einstein leans his elbows on the back of the booth’s high seat, his hair shaking every time he takes a breath. Across the room, the kitchen door swings open and Elvis saunters out. He takes off his apron, balls it up, and throws it in the corner. Almost before it hits the floor, Judy Garland dives on it in a swoon and clutches it to her bosom.

  This is my support team: concerned, attentive, and highly dysfunctional. They don’t exactly engender great confidence.

  I close my eyes again, just for a moment. Take a few steadying breaths, fill my lungs with air, and then empty them. There’s no way I can put it off any longer. I steel myself, open my eyes, and reach for the chest. Then I stare at it.

  Wait a minute. . . .

  Relief floods through me and I fall back against the booth’s padded backrest. “I can’t open this.”

  “Why not?” Vinnie asks.

  I’m almost giddy, grinning like an idiot and waggling a finger at the front of the chest. “Because it’s locked.”

  This revelation makes me a whole lot more comfortable with the article on the table. Since the chest is impossible to open, I’m not afraid to touch it anymore. I turn it around so Vinnie and Joe can get a look at the fat padlock secured on the latch. “See? Locked.”

  “That’s okay. You can still open it.” Joe’s voice is indulgent, like a teacher gently leading his student toward an answer.

  I frown at him. “What do you want me to do, rip the lock off?”

  “You have the key, Allie.”

  “No I don’t”

  “Yes you do.” His tone remains gentle. “Look in your pocket.”

  This is crazy. I’d know if I had a stray key on me, wouldn’t I? I’ll just have to prove that he’s wrong.

  I stand up and start jamming my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. “I’m telling you, I don’t have the key for this thing. I’ve never even seen—” My frantic movements stall as my fingertips brush against something hard and thin and warm. Slowly, I pull it out. Gripping it between my thumb and forefinger, I hold it out in front of me as far away as I can, like it might be radioactive.

  It’s a long key made of some kind of dark metal with a loop at one end and two big, uneven teeth at the other.

/>   “How did this get in my pocket?” I look from Joe to Vinnie.

  Joe smiles. “You’ve always had the key.”

  My eyes return to the mysterious piece of hardware as I drop back onto the seat. What he’s saying makes no sense. How did this key get into my pocket?

  Vinnie turns the chest back around so the lock is facing me again. His simple act speaks volumes: No more excuses. It’s time for you to open it.

  I don’t have the strength to argue anymore.

  I slide the key in the hole and then stop. I grab on to a new hope. Maybe this won’t work. Maybe it’s the wrong key. Or maybe the lock is so old that it’s rusted shut. I hold my breath. Then I twist the key.

  The movement of the tumblers is smooth and fluid, almost as if the lock has been well oiled and maintained. With a clunk the body of the lock falls free from the hooked piece of metal at the top. It’s cold and heavy in my hand as I turn it sideways and slide it out of the latch. I lay it on the table and stare at the chest. There’s nothing keeping me from looking inside now.

  Still, I hesitate. It brings to mind all the summers I’d spent swimming at the public pool near my mother’s house. I was always the girl who lingered at the steps on the shallow end, putting in first a toe, then my whole foot, then stepping in up to my knees, then my waist. Each new step brought a renewed shock of cold that I had to get used to before going in any further. While other kids were jumping into the deep end, taking the full force of the cold water at one time then getting right to the fun, splashing and chasing each other, I would drag it out, making myself miserable until I was finally in all the way. How many hours of summer did I waste because I was afraid to jump into the water?

  The fast approach would probably be a lot better now, but I still can’t do it. I undo the big, metal latch on the front, letting it fall with a clank. Next, I ease my hands up the side of the chest’s smooth, varnished surface until I get to the lid. With my thumbs at the corners, I give it a push and slowly lift it up. The hinges creak in protest and I freeze, bracing myself for whatever pestilence is going to fly out and ravage the earth. But the only thing that escapes is a slightly musty smell. Exhaling a breath, I push the lid up the rest of the way, up and over, until it’s all the way open. I move forward in my seat, spine a little straighter, and crane my neck to look inside the box.

  A sob catches in my throat. I reach in and my fingers grasp soft fur, worn bare in spots. It used to be white, but as I take it out and hold it in front of me, I see it’s now mostly pale yellow with darker patches of brown here and there. The paint is almost completely rubbed off of the once-shiny black plastic nose, and one ear is missing, the rip mended haphazardly with thick, dark thread.

  Peppy the Polar Bear.

  I hold him in both hands, my fingers digging into his lumpy softness, unable to tear my misty eyes away from his cloudy brown glass ones.

  “That must be a very special bear,” Vinnie says.

  I nod. “It was a gift from my father.”

  “When did he give it to you?”

  “The day he left me.”

  “Tell us about it.” Joe’s voice, soft and encouraging, finally gets me to look away from the bear. Now I’m locked on Joe. For the first time since I entered the diner, someone’s asking me to do something that I wish I could do. But I can’t.

  “I was only a year old,” I say, shaking my head much longer than necessary. “I don’t remember it. I just know what my mother told me.” And when it comes to the men in her life, I have serious doubts about most of the things my mother has told me. I’m not even certain that the bear came from my father. For all I know, she picked up the toy at a thrift store and just told me it was from him.

  Joe leans in closer to me. “But you were there the day he gave it to you. You’ve got it in your mind somewhere.”

  He puts his hand on my wrist, and something sizzles up my arm as if I just brushed against an electric fence. His eyes are clear and bright, and as I look into them, they swallow me up. And I know he’s right. The memory of that day is part of me, buried to be sure, but solid and unseen like the foundation of a house. I can’t deny it’s there, whether I want to remember it or not.

  I bring the bear to my face, my nose pressed deep in its fur. Smells of talcum powder, men’s cologne, apples, and other things I can’t distinguish imbue me with a sense of time and place. The diner becomes hazy, fading into muted colors around me. I shut my eyes and let myself be carried along by the strength of the memories building inside my head.

  11

  A small apartment—California—twenty plus years earlier

  I open my eyes.

  I’m standing in a small living room. The walls are painted a neutral cream. There’s a squatty entertainment center and television on one side of the room. The other two free walls are lined with a loveseat and a sofa, both in the same shade of coconut shell brown. There’s no other furniture in the room: no coffee table, no bookcase. The middle of the room is taken up by a mesh-sided playpen. The baby inside it is yapping to herself and playing with her toes, but no one’s around to see.

  Muffled voices come from another room. I turn my head in their direction.

  The voices get louder. A door opens at the end of the hall, and a man walks through it. His jet black hair is so short it stands up by itself, and his jaw is clenched so tightly I’m afraid he might bust off a tooth. He leans forward under the weight of the duffle bag slung over his shoulder. The woman who follows behind him is animated, her arms flailing, hands drawing pictures in the air to match the words that erupt from her lips.

  My mother. Even though she’s over twenty years younger than the last time I saw her, she looks pretty much the same. She certainly sounds the same.

  She grabs the back of the man’s collar and yanks him to a stop, nearly toppling him.

  “You can’t just walk away. How can you do this to me?”

  Now things start to click. The baby, my mom, and the man she’s got by the collar . . . his eyebrows are drawn together. They’re thin for a man, and they become even thinner on the outer edges. They almost seem to disappear. I know those brows. I’ve seen them for years, every time I look in the mirror.

  For the first time in my adult life, I’m looking at my father. On the day he walks out of my life forever.

  He drops the bag, and his arms fall limp at his sides. I see him clench and unclench his fists, trying to get himself under control. After a moment he turns around to face her.

  “I’m not the only one doing this. You had a part in it, too.”

  Her cheeks flame, and she jumps at him. “Don’t you dare. After all I’ve done for you!” She jabs her finger into his chest, punctuating each statement. “I cook! I clean! I take care of your kid!” Her arm swings like the grim reaper wielding his scythe as she points an accusing finger at the playpen. The oblivious baby is on her hands and knees now, nose right up against the mesh side, pressing herself toward the adults.

  The man’s shoulders slump in defeat. “I know having a baby wasn’t part of the plan, but she’s here now. She’s your kid, too, you know. She belongs to both of us.”

  The woman’s eyes are wide, almost wild. “Yes, she does belong to both of us. But you’re walking out on her. You’re abandoning your own child. What kind of a man does that?”

  He frowns, his eyebrows drawing together in a V. He hesitates. “You know it’s not like that.”

  Uh oh. He showed some weakness. And a tiny bit of self doubt. No way will my mother let an opening like that go by. As I watch her, I can almost see the wheels of her mind turning, the gears shifting. “How can you do it? How can you walk out on her? On your own flesh and blood?”

  I roll my eyes to the ceiling. She’s laying it on a little thick with the melodrama. But then I look at my dad. She’s obviously hit a nerve. Maybe she’s on to something after all.

  The muscles across his jaw line tense. “I’m not leaving my child,” he says slowly, deliberately. “I’m lea
ving you.”

  Nope. She lost. Her pretty face contorts into a mask of anger and, in his face, she spits a string of profanity worthy of a Bruce Willis movie.

  He drops his chin and takes a step back, but he stands up under the brunt of her tirade. When it seems like she’s run out of ways to tell him how awful he is, he looks up at her again. “I’m sorry, Georgie, but I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve tried. I really have. But you’ve changed so much. I don’t know what happened to you, but you’re not the same girl I fell in love with.”

  The transformation in her expression comes so quickly, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. She steps to him, her face soft and sweet, and puts her hand lightly on his arm. “I can change. I can be that girl again.” Her other hand curls around the side of his neck, her fingers stretching up to touch his hair. “I can be any way you need me to be. Just don’t leave.”

  The room is silent. He looks at her closely, eyes narrowed. The temptation is clear on his face. Should he believe her? Should he give her another chance? But he finally shakes his head. “I wish you could, but I don’t see how things can get any better. You’ve been like this for over a year.”

  He doesn’t say it, but the implication hangs in the air between them. You’ve been like this since the baby was born.

  She yanks her hand away from his neck, letting her nails dig in and rake across his skin. He grimaces, and I can see the three red welts she left behind. But that’s not enough. Her arm pulls back, and she slaps him hard across the face. The sound echoes in the small room as she whirls around and runs back down the hall. A wail pierces the air as a door slams, and the pictures on the cream walls shake.