Vinnie's Diner

by Jennifer AlLee

  My father blows out a hard sigh and runs a hand down his face. Nonsensical syllables draw his attention to the playpen. The baby has pulled herself up into a standing position and is slobbering on the padded railing with toothless gums.

  A giant fist squeezes my heart as I watch him lift her up and hug her tight to his chest. She tries to grab handfuls of his hair, but it’s too short and she can’t hold on. He kisses her cheek, breathing in deeply as if trying to memorize the smell of her. Then he puts her back in the playpen and squats down in front of it.

  “I wish I could take you with me, but they don’t allow little girls in the Air Force, not even ones as pretty as you.”

  He pauses, takes another long breath, and glances in the direction of the hall. “If I didn’t have to leave you alone with her, I wouldn’t.” He looks back at the baby, forcing a smile. “But don’t worry. She’s your mom, and she loves you. All mothers love their kids, right? Besides, she needs you. She just doesn’t know it yet.” He’s rambling, talking more to himself than the baby, working through his guilt in the guise of talking to his daughter.

  The baby holds onto the rail with one hand and waves an open-palmed hand in the air while bouncing up and down on rubbery legs. She looks like she’s practicing to be a bareback rider in the rodeo. The man laughs and shakes his head. “Hey, I got you something.”

  He digs in the duffle bag and takes out a white stuffed bear. “Something to remember me by.” He holds it out to her, but rather than grab it, she swats it with her free hand and it falls to the playpen floor. “I’m sure going to miss you. But if I come back around, your mother will just make us both miserable. So it’s best if I keep my distance. But your bear will keep you company.”

  His voice has grown thick and his eyelids blink rapidly. He ruffles the girl’s hair and presses another kiss against her forehead.

  “I love you, Allie.”

  He stands quickly, scoops up the duffle bag, and walks out the door. He pulls it closed behind him, careful not to make it slam.

  I watch the door, wondering how he was able to convince himself that leaving was the best thing for everybody. Hoping he’ll change his mind and come back. But the past is the past.

  He won’t come back. He never did.

  I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, eye level with the baby. Little Allie bounces a few more times before she drops to the bottom of the playpen. She rolls from side to side, then pounces on the bear and wraps herself around it, making baby sounds that no one is around to hear.

  12

  Vinnie’s Diner

  I’m still holding on to the bear, clutching it so tight my fingers hurt. According to my mother, I never let the toy out of my sight. I treated it the way some kids treat their blankets or their pacifiers. It wasn’t until I went to kindergarten and she made me leave it at home that I finally detached from it. The promise of having other children to play with overrode my affection for my old friend. But it was never far away. I slept with it for years, then, sometime in sixth grade, I gave it a place of honor on top of my dresser. That’s where it stayed, all through high school. The last time I saw the bear was when I put it in a storage box before leaving for college. It’s a treasured memento that I’ll never part with, but haven’t looked at for years.

  But now here it is, in my hands. I run my fingertips over it one more time, then start to put it back in the chest. At the last second, I change my mind and set it on the seat beside me. Something tells me that once and item is out of the chest, it probably shouldn’t go back in.

  I shake myself, trying to let loose of my trip to the past. Where did all that come from? Of course, I’d already known part of the story. I knew about the bear. I knew my dad joined the Air Force. I knew I had never seen him again. But I knew all that only because of what I’d been told by my mother. I’d never had any real memories of it.

  Until now.

  But this had been more than a memory. Even the strongest memories I possess have holes in them, lacy doilies of connected thoughts, feelings, and images. But this had been like watching a movie unfold in front of me. A very vivid, 3D movie, complete with ambient sounds and smells. It was unsettling, to say the least.

  Vinnie and Joe are still sitting with me at the booth. They gaze at me, waiting for me to say something. Did I describe the story as I saw it happening? Did they see it with me? I don’t have a clue. But I can tell they know what happened. More than that, they understand it.

  I look down at the bear. It’s forlorn and bedraggled lying against the bright red of the cushion. “I always wondered how he could leave me with her. And why he never came back.”

  “People always have a reason for the things they do,” Vinnie says. “It doesn’t mean the reason is good or that it makes any sense, just that it’s there.”

  I pull a napkin from the silver holder at the end of the table and start fiddling with it, drawing it through my fingers again and again. “So, he found a way to justify leaving me behind. And he really trusted her to take care of me, despite the way she was acting?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he convinced himself that it would be better for me if he never came back?”

  “Yes.”

  I look down at my hands. The table top is littered with the now mangled and shredded remnants of the napkin. I push them off to the side, shaking my head. “You’re right. Just because he had reasons didn’t make them good ones.”

  “Was he wrong?” Vinnie asks.

  My head bobs up and down. I’m a marionette and someone’s jerking on my strings. “Oh yeah, he was wrong. On both counts. Way wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “That whole spiel about not coming back because it was better for me? Baloney. That was nothing but a huge cop out. And the innate love of a mother for her children?” I let out a very unladylike but completely appropriate snort. “No such thing. Just because a woman’s had a kid doesn’t make her a nurturing caregiver.”

  I shift my eyes to Joe. He’s been quiet through this whole exchange. Something in the way he looks at me says he’s got the answers to any question I could ask. But I figure there’s no point in asking. He won’t just hand over the information. Instead he’ll say “The truth lies within you” or something else equally as Yoda-like.

  “Okay, that was fun.” My gaze darts from one man to the other, and I purposely put on an over-exaggerated smile. “Now that we’re done with that, how about we work on getting my consciousness back into my body, or however it works.”

  “You’re not done.” Vinnie gives the side of the open chest a pat. “It’s not empty.”

  Of course it’s not. But after what I’ve just gone through, I don’t think I want to scrutinize any more of the stuff Joe claims I’ve been carting around wherever I go. There’s plenty of crud in my life that’s better ignored than examined. I’m not one hundred percent sure what all is in there, but I’m positive that I don’t want to find out.

  I lean toward them, hoping to reason my way out of this. “Look, as far as I can tell, I’m supposed to learn something about myself from going through this box. Fair enough. So what did I just learn? That my mother was a shrew, and my dad was an idiot. Satisfied?”

  Vinnie winces. “Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”

  No, I really don’t, but I’ll play his game. “Gee, I’m sorry. Let me rephrase that. My mom was extremely upset and emotional, and my dad was naïve and just a little bit selfish.” I wave my hands in the air as if I’m trying to see through a cloud of smoke. “Put it however you want. Bottom line, I didn’t enjoy that little trip into my past, and I don’t want to take another one. I don’t see how any of this is supposed to help me.”

  “Quit whining and look in the box.”

  I turn my head slowly in Joe’s direction. I’m shocked. This is the advice he gives me? Quit whining? Not very Yoda-like at all. But strangely, I find it a lot more helpful. I could probably avoid gentle prodding all day, but a di
rect command is something else. And the tone of his voice doesn’t leave any room for argument. But that doesn’t mean I have to act happy about it.

  “All right, fine. I will.”

  With a frown I reach into the box. I feel a stack of something tied together with ribbon. I pull it out.

  “Pictures?”

  I tug on one of the loose ends, and the ribbon falls away. Since the first image is of my father, I can’t say I’m completely surprised when I fan the photos out in front of me and get a look at the rest of them.

  Vinnie cranes his neck to get a better look at what I’m holding. “Who are they?”

  I’m pretty sure he knows already, but I appreciate him trying to make this an interactive experience. I turn the pictures toward him, feeling like I’m holding up the world’s worst hand of playing cards. “Mom’s husbands and boyfriends. It’s the cavalcade of men that have paraded through my life.”

  A quick glance tells me they’re already in order from oldest to newest. I straighten the stack, then look from Vinnie, to Joe, and back to Vinnie again. I hold up my father’s picture and wiggle it in front of me. “My dad. You already know about him.” I put it on the table and tap the remaining stack of pictures with my finger. “So, I guess you want to know about the rest of these guys, huh?”

  They both nod. Around the edges of the diner, heads turn in our direction. Norma Jeane gets up from the table she’s been sitting at and moves closer. Grimm pads his way across the floor and sits next to my side of the booth. He rests his massive, battle scarred head on the seat and prods me with his cold, wet nose.

  I look down at my dog, and for the first time I notice the similarities between him and my love-battered, stuffed bear. “Et tu, Grimm? Okay. I guess there’s no way out of this.”

  I lift my head and lock eyes with Joe. His expression is intense, almost as if he’s offering to help me call up the memories again.

  I shake my head. “Thanks, but I’ve got this covered.”

  I wish I needed help. I wish I could look at Joe and say, “You know, I don’t remember much about these guys. Why don’t you give me a jolt to get me started?” But that’s not the case. Unfortunately, each one of these losers is ingrained in my brain.

  No matter how much effort I’ve put into trying, they are impossible to forget.

  13

  Vinnie’s Diner

  “Stanley Gaebler.” I slap down a photo of a man wearing black parachute pants and a multi-zippered, red leather jacket straight out of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Stan knew every word of that song and every step of the dance routine. This man had enjoyed the eighties so much that he stayed there, even when the rest of the world moved on without him.

  Vinnie looks down at the photo. “Nice pants. Who is he?”

  “Stepdad number one. And don’t let his outfit fool you. I was five when mom and Stan got married, so that puts this somewhere in the nineties.”

  Mom’s voice is shrill in my head. I’ve gone too many years without a man. I don’t know why she waited until I was five to start dating again, but she did. Maybe it was too hard to date with a little kid hanging on to her ankles. Maybe it just took her that long to decide she wanted to put in the effort where men were concerned. But one day, she made her declaration, dropped me off at Aunt Bobbie’s for the night, and hit the dance clubs. That’s where she found Stan.

  Stan unleashed my mother’s inner performer. To hear her tell the story—and I’ve heard it more than once, because she loves to tell it—Stan was mixing tunes in the DJ booth when he saw my mom out on the dance floor. He left the booth and by the end of the song, Stan had boogied his way between mom and her partner of the moment. His stellar pickup line had included something about her booty and the way she shook her groove thing. I’ve banished the exact words from my mind.

  Six months later, they got married right there in the club. I was the flower girl and so proud of the pink rose petals I threw across the dance floor. But as soon as the ceremony was over, someone came through with a broom and a long-handled litter pan, the kind you see used at amusement parks, and swept the petals away. They didn’t want anyone to slip and fall when the dancing started.

  Mom and Stan did a lot of dancing. I remember the two of them practicing their moves in the living room. They even competed in a retro-disco competition, and I think they came in second. Stan was a good dancer, I’ll give him that. He just wasn’t good for much else.

  “Mom thought it was funny that marrying Stan made her initials G.G. She started calling herself that. She’d say, Hi, I’m Gigi.” I imitate her, making my voice high-pitched and exaggerated. It sounds nothing like my mother, but I’ve managed to capture the essence of the moment.

  “Stan lasted a year and a half.”

  Vinnie tilts his head to the side. “What happened to him?”

  I’d been sick that day, so when Stan said he was going to the club to check out the new lighting system, Mom reluctantly decided to stay home. But she couldn’t stand missing out on the fun for too long. By ten o’clock, Aunt Bobbie had responded to her emergency call to come stay with me, and mom headed out the door with a finger-wiggled wave goodbye. She was all smiles when she left. But finding Stan doing a slow grind on the dance floor with a young blond waitress wiped the smiles away.

  “Stan got tired of having only one dance partner.”

  I push his photo off to the side.

  “When things didn’t work out so well for my mother at the dance clubs, she moved on. To biker bars.” I slap down the next picture and let everyone get a good look.

  “Shooter Williams. Stepdad number two.” He’s wearing a Harley jacket and has a mustache thick enough to hide things in, which he often did. Not on purpose, but pieces of breakfast or dinner could routinely be seen falling out of that hank of hair when he talked. It was pretty disgusting. How mom could stand to kiss him remains a mystery to me.

  Vinnie makes a face. “Shooter?”

  I nod. “Because he could down more shots of tequila than anyone else in Buzz Kill.” All the faces around me wrinkle up in varying shades of confusion and revulsion. “The bar he hung out in. The name was Buzz Kill.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Ewww!”

  So many drawn out sounds fill the air, I feel like we’re on an episode of Sesame Street, the one where we’re all learning how to pronounce our vowels.

  I point back to the picture, to what’s standing next to Shooter. “And this is Butch.”

  My mother never wanted to have animals in the house. Whenever I asked for a pet, she always said no. Even to goldfish. “You’ll just get bored with it,” she’d say, “And then you know what will happen? I’ll end up having to take care of it, too.” But when Shooter moved in, his dog, Butch, moved in with him without a word of argument from my mother. Butch was as ugly as he was bad tempered, but Shooter loved that dog more than his own mother,

  From his spot next to me, a low growl rumbles in Grimm’s throat. I smile down at him and scratch the top of his head. “My feelings exactly.” Grimm may not be a beauty, but he’s got a good soul. My personal belief is that Butch was black-hearted and soulless.

  Vinnie taps the picture. “Was he an alcoholic?”

  I jerk my head up and raise my eyebrows. “Butch? Naw, but he did like to drink out of the toilet.”

  Vinnie stops just short of an eye roll. “You know what I mean. Was Shooter an alcoholic?”

  Yeah, I knew what he meant. “Well, that depends on who you ask. Not when Mom met him. Not technically. He was a recovering alcoholic. Sober for a whole ninety days.” I frown at the memory. “Then they got married, and he un-recovered real fast.”

  “That’s terrible!” Norma Jeane squeals.

  “Yes, it was.” Sober, Shooter had been rough around the edges, but nice enough. Drunk, Shooter went beyond any reasonable definition of rough. Alcohol chased all the nice out of his body, leaving a pretty unpleasant person behind. “He was
a mean drunk, too. Yelling, throwing things. And I’m pretty sure he hit my mother more than once.” As skilled as my mom is with a makeup sponge and concealer, she never could completely erase all the bruises.

  “Did he ever hit you?” Norma Jeane’s voice escapes from her lips in a whisper, so thin and airy the question almost evaporates before it reaches my ears.

  This isn’t something I like to think about, and I sure don’t want to talk about it. Maybe I should just move on to the next picture—

  “Did he?” Joe speaks up. I should have known he wouldn’t let it go.

  “Once.” I made the mistake of changing the channel when he was out of the room. I don’t know for sure what he’d been watching . . . a rerun of Cops, I think. And what eight-year-old girl likes Cops? I just wanted to see what else was on, but he came flying at me like I’d insulted his mother. Or kicked his dog.

  Mom saw it all. She told me to get ice for my face, then she sent me to my room while they yelled at each other. Even though my head was under my pillow, I could hear them scream. Then something crashed. The next day, my lip was split, my cheek was purple, a lamp was in the trash, and Shooter and Butch were gone. Which proves that even my mother has her limits.

  “That one lasted six months. Good riddance.” With a flick of my wrist, Shooter joins Stan.

  I look at the next picture and can’t help but laugh. Poor Morris.

  “I’ve gotta warn you, this next one is going to be a surprise.” I look around at the expectant faces and then put the photo on the table. “Ta da! Here he is. Stepdad number three.”

  Complete silence. This was not an unusual reaction when people first met Morris. His extraordinarily long face, prominent front teeth, and gangly limbs gave him a strong resemblance to a horse. And not a particularly handsome one.

  Vinnie clears his throat. “She decided to go another way, huh?”

  “Yep.” Mom met Morris Singleton at night school in a class called Tax Preparation for the Mathematically Illiterate. He was the instructor. She dropped the class, but picked up a new boyfriend. “I guess she thought it was time to try a calm, stable life.”