Yet she couldn’t blame Charlie. Even before their relationship, she’d been unable to follow through on marrying Paul Rice, not to mention the other men: Looking back, it was as if she continually did the wrong things at the right times and the right things at the wrong times.
But she knew better than to engage in self-pity, and she didn’t want to go back to the pre-Charlie Esther.
On her way back to her hostess podium, she detoured and walked over to Ted, the bartender, drawn by his salacious stare.
“I’ve got a rocket in my pocket,” he whispered, sidling closer, “and that woman, that one sitting over there, at the end of the—no, no, no, not that one—over there, over there. Hell no, not that one! Over there. Don’t stare! Yeah, yeah—her. She’s my release.”
Esther wasn’t sure which woman he was talking about—the one with the piña colada, a pineapple slice perched on her hourglass-shaped goblet, or her Corona-drinking friend—but she didn’t really care.
Ted had driven Esther home one night, put a hand on her knee. But he’d handled her rejection well, saying it was standard, nothing personal. He saved neglected cocktails, abandoned bottles of wine, surplus alcohol from his own complicated system, and stored them in a corner of the bar—partitioned off from the restaurant—for the employees.
Staff interactions were often in a fast-forward, intimate, inappropriate, jocular style, and she was getting better at it.
“I’m in trouble,” she said.
“Big Boss,” Ted agreed, “is not happy.”
“Who told him?”
Ted shrugged, and then moved away.
She walked toward her hostess podium, her four feet of an island. She felt a strange safety when she locked into it, with her forearms on the wood surface, her body leaned against it.
She watched Fred Smith strolling from one table to the next. He wore dark slacks and the cuffs of his shirt were folded to his elbows—casually elegant. He mixed amiably in a conversation, a hand on someone’s shoulder, his head going back in soft laughter; he made a flattering remark (she saw the delight in the customers’ faces), and then moved on to the next table, making his way to the bar.
He’d been avoiding her, so she knew that she was in trouble, even before Ted had confirmed it; she knew that any minute now, Fred would take her to his office and she’d have to endure a meeting.
Fred was listening to two men. The men reminded Esther of peacocks, their chests thrust out, competing for his attention. Then, probably because they bored him, Fred moved away. Before he reached the bar, he sent her a mournful look.
She hated disappointing him, hated that a menial job was proving to be so difficult, hated that she was incompetent, that she had no training or skills. Who would have thought that answering a phone, booking reservations, and seating parties could be so complicated? And all that standing and smiling. People were rude when they were hungry, as if it were her fault!
Last week, she’d booked a party of five at a table that seated only three, and she’d overbooked the eight o’clock slot, causing three parties to leave in anger, rather than wait an extra fifteen minutes. One customer had written a letter (she’d found it on Fred’s desk), declaring his new mission to spread the news of The Palms’ substandard service, all because of her failure to seat him promptly.
She saw a man with longish hair standing at the bar, talking with passion. He fisted his hand, slapped it in the palm of the other—twice—making a point.
A flare of adrenaline rose up the back of her neck, spreading across her in nebulous alarm. Was that Charlie? Could that be him? Excitement made her wobbly, and she steadied herself against the podium.
But then the man laughed, turned, reached for his margarita, and she saw the whiskers at his cheek, his not-Charlie lips and his not-Charlie nose and his not-Charlie forehead.
And her guts tightened in reprimand, wondering why she kept imagining Charlie, when he was obviously not there. He was probably in Greece or the Caribbean or Spain, with his newfound fortune. A woman latched on to each shoulder. She knew that Charlie had inherited money prematurely from his still-breathing parents, and that he was traveling. Brenda had been all too happy to spread this information to her when Esther had seen her at Grandma Eileen’s funeral. But in her sincere effort to forget him (or, at the very least, to forget about him), she was daydreaming he was even more present, and it made her crazy and irrational.
She relived details of their relationship and then analyzed its demise. The stupid things she’d said came back to her; Charlie’s endless, nervous intellectual banter; how she’d said “I love you” by accident while in the throes of passion.
All these memories and more burned through her with poignancy, making him so near that she felt his legs entwined with hers or his breath at her ear, and she would have to shake herself back into the present.
For a long time, she’d believed that she might get a phone call; there had been weeks when she’d stayed beside the phone, not to miss it. But she understood that what had passed between them made it impossible to go back to how she’d felt originally, and that a phone call might complicate any progress. Besides, she decided, Charles Murphy was an incomplete gathering of ideas and promises; he was bound to develop, most likely in all sorts of directions, but just not toward her.
I’m okay, she told herself. I’m really okay. She would repeat it, over and over, carefully, lightly, as she went about her day, trying not to examine this awareness too closely, or lose it with any deeper examination, as if it were a fragile egg she carried in her hand.
Often, she had to seat people she knew, and she could feel them gossiping about her as soon as she turned and left them.
And there was also the shameful anonymity of being ignored completely—unseen. In the beginning, entire shifts had passed without anyone’s acknowledging her directly, unless Fred was there, overseeing the restaurant.
Fred had hired her when no one else would. He’d told her that her first month would be hard, that it would take a while to adjust, and that she needed to hang tight.
Month two, and she hadn’t experienced much of an improvement.
She appreciated Fred’s well-intentioned advice. (“Assholes will always be assholes, no matter what you tell them. They were assholes before you were arrested, and they’ll be assholes after, but now it’s easier to tell the difference.”) But she disliked that he’d done her a favor—that she owed him a debt. It lurked around them, her sense of obligatory constant gratitude, and made her uneasy, unequal.
Most of the waitresses resented her, and she didn’t blame them. Her incompetence affected their tables, and therefore their tips. Often she would see them arguing with Fred, probably urging him to fire her.
She shifted the toothpicks in the brass urn, made them crowd to the left. “Where’s the bathroom?” a man asked, and without looking up, she pointed in its direction.
“Thanks,” he said sarcastically, and she tried reminding herself to be grateful that she had a job. All the same, it could be worse: She had a place to live; she had a job. She had a job. She had a job. Eric (as far as she knew) was sober.
Aunt Lottie had kicked her out, blamed her for everything, including Grandma Eileen’s unglamorous finish, but Esther wouldn’t let her win. She remembered Mary’s look of pitying condescension as she and Rick had carried paper bags full of her things out of Grandma Eileen’s house. Aunt Lottie was already practicing her ignore-and-dismiss technique, making Esther disappear mentally before the demand was accomplished physically. But Mary had handed her a note, written on the back of a deposit slip from her checkbook:
Dear Esther,
This phrase could help.
BELIEVE MORE DEEPLY HOLD YOUR FACE UP TO THE LIGHT!
Please try. Suggestion: more prayer for cleansing. You have so much spiritual healing work to be done. Your behavior has hurt us all. REMEMBER THAT THERE IS NO END AND THERE IS NO BEGINNING THERE IS ONLY NOW. Walk in peace and harmony—less stress for yo
u, too!
And then she’d found a handwritten letter from Mary tucked in one of the paper bags, among her clothes:
Dear Esther,
Try to understand that none of us (no human) ever hurts another one of us unless he/she has been hurt first, usually and firstly when we are little by some well-meaning but confused adult. And this doesn’t even take into account the emotional baggage we carry from our past lives. But I don’t want to get into that!
In the best of all worlds, I would just let you tell me all the details of what it was like for you and listen until you felt fully listened to and fully loved and fully understood—until you had cried every last tear and stormed every last bit of rage. That’s really what we all want and what we all deserve. This is our true fully human legacy. YOU ARE COMPLETELY GOOD AND COMPLETELY LOVEABLE—ALWAYS HAVE BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE!
Love,
Mary
If she killed herself, gave up, Mary would throw a party and Aunt Lottie would come early, stay late.
Fred was watching her from across the bar. She pretended not to notice, arranging a stack of menus, smoothing her hand over the podium. He walked past her and she straightened, tried to look alert, but it felt like a cold wind passing.
THE MEETING BETWEEN boss and employee lasted fewer than five minutes. When Fred opened the door and gestured for her to enter, she noted that he looked tired and sorry, and she was crushed.
She sat in a chair before his desk. Fred sat and then cleared his throat. It was obviously tearing him up, whatever he had to say, and she vowed that she would be a better hostess, that she wouldn’t put him in this position again. She would smile; she would engage customers in genial conversations; she would make more of an effort with her appearance.
Fred inhaled through his nose and blew air through his lips audibly, his chest rising and falling. He folded his cuffs to his biceps. The window by his desk was open, allowing a slight odor of seaweed and gasoline; small waves murmured and lapped, and every now and then the pier creaked. He bowed his head in reflection, his forearms against his desk. “I know you’re under stress,” he said, looking up.
Yes, she wanted to tell him. Keep going. Don’t stop. It’s okay.
“I think it might be good for you to take a leave, maybe take it easy for a while. You might feel better. Then you can decide if you want to come back.”
“What did I do?”
“Maybe that’s not what’s relevant,” he suggested.
Her face was coloring, she knew, because she felt its heat. She needed the money, and she understood that this was Fred’s way of warning her. He wouldn’t make her take a leave. But she wanted to know what he’d heard, who had told him. She wanted confirmation. How much did he know? She leaned back and smiled, hoping to look casual, but he didn’t smile back and she gave up.
She thought of quitting, saving Fred the trouble of having to fire her. She was no good at her job. But she had all her bills to pay; she owed Rick something for letting her stay at his place, no matter what he said. And eventually she wanted to get her own place. No offense to Rick’s taste, but his Thomas Kinkade paintings, the teddy bear collection, and all those framed pieces of lace were starting to grate.
And Rick was planning a trip to Europe—Spain and France—with the money he’d stolen from Grandma Eileen. She was going to go with him, but she didn’t want him to pay, even though he liked to say, “It’s our money.”
She’d rather pay her own way.
At least she’d been cured—knock on wood—of stealing. She hadn’t stolen since her arrest. Rick said that most of the time people were unwilling to give up their defense mechanisms because they provided people with immediate release and satisfaction. He said that people had to see beyond their fears before they let them go. Strange that the things that hurt her and were self-destructive were the things that gave her relief. She used to believe that she was owed, that life shouldn’t be so difficult, and that she should get credit, since she’d been through so much. But she no longer kept score.
Sometimes she tried to add up all her bills—to assess her debt—but the results were staggering: She couldn’t believe it. She would try again, but soon she would get confused and frightened. She ended up shoving all the bills in a dresser drawer and trying to forget them. To get cash, she’d sold her clothes, her sunglasses and handbags, most everything of any value, to Moving Up! on Pacific Coast Highway, for the discounted used-clothing rate.
She needed this job. The routine. The money. She’d wasted time. Had she known sooner what was valuable in life—love, education, compassion—she would have prepared herself. She made discoveries every day, most of which were painful, and the majority of which were about her. She sensed that there must be something greater and more meaningful than the world she lived in, but she didn’t know what it was. Her job, she believed, anchored her, and the only real answer, she decided, was to continue seeking.
The important thing now was to find out what Fred knew. And then she could assess how much damage she needed to repair. She could invent an excuse, a justification for her conduct.
The night in question—last night—she’d been in the third hour of her shift when the Platt party had arrived, a bridal shower party of ten: the woman with the duck lips (her younger double) and her giggling, fake-breasted friends.
A sense of indignation overcame Esther: She had to serve these women! It seemed that fate was pursuing her, killing her; she felt outraged and humiliated. And right away, she sensed that they were mocking her: two of them whispering while watching her.
She showed them to their table. She tried to hand them their menus while they kissed, touched, and complimented each other. (“Oh, you look so pretty!” “I love your earrings!”)
She unfolded the napkins and set them in the laps of the women who were too stupid to do so on their own, as she’d been trained to do. She was disgusted by their brashness, the stupidity of their chatter, and their imbecilic self-satisfaction.
To soften her contempt, she found her nook in the bar and quickly pirated a shot of Absolut peach vodka, and then another, and then one more, fulfilling her quota of three shots per shift.
At first, Ted had questioned her judgment, but whatever he saw in her face had ignited a look of pity in his own, and he’d passed her the bottle without comment. In addition to her earlier consumption of a leftover quarter-full glass of dry zinfandel (on an empty stomach), the result had been like spreading gasoline on a flame, stoking her emotions into a withering, uncontrollable scorn.
A spirit of combat tormented her: She wanted to spit in their faces, to crush them, to strike them down and kill them all.
But she kept her place at the podium—she maintained a semblance of emotional equilibrium, leaned into the wood.
The table was loud and boisterous, and she did her best to disregard the women, avoiding any eye contact.
All might have passed had not one of them shouted, “Excuse me! Hostess! Come here!”
She ignored them.
“Hostess! You!”
She walked toward the table, shaking and furious. She tried to calm down, thinking of what she would say. “How is everything?” she would ask. “Yes, ladies? How can I help you? Can I get you something?”
But when she reached the table, the words died in her mouth. Sour and malevolent, with tear-rimmed eyes, she stared at each face, going down the table, until her eyes met those of Paul’s fiancée.
“Is your name Esther?” she heard, from another woman.
She faced the questioner, blond and young—those ugly clear braces on the bottom row of her teeth.
“We have a bet,” the woman next to the braces woman said. “You’re Esther, right?”
“I want my five dollars,” the braces woman said.
The table broke into laughter, but Paul’s intended looked startled. Her hands were under the table and her eyes were wide.
For a second, Esther became her—a transference. She fingered the
diamond of her engagement ring under the table, her hands in her lap, and stared at the hostess.
“Is she okay?” she heard.
“Just say your name, so I can get my five bucks.”
And then she transferred back into her own raging flesh, and she saw that Paul’s intended was sad, her eyes apologetic.
Esther blinked, and blinked again. She felt as if her guts were being pinched. At the same time, welling up was a surge of compassion for Paul’s fiancée, which confused her.
“I want my five bucks.”
“She didn’t say.”
“Shut up,” Esther said, letting everything release. The faces of the women blended into one pink stretch of skin. “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” and her hands went to the table, she leaned her hips against it. A great pressure loosened—it felt so good. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.”
The braces woman flung her arm out, as if to physically stop Esther from speaking. A bread plate clattered to the floor, a bottle of wine dropped. Three of them rose, chairs flung out, to avoid the spillage. Wine spread across the white tablecloth in a rubycolored blossom.
Esther set her hand in the stain, as if to make a stamp.
“WHAT DID I do?” she asked now.
Fred paused, rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. Then, looking at her as if she should have known better than to ask, he said, “Among other things, it was brought to my attention, by one of our customers, that you were crying last night. In fact, the exact words were ‘weeping uncontrollably.’”
She flexed her legs, and her back went stiff against the chair. She had done most of her crying in the walk-in freezer; she hadn’t expected this.
Fred clasped his hands, his forefingers pressed together and pointing across the desk. “Three employees corroborated this account,” he said.
She looked at his basketball trophies lined up on a shelf behind him, and then down at her lap. She thought of Charlie, and for the first time, he was erased by the crushing weight of reality—she could feel him becoming a memory.
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