But Boone wasn’t listening. He snatched the color sample out of my hand and went to buy four gallons of boring old taupe paint.
Fart watched the argument between Boone and Toni with a little grin on his face, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he climbed his ladder to the ceiling and began reattaching the tin tiles overhead. I went back to the kitchen, but still couldn’t make heads or tails of what I oughta do in there. It seemed absolutely overwhelming. All of it: the sheer volume of physical work that needed to be done to get the place in shape, the never-ending details that had to be attended to—and most especially, the money that was draining out of my bank account like blood from a severed artery.
Lord help me, I must be out of my ever-loving mind.
I was still standing there, frozen and frantic, when Tansie Orr pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and smacked me on the backside. Behind her, DeeDee Sturgis came hauling buckets and mops and about ten gallons of ammonia.
“Get out of the way, Dell,” Tansie said. “ ’Less you wanta get scrubbed and rinsed down the drain.”
I got out of the way. The two of them went to work scouring the kitchen while I cleaned out the pantry closet and put in fresh shelf paper. A couple of times I heard Tansie swearing under her breath as she sacrificed two fingernails to the cause, but to her credit she never uttered a single word of complaint.
It took a full week and a whole lotta elbow grease to get the place in shape, but by the time we got the floors waxed up and the booth seats re-covered, I was beginning to understand what Boone meant by “seeing it with my heart.” I vowed to myself never to doubt him again.
Still, I was constantly anxious about the money. When all was said and done, it took most of my twenty thousand dollars to replace the refrigerator and pay for permits and inspections and get the kitchen stocked. Every time I wrote a check, I felt the lump in the pit of my stomach get heavier, and I couldn’t help wondering if I was digging my own grave.
It was the little things that shocked me most—the price of ketchup and paper napkins and salt-and-pepper shakers. We had to hire the guy from Bug Blasters to bomb the place and get rid of all the critters. I felt like I was, quite literally, stuffing money down a rat hole. But it had to be done. I was already committed.
It was like when I went mud sliding when I was a little girl. We’d set out in the summer rain, find the tallest, slickest bank on the river’s edge, and shoot down the red clay into the water below. I was always scared—afraid of the height, afraid of the speed, afraid of the brown river zooming up toward me. But up there on the top, there wasn’t any question of chickening out because all my friends were egging me on. And once I started the long slide down, there was no way to stop. I just had to take the risk, face the fear, and see it through to the end.
Problem was, mud sliding couldn’t land you in the poorhouse.
I’d grown up in the looming shadow of the poorhouse the way some children live with the fear of the boogeyman under the bed. Not that we were poor, or even in danger of being poor. But every time I left a light on, or didn’t shut the door all the way, or stood with the icebox door open looking for something to eat, Mama would say, “Child, you’re gonna drive us right into the poorhouse.”
At an early age—four or five, maybe—I got the impression that the poorhouse was a kind of dungeon where families were locked up, kids and all. Clamped in irons with water dripping on our heads and rats scuttling around waiting to eat us when we fell asleep.
Later, in history class, I learned about debtors’ prison, and the realization that there really was a literal poorhouse, where people had to go to pay for their financial sins, scared the bejeebers out of me. Never mind that America did away with debtors’ prisons in the nineteenth century; the idea still haunted me, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how you were supposed to pay your debt if you were locked up in a cell.
I don’t reckon Mama intended her poorhouse threat to instill such fear in me; it was just an expression. But she’d been a child during the Great Depression, and had probably seen breadlines or heard my grandmother talking about Hoovervilles and unemployment. When you come that close to the poorhouse, it no doubt leaves an impression on you.
By the time I grew up, I’d lost my terror of the poorhouse. I used the expression now and then, but there wasn’t enough juice in the fear to keep me from risking every dime I owned on this insane scheme of Boone’s. Now it came back full force in my nightmares, in images of dank holes and barred windows and scuttling sounds that made my blood run cold.
I’d done it—gambled everything on the slim chance that I’d be able to make this cafe into a going business. I could almost hear Mama’s voice echoing in my ear: “Child, you’re gonna drive yourself right into the poorhouse.”
Finally, everything was finished. We passed inspection and were ready to open, and by some miracle I had managed to pay cash for everything and still had enough left to hold me for a month or two. Or so I hoped.
I still wasn’t sure I was in my right mind. I could feel the nervous breakdown skulking around the corner, waiting to jump me. I couldn’t get a clear breath, and my jaws ached with clenching my teeth. Truth was, I expected to go under and drown at any second, expected Marvin Beckstrom to walk through the door and tell me I was flat broke. I reckoned this might just be the biggest mistake I’d ever made in fifty-one years, and I’ve made some doozies.
On the day before my grand opening, everybody who had helped showed up to see the transformation. Boone and Fart appeared with two tall ladders and put up a huge, hand-painted sign:HEARTBREAK CAFE
Good Cookin’, Southern Style
Boone came down off his ladder, struck an Elvis pose with one hand in the air, gyrated his hips, and began to sing: “Well-a since my baby left me, I found a new place to eat,
In Chu-la-hat-chie, Mis-sis-sip-pi, down on West Main Street,
Ah-well I, I feel so hun-gry baby, I feel so hun-gry baby,
I feel so hun-gry, I could die.”
Everybody laughed and applauded. And maybe the name was appropriate, all things considered. I was scared out of my wits every time I thought about what I was doing, every time I looked at my dwindling bank account balance. But I figured, all right, it’s done now. No turning back.
“Well, open the door,” Toni said. “Let us in.”
I’ll never forget that moment if I outlive Methuselah. The afternoon sun coming in through those clean windows, glinting off the marble counter and shining across the hardwood floors. The exposed brick on the side by the hardware store, and the wall of booths with a view of the Sav-Mor parking lot.
I reckon by Birmingham or Atlanta standards, it pretty much looked like lipstick on a pig, but even if that was true, I was still in hog heaven. I thought it was absolutely wonderful.
And it belonged to me.
Well, me and Chulahatchie Savings and Loan.
I pushed Mama’s warning out of my mind, made three pots of coffee, and passed around apple pie and peach pie and lemon meringue pie. “All right, everybody,” I said. “Bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be serving breakfast starting at six-thirty, and I expect y’all to be here.”
“Where’s your menu, Dell?” somebody called out.
“Don’t have a menu,” I said. “Whatever I cook, that’s the menu, take it or leave it.”
“If it’s anything like this pie,” Fart Unger said, “that’ll work for me.”
• 8 •
January’s the time most people resolve to turn over a new leaf—lose fifty pounds, quit smoking. Drink less, save more, get their taxes done early for once. Usually by April 14 at 11:00 P.M., those same folks are sitting at their kitchen table lighting one cigarette off another, snarfing down chocolate or swilling beer, and pulling their hair out over their 1040s.
I didn’t wait ’til January. Chase died the third week of April, just about six weeks shy of our thirty-first anniversary. The Heartbreak Cafe was set to open the first week
of June. By the time renovations were done, I had settled on two goals: first, to survive, and second, to still be financially afloat by the end of the year.
Mama probably woulda said those were pretty modest aspirations, but given the circumstances, I figured my best chance of success was in aiming low.
I’ve always been an early riser. I’d get up with the sun, fix Chase his breakfast, send him off to work, and, if the weather was nice, sit out on the back deck and puzzle over the crosswords while I had a second cup of coffee. Didn’t need to rush; I could pretty much do things in my own time, in my own way. Long as I kept a decent house and put regular meals on the table, nobody questioned how I spent my day.
The Heartbreak Cafe changed all that, and mighty quick.
That first morning I got to the cafe well before dawn. I wanted to give myself plenty of time, since I had to heat up the grill and make scratch biscuits for breakfast, and stir up some pancake mix, and put the grits on. I figured on plenty of lulls during the morning, enough to make cornbread, set the vegetables cooking, put together a meatloaf, and fry up some chicken.
God’s honest truth, I had my doubts anybody would show up. Still, I had to be ready just in case.
But I wasn’t in my own kitchen, and everything seemed to take longer than I thought it should. Before I knew it, the sun was coming up and it was nearly six-thirty and I hadn’t remembered to start the coffee or write the menu on the blackboard over the pass-through window.
That’s how I came to be on a stepladder with my butt to the entrance when my first paying customers walked in.
The bell over the door jingled, and I nearly fell off the ladder. Fart Unger was standing there, and Boone Atkins, and about a dozen big burly guys in jeans and boots, men I didn’t know from Adam’s house cat.
I pulled myself together and made the coffee, took orders, served up bacon and eggs and sausage and grits and biscuits. Fart Unger sat with his elbows propped on the table, grinning at me like the cat with the canary.
I went over to refill his coffee cup. “You got anything to do with this, Fart?” I asked.
He beamed. “Those guys”—he pointed to one of the booths—“work with me at Tenn-Tom Plastics.”
“Yeah, I thought I recognized some of them. But what about the rest of these people? How’d they find me?”
“I got a cousin up at Amory who drives trucks. He put the word out on the CB that the best cooking in three counties is right here in Chulahatchie.” He pointed out the window at the Sav-Mor parking lot, where several semis sat idling. “You gonna give me a cut of the profits?”
“You gonna get in there and cook?”
By quarter to eight the truckers had finished their breakfast and gotten back on the road, leaving pretty good tips and promising to recommend the place to other drivers. Fart and his buddies went off to work. Only Boone was left, alone in a booth near the back, drinking coffee and reading.
“You want a refill?”
He looked up. “Yes, please. And a little company, if you’ve got time.”
I got a cup for myself, filled them both, and sat down opposite him. I felt like I’d already worked a twelve-hour shift. I’d gone all jittery inside, the way I do when I get an overdose of cold medicine or too much caffeine. But I hadn’t had so much as my first cup of coffee yet.
“You all right?” he said.
“I think so. I’m not real sure. I feel kind of—”
“Overwhelmed?”
“That’s one word for it. ‘Drowning’ might be more accurate.” I sipped at my coffee and felt myself calming down a little. “When I came in this morning I was terrified nobody would show up. And now—”
“Now you’re not sure you want them to?”
“It’s just so . . . well, so much. Cooking, serving, pouring coffee. Making sure everybody’s happy, everybody’s got what they need. Remembering stuff like this guy wants extra butter, that one asked for Tabasco. And they all want to talk to me.”
Boone glanced at his watch, closed his book, and slid out of the booth. “Get used to it,” he said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Something tells me you’re going to be the most popular woman in town.”
I don’t know about being the most popular woman in town, but I was a shoo-in for the title of Most Frazzled.
Day in and day out, it was always the same. I dragged myself out of bed at four-thirty and drove around the square while the birds were still asleep. When the lunch rush was over and I shoulda been at home putting my feet up and watching Oprah, I still had to count the till and mop the floors and prepare the menu for the following day. Make stew out of the leftover roast beef, or chili out of the meatloaf. Wash vegetables and bake pies and prepare casseroles and have stuff in the fridge ready to go the next morning.
I sure didn’t have time to do any of that prep work while I was flipping pancakes and scrambling eggs. I barely had time to go pee.
I never got home until five or six, and half the time I still had to bake a cake or two. Most nights I’d lapse into a coma in Chase’s recliner before Wheel of Fortune was even over. I’d come to in the middle of some infomercial about a vacuum cleaner robot that scooted around the house all on its own, or glue strong enough to pull an eighteen-wheeler. Then I’d turn off the TV, drag myself into the bedroom, and wake up three hours later to a screaming alarm and a pounding headache.
“You don’t look good, Dell,” Toni said to me one Saturday morning after I’d been doing this for a couple of months. “You need some rest.”
“You think?” The sarcasm came out sharper than I’d intended, but I didn’t take it back. I had glanced in the mirror now and then, and I could see what Toni saw. My life was a car windshield smacked by a rock. Every day the cracks fanned out farther and farther, spreading until the whole thing was a web I could barely see through. I was just waiting for it to shatter and cave in.
“I can’t slow down,” I said. “I’m barely making ends meet as it is.”
Toni frowned. “But you’ve got so many customers. Looks to me like the place is full.”
“Yeah, but it’s like bailing a boat with a bucket full of holes. Everything that comes in seems to drain right out again.”
“Are we talking finances or energy?” Toni said.
I felt a lump forming in my throat and tried to swallow it back. “Both,” I said. “I’m exhausted all the time, and money’s still bleeding out. I’m making ends meet, but just barely.”
Toni narrowed her eyes. “What you need is some help, Dell.”
I may be old, but I ain’t stupid. “Don’t you think I’ve figured that out already? Where am I gonna get the money to hire anybody?”
She didn’t have an answer for that, and left with her tail tucked between her legs. I shoulda felt bad about going off on my best friend in the world, but to tell the truth, at the moment I was too dang tired to care.
• 9 •
The Monday after the Fourth of July weekend, I went to the cafe before dawn, as usual. Even at five o’clock in the morning it was like walking into one of them Swedish saunas—hot, and so muggy it got into your lungs and made you feel like there was a concrete block sitting on your chest.
Boone always said that humidity kills brain cells, and that’s why people in the South move slow and think slow and talk slow and tend to be, in his words, reactionary. I don’t know about all that, but I know that Mississippi in July makes me want to go home, crank up the air-conditioning, and take a nap.
Unfortunately, a nap wasn’t on my agenda for the day. I was gonna be slaving over a hot stove in a tiny little restaurant where all the air-conditioning blew out into the dining room so the customers would be comfortable, never mind the cooks back in the kitchen. I hoped those folks liked their turnip greens salty, ’cause there was gonna be more than ham hock in that pot.
Air-conditioning was the first order of business. I set the thermostat, put the grits on to simmer, mixed up the biscuit dough. I was just getting the lunch casser
oles out of the icebox—homemade macaroni and cheese to go with the ham—when I heard something that, even in the middle of the summer heat, made goose bumps stand up on my arms.
Footsteps. A bang, like somebody had dropped a brick. And then running water, groaning in the pipes.
Upstairs over the restaurant was a small apartment that hadn’t been used for years. A set of rickety wooden stairs went up behind the Dumpster to a single room, a little tiny bathroom, and a corner that served as a kitchenette. I’d only been up there once, the day I rented the building. Marvin Beckstrom had taken great delight in showing it to me, suggesting that, considering my precarious financial situation, I might want to consider selling my house and moving up there permanently. The place was a pit, not fit for human habitation.
I heard another thump, which was a miracle in itself, since I ought not to have been able to hear a thing except the racing of my heart and the pounding in my ears. I grabbed a cast-iron skillet—the one I used for my cornbread—went out the back door, and peered up to the second floor.
It looked like a light was on up there, although it might’ve just been a reflection from the sign on the Sav-Mor Dollar Store. I started up the stairs, skillet in hand, and about halfway up I stopped and grabbed hold of the railing.
What the hell did I think I was doing? It was pitch dark, practically the middle of the night. There could be anybody up there—an escaped convict, a serial killer, a drug dealer. I couldn’t imagine why some mass murderer would hide out over the Heartbreak Cafe, but even in Chulahatchie we watched TV. We knew such people existed.
What I oughta do was go back down, lock the doors, and call the sheriff. What I did was go on up, one step at a time, until I got to the little landing at the top.
The door was closed but not quite latched. I raised the heavy skillet over my head, got ready to swing it, and pushed the door open.
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