by Joan Bauer
For starters, there was the cancer.
I went back in the supply closet to get mayonnaise because I needed to be somewhere to think.
I was looking through the sauces and the mustards wondering how all this started.
Maybe it was just a friendly gesture after all her hard work, but something told me it was more than that.
And Addie’s face had gotten all pink like an out-of-season strawberry and she’d looked, briefly, kind of feminine when he asked her.
Addie’s had her share of heartache with men. A few years ago, when she found out that her no-good husband, Malcolm, who deserted her, had died, she cried her heart out, not from love, but from all that got wasted between them. She’d been thinking about getting a divorce, but didn’t know where he was for thirteen years—she thought about getting him declared legally dead, which, she said, wasn’t much of a reach if you’d watched him slumped in his Barcalounger in front of the TV watching football. Addie said she once stuck her compact mirror under his nose to see if he was still breathing.
I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and I didn’t want anything to be more complicated than it was.
Braverman came into the supply closet looking for something. I knew he’d heard the whole thing.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Braverman.”
Braverman cleared his throat like he was choking.
I checked his face for signs of distress like they taught me to when I learned the Heimlich maneuver. I used it once at the Blue Box on an Iranian cabdriver who was choking on a chicken bone and probably would have died if I hadn’t stepped in.
Braverman was breathing fine; just acting strange.
Finally he said, “Hope, do you want to have dinner with me sometime?”
I dropped a plastic bottle of Gulden’s.
We looked at it on the floor. Neither of us picked it up.
“I mean, I know we have dinner a lot when we’re working. I meant out someplace. Together.” Braverman picked up the Gulden’s bottle, handed it to me. He coughed. “A date.”
I said, “What is this, an epidemic?”
I backed out the door and left Braverman in the supply closet.
I don’t get asked out too much either.
* * *
It was 1:00 A.M. when Addie swung in from her off-the-premises dinner with G.T.
Not that I was waiting up for her or anything.
I thought 1:00 A.M. was a little late for older people to be coming in.
“Was it all right?” I asked her.
“It was fine.”
“What aspect of the definition of fine was it?”
“We had a decent time.”
I’ve been to Walgreen’s and had a decent time.
“Give me something here,” I demanded. “A crumb.”
“Does it bother you that we had dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it bothers me, too. I’m going to bed.”
And she did just that.
* * *
I was living in a world of mixed signals.
Braverman said everything was fine, but everything had changed.
He didn’t even make eye contact with me at the diner. He muttered things that only applied to my orders.
Mayo on the side, right?
Medium rare on the burger?
G.T. and Addie were impossible to read.
Once I saw him hug her in the kitchen.
Twice I saw them have enormous fights over Addie’s attempted change to the pork-chop sandwich—putting it on a semolina roll instead of the traditional hard roll. G.T. won both times. Some things, he said, could not be made better.
I sure needed to make something better.
* * *
10:30 P.M.
Braverman was cleaning the grill.
Flo filled the last saltshaker, waved good-bye, and headed home. I took the clown nose from my pocket, put it on, tiptoed into the kitchen, and said to Braverman’s back, “I owe you an apology.”
He stiffened slightly, turned around.
I gave him my toothpaste-ad smile.
Tension left his face. He started to laugh.
I grinned. “This really great guy I know gave me this nose to help me put things in perspective.”
“It works,” he said.
I took a breath.
“I need to tell you that I would love to go out with you, Braverman, but I’m scared to do it. That’s why I acted like a jerk when you asked me.”
“Because we work together.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m worried about that, too.”
I took the nose off, trying to be more attractive. “How worried are you about it?”
He sighed. “It could be a problem.”
I moved a step closer.
“You could start thinking that I’m always going to cook your orders first.”
“And you could start thinking that I wouldn’t bug you when things are backed up.”
Braverman laughed. “I’d never think that.”
We stood there grinning at each other.
Braverman looked out at the empty diner. “We could have a trial run. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah …”
“Pork-chop sandwiches for two?”
My heart did a back flip. “Perfect.”
He got the chops from the refrigerator, put them through G.T.’s old tenderizer, sprinkled them with seasoned salt and pepper, turned up the grill. He didn’t say anything, just moved with the rhythm of the short-order dance.
My heart was beating fast. I couldn’t stop smiling. I got two salads, put Addie’s special mustard vinaigrette over them, piled on extra tomatoes.
Braverman took two clean dishcloths from the shelf, went out on the floor, and put them over table two in a diamond pattern like they were a fancy tablecloth. He walked to the register, rang up the meal, put money in the cash drawer, took the little vase of flowers by the cash register and put it on our table. He came back to the kitchen, toasted two hard rolls, put them on plates with lettuce and orange slices, and assembled the sandwiches. He layered the two plates on his left arm, grabbed his candle—the one he used when he sliced onions—and brought everything to the table. He lit the candle and grinned at me.
I got two 7UPs and walked over.
We sat down.
Braverman raised his glass and clinked it with mine.
I might as well have been in a prom dress, I felt so special.
We talked and laughed until midnight right there in the Welcome Stairways. And when dinner was over he said, “Hope, would it be okay if I kissed you?”
“You mean now?”
“Well, yeah. Did you have something else to do?”
I stood up fast. “Not a thing.”
It was an excellent kiss—the kind where you feel your stomach burn hot and you know it’s not from indigestion. We stood there for a while, arms around each other, not saying anything.
Then we looked at the dirty dishes on our table. Jarred back to reality.
I sighed. “I’ll wash.”
He blew out the candle. “I’ll dry.”
We cleared the table and walked back to the kitchen.
This is the downside of food service.
17
“Must be something in the water around here,” Flo said the next day when she saw Braverman and me holding hands in the supply closet.
Addie pulled me aside. “What’s going on with you and Braverman?”
I told her.
Well, Addie said, she’d been expecting it.
“What’s going on with you and G.T.?” I asked.
She was saved from answering by the sound of the kitchen timer. “My hazelnut pound cakes are ready,” she announced and left me standing there.
“It’s a fair question,” I shouted after her.
* * *
School.
It came up on me like indigestion.
I wasn’t ready to go back, not even
to be a junior.
Unfamiliar halls.
Unfamiliar teachers.
I’d been feeling so at home in Mulhoney working at the diner and being involved in G.T.’s campaign. Now suddenly I felt new and odd again.
I was ahead in math and English and behind in science and history. I had to take sophomore ethics class as a junior even though I’d taken it in Brooklyn. Wisconsin ethics takes a year to go through. Brooklyn’s Type A—you only need a semester.
I slogged through my first week and managed to find all my classes. My English teacher liked my writing. She said I had “creative boldness.” My history teacher said I had yet to “grasp the value of stating a clear thesis.” I’ve always been a person who meanders around to find truth. This is death in the five-paragraph essay.
In political science, my best class, Mr. Sage said, “We’re living a political science lesson right now in Mulhoney. We’re going to examine this local election and see how it speaks to us on a larger scale.”
That sounded interesting, but I wanted to be back full-time at the diner working with Braverman instead of only part-time after school and on the weekends.
We were having the best time working together, too, except when he’d make a mistake on an order and I’d have to be an advocate for my customer. I always mentioned it sweetly.
“You didn’t say hold the bacon, Hope.”
“Braverman, I said it twice.”
“You must have said it to someone else.”
“I said it to you.”
Clang.
“Don’t clang pots at me.”
Other than that, hope was in the air.
Addie introduced the Keep Hoping sandwich and instantly it became a comfort-food classic.
Anastasia started holding her bottle like a drowning person clutching a life preserver. Even when it was empty, she wouldn’t let go.
Flo said it was what we all had to do to get G.T. elected. Hold on to what we know is right and not let anyone take it from us.
And then, on September 29, we got the news we’d all been waiting for.
G.T.’s doctors declared that he was in remission.
You have to understand the full light that was released in G.T.’s face when he came back from the hospital with Pastor Hall and gave us the news. It was the kind of light that could open a daylily in the middle of a long, cold night.
He walked into the kitchen, walked up to Addie and told her.
She started crying.
“Okay,” he said. “I think we need to get married.”
We all froze at that one.
Addie looked right at him. “You don’t have enough to do these days? You need something else on the schedule?”
Everything I am I owe to this woman.
* * *
The news of G.T.’s remission swept through town like a whirlwind that couldn’t be stopped.
Then we got more good news.
Brenda Babcock arrested the two thieves who’d burglarized Adam’s house. They were found at a pawnbroker’s shop in Madison trying to sell Mr. Pulver’s campaign button collection. Both thieves had the same name, too.
Carbinger.
“She’s closing in,” Flo said to me. “And we’ve got ourselves one nervous sheriff.”
Three days later we had a blur of misinformation.
The sheriff said he was releasing the Carbingers—there was no evidence linking them to the crime.
Brenda Babcock said the Carbingers had agreed to a plea bargain with the district attorney to tell what they knew. They knew a lot. They said they were paid by the Real Fresh Dairy to frighten people who opposed the mayor, like Braverman. They claimed the sheriff had been paid off, too, to turn his head while they robbed houses.
Sheriff Greebs denied everything.
Cranston Broom from the dairy said he was appalled, disgusted, and very, very innocent.
Mayor Millstone said it was all a trick by the opposition to hurt his campaign.
TELL THE TRUTH, blared the Mulhoney Messenger.
The polls showed G.T. pulling seven points ahead of Eli Millstone.
We got revved like the Gospel of Grace van that had just gotten a new carburetor for the occasion.
It’s interesting how polls take over a campaign. My political science teacher, Mr. Sage, said it was part of our society’s need to know the score before the game is over.
G.T. put on a full court press to convince Addie that they should get married ASAP.
“I’ve got six chickens to roast, pies that need to be baked.”
He laughed. “Can’t you put your to-do list down for anything?”
But now the rightness of them getting married seemed to be hitting me from everywhere. I’d been so afraid, deep down, that G.T. would get sicker. I’d been afraid to think about what it could mean for me personally if he married Addie.
He would be my father, sort of.
Everything in me wanted to start dancing around the room at that thought, but just as fast, another one hit: What if G.T.’s not thinking of it that way?
That would be all-out awful.
* * *
I was in my room leafing through The Dads.
I’d always thought my dad was going to have a trench coat and thick hair and be pretty young and healthy. But that’s the problem with fantasy, when the thing you want shows up, you have to regroup visually because it’s never the way you picture it. A skinny bald guy in remission would not have made it into this collection.
But G.T. was better than all these trench-coated fantasy fathers put together.
I held Edgar, my pelican, smoothed back my hair.
“Well, Dad, it’s sure taken you long enough to find me, not that I’m complaining, but now I’m expecting you to do the right thing.” I said the last part pretty loud.
I waited.
And hope fluttered in the room like a butterfly getting ready to light.
* * *
Braverman and I were driving home from the Octoberfest held in the little park off Grimes Square. Octoberfest is a German celebration that gets a lot of play in Wisconsin. It has real pluses and minuses. Pluses: sausage, coarse-grain rye bread, and apple strudel. Minuses: two guys playing an accordion and a tuba.
Braverman touched the back of my neck in that way that made me shiver. He smiled at me, turned on the radio in his old Toyota, and we couldn’t believe what we heard.
Why can’t G. T. Stoop tell the truth about his health? An unidentified, high-ranking hospital administrator verified that Mr. Stoop’s leukemia has gone into his brain. It’s just a matter of time before we all see what the doctors already know.
Is your future worth that risk?
Vote for Eli Millstone if you care at all about the future of Mulhoney.
Braverman pulled over on the side of the road. We sat there stunned.
It was a lie as sure as anything.
And that lie played three times an hour on radio and TV until people were saturated with falsehood.
G.T. denied it.
His doctor denied it.
But it kept pressing the deception over and over.
My teacher Mr. Sage said if you hear a lie often enough, it begins to sound like the truth.
Why can’t G. T. Stoop tell the truth about his health?
Why?
Why?
Why?
My head pounded with fury. I couldn’t focus. Blew off my homework three days running.
Cecelia Culpepper screamed for fairness on the front page.
Braverman and I went knocking on doors to try to calm the storm and saw firsthand how frightened people were. Jillian went on-line to alert the teen troops.
We hit the phones and called voters.
Braverman put out a new issue of the Students for Stoop newsletter with the headline ANATOMY OF A LIE.
But it was like watching floodwaters rise. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it.
Al B. Hall drew his church together to
pray.
G.T. started losing points in the polls.
Sid Vole was calling from the road, saying the only thing to do was hit back hard. Blow for blow.
“No sir,” G.T. said. “I don’t play like that.”
G.T. kept his grueling schedule, talking to people until he was ready to drop.
People with STOP STOOP posters followed him everywhere.
We were working as hard as we could to get the truth out. The hospital even denied the report, showed G.T.’s medical records.
But the lie was everywhere and it was winning.
He called upon everyone to read his doctor’s report, but what you didn’t read was how his brain has been affected by the cancer.
He called upon churches and civic groups to support him knowing full well that he only has a few more months to live.
G. T. Stoop wants to be our mayor so much, he will lie, cheat, and misrepresent himself and his condition to get a few moments of glory.
On Election Day, vote for truth and health.
Reelect Eli Millstone.
The polls had G.T. neck and neck with Millstone now. One poll showed him three points behind.
“You going to listen to a poll?” Al B. Hall shouted from his pulpit. “Or your soul?”
* * *
Election Day.
Close to the longest day of my life.
We were everywhere.
Making last-minute campaign phone calls, passing out newsletters and buttons, cheering on the Gospel of Grace Evangelical van that shuttled back and forth bringing G.T.’s supporters to the polls.
Shouting foul when big groups of Millstone supporters went through town tearing down G.T.’s posters.
Hoping with all we had that we’d done enough.
“We’re going to make it,” Braverman said, and kissed me on the forehead, and went off to vote.
I sensed the hope building.
We all did.
I’d never been part of something so important before.
When I left Brooklyn I would have paid money to get out of making this move. Now, here I was, working with other kids to help get a good man elected. Here I was with the greatest boyfriend of the twenty-first century.
The polls closed at 9:00 P.M.
It was going to be close.
But we could feel the victory in our hearts. We hung on to that faith and wouldn’t let go.
Back to the Welcome Stairways to wait and eat and wait some more.