March 6, 2023
Greetings from the prodigal,
This has been sitting here for a few months, something I saved for a time I didn’t know was today.
I wasn’t hungry, but I stopped at a coney joint. It’s not just a place, it’s a kind of restaurant, but it’s also a culture, and maybe a religion. I just wanted soup, or something, and there was a reason I didn’t want to sit at a table or go through the drive-through line. I have no idea what the reason was, it was one of those unformed thoughts that I didn’t examine.
I went to the counter and asked for a menu and someone pointed to a stack of plastic laminated rectangles. I sat at the counter and looked at the choices. There were pictures of all the dishes next to the items I could order. I sat quietly and waited, which was, it turns out, what was needed.
Lunch was long before, dinner not even on the horizon, but for whatever reason, nearly every table was filled. Knots of people, a few friends, a small family, gathered in these little temporary dining rooms, everyone eating together but also magically separate from everyone around them.
I took a deep breath, and looked at the menu pictures, bright perfect renderings of meals that would never look that way again. I was close enough to watch the grill cooks sweating. For a moment I forgot I came in there to eat something. Or something.
Coney people are such a curious breed. I sat and watched the waitresses work, and I felt like I was backstage at a Broadway musical, sitting at the counter and listening to them talk.
"Whose chicken nuggets are these?"
"Not Terri's she already ate her one meal of the day. French toast and one piece of sausage."
"She eats like a bird."
"What?" asks Terri.
"Are these your chicken nuggets? I was just saying you already ate your one meal, the French toast and one piece of sausage. I eat twice that at breakfast."
Then to me: "She is so skinny because she never eats."
Another waitress, dark hair, taller, weaves in behind the counter and hands a plate through to the cook: "He says he wants this warmed. I know, who warms tuna fish?" She turns to the other waitress. "Never in my life have I ever eaten a warmed-up tuna fish sanwitch but whatever floats your boat."
The other woman says something suggestive and then they both laugh. I avoid eye contact.
"My mother never stops talking," the dark-haired woman says to two other waitresses. "Seriously, she never shuts her mouth."
A fourth waitress has a headset on and is taking drive-through orders and answering the phone. She lists all the soups they have and answers questions about what time they close. Then takes an order for some burger special and starts bagging things up, putting in ketchup packets, napkins, with the Styrofoam clamshells holding burgers and fish and chips.
The waitress whose mother never stops talking is looking at her phone, and then looks up, exasperated.
"Look at her, she's talking to herself while she walks over here." She explains to me that she works with her mother. "That's her." points at a woman with perfectly shaped hair. Then, louder: "Mom, you never stop talking."
"What?" she says, walking behind the counter.
I say: "She was just telling me that she loves working with you and that she wishes every day was Mother's Day so she could tell you how much she cares about you."
They all laugh hysterically.
The drive-through girl says, "She treats her mother like crap, and that's the truth."
The mother goes into the kitchen. The daughter leans on the counter, a big sigh, weary. She looks nothing like her mother, the big, dark, dyed hair, and lots of makeup. "You try working with your mother." She says this to me, but also to everyone.
I say: "Today is my mother's birthday, or it would have been. Honestly, she got under my skin too. But I would really love it if I could hear her talking today."
The drive-through girl says: "I wish I could have my mom back. See, we have to love them while we have ‘em."
The dark-haired woman rolls her eyes at both of us. "She never, sweardagod, never stops talking. Listen, she's in there now, I can hear her, talking to them guys like she just invented talking."
I look at the drive-through girl, who is taking orders on her headset, and in between answering the phone calls, and somehow is the only person in our group who heard what I said. She shrugs and goes back to taking an order for a cheeseburger, no onions, and fries and coleslaw.
I left with soup, and the uneasy feeling of the convicted, embarrassed for behavior that only played on a screen in my head.
Mom had been gone four years by that day in December. I sat in my car and sifted through memories, thought about her last day, and her last years, shuddered a little, and then remembered that was not her life, that was just a tiny piece of it.
She lived a rich, full life, complicated, painful, funny, and sometimes outrageous. She ice skated and danced and loved and had five children and launched them into the world, and suffered heartbreak and worry and had martinis and smoked and laughed and watched the birds outside her windows. And much, much more. But at times I reduced her to a list of complaints and cliches, none of which were untrue, but those were the thoughts I had, and sometimes, sadly, the things I said.
The dark-haired waitress reminded me. Ach, our parents are such dorks. Right? We could have gone to every table in the coney and commiserated about the endless stories and the embarrassing moments, and the complaining and the nagging and the mistakes they made. It’s a legacy that luckily won’t get passed on to our kids, of course.
The drive-through girl said, "I wish I could have my mom back. See, we have to love them while we have ‘em."
I wasn’t hungry when I stopped at the coney, I didn’t know what I wanted. I got it though.
Hope this finds you loving them,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
Comments