What do you feel like eating? Alene said.
I don’t know what there is.
Alene pointed in the menu. There are salads and sandwiches listed on this side and main dishes on this page.
Do they have hamburgers?
Yes. But you can have anything you want.
The waitress came and they ordered drinks. She had blond hair, teased out around her face, and was nice-looking.
Who’s this now? she said.
This is Alice. Berta May’s granddaughter.
Oh my, aren’t you a pretty girl. I like your outfit.
Thank you.
I could take you home with me, you’re so pretty. Do you want to come and be my little girl? I just got boys.
I don’t know.
Maybe some other day.
The girl shrugged.
The waitress left and came back with glasses of tea for the Johnson women and a Coke for Alice. Willa ordered soup and a salad and Alene a club sandwich and Alice said she still wanted a hamburger.
How do you want it cooked, honey? the waitress said.
The girl looked at Alene.
Do you like it pink inside or all brown?
All brown.
With fries? the waitress said.
The girl looked at Alene again.
I think you’ll want some fries, don’t you?
Yes.
The waitress went off to the kitchen.
Rose Tyler’s here, Alene said to her mother. By herself.
They looked at the old woman sitting alone by the window.
She’s never going to get over him, Willa said.
Why would she? People don’t.
The girl watched them talk and looked out through the doorway to the other room where people were coming and going.
After the waitress brought their food Alice started to pour ketchup on her hamburger but it spurted out, covering it all and she set the bottle down and stared at her plate and put her hands in her lap. She looked as if she would cry.
We’re not going to worry about that, Alene said. We can just scrape it off. Do you want me to?
I can do it, the girl said. She scraped and spooned the ketchup off onto the side of her plate.
There, Willa said. That’s better. Isn’t it.
The girl nodded and began to eat her French fries, picking them up one at a time and dipping the end in the ketchup and biting off the end and dipping it in again and eating the rest by small bites. The Johnsons watched her.
I’ve only used squirt bottles, Alice said. I used to help my mother fill the ketchup and mustard bottles and the salt and pepper shakers.
Your mother worked in a restaurant?
Yes. She always had me help her.
Do you have any pictures of her?
I do at Grandma’s. The girl looked around the room. She looked back at her plate. That old man’s dying like my mother did.
You mean Mr. Lewis, the man next door to you.
He’s got it all over him. My mother had it in her breast.
We heard about that. We’re very sorry.
Alice looked out the doorway and said, She didn’t have blond hair like that waitress.
Didn’t she?
She had brown hair like me.
Then she must have been a very pretty woman. I wish we had known her.
How does she get her hair that way? So puffy like that.
Well. She must blow-dry it and tease it and then pick it.
As they drove back to town in the car after lunch, Alice was looking out the side window at the trees and the houses going by. My mother said teasing your hair could damage it, she said.
13
ON THE PHONE Dad Lewis told Rudy and Bob to bring him the sales numbers in the morning this time since in the afternoons he wasn’t much good anymore, then he hung up and turned to Lorraine. Don’t you want to sit in with us so you can see for yourself what these store accounts look like?
Daddy, they don’t want me there.
How do you know that? It doesn’t matter what they want. If I tell them you’re sitting in, that’s what will happen.
I’m still trying to decide if I want to at all.
You have to make up your mind pretty soon. This isn’t going to go on forever, you know that. You can’t put it off much longer. If you don’t want to, I’ve got to do something else.
I know, Daddy.
So at midmorning the clerks came up on the porch and Rudy knocked quietly on the door. They removed their caps and Mary ushered them into the living room and served them coffee, and again they sat side by side on the couch as they had each time, as if they were attending a funeral service, and Dad was in his chair as always with a blanket over his knees and with his wood cane laid on the floor beside him.
Rudy was a little quick voluble middle-aged man, with a balding head, and Bob was tall and skinny and slow, with thick graying hair combed straight back. Rudy held the store accounts in a file on his lap.
You boys doing any good today? Dad said.
We’re doing pretty good, Rudy said. How about you, Dad? It seems like you’re looking a lot better.
Dad looked at him. Now that is bullshit and you know it.
Well, you don’t look too much on the worse side, Bob said.
Yeah. All right. He looked out the window and looked back. You want something to go with that coffee, you boys?
No thanks, Rudy said.
You, Bob?
No thank you, I don’t think so. It’s still pretty early in the morning.
All right then. Let’s see what you got there.
Rudy stood up and set the file in Dad’s lap and sat back down. Dad took out the reading glasses from his shirt pocket and fit the thin bows over his ears and studied the pages. The two men bent forward and sipped their coffee, watching him.
After a while Dad looked up. Any problem with any of this? he said.
No. Not to speak of.
Anything we do need to speak of, then?
No. Don’t believe so, Dad.
How many lawn mowers we sold this summer by now?
Ten, Rudy said. He looked at Bob. Wasn’t it?
That sounds about right.
Last summer we sold fifteen, Dad said.
Things have been slower this year, Rudy said.
Why’s that now?
They’re not building no new houses in town. That’s mainly it. That’s how I account for it.
What do you say, Bob?
It’s like what he said. And it’s this new mower we ordered in. It costs more.
It’s a better machine, Dad said.
Yeah. But it costs more.
Well yeah, it costs more, Bob. Goddamn it, it’s got to cost more.
Bob inspected his hands. People don’t like to spend too much money on a lawn mower.
All right, Bob. I take your point. Dad opened the file again. He found the line he was looking for. What about this accounts receivable? How come that’s still so high?
That’s old Miss Sprague, Rudy said.
What about her?
She bought that freezer.
I remember she bought it. She bought it before I got sick.
Well. She stopped paying anything on it.
Did you call her?
Yes sir. I called her. Called her two times.
Then did you go to see her?
I went.
Well. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me, Rudy. This ain’t some kind of mystery, is it?
No, but it’s a bad mess, Dad. He stared across the room for a moment. I figure I can go over to her house and get it back if that’s what you want.
You mean repossess it.
Yes sir. Repossess it.
How come?
You ever been in her house?
About thirty years ago.
Well, I doubt she’s thrown anything away since then. Dad, it’s just an all-out bad situation. She sits in her rocking chair or walks up and down in that mess and confusion all day long. She’s left herself little narrow trails to walk in. And she’s put that freezer out on the back porch loaded up with things. It ain’t even food that she’s got inside. She’s put her old leftover bank papers and family letters and old yellowed newspapers in it. And she’s got it plugged in and turned on, keeping it running, keeping the papers cold. She showed me. She insisted on it. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t know what I’d see. Why hell. It just kind of made me feel sick to myself to see all those papers iced up like that. You want me to take her freezer back?