I did that, he wanted to say to her, but Brendan broke into his dreams and said, “You want to stop here? That diner looks okay.”
Henry focused his eyes, which had been seeing the road but no more, and let the girl dissolve. They were in Geneva; the diner was old and needed a coat of paint, and he couldn’t imagine why Brendan had chosen it but then couldn’t see anything better. He parked and lowered his uncle to the ground and maneuvered him inside the diner doors. They left Bongo locked in the van, howling mournfully at the traffic, and they settled themselves at a table by the window.
Henry pushed one of the chairs aside and rolled Brendan into place, but the arms of his wheelchair wouldn’t fit beneath the table. The waitress who brought them menus looked from Henry to Brendan and back again and then said, “This isn’t any good. You hang on a minute — I’ll fix you up.” The white plastic pin above her left breast read Mirella.
Henry studied her closely as she walked away. Her bottom was broad but solid, crowned by the bow of her apron; her stride was crisp, with a roll to it that sent smooth waves through her flesh. Two small rolls of fat formed a triangle above her round buttocks, and the rest of her seemed composed of similarly simple shapes. Cones, cylinders, hemispheres — even her hair was geometric, a mass of round red curls. Mirella, Henry said to himself. The name curled on his tongue.
Mirella returned with a white metal tray that was dotted with yellow ducks. “I know this looks funny,” she said to Brendan. “But it works great on high chairs, and if we can just get it in here somehow …” The clips on the bottom of the tray didn’t quite fit the wheelchair’s arms, but she hammered on the tray with the heel of her hand until the clips spread and held. “There,” she said triumphantly. She moved Brendan’s water glass onto the tray and handed him his menu. “Isn’t that better?”
“Very nice,” Brendan said dryly. The duck tray over his lap, the white neck brace, and the heavy glasses gave him the look of a sinister, overgrown child.
“What can I get you?” Mirella asked.
“Would you give us a minute?” Henry said. Brendan bared his teeth at her in a grimace that might have been a smile. She tucked her order pad into her apron and left.
“You want to go someplace else?” Henry asked.
Brendan shrugged and his left arm drifted above the tray. “Where? The same thing’s going to happen anyplace we go. But these ducks …” His hand thumped on the tray.
“Forget about it,” Henry said. “Let’s just get something to eat.”
For a minute they studied their menus in silence. Henry examined the prices carefully: grilled cheese? The hot dog special? He longed for pork chops, chicken, steak, but he kept his eyes resolutely on the sandwiches. Brendan leaned toward him and said, “Everything’s so expensive. Three fifty for a hamburger — what is this?”
“It’s cheap,” Henry said, and then he studied his uncle’s face. “When’s the last time you ate out?”
“ ’Sixty-seven. Maybe ’sixty-eight? When the old director was around, they took some of us on a field trip to the lake. Augie Furlong had a stroke there, just after we had lunch, and they never took us out again. Coffee cost a quarter then.”
“Different world,” Henry said. He tried to imagine what his own life would have been like if he hadn’t eaten out since 1968. Cheaper, certainly — Kitty had hardly cooked a meal once she’d started full-time at the radio station, and for years they’d eaten out or ordered in almost every night. He still missed the elaborate meals she’d cooked during their first years together. Pot roast, creamed chicken, pork loin stuffed with prunes. She liked to cook then, she said she enjoyed it. When he’d come home from work, he’d walked in the door and found the table set with place mats and flowers, the girls scrubbed and dressed in clean clothes, Kitty bearing covered dishes that sent out delicious smells. All that had vanished years ago; what had drawn him to Anita, and to the women before her, had been at least in part the food.
His stomach rumbled and he settled on the hot dog special. Brendan said, “I’ll just have some pie.”
Mirella came and took their order and vanished again. She had lovely calves, Henry saw, sturdy and full but tapering to shapely ankles. He stared at his hands and imagined a life with her. She’d live in a trailer nearby, on a nice bit of land overlooking Seneca Lake. The hard-packed dirt outside her door would be dotted with bicycles and plastic bats and beheaded dolls; she’d have two children, or maybe three, and at least one would still be in diapers. Inside, the trailer smelled of soap and ammonia and sugar cookies, but although the place was crowded with belongings and beings — a dog, Henry thought, some company for Bongo; two fish in a bowl, a parakeet — it was clean and warm. In her room she had a water bed that rolled when Henry stretched out on it, and at night, after the children slept, she came to him and untied her apron and slipped her uniform up and off, disarranging her curls. Her feet were sore and he rubbed them and then set them gently down. Then he kissed her ankles, which were very fine. Then he kissed her calves. The dogs barked at the moon outside, the children dreamed of rubber rafts on the lake, the fish spun languidly in their small container. He kissed her knees and ran his hands along her hips. Her thighs were as white as her knees and they welcomed him, and afterward she walked naked to the kitchen and made them sandwiches.
Pickles? Kitty used to ask him, back when she’d fixed sandwiches for both of them after a romp in bed. Do you want whole wheat or rye?
When Mirella arrived with their plates, Henry managed to brush her arm with his hand. Her smile made him blush and pay attention to his hot dogs. They were grilled, he saw, not boiled, and they tasted good. But then anything would have tasted good after the food in the box factory’s cafeteria. He’d been eating there every day because the food was cheap and he couldn’t drive anyplace else. Rubbery cold cuts sweating moisture, falsely bright vegetables in yellow sauce, everything frozen and sealed in secret films, salty, processed, micro-waved. The young men he worked with said it tasted fine to them.
Brendan’s pie sat untouched before him. “You don’t want that?” Henry said. His hot dogs were already gone; he could have eaten several more if only they hadn’t been so pinched for money.
“I can’t cut it,” Brendan said levelly. “My hands.”
Henry flushed and bent over his uncle’s plate, dissecting the pie into bite-sized chunks. “I’m sorry. That was stupid of me. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You don’t, much,” Brendan said. “Do you? You’re always wandering off somewhere.”
“Lots on my mind.”
Henry held a forkful of pie to Brendan’s mouth, but Brendan took it from him. “I can feed myself. I just can’t cut.”
“Sorry,” Henry said again. The fork in Brendan’s fist made its wavering, halting way to Brendan’s mouth. Brendan licked a tiny bit of filling from the edge and then lowered his hand to his chest. “Canned apples,” he said thoughtfully. He seemed to be chewing that bit of filling, actually mashing the drop around in his mouth before struggling to swallow it. The brace hid his Adam’s apple, but Henry could see the muscles working under his chin.