An Order of Coffee and Tears (14 page)

“I’m tired, ma’am, b-been sitting on this so long.” Ms. Potts took his face in her hands, and whispered a long
shhhh
.

“Clark, I don’t know what will become of us, but maybe it is time. Maybe we been sitting on this thing long enough,” she said in a somber voice that sounded hoarse and tired. Clark mouthed another prayer, as Ms. Potts joined him. When they finished, he glanced at me and Suzette.

“Maybe things happen this way for a reason. Maybe you c-can help?”

I walked behind the counter, and stood opposite of Suzette, whose eyes furrowed with concern. Ms. Potts came back around to the front, and fixed another cup of coffee.

“Order of coffee and tears,” she half laughed, and lifted her cup to us as a tear wet her cheek. When she was ready, she sat on the stool and told us their story. With an empty diner and a full pot of coffee, Ms. Potts told us everything.

Both Suzette and I listened. What was important to her was to first tell us who her husband was. Until now, he was just a name, a name from the mouth of Detective Ramiz. No face. No memory. Not even a description. Just a name. Ms. Potts’ expression was one of fondness, as she told how they’d met at a church function. She told us how they were smitten with each other from the beginning. He courted her, and she knew he was the one she would marry; the one who she would spend the rest of her life with.

She told us that he only showed her the good side, the one that brought flowers, and opened doors, and was caring and loving. There was no hint of a man who could hurt her, or a man who was filled with more ugly than any one person should have. He only showed her a side of him that she would fall in love with, and she did. They married in the spring, in the same church they’d met at. They honeymooned like other couples, and set up a home like other couples, and began to build a life like other couples.

Something changed after their first year. Ms. Potts told us that someone else moved in and became her husband. He was cold and dark, and brooded most evenings. His eyes were different. They were distant one minute, and on fire with anger the next. She told us that she learned to avoid the moods. She avoided the hurtful things he’d say. But she could get him back. She had a plan to get them back to where they were when it was easy and fun, and filled with passion and love.

A fine dinner she’d prepared: one with a cut of steak that he liked, and a decorated plate of sides that were all his favorites. She remembered cooking all afternoon, and even enlisted the help of some friends to make it a night to remember. She waited eagerly to see his smile as he took his first bite.

He only nodded glumly, and said it was okay, but that it was nothing special. He said that maybe she should’ve cooked up something better. She told him that it was his favorite, and that is when it happened the first time. Her husband hit her with the back of his hand. She never even saw him lift it. A white light streaked across her eyes, and a low tone of ringing settled in her ears. He hit her a second time, and she tumbled to the floor, where she lay, dazed, blinking at the empty ceiling. She said she didn’t know what had happened until she felt the food on her. He was screaming, and throwing the meal she’d prepared for him from the table down onto her. He screamed for her to eat it, eat it all, if she was so proud of the slop she’d made for him.

Life changed after that night. There were more attacks, some worse than others. But she stayed. A few attacks left her without the use of her legs. She’d spend a day, sometimes two, in bed, crawling to the bathroom when the need was there. A limp would cripple her walk for a week or more afterward. Other attacks left her eyes bruised and swollen shut to the world. But she stayed. This was her marriage, and her husband, and her vows were for better or for worse.

“But not for the
abused
,” Suzette mumbled, her voice lifting angrily.

“He killed my baby,” Ms. Potts rasped, and looked at Suzette. “He never knew I was with child. Never knew it all. Not sure his knowing would have stopped him from kicking me across the floor, though. He might’ve even kicked a little harder,” she continued, and stopped long enough for the pain of the memory to pass. “After that, I learned you can’t wrestle with a meanness like that. Ain’t no praying it away with a Pastor, when they saying: ‘
It’s in God’s hands, deary, now pass the basket’
. Whatever gripped my husband and made him who he was, it had him long before I ever met him. He just kept it buried. Ain’t nothing stay buried forever.”

I felt a pinch in my gut when Ms. Potts stopped to refresh her coffee. Suzette’s eyes were moist, and I was only vaguely aware that she’d reached across the counter to hold my hand. It was cold with perspiration. As Ms. Potts told us about her husband and the kind of man he was, I realized how this was the exact life Suzette was living now. The bruises, the broken bones. The shattered dreams of a family – of a baby. But this time, the pain wasn’t by the cruel hand of her husband, James, this time it was through Ms. Potts’ words.

When Ms. Potts continued, she talked about that night her husband disappeared. She left none of the details hidden for us to uncover. I could imagine it all, as though I were in the diner with them twenty years earlier. I’m sure Suzette could see it, as well, and more than once, I had to assure her it would be okay.

Mr. Potts entered Angela’s Diner like a rushed cold invading the corners of a room. His step was crippled by his favorite drink: whiskey. Ms. Potts didn’t have to guess where her husband had been. It was obvious. Mr. Potts drank his fill at the pub across from the diner. He visited earlier than some, and stayed later than most. And, on many nights, he staggered home, but some nights he didn’t. On a few occasions, she found him on their stoop, his clothes wet with morning dew, or with the sour smell of his urine.

“I need some money, babe,” he struggled to spit out – but his words fell shamelessly to the floor.

“Coffee, instead – maybe?” she offered. There was a reservation… a hesitation in her voice. Caution was carried in her words. By now, she’d learned to temper what she said; short answers only. Too much could set him off.

“I said, I need money!” he raised his voice, and staggered to the counter. When he reached the cash register, he began pushing buttons. His fingers stabbed at the machine as he tried to open the cash drawer. Taking no aim, he stabbed and pushed with confused direction. The display window atop the cash register popped numbers up a few at a time until they jammed. He stabbed his fingers in the air again, and then made a fist and punched the face of the register. Numbered buttons broke and flew off to expose their metal posts.

“Won’t open. Gotta open this,” he snapped. Ms. Potts took a step forward and watched his hand rise and fall.

“Baby, you can’t do that. You can’t have the diner’s money. Here, take my money,” she started to say, and held out a few dollars in change that she’d collected in tips. “Go back to the bar, and I’ll see you when I get home. Here, take it,” she continued. But even slowed by the whiskey, Ms. Potts didn’t see his other hand coming. He swung a closed fist upward, connecting under her extended hands. Tip money flew across the diner, as he let out a cruel laugh, and pushed her back with a punch to her chest. Ms. Potts was thrown, but caught herself on the counter.

“I don’t want your dimes and nickels, you stupid ugly woman. Got a poker game, a big one. Gonna use what’s in here and put it back later,” he guffawed. Ms. Potts knew there was no later. He’d lose the money, all of it. His laugh faded as he began to punch at the register. When Ms. Potts got back to her feet, blood sprayed over her glasses. Her vision was blocked by drops of blood as it raced down the lens of her glasses, and fell from the frame. Her heart raced as she reached and padded her hands around her body, looking for the wound. Her breathing quickened as fear grew, and her hand closed around her face and head, searching for the source of the blood. Another spay hit her across her cheek and neck. She cleared her glasses, and saw that it was her husband’s hand. He’d torn open his skin and broken one his knuckles as he’d thrashed a flurry of throws on the face of the cash register.

“No!” she yelled, and stepped in to pull his arm up. When he looked at her, it was with mad eyes. Her husband was nowhere to be found. He was gone. She saw her reflection in the black of his eyes, where the anger and the pain lived, and it almost killed her. Literally. Before she knew what was happening, his hands were around her neck, and her body was bent over the counter. At once, all the air in the room was gone. It was replaced by the squeezing of his hands on her throat. The floor beneath her was gone, and she kicked in a desperate struggle to run. She felt her feet connecting with his legs, and her heels breaking the coffee mugs and tall fountain glasses innocently standing on the shelves beneath her. The light in the diner began to dim as pressure stabbed at her lungs. Pain in her chest grew until she thought she’d explode. The last thing Ms. Potts remembered seeing was the rage in her husband’s eyes as he leaned in with his face just above hers, screaming ugliness, while laughing at her. She was dying.

“When I come to, I couldn’t stand. Took me five minutes, maybe more, before I could catch a decent breath without coughing it out,” Ms. Potts continued, and reached a hand out toward Clark. He was already coming to the front, and put his hand in hers. “My husband tried to kill me. Would’ve too, but Clark… he saved my life.”

“What happened?” I blurted.

“I couldn’t speak; he stole my voice with his hands. Nothing come out, but whispery words. I remember crying and wanting to scream when I saw my husband. He was on the floor, right here where I’m standing. His head was opened up like a melon, and lying in a pool of blood. I remember thinking that his blood looked dark. It looked dead, and I wondered if a meanness was something that could be in your blood.”

“Clark?” I asked, and he closed his eyes and nodded.

“C-Couldn’t let him do it. I was out back having a sm-smoke when I heard the cash register. Awful, terrible noise that kept crashing. Didn’t know what it was. By the t-time I come in, he already have Ms. Potts over the counter, just choking the life out of her.”

Suzette’s hand was shaking, her other hand feeling around her neck, as though reliving what Ms. Potts told us. “My husband choked me once. He choked me on our bed. He said I made him do it, and that it was my fault. I remember thinking
this is how it feels to drown
. When your breath is gone, and everything becomes gray, and all the sounds shrink away somewhere distant,” she said, and then looked at Clark. “What did you do?” She asked. Clark passed a look to Ms. Potts, and then to his hand, before settling his eyes on us.

“When I come back in and saw M-Ms. Potts and her husband on top of her, I didn’t know what to do. When I saw her feet stop k-kicking and heard him laughing, I picked up my skillet and hit him. Man tumbled down onto the ground like a sack of potatoes. I only hit him once. But it k-killed him. I ain’t proud of what I did, just couldn’t let him hurt Ms. Potts,” he finished, as Ms. Potts embraced his hand in hers.

“Clark, here, is mo’ than just our cook,” Ms. Potts said, looking up at him. She pulled their hands against her heart, and forced out the words: “He is my angel… and I go to my grave protectin' him.” She wrapped her small arms around his middle.

This was their secret. The remaining details that had been told by the detective were eerily similar. He’d done his job. And that thought made me sad and scared for them. Detective Ramiz pieced together the accounts from the patrons at the Irish pub as Ms. Potts’ husband left that night to meet his wife at the diner. The detective even had a timeline, as he called it, that placed her husband at given locations, and at approximate times. And these, too, were accurate.

What happened to Mr. Potts next was the mystery. It was the void in the case that kept Detective Ramiz up at night. It led him back here to Angela’s Diner, and he wanted the case closed before the cancer eating away at his insides destroyed him.

“And the concrete? The pipes, and the new addition? All true?” I questioned. Ms. Potts let go of Clark.

“Yes. All of it. Clark was on parole from Holmesburg prison. Saving my life was just a minor detail. He killed a man. He’d surely go back to Holmesburg for the rest of his life. I couldn’t let that happen. I loved my husband, I surely did. But the man that lay dead in front of us, that wasn’t my husband. Not anymore.”

“C-Concrete was coming in the m-morning. We took Mr.Potts, and p-put him in the b-back.”

“When Clark put him down, I climbed down into the trench with them, and we covered my husband up with stone and dirt. Nobody would know he was there 'less they was looking.”

Suzette crunched her face, and asked, “So, your husband is still here? In the floor?”

“Y-yes, ma’am, and I stay here. Died by my hand, and I pray for my soul every day.” Clark answered with sadness in his voice.

“Some days, I wished I’d died that night. I wished when the room went gray and then black, that I died. My husband would’ve gotten what was coming to him at Holmesburg, and Clark would be free. But, I suppose, that ain’t how God saw fit for this to play it out.”

“That is why the detective is back. The diner’s sale! The construction!” I yelled, realizing exactly what the detective meant when he brought up the sale of the Angela’s.

“T-Tearing down the diner, they might dig, and if they do that, then they’ll find Mr. Potts, and we’ll g-go to prison. I can’t go b-back,” Clark cried in a soft voice, his face littered in fear.