Shem Creek (28 page)

MIMI left after breakfast and I hurried to the restaurant to pick up my fax. When I arrived, Louise was standing by the new fish display case with O’Malley, holding the fax in her hand.

“Hey! Well, will you look at that?”

“I don’t like the way that red snapper is looking at me,” O’Malley said. “He looks sneaky. Maybe I should check his ID.”

“Humph! Glad you came in,” Louise said. “We got that wedding today and four waiters, including the Zone Man, called in sick. Here.”

The Zone Man was a guy named Mike Evans who we had just hired away from The Trawler, another restaurant on Shem Creek. He called himself the Zone Man because he said that when he was in
the zone,
which we thought was a Transcendental Meditation or yoga/Zen term to mean what
in the alpha state
meant to the rest of the world, he was the best waiter on the planet. His absence was not a good sign.

She handed me the paper and I glanced over it, trying to understand what I was about to sign. “Four waiters?” I said. “Thanks. Are you joking?”

“Do I strike you as the joking kind?”

“We have to do something about them.”

“I agree entirely, but today is not the day.”

“You’re right. Okay, no problem, I’ll work this afternoon. But I have to go home first. I can be back by three.”

“Thanks, Miss Linda,” Louise said. “At least the weather is clearing up.”

“Yeah, that’s a break,” O’Malley said. “I still can’t believe that Brad gave them the sunset deck for their cocktail hour.”

“Yeah, that was rather stunning,” I said. “He’s losing money left and right on this deal.”

“See?” Louise said, smiling wide. “Y’all don’t know all there is to know about him! No, sir!”

“Like what?” O’Malley said.

“Like he’s romantic, that’s what!” Louise said. “He got to talking to the bride, that Lucy woman, and she says she wants to serve Eye-talian food, because that’s the first thing she ever made for her honey. Although she can’t be much of a cook if she puts taco chips in a casserole.”

“That sounds more Mexican but she didn’t strike me as a gourmet either,” I said, “more like an aging cocktail waitress.” I wiggled my eyebrows at Louise and she covered her mouth, hiding her laugh.

“Don’t be so cynical, Miss Jersey,” O’Malley said. “If there’s a lid for her pot, there might even be one for yours!”

“When my pot wants a lid, I’ll let you know.”

“Anyway, Mr. Brad, he says,
I think you should absolutely have the sunset deck! I mean, it’s a wedding and how many times do you get married?
I was so surprised, I almost dropped my drawers! He knew I was listening to them talking and I hate that—when I get caught eavesdropping—you know? Anyway, he knows I never miss a thing around here. . . .”

“Girl?
Everyone
knows you don’t miss a thing around here!”

“Well, I just be telling y’all that this man gots more romance in he head than he know what to do with and he ain’t even knowing he got it! And that, my friends, is all she wrote!”

I loved when Louise got excited and lapsed into a kind of Gullah.

“He’ll figure out what to do with it,” O’Malley said, “as soon as Loretta’s been cold long enough.”

Louise and I stared at O’Malley for a second and grinned. It was rare to get anything that smacked of catty from him.

“You’re a little late,” I said. “I think that his
old
—and I use the term to mean
former
—secretary already took a swing at that ball—no pun intended.”

“You bad,” Louise said.

“But in a good way,” O’Malley said.

“Thank you very much!” I folded the fax, put it in my purse and took out my sunglasses. “You know what? I could go for months and months in New Jersey and never need sunglasses.”

“Well, if you don’t wear them here, you’d have cataracts in about an hour!” O’Malley said.

“I’ll see y’all later,” I said. I turned to leave and then stopped. “Hey, Louise? Do we need my sister to help?”

Louise and O’Malley looked at each other, remembering what I had forgotten at that moment—how Mimi had lectured the patrons on caloric content. They looked at me, neither of them quite sure of what to say.

“Uh . . . uh . . . ,” they said, in a chorus.

I just said, “Well, if you’re desperate, let me know.”

They smiled in relief and gave a little nod.

I picked up the dry cleaning, went to the gas station and returned home. Gracie was in front of the television set, flipping channels with the remote.

“Hey, honey! Whatcha watching? Anybody call?”

“Hey! Nothing
to
watch! And, nobody called.”

I noticed that the counters were sparkling, all the food was put away and the dishwasher was humming. I knew I would be wise to acknowledge it. “Good. Hey, thanks for cleaning up the kitchen.”

“Well, this place is so small every little mess really sticks out. I washed everything but the coffeepot—I ain’t touching wet coffee grounds. Ew!”

“I don’t blame you. It’s pretty gross. I’ll be right back.”

I was pulling the plastic off the clean clothes and hanging them in my closet when Gracie came in and plopped herself on my bed.

“Wassup, baby doll?”

“Juss chillin’ with my momma. Wanna go see a movie today?”

“Oooh! I’d love to but I have to work! Four people called in sick.”

“Yeah, there’s a concert out in Awendaw this afternoon. Is this a cosmic coincidence?”

“I’ll tell you what. Brad’s gotta stop hiring these kids and get some real waitstaff.”

“No shit, Mom. . . .”

“Language!”

“Sorry, but you should hear them talking—half of them are a bunch of stoners anyway.”

“They don’t smoke pot at work, do they?”

“No, they burn a little bud in
church
and
then
they come to work,” Gracie said.

“Smart-ass!”

“Mommy! Such language! I’m telling Mimi!”

“You go right ahead and tell her,” I said and pinched her bottom. “So, what’s up with you today?”

“Well, I’ve basically recovered from last night, which is a good thing because I’ve got that river sweep late this afternoon. I thought for a while it would get rained out, but no such luck!”

“I thought you were so enthusiastic about it! What happened?”

“
Mom?
What happens in the creek after a big rain?”

“Um, eighty billion, kazillion mosquitoes hatch?”

“
Exactly!
And, they love the back of my knees for some reason. God, I hate mosquitoes.”

“Honey, nobody likes them but they feed the fish and the bats—food chain, you know.”

“And tadpoles, dragonflies and sweet little girls like me too, okay? I do my homework, you know. Anyway, Lindsey left a pair of drawstring pants that I can stuff into waders, so I guess I’ll go. I mean, I said I would. Maybe I can talk Alex into coming with us! Then Lupe can bring us and I’ll have a ride! Excellent idea!”

She bounced from my bed, was out the door in the blink of an eye, and once more I was left to marvel at the energy of youth, and as my mother used to say, it was most surely wasted on the young.

I dressed for work and when I was ready to go, I stopped by Gracie’s room. She was on the phone.

“Gimme two seconds of your time, okay?”

“I’ll call you back,” she said. “Alex is coming with me.”

“Good. Um, listen, Gracie, we didn’t really talk about last night and I didn’t want to say anything in front of Aunt Mimi, but what do you think actually happened?”

“What do you mean?”

I leaned against the door and found myself drawn in by the details of my daughter’s face. Her features were almost perfectly symmetrical and her eyes were so expressive, her smile so perfect . . . had I ever looked like her?

“Mom?”

“Oh, sorry, baby. I was just thinking that if I had known at your age what I know now I could’ve changed the world.”

“Probably. So, waddup?”

“Um, can I ask you something? When did
wassup
become
waddup
?”

“When people
your age
started saying it,” she said.

“I see. Thank you for that enlightenment.”

“On the house.”

“Listen, last night, Alex brought you home and then he stayed for a while.”

“While I was having my NDE?”

“In English?”

“Near Death Experience.”

“Yeah, okay. Anyway, Alex never said anything directly but he implied that the girls who gave you the brownies knew they had pot in them. I guess one of my questions is did
you
know?”

“Not until my head started spinning . . . do you mean they did it on
purpose?
”

“Yeah, that was what Alex seemed to think and he didn’t like it very much either.”

“Oh, my God! Mom! That completely
sucks!
”

“Exactly. Anyway, there was apparently some funny business with the boys that Alex rescued you from. Um. I guess what I’m getting at is that, you know . . .”

“That’s right! Oh, God! Now I
remember!
Look, Alex is a little bit of a worry wart too, Mom. I mean, I was glad he cared but he totally didn’t have to hit anybody. He just went nuts. I think he thought we had a
date
or something. Anyway, things got a little out of control.”

“So, you’re satisfied that none of the boys tried to get you to do something you didn’t want to do?”

“Are you asking me if one of those little assholes tried to like rape me or something?” She looked at me and when she sensed that I wasn’t breathing in a normal manner, she said in her usual Gracie speak, “Mom! Do you think I’m completely stupid?”

I knew that what she said had been intended to assuage my fear and panic. For a moment, I felt like an airline passenger in a nosedive, grabbing her words like an oxygen mask, then coolly laying it aside when the terror of a crash had passed. I took a cleansing breath as discreetly as possible. Remember: when dealing with teenagers, most especially your own, always appear unflappable.

“Okay, I just wanted to be sure that you were all right. That’s all. I love you, you know.”

“Mom!
Stop!
I’m fine! Listen, all these
southern boys?
They talk with this sweet accent and everything? But boys are the same
everywhere
. Believe me. I can handle myself. What
really
pisses me off is that the
girls
would do that. Girls are supposed to stick together.”

I didn’t say anything to her about her language. I was so relieved that she wasn’t compromised, that is, beyond what I had seen. I mean, every, well not every, but most teenagers do something stupid at some point and suffer for it. I knew that. It made no sense to be a prude—it was about the same as being delusional, because believing
your own
idea of their reality came at a much larger price.

“Well, now you can remember this and don’t trust those girls so fast. I gotta go.”

I gave her a light kiss on the top of her head.

“Ah, hell. I guess I’ll spend the afternoon in the marsh, picking up beer cans.”

“It’s a worthy endeavor! I’m very proud of you!”

When I got to the restaurant, the dining room was almost empty. I went to my office, read over the real estate agreement, and having no freaking idea what I was signing, I signed it and faxed it back to Gretchen in New Jersey after making the sign of the cross three times. The three times was a Romanian superstition I had acquired from my New Jersey days in the dark with a coworker, trying to start a truck with a dead battery.
Three times is the charm,
he had said. Okay, I thought, the truck started and I never forgot it.

I took a bin of bar supplies up to the sunset deck and found Louise there with Duane. She was draping white tulle all around the banisters and tying it up at the columns with white ribbons and bunches of daisies. Duane was rattling off the menu and she was arguing with him as usual.

“Doo-wayne? What the devil is Key o Pino?”

“Cioppino!
It’s fish chowder, Louise! The only significant difference is some red wine in the stock base and that you leave the clams in their shells!”

“Gonna be clam shells all over kingdom come too!” Louise said and looked up to see me. “Come here, Miss Linda. Look at this fool business! Doo-wayne’s printing up menu cards for the table with all these Eye-talian names and I ain’t letting him do a thing without me seeing it first!”

“I swear! Y’all are like two cats in a bag! Whatcha got, Duane?”

He handed me the draft for his printed menu, sighing with frustration. “You know, you try to add a little sophistication to this dreary world and you’re met with nothing but derision!”

“Poor Duane!” I said. “Listen, honey, every act of true genius requires courage. You know that, don’t you?” I gave him a little elbow on his arm and although he continued to pretend to be insulted, he knew his ally had arrived and would save him from Louise.

“Well, this time my precious mettle has been tested nearly beyond my endurance!”

“Oh, shush! Let’s see. Okay.
Cioppino
—I heard about that one. Okay, what’s Fritto Misto?”

“Fried seafood,” Duane said, “on plates, not in a basket! It
is
a wedding, after all. And during the cocktail hour we have platters of roasted
funghi
. . .”

Louise’s eyebrows, which got a lot of exercise on any given day, were arching, dipping and stretching all over her forehead. “Foon gee, my big fat foot,” she said, under her breath, “sounds like something you can only do in the eyes of God if you’re married!”

“Sounds like something that grows under your toenails,” I said, laughing.

“I
heard
that!” Duane said. “
Funghi cotti di portabello, gamberi grille
. . .”

No one was paying attention to Duane and naturally he was miffed. He probably spent two days on the Internet finding all the correct Italian spellings.