The Cocktail Waitress (6 page)

He was making me somewhat uncomfortable, talking that way of his stepchildren, and perhaps to change the subject I heard myself say: “Oh you don’t have to tell me. Because the bereavement, the hours with police, even asking for help with the funeral were nothing to what came later.” I then told about Ethel and her schemes to steal Tad from me, ending with how she’d acted that very afternoon. “I suppose I can understand it,” I said. “My child is a joy to be with, and he is her flesh and blood, and all she has left of her brother. Just the same, allowing for everything, I’m sick at the idea she wants him, wants to steal him off me, I mean—and still don’t know what to do. Just for now, I have to let her keep him, as without money I can’t get him back and couldn’t keep him myself if I did. Not without savings to fall back on, and with a mortgage hanging over me for good measure, which is how my loving husband left me.
But
—be thankful for little things. For the time being I have a job, and believe it or not, it pays. Not many treat me as you do, or did yesterday, I mean—but I’m not doing too badly. Compared with other things, other kinds of work, I mean, even allowing for this outfit I have to wear, I’m better off than I thought I was going to be.”

I may have said more, especially about Ethel, all the time wishing I hadn’t, as I wished he hadn’t said what he did about his stepchildren and what rats they were—one of the first things I had learned at home was: Don’t wash family linen in public, or with anyone except family. And I wish I could say I got to talking that way because of the way I felt, the way Ethel was bugging me, but it wouldn’t be true. I did it because I knew without being told, from the way he was lining it out, it was the kind of talk that he liked. So, from the beginning, I knew there was something about him I didn’t accept. But I also knew, would have been dumb not to know, that he was falling for me—that he was interested in more than just talk, and that I was playing for very big stakes. And for a stake like that you close your eyes to things—or at least a woman does. I was playing up to him, with whatever kind of talk it took. So when he paid his check with another $20, and waved the change at me, I said: “You don’t have to do that. I’m doing all right, Mr. White. And I’d like to feel you’re my friend—”

“I am your friend, Joan. I hope.”

“Then friends don’t tip each other—”

“If they’re really friends, and one has more than the other, he tries to equalize—just a little bit. But don’t worry, if it’s so very little,
that
can be fixed.”

We both laughed and I took the money.

That was Wednesday, and he came Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, each time leaving me $19.15. So, also on Thursday, I could put more money in the bank, and mail out my other two checks, the ones to the gas company and the electric company. And, still on Thursday, Liz came with her kit and glued the sofa leg on, putting a clamp on to hold it, so it would set firmly and hold. Friday she came and took the clamp off. Saturday, the men came from the gas company and electric company, to unlock my meters again. So Saturday, all of a sudden, from being a poor thing on Tuesday, with no job and no idea where to get one, I had a job, money in the bank, a living room that was decent again, gas, light, and phone—and had to do something about it. I mean, I wasn’t a thing, I was living. I took a cab to Woodies, the big store at Prince George’s Plaza, and bought Tad a tricycle, a blue one, more than I could afford but I wanted him to have the best in the store. And on Sunday I took a cab over to Ethel’s and came in with a smile on my face.

Not that she acted so friendly toward me. She protested against the tricycle, seeming to resent that anyone but her might buy Tad toys while he was under her roof, and really being objectionable when I took out my checkbook to pay her, a week’s board for Tad already boarded out and another week in advance, plus extra toward a new prescription for his pain pills. At first she refused to take it, but Jack Lucas, her husband, got in it, wanting to know: “When did we get so rich we don’t need fifty bucks? Take it and thank her, Ethel, and stop acting silly with her.”

So, she took it.

They lived in Silver Spring, perhaps six miles from me, in a house up on a terrace, and when I got there Tad was out back, with two other children, splashing in a backyard wading pool, a rubber thing with red stripes, that they’d filled with a garden hose. But of course the tricycle was news, and they all rolled it out front, where they took turns riding in it. Then Ethel, Jack, and I sat in the backyard, on recliners, and Ethel tried to be agreeable, unsuccessfully—and I tried, successfully. I felt positively angelic, even to her. Once, there were screams from the street, and I raced around the house to see what was going on. The little girl, who was a bit older than the two little boys, had ridden the tricycle off, so she was down at the corner with it, while the boys were screaming their heads off to her. Ethel, who followed me out, denounced the girl as a pest, explaining that she was always muscling in on what the other children had. But I knelt down, took her in my arms, and asked if she’d like a pair of skates. When her face lit up I promised to send her one. I promised the little boy a ball and glove, and Tad a new hat. Then everyone was happy, and I was the fairy godmother.

So, when we resumed our seats out back, I felt happy and pleased with myself. However, that didn’t last long.

Ethel asked, her voice like ice: “Where did you get the money you’re spreading around so generously to every child in sight? Working at your cocktail lounge?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t realize a waitress gets tipped so well, just for waitressing. Or are you doing more now, on the side?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“My customers have been generous with me, and I choose to share it. I won’t apologize for it.”

“It’s not the generosity you should apologize for, but what you have to do to make it possible.”

Her husband had a trapped looked on his face, as though he wished he could have been somewhere else, not watching his wife light into me.

Suddenly Tad was there, sidling up to Ethel. “What is it, darling?” she asked him.

He pulled her head down, and whispered.

She patted him, picked him up, and carried him into the house.

“You got to go, you got to go,” said Jack.

He rode me home after that, very sociably, and I felt grateful to him. But for some reason my day wasn’t nice anymore. Not because of what Ethel had said to me—she’d said as much before, and I could overlook it. But all because my son had gone to his aunt when he had to go to the bathroom, instead of me, his mother.

Whether the need to do something about it was vividly in my mind when Mr. White next came into the bar would be hard to say. But I certainly lost no time in making myself agreeable to him, offering him the cocktail list as always but adding: “But perhaps you don’t really need it, if you’re having the same as you regularly do.”

“Please. It’s very pleasant, Joan, having it remembered what I regularly have.”

“Well, Mr. White, I wouldn’t forget it so soon.”

Jake had already opened the tonic and was filling the glass with rocks. I toted, then poured, taking the bottle back to the bar. Did I put an extra sway in my step as I walked away, to make my hips jog and my bottom twitch? I may have. I know I unbuttoned an extra button on my blouse before turning around, tray in hand.

“Joan, there is something I’m curious to ask you.”

I rejoined him at his table, and swapped a full bowl of Fritos for the half-full bowl in front of him. It was no more than I’d have done at any of the dozen other tables in the bar. But perhaps I bent slightly lower doing it than was absolutely necessary. “What’s that, Mr. White?”

“Earl, please.”

“I’d feel too familiar.”

“Please.”

“Earl, then.”

“I…”

“What is it? What do you want to ask me?”

“I’m not usually tongue-tied, Joan, I just find myself somewhat distracted at the moment.”

I smiled and lowered my gaze, and said softly: “Pleasantly, I hope?”

“Most pleasantly.”

“But all the same, I don’t want to make it hard for us to have a conversation, Mr.—Earl.” I fastened up the lowest open button on my blouse. “Better?”

“From a certain point of view.”

I walked around behind him. “Better still?”

“From the same point of view, yes.”

There were no other customers in the bar just yet, and Jake had vanished into the storeroom on some errand. For the moment we were alone. I thought of what Ethel had accused me of, and of what Liz had proposed, and about how physically unappealing this man was to me—tall and ungainly, pale and middle-aged. But I thought, too, about Tad, sleeping in Ethel’s home, her kisses comforting him instead of mine when he cried out in the night, her face the one he woke to each morning, and I knew I’d do anything to have him back.

I leaned over Mr. White’s shoulder from behind, reaching forward to polish a spot on the table with a napkin, as though wiping up a spill. Through the thin fabric of his shirt and the thinner fabric of my blouse, my breasts pressed warm and heavy against his shoulder blade.

I heard his breathing change, becoming rapid, even ragged.

“There was something you wanted to say, Earl?”

He swallowed. “You make me so excited I can’t talk.”

I stood upright again, and came around to face him once more.

His face was red, less like a blush than a man suffering after long exertion. He took a swallow of his tonic. It was a minute before he regained his usual color—that is, his usual pallor—and his breathing resumed its normal rhythm. “I like you, Joan. I hope you know that. Perhaps I like you too much. It’s not good for me to get too excited.”

“Why not?”

“Can we just say doctor’s orders and leave it there?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave it there, if it means we need to stay at arm’s length.”

“Joan, you must.”

“We’ll see,” I said. Then: “What did you want to ask me?”

He took another swallow. “Your husband, who died this past week— how long were the two of you married?”

“Four years,” I said. “Just under.”

“… And your son is three, you said?”

“That’s right. Just over.”

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“I just wanted to understand your situation better, Joan.”

“And do you, now?”

“You were seventeen …?”

“A little over,” I said.

“And can I ask why you married him?”

“I’m sure you can guess.”

After some time he said: “It’s not a good reason, Joan.”

“I found that out.”

“… You don’t like to talk about it?”

“Would you?”

“I would like to know what happened, as perhaps I can help.”

“I was in Washington, waiting to start a job. Ron was there, too, living in the same apartment building. He had a record-spinner in his apartment and we would slip over there when we had nothing else to do. Of course we quickly found other things to do—and then I had to get married. That’s all. You need to understand, I was happy about it at the time. But alas, Ron had to get married too, and he
wasn’t happy at all. He hated it. He hated it, he hated me, and he hated our little boy. His family hated me too, but didn’t hate little Tad, especially Ron’s sister didn’t. So she has him now, and I have this job.”

“Well, don’t hate the job.”

“Hate it? I was down on my knees the other night, thanking God that I had it.”

“After all, it introduced us. You give me something to look forward to each evening, which I haven’t had in a long time, not since my wife died.”

There came a pause, while I stood there before him, holding my tray balanced on one hand, the half-filled bowl upon it. We neither of us said anything.

“Is the situation really so dire?” he asked. “With your son and your sister-in-law, I mean.”

“Yes,” I said simply. But then, not wanting to walk away on a sour note, I smiled and said: “But things are looking up. Thanks to you especially. Each night brings me one small step closer to my goal.”

“But only a small step, Joan. I’d like to do more.”

“Well, then, we’re even, because I’d like to do more for you as well.”

I was surprised to see a look of pain cross his features. But I couldn’t ask him about it because Bianca appeared then with another man on her heels, and I recognized him at once, even out of uniform.

Bianca seated him at a table in my station, the small one at the far end of the room.

“Mrs. Medford.”

“Sergeant Young—can I thank you again, for suggesting I come here, for recommending me to Bianca, or vice versa, whichever is the right way to say it?” I handed over the wine and cocktail list,
though obviously he knew the Garden better than I did and probably already knew what he liked to have.

“I’m glad she had an opening for you, and that you took it.” He handed back the card. “You can ask Jake to make me up a smash.”

Jake mixed a whiskey sour and poured it into a highball glass with some muddled mint leaves at the bottom. Sergeant Young took a long sip and set it down, then looked me over from head to toe. This time I didn’t stiffen. A week can make a difference.

“Mrs. Medford, I came partly to see how you are doing, and partly to sample Jake’s handiwork—but also because there’s something I want to let you know. It regards your case, and the matter of your husband’s death.”

“I thought that was all behind us,” I said.

“It ought to be, and I wish it was. If it was up to me it would be. But Church—you remember Private Church—he’s young and eager and stubborn, and out to make a name, and for some reason he’s not satisfied with the verdict of accidental death.”

“Why?”

“They train you at the academy to find crimes, Mrs. Medford. When you’re new in the job, you never want the answer to be that there wasn’t one. Let a few years pass and you know better—you’re thankful when a case can be closed without fuss. But he hasn’t had those years yet and is still burning to solve murders.”