The Coffee She Sent Back to My Mother

“Yes, yes, you told me she was at some cafe. All the more convenient. She won’t have to drive anywhere.”

“No, Mom, what I’m saying is that she”

“I’ll call them right now, darling. Kiss Allison for me.”

And she hung up.

He called back twice that week and got her voicemail both times. He sent a text that said, in plain words, that Brenda owned the Bluebird. What came back was a picture of a hat she was thinking of wearing and a line that said, “All arranged! Spoke to a very sweet girl named Kim.”

When I told my mother, she laughed until she had to set down her rolling pin.

“Quaint,” she said. “Well, I have been called worse than quaint.”

“Mama, she thinks you wait tables.”

“I do wait tables.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Allie, let the woman come and eat. She will figure it out somewhere around the pie, and we will all have a good laugh, and then it is a story for the wedding. Don’t you go correcting her before she gets here. That is no way to start with somebody.”

That is my mother. She has spent thirty-nine years assuming the best about whoever walks through that door, and most of the time the door proves her right.

The Bluebird opens at five in the morning and closes at two, except Fridays and Saturdays, when it stays open for supper. The dinner was set for half past six on a Saturday. My mother’s plan was to work the line through the first of the supper rush, hand the kitchen over to Jeff, and change into the green dress she had hanging on the back of the office door. She had bought it in Harrisonburg just for that night. I had never seen her spend that long picking out anything.

Then the high school boy who washes dishes on Saturdays called in with the flu, and the Ruritan Club came in eleven strong without calling ahead, and at ten minutes to six my mother was still at the flat-top beside Jeff with flour to her elbows.

That is when Constance and Jim walked in. Forty minutes early.

I was at the back table, setting out the good water glasses. I saw her before she saw me. Cream jacket, pearls, a handbag that she held in front of her with both hands. She stopped just inside the door and looked the room over the way you would look over a rental cabin.

It was a full house. Walt was on his stool at the end of the counter, where he has eaten supper every Saturday since his wife died. The Hensleys had the window booth. There was a table of turkey farmers in seed caps, and half the Methodist choir, and the Ruritans pushed together down the middle. About thirty people, every one of whom has known me since I was shorter than the pie case.

“Allison,” Constance said, and offered me her cheek. “Isn’t this darling. Look at the curtains, Jim.”

“We made good time,” Jim said, like an apology.

Drew came in right behind them from parking the car, and he gave me a look that said he had tried to slow them down and failed.

I heard the kitchen door swing.

My mother came out wiping her hands on her apron. Blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled, the same shirt every one of her employees wears, with a small bluebird embroidered on the pocket. White apron. Flour on one forearm. Her short hair pushed back off her forehead with the back of her wrist.