The Waitress Who Knew Every Order
“Black coffee,” Hank said. “Two eggs over hard. And I’ve been meaning to say for about 20 years that I don’t know a better thing on this earth than being asked how my knee is by somebody who actually wants to know.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” my mother said, and sat down on the floor.
Not the chair. The kitchen floor. I had never seen her do it. She sat with her back against the cupboard and her apron strings still tied around her waist, because she’d worked the lunch shift and hadn’t taken it off, and she laughed once, a short wet surprised laugh.
Hank got down next to her on one bad knee and gave her an orange.
Orville Jarvis came twenty minutes later, in his barn coat, and stood in the doorway saying “Chicken fried, gravy on the side, extra pickle,” and then, because it was a harder one, “and two sweet teas, Debbie, because Lana’s here too.” My mother said, “Orville,” and that was all she said. She got up off the floor and put the kettle on, because there were people in her kitchen and that was the thing her hands knew how to do.
Nobody made a speech. That was the thing I remember. They said it in orders. They sat at the table that holds six, with the oranges in a bowl and the good plates out because Mom would not hear of anything else, and they talked about the weather and Orville’s son and the price of fuel oil, and every so often somebody said a line from the notebook the way you would sing one line of a hymn.
The rest answered in their own way. A casserole turned up on the porch in a quilted carrier with no name on it. Loretta Quinn sent a text that was three lines of lowercase fury and a heart. Pastor Lund said he would see us in the morning. None of them were people who needed to be asked twice.
It was Reuben Moody who got to me.
He came in last, at ten minutes to midnight, in his Sunday coat over his pajama top. He stood in the doorway of a kitchen that had four people in it, and the room went quiet the way a church goes quiet, all at once and for no reason anyone could name.
My mother got to her feet. She was still wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Reuben,” she said. “You shouldn’t be out in this.”
“Booth 4,” Reuben said.
“I know, honey.”
“Two cups.” He took off his cap. “Four years ago the week after Viola passed I couldn’t make myself sit at home. I went to the Prairie Rose because it was the only place that didn’t smell like her funeral. And you came over with a pot of coffee and put down one cup and looked at it, and went back, and came back with another one. And you set it across from me. And you didn’t say a thing. Not a word.”
Nobody moved. Orville had stopped with a fork halfway to his mouth.
“I’ve never told anyone why I come in,” Reuben said. “Folks think I just like the eggs.” He said it to the cap in his hands. “I come in for the second cup. For about ten minutes every morning, a woman I love is sitting across from me, because somebody was kind enough to pretend she was.”
My mother did not say anything.