Bobby's Diner (5 page)

Lasagna dinner that night was
basic. We were growing apart and I wanted him to leave—to go away, and only if
he was to return, to return like his old self— those were going to be my terms.

After I stormed out and after
throwing the wash rag at him, I came back in to tell him so. But, he’d already
left.

He sat slumped over the sports
page, blood dripped off the table and was pooling by the table leg, his arms
hung flaccidly by his sides and there was no sign of Bobby anymore.

The 911 operator told me I had to
quit screaming because she couldn’t understand what I was saying.

The paramedics made me stand away
from Bobby while
 
they proceeded to pump
his chest, while they gave him
 
artificial
respiration, while they set up the portable paddles, while they shocked him
repeatedly, even while they pronounced him dead on the scene at 6:07 p.m.

It’s interesting, you know.
What’s funny was I needed to find out if he wanted to leave. I didn’t really
want him to leave, not really. My emotions were out of whack. The thought was
just that, a thought and nothing more. But, when you’re wishing, does the
Grantor of Wishes understand this? That it’s only an impulse—a mental
projection or a petty muffled utterance?

I didn’t want him to go. Not
really. I didn’t want to

live without him, and now wished
I had died before, long before, because the idea of living without him was
unbearable, unimaginable. My life ended when Bobby

died. Was that coincidence?

CHAPTER 5

Early spring in the desert isn’t
like spring in the cool northwest with tulips bending over a warming earth.
Spring in the desert is a quick burst of life that fades as the heat swells.
Early spring is cool in the morning and warm, hot even, in the
 
afternoon. Temperatures can reach close to
ninety degrees even at the birth of spring.

Heat baked a jasmine growing on
an arboretum next to the white tent. Its pink petals steamed under a blanket of
warmth and lazily plated the air. Bees flew wildly. They buzzed their
disapproval of people in the vicinity that lingered too close. They were so
near I could feel the batting of their wings drum against my skin like a
butterfly kiss on your lips. A grackle rocked out a ragged caw-caw-caw to its
mate who answered in kind. The bright sun clashed head-on with my mood at the
moment. Just like the desert to fake you out, the oasis just out of reach. Others
in attendance glanced at me in a plastic veneer I’d learned to recognize—to
live with. Luckily, my hazy veil covered my
 
swollen eyes and red nose. I wore black linen that day. A
 
vague
 
salty film covered my dry tongue when I finally swallowed. But,
remembering to breathe was my only
 
real responsibility.
I just had to survive it.

The cool morning was churning
into a hot afternoon by the
 
strike of
eleven o’clock. I arrived earlier than Vanessa or Roberta. The reverend greeted
me with a pat on the hand and sad, sad eyes. He expressed his sorrow and led me
to my seat where I sat alone for a while.

Then Vanessa arrived. Like a
dethroned queen with her following. Roberta bumped into my leg when she passed
me to take her seat as a family member along side the casket. She didn’t
apologize.

Four chairs lined the gravesite
for us. The minister spoke cautiously, sadly and lifted his head to god with
widespread arms.

The bible sat in front of him on
a spindled podium of cold tarnished steel with a gold ribbon slung between two
open pages of silky thin paper. I could only imagine that our Lord Jesus’ words
were in red and everything else written in black. A funeral jury stood behind
us— to the sides of us, and in front of us—in judgment. They all stared and
expected the worst. But, in my opinion the worst had already happened. Bobby
had died.

Upon giving his final prayer, the
minister turned to the five men of the honors detail. He nodded for them to
proceed and in doing so, the uniformed men stood erect with rifles quick to
their sides, and the lead man called out Attention! Half left. Face. Port arms.

Ready, aim, fire.

Ready, aim, fire.

Ready, aim, fire.

Present arms.

Half right. Face.

Taps blew slow and languidly
while two of the men lapped and overlapped our country’s flag. The mournful
wail of the trumpet caught in my throat like a rock—lapping, overlapping, once,
once again, then twice. The
 
horn blower
soulfully repeated the last song’s phrase three times lapping, overlapping,
once, once again, then twice until the man finished folding the flag. Red stripes,
blue background to
 
white stars all
represented in part to the flag now a triangle of folded fabric. After the
final note one man presented me with the flag in commemoration of Bobby and his
service to the United States. I heard Roberta make a noise with her tongue, a
tsk. Vanessa’s head was down the whole time and she didn’t twitch.
 
I could see her from the corner of my eye.

The presenter took one step back
from me and marched back to the others. He then toed and pivoted into line with
his men and called out, Order arms.

At ease.

They stood with their legs slightly
apart. My heart

still pounded in my chest from
the sound of the guns. I watched them intently as they took their dutiful
places. My face was wet but I don’t remember crying. Yet, I must have.

I had long since been hurt by
people omitting my name
 
from
 
their guest lists. Even so, several of our
diner’s patrons stopped by the house to check on me after the services. Vanessa
held a wake at her home in honor of her ex-husband and his family. I wasn’t
invited. But, Vanessa and Roberta couldn’t hurt me anymore by leaving me off
their party list. My days of mourning had long since begun. Bobby’s collapse
over the sports page marked the commencement of me grieving.

CHAPTER 6

Anymore, pulling into my driveway
left me with mixed
 
feelings. It hadn’t
been but less than a month since the funeral and I still expected to see Bobby
at home. It’s funny, death. You forget for moments at a time the person you’ve
lost is gone. You think you can still pick up the phone or call out from the
 
kitchen window to get their attention and you
honestly but briefly believe you’ll hear their voice answer back. Then, your
mind whirls into a vision and you feel an awful pit in your gut –a constant
reminder of the day he died—the
 
paramedics trying so desperately to revive him and then yelling,
“Clear!” Noticing their faces as they looked around at each other, shaking
their heads, clocking the time they stopped trying, the newspaper strewn in
sections across the floor, the cat rubbing against my leg, my knees cracking
against the wood when I lost the strength to stand any longer, seeing the wet
washrag lying on the floor beside the chair.

Then, your mind reels in a
fast-forward motion to scenes at funerals, mother’s, then Bobby’s, imagining the
gathering you weren’t invited to at Vanessa’s—a conjured scene, a comment, a
sneer. And, it all happens so fast like someone hit you with a slingshot
because you’re still in the car pulling up into the drive when your mind snaps
back to reality. It’s exhausting.

Instead of seeing Bobby, Gangster
went scurrying off with another ‘catch’ in his mouth. I threw the car into park
and jumped out screaming, “Gangster, you stop right now!” He had made his way
to the front door and had a baby rabbit in his jaws. “Drop it!” I walked hard
in his
 
direction and he did exactly what
I instructed him to do.

He was very well-trained, almost
like a dog.

“Good boy,” I told him. You see,
baby rabbits are about the size of small rats but they’re much cuter. I picked
up the poor little thing but too late as it turns out. By then, the bunny was
lifeless. “Gangster.” I whined his name irritably. But, he thought he’d done a
good thing… again. He purred loudly as I held the dead little thing in my
hands. I’d heard somewhere that cats will bring you their kill as a gift. It’s
their way of saying thank you and Gangster was a smart cat that could find a
nest of anything and steal the babies out of it. So, I said “Thanks, Gangster,”
with a furrowed brow and proceeded to go out back by the garden where all the
rest of his prey lay dead, under a branchy mesquite and under a pile of dirt,
and to give the poor thing a proper burial. I hadn’t even gotten into the house
when I was grabbing the shovel and digging another hole. Lately, my life—up to
this point—had become one
 
stream of
funeral services. Similar future burials flashed before my eyes. What an
unbearable existence it seemed at the moment.

When I finally got inside, dirt
covered the knees of my pants, my hands felt gritty, and the cat was following me
around like a puppy. He wanted his evening treat. The sound of the electric
can-opener brought with it a yowling from
 
Gangster that sounded like wild cats chasing a mouse.

“Here ya go, tiger.”

He responded with a sexy, breathy
yow. Then, the only

sound in the house was of delicate
lapping up of food and the hum of Gangster’s purr while ate his fishy dinner.

My stereo was stocked and ready
to go with DVDs of Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Sachmo, Danny Kay, Frank Sinatra,
and Count Basie—music Bobby had turned me on to. I set a kettle of water on the
stove, grabbed the remote control off the counter, and clicked on the music.
Unwinding to old-time jazz and sipping chamomile seemed
 
like a beautiful way to relax—a charitable
gesture to myself after my first day back at work since Bobby’s death—and,
more
 
importantly, a day back working
along side his
 
ex-wife.

After lounging on the sofa and
trying to figure out the day’s crossword puzzle I got up to take a bath and
wash off the day. In the shower I started to get riled and angry, at what, I
wasn’t sure. Then it dawned on me Bobby had left me. At that moment, all I
wanted was to get into bed and stay there under my blanket, hide away. Then, a
sound rumbled out of me from the core of my gut and felt like it was wrenching
out my soul with it, a guttural wailing echo against the hard glass and mirror
of the bathroom, hit the water and cascaded onto the tile floor. A roar from a
snared beast caught in a trap. I yelled with all my pain,
 
all
 
my
fury, repeating, as if each convulsing sob freed me from the torment. Bending
forward in agony, steaming water ran over my face. My voice strained out a
final howl and I lost my breath. I panicked. I sucked in air. When I did I
sucked in water too. Trying to swallow I spat and gagged. My hands plastered
flat against the shower’s stall and I struggled to keep from falling.

I slumped onto the hard warm
tile. My butt landed on broken piece of slate and it jabbed deep enough into me
that I felt my skin break. I rolled off the shard and laid on the shower’s floor
crying. For how long, I don’t even know. I wanted to disappear. But, leaving
wasn’t an option. Anyway, I couldn’t run away
 
from my anguish. I couldn’t leave. The restaurant would fold and then I
became angrier with Bobby.

How could he do this? How could
he just up and die on me?
 
He hadn’t told
me he was sick. What was it exactly the doctors said about him being ill… what
did they say about nearly three years before… was it?

Nothing would ever be the same.

I sunk in-between the cool sheets
with my cat curled against my side and fell asleep.

CHAPTER 7

“Hello, Mayor, Mrs. Pyle. How you
doing this fine Sunday?” Though I tried to mask my Georgian drawl, the
fine
 
still sounded a little like fan. I
was walking Gangster on his leash down the sidewalk in front of the Church of
Christ. Services had just let out and everyone looked enlightened and full o’
smiles and kindness as they clamored around the front of the church entrance.
Older folks and children wore their best Sunday clothes while teenagers sported
hip-huggers and tight tee shirts and metal in their faces and dark eyeliner
which made them look more like Satan-worshipers than Christians. But, there
they were, pouring out of the church’s pious mouth and onto its holy steps.

“Why, we couldn’t be better if
the Lord reached down and touched us on our heads, right Helen?” The mayor said
it loud so everyone could hear him.

Mayor Harold Pyle seemed more
like a caricature than a real person and he accentuated the parts that
already
 
stood out. The disproportion of
his large forehead
 
accentuated his
pea-sized eyes—eyes that darted all too frequently about as he conversed. And,
his overly oily beak-shaped nose had deep pores that covered the end of it and
appeared as tiny black dots and, just when I was
 
concentrating on his nose, he pulled out a
hanky and dabbed his snout rubbing up to his forehead and down around the rest
of his greasy face. His holy experience in church that morning must have gotten
his follicles pumping.