October Snow (2 page)

T
HE DASHBOARD CLOCK
read 5:27 PM. She’d be late for work in three minutes.

“Okay, honey. I understand…No, I’m not mad. Maybe next week…Love you. Oh, by the way, Johnny…”

But Jo’s son had already hung up.

She bit her lip, angry, uncharacteristically so. “By the way,
Johnny
…” she said to her closed cell phone.

“No, I’m not mad.” She slammed her truck into park. “Why bother being
mad
when no one cares anyway?”

She pulled her lipstick from her apron pocket. As she yanked the rearview mirror into position, she recalled the debate she and Maxine had the night before, about the tree falling in the forest.

“Of course it makes a sound. What a stupid idea.” She resisted a sudden impulse–almost a compulsion–to smear Honey Pink Frost all over her face.

She flipped the mirror back into place, looking up at the restaurant’s flashing neon sign.
Welcome To…The Berry Crate!…Homestyle Cooking…Really Great!

She grimaced. “Three years of this place.” She stepped out of the truck, rolling her eyes when she saw the manager’s car by the front entrance. “Great,” she muttered. “Big Barbie’s here.”

“Jo-
see
!” the other waitresses called out to her as she came into the kitchen. She blew them kisses, fumbling with an elastic band, trying to pull her hair back before Barb saw her.

“
Jo!”
Too late.

Kaleen, the new girl, jumped, scrambling to steady the large tray of food she was balancing. Jo took faint notice that she herself didn’t startle anymore when Big Barbie screamed.

“For the last time, you pull your hair back
before
you come into the restaurant!” Barb was close behind her, and Jo could smell the overdose of her perfume, intensely floral and suffocating. “Or better yet,
get a haircut
. Good grief, at your age, you certainly don’t need that cheerleader hairstyle.”

The kitchen fell silent for a few moments, then resumed its chaotic chatter. Jo closed her eyes and listened as Barb’s high heels clipped away. She could hear the cloying, nasal country music out in the dining room. Some singer–probably long dead, Jo mused–was wailing the eternal questions about broken hearts, and lamenting his own.

The evening was frantic, far too busy for only a few waitresses and one busboy. The Berry Crate was designed to evoke memories of the old country store, reminiscent of the days of roadside eateries and old-fashioned values.

Jo thought the place was completely synthetic, prostituting a fantasy of days gone by: an era of children playing on warm summer evenings, good neighbors, and happy people and families. Nine of The Crate’s airbrushed commercials played in a continuous loop on a fifty-two inch TV screen above the fireplace in the dining room.

The customers themselves were generally a sick, stark contrast to the happy images that streamed above them: they were angry, demanding misanthropes, with miserable lives and overblown ideas of entitlement. They came in for their cheap meals, and the hokey atmosphere, and to flex a little of their superiority at the waitresses. It sometimes occurred to Jo that Big Barbie was the same way.

They ate lots of meatloaf and gravy. Mashed potatoes. And fried chicken–the smell, sight, and feel of which she knew would haunt her senses forever.

The crowd was feeling especially ugly that night. Meals were taking too long, drinks sat empty, tables were dirty. The busboy had clocked out and quit at the height of the dinner rush, and one of the cooks wound up in the emergency room after burning his hand on the grill.

In the kitchen, after the restaurant had quieted, Jo picked up a large busser’s tub and took it to the dining room.

“Hey, you.” Her friend Samantha was rubbing her back. “Let me help. We’ll put the place back together.”

Jo picked up plates and silverware with two fingers, grimacing and waving away the flies that dotted one table in particular. She pulled a highchair away from it, and spotted an open, soiled diaper on the floor underneath it. Looking up for Samantha, her eye caught the TV above the fireplace: a pristine, white-haired grandmother was passing a perfect, pink, lace-clad infant to her grandfather as the proud parents beamed, taking bites of meatloaf and chattering happily.

“Sammy, got any gloves?”

There were two tables left to bus when Maxine called to them from the kitchen doorway.

“Hey girls, Barb wants us all in here. Now.”

Jo nodded. Her stomach gripped as she made her way from the dining room to whatever tirade was waiting for the servers in the kitchen.

Barb was a very large woman–heavy, tall, and big-boned. She had a fifties-style, poodle-do haircut, and a penchant for long, flowing skirts that she wore, always, with the stiletto heels that made her tower over the servers. Jo, at five-three and not quite a hundred pounds, couldn’t help feeling physically intimidated by her. She often wondered if it was a deliberate thing, the fact that most of the waitresses in the place were kind of small.

She could hear Barb shouting well before she got to the kitchen. “
No one
is leaving until this kitchen is
clean
. White-glove
clean
, ladies. I’m getting the gloves out of the office.
Move it
.” She lumbered toward her office just as Jo entered the kitchen. In spite of Jo’s best effort to get out of the way, she still got bumped–hard–by Barb, pushing through behind her. “Jo, stay the hell out of the way, and will you
please
answer that phone?”

Sam leaned into Jo’s ear. “Yes
please
, Jo, go get that
phone
.”

“I hope it’s death calling.”

Sam laughed out loud. “Big Barbie’s in a mood. Again.” She touched Jo’s arm. “You feeling okay?”

“Just tired.” The headache Jo had been resisting was winning, throbbing with her heartbeat. She rubbed her temples with her fingertips for a moment, sighed, and picked up the phone.

“Berry Crate, Manchester, New Hampshire. May I take your order to go?”

“
Hey! Kane!”
Barb screamed it, even though she stood outraged only a few feet away.

Jo was motionless for a second. “Could you hold please?” She jabbed the
Hold
button without waiting for an answer, and slowly turned to face Barb.

“
What?”

Maxine, hearing the edge in Jo’s voice, put a hand on her back.

“In my office.
Now
. Someone else grab the phone.” Barb turned sharply for her office, her four-inch heels clacking like a metronome.

Jo didn’t move. “I really don’t think I can do this anymore,” she said, to no one in particular.

She then wondered if she said it too loudly.
There goes my job
.

Good. It’s time.

Maxine was still behind her, poking her in the back. “Jo, what are you doing? Get in there.”

“I think I’m done.”

“Go!” Maxine gave her a little push, and Jo walked stiffly into the office.

She emerged a few minutes later, to the usual rush of questions from the others.

“What happened?”

“You get written up?”

“You okay?”

“What did she say?”

Looking at their anxious faces, Jo’s headache pounded harder. “Relax. She wrote me up for not saying my name when I answered the phone.” She smiled wanly. “She feels better now.”

An hour later, as Jo was clocking out, Maxine appeared beside her with their jackets. “Beers at Barley’s?”

“
Yes
.”

“Sammy? You coming?”

Sam gave her a thumbs-up. “Just for one. Then I gotta get home.”

Jo stared into her empty mug. “You know what I hate the most, girls?”

Sam was on her third drink, and didn’t answer. Max, on her fifth, wobbled a bit in her chair as she shook her head in response.

“Those freaking incessant TV commercials…”

Max was already yelling, “
Oh,
yeah,” then again, “Oh,
yeah
.” She stuck her finger in her mug, scraping something from the inside. “It’s like
1984
.” She lifted her mug, then paused. “But I hate Big Barbie most.”

Sam looked up. “That TV is creepy, if you ask me.”

“So’s Big Barbie.” Max drained the rest of her beer. “One for the road?”

Jo signaled the bartender. “Bobby?”

“Yeah, coming up.”

Jo leaned back in her chair, looking up at the rustic ceiling beams that crisscrossed the 1820’s tavern. She closed her eyes, wondering when her headache had let up. “It’s all imagery, like brainwashing. Making people believe that they can go back to innocent times by imitating the people on the TV.”

Max nodded. “They know they’ll never get back there. To innocence, I mean.”

Jo smirked. “Philosophical tonight?”

“That place is proof that Dante miscounted,” Sam mumbled.

They looked at her, surprised. Sam wasn’t known for her intellect.

“Hey, I know some stuff.”

“Don’t whine, Sammy. You sound like Jan Brady. Hey Jo, I thought you were going to
deck
The Big Bah-bah-ra for a minute there.”

“Maybe I will, one of these days.”

Bobby appeared at the table with their drinks and a bowl of pretzels. “You ladies should eat something.”

Sam’s cell was vibrating at the edge of the table, and Max grabbed it. She struggled to focus on the caller’s name. “Jack,” she said, rolling her eyes as she slid it across the table. “Tell him you met someone new, and now you’re on your way to Reno to divorce his sorry ass.”

Jo tossed a pretzel at her. “And then off to Vegas. With the new man.”

“Stop it, guys.” Sam flipped her phone open. “Yeah, what’s up?…No, I’m at Barley’s…. With the girls…No, not…Why?”

Jo and Max exchanged looks. Max inclined her head toward the bar, still watching Sam, who was stammering something about her long day and wanting to unwind. “Bobby, let’s settle up.”

The small tavern was filling up again, and they made their way slowly to the front door. The band that had been playing at Devon’s Grill–a high-class Yuppie haven just up the street–had apparently called it a night a few minutes earlier, and the drafts were cheaper at Barley’s.

“Hey, Jo,” Max called over her shoulder, “the upper crust is slumming it tonight. Nothing like cheap beer.”

Jo laughed, quickly taking a final sip from her half-full mug, reaching to put it on the edge of the bar on her way out. Someone on her right, pressed up to the bar, backed into her. She looked up at a tall man with every earmark of an aging Yuppie: red sweater-and-tie set, spreading hips, grayish hair lining his expanding forehead. He looked completely out of place. Then, she realized who the aging Yuppie was.

“Hey, Keith.” Her ex-husband.

He overplayed his shocked expression. “Josie! Hi!
Hi
!” The last “hi” was annoyingly sing-song, and Jo looked helplessly for Max and Sam. They apparently had already made it out the door; now, Jo was sandwiched between a short, heavily sweating guy in a gray suit–texting ferociously, and muttering something about “bitches”–and Keith.

Sammy was right
, she thought.
Dante miscounted
.

Keith was glancing around the room to see if people were watching. They weren’t, but it was one of his habits. “Hey, uh, let me buy you a drink?”

“No thanks. I’m already drunk. See ya.” She moved to set her mug on the ledge, and felt a hand caress her shoulder.

“Well, Keith, who’s
this
?”

A pudgy, studious-looking man with a comb-over was leering at her.

Keith was still scanning the bar for whatever audience he thought may be out there. “Uh, Ken, this is Josie.”

“I’m his ex-wife. Nice to meet you. Goodnight.”

“
Ex
? Oh man, that’s too bad, buddy.”

She was finally able to set her mug on the bar. Shaking her head regretfully, she said, “Yeah, Ken, it’s a real tragedy.” She exaggerated a sigh. “Ruined me for other men. Goodbye.” She had managed to move away from Ken’s hand on her shoulder, and then someone bumped her in his direction again.

His hand rested on her back. “What’s your hurry, babe?”

“Ken’s the new guy at work. He’s in…” The rest of whatever Keith was trying to say got lost in the noise of the sudden crowd. It sounded to Jo like he said “ice tea.”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“
I’m in I.T
.” Ken yelled. Jo heard him clearly, but his hand had moved way too low on her back, and she wasn’t having any success in moving it back up.

“Did you say ‘
bite me’
?” she yelled back, pretending to be deeply offended.

Bobby had come to collect her mug. He shook his head, grinning at her response, and left it where it was. Then he leaned on the bar to watch.

Jo kept her eyes on Ken’s as she grasped his hand firmly, turned it palm-up, and picked up her beer again.

“Oh no, sweetheart.” Ken was amused. “Don’t you do that …”

Still holding his hand, she poured the last half of her drink on his crotch.

Ken jumped up, swiping at his trousers; Keith was scrambling for the bar napkins. “Aw Jo, c’
mon
! Why do you
always
have to…”

“
What
? If I’d dumped it on his slimy hand, I would’ve gotten his wedding ring all wet.” She dropped the heavy mug on Keith’s foot. “Oh. Sorry.”