Such a Pretty Face (24 page)

Portland, Oregon

“Y
ou don’t seem as harried today, Stevie,” Eileen said. “Last time I saw you…” She let her voice wander off. She couldn’t bear to say anything further.

“I don’t remember being harried. I was working in my garden.” She had come over, unannounced, as she had many times since our last “incident” with the chocolate cake, but I hadn’t heard her this time, so I didn’t have time to hide in a closet and wait till she left. She had arrived at my house this morning at nine o’clock and insisted I go with her to this teahouse with white tablecloths and tiered, sugary, rich desserts.

I hadn’t wanted to go. I told her that. She argued, and she pouted. I said no, thank you, again. Then she’d said, “We’re going or I’m staying here all day.”

The thought of her lounging around my house all day was depressing, but I was steamingly frustrated with myself because I had allowed her to bully me into coming. I had wanted to work in my garden and attach crossbeams to my rose trellises, one for me, one for Grandma, one for Grandpa, before going to my chicken dancing job.

And yet here I was, in some teahouse out in the suburbs. Why didn’t I say no to her?

“Oh, yes, the garden. You hardly ate vegetables before the cheater operation. You said they were the devil’s brew, I think. And now you’re Miss Organic Carrot. Digging in dirt, slamming things together with your hammer.”

She turned and waved, both hands, at the young, blond waitress. “Yoo-hoo.” Under her breath she said, “The service here is terrible.”

“What’s terrible about it?” I asked.

Eileen sighed. “If you had spent more time in the high-end restaurants you would know what respectful service entails. This gal…” She rolled her eyes.

“She brought us the tea and teapot on a tray, she’s brought you extra lemon for your water, more strawberry lemonade when you drank the first glass, she exchanged some of the pink cakes for carrot when you asked, when you said something was “rotten” about the blackberry tea she brought you lemon tea, she mopped up when you knocked over your cup…she’s still smiling. What’s wrong with the service?”

“It’s her attitude. You know, the fat attitude.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Well, you wouldn’t. After your cheater operation…” She eyed my outfit. “Hello, Mrs. Tomisson,” she murmured.

Before I could respond, the waitress came over. She smiled at Eileen, but I could see the strain. “Young lady, I need you to take away these berry muffins. They’re awful. Dry. Stale. We’ll have more of the chocolate fudge pieces.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” the waitress said. “We don’t have enough and we’re still expecting a number of other guests—”

Eileen glared at her, hands clasped over her mound of stomach. “Do it now, young woman, or I will speak to your manager.”

“Okay.” The waitress tipped her chin up. She kept smiling, to her credit.

“Now.”

The waitress turned. Eileen thought she was getting the chocolate fudge pieces. The manager came instead.

“Can I help you?” The manager, a thin, blond woman with bell-shaped hair and a soft face, stood before us.

“I’m fine,” I told her, smiling. “Everything is delicious.” No way was I going to get caught up in this.

“It’s not fine,” Eileen snapped. She listed her complaints. The manager nodded. Eileen ended her complaints with a diatribe against the waitress. “Lazy, poorly trained, snobby—”

The manager lifted one finger. “Stop.”

“I beg your pardon?” Eileen said, her chins quivering in indignation. She was Eileen Yorkson. No one interrupted her.

“The waitress did all she could to make you happy. We haven’t had such a demanding guest in here, and we’re unsure how to handle this situation.”

“I’m happy with it,” I said. “It was delicious.”

“I’m not happy with it,” Eileen snarled at the woman. “Your waitress should be fired. She obviously has trouble with serving others. She has an attitude problem and talks back to customers.”

“The waitress is my daughter,” the woman said, so coldly anyone else would have frozen in their seat.

“Then she should be taught manners.” Eileen’s words came out weak. Even she was taken aback by this change of events.

“She has been taught manners and she has been taught to serve. In fact, she recently returned from a month in Mexico where she built a church. Last summer she was in Guatemala doing the same thing. During the school year she divides her time between sports and volunteering at a food bank and teaching Sunday school. Giving back and serving is what her whole life is about.”

Eileen was staring off into space, her face flushed, chins quivering.

“Her manners were impeccable,” I said to her, “and I apologize for my…”—I paused ever so slightly—“friend. I am so sorry she treated your daughter rudely. I tried to intervene.”

I had.

But had I tried hard enough? It’s one thing to take it yourself, but what had I done to keep Eileen from the poor waitress? Wasn’t continuing to go out to restaurants with Eileen allowing the mean behavior to continue? “I’m truly sorry. I should have done more to control her.”

“Do not ever apologize for me,” Eileen snapped.

“Get out,” the woman said to Eileen.

“What?” Eileen gasped, throwing down her napkin, crumbs flying.

“Get out. My daughter has perfect manners, but I don’t. You’re obnoxious. You’re demanding and rude. Get out.” Her voice cracked, her body rigid with anger. “Out. Go.
Go.
”

Eileen’s face registered her shock. “No one talks to me like that! Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t give a holy shit who you are,” the owner hissed at her. “None. Get out of my teahouse and don’t come back. I will not have anyone attacking my daughter.”

“I’ll bet you were a working mother, never at home, and that’s why she turned out as she did,” Eileen muttered as she struggled to heave her body up. “She thinks she’s better than everyone, and so do you.”

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone,” the woman said.

“Your daughter’s a brat—”

Well, that did it. The woman picked up not one but two cupcakes and smashed them both, at the same time, into Eileen’s face.

“Get out!” she ordered. “Get out!”

I walked around the table, and heaved a fighting, infuriated Eileen up on her feet as she hurled expletives, her face bursting with rage, icing dripping off her chins and diamond necklace. I manhandled her out of the crowded teahouse as she hollered that she would sue the woman from here to hell, she would “close her down,” and she would regret the day she ever opened her doors. Did the woman know who she was, dammit?
“Do you, you skinny bitch?”

It was ugly. It was beyond ugly. Eileen was huffing and puffing and could hardly catch her breath by the time I shoved her in the car, helped lift her feet in, and slammed the door.

I scuttled back in and saw the mother hugging her crying daughter. I grabbed Eileen’s purse, opened up her wallet, and handed $40 to the owner for the food. To the girl I handed the rest of Eileen’s money: $500.

“You deserve this and more. I am so sorry for my horrible, terrible, truly rude friend.” I reached out and hugged the girl, then turned to her mother. “If she sues you, and she won’t, but if she does, call me. I promise you I will testify on your behalf.” I scribbled down my name and number.

The owner nodded.

“I’m sorry. I am truly, utterly sorry.”

I wanted to kill Eileen.

Eileen’s father called me later and asked what happened.

I told him everything.

By the time I was done, he was crying.

“I don’t know what to do, Stevie. She’s so unhappy. She’s angry all the time. She’s making all my employees miserable, I’ve had three of my best people leave in the last three months. Twelve are threatening to quit, most of them women. The morale is horrible. And yet, if I let her go, I think it’ll kill her. But my company…”

We talked for more than an hour and then I had to garden my way back to mental health. I changed clothes, grabbed a bucket, and started weeding. I threw a few handfuls of weeds into the bucket.

Why am I such a wimp with Eileen? Am I afraid of her anger? Do I feel in some inexplicable way that I deserve her comments? Do I feel guilty about the weight loss when she hasn’t experienced the same? Is she a link to my past and I can’t let go of the link, as I’ve had to let go of other people, however unwillingly? Do I stay friends with her for purely altruistic reasons, which is that I am her only friend, and I think she would implode if I walked away? Is that a good-enough reason?

I have lost so much weight and it has been a wondrous miracle, but I’m still trying to find myself, trying to find the new Stevie.

She has been lost for so,
so long,
and I need to find her.

Did this new Stevie want to be friends with Eileen?

I pulled out a mongo-sized weed and tossed it in the bucket.

On Friday night I clucked and danced on a corner dressed as a chicken with scary yellow eyes. I was almost hit by a motor-cyclist who called me a “chicken shit.” I sweated profusely. An old man with a cane tried to pinch my chicken butt. Mr. Pingle said I did an outstanding job, outstanding! Sales were higher than on any other Friday. “Cluck cluck!”

On Saturday morning and Sunday morning I walked starting at six o’clock. My whole body was tense from my chicken-arm-waving exercises, my chicken dances, and my exuberance with the sign. My whole mind was numb.

Numb.

I was a dancing chicken.
I was so utterly humiliated. What if Jake found out? He was out of town for the next ten days, in San Francisco for work, but eventually I would have to tell him.

I figured I could pay off around $4,500 of my medical debt, barring any unforeseen problems, like The Mobster dying, by the end of the year. But was it worth the humiliation?

Probably. It probably was. I hate debt. It makes my nerves jingle and jangle.

Before I went back to being a chicken that night, I gardened. I pulled up weeds that outrageously decided they had permission to be in my vegetable beds in the first place and I laid stone down for my pathway. I had gotten the stone for nothing off a job site I saw on the way home from work. (No, I did not steal it.) The pathway led under the three trellises and then to a corner of my yard. I wanted that corner to have a circular patio where I could make a mosaic design out of cracked china plates I had. Sunshine and I used to play tea party with Grandma’s china plates.

I had a late lunch under the canopy of my old, white, flowering cherry tree. I loved that tree, as I loved my two pink cherry trees and my tulip tree. After lunch I planted a few geraniums that my neighbor had given me, then hung up two birdhouses I had bought for $3 at a garage sale on my walk on Thursday.

As I was driving to my chicken job early that evening I briefly wondered if there was anything I could do to make more money.

I could sell the eggs from my ovaries, but I think my eggs are probably too old.

Maybe a kidney? My brain?

I hated that my thoughts kept circling around money, I did.

But money is one of those triggers, I think, for all of us. Except for the insanely greedy, the ones who would sell their own sister if it could bring in an extra hundred, I think most people simply want to survive, not owe anyone money, and go on a nice vacation now and then.

My feelings about money could be summed up by a quote I saw on a napkin years ago: “Money Isn’t Everything, But It Calms My Nerves.”

That’s how I feel.

And my nerves were shot.

Despite our fun, witty phone calls and e-mails, ten days was an awful long time without Jake. An awful long time. I ached for him.

Zena and I saw Crystal dart up to the Chinese food stand again in Pioneer Courthouse Square. The man stepped out of the stand and gave her a hug, then lunch, and she teeter-tottered on her heels back to work.

“It’s surprising she’s nice enough to anyone to earn a hug,” I said. “She’s all needles and ticks to me.”

“She’s the type that shoots poison darts and flings snakes,” Zena said.

I handed her some orange slices.

“Okay, here’s the question of the day. Plastic surgery.”

“You know I had my boobs done.”

“Yes, but you had to. You were the size of a rhino, and now you’re the size of a flamingo and your boobs were dropped to your waist. I mean, if you ever wanted to have sex, you had to get those girls yanked back up to their proper position in life.”

“True.” I wasn’t offended.

“Women do all sorts of stuff to make themselves younger. They use needles to inject stuff, they go under sharp knives while unconscious, have strange machines suck them out, but for who?
Men.
Men, shallow and testosterone-dripping men with testicles in their craniums. Men often want their wives to do it to turn them on, but don’t you see the hypocrisy here?”

I thought about hypocrisy and men, an easy topic. “Yep. I do. What do men do to make themselves younger and sexier, and why don’t women insist on it?”

“Bingo, dearie. I have a friend in her early forties who has had all kinds of stuff injected into her face. She got her butt lifted, she’s had liposuction, a boob job, all for her husband, who constantly criticizes her. He’s in his fifties. He’s almost bald except for a rim of gray. He has a gut and a face like a squished bulldog, and there he is criticizing his wife.”

“And she takes it.”

“I think she takes it because after seven years she’s going to divorce the guy and take the house in Tuscany. She loves Italy. Says the wine is better there. I was there when he came home from work and told her she should get her poofy lips done again because they were, in his words, ‘flat and tight.’”

“What did you say?”

“I told him that as soon as he dyed his gray hair brown so he didn’t look so, so old and Grandpa-ish, and grew more of it so that when he was going down on my friend she wouldn’t have to be disgusted by the sight of his bald head rooting about, and as soon as he got rid of that gross gut that would squish my friend in bed and firmed up his flubby bottom, then he could suggest Botox for his wife’s lips.”