Frannie (at the Rehabilitation Restaurtant)

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This is a chapter from my forthcoming novel (The Rehabilitation Restaurant). It is set in southern California, in 1973. This excerpt will be published in the Eunoia Review in July, 2013.

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First Serial Rights Michael J. Martin 847-899-4870 [email protected]

FRANNIE (At the Rehabilitation Restaurant) IV by Michael J. Martin

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Frannie loved her family’s farm. On a winter morning she loved the pink dawn sky and the warmth of the dairy barn, the sweet smell of the hay and the cows and their milk. She helped her dad with his endless chores and she carefully watched how he did them because she knew she too would grow up to be a farmer. He kept a close eye on her and only became angry when he feared she might get hurt. Each morning she carried a freshly drawn pitcher of milk from the dairy barn that her mom would skim for cream, after it had settled. On Sundays, following Mass, she sold eggs at the roadside, ten cents to the dozen. She conducted her business seriously and did not give much heed to the compliments the neighbors and townsfolk paid her. When she turned nine, she was given sole responsibility for feeding the kittens. The kittens gathered together at the same place in the straw at the back of the barn and awaited her; they understood her routine and knew just when to expect her. They looked up and pretended to be surprised at her arrival, and they crowded their tin bowl as she bent down and poured the delicacies from her slop pail into their bowl. She reprimanded those kittens that hadn’t sidled to the bowl and reminded them that they too needed to eat. She waited for the kittens’ purr, a sound she likened to the hum of electricity that skipped through overhead wires, and she told the kittens good-night and wished them all sweet dreams.

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Twice a day Mr. Earl arrived in his rumbling red truck to cart the milk away. In winter he attached a plow to ensure a path to the milk on snowy mornings, and he’d clear the drive between the old garage and the road for Frannie’s dad, and also the graveled rectangle between the house and the dairy barn. Occasionally on a Saturday his daughter Beth rode the rounds with him and she shyly waited to see if Frannie would invite her to stay; on these days they climbed up on the tractors or fed apples to the horses, or searched the entire farm for the kittens, who magically re-appeared at their bowl when it was time for their dinner. Too, there were times Frannie was invited to ride with Beth and her father to the Chippewa County Co-op. They would deliver the milk and go to the cafe in town for their favorite, two chocolate-chip pancakes and a scrambled egg. When she returned home from her last trip to the Co-op, she told her mom that her head hurt and that her insides felt soggy; her mom pressed a hand to her forehead and found she had a fever. When she became sick, her mother held her up in bed. Her little brother was not allowed to visit Frannie in her room. The doctor came to the farm and examined her, and the next morning her mom and dad swaddled her in warm clothes and drove to Minneapolis, to the Polio Annex at the General Hospital. She was wrapped in hot packs of wet wool to keep her muscles

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calm and the nurse came for her in the morning and afternoon for exercises to keep her muscles strong. She saw the wheelchairs, the crutches and the leg braces all around her, and she saw them in her dreams; but the machine she couldn’t think about, the one she would not allow into her dreams, was the blue iron lung machine. It was shaped like the belly of a small baby whale and Frannie knew that once it was closed around you it wouldn’t let go. She missed the rhythms and the routine of the farm. The rich, earthy smell of the hogs and the cattle gave way to the shiny antiseptic scent of the hospital that only made her nose itch. And nature’s sweet sounds, wind through the trees or the animals marveling at a new day, yielded here to the constant clanking of metal and the low murmur of whirring machines. She wasn’t sure who she should tell that she wanted to go home; her nurse was kind and she wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings, and the doctor seemed stern and unlikely to listen. She worried more about the kittens than her missed schoolwork; numbers and letters came easily to her and she was confident she’d catch-up fast. But she knew her brother could be impatient and careless with his chores, and she doubted he’d wait to make sure that all the kittens had fed.

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She would wake with a start in the middle of the night and believe for a moment she was back at home. She wouldn’t let herself cry because she knew once you started crying you couldn’t always stop. So she would think about the farm and wait till sleep stole back over her and carried her away to morning. One night she woke and coughed several times till the flashlight nurse came to her bedside and asked, “why aren’t you sleeping, dear child,” and Frannie had whispered, “I’m protecting against the blue machine.” But the more she considered it the more she came to see that what woke her was not fear, but the sighing and the flashing --yellow, red and green and blue--of the many devices that blinked all round her, like thousands of fireflies in the dark, cavernous dormitory. She would imagine the farm, and, in her mind’s eye, its wide open spaces seemed even more expansive while she was away; two-hundred acres covered miles and miles. She could see the fields and how the pale corn glowed golden, and she knew there was nothing in the world prettier than the autumn sun setting over the cornfield to the west. She saw her mom in the kitchen, baking, always baking, cookies and pie, cupcakes and bread, and her aunts there too, in the warmth of the winter kitchen, laughing, helping, singing.

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She was allowed to stay up later than her brother and when it was her time for bed she crawled under the covers, and out in the distance, over the dome of the silo, she sought the familiar winking light high atop the radio tower; when she tired of the tower’s blinking light she would move her head on the pillow and look out further yet, to the stars that hung on invisible threads from heaven, and she listened for the comfortable timbre of the muffled voices downstairs until the voices faded away. Her mother wore lipstick on the day she came to take Frannie home and Nurse Dierdre led them down the hall to the doctor’s office. The doctor appeared much less severe when he smiled up at her mother. He spoke in his language--a mild spinal polio; nestled at the base of her right hand; the virus, you see, multiplies and destroys nerve cells; fortuitously, it affected the central nervous system, not the brain stem; yes, the weakened muscles can improve--words that seemed to bound soundlessly off the office walls and slip under his carpet. Frannie looked out the window at the chill November sky and watched the departing birds fly in their imperfect V, and she thought it was time to leave now, she was homesick for the farm.

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She wanted it all to stay the same, exactly as it had been, but when you go away and come back there is always a shift; sometimes it is subtle, sometimes straightforward. It might be imperceptible at first, but you sense the change, and the uneasiness you feel stems from the unknowing, and is even more painful than the yearning you feel for the way things were. Frannie was banished from the dairy barn till the doctor allowed her to be near the animals again. She snuck into the barn to check on the kittens, and when her dad discovered her there his face looked the same as when he would find her too close to the moving machinery. He lifted her up and carried her out of the barn, she was crying now, and he tried to comfort her. “Now, now, sweetheart,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about the kittens. I’ll take care of them. We just have to make sure you’re better.” “But kittens aren’t animals,” she sobbed. “They’re kittens.” She abandoned her outside chores for lowly inside chores like laundry, dusting and setting the table, and she watched her dad from the window, filling the wagon with feed for the hogs or leading the cows back into the barn for their milking. She knew that he missed his helper and that was likely the reason for his grumpiness. At the dinner table he groused about the sinking price for his milk, and he rubbed his brow when he

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talked about necessary capital expenditures; she didn’t like the sound of it, whatever they might be. In the early spring she and her brother learned they would have a new baby brother or sister, due to arrive over the summer. Donald looked up from the Erector-set crane he was building and said, “Oh. What’s the baby’s name?” And he went back to his work. Frannie picked up her jacket and went outside. The snow had melted and she carefully avoided the puddles. She walked past the silo to the edge of the corn-field, the black soil turned up in preparation for planting, and she imagined the corn coming up, row upon row of green shoots stretching toward the sun. After dinner she found her mom alone in the kitchen, making school lunches and listening to music on the radio. “I should be happy,” she said, “but I think I’m not.” Her mother ran a hand through the girl’s hair and studied her for a moment. “You’ll adore the new baby,” she said. “You were always so good to your little brother.” “Everything is so different, though.” She sniffed back her tears. “Oh, sweetheart--we don’t stay the same. Neither does anything around us.” Her mother bent down and kissed her hair at the crown of her head. “You want the corn to grow, don’t you?”

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Her reply was muffled in her mother’s embrace and she wanted to be held till the tears went away. Her mom began swaying to the ballad on the radio, holding her, a slow waltz. When the song ended Frannie brushed away the tears with the back of her hand and looked up at her mom. “I think Audrey would be a nice name for my new sister,” she said. Audrey was three years old when their father finally accepted an offer for the farm. He did not want to sell the farm, but felt he no longer had a choice. The slight profit margin of his small operation had not allowed for the requisite improvements and he was unable to further burden himself by rolling still more debt. That one good year that might allow him to catch-up, to mechanize the milking parlor or wash away the indebtedness, seemed more distant with each passing month, and each month added fresh weight to his worries. Roofs leaked and his aging machinery broke down. They all put a bright smile on this move to town, even convincing little Audrey that she would like their home in Eau Claire better than the farm. Frannie told herself she’d become a regular kid, flat-chested and self-conscious, no longer a kid with a farm, but all was not lost, the move would put her closer to the boy in town that she liked. She came across her mom in the kitchen pantry, packing away her pots and pans. She

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could see that her mom had been crying, and she hugged her. “I guess we’ll both miss seeing the corn grow,” she said. The tears beaded again in her mother’s eyes. “I’ve loved this farm, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll miss it.” They couldn’t drive by the farm for a long while and instead took the roundabout way to the Dairy Queen out on the county road. Their father did well selling insurance to the farmers, and when Audrey went to school their mother took work at the floral shop. Donald had decided he would become a scientist and Frannie dreamed of ways she might acquire her own farm. They told Audrey she would be a ballerina. She met Alan at 4-H and he was the first boy she ever held hands with. She tried to be on his left so that if he took her hand again he would take her better hand, but he laughed when he recognized her ploy. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I love both your hands.” They went to the bandshell to hear the concerts, and he would pick her up after work at the coffee shop on Water Street. One Friday night he took the highway north, past Chippewa Falls, toward Lake Wissota. “I know a place,” he said. She wondered how he knew this place, but worried more about the calculation she was doing in her head; after counting the days one more time she thought she would be alright. Alan parked the car behind a collapsed barn and they held each other

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on the bench seat of his father’s Chevvy Impala. With an arm around her waist he swept her down and under him, and clasped his mouth on hers. He unbuckled himself with one hand and tugged at her underpants with the other. He lay on top of her, wedged between her legs, unsure now what to do with his hands. Frannie’s head was pressed up against the door and her neck strained against the arm-rest. She was unable to get comfortable and her back hurt, and then she hurt. She wondered if there’d be blood. They rode back to town silently. She thought it would be nice to hold hands, but he had both his hands on the steering wheel. She wanted to talk, to break the silence, but as each moment passed it became more difficult to say anything. Their chaste kiss when he dropped her off at home seemed incompatible with the night. Alan left 4H for the Photography Club and he carried his Canon F-1 with him everywhere. Frannie became his unwilling model, and the camera doted on her; it loved her heart-shaped face, her wheat-colored hair and pale blue eyes. His favorite picture of her was taken at the coffee shop; she stood akimbo, surprised to see the camera, left hand on hip and the middle finger of her right hand thrust directly into the eye of camera. When Alan sold an early photo--a copse of golden birch at twilight, their delicate

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branches sheathed in silvery ice after a winter storm--he knew he would make his living with his camera. Frannie still knew how she wanted to make her living, though she didn’t know how she would get there. She took on more shifts at the coffee-shop as she neared graduation and thought that after summer she would move to the Twin Cities; she’d heard of dinner houses in St. Paul where a good waitress could make fifty dollars a night in tips. She lifted trays with her left hand and used her weakened hand for lighter duty, like serving platters and lifting coffee cups. She iced her hand when it ached, particularly the webbing between her forefinger and thumb, and took two aspirin after each shift. She continued to pitch in at 4H when she could. Autumn came and Alan surprised her by asking if she’d move to California with him. She surprised herself by saying yes. She could visualize Alan on her farm, though the picture was not perfectly in focus.

iii They rented a small house on a scruffy street in Oceanside. Frannie bussed tables at the Chart House in the harbor, and Alan took pictures of sunsets and ships. He told her he’d have to get lucky, he needed a big score, and he’d take day trips to Los Angeles

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and walk the streets to force his luck. His break came when he spied Ali McGraw in the doorway of a tobacco shop. His photograph of her was his first sale to a national magazine. He pressed on, spending weekends in Los Angeles, and then he was gone. The postcard he sent Frannie showed the Golden Gate bridge, all copper red against the blue of the sea and sky. She re-read his brief message: Up in San Francisco now, trying to get on with Rolling Stone. Hope you’re okay. You can give my old clothes away, I’m buying new threads. Or wear them if you like! Anyhow, Merry Christmas! Your friend, Alan. No return address was noted. Frannie tore the postcard into the smallest bits she could. Your friend, my ass, she muttered to herself. She bunched the bits in her hand, threw on a jacket and walked the five blocks to the ocean; she fed the postcard to the wind. She bundled his clothes in a large Hefty bag, collected his toiletries and his silly cologne and wondered for a moment about setting it all on fire in the back yard. She pitched the pictures of him, frame and all, into her bag, cinched it, knotted it twice and tossed it into the trash can outside. She played her favorite record album and made herself tea and cried when Joni Mitchell sang her River song, not because she would

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miss Alan, she wouldn’t, but because she still missed the farm and it was Christmastime and she wanted to be home. The house was a humble afterthought, a dump really, and she struggled with the rent. Late in spring, when she read the notice for the Rehabilitation Restaurant in the North County Times, she saw a way out. She fibbed a little, maybe exaggerated the effects of the polio, but Miss Maggie from the County liked her and assured her one of the twenty-five positions at the Restaurant. She packed all her belongings into two cardboard boxes and sold her beat-up Datsun to the neighbor next door for a hundred dollars and the promise of a ride to the Restaurant. Move-in day, a brilliant Saturday in June, and all the faces, all the activity in the parking lot made Frannie realize just how lonesome she had become at the house in Oceanside. She gave the little Datsun a farewell pat on its hood and waved good-bye to her neighbor and stood in the center of the parking lot with her two boxes and pillow and wondered how she would fit in. A car stopped in front of her and a young man pushed himself out of the car. A cigarette burned in the corner of his mouth. He went around to the trunk and lifted a large suitcase and a stuffed laundry bag. The driver, a short, graying woman, met him at the trunk and waited, expectant. “You can go now, ma,” he said,

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and he shooed her back behind the steering wheel. Frannie noticed the burned and scarred skin of his neck. Others hugged and cried their farewells. Already, music poured from the open windows of the squat, three-story cottages that crouched in the yard behind the white wooden fence. She watched the racket up and down the stairs, some trudging with the weight of their luggage, some bounding. She felt that old sense of anticipation, that something good could happen any moment, and began toward the fence. A small group huddled at the clipboard that hung on a fence-post; the fellow with the eye-patch greeted Frannie. “My name’s Rickey,” he said. “This here,” and he pointed at a young man who wore a cowboy hat, “this here’s Olin.” Olin tugged the brim of his hat even lower over his brow. Several others nodded and waved. “It’s nice to meet you all,” she said. “My name--” “No, wait!” Rickey waved his hands to stop her. “I have to guess who you are.” “He hasn’t been right yet today,” Olin said. Frannie couldn’t read his expression under the hat. Rickey lifted the clipboard and scanned the chart for names. “You are--” He bowed his head in concentration, the answer was coming to him now. “You are Faye!”

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“Well--” Frannie set her boxes and pillow down. “Not unless my name has changed. But you did get the first letter right.” “He’s pathetic,” Olin said. Rickey ran a finger over the list of names. “Aha! You’re Frannie!” “Hey! Score one for the whiz kid,” Olin said. “Now show her what’s under your eye-patch so she can go find her room and unpack her stuff.” Rickey slipped his thumb under the patch and flipped it up over his eyebrow. Frannie looked into the empty eye-socket; she didn’t blink and she didn’t shriek. The hollow was dark and shriveled and it made her think of her grandmother’s wizened mouth. She held the gaze of his good eye, leaf-green with flecks of gold, and she thought it the prettiest eye she had ever seen. The withered socket seemed to cry out for a prosthesis, if only to restore its integrity, but she dare not say anything, she didn’t understand their game. She thought she was being tested, or maybe being teased, and teasers always seemed cruel till you pulled back their curtain; her Uncle John called her the Little Dutchman and vexed her till she came to see his teasing was truly very clever, and was his manner of trying to win her affection in the only way he knew.

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Rickey blinked first, and he meekly fixed his eyepatch. Olin pushed his hat to the crown of his head. The crowd at the fence-post was quiet. “I know which room is yours,” Rickey said. “I’ll help you carry your things up.” She followed him through the gate, into the yard and up the stairs to her room. “Home, sweet home,” he said, and left her boxes on the landing. She unlocked the door and lifted the shades, opened the windows and looked around; a desk and a chair, a bed and a two-drawer pine dresser. The back third of the room was cloaked by a curtain that still smelled of fresh vinyl; she drew the curtain to reveal her sink, toilet and shower. Perfect, she thought, it beats a room in the convent. She unpacked her boxes and hung her framed picture of the farm over the desk. She admired it, decided it was off-kilter, nudged the lower left corner and heard a voice call to her from the landing. “Hi--don’t let me bother you, I’m Lillian.” Frannie laid down the hammer and joined her out on the porch. “Hey, do you smoke?” Lillian asked. “I’m really not supposed to, and I don’t want a whole cigarette, just need a couple hits from someone else’s.” Lillian seemed to squint in the sunshine, or possibly it was the crescent shape of her small eyes that made her appear to squint; an impish smile played at the corners of

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her mouth. Her delicate and fine-boned face reminded Frannie of her barnyard kittens, and she noticed the slight stretch of Lillian’s sundress at her stomach. “Y’know, I’m one of the oddball freaks that hasn’t taken it up,” Frannie said. “I’ve tried, but every time I nearly coughed half to death.” “I’d ask one of the guys, but they slobber all over ‘em.” Lillian’s manner made Frannie smile. She was happy to be out in the warmth and the light of the sun, beside this slender, gamine beauty. “I’m Frannie,” she said. “I’m one of the lunch waitresses.” “Oh, cool,” said Lillian. “I’m the lunch hostess. We get to work together.” Lillian padded back down the stairs to continue her quest, and Frannie stuffed her baggie of picture hooks and hammer in the bib pocket of her overalls and went out on a search of her own. She crossed the lawn to the cottage nearest hers and found an old guy, maybe her grandfather’s age, out on his porch in a straw hat and Hawaiian shirt. He appeared almost regal in his folding-chair, the king amused by the hustle and bustle of his minions in the parking lot in front of him. He tipped his hat to Frannie, and she leaned against his porch railing. “Need any help hanging your pictures?” she asked.

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“I ain’t got no pictures, girl,” he said. “What I’ve got is a photographic memory .” He tapped a finger against the side of his head. “It’s all up here, see?” “My name’s Frannie.” “Fanny!” He cackled and coughed. “See, that’s how I’ll remember you--Fanny.” He spit to extinguish his cigarette and dropped the butt into the ashtray he cradled in his lap. He looked her over. “We could go in there,” and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the door, “but it wouldn’t be to hang no pictures, if you catch my drift.” “As it happens, I’m an all-time catcher of drifts,” she said. She looked beyond his sly smile to the playfulness in his eyes. “Can I take a cigarette for my friend?” He stood and pulled a Chesterfield King from his pack. “Name’s Gunner,” he said. “You might check on the fellah above me--heard him sobbin’ when his mama left. Sounds like he dudn’t know what the sam-hell he’s doin‘ up there. Believe he called hisself Herbert.” Frannie thanked him and climbed the steps to the second floor landing. The door was cracked open and she looked in: first she saw the heaps of his things on the floor, a mound of shoes and socks and slippers, and a tuft of underwear, some worn and stained alongside unopened packages of tee-shirts and boxers; under a pile of shirts and slacks she saw a toothbrush and several prescription bottles. She leaned into the

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room and found him--he sat at the edge of his bed and he clutched a wad of tissue in one hand, his Bible in the other. He stood in greeting and Frannie could see he had been crying, his eyes all redrimmed and swollen. She noted that everything about him was sturdy and thick, from the lenses of his glasses and the bulky plastic ear-piece he wore to his wide flanks and big stubby nose. His porcine ears gave it away, he reminded her of those guileless fellows back home, the hogs, and she liked him immediately. “Let me help you arrange your stuff a little bit,” she said. “You’ve got a regular mess workin’ here, buddy.” Herbert went out on the porch to wipe away his tears and quiet his sniveling while Frannie sorted his clothes, folded them and ordered his dresser. She organized his sink and medicine cabinet, decided his room was now home, and called to him: “I love this picture,” she said. She held it out in front of her, a framed and matted family portrait in black-and white; father in a solemn suit and fedora, mother in her Sunday dress and there was Herbert, maybe five years old, in a crew-cut and smiling, wearing a striped shirt and suspenders that held up heavy woolen trousers. “Where was it taken?” she asked. “Backyawd at home in Dacwamento,” he said. “And how’d you end up down here?”

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“Aftaw dad died mom moved clote to her didter in Otentide.” Frannie climbed up on the desk and measured its width with her wingspan, made a small marking on the wall in front of her forehead and hung Herbert’s picture. “First time away from home, buddy?” Herbert nodded. “We’re gonna’ be alright,” she said. “You know that. We’ll be working soon, we’ll get busy, and we’ll all make some good friends along the way.” She hung pictures for several others who were grateful someone had remembered picture hooks and nails, and as she reflected back on her day she thought it a very good first day at the Restaurant; the great energy in the air warmed her, and already the dank little house in Oceanside was a faint memory. She had met so many people, and tomorrow she would work on memorizing their names. And she met Seth, who took her breath away. She knew his name immediately. There had only been one who rankled, whose words had stung. A group had gathered on Lillian’s porch after dinner and Frannie jumped the stairs to join them. Lillian and others waved, but Faye looked her up and down: “Bib overalls?” she asked. “I thought that whole cutesy country-girl thing was over--like years ago.”

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“Well, I grew up in the country,” Frannie said, as if that settled it, but Faye fired back, “yeah, well I grew up in a stinky, smelly city and we stopped wearing bibs by the time we grew boobs.” A few on the porch laughed and Frannie became very conscious of what she was wearing. She didn’t understand Faye’s antipathy toward her, it was almost as if she had been singled out, and in time it only worsened; all her grievances seemed to stem from something Frannie had said or done. At the end of their first week, Frannie was clearing her station after a busy Saturday lunch. Faye carried a tray heavy with dirty plates and stopped before the kitchen door. She pointed at Gracie, the busgirl, and scowled at Frannie. “Why is she always in your station?” she asked. “We could all use a little help, y’know.” Frannie didn’t feel that Gracie spent any more time in her station than Faye’s or Rachel’s, but she walked Gracie over to Faye’s section and together they began clearing and setting her tables in preparation for the dinner shift. When Faye returned from the kitchen she told Gracie thanks, and turned to Frannie. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Me and Gracie got it. I guess when I want your help, I’ll ask for it.” The annular dining room was divided into three stations at lunch, and Mr. Wooster assigned Faye Station-3, farthest from the kitchen and across the dance floor, on the

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simple premise that she was the biggest and strongest of the girls. Faye’s grievance with the station wasn’t the distance, however; she was unhappy because her bay tables faced south and the heavy plastic shades had to be drawn against the fulgent California sun. It wasn’t long before Faye had seen the familiar pantomime once too often: Lillian guiding a party into her station and then the hesitation, a guest’s finger raised and pointed toward an open table in Rachel or Frannie’s station, where no shade was drawn and the bay tables looked over the yard; where the sun came gently, filtered through the leaves of the great silk oak tree. The waitresses folded folded napkins at the long table at the start of lunch, and when Faye watched Lillian re-direct another party from her station to Frannie’s she shoved her stack of napkins off the table and onto Frannie’s lap. “So!” she cried. “The princess of Station-1 steals another one of my parties. Whose ass did you kiss to get that station?” After their shift Frannie asked Mr. Wooster to rotate her and Faye between stations one and three; Rachel would keep her middle station. The following week the women had convened at the long table at the end of their shift, awaiting the departure of the few remaining patrons. Frannie wondered aloud about the cook’s mutable moods; on this day he seemed especially sluggish and slow. Faye dropped her jaw and opened her mouth. “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “Cid’s a

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drunk--he was hammered today!” She shook her head, as if such a thing could be lost on anyone. There were other episodes and Frannie questioned her own fault in this resentment. She learned early on not to challenge Faye: the morning she and Lillian had done Gracie’s hair, swept it up off her neck and tied it back in an elegant French twist, and the kitchen crew and then Rachel and Cheryl all coo’d over Gracie’s new coif, Faye assumed indirect credit: “I knew the French twist would look nice,” she said. “That was Lillian’s idea!” Frannie protested. “The idea wasn’t yours, was it?” Faye asked. “I’d hate to see what you would’ve done with her hair.” The women all knew that Faye liked Olin and that Frannie liked Seth, yet it seemed to Frannie every time they were in a room together, whether the kitchen, or the bar after work, Faye found a way of sticking her big boobs in Seth’s face. She accepted that she had no claim on Seth and she chastised herself for her sensitivity; she had never learned to flirt and shouldn’t be chagrined at those who had. It was six weeks now since she’d waved good-bye to her car. The race-meet down the coast at Del Mar would begin soon and business would spike. The sky was a brilliant blue these days, and she lived a mere stone’s throw from the ocean. It was all

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open to her now, as wide and open as the sea in front of her and she knew there was neither time nor space for this pettiness with Faye. She resolved to make her a friend.

END

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