Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(12)

Passion for Pie

If Susanna hadn’t been born with a fire inside of her, she might have eventually grown tired of traipsing around, she might have lived to be an old and settled woman, content with her life and with watching her son grow to a man. But, she simply wasn’t a person to slip into the rut of sameness; so with each passing year she became more restless. In the springtime she developed an itch that made her want to shed her skin; then when winter came, her insides burned like the belly of a furnace. “I can’t stand the boredom of this life,” she said over and over again. When she got to feeling she’d scream if she watched another teenage girl breeze by the cosmetic counter and slip a tube of Tangee lipstick into her pocket without paying, she quit the job at Woolworth’s. The news, at first, pleased Benjamin; then she told him she’d now be waitressing at the all-night diner.

“Feeding dinner to other folks when you don’t bother to so much as cook an egg at home?” he said, his words sharp as a butcher knife.“I cook when I’ve a mind to,” she snapped back.

“When you’ve a mind to ain’t all that often…”

“Yeah, well maybe I got more incentive at the diner! You ever heard of tips?” Susanna said sarcastically. “With my way of pleasing folks, I’ll likely end up making two, maybe three, times more than I was making at Woolworth’s,”

“You’ll be gone the whole night long!”

Susanna wrapped her arms around Benjamin’s neck and wriggled her body up against his. “Don’t think about me being gone all night,” she cooed, “Think about what’s gonna happen when I get home in the morning. You’ll wake up and I’ll be standing at the foot of the bed,” she edged her tongue along the back of his ear, “wearing one of those lacy brassieres you’re so crazy about.”

The first three nights she worked at the diner she did indeed come home with a glint in her eye and ready for love-making; on the fourth, she claimed he could just forget about such doings, seeing as how she’d been on her feet eight hours and was dog-tired. “But you said…” Benjamin moaned. Susanna didn’t bother to answer, just flopped her head down on the pillow.

All that summer, Ethan Allen sat across the kitchen table from his father and ate warmed-up cans of spaghetti. Afterward, when his daddy settled down to read the newspaper or watch television, the boy would bicycle five miles into town and head for the diner. “Hi, Mama,” he’d say with a broad-faced grin, then she’d sit him down with an oversized slice of peach pie or a bowl of butterscotch pudding.

“Sweetie, this here is Scooter Cobb,” Susanna said, cozily edging herself alongside the pudgy-faced man who was round as a pregnant cow. “He owns the place. Ain’t he just the cutest thing you ever did see?”

“Pleased to meet you, Mister Scooter,” Ethan Allen replied, chomping down on another bite of strawberry rhubarb pie. Although anyone watching would have thought the boy was one-hundred-percent focused on scooping up that chunk of rhubarb, the truth was he’d seen Scooter’s hand slide down Susanna’s back and come to rest on the round of her butt. “Mama,” he asked days later, “…do you like Mister Scooter more than Daddy?”

“Good Lord, Ethan,” she answered, “what’s got into you? If your daddy got wind of you asking a thing like that, there’d sure enough be hell to pay!”

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it; I swear.”

“I know you didn’t, baby.” Susanna playfully tousled Ethan Allen’s hair and promised that if he’d keep such thoughts to himself, she’d make sure to have enough spare change for the movies.

“Candy too?” he asked.

She grinned, “Yeah, candy too.”

After that, Ethan Allen had only to mention Scooter’s name and he’d find himself jingling nickels and dimes in his pocket. He found he could go into the diner any time, night or day, whether his mama was behind the counter or not, and have all a boy wanted of pies and puddings. He’d order up a bowl of tapioca or two balls of chocolate ice cream, then tell the person scooping it up they ought to add some whipped cream and a cherry. “Ain’t he something,” Susanna would grin, “chip off his mama’s block, that’s what this boy is!”

When Susanna said something like that, Scooter would smack his hand up against her behind and start chuckling. “He sure is,” he’d laugh, “he sure is.”

Even a blind man could see there was something going on between the two of them. A blind man maybe, but not Benjamin, he was too busy counting up the dimes and quarters Susanna was dropping into the cookie jar every day. Each time that jar got heavy, he’d empty it out and cart the money off to the bank in town where he’d opened up an account in his own name, claiming it would keep the money safe from robbers.

“What robber is gonna come way out here?” Susanna said, but he of course reminded her of all the things that had gone missing.

“What about the rug? What about the portable radio?”

It was true that any number of things had simply up and disappeared; so even though she enjoyed counting up stack after stack of coins, she agreed the money might actually be better off in the bank. “Just you keep track of what’s mine,” she said, “because when I got enough, I’m taking you and Ethan Allen on a vacation to New York City!”