The Middlesteins: A Novel(37)

It was early, not even 5:00 P.M., and the restaurant was empty, except for a young Chinese woman sitting before a giant pile of green beans spread on a table. She stood when the two women entered and rushed toward Edie with open arms, and they quickly embraced.

“We haven’t seen you in so long,” she said. “We missed you.”

“I haven’t been feeling well,” said Edie.

Was that true? Robin didn’t even know if Edie felt worse one day to the next.

“Oh no,” said the girl, young, slim, punkish, with a purple streak in the front of her hair, and thick black, high-laced boots over the bottoms of her tight black jeans. “We can’t have you getting sick. I’ll get you some tea. You sit down, and I’ll get you some right away.”

Robin stood there lamely, watching the two women engaging so brightly with each other, her mother with this stranger.

Edie finally introduced Robin to the woman—Anna was her name—who broke into a broad smile and then shook Robin’s hand with gusto, her slender palm disappearing into Robin’s hand. “The schoolteacher! What an honor to have you here. Your mother talks about you all the time. We love your mother. Just love her. She’s our hero.”

Robin was stunned, and a little stung, too, that she had no idea what was going on at that moment. Why is my mother the hero of a Chinese restaurant?

Anna pointed to a table near the window. “Go on, sit, and I’ll get you some tea and let Dad know you’re here.”

They sat together at the table, her mother shifting herself in uncomfortably. Fresh pink tea roses floating in a small glass jar on the table. Robin picked up the menu, but Edie told her to put it down. “Just let them take care of it,” she said. “They’ll bring whatever’s good tonight.”

Robin looked around, at the framed black-and-white photographs of faraway cities that hung on the walls, the raw wood tabletops; it felt like a place she would go to in the city, and definitely not like a restaurant next door to a place called the Billy Goat Tavern.

“It’s kind of cool in here,” said Robin.

“It’s all Anna,” said her mother. “If her father had his way, it would look like every other Chinese restaurant in town. But Anna thinks she can get the yuppies in here.”

“Is it working?” said Robin.

“It’s not not working,” said her mother. “We’ll see.”

Not so long before, her mother had worked for the companies that opened these strip malls all over the suburbs. She knew the businesses well, had seen them come and go. Robin’s father, too, with his one pharmacy left after having three through the eighties and nineties, had his opinions on what made a business work. Robin would put her money on her mother’s opinion over her father’s any day of the week.

“He needs to advertise more. Spend a little more time on the Internet,” Edie said. “I’ve been helping them out. I did some paperwork for them. It was no big deal. I have too much time on my hands anyway.”

Suddenly Robin felt relief: Her mother had a life outside her home, outside of sitting there at that kitchen table, stewing in her own flesh, in the layers of hate and frustration and anger and heartbreak that she had been building up for so long. If she came here regularly, and she was helping people, then maybe she could be saved after all. Edie had always lived to help people, volunteering with the elderly, the synagogue, feeding the homeless every Christmas without fail. All those female political candidates she canvassed for. All those family members who needed pro bono work, and she did it without thinking, staying up late after Robin and her brother had gone to bed. God, where was that passionate, connected, committed woman? Robin missed her so. Was she right here? Sitting right in front of her? Was she still there under all that weight? Robin allowed herself to plant that tiny seed of hope within herself; she watered it with green tea, the bright lights of the Chinese restaurant sunning it.

A Chinese man in a chef’s jacket sidled out of the kitchen, long lines on his face, in his forehead, on his cheeks, arched eyebrows, a tender little mustache on his upper lip; wiping his hands on a towel he then tucked neatly under his arm.

“Edith,” he said.

Sure, thought Robin. It’s Edith on her driver’s license and her birth certificate and her voter’s registration card and then absolutely nowhere else in the world, so why not in this Chinese restaurant?

He stood before the table and then waited calmly until Edie invited him to join them, and then he slid in next to her, patted her hand just once, and crossed his on the table in front of him.