The People We Keep(7)

I threw up in her car on the way home. Right on my white tennis sneakers, and she wasn’t even mad. Chunks of pretzel and hot dog, all bright cherry red.

“I can get a new floor mat,” she said, patting my leg. “You aimed good. Except for your shoes.”

Later, my father put my sneaks in the bathtub and hosed them down with the showerhead. Even after he washed them, they had pink splatter stains and smelled like sour milk. “We’ll leave them on the fire escape when you aren’t wearing them,” he said. He never said anything about Margo or the breakup.

After that, on Sundays, when my dad went to his card game, Margo would give her secret knock on the door and we’d go downstairs to do her laundry together. I loved folding her clothes: polyester leopard-print leggings and zebra-striped tunics, dresses with big Hawaiian flowers and shoulder pads. Lace slips and nightgowns. And some of the underpants didn’t have a back, just a string. I couldn’t quite figure out what was supposed to go where, but they were all silky and bright. One pair had a tiny rhinestone heart.



* * *



I wipe down menus and ketchup bottles until eleven thirty, when Ida Winton lumbers in and takes her table in the corner.

“Why aren’t you in school?” she asks, groaning as she slides into the booth, which means her knee is acting up again. Which means we might get rain.

“I learned it all,” I say.

She opens the menu and smacks her tongue against her teeth. “What do I want?” she asks herself in a baby voice.

I wait for her to finish looking at the menu like she doesn’t always get the same thing. If she’s in for lunch, it’s a meatloaf sandwich with American cheese and mayo, no lettuce, no tomato, with a side of cheese fries and gravy. If she’s in for dinner, it’s mac and cheese with a side of cheese fries and gravy.

“April, you know what I want?”

“What?” I put my hand on my hip, make my eyes big, and say it like I’m talking to a little kid, but she doesn’t notice.

“I think I’ll have a meatloaf sandwich, but here’s what I want: Mayo and cheese. American. No lettuce. No tomato, or anything like that.” She wrinkles her face and shivers. As she hands me her menu she says, “Oh, and what the heck, I’ll have a side of cheese fries.”

“Okay,” I say, and take a step like I’m leaving.

“Wait! Can I get gravy for those?”

“Sure thing.”

“Aren’t you gonna write it down?”

“All up here,” I say, tapping my forehead with the pen.

Margo works the kitchen until Dale gets in at noon. She’s slicing tomatoes.

“Order up! Ida special!” I mark an order slip I.S. and clip it to the clothesline over the cutting board.

“Gross,” Margo says. She slides a salad toward me and tops it with three tomato slices. “Mrs. Ivory any minute now. Make sure she takes her pill first.”

Sure enough, when I get to the dining room, Mrs. Ivory is sitting at the end of the counter, handbag on her lap like someone might steal it. I deliver her salad with a bottle of ketchup instead of dressing and a glass of water. “Take your pill,” I say, watching until she does.



* * *



After my dad bought the land and we moved out to the motorhome, I didn’t get to do laundry with Margo anymore. “Stop in and see me after school sometimes,” she said on our last Sunday night at the Wash ’n Fold. So I did, every day after school, because I didn’t like going back to the empty motorhome. I ordered pudding or creamed corn, or whatever I’d rounded up enough change to get. When Margo had something that wasn’t moving, she’d wink at me and say, “Beets are on special today, sweetie. For you, thirteen cents.” If it was slow, she’d tell me the special came with dessert. And whatever the special was, I ate it, even if I didn’t like it, just so I wouldn’t hurt Margo’s feelings. I’d spread my books out on the back table and try to do my homework, but mostly I just watched people.

Sometimes my dad would pick me up on his way home from a job. He’d sit in the car and honk until I came out because he refused to set foot in the diner. Most days, though, I’d stay and help Margo close up. Then she’d drive me home.

If my dad wasn’t back yet, she’d idle in the driveway and shake her head. “Oh, I hate to leave you here,” she’d murmur, clucking her tongue. “No place for a girl to live.”

“It’s our clubhouse,” I’d say, repeating what my dad told me when I complained about the motorhome. “Not many kids get to live in a clubhouse.”

“I’d take you at my place if I could, you know,” she’d say, sighing. “But what can I do?”

I never knew how to answer.



* * *



Closing up with Margo all the time, I learned the ropes of things. I knew where she kept the extra ketchup and the hot sauce, and it was no problem for me to get them for customers if Margo was busy. And if customers needed something else when I brought them their condiments, I’d take the order in my school notebook, tear off the page, and bring it to the kitchen.

“I can’t hire you, kiddo,” Margo said. I was only eleven. “I’d have CPS and the DOL all over my ass for child labor. But if you take orders and people leave you tips, I mean, what am I gonna do about it? You’re not on my payroll, right?” She winked at me and put an apron on the counter. “I’m not giving this to you, but if you take it, I’ll pretend I didn’t see nothing.”