Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [81]
Meanwhile, Mara would be going to Chicago in the morning to meet her father. I had just left her strolling through the aisles of the library’s fiction section, looking for something to read on the train, something that would impress her father when he met her on the platform, the book tucked nonchalantly under her arm as though it belonged there. Silas Marner? I wondered. David Copperfield? Or why not go all out and choose War and Peace? It wouldn’t be quite so heavy if she checked it out in paperback, though it would still be weighty enough, of course, to make a lasting impression on William Remmick, English professor and book lover.
Mara, with her bright eyes and nervous laughter, was the picture of giddiness. It was all arranged. Her grandparents would accompany her on the 9:05, which they would ride to the end of the line. Her father would meet them at the station and spend a few hours with Mara while her grandparents did some Christmas shopping in the city. Mara and her father would have lunch, talk about their lives and literature, exchange Christmas gifts – she had a small volume of Langston Hughes that she’d signed With love from Beatrice – and forge a lifelong bond that would keep them together even while they lived out their lives apart.
Clenching my jaw and clutching my books more tightly, I tried to push the thought of Mara and her daddy out of my mind. I was on my way to meet Mom at work so we could drive home together, but at the last minute I decided to turn down Second Street instead of sticking to the usual route. It would be a roundabout way to Marie’s Apparel, but it would take me by the café. Maybe, just maybe, Daddy would be there, sipping hot coffee while warming his hands on the cup.
The plate glass window of Hot Diggity Dog was rimmed with blinking colored lights. Someone had painted a Santa hat on the dancing hot dog and had written Ho Ho Hot Dogs! in a cartoon bubble near his head. He was surrounded by a storm of hand-cut paper snowflakes stuck to the window with Scotch Tape. Finding an open patch amid the blizzard, I pressed my forehead against the icy glass and lifted one gloved hand to the side of my face so I could peer inside. A few customers sat scattered here and there, but Daddy wasn’t among them.
My breath steamed up the window, so I rubbed a circle with my glove to clear the fog. As I was doing that, Darlene came to the door and leaned out into the cold. “You looking for your uncle Nelson?” she asked.
I nodded dully.
“I haven’t seen him around here for a while. Last I heard he’d got a temporary job in the city.”
“Chicago?”
“Yeah. Didn’t he tell you?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” she went on, “it sounded like he’d be gone a couple of weeks. Three at the most. He should be back soon.”
“Okay,” I whispered. My throat was tight, and I knew that if I didn’t go soon I’d break down crying in front of Darlene.
“Listen, honey,” she said as she hugged herself and shivered, “it’s freezing out here. Why don’t you come in for a nice cup of hot chocolate?”
But I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want to be in there without Daddy.
“It’s all right,” Darlene went on. “It’ll be on me. Besides, your uncle Nelson is a generous tipper. I owe him one.”
I looked up at the waitress, her cheeks now reddened by the cold, her teeth beginning to chatter. She was still talking, but my mind was whirling, and I couldn’t make sense of the words. I wanted to ask her why she thought my father was my uncle Nelson, and what he told her when I wasn’t around. I wanted to ask her what she really thought of him, beyond the fact that he was a generous tipper.