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By Root 871 0

only it never happened. Mickey’s an okay kid most of the time, doesn’t ask for much. But when she does want something, she is ferocious in her desire for it. She argues, she screams, and, on occasion, even lashes out, trying to hit and scratch Rita. She’s a hellcat. Well, she comes by that naturally, through her mother and her father, may he rest in peace. Rest in pieces. What a loser he was. Killed in jail, in the overnight lockup on something small, but he had to go pick a fight with a little guy who beat him to death before the guards could get to them. When Mickey was young, it was too complicated to say her father was dead and not say how, so Rita said he was in the wind. She planned to kill him later, in some more civilized way. “Oh, honey, I just heard—your dad died in a car accident in Whereverthehellishe.” Or cancer. Something nice. But as Mickey gets older, it only grows harder for Rita to speak to her of her father’s death. She’s such a funny kid, always focused on who has what, very into fairness. It bugs her that Joey has a father and she doesn’t.

Man, how bugged she would be if she ever finds out that Joey has two fathers, in a sense. But even Rick hasn’t figured that out. At least she doesn’t think he knows that part.

Rita’s tables are all in lulls; she ducks outside for a cigarette. The air is nice tonight, balmy and bursting with scents, spring coming on all of a sudden, like it overslept and needs to make up time. But maybe what she’s smelling is only what’s left in the breeze from McCormick spices on the other side of the harbor. People are excited about the changes coming to the harbor, and Rita knows there will be opportunities—new restaurants, which will draw crowds if only because they’re new. But she’s skeptical. Tear down the old things, build new things, it’s still Baltimore. She should have gotten out while the getting was good, headed to San Francisco or Los Angeles, maybe Dallas. Some big city, although not New York. New York never appealed to her. It’s almost as bad as Baltimore. Crime, drugs. Dirty. She wants to go someplace clean, fresh, and warm, a place where the air never turns red with powder from the steel mill. Atlanta? Florida, although not Jacksonville, where she grew up. Real Florida, Miami or Fort Lauderdale.

But her last chance of a fresh start was sixteen years and two kids ago. She met Mickey’s father, Paul, and got knocked up. Talk about wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. She couldn’t afford an abortion, and even if she could, she didn’t trust the guy that Paul said he knew. Then Paul had to go and get himself killed before his daughter was even born. At least she could claim they were married, pretend to respectability, not that her own father bought it. He only let her stay at home because her mother was wild for the baby. They moved out as soon as Mickey was in school and Rita got the lunch shift at Hot Shoppe Juniors. She moved on to Connolly’s when Mickey turned nine. Then she met Rick. Then she met Joey’s dad-to-be, not even a month later. That was a complicated time. But fun. She smiles, remembering, two new romances at the same time, both fulfilling in their own way. There was Rick, handsome and steady, ready to take care of her, so sweet with Mickey. Rita loved her daughter a little more, seeing her with Rick. Not that she didn’t love her like crazy, but part of being a single mom was never getting to step back and take in the view. Rick made that possible.

Then there was Joey’s dad, Larry. He was bad, in the best sense of the word. Drove a hot car, usually had a little toot on him, liked to have sex anywhere but a bed. He had come into the restaurant one night, sat at the bar, watching her, making sure she saw him watching her. He was waiting outside when she got off at ten, leaning against his Monte Carlo. “Need a lift home?” “I need to make a phone call first.” He gave her the dime for the pay phone. She liked that. She went back inside, called Mickey. “Mommy’s got to stay late,” she said. “We’re doing inventory.” The girl was nine, there was no harm in leaving her