What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [19]
More customers rang through the door, the bells tinkling their welcome, and the café filled with the clatter of silverware and afternoon greetings and footsteps across the tiled floors. The couple had never raised their voices, even when the café had been empty, but now Arlene could only guess at what they were saying, how the man held the woman’s attention, how they talked without ever pausing, without ever glancing away in disinterest. The girls flitted around with coffeepots, dashing back and forth into the kitchen, bringing back turkey sandwiches and chicken-fried steak: They were watching all of this between tasks and they would come up with a story, but it would be the wrong one. They would put it together during the next break time, flipping through Modern Screen and finding the picture of that actress and swearing up and down that she was wearing the same earrings if only you looked really close. They would do so because Bakersfield was that kind of town. Here, people believed whatever story they wanted to believe, even if they made it up, and it had already had its own beginning and its own middle and its own end.
What she wanted to tell the girl waitresses was that life was not anything like those magazines, but she did not want to sound like a bitter woman. She had stories of her own to prove it. But how was she supposed to tell them, when no one bothered to ask her about her life? Especially not lately, since Frederick had left her, and all around her swirled assumptions about the reasons why. When Frederick left her, she was still Mrs. Watson. There was no maiden name to go back to. Not without being able to explain that she was from Oklahoma and he had been from Wisconsin, with no relations in between. She wanted to put down the coffeepot, the slice of apple pie, rest her hand on Priscilla’s shoulder, and explain, to tell her real story, as it had happened. To say to all of them, There’s the story you think you know, and there’s the one I need to tell you.
She saw that the couple were beginning to wrap up their meal and she walked over to the table, drawing up the ticket right in front of them, trying to overhear anything they might still be saying, but they were quiet. Arlene ripped the ticket from her pad and set it facedown on the table, but she looked one more time at the woman, as if to invite her once again to admit that she was or wasn’t who they all thought. But the woman only stared back at her with a face so shorn of feeling that Arlene did as she had before—she looked away—and her thank-you to the customers came as it did on those days when she was most exhausted, the sunlight orange in the plate-glass windows and the hours too slow, her voice caught in her throat, the very sound that reaffirmed everyone’s worst possible imaginings about her. What man, after all, would have stayed with someone who spoke so sharply, in such an unfriendly tone, her head hanging? How could a woman like that possibly be the mother of that radiant man who tended bar at Las Cuatro Copas, the one who made that Mexican shopgirl beam like she did?
“It’s her,” said Priscilla, watching as the couple exited the café, the man regally holding the door open for the woman. “I think the girls are right, though. That’s not her husband.”
“That’s terrible gossip,” said Arlene. “She’s a good woman stopping through town is all.”
“Did you see the rings? They were different! You can even see it in the magazine!”
“Do you believe everything you read?” asked Arlene. “Now, enough of this nonsense.” She tried to look at Priscilla in the same way that the woman had looked at her—cool yet defiant, placid yet standing her ground—but Priscilla only retreated and raised her eyebrows. One of the other girls came into the kitchen, and Priscilla wasted no time in leaning her head in to hers, her voice low and