The Best of Good Page 3

  She sat there for a minute or two. “I guess it might mean that.”

  We both waited for one of us to talk again. I decided it wouldn’t be me.

  Ellen didn’t speak for a long time. Then she took the knife from my side of the table and cut the opposite brownie corner from the one I had cut. She got up and got a plate and a fork. She sat down and started on her brownie. “Do you want to get in touch with her?” Ellen said.

  “Me? What? Why would I… Not if, no—I—I honestly don’t know what to do.”

  “Sounds like you have time to think it over, if she hasn’t come to you to ask for anything.”

  I waited until Ellen put down her brownie fork before I stood up. I started clearing the dishes, my job. Ellen was taking stuff off the table, putting it into the fridge. I rinsed the dishes, put them into the dishwasher.

  “What was she like?” Ellen wanted to know.

  “Who?” I could be really annoying. Ellen must have wanted to slug me sometimes, but she never did. I knew I was being annoying, and I did nothing to stop myself.

  “The woman,” Ellen said. “You dated.”

  I let a glass fill up with water.

  My sister let out a gust of frustration. Then she said, “The woman who might’ve had your child! Who do you think I’m talking about?”

  “Diana. That’s her name. She was, she was blond and small. She had freckles and—”

  “Cut it out. Personality. What was her personality like?”

  “Nice,” I said. “She was nice.”

  She mimed tugging a rope out of my stomach, like it was a huge effort to haul any information out of me.

  “Kind of, you know, independent. Smart. Stubborn. She liked to do things her way.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Not long. A few months. This was ages ago, so a lot of it is—”

  “I understand. I think you should take some action. Right away.”

  I looked at her. My sister doesn’t usually tell me what to do. She’s more the whatever-feels-right-for-you type.

  I finished the plates and glasses. I picked up a sponge and started wiping the counters. “What kind of action were you thinking? Just for example,” I said. But now it had been so long since she said the thing about taking action that her thoughts had probably moved on to something else. “You said I should take some action. About the woman? Diana?”

  “No—I know what you’re talking about, Tom. I’m just thinking. Well, you know, nothing complicated. Get in touch. Call her,” Ellen said. “Talk to her?”

  “Just like that? Out of the blue? I don’t want to freak her out.”

  “Fine. OK. Then ask Kevin to ask her if it’s OK to give you her phone number. That way she can say no if she wants to. She gets some warning. And you get to test the waters.”

  “But if she’s in the phone book, then it’s OK to just call. I mean, anybody can call, right? It’s, you know, public information if it’s listed. It’s not an invasion of anybody’s privacy if you look up a number and dial it. Is it?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course not. But you just said you didn’t want to freak, her out.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But OK, if she’s listed, you could just call.”

  “If I go through Kevin, then I have to deal with him giving me his opinion and lectures and who knows what all.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “I’ll write her a note!” I said.

  “Good, idea.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Tom!” She exhaled as though she were fed up with the questions, but I knew she could handle it. My sister had a lot of patience, and I gave her plenty of opportunities to put it to use. “Say you heard from Kevin that she had moved back here. Say you were wondering if she would please get in touch with you, that you’d like to talk to her.”

  I nodded. “What if she says no?”

  “If she says no, we’ll think up a Plan B.”

  I smiled at her. I knew Ellen would help me. I loved Ellen.

  • • •

  At home, I looked around for something to write the note on. I had a lined yellow pad that I wrote songs on. I found a pen. I wrote:

  Dear Diana,

  Kevin told me that you had moved back into the area. I was wondering if you could give me a call sometime. I’d like to talk to you.

  Then I put my phone number. I signed my name. Under it, I wrote, “P.S. Please call!!” I looked at it. Wrong. The note was OK until the P.S., which ruined it. I tore off the page and started over. I thought I’d make it a little more informative.

  You will not be surprised to hear that I am still working at The Club.

  Wait. Why wouldn’t she be surprised? Was I assuming that she thought I was in exactly the same place as when she left? Plenty of people had the same job. That was stability, which could be a good thing, a positive character trait. I guess it made a difference what the job was. If you taught high school for seventeen years, then you were a stable, contributing member of society, somebody making a difference. I pictured a small boy watching me work. I looked like a TV character somehow, wiping down the bar, making drinks, watching the band onstage. If he had been born the day I started the job, he would be almost finished with high school now. OK, I didn’t have to mention the job. It wasn’t the whole story about me. I did other things. Bartending didn’t define me, after all. It was what I did, not who I was. I did not need to explain to Diana or anybody why I was still doing it.

  I rewrote the note:

  Dear Diana,

  I hear you’re back in the area. Please give me a call.

  Good.

  I looked it over. I flipped to a clean page.

  Diana—

  Call me.

  Good

  I put my phone number at the bottom. I found an envelope and wrote Diana’s name on it. I looked up the address of the school Kevin’s daughter went to and found a stamp. I walked down to the corner to put it in the mailbox so that I wouldn’t chicken out after a good night’s sleep.

  When I got back from the mailbox, my place looked different, as if someone had tampered with it while I was out. It wasn’t that anything was missing or had been added. It was just that it seemed to have shrunk. And the lamp shade over by my bed had a tear I hadn’t seen before. The paint on the walls had gotten dingy. Wasn’t it a lot whiter just a few minutes ago? I looked into the refrigerator and found no real food and some dried up brown spills on the shelves. My phone looked old-fashioned, like something an eldery person might cling to, insisting that it worked fine. My television was a black-and-white Kenmore that I’d grabbed off my parents’ Salvation Army pile years ago, I really ought to throw that thing away. The antenna was broken off, and replaced with a straightened hanger. It was too much trouble to keep one hand on the hanger to improve its reception, so I never watched it. The clothes I’d left in a heap on a chair seemed like a random assortment of nondescript rags. The windows were dirty. An old flowered comforter, one of my mother’s castoffs, lay in a jumbled mess on the bed. The place looked—I had a startling stab in my chest with this thought—like a crazy person lived here and had for a long time.

  I brushed my teeth and got in bed quickly. I wrapped my funky old comforter all around myself as if I were making a cocoon. I pulled it over my head, a hood. Then I closed my eyes, and I was gone.

  six

  I had to go to work. At 5:15, I took a shower and washed my hair. I put on a pair of clean jeans and a black T-shirt with a button-down plaid shirt over it. I put on clean white socks and sneakers, Converse high-tops, black. My standard uniform. I was ready at 5:22. At 5:30, I walked through the front door of The Club. You had to be there at 5:30 to get dinner, I don’t know why I bothered, but I ate here every work night. Tonight it was lasagna—vegetarian, luckily, because I have not eaten meat, at least not on purpose, since eighth grade when I read that George Harrison was a vegetarian.

  “Good, how’re you doin
g, man?” said the chef, James, who had worked here even longer than I had.

  “I’m doing OK, James,” I said, though now he was not listening to me anymore but sliding plates at other employees.

  “No, you may not order something from the menu!” James shouted at a new waitress. “This ain’t good enough for you, you eat at home tomorrow night!”

  “God, sorry, "the girl said.

  She was going to have a long night. She had on a striped T-shirt, and her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. She looked too young to be in here, but lately I thought that about every new hire. I went to the walk-in box and got a can of orange juice for my bar. Walking back through the kitchen, I could feel the greasy wooden boards through my shoes. For the most part, I did my best to stay out of the kitchen. The constant tension between the waitresses and the kitchen staff made for a stressful atmosphere.

  I walked to the bar at the front of the club. Roxanne, a waitress, was setting up her station, wiping down her tables and straightening the chairs. “Hey, Good,” she said.

  “Hey, Roxanne.”

  Three more waitresses were eating dinner together. “Good,” one of them called. “How many tickets are sold?”

  “Twenty-seven. Almost nothing,” I said. Everyone knew I always checked ticket sales on my way in. I liked to know what to expect.

  “How much did you make last time these guys played?” another waitress, Mary, asked me.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do. Tell me.”

  “Fourteen dollars.” I always remembered the exact number of dollars I earned in tips for each band who played here. I didn’t try to; the figure just attached itself to my brain and stayed there, another quirk of my annoying memory.

  “Time before that?” Mary wanted to know.

  “Time before that it was nineteen. Sorry, ladies. This is not going to be your best night.”

  “Oh, no!” Mary put her head down on the table. “How do you stand it? I’m going to have to ask my parents for money again!”

  I set my dinner down on the bar and emptied the can of frozen orange juice into a pitcher, which I filled with hot water. When it was full, I turned off the water and ate my dinner. By the time I was finished eating, about three minutes later, the orange juice was melted enough to stir. I made some Tom Collins mix also, which I probably would end up pouring down the drain, and a pitcher of margarita mix. Weezer was playing on the sound system, and a roadie was on the stage taping down cords.

  The roadie straightened up and looked at me. “Good!” he said. “You still here?”

  After a while, you get tired of hearing the same question over and over. “Yeah, looks like it,” I said. “How long you been working for these guys?”

  “Few months.” The roadie rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I’m too old for this,” he said. “And so are you!”

  “Apparently not,” I said, “since we’re both still doing it.”

  I got the cherries, lemons, limes, and oranges out of the small fridge under the bar.

  The door to the front office opened, and Elvis stepped out. His name isn’t really Elvis. Everyone just called him that because he started work at 3:00 in the box office and left at 11:00 every night, right after the second show started. If you looked for him during the late show or at closing time, he was always gone. “Elvis has left the building,” everyone said.

  Elvis said, “Good, somebody here to see you. A woman.”

  My stomach dropped. I took a deep breath. “Is it my sister?” I asked Elvis hopefully.

  Elvis shook his head. “It’s someone I’ve never seen.” He went back into the office. He had worked here five years or so, still a new guy, compared to me.

  I walked out the front door. I didn’t see anybody for a minute. Nobody at all. Then she stepped out from around the corner. She had expected me to come out the kitchen door, so she had been waiting over there. She was wearing a pale blue T-shirt and denim shorts. She didn’t have a purse, and she was holding her car keys, meaning she wasn’t staying.

  “Diana,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. She didn’t smile or throw her arms around my neck. Far from it. She pressed her lips together into a thin line. “What’d you want to talk to me about?” she said.

  “Oh, I—I just wanted to—I thought we should—”

  She nodded as if she knew what I was trying to say, even if I didn’t. “Be in touch,” she said. “Well. So. We are.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “That’s, that’s good.” My mouth was all dry. “Right? Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What exactly did you want to be in touch about?”

  “Oh,” I said. I put my hand on my hair. “I’m sorry if I—I sure didn’t mean to—”

  “Whatever,” she said. “Anyway, what’s up?”

  “Kevin came over. To my house. The other day. He told me you had a kid, a boy.”

  “Yep.” The mouth line again.

  I lowered my voice to almost a whisper. “And he also said the boy looked just like me.” There was traffic noise on the street and a little breeze, so it was possible that my words might not even reach her.

  “What! No, he doesn’t!” she snapped.

  “I’m sorry—I thought—Kevin said—so your son is—” I could breathe a little now as relief started to spread through me.

  “He has my eyebrows totally and my ears!”

  “Oh. Right, I—”

  “Yeah. People say all the time how much he looks like me! All the time. OK, not that often, but sometimes.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was nodding, trying not to make her mad. “Sure. I’m sure they do, after all he’s your—”

  “OK, maybe he does look a little more like you than like me.”

  There was a thud inside The Club. A door slamming? An amplifier case being dropped from the stage?

  Diana scowled. “But he has my personality! And he thinks like me!’

  “Thank God for that,” I managed to say. “That’s a lucky break for everyone, isn’t it? So, so he is, you’re saying he’s my—”

  “He’s mine Good. Some of your DNA, maybe, but entirely my child. Understand? I know all these fathers sue for custody. It’s like the fashion or something. I’ve heard about all that, but if you even think for one minute that I would—”

  “No way,” I said, moving my head quickly, almost violently, back and forth in short insistent no’s. I put my hands up, open palms out, as if to show that I was not concealing any weapons. “I wouldn’t even—”

  “You better not!”

  “I won’t. I swear.” I kept my hands up and backed up a couple of steps.

  “So why did you call me, then?” she wanted to know. She folded her arms.

  “I wanted to know,” I said. “I just—wanted to know. About him. If he—you know if he was—not mine, of course, I know he’s yours, but if my, um, genes had been, you know, involved. Way back. At the beginning.” I sounded like a complete idiot.

  “Well, now you know,” she said.

  “OK,” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  There was a long, miserable pause. She looked at me. I looked around as if searching for an exit sign, but we were outside.

  Finally, she said, “I’m going to go now.”

  “OK,” I said.

  She turned around and started walking, “Bye,” I said, “Bye, Diana.”

  She didn’t answer.

  I stayed outside for a few more minutes, and I saw her drive away. She had a little purple car, one of those updated Beetles. It was a nice purple, a tasteful purple. I kept standing there, even after the car was gone.

  “Good, man, you OK?” Elvis was leaning out the front door.

  “Me? Oh, yeah. Superb. You? How are you doing, Elvis?”

  “Really, can I get you anything?”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “I’m fine. Just enjoying the night air.”


  “I’m sure. You have no color in your face and this expression like you just witnessed an accident.”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “That’s just my—Are we ready to open?”

  “Yeah,” said Elvis, “all ready. All systems are go. Except there are no people here.”

  “I better get behind the bar then,” I said, as if he had told me a crowd of customers were banging their fists against the bar, demanding to be served. I went inside.

  seven

  All the kids were home next door, and it was a Wednesday. I was positive that it was a Wednesday. Pretty sure. Or Thursday, maybe. I woke up at 7:30 because of the racket over there. Somebody got all of something and didn’t leave any for anybody else. But it was nothing to cry about. Their mother, Robin, would get some more; she promised. But today? Would it be today that she would get some more, or in a long, long, long time? It would be today. She promised that, too. Really.

  It was some kind of cereal that they wanted, probably. Or gum. These kids had an irrational passion for gum. I had overheard a lot of these conversations. But you said you would yesterday, the complainer insisted, you promised. I said I would try, came the response, and I did try, but there wasn’t enough time left and then I had to pick you guys up. It isn’t my fault. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said it was time for me to pick you up. And so on. Back when the husband was here—Vic, his name was—he would eventually explode, then there would be silence, followed by crying. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the yelling and crying or the whining and promising.

  At 8:05 exactly, they all started crashing out the side door to go to their car. Now it would be quiet, and I could go back to sleep.

  Trouble was, I didn’t. I lay there and surveyed my apartment again. Usually, my belongings were invisible to me, I was so used to them. Now that I had found out about Diana and her son, I was staring at everything as if I were about to file a detailed report.

  From the survey of the shortcomings of my belongings, I moved on to a review of my scene with Diana the night before. I handled that wrong. I hadn’t said what I wanted to at all. Now the two topics converged, and all I could think of was what Diana would see if she walked in here. She wouldn’t like it at all, I knew that. She wouldn’t like my patterns, if you know what I mean, and they were far too well established for Diana. I could just see the way she would count off my patterns on her fingers: