Chapter Seven
Talk about a role reversal.
That saying about being the statue one day and the pigeon the next came to mind as I picked up two menus and carried them to the elderly couple at the corner table.
The day before, I’d been the important statue, having dinner with Jackson.
Today I was just a waitress with a stained apron tied around my waist. But like a wise woman once said, “Life is not all rainbows and unicorns. On bad days, laugh about them, remember the good ones, and move on.”
“What can I get you folks to drink?” I asked.
“We’ll have coffee,” the woman answered. “I’m so glad that the Tumbleweed is still here.”
“Me too,” I said under my breath and hurried off to the next table to deliver menus and see what the pair wanted to drink.
“Do you have herbal tea?” the lady asked without looking up from her phone’s screen.
“Yes, we do. I’ll bring an assortment and hot water, if that’s what you want.”
“Make that two,” the guy said, his eyes on his own phone.
Once everyone had their drinks and their orders were turned in, I picked up the coffeepot to do refills. The elderly couple were holding hands across the table, and their mugs were still full.
The young couple with the herbal teas were still scrolling through their phones. “Want a refill? I can get you more hot water.”
“No, thank you. I just want to eat and get out of this place,” the woman answered with half a shrug.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“Not only a day. It’s been a bad long weekend,” the man answered.
“It didn’t have to be. I offered to buy plane tickets,” the lady said.
“I’m tired of you paying for everything, and I thought a bus trip would be romantic,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Just because you are poor and planned a shoestring trip—”
He cut her off with a glare and finally glanced up at me. “We got drunk and married in Vegas.”
“And now,” she sighed, “we are going home to pay for an expensive divorce, since I didn’t have a prenup. My daddy is furious with me.”
“God forbid if Daddy”—he dragged that last word out—“is upset with the princess. I don’t want your money.”
She shot a dirty look across the table. “You say that now, but I know you. When he offers you a settlement to leave and never come back, you’ll take it.”
Yikes. Of course, not the first Vegas wedding I’d seen. I left them hissing at each other and went back to see if the elderly couple needed a warm-up for their coffee. “Your food should be out in a few minutes. Can I get you anything else?”
“No, we’re good,” the woman said. “Fifty years ago, when this place was kind of new, we also went to Vegas on a bus and got married there. So we are celebrating our anniversary with a redo of those days. That’s why we are so glad that the Tumbleweed is still here.
We had breakfast right here at this table on our way back home.
It’s been a wonderful trip full of great memories. ”
The man reached across the table and took his wife’s hands in his. “Patsy has stood beside me through thick and thin. But this is our last trip. We have made the full circle, and now we are on the final leg of life’s journey.”
“Hey, now.” I smiled down at them. “You might celebrate another anniversary by repeating this same trip next year.”
He patted Patsy’s hand, and his eyes filled with tears.
“Several weeks ago, the doctors gave me three months. My expiration date is as soon as next week, but we are not complaining. We had fifty wonderful years together, and we got to have this last trip. Patsy knows that I’ll be waiting on the other side for her. ”
“Can I grow up and be like y’all?” I asked around the lump in my throat.
“Of course you can,” Patsy answered. “Just be sure your glass is always half full and never half empty.”
“Yes, ma’am, I will try to do that,” I promised, and hurried away so they wouldn’t see me cry.
Today I had seen a half-full cup—no, that wasn’t right.
I had experienced an overflowing glass and a totally empty one in the same room.
Like Patsy said, how full my proverbial glass was each day would be up to me.
If I could have remembered the opening music to Groundhog Day, I would have hummed it in victory, because I had finally gotten past the feeling that every day was the same at the Tumbleweed.
“Well, good morning to everyone,” Ada Lou’s voice echoed through the empty dining room that morning. She hung her coat on the back of a chair and sat down at the table she seemed to favor.
I had just finished busing the last table from the morning rush. “Right back at you. You want the same as always?”
“Nope, I’m changing it up today,” she said. “I need something that will stick to my skinny bones in this cold weather. From what I heard on the radio on the way down here, there’s a blizzard coming our way that will hit us in the middle of next week.”
Tumbleweeds and now snow. What had I fallen into?
I picked up a menu and poured a cup of hot coffee, and dropped both off at her table. “What’s the difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm?”
She took a sip of coffee and pointed to the Supreme Platter on the menu.
“I’ll have that. Just leave the coffeepot.
To answer your question, compared to a blizzard, a snowstorm is a baby, or maybe a toddler, and it won’t keep us cooped up in the house.
Did you ever hear the Bible story of David and Goliath? ”
“Yes.” I remembered a few stories from Sunday school class at the church where my grandparents and mother went when I was a little girl. “Wasn’t he the big giant that everyone was afraid of? I pictured him like the Hulk, only maybe not green.”
“That’s a blizzard,” Ada Lou said with a nod.
“A person better have what they need in their houses, because they will be stuck in their trailers or homes or wherever they can find warmth and food until it blows on through the place. Now, tell me: What put a smile on your face and that sparkle in your eyes?”
“My glass is more than half full.”
“What does that mean in English?” she asked. “I don’t speak all that metaphorical stuff.”
I told her to wait just one minute so I could put her order in. I crossed the room, stuck my head in the service window, and told Rosalie what Ada Lou wanted. Then I went back and sat down across from her. “You aren’t so old that you don’t know what it means. You don’t fool me one bit, Ada Lou.”
The wrinkles in her cheeks deepened when she smiled. “Okay, then I’ll rephrase: What is in your glass?”
“Peace,” I answered.
“Where did you get it?”
I told her the story of the two couples who had gotten off the bus that morning. “I’m not sure where the peace came from, but I’m glad it’s there.”
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “Don’t ever let anyone or anything take it away from you. Treat it like fine gold.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We have a new tenant at the RV park,” she said. “His name is Jackson Armstrong, and he took the last available spot. He comes from the Armstrong family, who has their hands in a lot of Texas pies, but mostly in oil. I looked them up on the internet.”
I played dumb. “How about that?”
“Good-lookin’ and rich. You should meet him,” Ada Lou said.
“Does he play poker?” I asked in an innocent voice.
“I wouldn’t know, but tell me this: How much peace was in your glass when you were playing every night?”
“I never measured,” I answered. “What does my glass have to do with your new tenant?”
“You got to look at life itself being at least half full. I’ve got this sexy-as-hell guy living only a few miles from you. If you meet him . . . who knows. He might fill up your glass to overflowing.”
“Then I’d have a mess to clean up,” I said.
“You!” Ada Lou threw up her hands in exasperation.
“You didn’t tell me that you owned the RV park.”
She pointed a long, bony finger at me. “No, I didn’t.
I bought it several years ago, and it’s been a very good investment, but don’t try to change the subject.
I was talking about Jackson, who appears to be a nice guy.
He’s right handsome and built like a weight lifter, and he’s got kind eyes and a gorgeous smile. ”
To me, his green eyes were downright sexy.
Kind had never entered my mind—but then, there were fifty years between me and Ada Lou.
Maybe when I was eighty and looking at a man like Jackson, I would think he had kind eyes.
Thinking back to the day before, it could very well be that he was part of the reason I had a half-full glass.
But is it peace or just friendship that makes you happy? the voice in my head asked.
“Jerry Clower, one of my favorite comedians—may he rest in peace.” Ada Lou rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and blinked several times before she stared right into my eyes.
“He used to say that when you are arguing with yourself, you are about to mess up. I see you fighting with someone in your head. Who is it?”
“Myself,” I answered.
“Then you are about to mess up,” she said.
Rosalie brought the platter out herself and placed it in front of Ada Lou. “Things are caught up fairly well, so I’ll take a break,” she said as she sat down.
Scarlett came from the back and brought a platter of biscuits and three mugs to the table. “We can have these leftover biscuits for a midmorning snack with our coffee.”
“I was telling Carla that I rented out the last spot in the RV park. My new tenant paid six months in advance with cash money,” Ada Lou said between bites.
Scarlett squirted honey onto a plate and dipped a biscuit in it. “Who got it?”
“Jackson Armstrong. He’s in charge of the Armstrong Oil Company that’s drilling up north of Dell City. That’ll provide jobs for a lot of people in this area. Who knows? It could even raise the population enough that the sign at the city limits will be telling the truth.”
“He’s stopped by here several times, but we didn’t know he was actually moving to these parts,” Scarlett said.