Chapter 34 Cream #2
"My mother is a waitress. My father is a cook.
They own a diner in West Ashley that has fed three generations of working people in this city.
They built that diner with their own hands.
They paid for my college with the tips you used to leave on the table when you came in with your bridge friends every other Sunday for ten years before you knew who I was.
They're the most generous people I've ever known.
They love your son the way they love me, which is to say more than you've ever been capable of loving him in a single afternoon.
You and Sonny built a house full of carved furniture and brittle china and you forgot to feed your own son.
He came to my parents' diner for years to be fed. "
Her eyes are wet. Genuinely wet. The mask has fallen.
"Summer."
I stand up.
She doesn't stand.
"I appreciate the years of training, Vivienne. I really do." I smooth the front of my jeans. Adjust the cuff of the turtleneck. "It's too bad you taught me so well."
I turn.
I walk out of the garden the same way I came in.
Through the French doors. Through the parlor.
Through the dining room where the seating chart used to be.
Past the chandelier and the portraits and the grandfather clock.
I don't look back. I don't look down. I don't feel anything until the front door is closed behind me, until I'm on the front walk with the harbor breeze on my face and the white columns of the Bennet house at my back.
Then I exhale.
I exhale for a long time.
I walk to the car. I don't run. I open the door. I sit. I close the door.
I press my forehead against the steering wheel.
I don't cry.
Vivienne Bennet, in the rearview mirror of my life, is a woman in a cream silk blouse alone on a wrought-iron bench in a garden that no one is coming to visit.
I drive away.
***
I drive to King's Diner.
It's the slow hour. The lunch crowd is gone and the supper crowd hasn't arrived.
Mama is at the register in her apron with the embroidered K.
Daddy is in the kitchen prepping for the dinner rush.
The diner smells like coffee, bacon grease, and the brown sugar Mama melts down for her pecan pies.
The G in the neon sign is flickering. The afternoon light hits the chrome counter at the angle it has hit it every afternoon of my life.
I sit at booth four.
Mama looks at me from the register. She doesn't ask. She walks behind the counter, gets the good coffee, pours two mugs, sets one in front of me and one across from her. Sits.
I drink.
"You went."
"I went."
"You said what you needed to say."
"I did, all of it."
"You okay?"
"I'm shaking, Mama."
She doesn't reach across the table. She knows me. I'm not a touch-me-when-I'm-shaking person. I'm a let-me-sit-in-it person. She sits in it with me. She doesn't fill the silence. She drinks her coffee.
The shaking goes from my hands to my shoulders to a deep tremor in my back that I haven't let myself feel in too long.
It comes up in waves. I let it. I've done what I went to do.
The body is allowed to come down now. Mama gets up.
Crosses to the kitchen. Comes back with a plate of biscuits and a small bowl of strawberry jam. Sets the plate in front of me and sits.
"Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"Eat one anyway. The shaking goes down faster with bread in you. Sarah King's medical advice."
I eat a biscuit. The shaking goes down a quarter inch.
"She say anything that got through?"
"She cracked, her eyes watered and she grasped at her pearls. She knows that she bet on the wrong team."
"Hmph."
"I gave it back to her. In her own voice."
"Good."
"I'm not proud of it."
"You're a little proud of it."
"I'm a little proud of it."
"That's allowed."
I eat the rest of the biscuit. The shaking has gone down to a tremor in my fingertips that the coffee mug catches and quiets. Mama refills my cup and adds a splash of cream.
"Where is Colt?"
"At the B&B. He knew I was coming. He didn't ask when."
"You want him here?"
"In a minute. Not yet."
"Okay."
"I just wanted to sit, Mama."
"You can sit."
The diner is quiet in the slow hour, the small hum of the cooler, the radio low on the gospel station Daddy likes, the bell over the door not ringing because the supper crowd is still an hour away.
A regular comes in for coffee to go. Mama gets up, pours it, takes the money, gives the change, comes back. Sits.
"I'm going to call him in a minute," I say.
"Take your time."
"I love him, Mama."
"I know, baby."
"I'm scared of how much."
She puts her hand flat on the back of my head, the way she did when I was small and the world was loud.
"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing."
"You don't have to know yet. You only have to know whether the man who is about to walk through that door is doing the work or pretending."
"He's doing the work."
"Then the right thing will come around. It always does."
I look at my mother across the booth. Sixty-two years old.
Smells like vanilla and Crisco and the soap she uses at the prep sink.
The most generous woman I have ever known.
She has fed Colt Bennet in this diner since he was a teenager, and she will keep feeding him for as long as I let her, and the math of love in her face has never required a margin.
"Mama."
"Yes, baby."
"You always knew, didn't you?"
"That you would come back?"
"That I would come back."
"Yes, baby."
"How did you know."
"Because you came here when you were lost. You always come here when you're lost. The lost child comes home. The lost wife comes home. The lost grown woman comes home. I have been waiting for you in booth four your whole life."
I cry, finally. Quietly. Into the coffee. I did the hard thing today, I shook with it, and now that I'm somewhere safe, with the woman who made me, in booth four, the tears come.
Mama lets me cry. She doesn't wipe my face. She doesn't move from her side of the booth. She drinks her coffee and watches the parking lot through the window, like Daddy watches it, and the diner keeps breathing around us.
When I'm done, I blow my nose on the napkin. Mama is watching me.
"Pie?"
"Pie."
She gets up.
Comes back with a slice of pecan and two forks. She sits down across from me and picks one up.
"You did a hard thing today, baby."
"I know, Mama."
"Eat your pie."