ARE YOU TOGETHER ?
(His unspoken thoughts are in italics)
ARE YOU TOGETHER ?
“Oh, look there’s a diner up ahead, let’s stop and get a bite. Don’t just drive on like you usually do,” Rosa said in a clipped tone like Bette Davis , drawing on her cigarette for added effect.
“Yes , I see it.”
“I’ve just about had enough ,” I grunted to myself pulling my station wagon over to the off-lane as the brightly lit diner emerged from the dusky dawn. I had made a mental note of it on the way south three weeks ago and had planned to stop at it on the way back. My unobservant wife had suddenly discovered it.
“Yellowstone to here, 800 miles, is enough driving to sicken anybody and your nagging doesn’t help. And we’ve still got 150 miles to go till Regina. Three years of this nagging is enough.”
I yanked the wheel hard over to come round and get in between two semi-trailers with Canadian plates. As the engine died, so did the mental struggle. In exhausted silence we walked slowly, stretching and yawning, to the diner door.
“It’s all on the rocks now, with her constant nagging about me having a crappy job and drinking too much. I just want some peace. She just never knows when to shut up.”
“You know, if you’d quit the booze and get a real job we wouldn’t have to live like this. If he could see me now, my daddy would be downright ashamed.” Rosa tossed back her dark hair
“I understand, my dear.” She didn’t detect the sarcasm.
My job at the packing plant was not good enough for her. Given to me because of daddy’s connections, it paid more than the bookshop I used to have, but I hated the work. Two beers after work with the guys was no consolation. I was exasperated with her constant harassment
She just couldn’t stop yapping even in the short distance to the diner door. I felt like telling her a few home truths about her daddy. It made me sick to be compared all the time with daddy-perfect from Yellowstone. His mistress of twenty years hadn’t come to the funeral but sent a huge anonymous bouquet. To be honest, I was happy the teetotal old bastard had died three weeks ago and was now deep-buried in the National Park. The mother, the family and Rosa had consoled each other extravagantly. Apparently daddy had always had a special affection for Rosa because he always thought she looked like Bette Davis in his favourite film ‘Beyond the Forest’ . As far as I was concerned he was a burden off my back. And I wouldn’t complain if she was, in fact, far beyond the forest, any forest.
She was about to digress about daddy again, but we were too close to the door . I pushed the heavy door open and she followed me into the diner.
Inside, there were two choices : self-service counter or table waitress-service.
Sign over the food counter, ‘Before you spend, You must pay at the end’
Terse and gritty, but true…..
Made our selection - not much variety.
The waited tables were, not exclusively but mostly, for the truckers with piles of flap jacks and endless coffee after their steak and six eggs. Each huge driver had a table to himself but they were all talking across each other’s tables about the weight of loads, and speed limits, and difficult driving conditions, and RCMP speed radar traps.
“Now that’s what I call guys with real jobs, independent, owner-operators,” she scornfully observed…and my fists clenched instinctively. She and daddy hadn’t liked my own independent ownership of a bookstore.
We joined the end of the line, pushing two trays down the parallel stainless steel bars like a miniature railroad track heading for the checkout. Glass cases with sweet pastries ,salads, warmed potatoes and gravy, just out of reach. The line was moving slowly because some old guy was trying to get a salad with no dressing and extra dill pickle.
“Two coffees - large.” And the girl behind the espresso machine swung into action and handed them to me.
We were alone in the line now and our two trays were shunted together like boxcars down the railroad track.
In order to figure out the charge, the girl automatically asked, “Are you together?”
I paid with the few bucks I had left. But I was struck by the question. Harmless enough, but in its way profound. Were we together in a real sense or just eking out a shared existence in an awkward way with minimum effort? A question I had asked myself countless times. Unimaginative and dull in conversation, Rosa was the kind of person who wore a teeshirt message because it was true. Honest as the day is long and twice as tedious. Mostly, I just wanted to be out of her company. I had put up with humiliation and embarrassment on account of her snobbery for three years, three years too long of listening to her jawboning about daddy-in-law and his abstemious saint-hood. Completely ignoring his womanising, which was widely known to everybody else in the plant.
“Together? …” I echoed with heavy sarcasm.
I finally thought the forbidden thought, and then blurted it out loud, “ Not for much longer ! "
Rosa wasn’t even listening to me as usual. The check-out girl looked amazed and her mouth fell half-open.
I left the tray. Turned on my heel and walked slowly out of the door. Backed the car over to the pumps and gassed up. Started the engine. Pulled her bags out of the trunk and stacked them neatly on the tarmac. Drove off northwards back to my Regina bookshop, alone.
………………………………..
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