Karen angled her flatbed into a parking spot half a block past the café. After she pulled to a stop, her feet danced across the pedals as if they wanted to keep driving. She ignored them. A pain shot up her shins as she stepped down from her truck. She stamped her feet, then wriggled her ankles as much as she could in her brilliant red cowboy boots. Because of her curse, she usually only ever felt physical pain for a few minutes; at most, for a few hours.
Karen walked toward the café using slow baby steps, almost on her toes. A mother with a stroller was walking the other way. The baby in the stroller started crying and fussing. The mother kept walking, reaching a hand down to casually pat the baby’s stomach. Karen minced to a halt to let them pass. If only she hadn’t been cursed. She would care for a baby better than that. Better than her mama had. Better even than the Old Lady had. Sighing, she moved on.
As she neared the café sign, she saw the border was decorated with different types of fruit; blackberries and strawberries chased each other in a cotillion, and solitary peaches with a hint of fuzz stood in the corners like wallflowers. Her feet twitched at the sight.
“Please,” Karen prayed softly. “Let me stay calm enough to eat. I won’t try to stop any longer than that. Mercy,” she asked of any passing angel. Her feet twitched one last time, then she felt a tingling move up the front of her legs, through her shoulders, and out the crown of her head. Her French braid loosened slightly, like unseen ravens adjusting their perch on her scalp. Karen stood still, too shocked to move. What had just happened? Had an angel heard? And maybe answered?
When no other sign came, she walked the rest of the way to the café. The heavy glass door felt warm against her palms as she pushed against it. Inside, the moist heat wrapped around her face like a towel fresh from the dryer. The salty, mouth-watering smell of grilling potatoes and garlic greeted her. Luckily, no music was playing.
She paused by the door, bracing herself for the tide of conversation that always rolled away when she went anywhere to surge back. But no one seemed dazzled by the rhinestones embedded in the yoke of her satin blouse, or tsked over how tightly her jeans molded her legs, or giggled at the brilliance of her red boots. The pair of women that looked up didn’t stop their own conversation but did give her welcoming smiles.
Karen smiled back, then, following the sign directing her to make herself at home, chose a table far from everyone, next to the window. Healthy looking spiked ferns, pothos and spider plants lined the low windowsill. The plastic tablecloth was stiff and yellow with age, but a real cloth napkin lay folded next to her plate. It still smelled of Ivory soap. A scratched stainless-steel vase sat on the table, holding a sprig of cheap silk fuchsia. The menu was stuck behind it: hand-lettered on green construction paper, stained and bent.
Karen had just picked up the menu when the waitress came up and asked her what she wanted.
Karen wanted to order pie, and only pie, but she needed fuel, a full meal; she was skinny as a Yankee.
“The special’s awfully good tonight,” the waitress said. Karen looked up, then gawked at the smiling woman. The light coming in from the picture window back-lit the waitress’s frizzy hair, making it glow like a halo. Karen’s eyes adjusted. The waitress’s beautiful dark eyes held the light, her round cheeks and full lips hinted at liking good cooking, her small chin spoke of stubbornness. She was young, like Karen, probably only eighteen or nineteen. Her name tag read, FRIEDA.
“I’ll take the special, then,” Karen said. She read the menu after the waitress had walked away and discovered she’d ordered chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes, all the gravy and biscuits she could eat, a serving of the vegetable of the day, and a bottomless glass of iced tea to wash it all down.
She put down her menu and looked at the other customers. Mostly women, women who seemed friendly with each other, who weren’t giggling falsely or screeching in competition but sharing good-hearted laughter. She saw two women holding hands over a table. Isn’t this a friendly place? she thought. No wonder no one had commented when she walked in. Maybe she and her best friend Angie would have been comfortable here, even though it was so run-down. All the chairs and tables looked secondhand and didn’t go together. The Old Lady wouldn’t have approved at all.
The waitress came back with her order quickly. The off-white platter holding her steak didn’t match the small blue bowl of vegetables, but everything smelled heavenly under the blanket of gravy. Karen picked up her knife and fork immediately.
“Can I get you anything else? Ketchup? Steak sauce?” the waitress asked.
Karen forced herself to be polite and look at the waitress. An oval stain ran from her shoulder to just above her name tag. “No, thank you,” she said, then, unable to hold herself back, she attacked her food.
The steak was hard to cut, and the bright highlights in the gravy turned into grease, but Karen didn’t care. She sliced the meat into small bits and was nibbling on some gristle when the waitress came back.
“So how is it?”
“Best I’ve had since I don’t know when,” Karen said, hastily clearing her mouth with a gulp of iced tea.
“I’ll be sure to tell Harry. My brother, the cook.”
Karen nodded. They were quiet for a moment, then Frieda asked, “Where you from?”
“A long ways away.”
“Just passing through?” the girl asked, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Yes,” Karen said, drawing out the s a little, watching Frieda’s gaze amble from her braided hair, along the slope of her neck, past the glittering yoke of her blouse, only to pause at her breasts, then continue down to her hips, and after another pause, slide back up again. A bell rang in the kitchen.
“Shame,” Frieda said as she walked past Karen, her hips within fingertip-grazing distance.
A warm, floating feeling rose in her chest as she watched Frieda’s shapely back. With a start, Karen pushed down the feeling and made herself look at her plate. Her mama had told her it wasn’t natural to feel that way. She speared another piece of patty-pan squash and tried to eat lady-like. Her feet started tapping the patterned linoleum impatiently.
When she finished wiping up the dregs of gravy with her last biscuit, her belly felt full and solid, yet her mouth still hungered for something comforting, like pie. Through the fatty cooking smells she imagined she could smell apples and nutmeg. Her mouth began to water.
When she was a little girl, she’d watched on Saturday mornings as the Old Lady’s cooking woman carried the pies out of the oven to the cooling racks; white-gold crusts topped with large grains of beet sugar, dark red fruit bubbling within. Karen had been patient then, and could sit in one place for hours. She would stare at the pies, greedily watching them cool in the sunny whitewashed kitchen, flour dust dancing in the air, the heavy combination of baking soda and cinnamon sticking to her jumper. Waiting for that first bittersweet taste of berries, buttered crust, and sugar; baked feelings of home forming her bones, making them solid.
The memory of living in a home, staying in one place, unmoving, made her full belly seem empty and hollow. Her feet jerked violently, bringing her back to the restaurant. She had to go.
When she stood up and began walking to the counter, Karen realized she’d been sitting too long. She couldn’t walk regularly anymore. Her feet insisted on dancing. She tried to take gliding steps, tried to seem normal. About halfway to the counter she turned as if to check her table, to see if she’d left anything there, sneaking in a quiet pirouette in the process.
Karen handed Frieda a crumpled ten dollar bill and asked, “You know where there might be any dancing tonight?”