An Order of Coffee and Tears (22 page)

That was the last I heard of Claire’s story, and the last I thought about Clark and where he might have gone. When the bell above the door rang out, bright afternoon light and a hot breeze pushed into the diner. An older man stood at the door, his silhouette keeping his features hidden from us. We were back into the throes of the spring season’s summer-warm days, and the figure at the door held his jacket over his arm, as though he’d been walking a while. The bell rang again, as the door closed behind him. I’ve made a habit of giving a brief look to those that enter, and then immediately a quick check of the booths, their linen and silverware, and the counter. We were between the rush of late afternoon lunches and the dinner crowd. It was quiet for the time being. If he was alone, he could sit at the counter.

There was something familiar about the man, and my eyes went back to him. When his eyes found mine, he stepped forward, and the air in my lungs became hot like the outside breeze, and I coughed it out. I wanted to run. Run to the back where Clark had been, and then run out the door. It was my father.

“Donut?”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Ms. Potts said from the grill. I heard the sound of metal on metal when she dropped her spatula. She was around to the counter and by my side a moment later, holding my arm.

“Gabby, girl, it’ll be fine,” she started to say, but I couldn’t hear more than the whisper of her words. My eyes were stuck on my Daddy. He was old. So old. The thick black hair I shared with him was almost all gray, and the perfect skin on his face was a mass of lines around his eyes and cheeks. He looked more than just old, he looked tired.

“Gabby. Please,” he pleaded, raising his hand, and took another step into the diner. Images of him pushing my hands away came to mind once again, and I shook my head.

“I don’t want you here!” I yelled. He stopped abruptly, and shuffled back a step, as though he’d bumped into a glass wall he couldn’t see.

“I’ll sit,” he started, and motioned a hand toward a booth, “I’ll just sit, and… and I’ll order something. Can I do that?” Ms. Potts let my arm go, and, without a word, she brought two cups over to the table nearest my Daddy, and poured coffee into each. The diner was so quiet. I kept my eyes on my Daddy, and listened to the sound of the coffee pouring.

Ms. Potts looked up at me once as she poured, but said nothing. She didn’t ask. She didn’t seek out an objection. Nothing. Two cups – she took two cups, and poured the coffee. Not a word. But that said everything to me. When she was done, she glanced back at me and motioned with her eyes to the booth.

I shrugged at him, and saw in his eyes the man I remembered when I was a little girl. They were the same eyes that held me after a tumble while learning to ride a two-wheeler. They were the same eyes that told me I’d be okay, and planted a kiss atop my head after a nightmare. It was my Daddy, and, for a moment, the pain and anger fell away. I moved to the booth, and Ms. Potts followed with an arm on mine. I heard her say again that it’d be okay… that I just needed to sit and listen
.

My Daddy was seated by then, stirring creamer into his coffee. His eyes stayed on mine. I sat down across from him, and, at once, felt old. I wanted to be nine again. I wanted to be running to him and crying after having scraped my knee in a fall. But I couldn’t do that. Ten years had passed, and never once did I consider my age. Inside, I still felt like a teenager, the one who learned her way across the country.

Seeing my Daddy was like looking into a mirror. The reflection showed me that I was no longer the teenager who had run from home. I wasn’t walking the blacktop of sleeping roads while the sun struggled to stretch an arm over the mountains. I wasn’t
that
Gabby anymore. I wasn’t Donut.

“What do you want?” The words just spilled out of my mouth. It was all I could think to ask. He cupped his hands around his coffee, and placed it on the table.

“Look at you, Donut, look at how grown up you are,” he said in a lilting Texas accent. The sound of his voice and the sound of home in his words touched my heart with a guttural volley of emotions. My tongue had lost the sound of Texas some time ago during my journeys across the country. It may have been the travels on the back roads of Colorado, or the rain-soaked walks in Seattle. And, like everything else from Texas, I buried the memory of it.

“What do you want?” I repeated, and then scolded, “My name is Gabby! Just Gabby!” He winced when I said that. But could he have expected anything different? Should he have expected anything different? In my heart, Donut died in a motel room ten years earlier. I buried Donut and my baby, and the bloodied motel towels. I buried them in a field behind the motel, five miles north of the Texas border. The winds whipped tall grasses around my body while I cried and dug with my fingers. I clawed at the hard dirt and stone until the hole was deep enough, and then put the towels in the ground. I remember staring into the hole, staring at the towels and the blood. Donut laid in the ground, too, and I covered them up. I stayed on the ground next to them until the fading stars and reaching sunlight told me it was time to go; to leave this place and never come back. I told myself that Donut died so she could watch over my baby. She stayed there, and I never saw her again. Fury was what I felt next, and I thought I might pick up the hot coffee from the table and throw it in his face.

“I hated you. Did you know that?” I yelled, and didn’t care if the few in the diner heard me. My Daddy winced again, and raised his fingers to try to say something. I wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t listen. He put his hand down and said nothing. Words tripped on my tongue as I tried to say something mean and hateful. Rage stole my voice. Thousands of confused words raced around my head. They felt like hurtful bees, stinging my mind and feeding on my fury, spewing sour honey.

“Gabby, I am so sorry. I see that day at the demonstration in my head all the time, and wish I could do it over again. I wish I could have acted like your father, and not like that man you saw. I’m not that man anymore; haven’t been since the day you disappeared.” He explained, but then his expression changed. “Where did you go? How could you disappear? We thought you –” he stopped to catch a shaky breath. “Your momma and I thought you were dead. How could you let us think that? How?” More bee stings followed, and the sour honey poured into my mouth. I wanted to hurt him, but then I considered what he’d said, and thought of my momma. And then I heard Detective Ramiz’s voice.
Be civil to your parents. Be civil.

“You don’t get to ask me that. You never get to ask me that!” I spat at him.

“But… but Gabby, your momma and I spent years looking. How could you let that happen?” Shock staved off the bee stings, as I realized my Daddy was angry, too. His Donut disappeared, and they thought she was dead. He might’ve even hated me for disappearing. But didn’t I want him to think that? Did I care what he thought?

My emotions twisted into a knot, and turned my insides. I sought out the faces of my family, Ms. Potts and Suzette. Their eyes were welcoming when they found mine. Suzette blinked an “I love you” while Ms. Potts nodded, and brought us over some more coffee. She didn’t say a word, just poured the coffee, and rested her hand on my shoulder before returning to the counter. The warm touch of her hand settled me and gave me strength.

“I had to leave – and I never wanted to see you or anyone from home, again.”

“Your friend Jessica told us everything. We saw her days after you disappeared. She told us that you didn’t go through with it. She said that you changed your mind and that the two of you were trying to leave, when…” he stopped then, and I thought it was because of my expression.

“Go ahead and finish it – say what happened next! I want to hear you say it!”

“… when you two were confronted by the demonstration,” he finished in a breath that was choked and tortured.

“They killed my baby, Daddy, they did it! Did you know that, too?” I screamed at him, and the swarm of bees stung me as the pain and hate poured from my eyes. The brief stoic expression my Daddy held disappeared in that moment, as he took in the realization of what had happened.

“No, no, no,” he mumbled, and shook his head. He fell apart and cried. We both cried, and, before I could stop it from happening, I reached for him. I reached for him like I did that day at the medical center, and this time he reached back. I hated myself for doing it, but I needed my Daddy. I fell into him and held him, and let myself love him.

The moment was brief, and when he was sitting across from me again, I told him, “This doesn’t change anything. I left home –
had
to leave home, and won’t be going back.”

“Tom Grudin was looking, too,” he started to say, and the image of Tommy came to mind. “He never knew about what happened.”

“Is that how you found me? Tommy’s parents?” I asked. A dull ache touched my heart when I saw images of Tommy and the baby chick. My father nodded, and added,

“His mother stopped in to tell us about her son and her trip to Delaware. She told us she didn’t recognize you. I never knew you and Tom Grudin were close. Not a couple, anyway.”

“Only one – ,” I told him, then breathed, “Just once.”

“I was sorry to hear he died. He was a hero, saved some lives, his mother told us.”

“Did you and Momma go to the service?” I’m not sure why I asked him that, but it seemed right for one of us to be there. I felt a pang of guilt thinking about Tommy. My Daddy nodded.

“You said you
hated
me. Does that mean you don’t hate me anymore?”

I considered his question. Ten years had passed, and every day since made the next day a little easier. I told myself I stayed away because I hated him, but wondered if I stayed away because it just got easier than thinking about going back.

“I don’t think I ever hated you, I hated who you were that day. But you’re my Daddy…” And then I couldn’t finish what I wanted to say. The emotions of it all knotted my insides until my words were gone again. He reached across the table, took my hands, and finished for me.

“Maybe we can be okay again one day. I know that isn’t today, and don’t know when that might be
.
I just couldn’t live with you hating me. I love you, Gabby. You’re my daughter, and there is nothing you can do that will ever change that.”

At some point, I think we both realized what had happened that day at the center. What had changed who we were, who we all were, wasn’t something we could make better in a conversation. After all, how do you fix, in a few words, something so terrible? I suppose the only thing he could do next was to tell me he loved me. And he did.

17

Hours disappeared, but it seemed only minutes since my Daddy left Angela’s Diner. He went back to his hotel. Before leaving, he insisted that we meet for a lunch the next day, where we could talk some more. The emotional drain of seeing him and reliving some of what I’d buried took its toll. My lungs didn’t want to fill – I couldn’t catch my breath, and my legs and arms were heavy and clumsy. Exhaustion is a funny thing when it is in your head. It’s even funnier when your brain turns to a mass of oatmeal without rhyme or reason to the thoughts being produced. That’s how I felt, and no amount of coffee seemed to shake the tired out of me.

Jarod stayed around. He was a week behind on his work schedule, and decided that he would like to take me up on the quick meal I offered. I was happy he had to work late; I was happier that he worked in the back while my Daddy was here. But what I liked most was when Jarod asked if I was going to sit with him for a while. I’d brought him some coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich with fries, and, as I walked away from his table, he reached out and took my arm. I felt gentle kisses of his fingers on my skin, and then I felt them drape over my hand. My heart fluttered, and I told him I’d be right back.

“Sit, Gabby – I’ve got your food, and have things covered,” Suzette chimed from behind the counter. She was joined by Ms. Potts, and the two of them stood, huddled up like spectators. I threw a stern glance at them, and they hurried to move like bugs in the dark when the lights come on. A moment later, and Ms. Potts was showing Suzette how to drain the ketchup bottles. Ketchup, for the most part, drains itself – all we do is stand up the bottles. The two of them continued to watch and talk the way I would have done with Ms. Potts. I tried not to laugh, but could feel my cheeks pushing up against my will.

My smile stayed; I could feel it fixed on my cheeks as I sat across from Jarod. I couldn’t stop smiling, it was almost funny. Suzette brought over my sandwich and some coffee. She planted a wink of her eye, and giggled a school girl laugh before saying hello to Jarod, and asking him if there was anything else he needed.

“Just a drop more of coffee – thanks,” he answered politely. I liked the sound of his voice. I know that might seem strange, but it was true. Suzette leaned in to pour his coffee. Images of her wearing the beautiful green evening gown came to mind, and that frumpy feeling found me again. I tried to push a smile, but it was forced, and I felt uncomfortable. What I saw next made my heart swell. Jarod didn’t look at Suzette. He didn’t look at her like the other men in the diner. When she poured his coffee, his eyes didn’t fall past the opening in her shirt. When she smiled at him and walked away, his eyes didn’t follow. He didn’t see Suzette; not like that.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, breaking my gaze. I nodded, and he asked, “Would you want to maybe go out with me sometime? I mean, on a date, with dinner and a movie.” Jarod fixed his eyes on me again, his lips pursed with an expression that was both sincere and vulnerable. I tried to swallow, but felt my heart in my throat as my skin turned warm around my neck.