No Defense (13 page)

Every table was set with table mats,
flatware, and napkins, ready and waiting for the lunch customers.
Only three tables were occupied. One of the busboys was mopping the
foyer. Outside, the rain fell steadily.

I had always loved the morning lull. It was
like the eye of a storm. We knew the peace and quiet was only
temporary, usually lasting about an hour and a half, maybe two.
Then, suddenly, a steady stream of people would rush in, eat, and
leave. Just as suddenly calm would again prevail, and we’d all
collapse. People seemed to magically appear and disappear.

I felt content in a way I had not in a long
time. This was the ideal job. Was is it possible to know something
so quickly, so surely? I did.

When my father came in early for his coffee
break, I jumped up and greeted him at the door. “Thanks,” I said,
throwing my arms around his neck.

He kissed my cheek, grinned, and asked, “For
what?”

“My job, the house, Jolene. Everything!” I
gushed.

“It
was
my idea, wasn’t it?” he said.
“Damn, I’m smart. Now get me a cup of coffee and sit and talk to me
for a while-if you have time.”

“You’re so modest, Daddy,” I joked. “Coffee
coming up.”

The other Coffee Club members arrived within
ten minutes. After a brief visit, I went back to my booth to eat
something. Ben Gainey came in, waved hello to me, then sat down
with the group of men for thirty minutes. He took notes in his
steno pad and recorded some parts of their conversations on his
tape recorder. The members of the Coffee Club obviously loved the
attention. There was more than the usual laughing and loud talking
from the wall booth that morning.

After the last of the Coffee Club members
left, Ben walked over to my booth.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked. He set the
tape recorder and steno pad on the corner of my table.

“Why, if it isn’t Mr. See No Evil.” I
covered my eyes with my hands.

“Are you going to give me a hard time about
that forever?”

“Maybe. You’re an easy target. How are your
allergies?”

“Much better, thanks. The pharmacist took
pity on me Saturday and gave me a miracle drug.”

“Is this an official or an unofficial
visit?” I asked.

“Both: I need a good breakfast, and I’d like
to start talking to you for the book.”

“Have a seat then. I have a few minutes.
It’s pretty late to be eating breakfast, isn’t it?”

“What’s that you’re eating?” he asked,
referring to the slice of cinnamon toast I’d fixed after my visit
with my father.

“Just a snack. I ate at five-thirty.”

“I must admit I was sound asleep then-at
six-thirty too.”

“You didn’t just get up, did you? What a
cushy job.” I smiled at him.

“I’ve been up-awhile, anyway. I swam in the
lake, reviewed some notes, called the
Star
and rushed over
here to catch those guys before they left.”

“The Coffee Club, you mean.”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“That’s what most people call them.”

“How long has there been a Coffee Club?” he
asked.

“Forever, I guess. I know some of them were
coming here when I was in high school Different ones over the
years, but there’s always five or ten men sitting there, same time,
same place, every day.”

“They’re helpful”

“Good, because from the looks of this
morning they’re going to make you talk to them again whether you
want to or not.” I laughed, then stood up. “You better tell me what
you want for breakfast. It’ll be too late to get it in a
minute.”

He gave me his order.

“Study this map while I’m in the kitchen.
When I get back I’ll answer questions about hot spots,” I said,
pushing the Steak House placemat toward him.

The placemat displayed a map of the state of
Alabama outlined in black against a mustard background (the same
mustard as the waitresses’ uniforms) and included numerous points
of interest, such as the capitol building in Montgomery, the Ave
Maria Grotto, Vulcan, and the Boll Weevil Monument. Across the
bottom border of the mat were the words THE HEART OF DIXIE in bold
black letters. The same design had graced the placemats for over a
decade. Mimi Bledsoe told me that one of the placemat salesmen had
wanted to put the Steak House on the map, as if it were a state
monument, but she’d thought that would be tacky.

When Estelle got to work at two that
afternoon, I left the Steak House. As much as I wanted a nap, I
wanted more to spend the time I had at home before the dinner rush
with the children.

The rain had stopped during lunch, and the
air was warm and muggy as we walked around the neighborhood. The
twins were in their double stroller and Jessie was next to me. The
neighbors we passed stopped and admired the children, receiving in
return wide toothless grins from Will and Hank and a glowing smile
from Jessie.

Not all the homes were Tudors, like ours. A
few were colonials, and a few old southern Victorians. On each side
of the block there were only three or four homes, each with
spacious, beautifully maintained yards full of huge old azaleas and
dogwoods, their blooms gone weeks ago and replaced by the flowering
crape myrtles, hydrangeas, and delphiniums.

Darrell, Jolene’s son, was doing our yard
work when we returned to the house. He was bent over the lawn
mower, pouring gas into the tank.

I fed Will and Hank bottles in the den, then
put them in their cribs upstairs and watched for a few minutes as
they tried to figure out what their hands were. The week before
they’d discovered they had hands, Hank a day before Will. Since
then, both of them were obsessed. They brought their hands
together, spread them apart out of sight, brought them back again,
and pulled on the fingers, repeating the process again and again
until they grew sleepy.

I put Will’s pacifier in his mouth. We’d
finally gotten him to relax a bit with the pacifier. Of course,
when he couldn’t find it you could hear him all over the house, but
sometimes the pacifier seemed to calm whatever was irritating
him.

I left the boys to sleep and sat with Jessie
in her room, surrounded by her collection of Barbie dolls. We
played “Barbie moves away” over and over again until Caroline Cook,
Jessie’s new friend from next door arrived to play with her.

Jessie was adjusting to the move
beautifully. She had her Granddaddy and Glady, her aunt Jane and
uncle Buck, and Jolene, all heaping gobs of attention on her. She
was only away from home three hours a day, compared to the eight or
ten she’d spent in day care in Atlanta. Her camp and nursery school
friends were also neighbors, and she’d quickly become part of the
gang. She had everything to be happy about.

I went back to the restaurant at six, about
the time Eddie was due home. When I left, Jolene was cooking dinner
for the children and him. She’d leave when he arrived.

Driving to the Steak House, I felt as though
I were deserting the children, leaving them at dinnertime without
me or Eddie. I didn’t plan on keeping this schedule forever, but
had little choice for the time being. At that moment, I wished
Eddie hadn’t taken the teaching job, or that he could have waited
until fall to begin. Then he could have been home while I put in
all the hours at the restaurant.

I didn’t allow this minor concern to dampen
my enthusiasm, however, and when I walked into the Steak House for
the dinner rush I paused briefly at the door to watch the scene
inside. Waitresses were bustling around the front dining room,
serving the forty or so diners. Two busboys were cleaning the
remains from dinners already completed.

When a guest enters a busy, successful
restaurant he is drawn in by the smell of good food, the sight of
content diners and happy waitresses, and the sound of animated,
interesting conversations. He sees a club he wants to join.

I shivered with delight. My restaurant. My
hometown. I was back where I belonged.

CHAPTER
NINE

Why did the biggest, most important event in
Tallagumsa history have to be in the upstairs dining rooms of the
Steak House barely a month after I took over? I tried to convince
my father and Buck that Daddy should announce he was running for
governor in Birmingham, the closest big city, or in Montgomery, the
capital, or anywhere else. I told them I wasn’t ready after only a
month, that the event might be a disaster. Neither listened to a
word I said. I viewed their response as either a great vote of
confidence or a sure sign of madness.

It was settled, though, and as the days of
preparation passed, Buck nearly drove me mad too. He came by the
Steak House daily, sometimes two or three times, with this or that
screwball idea, order, or concern. This menu, that wine. This
seating arrangement, that schedule. His demands never seemed to
end.

Two days before the dinner party Buck rushed
into the kitchen looking as if he might be on the verge of a
sunstroke, his face beet-red, his shirt wet with sweat.

The dog days of summer in Alabama had begun.
Every day was over ninety degrees, dead still and humid. The dog
days were said to last forty straight days. If that was true, we
had thirty-five to go, and Buck didn’t look as if he’d last that
long.

“We have to find a movie star to come to the
dinner,” he proclaimed.

“We don’t know any,” I pointed out.

“Everybody gets stars or country singers or
somebody,” he insisted.

“Wait here, Buck,” I said. I went to my
office and called Daddy, asking him to come over and stop Buck
before I killed him.

Daddy appeared within ten minutes, lectured
Buck on the difference between a campaign manager and a Hollywood
sent, and ordered him to leave me alone.

Buck finally calmed down a tiny bit after I
talked Ben Gainey into writing an article on the election and my
father for the
Washington Star
.

I didn’t understand what Buck was so frantic
about. My father had been elected mayor four times, with eighty
percent of the vote each time. A result of his generous work on
behalf of most of the Democratic candidates in other parts of the
state, he was well known outside Tallagumsa. There was no other
credible candidate running for governor. The Democratic party was
solidly behind him, and no Republican had been elected governor of
the state in over one hundred years.

I wasn’t worried at all about my father
getting elected, but I was haunted by all the things that could go
wrong at the dinner. The morning of the event I couldn’t sit still,
and I left Ben, who often joined me at my booth during the morning
lull, sitting alone eating his late breakfast.

I rushed through the kitchen doors to check
once again on preparations for the party.

Inside the kitchen, Estelle was removing
large rectangular aluminum trays of dinner rolls and sweet rolls
from the oven and dumping them, tray-by-tray, into the bread
warmer. She looked a little silly wearing the oversized silver and
red oven mitts on her small hands.

Behind the stainless-steel island that
separated the waitresses from the ovens, the grills, and the cooks,
I saw evidence of Roland’s presence. Bacon and meat patties were
frying on the grill, com was cooking on the stove, and piles of
French fries sat next to the grill, waiting to go into the deep
fryer. But there was no Roland.

I walked up behind Estelle and gently
tickled her back. “I don’t think I’ll survive until tonight,” I
said.

Estelle turned around. “It’s going to be
fine. No different than the Lions Club dinners.”

“Except it’s twice as big and four million
times more important.” I pretended to hyperventilate and patted my
chest.

“I mean the food and the logistics,” she
said. “We’ve done this thousands of times. Don’t worry.”

“But you’re working on lunch now, not the
party,” I said. “Shouldn’t you do something about tonight? Just
forget lunch! Maybe we should have closed for the day.”

“It’s not even eleven, LuAnn. Relax. Take a
break. Go home.”

Roland came out of the walk-in refrigerator,
carrying a pack of chops. He walked to the grill and picked up a
large spatula. As he flipped the meat patties over, grease
splattered on his white apron. He moved the hamburger patties off
the grill and snapped his fingers. “Shit!” he said. “I forgot to
call that new fish distributor.”

“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “That’ll
be interesting. A dinner with no main course.”

“All is well,” Roland said, but I didn’t
believe him.

Estelle watched Roland walk out, appeared to
think about something, then spoke. “Can I ask you something?” she
asked softly, moving up close to me.

“Sure.”

“What’s going on with you and Ben Gainey?”
Her mouth was set in a determined line.