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The manager waved his hand around as if to take in the sandwich shop, the road beyond, the town, the distant hum of thehighway, the invisible infection, the months of lockdown, death itself.All this.
His eyes slid again to their little girl. She felt her hand jerk toward her daughter, as if to interrupt…what?
Stop it. It’s nothing.
“At least we’re a takeout operation, you know? Got the outdoor tables, too.”
“Sure.” Her husband nodded. “Sure! Everyone wanting to eat outside. And this is an awesome spot!”
It struck her as it always did how much her husband’s personality mirrored what she remembered of her mother. Brimming with enthusiasm. Hyperbole. Easygoing friendliness.An awesome spot!
The whole place had grown uglier in her eyes, turned now to the background of the discomfiting man. The fake shrubs rimming the café’s wide concrete patio didn’t do much to hide its view of a pockmarked parking lot. On the other side of the lot’s stained concrete berm was Route 23. Across the busy road was a Verizon store, a Joann Fabrics, and a Taco Bell. The café was part of a shopping center with a Starbucks on one side and an empty storefront on the other, a banner in the window half-fallen to proclaim “ns coming SOON!” Cars hurried by. Cars waited at the light. Cars spewed noise and exhaust.
She had suggested they eat their sandwiches at home, but her husband had insisted on the patio, seizing any chance to be back in the world.
It’s all so ugly. We could be anywhere,anywhere in America.
“You guys did a good job spreading all the tables out. It feels really safe,” her husband mused.
She frowned at how small her daughter looked in the manager’s shadow.
Safe.
“Well, if you get a chance, we’d love it if you reviewed us online. Love it if you come back.” The manager clapped his hands together. “In the meantime, anything I can get for you folks?”
“No, nothing.” It was the first time she’d spoken since the manager arrived at the table. Her voice struck her as obnoxiously loud, yet the manager didn’t seem to hear her. The strap of her daughter’s tank top had slipped, looping loose over her thin upper arm. The manager hooked the fallen strap with one finger and deftly replaced it. Her daughter hunched away from him, intuitively recoiling from that touch. He withdrew his hand. All over in a moment.
Did you see that? Did that just happen?
Her insides squeezed, freezing her tongue to silence. Her mind tumbled over vague memories of that same gesture. All the times a boyfriend, her husband, had replaced a strap that had gone askew.
It was intimate. It always is, always was, every time.
Don’t be ridiculous. It was only a second. Just a quick little reaction.
“Do you have coloring stuff?” her son asked the manager. “Crayons?”
“How do you ask?” she corrected automatically and winced.
“Easy-pleasy-lemon-squeezy!”
“Not that kind of operation, bud, sorry.” The manager shrugged. “How about you, princess?” He leaned down as if to catch their daughter’s eye. “Refill on that cocktail?”
Behind her teeth trapped words bubbled.Don’t go near my daughter.
You’re being illogical.
Because what had this man done, really? Nothing, nothing at all. A swift fix of a strap. Teasing words. Eyes that hovered and crept. Men and their eyes, always thinking they were so subtle.
Have you ever been right about something like this? Not in any provable way.
She imagined saying something. Setting in motion what she wassure would be the put-on confusion of the manager, the genuine confusion of her husband, who was, after all, a good man and therefore immunized to intuition built on fear. Her mouth felt sewn shut by all the undercurrents and implications and consequences. Saying something, anything, would turn the manager into the victim. Leave her husband baffled, apologetic. She and her husband would argue. The kind of argument that turns cruel and personal, searing and scarring the skin branding iron style. An argument that cut deep because the real problem was that, at bottom, they each lived in separate, untranslatable realities.
Yes, she would seem ridiculous. She would lose any argument, easy-pleasy-lemon-squeezy.
It was one second. Did you see it? It could all be normal.
So she stayed silent. So did her daughter, chewing on the bendy straw in her drink.
