“Come on little birdy, eat the tomato!”
Jodi was waving a forkful of salad as Jo’s face but her son’s lips were pressed
shut. “You don’t have to eat it but you won’t get any other dinner.” She held
it up for a few more seconds before Jo obliged and nibbled at the lettuce
around the squished tomato bits.
Jodi had found the smallest plates
she could to bring with her when they ate out in the hopes that heaping food onto
their small surfaces would somehow mask the fact that they were forced to share
a single fast-food salad. It pained her when Jo was picky – she could hardly
afford to buy a second meal when he refused the first. But even she was forced
to admit that the burgundy tomatos and soft lettuce was unappetizing.
“Jodi? Oh my God hi!” Lydia Collins
bounded over, a blue in a pink top and what were either tiny white shorts or
her underwear. “Oh my God, what are you doing here?” she asked, as though there
were more than one reason why someone would be at a MacDonald’s at 7pm.
Lydia was Jodi’s shift supervisor at
the Diner 55. “But don’t take it seriously, I’m no better than all the rest o’
ya’ll!” she would laugh during meetings. Provided Jodi had had her morning cup
of coffee, she generally liked Lydia despite the constant perky attitude. No
one worked at the 55 if they had any other options so Jodi was forced to admire
the girl’s constant optimism. She was about to answer when Lydia squealed
again.
“Oh man, is that him? Is that your
little dude? Hi there! I’m Lydia! I work with your mommy!” Jo stared at the
girl, blue-eyes wide. He looked like a Renaissance painting of a cherub caught
in mid-glance, but he was shaking.
Jodi dropped the salad fork and held her hand out to him. He gripped two
of her fingers and squeezed. Hard.
“He can’t talk, “ Jodi said, “so he
hasn’t figured out yet how best to greet people.”
“I see. Is he, you know…” Lydia
stage-whispered so loud that the teenager janitor turn to stare, “is he retarded?”
“What? No! He’s just got a problem
with his throat or something. I don’t think you’re supposed to ask that…”
Jo let up his grip slightly and
waved a few fingers at Lydia, who had turned the same burgundy as the wilted
tomatoes.
“Look Jodi, why don’t you and your
kid join us??” Before Jodi could respond Lydia picked up the two pitiful plates
and carried them over to a boot. Jodi shrugged at Jo and rolled her eyes as
obviously as she could. She couldn’t wait until he understood what that meant.
She held out her hand and he wriggled out of his seat, following his mother
over to the group.
“Ok everyone!” Lydia announced as
Jodi slid into the booth beside her, “This is Jodi and… mm.. Little Dude!”
“It’s Jo,” Jodi muttered, though no
one heard.
“’K, Jodi, that’s Sandra – she works
makeup at Arcadia Mall, Ali, Josh – ignore him, he’s a tool but he has a job at
a grocery store and gets us discounts – Wes and Kate.” She failed to point to a
single person as she explained.
“Hi everyone.” Jodi slid into the
booth next to a chubby girl with long, auburn dreadlocks and a silver ring
through her septum. She smelled faintly of cilantro but Jodi knew that she
still smelled like work and the mould that lived in her car seats so she wasn’t
in a position to judge.
Across from the white girl with the
dreads was a girl, no bigger than five feet tall, wearing an outfit identical
to Lydia’s. Her head rested on the shoulders of a shaggy-haired boy in a Pink
Floyd shirt who was busy eating dead-girl’s French fries. Across from him was a
guy in a suit, though he tie looked like it was tied with a boy scout knot and
his top three buttons were undone. Finally, a girl slouched in the corner,
mouth open while she napped. The guy in the Pink Floyd shirt occasionally threw
balled-up bits of straw wrappers at her tongue.
Lydia immediately turned to the girl
in the matching clothes and continued a half-completed story about an
unpleasant customer who had come in earlier that day. Periodically she would
turn to Jodi and say “Back me up here!” Jodi would raise her eyebrows and nod.
It was mostly true. Ish.
“So what’s your deal, man?” Pink
Floyd leaned across the table at Jo, who was too busy watching Dread’s French
fries to notice.
“He doesn’t really have a deal, he’s
three,” Jodi said for him as she lifted more salad to her son.
“Come on. Everyone’s got a deal.
Like Sandy there – hers is putting makeup on people and pretending that she’s
not the whitest girl you know. Mine’s art.”
“You’re an artist?” Jodi asked.
“No,” said the sleeping girl, wiping
bits of paper from her mouth, “he knows how to play Smoke on the Water on the
guitar. He’s a grocery clerk – “
“By day! By night I’m like the
Batman of music before he donned the mask. Wonder in-training.”
“Don’t even, Josh. Before he was
Batman he was a rich Christian Bale. You’re a 25 year-old who still lives with
his step-mom.” Lydia was suddenly in the conversation.
“Whatever. I was just trying to show
interest in the chick’s kid.” Jodi instinctively put a hand on the back of her
son’s head as she always did when he was being discussed by strangers.
“So you’re like… what?” Lydia’s twin
asked.
“Twenty. I mean almost 21.”
“Young, I like it.”
“Shut up, Josh, don’t be a creep,”
said the twin. There was a thud as
her shoe hit Josh’s shin.
“Sorry, she knows I was kidding. I
was kidding.”
“It’s fine,” said Jodi.
There was a long pause. Twin looked
like she wanted to ask something but couldn’t after having kicked Josh. The
sleeping girl had gone back to her open-mouthed slouch. Dreads offered Jo a
fry, which he rapidly shoved in his mouth before looking to his mom to ask if
he could have it.
“So is this some kind of fast-food
party I just crashed with my salad?” Jodi asked to break the silence.
“No,” laughed Lydia, “Coffee date.
We used to do this thing called Coffee Tuesdays at that place – Morocco’s, you
know? With the giant Man-Eating Clam on the wall?”
“There’s no such thing as –“
“Shut up, Wes! Anyways, we all know
each other through this lame barbeque thing our parents used to do every summer
so after we got too old for it we started getting together once a week to keep
in touch and we just kept doing it until we stopped getting allowances –“
“Hey, for some of us that was a
decade ago –“
“I can’t help that you’re really
old, Josh. Anyways, on day we realized that we could get a whole meal here for
the price of a coffee at Morocco’s and yeah. Except that we still call it
Coffee Tuesdays because despite what Ali insists, Weekly McDicks was not an
acceptable alternative.”
“Right”
“You’re totally welcome to come next
time. You should! It would be fun! Like if you get a night off from being a mom
or something you should come out with us!”
“Ok. If I get a night off, I’ll let
you know maybe.”
“No, really, please,” said Dreadlock-Girl-Who-Was-Probably-Sandra.
Suit Boy looked up from his napkin,
where he was holding Jo’s attention with some kind of doodle, “We need new
blood. You can only listen to the opening riff of Deep Purple so many times
before you think you’ll go postal.”
Jodi nodded at the girl but excused
herself. It was late and Jo would never get up the next morning if she didn’t
let him home soon. She thanked Lydia and gathered Jo, who pointed and wriggled
until she picked up the napkin that had been in front of them on the table. On
it, the boy in the suit had drawn a shell with the title Regular Plankton
Eating Clam.