Rodney sat on the edge of the feed store loading dock, watching the highway and counting cars as they passed under the faded bicentennial banner on their way to somewhere else. It was not a big number. The other workers had gone home and the noise of closing doors let him know that his mother would be out any minute. She had told him to wait for her when he was finished sweeping. She had plans for the two of them.
They walked together down Charlotte into town, taking the four blocks at a good clip, past the post office and library, and Dino’s Smoke Shoppe, where a straw hat-wearing woman closed the door behind her and waved at his mother, and called out her name.
“That’s Dino’s wife, Sadie,” his mother said, waving back at her. “She runs the place.”
“Why does she run it?” he asked. “Is her husband dead or something?”
They walked a little farther and she leaned into him. “He’s a drunk,” she said. “If he’s not down at The Hitching Post then I imagine he’s at home in bed, just waiting for his liver to give in.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s no secret, really, but all the same don’t go spreading it to your friends.”
“It’s a sad thing, and Sadie doesn’t deserve the gossip.”
“I said I won’t,” he repeated. “Besides, I don’t have any friends to tell anyway.”
She faltered in her walk then, only for a brief step, and her face fell into a snapshot of worry, of borderline pity that rolled Rodney’s stomach from one side to the other. He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him. His lack of friends was his choice, not the result of some kind of phantom social plague stirred up by the kids at his school. Not this time.
“Anyway,” she said. “I thought we’d eat out tonight. Have a little date for ourselves.”
She turned off the sidewalk and up to the front door of the Iron Rail Diner, where she pushed through and led him to a booth near the back, adjacent the kitchen, separated by quilted, aluminum saloon doors. It was chaos in there, men shouting back and forth, cussing at one another now and then, metal knocking against metal, the hiss of meat being slapped onto a hot griddle.
This was something because, as a rule, his mother did not care to eat out, not even when Rodney’s father had been home and working steady. It was ridiculous, she insisted. Unnecessary. Why pay an arm and a leg for someone else to cook meat that you could get for fifty cents at the supermarket? But she’d been working more, it seemed, since Rodney’s father had left. Coming in some nights after he had gone to bed, trying to be quiet but failing. Rules that had once been steady were peeling away like the paint on their little house. And now, here they were at the Iron Rail.
Rodney slid into the seat opposite, and his mother did not pick up the menu that lay in front of her but instead nodded her chin at the waitress, who came straight up to them and put her fingers on the edge of the table. Her nails were long and glassy pink, and the two women smiled at one another. “So this is him,” the waitress said.
“In the flesh,” his mother said.
“Handsome boy.” She smiled, waxy lipstick bleeding into tiny cracks at the edges of her lips. She wagged a pen at him. “I’ll bet you get all the girls chasing you through the schoolyard.”
His mother beamed at Rodney and, for the first time since they’d left Kruger’s, he saw how she had painted herself up, that she’d run a cherry red over her lips and done something with her eyes—brushed a smudge of green over them and darkened the lashes so they looked like the tips of tiny paintbrushes. She nudged his foot with her toe. “Don’t just sit there like a mute,” she said. “Say something.”
Rodney said, “Nobody’s chasing me at school.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” the waitress said, tapping her pen on her pad. “Give it time.”
He’d barely had the chance to look through the menu before his mother declared that it would be a burger and fries for him, and a salad for herself. The whole exchange was quick and businesslike, the waitress snatching up the menus with those fingernails and the lowest of whispers. You got it, hon.
His mother turned herself so her back nudged the wall, facing the door to the kitchen. She smiled at Rodney and reached across the table to wipe at something on his cheek with her fingers and when he pulled away she just rolled her eyes at him and turned back toward the kitchen. Something was there, distracting her. It was as if there was some big story unfolding behind those aluminum doors, a scene that she should be a part of.
“Are you too old for crayons?” she asked him.
“I don’t want to color,” he said. He’d seen the pages on his way in. Bunnies and flowers and little kid stuff. He wasn’t going to be caught dead with that nonsense. Instead, he dumped all of the sugar packets onto the table. They were inventors or some such thing, the Wright Brothers, Eli Whitney. People like that.
His mother reached into her purse and slid out a cigarette and tapped it on her arm. In his life he’d probably seen her smoke a dozen times. It was never something she seemed to enjoy, but rather something she needed—a way to smooth out moments of stress, maybe punctuate the tail end of one of her battles with his father.
She smiled at him. “Hungry?”
“A little.”
“I hope a hamburger was fine.”
He guessed it would have to be, since she’d taken it upon herself to order it. “It’s fine,” he said.
“I just assumed.” She reached back into her purse, the unlit cigarette a tiny flagpole still held in the fingers of her free hand. She dug around in there like she was a scavenger, and her forehead shrunk into itself with the growing frenzy of her search. After a minute or so she gave up, throwing the cigarette back into her purse and shoving the whole bag aside.
There was kick of a desk bell and someone yelled, “Order up!” and the waitress appeared again with plates in her arms and another wink at Rodney.
“Thank God,” his mother said to her. “I’m starving.”
“Hope this will do,” she said, sliding the sleepy pile of lettuce in front of his mother almost apologetically.
Rodney pulled the vegetables from his burger and layered the meat in ketchup. He had barely taken his first bite when one of the aluminum doors punched open, knocking against the wall. A man who was mostly arms and sideburns waltzed through, like some actor making his first appearance on stage. His spider hands worked eagerly at the grease-smeared apron wrapped around his waist, and there was a kind of paper towel cap over his head, pulled almost down to eyes a color of green that Rodney didn’t think he’d ever seen in a person before. It was like they’d been painted on his face along with those sideburns of his that dripped like black ink from his ears to his jawline.
“So?” he said. “How is it?” And when Rodney didn’t answer quickly enough he added, “That burger you’re eating there. I cooked it.”
There was the sharp stab of his mother’s toe against his shin. Rodney shot a look at her. The hamburger tumbled dry and unyielding in his mouth.
“The name’s Otis,” the man said, reaching his hand across the table. “Otis Dell.” He held it there like he was a statue, and only when Rodney’s mother said, “Oh for goodness sake, shake his hand,” did Rodney take it, damp and cold as it was. Otis stared at the boy, sugar-cube teeth pushing through pink lips almost woman-like, a grin of expectancy, or worry, perhaps. As if his job—or something, anyway—depended on Rodney’s approval. “Well?” he asked.
“Well what?” Rodney said.
“Rodney,” his mother whispered—another kick to his shin. “How’s the hamburger?”
“It’s fine,” said Rodney. God. All this over a lousy burger
His mother dragged her fork through the salad, the leaves limp and soaked in clumpy, pallid dressing. She stared dreamily at her plate, now and then glancing up at Otis.
“As for me,” she said, “I’ve had better in the world of salads.” She lifted a dripping fork to her mouth. “But I suppose it’ll do.” She gave Rodney a wink and it seemed that she might be trying to pull a fast one with this Otis fellow, but doing a lousy job of it, what with the thin smile that she was giving away so easily. The whole thing pulled on his stomach, too, the way the two of them looked at each other, their gaze welded together as if connected by some hidden joke. A flush of pink bloomed from his mother’s collar to her chin.
Otis said, “Guess you’ll have to come back then and give me another chance to get it right.”
“I guess I will,” she answered.
They were both quiet then, Rodney’s mother eating lettuce in tiny bites, like some rabbit-human, this man Otis standing over her with his dingy white T-shirt and filthy apron and that sugar grin stretching ever wider across his unshaven face. And while he knew it would send his mother in a whirlwind if she saw him do it, Rodney rolled his eyes.
“You trying to get a look at your brains back there?” Otis was looking at him now, his lids narrowed and still.
The burger turned in his mouth as if it was made of rubber, and Rodney held his eyes firm on Otis as if looking away might end his life. They stood like that for some time, minutes it seemed, until his mother whispered, Oh dear—Rodney, and someone thankfully hollered out from the kitchen.
“Dell!”
Otis said, “That’s my cue.” He tipped his head at Rose and gave a measured wink to Rodney before turning and punching the doors on his way through, the metal ricocheting off the kitchen walls as they swung.
“That wasn’t your finest moment,” she said.
In the quiet that followed, Rodney forced himself another bite, picking at the edges of the burger, doing all he could to avoid looking up at her. He took his time, scanning the walls and other tables as he chewed. There were paintings of freight trains and dense forests and mountain ranges, all jagged peaks and patchy snow pack. He counted four different clocks, all made from glossy chunks of wood, each with a colored sticker with what looked like a price, if a customer wanted one for his very own. A couple tables over a toddler in a high chair ate scrambled eggs straight from the tray.
His mother shifted in her seat, and the water in his glass danced in ripples from the center to the edges. “Did you hear me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he finally said.
“You were pretty rude,” she said. “It wouldn’t have killed you to be nice. He was nice to you.” And when Rodney simply shrugged and went back to his burger, she moved her plate to the center of the table, tapping it against his.
“I don’t know why it matters,” he said. “He’s just some guy, right?”
She put her hand to her forehead. “What? You can’t be polite unless it’s someone important?”
Rodney laid his burger on his plate and pushed it away from him, sliding it in her direction. There was something in all of this that tasted foul. The dinner, the waitress, and the way she seemed to know him already. So this is him, she’d said. And this cook. Otis. Everyone in this whole place seemed to be in on this date except him.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” she said. This person who was, herself, turning more and more alien each day. Like something in the pages of one of his comics.
“I’m just Rodney,” he said, picking at the bread on his plate. “That’s it.”
“Okay, Just Rodney. You should pay attention to first impressions,” she warned, leaning in. “Because you never know when you will meet people a second time.”