Our script:
Maria enters the car. Rick removes a tape from the deck, then puts in one of two cassette tapes, Johnny Cash or Hank Williams.
“How was your day?” Rick asks.
“Fine,” Maria answers.
“Homework?”
“Doing it now.”
Repeat every day for the last three and a half years.
Today, as we pull off the highway and onto the bustling main strip (a car repair shop, a gas station, a series of slumping duplexes, and the Christmas Café), Rick breaks script.
“Paloma found a new cook.”
I narrow my eyes suspiciously at the dull brick exterior of the Christmas Café, which isn’t a café at all. It’s a diner. But the Christmas Diner isn’t alliterative, and saints forbid anything about the place not be ridiculous.
Ted, the last cook, died last week. He’d worked here since it was opened thirty years ago by Rick’s mom. Dottie lives in a retirement home in Florida. Even though my mom has been with Rick for eight years, Dottie still refers to her as “that nice Mexican.” That nice Mexican runs the diner—covers the ordering, keeps track of the accounting, forces her daughter to work for tips alone—basically does everything Dottie is too busy being retired to bother with. She also works full-time at the mine with Rick.
I keep trying to feel sad about Ted, but we barely knew each other, even after three years of working together. Still, it’ll be strange not having him there. He was more of a fixture than a person. Like if I walked in and the freezer was just … gone. Another reason I need to get out of here, before I become stuck like Ted, stuck like Rick, stuck like my mom. Everyone here is miserable, and we’re all just punching our time cards until we die.
Or, in my case, until May, when I graduate and leave Christmas forever.
* * *
Rick drops me off in front of the duplex, then heads straight for the late shift at the mine. They actually let me take the car when I turned sixteen, but I got in two accidents (both my fault), so it’s still cheaper for Rick to drive me than for them to insure me. Cheaper trumps all.
I unlock the door and enter the dim, chilly stairwell. My mom doesn’t believe in heating. It’s a belief strongly supported by Rick. During the winter, it’s colder inside than it is outside. I shrug into the jacket that I leave by the door, check the mail—always neatly divided into the Sanchez and the Miller piles—and climb upstairs to the kitchen. The fridge is plastered with so many years of my report cards, they’ve formed a sort of wallpaper. I push past the milk labeled “Rick,” the yogurt labeled “Rick,” the eggs labeled “Rick,” and find a small container of unlabeled leftover turkey. It has the flavor and consistency of cardboard. I scoop it into the trash, still hungry.
Usually our fridge is packed with castoffs from the diner, but with it out of commission since Ted died, actual food has been scarce. My mom hasn’t cooked a meal in years. Never thought I’d miss Ted “Moderately Edible” Dickson’s culinary stylings.
My mom used to cook. Before Christmas, we hopped around. Sometimes living with relatives, sometimes on our own. No matter how small our kitchen, though, she made it work. She’d spend hours putting together tamales, dancing and spinning stories in musical Spanish. She’s different in Spanish than she is in English. Warmer. Happier. Funnier. Mine.
English mom began when we came to Christmas. She got a job here as the site administrator—a fancy name for a secretary who has to do everything. We lived in a little trailer right at the mine site. Then she got a second job managing the diner, and she and Rick started dating. And it wasn’t just the two of us anymore. One of these days, she’ll show up with her own “Rick” label, right across her forehead.
Fridge possibilities exhausted, I head over to the diner to make sure our schedules haven’t changed and to get something to eat. There’s a dented minivan in the parking lot. Several car seats inside. Luggage strapped to the top. Bad news.
The door opens with a rusted jingle, and an animatronic Santa insults my moral virtue three times. Ho, ho, ho. A train track overhead circles the entire room, a dusty Polar Express forever stalled on the verge of reaching the North Pole. Every surface not reserved for eating is covered in holiday kitsch. Glittery Styrofoam snowflakes, empty boxes covered in sun-bleached wrapping, twinkle lights with one strand always blinking out of sync, stockings with hot-glue stains revealing where pom-poms used to be, and a stuffed deer head, red-bulb nose long dead and antlers strung with limp tinsel. As if that weren’t freak show enough, from the ledge above the kitchen door, a sinister elf gazes malevolently down, its head cocked at a horror-movie angle.
A year ago, I stuck a tiny knife in its hand. No one has noticed.
I look for the other waitress, Candy—she covers mornings and early afternoon, while I do late afternoon and evening. But she’s not here, and I was right about the minivan. The corner booth is a pending full-mop situation. A harried-looking woman wears a pair of sunglasses with only one lens. She’s bouncing a screaming infant on her lap. A toddler climbs on top of the table in spite of the mother’s cautions, while a middling-sized one whines and a bigger one pouts.
She sees me, a combination of hopelessness and annoyance warring on her tired face. “Good luck. We’ve been here five minutes with no sign of a waitress.”
I freeze. If I back out now, I can leave. I’m not scheduled to work.
The bell at the window rings. Ted was short, like me, so he never used the order window. We always had to go into the kitchen to get it. “Order up!” a cheery tenor calls.
The woman sees my reaction and narrows her eyes.
“I—uh—I work here.” You had to admit it, didn’t you, Maria. “Be right back with some menus.”
“Thanks.” Her voice is tight.
I approach the window to find a miniature box of Cheerios, three kids’ cups of chocolate milk, one large Coke, and a deep dish filled with—baked macaroni? I lean forward, breathing in, and … wow. I’m not huge on pasta, but this smells like comfort smothered in cheese. There’s a bread-crumb layer on top that’s baked a perfect golden brown. The whole thing is still steaming.
I get on my tiptoes, but my view into the kitchen is limited. “Hey? I work here? Who is this order for?”
“Table two,” the voice calls. I look out to double check. There’s no one else in the restaurant. Just the crazy family.