Original: The Diner; PG
Title: The Diner
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,444
Summary: I go to the diner to remember my mother
“Come on,” She calls to me with a smile painted on her face. It’s strained, I can tell. I don’t know what’s worrying her, but it’s something important. All through church she fidgeted. She never fidgets. Not my mother. No, she’s always straight backed and devout. Often times I don’t pay attention to the mass, and instead marvel at my mother, and her amazing resolve. I know she doesn’t like going any more than I do. But she puts so much effort into it. Looking like she wants to be there, because she should want to be there. So she tells herself.
I don’t want to be there. But she takes me, because she’s worried about my spiritual health. I tell her I’m just fine. But she worries. And I can’t help but give in. She’s my mother, I’d do anything for her.
What I really like about Sundays is after church. After church we go to a little diner around the corner from our house. The only thing that really gets me through mass is the promise of the diner. Where we go and sit in the same exact booth every Sunday. The time spent there, in the diner, is the only time we really get to be together all week. She works, I have school. Thus, my mother decreed Sunday mornings our time.
--
Now she’s gone. And what do I do with myself? I still go. It’s where I go when I need to feel safe. Always has been. I can’t help it. It’s my booth, my diner. Now, at least. It used to be our booth, our diner. But I’m not an “our” an anymore. I’m a “my.”
--
“What’s wrong, mom?” The words echo through the room.
“Nothing, sweetheart, go get your daddy.” She never asked for dad. He’s usually downstairs drinking. That’s what he does, she would tell me. Your daddy is a drinker.
“Mom?” My voice cracks.
“Go get your father!” She’s yelling. That’s something else she doesn’t do. Who is this person that has replaced my mother? I run out of the room, not sure what else to do.
“Dad! Dad! I think something’s wrong with mom.” I call as I practically slide down the steps.
And there he is, laid out on the couch down in the basement. “What’s that?” He picks his head up.
“Mom. She’s just lying on the floor, and she wanted you.”
“Damn.” I wince. Mom never curses. But dad does. “Stay down here.” He tells me. He looks so serious, and imposing, all I can do is nod. What is going on? But he won’t tell me. He just walks past me and up the stairs. There’s more yelling, and I huddle against the wall, shivering.
The slam of the door brings me out of my stupor. Silence can be a tangible thing, if it’s terrible enough. And I worry. Dad said to stay downstairs, but how could I? Slowly I crept upstairs and to the living room. Peeking my head round the corner, I frown. No one is there. The car is gone, too. Where’d they go? All I can see is an empty house, and the indent my mother made on the carpet. I go and sit next to the space she used to occupy. “Mother?” But they’re gone, and she can’t comfort me.
--
Whenever I go to the diner, I order the same thing too. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, orange juice. It was a joke of my mother’s that I never liked to try new things. I would tell her that I just didn’t want to mess up what I knew I already liked. She would laugh, and I would beam. Her laugh was infectious.
--
That Sunday after dad took her away, I didn’t go to the diner. It was the worst week of my life. Right after the incident, dad came home without mother. I yelled at him, asking where she was. He backhanded me. And while I whimpered, he told me she was in the hospital. We’d go see her the next day.
It was another two days before he made good on his promise. A nice bruise was forming on my cheek, and my mom fawned over me. Who did this? I told her I’d gotten in a fight with someone at school. Dad didn’t bother to stick around. Said he’d be in the car.
We talked for what seemed like hours. I thought she’d get better. She never disillusioned me. When it was time to leave, she stroked my hair, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I’m going to miss brunch this Sunday.”
I told her I didn’t care. Brunch wasn’t that important, it was okay.
She shook her head. “Brunch was the best part of my life.”
--
She died. But I kept going. Because it meant so much to her. The time spent together. And because it was the last thing we talked about. My mother was a saint, in my eyes. I’d do anything for her. I liked to think that she would watch over me. And if I didn’t go to brunch, she’d get mad at me. I didn’t want her to get mad at me. I was only 12, after all.
--
What I regret most in this world, I think, is showing the diner to her. The other her in my life. The one I loved for three long years. Loved? Love. I don’t even know now. When I go to the diner, and I eat my brunch, I think about my mom. And her. Two very different women in my life. One took me here out of love. One followed me here out of a jealous need to be in control.
--
“Where do you go? Every Sunday?” She asks in that simpering little voice of hers.
“Nowhere.”
“Why won’t you tell me? I thought we weren’t going to keep secrets from each other.”
What kills me about this statement is that she, quite possibly, has more secrets than anyone I know. Not the good kind of secrets either. The ones where you’ve bought the other a present, and can’t wait to tell them, but are saving it for a special occasion. No, she’s got secrets that could hurt me. And she knows it. That’s why we don’t talk about them. But they’re there, just waiting for me to find them.
But I don’t look. Because I have my own secret. Just one, though. And it’s not much of a secret, but it’s mine. And now she wants to know. I get angry, because it’s the one part of my life she hasn’t taken over. And now she wants to do just that. Because she’s nosy. I don’t like that about her. She’s very nosy.
“Can’t I just get away for a bit? Spend some time alone?”
“No.” That’s all she’ll say. Every time I ask. But I still go. Because I owe it to my mother. It’s been so long since my mother died now, I hardly know why I go anymore. I know, but it’s not the same. When I was younger, I still could feel my mother’s presence there. Now, I just feel a cold booth.
--
I think about her a lot when I sit alone in my booth. And my mother too. What if my mother had met her? She’d call her a devil woman. A strumpet. Any number of names. Now, now that we’re not together anymore, I smile about that. My mother would have given her a run for her money. It’s a comforting thought, and I nurse my coffee thinking of all the possibilities.
--
What irritates me is that sometimes she still comes here. I cracked one day; I couldn’t take the nagging anymore. “Let me come with you,” She had begged. Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Yeah, alright.” I muttered dejectedly. Putting on my coat, I didn’t even wait for her before I was out the door. But she was ready. It was like she could tell I’d give in.
When we reached the diner, she had stared at it distastefully. “This is where you go?”
“Yeah.”
“But why?”
“Brunch.” I shrug and sit down in my booth.
“Why don’t we sit closer to the door?” She wants to leave.
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
--
Whenever I’m done eating, I like to take a few minutes to just talk to my mother. I tell her about my week, and what I’ve been doing. It’s what we always did. She was always very interested in my life. So, I would tell her. Even if I felt a little ridiculous. But this was my mother. She wouldn’t think I was ridiculous. My mother loved me.
--
At those times when she visited, after the breakup, she would come and sit across from me. Always she would watch me eat. And as soon as I was done she would start talking. Did she not understand that this was my time? She begs me to take her back. As if I was the one to do the breaking up. I might have, given the chance. But she didn’t give me that chance. She tells me she loves me. Can’t live without me.
“Go away,” I stare at her. The diner and the booth is where I go to relive happy thoughts, not her tragic memories. Everything about her confuses me. What appealed me to her in the first place is something beyond my comprehension. It’s in her eyes, I whisper to myself. But I ignore it.
--
“You don’t pay rent, you know.” She accuses me one Sunday while we were still together. I’d just come home from brunch, and was feeling relatively happy. Couldn’t she see that? Why did she have to spoil everything?
“What?” I ask her bewildered.
“You don’t pay rent.” She repeats herself.
“I tried. Your dad wouldn’t let me. You don’t pay rent either,” I shrug and sit down on the couch.
She stands in front of the T.V. “So?”
I look away from her, at the stain on the couch. I’d spilled juice last week. We fought for hours over it. “So, what?”
“You’re impossible.” She hisses and storms out of the room. I just watch her go for a minute. Staring after her retreating figure. But she isn’t going to come back and yell some more this time. So, instead, I flip on the television. I almost wish she’d come back. The defeated look in her eyes was enough to give me pause. Reaching for the bottle next to me, I decide to just forget about it. She’d come back. She always did. I loved her, didn’t I?
--
And now. Now that I’m sitting here on Sunday I can’t help but feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. Like they usually do when she decides to come. It’d been a bad week, and I’d rather she didn’t come. I wanted to sit here, eat my food, and leave. Was that so much to ask?
I can see her walk through the door, and I sink lower into my seat. Maybe she won’t find me. She’ll think I didn’t come. Or that she missed me. But she knows where to check. She knows my habits, and that I always sit here. Furthest booth from the door. The one reserved for me. At least on Sunday mornings.
She sits across from me, and I fiddle with my fork. The waitress comes and she orders coffee. Never have I seen her eat here, despite the countless times she’s come with me. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.” I mutter, grabbing at the salt shaker. I practically drench my eggs in it, and when I take a bite, I grimace. Disgusting. “I’m fine,” I repeat when she doesn’t respond. It takes a lot of effort to not look up at her face, into her eyes. I know what I’ll see there. The pity. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s pity.
“Of course you are,” She responds. The waitress brings her coffee, and she sips it. “What are you doing with yourself?” I can hear it in her voice. It’s not just in her face, and her eyes. It’s in her voice too.
“I have a job.” I tell her, almost defiantly. “I can take care of myself, you don’t have to worry.” I could never stand when people worried about me. I know my mother did, and I always felt bad. She spent too much of her time worrying about me, rather than about herself.
“No you can’t.” She states. “You look awful.”
There’s nothing wrong with the way I look. I’m okay, and I don’t see how it’s any of her business, in the first place. I don’t object, though.
“Come home with me.” It isn’t a request. Because I couldn’t speak up, she will get her way. I know she will. It’s inevitable. She always does.
“No.” I look away.
“You’re coming with me.” Is all she says.
When I feel her at my side, tugging me up, I comply. My food was too salty, anyhow. And I was tired. I didn’t have it in me to fight. “I don’t want to go,” I put up a last ditch effort.
“I know,” She says quietly, wrapping her arm around my waist. “But I want you to.”
Step by step, I resist her dragging me out of the diner. She paid. I don’t want to leave the place. It isn’t time. I haven’t spoken to my mother yet. I miss my mother. And I want to be 12 again. But instead I’m 30, being held up by this woman I used to love, about ready to collapse from exhaustion.
--
When I think about Sunday brunch with my mother, I always remember the good things. It never occurs to me that she used to nag me as well. About my grades. About my hair. About how I wasn’t attractive enough. How would I find someone to fall in love with me? She had a whole list of things she liked to complain about. And every time we left, she’d turn to me and say, “Don’t you become a drinker, like your daddy.” I would nod, just to satisfy her. It was inevitable, I think.
I feel physically incapable of bringing up the bad memories. I don’t want to. They’re buried deep inside. With my alcoholic father. My girlfriend. The only one I’ve ever had. Will have.
The diner is my happy place, and I like to go there for brunch. Breakfast, really. But I could never make that distinction.
----------------
Note: Now, if you could help me out. Let me know if you think the narrator is a man or a woman. It's very ambiguous, which is what I love most about this piece. Just because I am female, doesn't mean the "I" is in the story. And I'll tell you this, not even I know the definite gender of the narrator. It goes back and forth in my mind.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,444
Summary: I go to the diner to remember my mother
“Come on,” She calls to me with a smile painted on her face. It’s strained, I can tell. I don’t know what’s worrying her, but it’s something important. All through church she fidgeted. She never fidgets. Not my mother. No, she’s always straight backed and devout. Often times I don’t pay attention to the mass, and instead marvel at my mother, and her amazing resolve. I know she doesn’t like going any more than I do. But she puts so much effort into it. Looking like she wants to be there, because she should want to be there. So she tells herself.
I don’t want to be there. But she takes me, because she’s worried about my spiritual health. I tell her I’m just fine. But she worries. And I can’t help but give in. She’s my mother, I’d do anything for her.
What I really like about Sundays is after church. After church we go to a little diner around the corner from our house. The only thing that really gets me through mass is the promise of the diner. Where we go and sit in the same exact booth every Sunday. The time spent there, in the diner, is the only time we really get to be together all week. She works, I have school. Thus, my mother decreed Sunday mornings our time.
--
Now she’s gone. And what do I do with myself? I still go. It’s where I go when I need to feel safe. Always has been. I can’t help it. It’s my booth, my diner. Now, at least. It used to be our booth, our diner. But I’m not an “our” an anymore. I’m a “my.”
--
“What’s wrong, mom?” The words echo through the room.
“Nothing, sweetheart, go get your daddy.” She never asked for dad. He’s usually downstairs drinking. That’s what he does, she would tell me. Your daddy is a drinker.
“Mom?” My voice cracks.
“Go get your father!” She’s yelling. That’s something else she doesn’t do. Who is this person that has replaced my mother? I run out of the room, not sure what else to do.
“Dad! Dad! I think something’s wrong with mom.” I call as I practically slide down the steps.
And there he is, laid out on the couch down in the basement. “What’s that?” He picks his head up.
“Mom. She’s just lying on the floor, and she wanted you.”
“Damn.” I wince. Mom never curses. But dad does. “Stay down here.” He tells me. He looks so serious, and imposing, all I can do is nod. What is going on? But he won’t tell me. He just walks past me and up the stairs. There’s more yelling, and I huddle against the wall, shivering.
The slam of the door brings me out of my stupor. Silence can be a tangible thing, if it’s terrible enough. And I worry. Dad said to stay downstairs, but how could I? Slowly I crept upstairs and to the living room. Peeking my head round the corner, I frown. No one is there. The car is gone, too. Where’d they go? All I can see is an empty house, and the indent my mother made on the carpet. I go and sit next to the space she used to occupy. “Mother?” But they’re gone, and she can’t comfort me.
--
Whenever I go to the diner, I order the same thing too. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, orange juice. It was a joke of my mother’s that I never liked to try new things. I would tell her that I just didn’t want to mess up what I knew I already liked. She would laugh, and I would beam. Her laugh was infectious.
--
That Sunday after dad took her away, I didn’t go to the diner. It was the worst week of my life. Right after the incident, dad came home without mother. I yelled at him, asking where she was. He backhanded me. And while I whimpered, he told me she was in the hospital. We’d go see her the next day.
It was another two days before he made good on his promise. A nice bruise was forming on my cheek, and my mom fawned over me. Who did this? I told her I’d gotten in a fight with someone at school. Dad didn’t bother to stick around. Said he’d be in the car.
We talked for what seemed like hours. I thought she’d get better. She never disillusioned me. When it was time to leave, she stroked my hair, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I’m going to miss brunch this Sunday.”
I told her I didn’t care. Brunch wasn’t that important, it was okay.
She shook her head. “Brunch was the best part of my life.”
--
She died. But I kept going. Because it meant so much to her. The time spent together. And because it was the last thing we talked about. My mother was a saint, in my eyes. I’d do anything for her. I liked to think that she would watch over me. And if I didn’t go to brunch, she’d get mad at me. I didn’t want her to get mad at me. I was only 12, after all.
--
What I regret most in this world, I think, is showing the diner to her. The other her in my life. The one I loved for three long years. Loved? Love. I don’t even know now. When I go to the diner, and I eat my brunch, I think about my mom. And her. Two very different women in my life. One took me here out of love. One followed me here out of a jealous need to be in control.
--
“Where do you go? Every Sunday?” She asks in that simpering little voice of hers.
“Nowhere.”
“Why won’t you tell me? I thought we weren’t going to keep secrets from each other.”
What kills me about this statement is that she, quite possibly, has more secrets than anyone I know. Not the good kind of secrets either. The ones where you’ve bought the other a present, and can’t wait to tell them, but are saving it for a special occasion. No, she’s got secrets that could hurt me. And she knows it. That’s why we don’t talk about them. But they’re there, just waiting for me to find them.
But I don’t look. Because I have my own secret. Just one, though. And it’s not much of a secret, but it’s mine. And now she wants to know. I get angry, because it’s the one part of my life she hasn’t taken over. And now she wants to do just that. Because she’s nosy. I don’t like that about her. She’s very nosy.
“Can’t I just get away for a bit? Spend some time alone?”
“No.” That’s all she’ll say. Every time I ask. But I still go. Because I owe it to my mother. It’s been so long since my mother died now, I hardly know why I go anymore. I know, but it’s not the same. When I was younger, I still could feel my mother’s presence there. Now, I just feel a cold booth.
--
I think about her a lot when I sit alone in my booth. And my mother too. What if my mother had met her? She’d call her a devil woman. A strumpet. Any number of names. Now, now that we’re not together anymore, I smile about that. My mother would have given her a run for her money. It’s a comforting thought, and I nurse my coffee thinking of all the possibilities.
--
What irritates me is that sometimes she still comes here. I cracked one day; I couldn’t take the nagging anymore. “Let me come with you,” She had begged. Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Yeah, alright.” I muttered dejectedly. Putting on my coat, I didn’t even wait for her before I was out the door. But she was ready. It was like she could tell I’d give in.
When we reached the diner, she had stared at it distastefully. “This is where you go?”
“Yeah.”
“But why?”
“Brunch.” I shrug and sit down in my booth.
“Why don’t we sit closer to the door?” She wants to leave.
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
--
Whenever I’m done eating, I like to take a few minutes to just talk to my mother. I tell her about my week, and what I’ve been doing. It’s what we always did. She was always very interested in my life. So, I would tell her. Even if I felt a little ridiculous. But this was my mother. She wouldn’t think I was ridiculous. My mother loved me.
--
At those times when she visited, after the breakup, she would come and sit across from me. Always she would watch me eat. And as soon as I was done she would start talking. Did she not understand that this was my time? She begs me to take her back. As if I was the one to do the breaking up. I might have, given the chance. But she didn’t give me that chance. She tells me she loves me. Can’t live without me.
“Go away,” I stare at her. The diner and the booth is where I go to relive happy thoughts, not her tragic memories. Everything about her confuses me. What appealed me to her in the first place is something beyond my comprehension. It’s in her eyes, I whisper to myself. But I ignore it.
--
“You don’t pay rent, you know.” She accuses me one Sunday while we were still together. I’d just come home from brunch, and was feeling relatively happy. Couldn’t she see that? Why did she have to spoil everything?
“What?” I ask her bewildered.
“You don’t pay rent.” She repeats herself.
“I tried. Your dad wouldn’t let me. You don’t pay rent either,” I shrug and sit down on the couch.
She stands in front of the T.V. “So?”
I look away from her, at the stain on the couch. I’d spilled juice last week. We fought for hours over it. “So, what?”
“You’re impossible.” She hisses and storms out of the room. I just watch her go for a minute. Staring after her retreating figure. But she isn’t going to come back and yell some more this time. So, instead, I flip on the television. I almost wish she’d come back. The defeated look in her eyes was enough to give me pause. Reaching for the bottle next to me, I decide to just forget about it. She’d come back. She always did. I loved her, didn’t I?
--
And now. Now that I’m sitting here on Sunday I can’t help but feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. Like they usually do when she decides to come. It’d been a bad week, and I’d rather she didn’t come. I wanted to sit here, eat my food, and leave. Was that so much to ask?
I can see her walk through the door, and I sink lower into my seat. Maybe she won’t find me. She’ll think I didn’t come. Or that she missed me. But she knows where to check. She knows my habits, and that I always sit here. Furthest booth from the door. The one reserved for me. At least on Sunday mornings.
She sits across from me, and I fiddle with my fork. The waitress comes and she orders coffee. Never have I seen her eat here, despite the countless times she’s come with me. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.” I mutter, grabbing at the salt shaker. I practically drench my eggs in it, and when I take a bite, I grimace. Disgusting. “I’m fine,” I repeat when she doesn’t respond. It takes a lot of effort to not look up at her face, into her eyes. I know what I’ll see there. The pity. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s pity.
“Of course you are,” She responds. The waitress brings her coffee, and she sips it. “What are you doing with yourself?” I can hear it in her voice. It’s not just in her face, and her eyes. It’s in her voice too.
“I have a job.” I tell her, almost defiantly. “I can take care of myself, you don’t have to worry.” I could never stand when people worried about me. I know my mother did, and I always felt bad. She spent too much of her time worrying about me, rather than about herself.
“No you can’t.” She states. “You look awful.”
There’s nothing wrong with the way I look. I’m okay, and I don’t see how it’s any of her business, in the first place. I don’t object, though.
“Come home with me.” It isn’t a request. Because I couldn’t speak up, she will get her way. I know she will. It’s inevitable. She always does.
“No.” I look away.
“You’re coming with me.” Is all she says.
When I feel her at my side, tugging me up, I comply. My food was too salty, anyhow. And I was tired. I didn’t have it in me to fight. “I don’t want to go,” I put up a last ditch effort.
“I know,” She says quietly, wrapping her arm around my waist. “But I want you to.”
Step by step, I resist her dragging me out of the diner. She paid. I don’t want to leave the place. It isn’t time. I haven’t spoken to my mother yet. I miss my mother. And I want to be 12 again. But instead I’m 30, being held up by this woman I used to love, about ready to collapse from exhaustion.
--
When I think about Sunday brunch with my mother, I always remember the good things. It never occurs to me that she used to nag me as well. About my grades. About my hair. About how I wasn’t attractive enough. How would I find someone to fall in love with me? She had a whole list of things she liked to complain about. And every time we left, she’d turn to me and say, “Don’t you become a drinker, like your daddy.” I would nod, just to satisfy her. It was inevitable, I think.
I feel physically incapable of bringing up the bad memories. I don’t want to. They’re buried deep inside. With my alcoholic father. My girlfriend. The only one I’ve ever had. Will have.
The diner is my happy place, and I like to go there for brunch. Breakfast, really. But I could never make that distinction.
----------------
Note: Now, if you could help me out. Let me know if you think the narrator is a man or a woman. It's very ambiguous, which is what I love most about this piece. Just because I am female, doesn't mean the "I" is in the story. And I'll tell you this, not even I know the definite gender of the narrator. It goes back and forth in my mind.