Heart of Palm (14 page)

Of course, as luck and life would have it, things didn’t work out quite as Arla expected. Running the restaurant was hard. Damn hard. Early morning preps in a stifling hot kitchen. Vendors who left you hanging with no grouper
or
mahi on a four-day weekend in the middle of summer. Snippy, chesty waitresses who thought they could do better elsewhere. Boozy brawlers who sassed her at the bar and drank on credit night after night. A year into operations and she thought she’d go mad.

But then there was Frank. Thank God. Frank. Nineteen years old and skinny as a whip but strong and stable and smart, good Lord, that boy was smart. He was figuring up the accounts receivable before she knew what to do with the accounts payable, tallying up the drawer each night and marking down notations in a ledger and negotiating with that god-awful fishery in Jacksonville for the lowest price on bulk crabmeat, frozen crawfish, catfish nuggets. He saved her, Frank. He did. She knew it then, and she knew it now. Within two years, she’d handed over the operations of Uncle Henry’s top to tail to Frank, her middle son, her right-hand man, her rock. And he’d run the restaurant well, had grown it, in fact, adding new entrées to the menu and setting up outdoor seating and expanding the bar area by three hundred square feet to accommodate the seemingly endless income potential generated by thirsty Utina stalwarts in search of cold brew and conch fritters. He’d done well with Uncle Henry’s, finding his rhythm as manager and bartender just as Arla herself retreated farther and farther into the darkened rooms of Aberdeen, sealed herself off from the restaurant and its attendant slavishness and sociability, opting instead for the quiet and isolation of life alone with Sofia, surrounded by communion cloths and magazines and empty rooms once filled with boys. He’d done well.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t still be mad at him. Because this was pissing her off, pardon the French, no other way to put it. She didn’t want to be here tonight, Fourth of July, night of nights, the night she hated above all others. And if it weren’t for Frank, she wouldn’t be. She wanted to go home.
Enough.

Arla left Sofia picking at her okra. She walked around the end of the bar, down a dim hallway that led to Frank’s office. The noise from the restaurant faded a bit as she entered the office, closed the door behind her, and sat down behind Frank’s desk. She looked around. Not a single paper on the desk, not a single item out of place. A row of equipment catalogs stood neatly on a bookshelf against one wall. A simple floor lamp, shining, dustless, stood in the corner. Immaculate. Where did he
come
from, Frank? If she hadn’t borne him herself, put him to her breast the moment he entered the world and memorized the curve of his head, the shape of his nose, sometimes she would have wondered if he was switched at birth with some other baby, from some tidy mother. The office had one window, a jalousie, which looked out to the back of the restaurant and the party on the deck. A small couch sat under the window, and Arla knew he slept here sometimes, catnaps in the afternoons between the morning preps and the evening customers. She sighed. Frank. He worked hard for all of them. But she wanted to go home.

She dialed Biaggio’s number.

“Would you be a sweetheart and come and get us from the restaurant?” she said when he answered. She could hear the TV in the background. She felt a little bit guilty. Biaggio didn’t like crowds, and he told her he’d been afraid of fireworks ever since he was eight, when his brother Jimmy had snuck under the picnic table at Mary Lou’s house in West Virginia and tied a string of firecrackers to Biaggio’s PF Flyers. When the crackers went off Biaggio tried to run across the lawn and had ended up with third-degree burns on his hands and feet, not to mention the lingering, burning shame of his family’s laughter in his ears. So he hated Fourth of July. It was one thing they had in common. She knew he wouldn’t want to come here, but she asked him anyway.

“Right now?” he said.

“Yes,” Arla said. “Well, as soon as you can.”

“But what about the fireworks?”

“We don’t want to watch the fireworks.”

“Sofia, too?”

“Right. Both of us.”

“Well, Miss Arla, I thought Frank said you were supposed to stay and watch the fireworks. You know, enjoy yourself and all.”

“Oh, Biaggio,” Arla said. She leaned back in Frank’s chair, put her deformed left foot up on a file cabinet. She suddenly wanted to cry. “I don’t care what Frank said.” Her voice caught a bit when she said this, and, while the emotion was sincere, she knew it would have a beneficial effect on convincing Biaggio to come. She felt a tug, a twitch toward the Arla she was not so many years ago, and she fell back almost unwittingly on her long-dormant though never-forgotten skills in making men do things they didn’t always want to do. Though she felt vaguely remorseful about using these admittedly rusty tactics on Biaggio, she wanted to get home. And he was going to get her there.

“Now, Miss Arla,” he said. “Don’t you go getting upset now.”

She sniffled, cleared her throat.

He was quiet for a moment. “Are you okay, Miss Arla?”

Arla had a picture of Biaggio sitting on the concrete step in front of his trailer, the kitchen phone cord stretched taut though a crack in the screen door. A barred owl hooted in the woods outside the restaurant, and she could hear the echo through the phone and knew she and Biaggio could hear the same sounds at the same time. So close—just a few minutes from Aberdeen through the woods, but she couldn’t get there. Not without help. He really was a sweet boy. She liked him as much as one of her own. Sometimes even more.

“I will be,” she said. “If you’ll come get us.”

He sighed.

“Give me ten minutes,” he said.

“Thank you, Biaggio.”

“But come out the back door, and don’t tell Frank,” he said.

“Of course not.”

“All right, Miss Arla.”

“Biaggio?”

“Yes?”

“You are a prince among men, Biaggio.”

Arla hung up, but before she could get up from the chair the phone rang again, and she picked it up.

“Uncle Henry’s,” she said, remembering the days when it was her job, and her job alone, to answer the phone at the restaurant. She hadn’t done this in years.

“Good evening, Mrs. Bravo.” It was a man’s voice, low and confident.

“Who is this?” Arla said.

“My name is Alonzo Cryder,” the man said. “Is this Mrs. Bravo?”

“Well, that doesn’t tell me a skinny thing, does it? Who is Alonzo Cryder?”

“Oh, I’m a business associate of your son’s. I was calling to reach him, but I am delighted to have reached
you
, actually.”

“A business associate? What business is that?”

A short snuffle, like an aborted laugh. “Didn’t your son tell you about me, Mrs. Bravo? I’m offering to buy your restaurant.” She sat straight up, looked through the small window at the crowd of people out on the deck.

“The restaurant is not for sale,” she said.

“That’s what your son said.”

Relief washed over Arla like cool water.

“But I’m hoping to change his mind.”

“You spoke with him about this?”

“I did. And actually, Miss Arla—may I call you Miss Arla?—our conversation did not go entirely well. I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, in fact. I’m calling him to see if we can try again.”

“The restaurant is not for sale.”

“I spoke with your other son, as well—Carson?”

“Uncle Henry’s is not for sale,” she repeated, though she had a strange rushing feeling in her head, like an avalanche beginning to break loose from the top of a mountain.

“I just thought we could talk, Mrs. Bravo. About your restaurant. And also about your home.”

“You always conduct business on the Fourth of July, Mr. Cryder?”

“Not always. Just today.”

Arla was silent, stonily so, waiting for the man to get the picture. And eventually he did. “We’ll talk again soon, Miss Arla?” He’d shifted to using her first name again.

“I doubt it.”

“Well I hope we do, Miss Arla. I hope we do. It would be my sincere pleasure.”

Back home at Aberdeen a half hour later, Biaggio held the door while Arla and Sofia made their way up the ramp, across the porch, and into the house. The fireworks behind Uncle Henry’s were in full swing now, and Arla had to fight the temptation to cover her ears, block out the sounds of the explosions.

“Whoops,” Biaggio said, when they headed for the kitchen and saw the Steinway still parked in the hallway. “Forgot about this little boondoggle. How ’bout I move this back?”

“Move it out, you mean,” Sofia said.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Arla said. “Leave it alone.” She leaned on Biaggio and climbed awkwardly across the top of the old piano. Her backside hit the keys on the way down the other side, and a thudding chord rang out. She clomped into the kitchen. Biaggio and Sofia followed, over the top of the Steinway.

The kitchen was dark and quiet, but when Arla flicked on the overhead light a palmetto bug buzzed across the room and hit her in the head, and she screamed in surprise.

“Damn things!” she said. You never got used to them. Never. The bug crashed into the refrigerator, hurled itself back across the kitchen, and settled on the counter, where it ran in a tight circle.

“I got it, Miss Arla,” Biaggio said. “You just sit down now.”

Arla sat, glaring at Sofia as she pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table.

“I wonder how many other families are coming home to a piano in their hallway tonight?” Arla said.

“Don’t you start,” Sofia said. “Don’t
even
.” She picked up a newspaper on the kitchen table, shook it open.

Arla had no intention of starting anything. So she told Sofia so.

“Fine,” Sofia said.

“Yes, fine.”

“Let it drop.”

“It’s dropped.”

Biaggio dispatched the palmetto bug, then filled an electric teakettle with tap water. He plugged the kettle in and fetched three mugs from the cupboard.

“It just strikes me that we are not living as normal people,” Arla said.

Sofia slapped the newspaper down on the table.

“Do you
see
, Mother! You just cannot let it rest!”

“Well, it’s true,” Arla said. “Don’t you think it’s true, Biaggio?”

“I’m just making tea over here,” Biaggio said.

“There are issues,” Arla said vaguely. “And I worry about someone around here. About her outlook. About her state of mind.”

“Oh, really? Well,
you
should talk about state of mind,” Sofia said.

Arla was quiet a moment. The kettle began to whistle, and the kitchen felt cavernous, suddenly, overlarge and bright, a gaping bold void in the darkness of Aberdeen. She remembered a moment like this one, very many years ago, sitting in a small kitchen with her mother.
We’ll take care of you
, Vera had said.
Dean will take care of me
, Arla said.

Oh, hell. Oh, double hell.

Sofia’s hands shook as she rattled the paper, and Arla felt her heart clench as she saw her daughter’s loneliness, and her mouth went dry with the taste of her daughter’s desperation. But she didn’t know what she was supposed to do about it. It was one of the mysteries of her life. One of the many.

She should go to bed. She was exhausted, suddenly. “Biaggio, tomorrow maybe you can help us move the piano,” she said.

“Mother,” Sofia said quietly. “I swear to God. The only place that fucking piano is going is out the front door.” She enunciated every syllable clearly, then clenched her jaw and stared stonily back at the newspaper. That word! Arla was incredulous, that Sofia would use that word. The sound of it hung in the kitchen like an odor.

Arla took a deep breath. She’d never cried in front of Sofia before, and she wasn’t about to start now. Biaggio stood frozen at the sink, a Lipton teabag in each hand. Sofia still stared at her newspaper, but a redness had begun to creep up her neck and into her cheeks, and though Arla could see, already, her daughter’s remorse, and though she wanted to offer her absolution, she decided against it.

“All right, then,” she said. She smoothed her hair. “I’m glad we’re such a help to each other, Sofia. I’m glad we have each other in this world.”

She rose stiffly, walked to the pantry, and put a bottle of Chablis and a plastic tumbler in a tote bag. “No tea, thank you, Biaggio,” she said. She hitched the bag over her shoulder and walked out of the kitchen, then climbed over the piano and limped past the living room, where Dean’s largemouth bass seemed to watch her, mocking. She made for the stairway, gripped the two banisters, and began her slow climb, her cane hooked over one elbow. On the third step she stopped, leaned over the railing, and looked back down the hallway into the kitchen, where Biaggio had taken her seat at the table and was staring forlornly at Sofia, who still flipped woodenly through the newspaper, not speaking, her face a crimson mask.