The Resurrection of Tess Blessing (16 page)

Tess thinks it’s funny that the head cook at a ’50s diner in a small Wisconsin town that serves the most American of American food is a man from down Mexico way. She’s
muy
fond of Juan. He can sling hash with the best of them, and even better, he cracks her up. Unlike the two revolving cousins that he brings in as line cooks, Juan’s English is pretty good, but not perfect. The one and only time he was late for his shift, he rushed into the diner apologizing for having a flat on the highway. “And when I open trunk of car there es no asparagus tire!”

There’s a team of four servers this afternoon. Tess, two other women—Jeannie and Val—and a guy by the name of Cal Fullerton. Cal is in his early thirties, but flirts with every woman no matter her age. What a favorite he is amongst the mature ladies. Courtesy of the GI bill, he’s attending film school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the same school that the Professor teaches at, and Tessie had attended in her younger years. Cal wants to direct motion pictures someday.

He reaches for a glass on the shelf above Tess’s head and says, “Hey, did you and Henry have a chance to catch Scorsese’s remake of
Cape Fear
yet?”

“Yup.” Cal and her son are friends. Their shared passion for films bridged the age gap. The two of them love quoting dialogue to one another, each trying to top the other.

“Wasn’t it incredible?” he says as he scoops ice out of the machine. “The camera angles were so inventive.”

“Yeah, and the lighting was really something too,” movie-buff Tess replies. She would usually expound because she enjoys this kind of discussion, but she’s got an order to get out to Mare, and another to her favorite customer, Richie. God only knows how much time he has left she thinks as she pours the creamy goodness out of the stainless steel malt cups into three mugs and scoots out of the kitchen.

She drops one of the malts on her tray to Mare Hanson, who is too appreciative, and then turns toward the table that she sets a RESERVED sign on every Friday because it’s closest to the door and can accommodate his elaborate wheelchair that his children have decorated like a Rose Bowl float.

Richie Mattigan has Lou Gehrig’s disease. A powerful man nine months ago, the father of two was a lawyer for the downtrodden, active in the town, and taught Sunday School classes at St. Lucy’s, but these days, saliva slips down his chin and his speech is so foreign-sounding that his wife, Holly, must act as both his nursemaid and interpreter. Before the ALS hit, Richie could knock back a Blessing burger in two bites, but he lost the ability to chew and swallow solids within the last month.

Whenever Tess sets his chocolate malt down in front of him on Fridays, she always makes sure to have a bit of comedy ready, the same way she did before he got sick. He has a great sense of humor and one of those soulful belly laughs that the disease has yet to claim. She keeps the jokes simple these days.

“Hey, Richie, did you hear about the new organization Mothers Against Dyslexia?”

He shakes his head. Can’t help it.

“It’s called DAM.”

The punch line takes more than a few beats to work its way to his diminishing brain, but when it arrives, he brays so forcefully that some of the malt comes shooting out of his nose. His wife reaches over and mops him up, which she’ll do for the duration of their visit. Holly never orders food when she’s in with her ailing husband because, as she told Tess one day behind her hand, “Eating in front of him seems like rubbing it in.”

As much as Tess adores the Mattigan family, the hopelessness and unfairness of Richie’s condition always takes a toll on her, so after a few more convivial words she tells them, “Be back to check on you in a little bit,” and hurries off to make a pit stop.

The “Dolls” restroom had won an award from the Mayor’s Beautification Committee thanks to arty Tess. She had papered the walls in
Look
magazine covers and other ’50s paraphernalia she and Will had found at swap meets when they were still doing fun things together. The porcelain racks hold embroidered hand towels and a fifties’ bureau is topped with colored perfume bottles with old-fashioned atomizers. She reaches for the blue Evening in Paris bottle and sprays a little behind her ears even though it was her mother’s favorite before she switched to Chanel No. 5. Tess was, still is, and will be until the day she dies, a hopeless romantic. She’d dreamt of spending her honeymoon in the City of Lights, but her agoraphobia and inability to fly had made that an impossible.

Will was the one who came up with the idea of celebrating their vows in a more attainable Paris. They drove the red Triumph to Paris, Illinois where he’d booked the wedding suite at the Holiday Inn on the River. He ordered room service—the deluxe chicken dinner—and the lovebirds pretended they were dining on escargot and the packaged dinner rolls were croissants fresh from the oven. The murky water outside their motel window was the Seine. They danced the tango she’d taught him at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio on its banks. When they returned to the room, the newlyweds fed each other slices of cherry pie à la mode with their fingers and they rechristened Will’s penis, the way young lovers are apt to.
Mr. Business
would henceforth be known as
Monsieur Pierre
.

Tess splashes cool water on her face, runs a comb through her shaggy bangs, retightens her ponytail, and returns to the kitchen to find curvy Connie leaning against one of the prep tables taking a breather from the lunch rush. She’s helped herself to a glass of the pause that semi-refreshes.

“How
are
you?” the hostess with the mostest asks sweetly as she slips a straw into the Diet Coke.

Tess wonders, Does she sound solicitous? Did Will tell her that she had cancer? Is she feeling sorry for her? She gives Connie one of her stock answers, “Hangin’ in there. You?”

The buxom blond closes her baby blues and sighs like she’s on cloud nine. “Couldn’t be better.”

Tess knows there’s only one feeling that could elicit that sort of response. Connie is in love. She is dying to know with who, but there’s that famous saying, “Don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.” It’d be awful if she’s tired of hiding the affair with Will and comes clean right here, right now. On the other hand, she could say that she’s seeing Neil the cop again.

Tess grips the edge of the silver prep table and says, “Do tell.”

Connie replies with a minx grin, “Oh, I wish I could, but….” She even shrugs cute. “Don’t want to jinx it.” She wraps her luscious lips around the straw. “You have another table, by the way. Hoover and her book club are at the six top.”

Tess isn’t in any mood to listen to Babs and the five other Book Babes heatedly discuss another Jackie Collins novel. She usually insists on being treated like any other member of the staff when she’s waitressing, but occasionally she pulls rank and this is one of those occasions. Screw Connie and her damn table assignments. She turns her back on the woman who might be feeling so dreamy about her husband and says bossy, “Val can take them.”

But seconds after Will’s right-hand gal heads back to the dining room to resume her duties looking bewildered by Tess’s sudden change of voice, my friend feels stupid and ashamed of herself. This could all be in her head. The affair…everything. Connie might not be messing around with Will at all. She didn’t even admit to being in love. She might not want to jinx just about anything.

Tess knows that she needs to make amends, to tell her that she’ll happily take Babs and her Book Babes after all, but as she heads toward the dining room determined to smooth things over, Otto, the man who makes it his business to keep track not only of the CIA and the inhabitants of Planet Argon, but everyone on the staff, stops her in her tracks when he begins to loudly singsong from the sink, “Connie’s got a boyfriend…Connie’s got a boyfriend.”

The doctors affiliated with St. Mary’s North have offices growing out of the back of the hospital like a hump. Tess’s gynecologist/obstetrician is on the first floor, and their long-time family doctor, Scott Johannson, is one story up. Surgeon Rob Whaley is in Room #318.

Tess is on high alert as she comes through the doors that morning. This is dangerous territory. She treads softly, her ears pricked forward, her nose twitching. The hospital smells different than when she was here for her mammogram. What is that?

Embalming fluid.
That welcoming broad hasn’t moved since the last time you were here
, always quick to criticize Louise snips.

When Tess skirts past the information desk because she’s running late, the volunteer greeter gives her the evil eye, like she’s trying to put her out of a job. (Even though Tess loathes agreeing with her dead mother, she has to concur. Poor Vivian
does
look slightly deceased.)

My friend squeezes her lucky black purse to her side. She needs the talismans inside—the children’s blanket swatches, her treasured
Mockingbird
book, and her daddy’s Swiss Army knife—to give her enough strength to try and pry herself out from between the rock and the hard place she finds herself wedged into. Her severe claustrophobia prevents her from taking the elevator to Rob Whaley’s office, but she’s so nervous about the appointment that her legs feel like Slinkies, which are designed to go down steps, not up.

You coward
.

When the elevator door slides open, Tess checks her watch and takes a few tentative steps. There are times she can force herself into what she calls, “A steel coffin,” but only if certain requirements are met. It’s got to be roomy. The ones in parking garages, for instance, are out of the question. Mirrors are important because seeing her reflection makes her feel more real. The mirrored elevator she’s considering stepping into is generous in size, so those criteria are met, but an unfortunate green-and-yellow paisley-patterned carpet reminds her of her gambling stepfather’s “lucky” shirt.

When she backs up and turns to head for the STAIRS sign, I materialize just out of her line of vision, take a step forward, say, “Good morning!” and accidentally on purpose herd her inside the elevator before she knows what’s hit her.

She lunges at the OPEN button on the panel, but I’ve made sure it won’t respond, so her fight-or-flight response kicks into high gear. She’s trapped, so running away is out. She balls her fists, like she’s preparing to punch me in the breadbasket, which she might, if she wasn’t plastered against the side of the elevator. She’s terrified that she’ll get stuck with the woman she just now recognizes from her recent visit to St. Mary’s City Hospital. Could I be pulling an Otto? Stalking her? Another panicked line of thinking involves me being one of the ailing people who tend to latch onto her. She sneakily checks me for any obvious symptoms. When she finds none, she begins to wonder if the illness is mental, or maybe I’m fine in body and soul, but I hate white people and here she is confined in this steel coffin with an angry black woman who is about to bring up slavery or what if….

I try to shove the needle off the panicking, obsessing groove in her brain by saying, “How nice to see you again,” in my most soothing voice. Up to now, we’ve been waves crashing on the same beach. Time to formally introduce ourselves. I don’t bother offering my hand on account of her germaphobia. “By the way, I’m Grace,” and she has no choice but to feebly respond, “Theresa,” because she’s polite, but also doesn’t want to irritate unpredictable me.

Now that we’re on a first-name basis, I need to put her mind further at ease, which can be a challenge once she gets balled up like this. Music often soothes her savage breast. Especially the blues. (Misery really does love company.) I’m sorely tempted to take her in my arms and sing our song—
At Last
—but it’s much too soon in our journey for that. I’d only scare her worse than she already is. I’ll offer assistance instead.

When the elevator comes to a stuttering stop on floor three, I tell Tess as she barges out the doors, “You’re lookin’ a bit peaked, mind if I come along with ya?”

She’s wishing I’d take a long walk off a short pier, but she says, “Suit yourself.” I don’t appear to be some sort of maniac or a member of the Black Panthers, after all. And she
is
feeling wobbly. A healthcare provider could come in handy. (She’s decided that’s what I am because I showed her the way to St. Mary’s City Women’s Center, sat too close to her in the waiting room, waved at her during the biopsy, and gave her advice about holding onto hope in the locker room.)

To confirm her suspicions, she tries to get a gander at what I’m wearing beneath my hounds tooth coat. She’s looking for a white uniform, but today I’m wearing a royal-blue dress with half-dollar-sized red buttons running down the front, one of my favorites.

“You’re a nurse, right?” she says as we walk.

I smile and say, “When necessary.”

Like everyone else in the surrounding counties, she’d recently found a sleek pamphlet in her mailbox from the PR firm the hospital had hired to spread the word that the hospital is now—“Passionate about Patient Care,” so she decides that I must be an RN most of the time, but on some days, like today, the muckety-mucks at St. Mary’s gave me another job as an emissary at-large. A black nurse with a gregarious personality liberally doling out customer service to white folks would do wonders for the hospital’s image.

Tess pauses for a moment in front of the fake potted plants set below the office numbers painted on the third-floor hallway wall. She doesn’t recall doing so, but she figures that she must’ve mumbled out the room number, because I tell her, “Dr. Whaley’s office is right down here.”

Engaging with me is further depleting the strength she needs to focus on fighting back the fear, so she gives me one of her Brownie smiles and says, “I can find it. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”

I say, “Actually…,” and show her
my
ivories, which stand out quite nicely against my ebony skin. (Tess is reminded of the Girl Scout merit badge she earned for piano playing.) “Bein’ here for you
is
my job.”