By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
Hovering over a lukewarm coffee pot and remarkably unclean mugs, Sue wonders how she became this way; sixty-five years old waiting tables at the same Upstate New York diner she worked at as a leggy young woman who looked seductive cradling cigarillos between her scarlet lips by the plaza dumpster. The diner is in a lusterless farm town, and on scorching summer days the nauseating odor of cow manure and hay is overpowering; today is one of those days. She listens to the sound of young waiters and waitresses talk about prom and feels a fiery pang of shame. The passage of time continually leaves her perplexed, so she tries not to think about it, or the phlegm pooling in her flimsy lungs, or the way her hands violently shake when carrying too many dishes. In the diner bathroom, before the morning rush, she ties her blood orange curls back and briefly sees a glimpse of the young rebel who refused to graduate high school. Time is a façade, a mere distraction from reality, she thinks as applies the same shade drugstore red lipstick that she has been wearing for the past forty years; #46, Dancing in Moscow.
She makes her rounds, telling each table about the car accident she got into in 1988, and how she never quite healed emotionally from that night. Her customers scroll on their smartphones while she recalls details about the twenty-three stitches she needed and the unfriendly tow truck driver who reeked of kitty litter.
With tears running down her face she walks to my lonely cherrywood table; a regular. She tells of her sister’s drawn out death in Tennessee; recounting the image of fresh rigor mortis while gazing at the brick wallpaper on the wall. There is a distinct look of disillusioned hollowness in her candy apple eyes and I can’t help but want to rip them out with my bare hands and see if there are any remnants of youthful zest caching in her spider veins. How beautiful it is to marinade in the broken glory of an elderly teenage rebel.
Every time I go to the diner, she tells me a new sob story that eradicates my appetite but ignites deep curiosity. Why does she treat her customers like psychologists? Is that the only way she can mutter through the grueling weeks of soulless labor that requires her to take orders from cutesy teenagers who try to switch shifts with her so they can tailgate with their football player boyfriends before games?
Returning with my breakfast, Sue inarticulately mumbles about missing her flight due to a snowstorm and inflexible hours. I want to ask her why she feels so comfortable in my presence, a twenty-year-old artist with a warped sense of reality. But, if I acknowledge her aura it will likely dissipate and we will only be left with lifeless small talk and burnt pancakes, so I don’t. Instead, I let the intoxicating smell of cheap gardenia perfume and burning flesh envelope me until I can only see soft shades of blue.
So, I suppose admitting that the attraction I have to the cherrywood table near the circular window and the stories that Sue waterboards me with is the only thing I can do. Maybe one day I will invite her to sit with me and tell her that the she acts as a momentary distraction from all the straining endeavors that keep me up at night; turning and tossing, tossing and turning. We will share an inky pot of coffee and waltz with her melancholy version of nostalgia and my optimistic vision for the future. And finally, I will ask her where she gets that bold lipstick that disguises all the acidic foulness that pours out of her mouth every single day. I would benefit from having a tool that powerful in my makeup bag.
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