ixthusAgitator

Cold light and dust enveloped Grace when the door to the walk-in fridge finally opened. She shielded her eyes with her hand, coughed, stood shakily. A rough hand gently grabbed her arm, and a bronchial voice said, “Are you all right?” Grace coughed again. She squinted and saw the food wrapped in cheap cellophane that had kept her company and lent her clothes and hair their smell the hours she was trapped. Her left cheek and the back of her head felt sore from her crash into the walk-in, and her right leg felt twisted and numb. Leaning on the man’s arm, she hobbled into the light. He guided her over the rubble of bricks and glass, formica and gleaming chrome toward the sidewalk. The emergency vehicles and workers buzzed around her, but the image of her four-year-old son filled her mind’s eye, interposing him onto a boy who had sat at a table right there, coloring on a napkin, nibbling a morsel of greasy fried fish.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Max slowly ruffled through his clothes drawer. His hand passed over his three good pairs of pants and among his two good shirts. He shuffled them all together, breaking the folds and mingling the empty sleeves and legs together.

Grace stood over him in an exasperated motherly pose but trying hard not to sound mean. “Come on, Max, this is not a difficult choice. You’re making me late for work.”

“But I can’t find anything to wear.”

“What are you talking about? All you’ve got is right there.”

“But I can’t do it by myself.”

“Oh, Max, fine. Here.” She yanked out a pair of jeans and a John Deere shirt and dumped them in his lap. “Put these on while I get your bag ready.”

“I don’t want to wear those.”

She ignored him and swept into the kitchen of her small apartment. She knew they’d be mostly empty, but she opened and shut the cabinet doors and drawers anyway, just to see. She opened the fridge and stared—a can of half-eaten black beans, an empty bottle of ketchup, a molding bit of cheddar. She grabbed the cheese, pared away the white spots and folded the remaining bit into a paper towel. She rummaged through her purse and then remembered the cereal bar she had stashed in Max’s coat pocket the other day for daycare snack. He hadn’t eaten it, said he didn’t like it, but maybe he’d change his mind today. She put the snacks in Max’s Optimus Prime backback along with a hat and pair of gloves her mother had knit.

Max shuffled into the living room and stared at her. Grace handed him his coat and his bag, pushed his Crocs on his feet and shoved him out the door. The elevator in their building was out of order so she grabbed Max’s hand and hurried him down the three flights of concrete stairs. She looked suspiciously through the reinforced glass of the front door. Her mother apparently was running late, so Grace leaned against the brick wall and sighed. Max stood beside her, holding her hand and staring at the black stained carpet. Grace felt so tired. Her mind was a fuzzy blank. Her eyes fell on the community bulletin board on the opposite wall—Parenting with Love and Logic, Tuesday 8 p.m., with Annie and Barb; Dress for Success, Monday 8 p.m., teacher Marcie Folberg, Denver Urban Ministries; Staying Safe—What You Can Do Personally and Legally to Keep Your Abusive Partner Away, Saturdays 10 a.m.-noon, Denver Free Legal Services.

Colfax Avenue hummed a half block away, an artery pumping life in and out of the heart of the city. The last few months, it had been her lifeline. Denver Urban Ministries, a short walk from the women’s shelter, had helped her land a job at Pete’s Kitchen, also a short walk away, and had given her the required uniform. She had felt entirely out of place, standing in DenUM’s room of work clothes, surrounded by the down and out she used to sometimes hand quarters to. It smelled a little in there. But, at this point, who was she to complain? The staff was nice, if a little overeager and overworked, and they ran an okay food bank that put cans of food in her kitchen. She longed for greens, though. Fresh greens. Broccoli. Cilantro, for God’s sake! It’ll happen again. She’ll be able to bring home a paycheck and leftovers tonight from the Kitchen, and that will be good. And she will have a restful evening with Max in a safe place, and that will be very good.

The Sunday morning rush was just beginning as she punched her time card. Ten minutes late. She tied on her stained server’s apron and bumped into her manager. “Oh! Danny, sorry I’m late again. My mother was late, and Max was having one of those days. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Okay, Grace, okay, forget about it. Just get out there, all right? It’s a madhouse. Here.” He handed her a pad with orders from her tables scrawled on it and brushed passed her to bark at the prep cook.

She ripped the page from the pad, jammed it into the queue, grabbed a pitcher of water and a carafe of coffee, and pushed out the swinging doors to meet her customers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam and Trish Beaumont were finally seated with their two boys at a table by the door and window. A line of waiting people filled the entryway and stretched out onto the slushy sidewalk. Every few seconds the door was flung inward by a new customer, and then it slowly sighed closed. Outside the window, a score of workers were tearing up the sidewalk and street with Bobcats and jackhammers. “Isn’t there another table further in?” Sam asked the hostess. She looked at him, glanced around the crowded room and slapped the two menus and a half-filled box of crayons onto the table. “Okay, I guess we’ll sit here,” he said.

“I’m cold,” said Xander, slipping into his chair. His mouth came no higher than the dirty chrome of the table edge. His brown eyes peered grumpily across the table at his dad. His brother Cameron went to the window and watched a man outside work the jackhammer. “How does he keep his feet on the ground?” he asked between hammer bursts.

“I don’t know, Cam,” Sam said. He slipped off his coat and then put it back on with the next icy blast from the door. “Come sit down and color.”

“He should bounce around the street. And then his teeth can shake out of his head and fly everywhere. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it, dad? That’d be hilarious.”

“Okay, who wants fish and chips?” Sam said. Trish went around the table, pulled Cameron away from the window and pushed him into his chair. He was a few years older than Xander and was able to reach across the table to grab the crayons and dump them out in front of him.

“Mom, Cam’s not sharing the crayons.”

Trish sighed as she slumped into her chair. “Fish and chips, seriously? They need salad.”

“I don’t like salad,” said Xander. “I want the green crayon. Can I have the green one?”

“No,” said Cameron. “I’m using it.” Xander slouched down further until only his forehead was visible over the table.

“So much for leaving church early to beat the rush,” Sam said as he scanned the menu.

“We shouldn’t even be here,” said Trish. “We can’t afford to keep eating out like this.”

“Fish and chips it is,” Sam said. Trish’s retort was lost in the construction noise behind her, and Sam avoided looking at her. “What’s that you’re drawing, Cam?”

Grace approached and introduced herself as she sloshed water into their glasses and poured coffee into Sam and Trish’s cups. She barely looked at them, trying to keep the demands of her other customers straight in her mind. As she took their order—three fishes and chips and a Cobb salad—the younger boy glanced at her, scowled and dropped his eyes to the floor.

“I…I’m sorry. What did you say?” she asked Trish, still looking at the boy.

“Can I have the dressing on the side?” Trish said louder and more slowly. This waitress didn’t seem entirely together. Distracted, deep crow’s feet around the eyes. Something in her manner, her movements, like a sniffing dog whose owner is impatiently yanking the leash.

Grace nodded and moved toward the kitchen, glancing back one more time. Creepy how identical people can look sometimes.

Trish dumped two packets of dairy-free creamer in her coffee and watched the miraculous whorls of white for a minute before dunking her spoon in to stir it. Then she looked up at Sam and said, “Why don’t you listen to me?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Is this really the place you want to talk about this?”

“Why not? A quiet home never seems to be the right place. Why not now?”

Xander made a grab for the green crayon and knocked over his water into Cameron’s picture. “Mom, look,” cried Cameron. Xander snatched his dad’s napkin away, spread it out on his chair between his legs and stubbornly began to draw.

Sam looked around for Grace and waved at her as she came out of the kitchen. “What are you talking about?” he said to Trish.

“I’m talking about you never listening to me. You just stubbornly do whatever you want to do.”

“For example?” Sam looked at Grace as she approached. “Can we please have a rag to wipe up this water?”

“Oh sure, let me do it,” Grace said.

“For example,” Trish said, “we wouldn’t be on the brink of financial ruin if you hadn’t bought the rental property I told you would be a disaster. It’s on a bad corner, I said. It’s a money pit, I said. It’s going to cost more to fix up and rent out than we’re going to get out of it in monthly income, I said. Didn’t I say those things? And now it’s all come true, Sam. All of it.”

“Not all of it. We found good people to put in there. We have a really low interest rate on the HELOC. It’s money in the bank, honey. We might need to rent the last unit for less to fill it, but things’ll turn around. They always do.”

Grace slowly finished mopping up the water. Cheap rent. It would be providence itself if she could move out of the shelter and into a place of her own. A place with a yard or at least somewhere safe Max could run instead of moping around their tiny junked place. Grace straightened and said, “I’ll go check on your order.”

Sam smiled and nodded Grace away while Trish leaned closer to him. “You never know. They might not. We have to prepare for these things, for the worst, just in case. We can’t keep stretching ourselves so thin. What if one of us gets into an accident? What if Xan’s asthma gets worse? What if one of your star tenants burns the place down? We don’t even have full insurance on our own house because we can’t afford it.”

“You’re feeling fine now, aren’t you, Xan?” Sam said. Xander stayed bent to his work.

“Don’t deflect me,” Trish said. “See? This is what I’m talking about. For God’s sake, Sam.”

“Listen, God has nothing…”

“Okay, three fish and chips?” Grace placed the plates in front of Sam and the boys. “And a Cobb salad.” Trish moved her coffee cup to make room for the plate.

“What do you say, boys?” Trish said.

Cameron and Xander mumbled their gratitude in unison and began fighting for the ketchup bottle.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“You forgot the Ranch,” Trish said.

A group of workers outside the window started shouting, gesturing at the hole and each other. “What?” Grace said.

“The Ranch. Dressing,” Trish said loudly and slowly again.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll get it right away. Anything else?”

“I’ll take more coffee when you have a chance,” said Sam.

“Be right back.” As Grace turned and moved away, she heard the little boy say, “You can have some of my fish and chips if you want, mom.” She rushed to the kitchen. Crap. Her memory was getting worse every day. She began to recite the orders to remember. “Ranch, water, ketchup, more fries, coffee.” She pushed her way past Danny. “Ranch, water, ketchup, more fries, coffee. Ranch, ketchup.” She moved to the back of the kitchen and opened the door of the walk-in fridge. “Ranch, coffee…”

Brilliance, a cataclysmic sound, a roar like the earth rending apart and an irresistible force blowing her into the fridge like a dried blade of grass. The door slammed shut.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grace shivered and stared at the rubble where the Beaumonts had been seated. She didn’t know where they went, where anyone from the restaurant had gone, if they had survived. She glanced around and saw no one she recognized. A gust of wind blew into her face, and her eyes teared up. The man helping her waited, not prompting her to move, not speaking. She felt grateful for the strength and roughness of his hand.

A paramedic rushed up to them and threw a blanket around her. “Ma’am, we need to get you into the ambulance. You could be hurt.” Grace nodded, and as she began to move, she saw something white flutter under the bricks. She began to stoop, and the man holding her moved with her. She moved aside the broken bricks and picked up a bit of napkin. She straightened back up and turned the napkin over.

On the other side, in green crayon, was the halved and burned image of some sort of fish. She looked at it for a beat, then carefully folded it in quarters and tucked it into her apron’s pocket.