That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

each member of the wait staff could have a bite or two and, thus, give informed descriptions to the diners. He’d also make a staff meal, a simple dish, like burgers and sweet-potato fries, sausage grinders served with onions and sweet peppers; chicken schnitzel and potato rosti. At five thirty, Diana would visit the restroom to brush her teeth and touch up her makeup. Her shift began at six o’clock and went until one o’clock in the morning, or until the last check had been dropped, whichever came first.

Reese gave her four shifts: dinner on Tuesdays through Thursdays, then a split shift on Sunday, where she’d work brunch from ten to two, then have a break before the dinner service began. Fridays and Saturdays were the most lucrative nights of the week, but, as the newest hire, she didn’t get to work them. She didn’t mind. The slow pace suited her, as did the clientele. Most of their off-season customers were locals who’d come to celebrate a special occasion, a birthday or an anniversary or a kid coming home from college. They were almost always friendly; patient with her mistakes, and the tips, while not astronomical, were enough for her to cover her expenses and even start a savings account.

She got to know the people who made up what Reese called “our happy Abbey family.” There were the waiters and waitresses; the bussers, the chefs and line cooks and dishwashers. For her first few weeks, Reese had her shadowing Carly, a single mother who lived with her daughter in an apartment off Shank Painter Road and attended, each morning, the AA meetings at the Methodist Church. Diana wondered if it was hard for Carly, delivering drinks to tables, watching diners get tipsy and jolly and, sometimes, a few drinks past that, but she was too shy to ask. Carly was brisk and unsmiling and laconic on every topic except her daughter, Melody. “She’s very talented,” Carly would say, her plain, narrow face glowing as she pulled out her wallet to show pictures of her daughter seated at a grand piano, in a velvet dress and a hair bow that was bigger than her head. Every few months Carly would take her daughter to Providence or Boston to compete in a pageant. Carly’s plan, Diana learned, was to move to Vermont when Melody got old enough to compete in the Miss America pageant. “I’m from Texas. She wouldn’t have a prayer back home,” Carly said. “But do you know how many girls in Vermont competed to win their state last year? Seven girls. Seven girls in the entire state.” She’d laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “My God, back home there’d be a hundred girls in every local competition. Up here, nobody even cares!”

Diana met Jonathan, Reese’s partner, who managed a local theater that, in the summer, brought in Broadway stars to perform for a few nights apiece while he interviewed them and accompanied them on the piano. Jonathan was an accomplished pianist who could play just about anything from the Great American Songbook, and any Broadway show produced after 1976. On Thursday nights he hosted a singalong at the Crown & Anchor that went until last call, and most of the wait staff would stop by for a drink and a few songs.

Ryan, the host, had been standoffish at first. If Diana failed to recite the specials exactly as they’d been written, he’d act like she’d forgotten the nuclear codes; if she hadn’t kept the bar supplied with citrus and celery, he’d act like she’d neglected to deliver a heart to a kid awaiting a transplant. His standard form of address to her was “Bitch,” but she couldn’t take it personally, because he called everyone, male and female, the same thing. He also called Diana “Miss Thing” when he was merely irritated, “Missy Miss” when he was really upset, as in “Where do you think you’re going, Missy Miss, you’ve got to help Mario with the napkins.” Sometimes she’d hear him whispering with Frankie the bartender, or Lizzie, one of the waitresses, and she’d be sure he was talking about her. Probably wondering why Reese had hired someone so inept, she thought.

Then, one night a middle-aged couple had come for dinner. Ryan’s face had been pale as he’d led them to the table, his shoulders stiff and his hip-swinging sashay tamped down to a regular walk. The man had worn a suit and tie; the woman had hairspray-stiffened hair and a gold cross glittering at her throat. They’d sat in virtual silence through their meal, and departed the Abbey wordlessly, looking straight ahead as they walked out the door. Diana was walking to her car at the end of her shift that night when she heard someone crying. She peeked around the Dumpster, and there was Ryan, half-hidden in the building’s shadow, head bent and shoulders shaking. She’d tried to get herself out of sight, to leave him alone in what was clearly a private moment, but then he saw her.

“Are you okay?” she’d asked.

“It’s my birthday,” he said, and started to cry harder.

“What are you, twenty-five? That’s not that old!”

He’d made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’m not crying because I’m getting older,” he said, his voice dropping. “I’m crying because those people? The ones I seated at table seven? They’re my mom and dad.”

It was Reese who’d told her the rest of the story: how Mrs. Halliwell had come home from work unexpectedly to find fifteen-year-old Ryan wearing one of her dresses. How she and her husband had given him an ultimatum, to renounce his perversions, attend a special summer camp for boys with his particular problem, or leave their home.

“So he left?”

“He did. Couch-surfed and stayed with friends until he finished high school, and then moved out here. His parents still don’t speak to him. I guess he’s been excommunicated from whatever church they attend, and he’s got two older brothers who act