Then she got so caught up in her new life here, in Danny, inher job, in watching the house in Owls Head, that she didn’t even notice her missed period.
She reaches for her phone and pulls up a pregnancy calculator, inputting dates. The calculator spits out the answer almost immediately. She is five weeks pregnant, almost six. How big is a baby at six weeks? She googles again. The baby is the size of a pomegranate seed! So tiny. By the next week at this time it will have become the size of a blueberry.
Kristie falls back onto the pillow and stares at the ceiling. How can something as tiny as a pomegranate seed make her feel so tired? She closes her eyes. The next thing she knows her phone is ringing and sunlight is streaming in the window. She fumbles for the phone. It’s Fernando.
“Kristie—what the hell? You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago to set up for lunch. You’re out on the deck. It’s sunny as all fuck today. We’re going to get slammed.”
“Ohmygod. Fernando. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She’s working a double today.
“Get your ass over here ASAP if you want to keep your job.”
“I do. I do want to keep my job.” Kristie’s hair is sticking to the side of her face, and the sheets are sticking to her body. The coffee has grown cold on the nightstand, the cream congealing in a slick layer on top of it. Her stomach turns. She’s out of bed, peeling off her pajama shorts with one hand and holding the phone with the other.
“I’m on my way,” she tells Fernando. “I’m almost there.” Toilet, toothbrush, cold water on her face. No time for a shower. Ponytail, lipstick.
She gets through the lunch shift. It isn’t pretty, but she gets through it, even though the entire time her limbs feel like they’re moving underwater. While she’s rolling silverware she pulls up a map of the apartment in her mind, tries to figure out where to puta crib. But surely a new baby doesn’t need a crib. They can hold off on that for a while, right? The baby can sleep in a bassinet. How much does a bassinet cost? She fumbles the silverware and drops a setting on the floor.
“What’s eating you, Princess?” Fernando asks her as he picks up the silverware and puts it in the dirty dish bin. “You look terrible.”
“I hate that expression,” she says, irritated. “And: nothing.” Fernando calls all the female servers Princess except for the one he’s sleeping with, Sarah, whom he calls Babygirl. Both names are misogynistic and insulting, but that’s the restaurant business for you. It was worse in Miami Beach. Harder to complain there, though, because the tips were so good.
She has ninety minutes before she has to be back for dinner setup. She naps for eighty-six of the ninety minutes, not changing out of her work uniform. “You look even worse,” Fernando tells her when she returns. “Freshen up, why don’t you.” She puts on lipstick in the bathroom and feels a little better.
It’s a full house almost from the start. Good. She needs the money. More than ever, now, she needs the money. She hopes every adult at every table orders a cocktail before peeking at the wine list. Fernando has her out on the deck, where there’s a wait by five-thirty. She’s doing her best to keep up, but her mind is lagging. She orders the wrong bottle of wine for one table, opens it before she realizes it, has to have Fernando take it off the bill. Amber will use it behind the bar, but still. This is supposed to be her fresh beginning, and she feels it slipping away.
By seven-thirty the sun is still vigilant. There’s a breeze off the water, which is nice, but Kristie feels like it’s midnight. Fernando gives her a four-top. Two couples, not much older than Kristie. Men in golf shirts, suntanned faces and arms, women in sundresses and wedge sandals. Twenty bucks says they came from a sailboat docked in Camden and Ubered down here. She can smell thewomen’s expensive perfume. Their fingers are lousy with rings; their earrings are square diamonds.
When she does her bit—Fernando makes them say it this way,I’m Kristie, and I’ll be taking care of you,one of the men says,Thank you, Kristie,and gives her a cheesy smile. He’s looking at her tattoos and she can bet he’s thinking,I’d like to have you take care of me. People always make assumptions about tattoos and sex. One of the women has dark hair pulled up in a perfect high bun; the other has expensive honey highlights.
A round of cocktails: Dark and Stormys for the men and vodka tonics for the women. She bets she can talk them into a nice bottle of sauv after.
They order. House salad topped with crab. Caesar salad topped with haddock. Delmonico rib eye. Seafood pie. Okay, now they’re cooking with gas. The Delmonico is thirty-two dollars and the seafood pie, a house specialty, thirty-four. No appetizer, but they go for two bottles of wine, the sauv she suggests and a red blend.
She tends to her other tables. It’s such a nice night, everyone is lingering. That means less tip money, but she’s okay with that; she’s having trouble catching her breath. She keeps thinking of the pomegranate seed. She’s only known Danny a little over a month. This will scare him into leaving.
She opens both bottles of wine while she waits for the entrées. She brings fresh napkins to one of her other tables and recites the desserts to a two-top. The party of five at table seven is still perusing the menu. Just before entrées for the four-top come up, they’re ready to order. She writes everything down on her notepad; she’ll enter it into the computer after she delivers the entréees.
“Come on, Kristie, my girl,” says Joe, who’s running the kitchen. He’s sweating through the bandanna he wears to cover his head; he’s as bald as the day is long. “That pie’s my pride and joy, don’t let it dry out.”
“Got it,” she says. Her arms feel shaky. She nods to the foodrunner to take the Delmonico and the pie and she grabs the two salads. Through the dining room, out onto the deck. Her legs feel shaky too. She can’t remember what she ate today, or even if. She’ll have to be more careful about her nutrition, with the baby.
The wordbabystuns her, even in her head. She puts down the salads—these go to the women, of course—and reaches for the seafood pie. But there’s a disconnect between her hands and her brain, or between the food runner’s brain and Kristie hands, and the seafood pie slips out of her hands and lands in the lap of High Bun lady before flipping over onto the floor of the deck, landing with a terrific crash, so loud that it seems to reverberate over the harbor. High Bun Lady screams, and everyone on the deck falls silent and turns to look. From somewhere unseen comes a long, low whistle. There is always some asshole who whistles like that when somebody drops something in a restaurant. Every time.
High Bun Lady is livid. Who wouldn’t be? The plate is hot, and it’s heavy. The pretty dress is ruined—definitely for tonight, if not forever.
“I’m sorry,” Kristie says. “I’m so, so sorry.” She wants to curl up into a ball and disappear forever. She doesn’t even know where to start cleaning up the mess. Someone alerts Fernando, who sends the busser out, then Fernando works overtime in the appeasement department. Napkins to cover the summer dress, dry cleaning assured. A replacement for the dress if the dry cleaning doesn’t take care of it. Fernando removes all four entrées from the bill and brings a fresh round of cocktails. Kristie stands near the walk-in, stupid tears popping into her eyes.
“Kristie,” says Fernando, whipping through the kitchen to tell the chef to expedite the pie order. “You just cost me a hundred and eighteen dollars, before the cocktails.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. She wants to sink down onto the kitchen floor. “I’m just having a really bad day.” She can’t help but resent Fernando’s choice of words; surely he is not footing the billfor the entrées from his very own pocket! But every restaurant manager she’s ever worked for has used personal pronouns in the same way. She could offer to pay for the entrées herself, but she can’t afford it. She probably hasn’t even made one hundred and eighteen dollars so far today. And she needs to hang on to every penny. Crib, she thinks again. Formula. Diapers. Diapers. Diapers.
Fernando whistles through the gap in his front teeth, and his brown eyes rove and then settle on hers. “Kristie. You were late for lunch today, and now this. If you don’t want to be here maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
She doesn’t want to be here, but also, she needs to be here. “Wait,” she says. “Do you mean I shouldn’t be here tonight, or—forever?”
“Either. Both.” Fernando crosses his arms and studies her.
“Are you firing me?” she says. “Fernando, are you fucking firing me?” One of the line cooks whistles in the same way that the person on the deck whistled when she dropped the plate. She knows the curse was a mistake as soon as it comes out of her mouth, but it’s too late—she can’t get the word back.
