Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress Read online

  “Bullshit,” my father replied, “there’s half a pig on that bread.” He rearranged the sandwich with slightly more pork and sent it back out.

  “No, no, duhlink,” Mrs. Zucker said, raising her voice. She went off on a minitirade about how people should get their money’s worth, how she wasn’t going to pay for such a measly sandwich, how she wasn’t going to be taken advantage of. The whole thing became very personal. “You should tell your fuhdder,” she shouted. “Tell him!”

  Mrs. Zucker terrified me and I had no doubt she could snap me in half like a twig had she wanted to. I had more trepidation, however, about facing my father with the sandwich again. But my father knew where his garlic bread was buttered. Mrs. Zucker got more meat on her sandwich that night. But every Saturday night until Labor Day, no matter what the sandwich, Mrs. Zucker demanded still more meat.

  Serving in the luncheonette was much harder than I’d imagined. Pleasing my father was even more difficult. Although I would hesitate to call him a taskmaster, he was a perfectionist. And of course, he was much more exacting with his daughters than he would have been with a nonrelative. There was his attitude toward cantaloupes, for example. When he discovered that I’d wrapped a halved cantaloupe and stored it without removing the seeds, he gave me a fifteen-minute lecture on why the seeds should be removed as opposed to simply instructing me to take them out.

  “Doesn’t it make sense to take them out?” he asked. “Can’t you see that this melon will rot faster if you leave these seeds in there?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “You guess? I don’t think you understand this and I want to know why not, because if you don’t understand, you’re going to put another melon in the fridge with the seeds in and it’s going to go bad and I’m going to be very upset about that because it’s just a waste of good fruit.”

  For my father, the luncheonette was not an opportunity to have some summer fun and he wanted to make sure that I knew it was work. He wouldn’t tolerate sloppiness of any kind and whatever we prepared had to go out looking as good as possible, cantaloupes included. My father also hated idle hands. It had taken us two weeks to scour the previous tenant’s dirt from the interior of the luncheonette and shine it up the way my father wanted before we served that first cup of Sanka. After we opened for business, I spent hours polishing the counter and the soda fountain.

  We all came home bone weary every night. Our dinner rushes on Friday and Saturday nights were exercises in endurance. My sister wasn’t quite as adept at dealing with the long hours and constant running as my father and I. In fact, we could set our watches by her tearful interludes on Saturday nights. She’d start looking weepy, commence sniffing, and finally hit the wall and burst into tears and we’d know it was 11 P.M. I didn’t mind the late hours, and the running produced an endorphin rush that would later become singularly addictive. It was the tough customers, the ones who sent back my father’s meals and made my sister cry, who bothered the hell out out of me. Late at night, in the privacy of my room, I complained to my journal. It was too hard, I wrote, and I hated being bitched at and treated like an idiot.

  I took complaints very personally, as if they were barbs directed specifically at me and my family. I couldn’t understand why basic civilities seemed to be all but abandoned when people sat down to eat. Between my father’s glowering looks when things weren’t going smoothly and the lack of respect on the part of our customers, I began to think the summer was going to become more like an extended punishment than the adventure I had hoped for.

  There was, however, a single factor that, by the middle of July, changed my entire attitude and made working at the luncheonette not only bearable but irresistible. That factor was Steve, the boldest and best looking of Maxman’s eligible boys. I first noticed him when he walked by the luncheonette’s windows, tossing his long hair and a handful of quarters in the air. He sat in a corner booth with a group of other boys, playing cards, plotting strategies to obtain beer, and shooting sidelong glances my way. At first, I was too shy to talk to him and merely smiled when he insisted his hamburgers be very well done and his french fries be “burnt.” When he leaned over the counter and took my hand in his one afternoon, my heart began a crazy flutter.

  Of all the strapping youths looking for a summer romance at Maxman’s, Steve was the one who persisted the longest and most insistently in seeking my attention. He sat at the counter at the luncheonette every day, drinking Coke, eating his burnt fries, and cracking wise, until I agreed to take a swim with him on my break. He was a self-proclaimed “bad boy” from Long Island who dazzled me with tales of selling joints on the subway for pocket change. His reputation was only enhanced by Lori Zucker, who informed me, once Steve and I had become an item, “I don’t know how far you go with boys, but let me tell you, if it’s not very far you can forget about Steve.” He had a dimpled chin and wore thick braided gold chains and shirts open to his waist. Like everyone else in the summer of 1978, his hair was feathered and he spent at least a half hour drying and styling it.

  “You’re so cute, it’s unreal,” he told me and I was hooked.

  We made out in the indoor swimming pool and drew initialed hearts pierced with arrows over the game-room jukebox.

  Like every other teenage couple that summer, we had our own song. Steve cared very little about this detail, so I chose G4, “You Belong to Me.” Since I was on call for all three meals in the luncheonette, Steve spent a lot of time waiting for me to take breaks. He rose late and drank coffee in the mornings and played pinball through lunch. He’d stay up with me on Saturday nights as I worked, stealing me away for frequent make-out breaks on the paddleball courts. Sometimes he’d come in with his friends for dinner and they’d tease me when I came over to their table. No matter what meal I was serving, though, he was always there, smiling admiringly and whispering vaguely obscene comments as I passed by serving fruit plates and wiping down tables. Although I served breakfast and worked into lunch, my day didn’t really begin until I glimpsed the sight of Steve walking through the door, tossing his quarters, and heard him say, “Morning, babe. When are you getting out of here today?”

  Steve’s mother, a flaming redhead with a Brenda Vaccaro voice, thought I was “adorable” and took several Polaroids of the two us posing, Grease style, at the pool. My father was definitely not as enamored with Steve. He kept a constant watchful eye on me, his eldest daughter, and grimaced every time he saw us flirting. To avoid confrontations with my father, Steve and I would hold hands under newspapers on the counter and sneak short kisses behind the soda fountain. Every time my father disappeared into the kitchen, we’d hurry to brush past each other to touch, however briefly. But one afternoon, my father came back to the luncheonette early after picking up some produce and found me sitting at a table next to Steve, who had his hand resting on my naked knee. I knew I was in for it when my father’s gaze shot immediately to my leg. Steve yanked his hand back as if he’d been burned and I jumped up at the same time, but it was too late. My father was absolutely horrified and demanded that I “cool it with that boy” immediately. Of course, his disapproval added an element of the forbidden to the whole thing and made it infinitely more appealing.

  As the summer progressed, I got better at the tableside parrying that was so integral to the job. I learned to carry more than one item at a time (although it would be many years before I could balance three plates on one arm while I carried a fourth in the other) and I learned to anticipate what our customers would order. I began receiving tips. Even Sophie Zucker left some crumpled dollar bills on her table after a meal.

  (I also became aware of a fact that continues to be true. New Yorkers tip well. To this day, when I find a New Yorker seated at my table, I breathe a sigh of relief. No matter what the demands or how blunt the comments, I know there will be a nice reward waiting for me at the end.)

  My liaison with Steve heated up as July moved into August. After one particularly late Saturday night, my family
decided to spend the night at Maxman’s instead of driving home. I snuck out with Steve and two other couples and we spent the hours until dawn sitting on a cliff overhanging the freeway. This kind of make-out party was old hat for Steve and his buddies, but for me it was the most daring and exciting thing I’d ever done. I watched the sun rise in slow streaks of gold on the horizon as Steve dozed on my shoulder and knew I’d be in deep trouble for staying out all night, but I couldn’t have cared less at the moment. What I was doing just seemed so daring. The taste of that riskiness and its attendant freedom was truly sweet.

  When I strolled into the luncheonette a few hours later (alone—I insisted that Steve not accompany me out of fear for him), my father was practically apoplectic. We had a tremendous fight over where I had been and what I had done, which ended with me tearfully shouting, “But I didn’t do anything wrong!” My father didn’t exactly forbid me to see Steve any longer, but disappearing with my boyfriend was no longer possible. My father and I didn’t speak to each other for two weeks, which made working together in the heat of the luncheonette quite unpleasant. (To my father’s credit, he never confronted Steve about his misgivings, preferring to keep it strictly within the family, saving me from what would have been a supremely embarrassing scene.)

  Naturally, this family feud only helped to make the relationship more intense, and as September crept into view, Steve accelerated his efforts to take it one step further. Although I dreaded to think where she’d gotten her information, it appeared that Lori Zucker’s predictions were coming to pass. Tired of rounding the same two bases after six weeks, Steve sought creative arguments to entice me into going all the way. We’d soon be separated, he told me. He loved me, he said, didn’t I love him, too? Finally, he added, he’d be gentle. Despite a healthy curiosity on my part, I took the lesson of Valerie Grossman to heart and remained clothed from the waist down. Steve persisted. This struggle reached a feverish pitch over the Labor Day weekend. Aware that Steve and I would shortly be torn asunder, my father (he wasn’t heartless, after all) let me take Saturday night off so that I could spend it with Steve. While his parents enjoyed the last show of the season in the casino, Steve and I huddled together in his darkened bungalow. After an hour of endearments, persuasions, and passionate petting, I finally yielded.

  “OK,” I told Steve, “let’s do it.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I mean it,” I said, wondering if I did.

  Over the years, I’ve often wondered what happened to Steve in that moment because what he said next truly surprised me.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not ready,” Steve said, “and I don’t want your first time to be a bad experience. I can wait. I want to wait until you’re ready.”

  Could he really be this sensitive, I wondered, or had his body been temporarily overtaken by an alien being? At any rate, I was astonished, amazed, and, from that moment forward, completely in love. I burst into tears of joy. Steve, too, was moved by his own gallantry and shed one or two of his own. We declared passionate and undying love for each other and then stumbled out into the brightness of the luncheonette, arms wrapped around each other. My father looked relieved that we’d emerged so early, and I helped close down dinner with a complacency that must have totally confused him.

  In the last twenty years, I have rarely experienced moments such as the one I did that night in 1978. I had a devoted boyfriend who had just demonstrated his love for me in the most touching way I could have hoped for. My father was smiling at me, totally contented with my behavior for the first time all summer. Even my sister seemed unusually energetic and lively. I had everything I wanted and I was so happy I began weeping all over again. I felt I would live forever. Perhaps when one is sixteen this feeling is not such a difficult one to come by, but there have been precious few times since then when all seemed so right with the world and the future felt so full of life and promise. The color and bustle of the luncheonette were an integral part of all this, and it became, in my memory, forever fused with danger and delight, first love and triumph.

  Over the next few days, we packed up the luncheonette and watched our regulars drift back to the city. My sister and I both received unexpected bonuses: many of our customers gave us chunks of cash for our devoted service throughout the summer. Sophie Zucker was among them.

  School, when I returned the following week, seemed gray, uninviting, and terribly quiet. I missed the excitement horribly and spent the evenings writing down every moment of the previous two months in my journal. I also wrote Steve a series of long letters filled with yearning and declarations of love. When he proved to be a less than reliable correspondent, I turned my letters into short stories and folded them into notebooks at school, where they could be viewed over and over again.

  My parents had quite a different reaction. My father spoke of going on a spiritual retreat after his experience running the luncheonette. In fact, he did something similar; nine months later we all moved to Oregon, a state considered so rural my friends couldn’t even pronounce it properly. And after sweating over roast pork and chicken all summer, all seven members of my family became vegetarian.

  Although Steve and I had sworn to remain close, we drifted out of touch within a few months. I’ve never seen him again and so he remains forever the cute boy in tight white pants, smiling into the lens of a Polaroid camera. As for Maxman’s, it no longer exists. We had come into the luncheonette at the tail end of an era. Almost all of the bungalow colonies shut down and faded away shortly after.

  I am jolted out of my reverie now by Gold Chains and his date, who are frantically waving me over to their table. Beside me is a stack of folded napkins a foot high. I’ve drifted far afield remembering the luncheonette. But I know once again why I am still here. There is the same underlying thrill of excitement and movement to this job now as when I was sixteen. To be sure, I have changed and the landscape is considerably different. I no longer feel I will live forever. Yet I can still remember what it felt like when every night was a new adventure. Gold Chains and his date are as much a part of these feelings as Sophie Zucker or even Steve. In the end, my relationships with all of these people (however short) are what have kept me coming back for more. There is still the thrill of a good challenge for me here. More important, perhaps, there is a certain romance inherent in making human connections.

  As I head over to Gold Chains and his date, my attitude toward them shifts once again. They are my last table, and cashing them out will finally allow me to go home. When Gold Chains asks for the check (they are now in a tremendous hurry to leave), I am actually grateful. I don’t even care what or if they tip. I’ve already written them off and moved on.

  The tip, in fact, will be the last piece of this adventure. Will I be rewarded for my efforts? I suspect not. The check is fifty-four dollars and change. Gold Chains pays with a hundred-dollar bill (somehow I’m not surprised—he just doesn’t look like the credit card type). I make change at the bar, which consists of a five-dollar bill and two twenties. I don’t bother breaking the twenties down. As far as I’m concerned, the smart bet is on a five-dollar tip. So be it. From a distance, I watch Gold Chains take some money out of the check cover and push the remainder toward the edge of the table. It’s my cue to come pick it up. After waiting a decent interval, I do just that.

  “Thanks again,” Gold Chains tells me.

  “Thank you,” I respond.

  I wait until I’m out of view to open the check cover and look at the tip. Nestled there safely is one crisp twenty-dollar bill.

  [ ]

  tw o

  tipping (i t’s not a city in china)

  My last year of high school was an exercise in homogenized boredom. In the spring of my junior year, my family moved from upstate New York to a suburban area outside Portland, Oregon. It was pretty and it was green, but I found absolutely nothing to connect with in my new school or my new classmates. I’d gone fr
om a scrappy, decidedly multicultural environment to one that very closely resembled Ira Levin’s Stepford. Everyone at my new school, it seemed, was given a car for his or her seventeenth birthday. The highest social achievement for boys was a spot on the football team. For girls, it was the pep squad. When, inexplicably, the Drama Department decided to stage Fiddler on the Roof as their musical, the cast was made up of blond, blue-eyed cheerleaders and football players who had tremendous trouble pronouncing the names of the characters. My sister, who played the actual fiddler, was the sole Jewish cast member.

  I felt extremely out of place in this environment and made no lasting friends. I felt I was in a state of suspended animation for much of my last year in high school. In my journal, which had become my best and closest confidant, I ended almost every entry by whining that I was waiting, eternally it seemed, for my life to really begin.

  Instead of participating in after-school activities (not that there were any for me), I decided to find a job. Since the luncheonette, my father had changed his tune about not wanting me to work. He now thought it might be quite a good idea for me to save money for college, where we all agreed I would be going as soon as I graduated.

  I spread several applications around the town we lived in and received a few job offers. The one I decided to take was at Petit Morsel: An Eatery, which was a new family-owned restaurant near my house. My first clue to the trouble that lay ahead should have been the fact that the restaurant chose to advertise itself as “an eatery.” Any restaurant that feels the need to instruct patrons that they are actually supposed to eat there is a little frightening. Eatery also implies that the restaurant has absolutely no idea what category their menu falls into. (Come and eat here—we don’t know what we’re doing, but we know you’re supposed to put it in your face. Hey, it’s an eatery, right?) But, of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time. I was just happy to have a job.