lakeview cafe

by sonya huber

     How did Joe, an irritable former sergeant in the Turkish police, come to own a restaurant in a south suburban Chicago strip mall? Compared to the Turkish hillsides, did Chicagoland look horribly paved, ugly, and flat? And why did Joe hire me, the shyest waitress on the planet despite my year-and-a-half of experience at Pizza Hut?

    Joe ran the restaurant with Nicole, the Turkish head waitress whose Turkish name was Neval, and I was mystified by their relationship: Had they ever hooked up? Neval arrived for work glamorous with bleach-blonde hair and pale-pink lipstick, but in the early mornings of her days off, she came in with no eye makeup, wearing sweatpants and clutching car keys, heading to pick up her daughter from her ex-husband; she never told me what she cried about, those mornings.

    Why did I feel trapped like a rat in a Plexiglas cage when I scurried along the narrow aisles with baskets of stale cracker and plastic-encased squares of butter? Joe made us wear white pants, but why did a pair from Kmart that made me feel like I was wrapped in a flour sack? Why did Neval tell me I needed to lose weight around the ass? Was it because of those pants?

    I didn’t know whether I was a woman then, or a girl. Should I have called the smiling, blonde antennae repairman who ate lunch at the counter and left his number on the saucer under his coffee cup?

    I polished the already-clean pink countertop in countless swirls of bleach-water. For some reason, it was more satisfying to refill the square containers with paper packets of sugar and Sweet n’ Low than to line the salt shakers on a tray, take off their silver tops, and pour salt into each open mouth. I wonder whether Joe appreciated that I cleaned off the dusty domes of the hanging lamps with Windex and a rag. I had taken calculus in school, so why did I have such a problem with sales tax? I wonder which mistake on a check made Joe yell and whip a handful of ice at my legs.

    I don’t know how the lesbian couple became regulars, with free meals and permanent seats at the back booth. I can’t remember if I said much to either woman, the older woman with glasses or the younger with a shag haircut, both of whom also worked at the antennae plant. I might have been too shy, too mystified. How did Joe adopt them, or did they choose Joe? How did he choose the tiny grandmother with owlish glasses and a huge brown purse who they all called Mama? I wonder what happened to those friendships after the store was sold, and the pale pink and blue booths were ripped out to make way for a scrapbooking supply store or a tanning salon.

    I wonder whether it broke Joe’s heart to cook pale, soft open-faced turkey sandwiches with brown gravy for customers, and to serve broiled eggplant and Turkish delicacies only for the grandma, the lesbian couple, Neval, and me. When he cooked a huge plate of eggplant with chunks of spicy green pepper and potato for me, I wonder whether I adequately expressed my thanks.

    I wonder whether it was legal that Joe paid me $2 an hour in cash. I imagine he did the same with Russ the Mexican cook and his nephew, shy Surrillo, the dishwasher. When Russ grabbed my hand and would not let go, in the kitchen amid red mesh bags of huge white onions with flaky skins, why did I freeze but only blush? When he mouthed the words “I love you” through the server window over orders of Denver omelets, how did I avoid his eyes? Russ and Surrillo must have known I was a college kid, that we had intersected in a universe that would never bring us together again.

    I wonder what it was about Neval’s recipe for rice pudding that was so incredible. I wonder why she served me dish after dish of cream-rich pudding with cinnamon-dusted skin and then encouraged me to lose weight off my ass. I wonder who suggested the name Lakeview Café, when there was no lake anywhere, only a massive parking lot that was lake-like in its grayness and with the seagulls that wheeled above, looking for French fries and trash.

Sonya Huber's first book, Opa Nobody, was published in 2008 in the American Lives Series of University of Nebraska Press. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Passages North , and several other literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. She is a Creative Nonfiction Co-Editor of Literary Mama and an assistant professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University.