Bar Maid by Daniel Roberts

Author:Daniel Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950994281
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

MRS. HENDERSON WAS A big blonde polar bear of a woman. When they got off the bus she was leaning against her Buick, smiling. “Hi, you guys.”

She shook Charlie’s hand, then said screw it and gave him a hug. She had Paula’s eyes and a weak chin; semicircles of rouge were smeared over the age avalanches of her cheeks. Paula had said she used to be a real looker, but then came divorce, and now the ultraclean blue jeans of middle age contained her formidable caboose.

“You sit in back, Charlie, where there’s more room. I’m making Paula’s favorite for dinner tonight, Chicken Paprikash. Hope that’s okay. So. What’s the gossip, you two? You mind if we stop by Simple Pleasures? I bought this beautiful blouse, but it doesn’t fit. Miss Cipriano was asking about you, Paula. So, Charlie, your parents live in New York City? My husband used to take me. Mr. Asshole. We’d always go to the Russian Tea Room. Will you look: this new girl did my nails, but she was rushing, and now look at them.”

Charlie sat in the back, the Frucor poster by his side. They took River Road, stopping at a landing where Paula had learned to swim. Above the river were green hills with huge old Tudor homes and, below, the boathouses that belonged to them.

Charlie didn’t like the superior attitude of the homes, glaring down on his middle-class girl who probably had to trespass in order to learn to swim.

“She was a real good swimmer,” Mrs. Henderson narrated from the car window. “Her coach said she could’ve swimmed in college, but she never practiced. She was afraid she’d swim better than this boy she liked.”

“Mom, that’s simply not true.”

“The things boys do to get a girl, and the things girls do to keep a boy,” said Mrs. Henderson.

“What’s Simple Pleasures?” asked Charlie.

“It’s the cutest store,” said Mrs. Henderson. “I have to say, Charlie, I’m happy to see Paula with a boy her age who wears a nice suit jacket.”

“Mom wasn’t such a Tommy fan.”

They stopped at several stores just like Simple Pleasures. Grand Designs. Elegant Lawns. The stores were new to Charlie. Creaky with old wood. Set pieces for a western, with hitching posts and weathervanes. Everyone knew the Hendersons. Everyone was a version of Mrs. Henderson, broadcasting their own incessant radio station about their life. The chatter was comforting. It reminded him of when Angelina would get on a roll, complaining about Jimmy Carter wearing jeans in the White House, complaining about the price of 1979 milk.

“Did Paula tell you the Chicken Paprikash story?” asked Mrs. Henderson.

“Mom became pen pals with an inmate—”

“Death row, Charlie.”

“A death row guy who would send her recipes, and the chicken dish—”

“Chicken Paprikash, Paula.”

“The Chicken Paprikash was the last recipe he wrote her before they executed him.”

“Poor guy,” said Mrs. Henderson.

“Dad used to call it electrocuted chicken.”

“Mr. Asshole.”

Mrs. Henderson had set Charlie up in the study, on a foldout couch by a window that looked out

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