The UnAmericans: Stories by Antopol Molly

Author:Antopol, Molly [Antopol, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

I’M WIPING down tables the next morning when my father and Lou saunter through the restaurant doors. They seem all business, snagging their booth in the back without stopping to chat with the guys at the counter. “Hey,” I say.

My father doesn’t look up. So I walk over and say, “The usual?”

“Sure,” he says. “Whatever.”

And then he waves me away and turns back to Lou. They’re so focused on each other that it’s like I really am just a waitress to him, some flimsy, forgettable girl in a grease-stained apron with a too-hot pot of coffee. They just keep leaning in and whispering, and suddenly I’m so hurt I can taste it. I’m standing there, feeling like a bigger fool by the second for believing one real talk with my father means another will follow—and then I set the pot down right on their table, untie my apron and push through the glass doors.

“Running out again?” Alan’s behind me on the street, so close I can see a rim of sweat above his lip. In the sunlight he looks athletic, like the sweat came from a tennis match rather than working in a restaurant with a broken fan. But I’m already walking down the avenue too fast to answer, past the hardware store and the druggist and the bakery, my sandals loud on the pocked sidewalk. I know the last thing my father will do is tie on that apron, and yes, I know it’s wrong to make Alan take over my shift, but I keep walking. I turn up one block and the next, smelling everything at once: charcoal and hamburgers, eucalyptus trees, exhaust wafting out from the mechanic’s. I cross a boulevard, toward the larger houses set away from the road. Then down a side street, up another and past an intersection, until I’m standing in front of his door.

“Hey,” Hal says, opening it after my first knock. His face is pink, like he just scrubbed it. Behind him there’s a television flashing and a brown plaid recliner. I can’t make out the person in it, just a man’s arm, Hal’s father’s arm, reaching for a sandwich on the tray beside him. There’s a western on the screen, and beyond that, lemon-colored walls and thick carpet and the distant sound of a vacuum, humming away in a room I can’t see.

Then Hal steps toward me and closes the door on everything. “It’s good to see you,” he says, leading me out back. “You’ve got to see what we’ve done.” He lights the lantern and we climb inside.

The rest of the cinderblocks have been set along the sides of the shelter and the boards have been hammered down to create a floor. Canned food, candles and jugs of water rest against the wall. “We did a lot in a day, didn’t we?” Hal says, a hint of pride in his voice. “It’ll be finished by the weekend.”

“What’s the rush?” I say. “You’re really that worried?”

He pokes a finger through the buttonhole in his shirt.

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