Patsy was a waitress at the small diner my mother favored for Sunday morning breakfasts after she had given up her church going ways, a tired looking woman with dark circles under her eyes and a smile that took effort. She delivered ice water and coffee, then took a pencil from behind her ear and produced a ragged and well worn pad from her apron pocket. What'll it be, folks, she asked over the smoke and noise, not bothering to make eye contact and trying pretty much unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.
Like many of my mother's friends, she was in her late fifties, I imagined, a solid and bulky woman, plain to the point of coarse, with traces of yesterday's makeup around her eyes and nicotine stained fingers. She wore white hose with a run up the back and scuffed white leather shoes, loosely tied to accommodate her swollen feet and abundant weight. I had never seen her without a wad of chewing gum stashed in her cheek and a Timex watch hanging off one thick wrist. She reminded me of a bad Norman Rockwell painting - earthy, overblown, careworn and a little out of touch. Late night, Pats? my mother asked as the food arrived and Patsy slapped heaping plates of runny eggs, greasy homefries and soggy underdone toast in front of us. Waitin' on Pete to get home from ... she began then recognized my mother.....Buxton. Oh, mornin', Jan, this with a half hearted attempt at a smile, Sorry, can't recollect where I left my glasses....These were jammed into her tangled hair, she wiped her hands and discovered them as she adjusted her hairnet. How'd it go last night? My mother shrugged, Win some, lose some,she replied, and I remembered that Saturday night was Bingo at the legion hall and my mother rarely missed an opportunity to play. Ayah, Patsy said with a genuine grin, Never give a sucker an even break, and with a smack of her gum, she began refilling our coffee cups. Pete running late? my daddy asked, joining the conversation for the first time. Some, Patsy admitted with a rueful smile, But I expect he'll be along directly.
Patsy and Pete, a downeast, chain smoking, long haul trucker had been married just after graduating from high school, my mother told us, going on forty years, a good ten of them spent apart so they figured. He hauled logs mainly but also carried machine parts, cars, furniture, even the occasional truckload of Canadian made whiskey.
He loved traveling the open road in the big rigs and had a perfect safety record, Patsy had been known to brag and he was not often late. There was, I thought, just the slightest hint of worry in her face as she worked her tables,
glancing at the old Timex every few minutes and seeming a bit jumpy when the telephone rang. Later she would say that she'd had a feeling that particular Sunday morning, a twitchy sense that something wasn't right - certainly she had no way of knowing that at that moment her husband was being pulled from a mangled, twisted wreck of steel and glass on the Maine Turnpike, that his cargo - a trailer filled with Oriental rugs - had spilled across three lanes and created a massive fourteen car pile up. Pete had swerved to avoid a convertible full of beach clad teenagers passing on the right and tailgating a rusted over pickup truck - the pick up had abruptly slowed, the convertible had not, and both vehicles lost control and slammed into the guardrail. Pete's trailer jackknifed and sprawled sideways then spun into the median and crumpled like tinfoil - there were multiple injuries, but only one death, the long haul driver himself.
Patsy got the news just as the last of lunch crowd was trailing out, in a reluctant telephone call from a Maine state trooper. She took the call, white faced and stoic, finished and took off her apron and hairnet, walked slowly to the door then seemed to forget where she was. My daddy recognized the look, shocky and dazed, and gently steered her into a booth where she buried her face in her hands and began to cry, silently and profoundly. There was precious little comfort he could provide, a fact he knew all too well, but he gave what he could.
A few days later there was a quiet, country funeral at the small church in Derry, well attended according to my mother, and Pete was laid to rest in the Derry cemetery. Patsy returned to the diner the following week, thinner and more tired looking than before, subdued but as intact as she could be. A hard core New Englander, she dug for and found the strength to pick up the pieces. Several months later, she received a letter from the State Police, saying that Pete's decision to swerve away from the convertible and the pickup truck had saved the lives of each of their occupants. Although it wasn't anywhere near enough - tokens hardly ever are - she carried the letter in her apron pocket every single day, a talisman of sorts and a remembrance. Some days it just made her more sad and lonelier than she was but some days, when she heard his name spoken and followed by "hero" it made her proud enough to smile.
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