After Lunch
Eskrich of late had grown suspicious. In the expensive restaurants where he was a daily customer, he had begun to notice alert ears cocked his way. The waiters lingered, combing nonexistent crumbs from the tablecloth. Eskrich was forced to pause the conversation, which furthered the effect that it was something not to be overhead. It was something not to be overheard. Now, Eskrich was sure, everyone was overhearing it.
Thus, for good reason, Eskrich began eating at a budget cafeteria where the clientele was mostly aged. Almost immediately he felt calmer. The cafeteria offered incapacitated ears and a sloth−like pace. He began to look forward to the ritual of pushing his plastic tray along the brushed steel bars and watching the food roll by like fake scenery. The elderly women poked along authoritatively, steering their guests away from the lead−off treats with the assurance that better desserts lay ahead. In addition to their tray, they managed sturdy oblong pocketbooks. The ones who weren’t widowed ushered husbands who had rewarded their wives’ loyalty by becoming entirely useless. Folded over like shepherd’s staffs, the men had to be helped with their tray, their silverware, and their entrées, all of which the wives did for them in an exit version of changing a baby’s diaper−what had once been brisk and tolerant and no−nonsense had diminished to wordless slow mechanics. The women, thinking ahead, had laid a quarter tip on the tray for the worker who carried their husband’s tray to a table.
Yet it had taken Eskrich several days before he located what felt most strange about the cafeteria: there was no background music. The old suspicions started up, but a table in a private corner helped to ease his mind—that and the realization that ambient music was irksome to hard−of−hearing ears. This corner table he now thought of as his own was a four−seater. Though it was bad form among the careful seniors to grab a table larger than needed, he nevertheless folded his suit jacket over one of the chairs before going through the line.
Eskrich had tried out the cafeteria with a couple of zoning commissioners, one from the town of Mt. Levington and the other from Mapleport. Both of them had liked it. The comfort food had made their conversation about rezoning some farmland for a big−box retailer feel friendly and natural, but they were from the country, these fellows, and this kind of place suited them.
Today Eskrich had brought Sunderson here. Sunderson was a man who liked to talk. When he drank, he talked more and he talked more loudly. In fact, it was Sunderson with his big body and big laugh and big stories who had first made Eskrich begin to squirm so at his old upscale restaurants. Every time one of these places got popular the tables started edging closer and closer together. Squeezing in more people until people got squeezed out. He should have written a letter. Has your eating establishment ever heard of an intimate atmosphere or the need for a private conversation? Move the kitchen back inside, we get it already, and make room for the paying customers. Of course at his table nothing exactly transgressive had ever been said—Eskrich if anything was a master of the nothing exactly—but to discerning ears who had also mastered the same game, fill−in−the−blank phrasings were enough to give yourself away. Eskrich began to see the boys with their peppermills, always a dreaded sight anyway, though a new set of terrors. He heard them clanging their spiced blackjacks against his prison bars. Finally one noon his legs, twitching and painful, could stand it no longer. He threw down his linen napkin and ran from the wine−sipping eavesdroppers. Outside he dialed Sunderson on his cell phone and told him he had sprained his ankle and was at the hospital. He hadn’t seen Sunderson since, until today.
Sunderson was ahead of him in the cafeteria line. By now Eskrich had learned a few of the tricks the old ladies knew, the most basic being don’t get smitten by the Jell−O parfaits and the tapioca and the pretty mandarin oranges. He found himself wanting to correct Sunderson when he fell for these majorettes leading off the parade of dishes. Sunderson chose not only the tricolor Jell−O cubes, but the pink−tinted pudding as well. Then he went for the pineapple cottage cheese. The grape that topped it looked like a bruised thumb sticking out. Eskrich wondered if Sunderson thought the same thing, for at that moment Sunderson laughed out loud. The server laughed with him, sure of his good nature. "Jesus," Sunderson said to the server, "I haven’t seen a hairnet since, christ, ten years?" Eskrich cringed at the profanity. This was a cafeteria. It was one step below a church. Many of the people held hands and prayed before they ate.
"I got long hair," the server said. "Been growing it all my life."
"Can you still buy those things?" The server began to answer in earnest but Sunderson interrupted. "Sweetheart, what is this on top of the pudding, a butter pat?"
"That’s whipped cream."
"It looks like a butter pat. Put some real whipped cream on this, would you, sweetheart?"
Sunderson went through the line like this, adjusting his portions, more green beans, more stewed cabbage, a bigger slice of prime rib, the biggest chicken breast you got there, more mashed potatoes and more gravy, and he made them go back into the kitchen to cut a bigger piece of Dutch apple pie. Eskrich watched amazed that the servers complied. Not only did they comply, they complied happily, even hungrily, as if convinced Sunderson were some kind of movie star. He was so out of place that he had to have been. He was a middle−aged white man who wore a diamond pimp necklace plopped over his collar and tie, and he laughed at everything in such a way as to say, I own this and it amuses me. Something was up and the servers knew it. They were electrified by this fantasy figure playing a drumbeat on his tray. This guy was a producer, and he was watching them, probably for one of those reality tv shows. They scrambled to please him, increasing portions, arranging their spoken pleasantries and bright smiles, all of them working hard to have a successful audition.
Even in this place it began—Eskrich’s nerves, the twitching in his legs. Sunderson did that to him.
At the end of the parade of dishes came the drinks. Sunderson asked the elderly woman in front to grab him that bottle of beer staked into the ice. Then he asked her to grab him one of those miniature bottles of red wine while she was at it. "Or do you call this a thimble with a lid on it or what do you call it? I haven’t had something this nice since my last airplane ride. Thank you, sweetheart. Get one for yourself. Oh, you got one, good for you." The server came back triumphantly with a big piece of Dutch apple pie. "And I’ll be paying for this lovely young lady beside me," Sunderson said, which meant that Eskrich paid.
Sunderson had piled on three times as much food as Eskrich. At their table Eskrich forced himself to eat slowly, with long sips of coffee. He didn’t want to have to sit there with empty hands. One of the servers came by with a refill, a first, since there was a self−serve refill bar in the center of the dining room. Sunderson ate with the sloppy abandon of someone used to being in charge. Eskrich recognized it from interviews he had sat in on. He saw the same kind of power gluttony in the football and basketball coaches he ate with as an alumni booster, in the differences between how a heavily recruited athlete ate versus a merely hopeful one out to please. Sunderson was the director of downtown development. It sounded like an impressive job, but it didn’t make him rich by any means. Sunderson’s wife was a partner in a local law firm and for most people that explained the house in a gated community, and the boat and the second homes in Florida and Park City, Utah, but Sunderson’s good life clichés depended on the donations developers like Eskrich threw his way. There was also the fact that Sunderson’s brother−in−law had a blind control in a minority construction firm that the city had selected for several projects.
Another server came by with more coffee and asked if everything was okay. Sunderson’s mouth was stuffed full, but that didn’t stop him from opening it. It’s something something great, sweetheart, he told her. Something something. Something. Both Eskrich and the server stupidly watched Sunderson’s mouth for enunciation clues. It wouldn’t matter if they could understand him. Sunderson’s conversation never made any sense. He threw out non sequiturs like football plays. Eskrich’s legs were hurting now—the cardinal sign that Sunderson was nearby.
To Sunderson’s chomping mouth the server said, "I just want to tell you that that sweet old lady was so tickled you paid for her lunch. She lost her husband a few months ago, it just meant the world . . ." Eskrich could see that Sunderson, his big rapacious Adam’s apple flying up and down in his throat, was paying not one whit of attention. He quickly directed the server to one of the two−seater tables where another elderly woman sat alone, raising her hand like a second grader. She had raised her hand the first time the server had come by with coffee refills. A cane hung over the empty chair. Of all people, they should be refilling her cup, and the cups of people like her, not his and Sunderson’s.
The server left the cafeteria’s business card on the table.
Eskrich had seen the old woman before. He was sure she had been sitting with her husband. He had thought the cane belonged to him. He remembered her because she had taken up a four−person table and had sat next to her husband rather than across from him. She ate from her tray, not bothering to set out the dishes.
Eskrich wondered where the husband was. He couldn’t have died so quickly. It was just a couple of days ago.
Sunderson was now picking the yellow cubes out of his tricolor Jell−O and slurping them down like oysters. Left were the red and green cubes. The wobbling colors reminded Eskrich of the eye exams he had taken as a child. The eye doctor’s assistant strapped something around his eyes and he had to stare at a diamond of four lights. She asked him how many of the four spots were red. Three, he’d say. And how many are green? Two and a half, he’d say. That adds up to five and a half, not four. The assistant was always irritated. He had weak eyes and it seemed he was back in that chair every month giving the wrong answers. But those wrong answers were right, dammit. There were two and half green lights. Was he supposed to lie about it? Suddenly Eskrich was extremely worried.
The server came back to their table and asked Sunderson if he’d like his pie heated up and a nice scoop of French vanilla ice cream placed on top of it.
Eskrich excused himself and inside the restroom dialed his cell phone.
"Have the two boys had their eyes checked?" he asked his wife.
"What are you talking about?"
"Don’t you think they should be given eye exams? What if they’ve got my bad eyes?"
"One is writing college applications. The other is fourteen. If they can’t see, they can use their words to tell us."
"They should be dilated and their retinas checked."
"I can always tell when you’re having one of those lunches."
"But have you ever taken them to be tested?"
"Have you?"
"Well, no."
"I’m busy right now," his wife said and hung up.
Eskrich bumped the old woman’s table on the way back, not that hard, it was an accident, but her coffee swished over and her cane fell off the chair. Since she used her tray as the coffee saucer, her chicken−’n’−noodles plate was swamped in a black puddle. He didn’t know what to do. He knew what Sunderson would do. Sunderson would do nothing because he wouldn’t have noticed. The old woman hadn’t started to get bony. Maybe she wasn’t as old as the others. He looked around for one of the servers. Knocking against the table had jolted his legs. He barged in at the cash register and told the cashier he needed help cleaning a spill. The path back to his table skirted the old woman, and now her husband was there shimmering in his seat, not looking very pleased. Not looking very human either. Eskrich returned to the restroom and called his wife.
"My legs are hurting."
"Drink more water," she said.
"No, I mean they’re hurting again."
"I didn’t know they were hurting before."
"Who’s our doctor?" he asked.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I know we have one."
"Did you drink water with your lunch?"
"Could you call the doctor for me?"
"You call her."
"Her?"
"Call her and tell her your legs hurt."
"What’s her number? You call, please. I’ll never ask you to do anything else."
"Hold on." She hung up.
Eskrich slumped on the toilet while he waited and through the crack watched an old man in red pants stand in front of the urinal. He was still standing there when his wife called back five minutes later.
"She said exactly what I thought she’d say. She can’t see you today."
"Why not?"
"She said go to the emergency room if they keep hurting."
"It’s not an emergency."
"Then don’t bother me with it."
"Why can’t she see me today?"
"She can see you in a week."
"I want to see her today."
"Why didn’t you tell me last week they were hurting. Then she could have seen you today."
"That’s not helpful."
"She said Advil might work."
The layout of the dining room, though he had grown used to it, was a game they played to trick the old people, which was not nice. That, too, was getting on Eskrich’s nerves. It was sectioned off by low walls that mimicked separate dining rooms. Everything was dark. The tables were thick dark varnished oak, and they came in all shapes. Round, square, rectangular, that was the extent really but you could angle the square table to make it a diamond. It was nice in a way, the motley shapes. In another way, it was too much like an unsolved math problem sprawled across the floor. He knew his table was located near a big round eight−seater. That didn’t help. It was embarrassing to be lost, even in this place. He started going corner to corner within the sectioned areas until he found him. Sunderson’s dishes were piled high like a sight gag. He was starting in on the Dutch apple pie, heated up, with the ice cream melting down the sides.
"Hey man, something’s come up," Eskrich said. He tried for a long−suffering shrug. "I have to take off early."
Sunderson’s stuffed mouth moved energetically. The sounds came pretty close to arf arf arf.
"I gotta go," Eskrich said. "I just wanted to reconnect."
Sunderson held up a finger, swallowed. "All right, man. Let’s do it again soon."
"This a good place for you to meet then?
"Great something something," Sunderson said, forking in the pie.
Eskrich spent the rest of the afternoon in the emergency room, outranked by real emergencies. Just as his moment approached, a boy came in bleeding all over the place. Nurses ran out with towels. There was a lot of blood. When his name was finally called, Eskrich asked the nurse about the boy.
"Is he going to be okay?"
"I can’t talk about other patients."
"Yeah, I know, "Eskrich said, "but can you find a way to talk about him anyway?"
"All I can tell you is that scalp wounds bleed a lot. You write here that both your parents are deceased from no cause of death."
"That’s right."
"They didn’t die of anything?"
"No. My dad had all these moles on his chest. Every week he’d get more. He looked like a hairy chocolate chip cookie."
"Do you think that contributed to his death?"
"People always thought so. I don’t know. From the neck up he looked normal."
"How old was he when he died?"
"Somewhere in his fifties. Is that little boy okay?"
"Were the moles malignant?"
"No. He had a heart attack."
"So he did have a cause of death. And your mother. Did she have any kind of condition like that?"
"She’s still alive actually. I just think of her as dead."
"Does she have any chronic illnesses, a heart condition, cancer?"
"No."
"Diabetes, high blood pressure?"
"No. Do scalp wounds really bleed that much?"
"They can."
"Did he get shot?"
"He’s eight years old."
"Eight−year−olds can get shot."
"He didn’t get shot. Have you been like this for long?"
"Like what?"
"Irrational."
"I’m not irrational."
"So you don’t know when it started."
"No, I guess I don’t."
"All right," she said, "we’re going to take a cat scan of your legs."
Afterward, Eskrich had time for a nap. When the intern strolled in, Eskrich’s first thought was white guy, not a Jew. Not an Indian. An American like himself.
"Mr. Eskrich," the intern said.
"That’s me."
"How are you feeling?"
"Good!"
"Really . . ."
Eskrich’s high hopes for bonding were dashed. "Shouldn’t I be feeling okay?"
"I can’t tell you how you should be feeling, but you’ve got blood clots in your legs."
"Plural?"
"Yes."
"Big ones?"
"Small ones."
"Little tiny ones?"
"Pretty small, yes."
"So that’s good then."
"Nooo," the intern said. "We can give you medication for the pain, if you’d like."
"All right."
"I thought you were feeling fine. Now you want pain medication. We need to know if you’re in pain."
"I’m just trying to agree with you. Helping us both to get out of here quicker, right?"
"Let me see if the oncologist is here yet." The intern left the room, and Eskrich took out his cell phone.
"It’s me. I’m at the hospital."
"That was sudden. Is everything okay?"
"No. Did you make the eye appointments for the boys yet?"
"Not yet."
"Just promise me you will."
"Why are you at the hospital?"
"Because I couldn’t get a regular appointment."
"I made one for next week."
"Don’t use the cell phone in here," the intern said, returning.
"Things are happening quickly. Gotta go," he said and hung up.
"Was that your wife?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell her to come to the hospital?"
"No reason to."
"Our nurses will call. The oncologist isn´t here yet."
"I know what the word ´oncologist´ means."
"Besides the blood clots, you’ve got several spots on your liver."
"Is that bad?"
"We never like to see spots of that nature. We never like to see them on the liver."
"So of that nature means it’s bad."
"I don’t want to speak without a specialist here."
"Well . . ." Eskrich stopped. "Could you speak anyway?"
"Hold on," the intern said and left.
"I used to be a swimmer," Eskrich called after him. He used to carry a tray with six glasses of milk on it and lots of food. His wife, he realized had the same shape as Sunderson, both of them unusually tall with narrow shoulders sloping to a wide spread in the stomach and hips. He imagined Sunderson’s body with his wife’s face on it, and then his wife’s body with Sunderson’s face on it.
The intern returned with an older man. He was dark with a salt−and−pepper beard. Thank god, a Jew, or maybe an Indian, hard to tell; either way he was saved. This was too much for an all−American boy to handle. Eskrich breathed a huge sigh of relief. The oncologist held out his hand and introduced himself. He carried himself with gravity. The wiry beard trickled up to his cheekbones. Finally, a real doctor. "Hello, doctor," Eskrich said. Just saying the word ‘doctor’ made him feel better. "I see you’ve got experience behind your belt."
The doctor asked Eskrich to lie down. He told Eskrich everything he was doing. "I’m palpating your liver." Eskrich jerked. Then the hands were around his throat. "My hands are feeling your lymph nodes." Eskrich tried to escape the hands. He pulled away and came face to face with a football recruit jumping up from the luncheon table at Morton’s and shouting "I’m immortal!"
He smelled the damp inside of his son’s new used car. His other son looked up from the couch when he walked in, neither pleased nor annoyed to see his father, and didn’t bother to take his feet off the coffee table. "How does that feel?" the doctor asked.
"There’s a small white cloud floating above me," Eskrich said. "Am I still here?" There was actually a small white cloud. Though brief and quick, it was real. But probably he shouldn’t have mentioned it.
Now the doctor was pushing at him more, and it hurt. "Tell me it’s okay," Eskrich said. He steeled his face and the tightened muscles forced out tears. He couldn’t stop the tears. The doctor had fallen silent. "Tell me!" The doctor looked away when Eskrich cried out, and Eskrich saw it clearly. The doctor was another person who didn’t care whether he lived or died. Eskrich had succeeded in only one thing: he was boring the doctor to death.
Copyright 2007 University of Nebraska Press. All rights reserved.
