Coffeehouse Confessional (work in progress...)

I came in on the tale end of the conversation. Grant already had his drink in hand, but he continued to stand to the side and chat up the barista. "Yeah, having kids, that is something I never did. Never had a family." The barista's reply was short but not unfriendly. She was busy making my iced mocha. Grant took the hint and wandered outside to one of the shiny black tables newly minted with no smoking signs (because some people in Washington state were smoking pot outside of the coffeehouses there, Grant later told me).
I always try to steer clear of too many people in my close vicinity when I am writing. I like having people around me, but only at the level of white noise (and I suppose the equivalency of white company, but that sounds a bit racist... I mean feeling the presence of others without actually having to interact with them. The company of others without the sensory overload, like white noise. A presence that is there and comforting but not something you have to attend to). On this particular day, though, I had set out to go to this particular coffeehouse as a new environment to inspire my writing. The inside was too crowded, so I made my way outside and sat at the table next to Grant's. I could have sat looking at him or with my back turned to him. I chose to have my back turned, so I could focus on my writing.
But Grant isn't the type of guy who would let a back turned to him stop a conversation. "You know if you smile, you'll feel better." A smile crept on my face as I sat down and looked up at him in surprise.
"That's true, I suppose. I feel better already."
"That's what I tell my customers. Unfortunately I get a lot of unsavory replies."
"Really?" I asked, half surprised, but really not surprised. I myself was torn between the bitchy and friendly reaction when he said it to me.
"Yeah, the four letter F-word is generally the worst."
"You must have some pretty unhappy customers."
"Seems like a lot of them are," he said. "The little old ladies are the nicest. They really don't care about anything. They're the least judgmental, the least stuck up. Sometimes they even bring me food during my shift at work."
"That's nice," I said as I started to turn away to my notebook to hopefully start my writing. It seemed to work because Grant had already struck up a conversation with a passerby he seemed to know. He invited her to join him, but she had to go in and order her drink first. I'm not sure why, as I usually avoid unnecessary conversation with strangers, but Grant intrigued me. He seemed so carefree in his ability to converse with strangers. Being so the opposite of myself, I was curious to see what more he would share. "Where is there a Food Lion near here?" I asked after observing the logo on his work shirt.
"Where isn't there a Food Lion near here is a better question! Are you new to the area?"
"No...I've lived here my whole life." Grant then proceeded to share a list of nearby Food Lion grocers, closing with the grocer that he called home. "I suppose I never paid muchattention."
"Where do you usually do your grocery shopping?"
"I'm a Co-op fan."
"Oh, the old communist co-op...and I say that in a kind way. I actually send them a lot of customers."

Cold

It is tough to feel anything out here. I thought it would just be a cool, stinging rain, but the water fell in heavy, icy sheets. Barbara taunted me to come inside with the sweet smelling steam of hot cocoa and a red knit blanket big enough for two, but she couldn't move me. I was frozen to the porch, barely feeling my face, fingers, and toes. Ice coated the road in front of me, transforming it into a skating rink for squirrels. But even the squirrels weren't out in this chill. They didn't need to feel coldness to the core; they didn't need to see the world around them change. They curled up and slept through it, just like Barbara.
An icy wind began to blow. Frozen pieces of water flecked my face and stuck to my eyelashes. I tried to dry them, but the fuzz of my mittens kept sticking in the corners of my eyes. I pulled off one of my mittens. The tingling on my fingers turned to a burn as the once enclosed hand was shocked by the land of ice being built around it. I quickly wiped my eye clean and felt a melange of hot and cold sensations before I slipped my hand back into the mitten. My fingertips were still wet, and the tips of my mittens froze almost immediately. I curled my fingers out of the tip and into my palm in protest. The round, frozen tip of the mitten hung limp over my pink knuckles.
I looked out at my car, a crystalline fossil, like a preserved relic for men and women or aliens of the future to find and learn about our mechanical technology. The vehicle looked so useless; it was so useless in this frozen world. I looked at the trees. They stood naked but stoic while ice whipped past them, sticking to some of their branches like a hair or a fungus. They could freeze and refreeze, feel the shattering chill or the burn of the earth, always with repose.

The Rash

The rash pimples up my spine and wraps around my rib cage. Tiny little red, sometimes purplish, bumps itch and sting my side. I scratch at them, and then they start to burn like a fire on my skin flaming my clothes away. I try to tell myself to forget those bumps, but no amount of convincing seems to work. The bumps have created their own neurons of special attention in my brain. With every itch and focus on these bumps, I begin to feel my spotted rib cage protruding, as if it is growing with pride each time I think about it and worry, verging on panic, about the origin of its speckled surface. I imagine these bumps growing on each individual rib bone and jutting outward, an internal disorder not merely classifiable as contact dermatitis.

Sketch: Atticus and Father

Atticus, through icy blue eyes masked by a mop of dark hair, penetrates a glare into his father who is "rat a tap tapping" on the family dinner table. Father's fingers pound down on the plastic, the plastic that wishes it was wood and imagines itself so with brown paint and darker circles and lines attempting to mimic the grain. Father's thumb is the bass drum leading the beat with a pounding rhythm inside of one of those faux circular grains. Father even leans into it with his upper body, as if pushing down a pedal, but Atticus can't see his father's feet through the railing from his spy perch on the stairs.

Atticus watches as his father's ring and index fingers, the hi-hat and snare, join almost automatically with the upper body convulsions and bass beat. Atticus' icy eyes glare with increasing intensity at his father's fingers and the fake wood of the dining table, while father's eyes look black and empty staring off in vacancy. Father's hand continues pounding rhythms in a mathematical fashion that makes father an automaton connected only to the fake wood with a long string of zeroes and ones.

From the beige carpeted stairs that grow out of the living room, Atticus sees his father through the doorway to the kitchen and dining room. Suddenly, the tapping stops. Atticus shoots up on his two legs and bolts down the steps. Without a word, he heads straight out the front door that beckons him at the bottom of the staircase. With Atticus gone, the tapping continues.

Restaurant

When I saw the white sign with the green lettering that read, “Food-Liquor-Motel,” I knew we were close to home. The little one-stop triumvirate was about fifteen miles from our home in Frederick. It was the end of a large stretch of farm fields, wooded parks, and a petting zoo that made up Thurmont and Emmitsburg.

            Seeing the sign brought back memories of the one time we stopped at the restaurant there. It wasn’t a pizza joint or a sandwich shop, they were actually trying to be a real restaurant, white tablecloths and all, directly off the side of a highway. The attempts at formality without a thought for current tastes froze the restaurant at least thirty years in the past, a 1960s steak house that was once the height of stylized dining for wealthy ad men in New York City. Being inside the restaurant, however, I felt more like the housewife waiting at home in suburbia for her husband as he downed drink after drink and hit on the waitresses in the city. A brown roast was drying up in the oven, bland mashed potatoes were crusting over in a pan on the stove, and green beans were cooking to smithereens in a vat of pig fat.

            The restaurant's food, in truth, was so bland and tasteless that I don’t even remember it. What I do remember is my father being angry about the food or the service, or both. The water glasses with smudges and stains were filled and then overfilled causing a spill into my mother’s lap. “Oh, oh, that’s okay,” she said trying to allay my father’s anger.

            “No, it’s not okay. Someone needs to get a towel and clean that up. Somebody needs to get over here and take our orders too,” my dad shouted at the busboy and the two other members of the wait staff wandering near our table. The bus boy ran off to grab a towel. He apologized for the mishap as he handed my mother the towel. My father glared at him. I was just glad that the young man didn’t attempt to over apologize by awkwardly mopping up my mother’s lap for her.

            Why we ever stopped at that restaurant, I will never know. Maybe it was the incessant screaming of my sister, “We’re hungry!” while I drowsily passed out from the soothing hum of the car engine.  My dad always responded with frustration, “I’m not stopping for fast food. I need some vegetables, Abby!” So many times we had passed that restaurant on our way home from a day trip to Gettyburg, but we never stopped. It was as if fate was determined that the Bateman family knew why they never stopped.