Part Four of Four

In front of Hamlet, MarthaAnn placed a Belgian waffle piled high with cherry preserves and whipped cream.  Next to it she deftly set a cup of steeping Breakfast Tea.  The arch of her eyebrows told Hamlet not to even mention vodka and to pick up his fork.  Which he did.

Hester’s egg was as good as a hard-boiled egg can get; that is to say it wasn’t green-tinged or chalky.  She ate without pleasure.

Crusoe looked with interest at the three plates comprising the Old Timer’s breakfast arrayed in front of him.  The eggs delighted him with their circular perfection and he broke the yoke with a biscuit.

The three were fairly absorbed until Pauline from table next uttered a chilling sound, all vowels and absent of intelligence, yet human and carrying some raw attempt at communication.  It arrested all eating, slicing into the momentary calm with a knife-point reminder that things are not as they should be, not at all as they should be.  “Broken!” screamed that sound.

Hamlet sagged, dropping his cherried fork and placing his head in his hands.  Crusoe’s eyes went distant looking over a thousand seas to a place of unrelieved loneliness.  And Hester simply sat more erect, more brittle, and pecked with rage at her egg.  Until all three couldn’t help but watch Ray.

Ray reached over the table and took his wife’s hand from her lap and stroked it gently, wrist to fingertips, over and over, saying, “I’m here.  Your Ray’s here.  I’m here, sweet girl.”

He did this in tender rhythm until the distressed sounds ceased, and as the three watched, Pauline smiled.

Ray sipped his black coffee, all the dinner he had ordered, and smiled back at her.

~

Hester was enraged watching Ray because she felt cracks forming in her anger.  It wasn’t pure anger anymore.  It was veined with sorrow and yearning and a desire for Ray to hold her hand and call her his sweet girl.  Her chest began to heave without her ironclad permission and she bowed her head over her plate.  She was afraid she might make a sound like Pauline’s if she allowed her throat to work.

Beside her, Crusoe’s eyes came back from afar and saw today again and saw her distress.  He placed his arm with gentlemanly warmth around her shoulders and said, “Yes, madam.  Yes.”

MarthaAnn came round with tray aloft and began removing smeared and crumbed dishes, and refilling coffee with a backhanded pour.  Attentively not looking at Hamlet she nodded at his cherry-red waffle.  He paused for a long moment, cut off a few square waffle-chambers, arced them through the cloudlike cream, and tasted the piercing goodness.

~

“In all,” Crusoe concluded, “I was there 28 years.”

“28 years of solitude,” Hamlet said thoughtfully.  “I longed for that.”

Hester agreed with her deep, dark eyes.

“No,” Crusoe countered.  “No.  It wasn’t good.  But . . . it became good.”

“How?” Hester croaked the one word.

“When I understood it.  When I saw that it wasn’t punishment.  It was mercy.”

A memory stirred for Hester – Arthur, dying in her arms and saying something very like this.  But she had been so resistant then, so unwilling to see that something could look like one thing but be another.

Just then MarthaAnn arrived at Ray and Pauline’s table to clear the apple pie plate she had brought him unasked.  The same implacable air that made Hamlet eat an entire Belgian waffle cajoled Ray into enjoying the dense, tall, crumb-crusted pie.  The veteran waitress squeezed Pauline’s shoulder and wished her a Merry Christmas as Ray got to his feet and assumed his position as chair pusher.  Hester, Hamlet, and Crusoe watched silently together as Ray and Pauline headed back out into Christmas and the Rockettes.  MarthaAnn also stood watching silently, then turned to the three parties of 1.

Hamlet raised a princely hand and said their dinner was on Denmark and could he have the honor of paying for theirs.  Hester blushed rose and Crusoe looked profoundly happy.  Only MarthaAnn hesitated.

“Yours is paid for,” she said elliptically.

“What?  All three of us?” Crusoe gestured to ‘us,’ now 1 party of three.

“With a generous tip,” she added.  “Merry Christmas.”

~

Queen Sarah stood at her hostess station overseeing the exodus and reloading of the now-stuffed seniors.  She had helped Ray negotiate the wheelchair back through the giftshop obstacle course, and had told him to keep the Auburn scarf of course as a gift.  He had smiled the smile of a child under the Christmas tree, dazed with blessing.

Now came the three, still formal as ones from another era, but with eyes alive with the connection of one to another. Tying her cape at her throat, Hester helped Crusoe find the arms of his greatcoat as Hamlet perused a display of jars of striped sugar sticks lyrically flavored ‘butterscotch’ and ‘blackberry cream.’ Choosing three, he handed them around and asked Hester, “Who, then, paid for food he didn’t eat?”

“Someone with plenty, and much to spare,” she reasoned.

With that, Sarah watched Hamlet and Crusoe hold open the doors and honor the lady Hester as royalty.  And out they went into the twilight of Christmas night.

~

 As they left, more passed them coming in to the Exit 310 Cracker Barrel, hungry, lonely, or escaping.  Sarah eyed the waiting list of 11, when MarthaAnn touched her arm.

“Look at this,” she said to Sarah, her face and tone asking for help, help understanding.

She opened a thin, repurposed envelope that contained five twenty dollar bills and a note in deliberate, careful cursive:

“From our house to yours, Merry Christmas.  Love, Ray and Pauline.”

~

” . . .and with His wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5