Sari Wilson

Stories

The Michigan-Indiana Border

Maxine #2. 1996

Clarisse and Mary Lou were working the diner that night. Mary Lou had wavy brown hair. She wore it pulled back in a comb. The comb divided the hair into clumps that hung in ordered spirals grazing her shoulders. She had an open face and a pleasing, pleasant smile. Clarisse had very pale skin with thin lips that could turn sour in a moment. Her face was covered by a layer of pancake makeup. Their boss was in from Chicago and he had a surly manner on account of the snow storm that hit on the way up. The trip usually only took two hours but it had taken him three and a half.

The girls were talking by the cash register when their boss came up behind them.

"One of you girls write a holiday greeting," he said, pointing at the front window.

"Please," said Clarisse, "say please." Her boss grinned at her. His teeth were different colors.

Mary Lou went to the window with a can of silver spray paint. She stood in her stocking feet on the bench running along the window. From outside she was a blurred form. She watched the cars. Bye bye, she thought, bye bye. Then in quick and sure strokes she wrote the letters backwards on the glass. From a passing car it read, Happy Holidays.

Mary Lou returned to the cash register and stood behind it with her boss and Clarisse. A woman approached to pay.

"How'd you write that so fast?" the woman asked Mary Lou.

"What?" Mary Lou smiled and took her money.

"You know, write backward so fast like that! I've never seen anyone do that so fast." The woman shook her head and her gray hair moved like a cap. "I'd have to think a lot first about each letter and how it looked."

"Lots of patience," Mary Lou said in an unusually throaty voice for her. She was being dramatic. Then she laughed. The woman joined in but Clarisse didn't laugh; she didn't even smile.

"It's about all these Michigan girls can do well," said their boss winking at the woman and then at Clarisse. Mary Lou continued laughing but Clarisse only looked hard at her boss with suddenly small eyes. She said, "So you have to be Greek and from Chicago to do anything big, huh?"

"Yes, yes," said her boss, patting Clarisse's hand which she pulled away and hit against the wall on her way down the long hall to the bathroom.

© 1996 Sari Wilson

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