Dinner at Home

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“You really want to feed people this crap?” Hank Mellinger snapped at his new boss. Lined up in the kitchen of Haven, a charity that housed and fed the homeless of Seattle and provided chef training for some of its residents, were several industrial-sized boxes of generic mac and cheese mix. Alongside the boxes were sticks of no-name margarine and boxes of powdered milk.

His boss, E.J. Porter, an African-American woman with her hair braided tightly to her scalp and oval-rimmed frameless glasses, shook her head as she took in her latest charge.

“Hank. We have to face reality here. Now, as much as I would love to serve people mac and cheese with real cheddar, cream, and maybe roasted red peppers, we just can’t afford that kind of stuff on the measly funds we get from the state and what donors kick in. Hell, honey, we might as well do a béchamel and throw some lobster in too.” She patted his shoulder. “It’s a nice dream, sweetie. Now you need to get cookin’. Lunch is only a couple hours away, and I still need you to chop and prep the salad.” She pointed to the sorry pile of heads of iceberg lettuce in the sink.

Hank shook his head. “So because people are poor, they have to eat this f*****g s**t? Why can’t we get some fresh vegetables? Is it that pricey? This stuff gives ‘em nothin’. Artery-clogging crap that might fill up their bellies, but doesn’t do a thing to keep ‘em healthy. Fuck.”

E.J. moved in close to Hank, so close he could feel her breath and maybe even a bit of her spittle on his face. She spoke softly, but there was an intensity, perhaps even a fury to her words. “Look, Hank, you just got here. I have been trying to run this place for the last nine years. You have no idea what I go through just to get the food we have to work with. You have no idea how grateful some of these people are for this ‘s**t,’ as you call it. It tastes pretty good when the last meal you had came out of a dumpster, if you had anything at all. We work with what we get. Some days it’s healthier fare than others, but all of it’s food. For hungry people. And you might not think that’s something, but it is.

“Now, you are just starting here. We gave you a roof over your head, food to eat, and we’re trying to help you find a career path as a chef. Haven may not be Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, but we will get you ready to work in a kitchen. We’ll give you knife skills, teach you how to make simple sauces, stocks, and soups. We’ll make a real cook out of you. Maybe not a chef, but a cook.

“Now you need to watch your language, watch your attitude, and get to work.” E.J. stormed away.

“f**k you, E.J.! b***h!” he called after her and then craned his neck to see if the woman had heard him. Fortunately, E.J. was a busy woman, and she was well out of earshot in a flash. The tiny rational part of him he kept so carefully hidden away told him that shouting such an epithet after his new boss was not the best idea. If she had heard him, she would have had every right to turn around, march back into the kitchen, and kick him to the curb.

And then where would he be?

He fingered the “food products” on the counter and wished he had a million bucks, or even a thousand, so he could feed the people who would be lining up outside of Haven something that would not only fill them up, but also nourish them.

He wished a lot of things. He wished he had never started messing around with drugs when he was in his teens, particularly that corrosive b***h crystal meth, who went by the name of “Tina.” He wished he hadn’t used his body to barter for that same drug. He wished he hadn’t stolen from people. Wished, at age twenty-two, he wasn’t intimately acquainted with how to get by on the street and the comfort one could take in a large cardboard box on a cold winter’s night. He could spend all day wishing for other things. But right now, what he needed to do was chill out so he could stop focusing on the injustices of the world and simply put his head down and work.

Even though he had a ton to do in a very limited time, he knew that taking a short break to center himself would make him more effective in the long run. That was a lesson he had learned both in prison and in rehab. And it hadn’t been an easy one, not with the temper with which he was saddled.

He slipped out the kitchen’s back door and, even though the day was gray and cold, sat down on the ground in the back, near the dumpsters. He leaned against the red brick of Haven and stretched his legs out. He groped in his jeans pocket for the battered pack of no-name smokes he knew were there and the book of matches. He lip up a cigarette and closed his eyes with pleasure and relief as the oblivion-bringing smoke filled his lungs.

He reminded himself once again that he needed to quit. After all, wasn’t it just a little hypocritical to rail against what Haven was feeding its hordes of homeless and then go out and pollute his own lungs? Still, as he drew in on the cigarette, he rationalized the satisfaction he took from it by telling himself he had given up so many other pleasures—illicit s*x and drugs and alcohol—that he should be allowed at least one vice.

Right?

Spoken like a true addict, he thought. Next week. I’ll think about quitting next week. He finished the cigarette and, even though he knew he could scarcely afford it, pulled out a second one and lit it from the butt of the last.

His cell vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out, glancing down at the screen. “Shit.” The simple word on the flip phone’s screen, mocking him as the phone rang, gave him yet another reason to remember the cell was an expense he couldn’t afford, even if it was the cheapest pay-as-you-go model.

The simple word that had caused him such consternation was “Mom.”

Hank rolled his eyes, debating whether he should simply ignore the call and let it go to voice mail or deal with it now. Later would not be easier because Mom was like an STD: she might go away for a while, but she would always come back, and when she did, it would be worse.

Why can’t I just have a couple minutes to smoke in peace? Christ!

He answered the phone. “Mom.” He pictured Lula on the other end, clear across the country in the town he had fled when she kicked him out four years ago. She still lived in that same run-down duplex on the outskirts of what could laughably be called downtown for a dying steel-mill town in western Pennsylvania called Summitville.

Hank hadn’t been back in those four years, but he could imagine that everything in that cramped, airless little space remained the same, right down to the couch where he’d slept every night growing up.

“Hank,” Lula responded, with their family’s particular brand of eloquence.

“What’s up? I’m at work.”

“You got a job?”

“Yeah. It’s a program I got in through the city. Not really a job, but more like an apprenticeship. I’m at this place called Haven, where they help the homeless with food and shelter. But they also teach people how to cook, professionally.”

“You’re cooking for people? Lord help them!” his mother said, laughing. The laughter ended in a spasm of dry hacking that reminded Hank once again he needed to quit smoking.

“Did you just call to give me a hard time, Mom?” Hank took his last drag off the cigarette, rubbed out the cherry on the side of the building, and dropped the butt in the dumpster. Briefly, he considered tossing the half-empty pack in after it, along with his matches, but knew he’d be back here in an hour, digging through the garbage to retrieve them. Hank had successfully quit smoking, like, a hundred times.

It was the staying quit that gave him problems.

“Can’t I just call to see how my boy is doing?”

“No, you can’t. You never call for that. You always have an angle.”

“Well, my angle this time is your sister.”

Hank closed his eyes. Stacy. He pictured his twin in his mind’s eye. Even though they were obviously not identical, she still looked like the female version of him. Same reddish hair and gray eyes. Same slight build. Same button nose the men always found so cute.

Stacy also had the same capacity for getting into trouble.

“What’d she do now?”

Lula made a “tsk” sound on the other end of line. Hank heard her light a cigarette, the quick inhale and exhale that made him long to do the same. No.

“Where do I start?” his mom wondered.

“I’ve heard at the beginning is always a good place.”

“Don’t be a smartass, mister. Just because you’re clear across the country doesn’t mean I won’t come out there and knock your f*****g teeth down your throat.”

Hank had to laugh; his mom was such a sweetie pie. “So what’s goin’ on with Stacy?”

“She’s gone.”

A little frisson of fear ran through him. “Gone?” he asked, his voice rising with alarm. Like him, his sister was no stranger to hanging out with the wrong people and taking risks that were best described as “ill-advised” and worst described as “f*****g dangerous”—or maybe “life-threatening.”

“Ah, don’t get your panties in a twist. I know where she is: in Pittsburgh, with yet another man. She says this guy’s the one. You know, her soul mate. Only thing is, he doesn’t like kids. So she left Addison with me. I don’t need a four-year-old underfoot! I’m too old to have some rug rat biting at my ankles. I got a life to live too.”

“Too old? Ma, you’re not even forty yet.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“And with what you’re saying, I just can’t understand why little Addison isn’t the light of your life. Why, you sound to me like grandma of the year.”

“You and that smart mouth. You suck d**k with that mouth?” Lula barked out a short laugh, and even Hank had to admit his mother’s question took his breath away for a second.

He ignored it and posed another one to her. “So what do you want me to do, Ma? Or are you just calling to vent?” Hank had never laid eyes on his niece, although once Stacy had texted him the little girl’s preschool portrait. The photograph revealed a very solemn little girl, with café au lait skin, curly red hair, brown eyes, and the same button nose both he and Stacy had.

He recalled thinking that Addison had the wizened face of someone much older, and it made his heart ache. Where was her smile?

“Why son, I’m glad you asked what you can do.”

Hank hadn’t asked what he could do; he had asked what she wanted him to do. He realized there was little difference between the two. He wondered what was coming.

“I can’t take care of her. In spite of your kindness about my age, I am too old for the s**t a four-year-old dishes out, especially this one, who is too smart for her own good.”

“When’s Stacy coming back? She is, after all, her mother.”

“She’s not.”

“What? Not her mother?”

“No. I didn’t want to get into the whole thing, but it turns out her soul mate is one of the biggest crack dealers in central Ohio, and she got dragged into a big mess with him.”

Hank rolled his eyes and lit another cigarette. “Don’t tell me. She’s not in Pittsburgh?”

“She’s in jail.”

“I said don’t tell me!” Hank stared hard at the gray, low-hanging clouds above.

“I can’t take care of her daughter.”

“She’s your granddaughter, ma.”

“I know! I know! That’s just it. Grandkids are supposed to be fun. You kid around with ‘em, then hand ‘em back when they act up.”

Hank looked up as E.J. came to the back door, her features creased with fury. She had a knife in one hand, and Hank seriously worried she had more on her mind than chopping vegetables. He held up a finger to her, signaling she should give him a minute, and she shook her head, her lips compressed into a thin line. She turned away.

“Look, Ma, thanks for letting me know what’s going on. I don’t know what I can do to help, but I’m here if you need to talk. I need to get going. My boss just gave me a look that would kill and if I don’t get back in the kitchen, I’m gonna be out on my ass.”

“I need you to help me, Hank!”

“What can I do?”

“You can take her.”

Hank felt a tremor go through him. Surely she wasn’t asking him to…No, that couldn’t be. “Take her where?”

“Cut the smartass remarks! You can take care of her. She’s your niece.”

“Mom, I’m across the country. I’m living in a shelter for the homeless. I don’t have an apartment. All I got is a room.” He sighed. He wanted to say that he was still a kid himself but then realized it wasn’t true. Not by a long shot. Not with all he had been through.

“I’ll find a way to get her out there. She can sleep on the floor. You’ll get a job and get out of there soon. I know my boy. He’s smart.”

“I can’t make a home for a kid. I barely can make one for myself,” Hank said, suddenly feeling like the proverbial fly, all wrapped up nice and tight in a spider web.

“Then she goes into the system. Foster care. I’m not becoming a mom again. I don’t have time.”

Hank bit his tongue to keep from asking when she ever was a “mom.” E.J. appeared at the door again.

“Either you get back to work,” she said softly, “or just stay out there. But don’t bother coming back in.”

Hank shut his eyes, feeling as though his world had turned upside down. He wanted badly to light yet another cigarette but knew to do so would jeopardize more than his health—would jeopardize his very future. “Listen, once the lunch shift is over, I’ll call you.”

Lula started to say something, but Hank hung up on her and hurried back inside.

“Lunch! Coming right up.” He pushed E.J., who was chopping up heads of lettuce, out of the way. “You go on about your business. I’ve got things under control here.” He forced himself to smile and thought: if only, if only…