Breathe Me || Completed

7.1

7.1 - Why

At Cassie's, Samantha orders so much food that I worry it won't all fit on the table. The waitress looks at Samantha with her hands on her hips, waiting for her to be done, but she never is. Finally, she stops and the woman says, "Can you repeat that? I think I should write it down."

It's Ms. Callahan, Jody Callahan, the poor woman who always seems to be the subject of town gossip. I've heard all sorts of things about her, mostly that she's a crackwhore and/or performs coathanger abortions in neighboring towns for fun. I think people are just bored. Mrs. Callahan is nice enough and although she does usually look tired, she always looks presentable and smiles when you walk into the diner, so in my book, she's alright. Her son is in elementary school. What would it be like to be seven and have people telling you every day that your mother is a prostitute?

Samantha repeats her order. She wants a triple order of Belgian waffles with three sides of eggs, two fried and one scrambled. She also would like two sides of breakfast sausage with three sides of bacon. Not to mention, she would like the eggs and bacon meal which comes with more eggs and bacon and a slice of buttered toast. She would also like a fruit salad and two orders of french toast, one with whipped cream and powdered sugar, the other without. She wants hashbrowns, Canadian bacon, and three bananas on the side. She also requests "however many strawberries you have" and four cups of coffee.

"I'll just have two buttermilk pancakes with hash browns, thanks," I say.

Mrs. Callahan nods to me. "Alright, Sal. You two have money to pay for this?" She turns her gaze over to Samantha who stuffs her hand in her pocket. She clutches something in her hand and drops it on the table. A gum wrapper, a loose cigarette, a button, and a crumpled hundred dollar bill.

Mrs. Callahan leaves and comes back with our coffee mugs and fills them up. She leaves and Samantha downs hers in ten seconds and then grabs mine.

I blink at her. Well, she did say I could ask her anything, whether that was in a starving fervor or not . . . "Can I ask you something?"

Samantha glances at me over the rim of my coffee cup. She sticks out her tongue with a distressed look. "I think I burned this," she says.

Well, yes, probably. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." She puts her tongue back in her mouth and gulps down the rest of the coffee in my mug. "That's good shit."

Cassie's is pretty quiet at six twenty in the morning, a few early risers hanging around before work. There's a quiet group of men in work boots drinking coffee in the corner opposite us. Mrs. Luhan, our retired librarian, is at the bar eating cantaloupe. There are a few other people in the booths around us, but I can't see them. I can only hear their quiet murmur. Stone Harbor is still asleep.

Samantha frowns at the empty cups. She taps them together absently.

"I was just wondering," I say, getting ready for her to shut down and clamp up like a bear trap I stepped too close to. "Why are you always so hungry?"

She doesn't glare at me or snap, "None of your fucking business," like I'd expected. She leans her cheek against her fist and runs her index finger over the rim of the coffee mug. Under heavy white eyelids, her eyes are dark blue and still as a calm ocean. Perhaps the locked cage of her mind has come open a crack. Has she slipped the key into my hand? Can I open her up?

"I don't know." She shrugs. "Just am."

"How can you not know? I've never seen anyone eat like you do. You never did that when we were kids, either."

"Well back when we were kids I wasn't all alone, was I? I could go to your house and eat. What do you think I do now?" There it is. Her eyes are a tsunami. "I fucking steal. And when I can't steal, I dumpster dive." She stares me in the face, her mouth a tight, bitter line. "Is that what you want to hear, Sal? I'm fucking hungry because I eat like a homeless person, okay? Are you fucking happy?"

I look away first, of course. There's a lump in my throat. I can feel tears fighting to spill over. Should I cry? Would it show her how much I loved her, how much I still do, how much it hurts me to imagine her hungry and hopeless in Brownsville, alone apart from her tapped-out mother and a city that doesn't care? She stares at the bottom of the mug with wrathful eyes.

"No, of course I'm not happy," I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. "That's -- that's awful, Samantha. I'm sorry . . ." I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I left you alone. I'm sorry your father is gone. I'm sorry your mother can't take care of you. I'm sorry I can't take care of you. But I don't finish the sentence. I'm sorry. I just am.

Samantha glances at me and looks away. For the first time, I feel like we are both in the same place, both hurt, both vulnerable, both weak and lonely and wishing for the warm embrace of another. Her face and her shoulders and her hands are sad. "Not that sorry," she mutters. "Or you wouldn't have left."

Mrs. Callahan comes back with the first round of food and refills our coffee cups. We eat silently, Samantha stabbing unabashedly into her thousands of sides, refusing to meet my eyes while I try and try and try to think of a way to say "I never stopped loving you" that won't just make things worse.