Who will take care of us, Mommy?” The words ricocheted through my mind. It was my child`s question. The words of a frightened 6-year-old. Now that Daddy has left, who will take care of us?
”I will, Nathaniel. Mom`s not leaving. I`ll take care of you.”
Easy to say, not so easy to do.
It was midnight. My back and legs ached. I could barely move my arms. My head was swimming. I was standing before a hot stove in a stifling restaurant kitchen. Through my daze I mechanically checked a set of orders. Three chicken Parmesans. Two steak sandwiches–one plain, one loaded with onions, peppers and mushrooms. A curried chicken, cranberry duck and veggie sandwich. Two fries, two French onion soups.
Who would order French onion soup in 90-degree weather? I wondered as I pushed the waitress call buzzer. Two more hours until I could go home. My son`s words kept coming back to me as an avalanche of food orders continued to be posted.
It was my first night at Arturo`s ”working the line” as a short-order cook.
I stared at the row of orders hanging before me like an orderly line of clothing drying in the sunshine on a hot sunny day. How could people eat full meals at midnight? When did they sleep? How could they sleep on full stomachs? The very thought nauseated me. The heat and the noise nauseated me. I leaned against the butcher-block counter in front of me, my hands clutching at its sides. I was so woozy, I was certain I was going to faint. The unfamiliar surroundings, heat and kitchen tumult were really getting to me.
Every time the swinging doors to the bar and dining room opened, the muffled din of the outer areas collided with the clatter of the kitchen. In, out, in, out. Whoosh, whoosh. The traffic through the doors was unending. Waitresses with orders, bartenders pulling back-up beer and wine from the walk-in cooler, busboys bringing in overflowing tubs of dirty dishes. When would it slow down? Didn`t those lounge lizards ever want to go home?
I told myself to concentrate. My job was to feed people, not question their eating habits. Only two more hours. Don`t screw up. You need this job. You`ll get used to it.
How far away the frenetic pace of the kitchen was, I thought, from the controlled white-collar world to which I was accustomed.
The orders kept coming. I couldn`t keep up. As each new order was posted, another wave of panic struck. I saw myself being drowned by a pile of restaurant checks. I envisioned the food flying out of the refrigerators and ovens and off the plates. I would be buried alive.
No one would miss me. No one on the kitchen staff had even asked my name when I arrived. I would be swept away by chicken Parmesans, cranberry ducks and veggie sandwiches, boiled to death by French onion soup in 90-degree weather.
”Who will take care of us, Mommy?”
”I will, honey. I will.”
As closing time neared, I rushed to complete the food orders. One more cheese sandwich and the kitchen was closed.
Now we could break down and clean up. The day shift was scheduled to arrive a few hours later and food had to be stored properly to avoid spoilage. Equipment had to be cleaned and ready for use. As the ”line” chef, in charge of the actual cooking, I was also responsible for preparing extensive notes for my daytime counterpart that detailed what had been sold, what supplies or ingredients needed to be reordered and which sauces or menu items needed to be prepped or replenished.
I could barely remember my name at this point, let alone all the clean-up details. How would I ever survive this, I thought? Office work was so much easier, but there were no offices in this area that would have me. I was overqualified for every available job. But I needed work. I was willing to take anything to support my son and survive. Anything meant this job as a cook –working the line at Arturo`s.
I finshed my notes, hung them on the ”dupe” rack above the food preparation area (where duplicate table checks were placed for easy visual access by both cook and server) and began to scrub the oven burners with a steel wool pad dredged up from the bottom of a soap-filled bucket. I was entitled to $5 worth of food from the menu per shift, but I was too exhausted to eat.
The night manager entered the kitchen carrying a glass of white wine for me. I hadn`t requested it, but I accepted the wine gratefully. He had iced the glass and the cool liquid tasted like a fine French vintage as it passed through my parched lips.
I had earned $42 for my night`s work, and I was thrilled to have it.
I untied my apron, which by now was caked with grease, marinara sauce, dishwater, parsley and onion bits, tossed it into the linen bin and dragged myself out to my car. I had made it, toughed it out physically. Emotionally I wasn`t so sure. I wanted to cry, to scream, to talk to someone, anyone. I couldn`t. I couldn`t even get my thoughts together. I was simply exhausted. I wanted to leave Arturo`s behind me, go home and sleep.
I reached my home a few minutes later, threw myself across the top of my bed and, still dressed in my filthy clothing, slept until 3:30 the next afternoon. When I arose, I showered and telephoned my son, who was visiting his father for a few days.
An hour later, I was back at the restaurant, on the line.
My nights at Arturo`s had their beginnings unexpectedly on an autumn night eight months earlier. I was reflecting on how all the problems in my marriage were finally being ironed out. It had taken a long time, but I was sure that now I had finally found the perfect solution to combining motherhood and career in a small town. I was about to open my own business (with three partners, one of whom was my husband): a restaurant that was to serve as the cornerstone for my eventual conversion of an antiquated hotel into a fashionable tourist bed-and-breakfast.
I felt good; for the first time in months I was free of the bone-crushing headaches which had plagued me daily from the moment I rose to the moment I drifted off to sleep. I was relaxed. Curtis and I weren`t fighting so much anymore. Things were really coming together. My life, my family, my business. Maybe now we could even finish furnishing our home. After 11 years of marriage, the house was still largely unfurnished. It never struck me as odd. Curtis and I had just never gotten around to it.
Now, as I lay stretched out on a newly purchased beige modular couch, watching the season premiere of ”Hill Street Blues,” I thought how nice it would be to keep going after this initial purchase, how nice it would be to turn our beautiful contemporary house into a warm and livable home.
Tomorrow would be Oct. 1, the first day of my most favorite month. I had always loved October because to me it signaled the start of a new year. As a schoolgirl I had relished the promise of the fall semester, which brought with it a new class, new friends and new activities. Each job in my checkered career path had had its inception in October. Even my son had been conceived during this month.
I was looking forward to my new venture. I would do lunch, another chef would run the dinner service. We would collaborate on catering and special events. Perfect, the venture was simply perfect. Curtis would see. He`d been against it for the longest time, but I`d finally brought him around.
The floor-to-ceiling windows in the family room were open and an occasional breeze darted in from the early fall night air, teasing the nape of my neck. It felt so good to be free from pain. Dozens of hours of medical tests and hundreds of dollars for physician consultations had yielded no organic reason for the excruciating headaches. Tension, the professionals decreed, was the reason for the nausea, vomiting and viselike head pain that had haunted me every day, morning, noon and night, for so long.
I was trying to do too much, these wise men and women had told me repeatedly. I was on overload. I couldn`t be everything to everyone. Superwoman was shorting out.
I had heard the same story from my husband. Constantly.
I couldn`t do it all, he told me. I was compromising all areas of our life together. Something had to give.
”You must unclutter your life, cut out the nonessentials, pare down the extraneous activities,” Curtis lectured.
His rationale for my headaches just didn`t make sense. I had uncluttered my life until it was practically vacant. Since the birth of my son six years earlier, I had worked only in part-time or freelance positions. I had left my well-paying full-time job, given up commuting. I was currently spending two days a week attending restaurant management school. My remaining hours were split between tennis and carpooling.
The ”burnout” or ”excessive-stress” syndrome didn`t make any sense as an explanation for the never-ending pain in my head. I was tired, sure, but I wasn`t that tired.
So what if we argued a bit? Every other couple I knew trying to combine work and family did too. That was the difference between dating and being married. Married was ”for better or for worse.” When you married, it was time to grow up. Married people worked things out. One of the things being worked out, it seemed to me, was some kind of fallout from the women`s movement, which had made clear to me that I not only wanted to work, I needed to work. Curtis had grown up with very traditional views about women working. I knew he was trying to accommodate me, but I also knew he`d rather I didn`t work at all. He`d have to adjust, I thought–or rather, hoped.
His job meant I didn`t have to work; I could freelance, dabble in the things that interested me, and I could easily fit in my business activities around the edges of our life together.
We were different personalities, but I thought that was what made our marriage work. We were complementary partners, not identical twins. I was impulsive, intense and easily excited. He was stable, structured and correct, everything I was not, and I loved him for his strength. I depended on it more, perhaps, than I liked to admit, even to myself.
When we did argue he could usually bring me around to his point of view. Since my way of arguing was volatile, emotional, all over the place, and his was articulate, logical, carefully prepared, he could usually convince me of anything. I hadn`t mastered his measured approach to life, but maybe someday I would. In the meantime I didn`t worry much about it.
Take, for instance, our most recent blow-up. Just a few days ago we had been discussing my financial projections for the restaurant. I had carefully stashed away several months` worth of payments I had received for baking breads and desserts for a local store. These funds would be the initial capital for my business.
”Oh, but we`re not going to set it up as a profit-making venture,”
Curtis said as I laid out my plans. ”We can use the restaurant as a tax shelter. We`ll run the funds through Red Top Leasing.”
I couldn`t believe my ears. He had just started a small leasing company as a sideline to his main job and planned to run my restaurant as a subsidiary of this new operation. He had never mentioned this to me. My business would lose money from the start.
We argued back and forth over the merits of saving money by sheltering income or paying taxes on my profits. Of course there would be profits, I said heatedly. I was certain of that.
I couldn`t prevail against his financial acumen. He had a fine sense of money, how to make it and keep it, how to work the tax codes to their best advantage. What he was suggesting was not illegal. It made very good business sense and I knew it.
”What`s such a big deal, Phyllis?” he asked after we had both calmed down. ”We`re married. The money comes out of our joint funds. If you lose money in your business, we`ll save money that we would ordinarily have paid out in taxes.”
Tonight Curtis was out for the evening, attending what he said was a dinner meeting with business associates. It had been a week of irregular schedules and meetings. Curtis worked for a large contractor and this was contract negotiating time. He liked wheeling and dealing. He was good at it and he got his way a lot. In the past years, labor-management bargaining sessions had continued well into the morning hours, and I expected nothing new or different from this round.
I heard the car turn into the driveway and listened as the tires crushed the gravel which blanketed the steep, nearly vertical climb to our home.
I glanced up from the TV screen as Curtis opened the door and came into the room. He strode silently across the floor to the television set and pressed the off button. The picture faded from the tube.
I remember thinking at the time that the contract negotiations must have been particularly difficult that evening. He looked perturbed and disheveled. He was wearing a lightweight navy blue pinstriped suit, a white shirt and a patterned maroon tie. The shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, the tie loosened, the pants and jacket wrinkled. Even when he was rumpled, his superb taste in clothing was evident. Everything he owned matched perfectly. He would not even purchase a shirt if a suitable tie wasn`t available to complete the outfit. For years he had selected my wardrobe as well as his.
He faced me, his arms rigid at his sides, and began to talk to me:
”Phyllis, I`m leaving you. I`ve taken an apartment, and I will be moving in the morning.”
I just looked at him. I didn`t quite realize what he was saying.
”Jackie is coming with me,” he continued. ”She`s breaking the news to Stan right now.”
I was bewildered. Jackie was a friend, my next-door neighbor. We played tennis together, alternated car pools.
I waited for an explanation. He offered none. This had to be a bad joke. He couldn`t be serious.
His face registered just how serious he was. I could think of nothing to say. I was stunned.
She was the woman he had always wanted–the woman I could never be: a professional wife, mother of two boys, school-board member, contented businessman`s helpmate.
”She`s perfect for you Curtis,” I said.
The shrill ring of the telephone provided a welcome interruption. As I picked it up, I knew it would be Stan, the other spouse.
”What are you going to do about this Phyllis?” he demanded. ”Did you know anything?”
His voice, angry, anxious and hurt, told me that he too had been caught completely unaware. And here I always thought his marriage had been a good one. So, obviously, had he. I had no idea what to say to him. I fumbled for words, wanting to help him in his pain, but I was numb, anesthetized. I fell back on the mechanics of a competent professional nurse soothing a sick patient. You`ll be fine, I said with a sort of wooden kindness. It`s for the best, I`m sure. Everything will work out. Cluck-cluck, I was the efficient mother hen.
As I spoke I was struck by the absurdity of our little domestic drama. The scenario was straight out of the daytime soaps. The woman next door, the unsuspecting spouses, the children asleep in their beds.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS IN PHYLLIS` BREAKUP
CURTIS: At nearly 40, a classic case of self-renewal. A type-A personality, successful businessman, he recently has taken up dieting, tennis, rock concerts, jogging at 6 a.m. Even when rumpled, his superb taste in clothing was evident. Everything he owned matched perfectly. He picked out Phyllis`s clothing.
JACKIE: A friend, married to Stan. Phyllis and Curtis` next-door neighbors. The couples play tennis together, alternate car pools. Jackie is the woman Phyllis could never be: a professional wife, mother of two boys, school-board member, contented businessman`s helpmate.
ROGER SPENSER: Phyllis` attorney. Reminds Phyllis of a wrestler–strong, agile and wiry. His face is broad, surrounded by curly salt-and-pepper hair. His blue eyes are warm, sympathetic.
MICHAEL RAWSON: Curtis` attorney. Tall and elegant with hair graying at the temples. Cool blue eyes. Looks like a successful trial attorney about to face the jury. Could be played by Spencer Tracy or Paul Newman.
NATHANIEL: Phyllis and Curtis` son. At age 6, a sensitive and perceptive little boy willing to offer his $220 savings to help out his mom.
MEREDITH: Seasoned mom, psychologist and Phyllis` true friend. The
”other” next-door neighbor. When she heard that Phyllis and Curtis were splitting, she put a bottle of Chardonnay on ice.
Tune in next week as Phyllis meets the ”most important man in my life”
— her divorce lawyer.
