3. Mrs. Abernathy Waits.
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Room 204
Mrs. Abernathy ran her fingers through the deep groves in the wooden arms of the lobby chair as she watched the Palmer’s revolving front door shudder in the wind.
Through the glass of the hotel’s front door, she saw a large blue banner that hung from the awning. Across its top read “Welcome Home,” along the bottom, “We Are Proud.” In between was an image of a smiling Uncle Sam with his arms outstretched. She’d watched the hotel staff hoist the massive sign into place weeks back, but by now, its corners had begun to fray in the gusts, and Uncle Sam’s face was dusted by soot from the city streets.
She daintily sipped the last bit of her tea as a figure came into view outside the front window. A giddiness crept into her throat as it always did whenever a new figure arrived. It could be anyone at that point.
It could be him.
She shifted to rise, but then the door spun to reveal just another businessman, so she slumped again back into the curvature of her seat.
“Another tea, Mrs. Abernathy?” said that kind voice behind her.
Hoight, trusty Hoight.
The Palmer’s young bellhop, only ten years old despite his shocking height, always there with a silver pot of steaming tea.
“You’re always just here when I need you most,” she said, and held out her cup.
Hoight flashed his teeth as he carefully poured. Then, as had become their custom, he pulled a cloth from his pocket, set it on the table, and placed the hot pot on top. He too, then, slumped into a nearby chair.
“What a day,” he said. He let out a steamboat whistle, then shifted his bellhop’s hat over his eyes to mime taking a nap.
Mrs. Abernathy had met Hoight on her first day at the Palmer as she struggled to pull her suitcase through those damn revolving doors. This young man in his adorable bellhop’s outfit, four decades her junior, found her stuck with her bag inside. He shook his head in mock disappointment.
“This simply won’t do,” he’d said.
Hoight had grabbed her bag, brought her back outside, and took her around to the metal door on the side of the building. The one he called “our V.I.P. door.”
“It’s reserved for only our most special clientele,” he’d stage-whispered as he held the door open for a delivery man pushing a cart filled with toilet paper. “Think I’m joking,” he said to Mrs. Abernathy, nodding at the cart, “but you try managing a hotel full of guests that can’t wipe themselves.”
Right away, Hoight was a godsend for Mrs. Abernathy. When Red at the front desk gave her a fifth-floor room, Hoight read the fret in her eyes and the balk in her knees, and had her squared away on the second floor instead. Without her permission, he’d made her standing reservations in the dining hall at 9:45 p.m., which he explained was the best time of night, “after the rush had died down.” Most importantly, he was always there when she needed another cup of tea.
“Oh, you’re too young to be tired,” Mrs. Abernathy said to the slumped-over bellhop.
Hoight raised his cap off one eye and lifted a skeptical brow.
“Is that right, Mrs. Abernathy?” he grinned.
He spoke in the high-pitched register of boys that age. It reminded her of the summer when Johnny’s voice had cracked and changed. One of his older cousins had called him McCrackin’, and it became an in-joke between the two of them that stuck for years.
Never would’ve known he’d be Johnny McCracklin until the day he died, Mrs. Abernathy suddenly thought.
It shot through her and departed, mercifully, before it had a chance to settle.
“Who am I to argue with a V.I.P.?” Hoight said.
He hopped from the chair, planted his feet in a cross-step, and unwound his legs so he spun 180 degrees back to her. He fell to one knee with arms opened and, suddenly, he held a rose.
“A little gift,” he said. “Happy Mother’s Day.”
She blushed and offered him a few nickels as a tip, but he shook them off.
“On me,” he said.
Hoight doffed his hat as he retreated back into the hallways of the Palmer, back to work.
Mrs. Abernathy smelled her rose and watched that front door some more. A woman in a flowery dress came in with a man twice her age. Then came five besuited men all chomping cigars, bellowing with mockery at the expense of some poor chap named Jacobson. Then came a stout older Polish woman who led a little girl, probably three years old, tethered to a rope.
“Ran off one too many times,” the old woman said to Mrs. Abernathy’s inquisitive glare, and they both erupted into a loud, wet laughs.
But still, no Johnny.
She waited some more, running her fingers through the chair’s wooden grooves as she glared out the door.
When half past nine struck on the grandfather clock that dominated the lobby, Hoight strolled in and sat down next to her again. He removed a red and white handkerchief from a pocket to dab theatrically at his forehead.
“This way, it looks like I’ve been working hard,” Hoight confided. “Got to give them the impression they’re getting their money’s worth.”
Tonight, rather than simply kissing Mrs. Abernathy’s hand and wishing her goodnight, Hoight stood and elegantly offered an arm. She took it and used his youthful leverage to counter the stiffness that came from the long day at her lookout post. She promised him that she’d take more breaks tomorrow, the same promise she’d made yesterday, the same as the day before that.
“No need to worry about tomorrow, because that’s when he’ll be here,” Hoight said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Got a good feeling about tomorrow.”
He escorted her past the front desk into the grand hallway, which split into three directions. To the left and right, two banks of elevators, six cars apiece, in the hotel’s north and south wings. Straight ahead, the short stairway into the hotel’s courtyard dining hall.
The hallway was littered with tall rolling carts, tagged with destination room numbers. Hoight shook the hands of a half-dozen night porters like he was a politician making the rounds. He whispered in their ears, and they all wished Mrs. Abernathy a “Happy Mother’s Day.” Then the odd pair went up the stairs into the dining hall.
It was a tall, open space that was formed entirely of glass panels, allowing the red, hazy light from the hotel’s rooftop sign to filter in. In the center of the room, the panels converged in a small pyramid; beneath it, a few conversations still echoed from the round tables covered in white cloth. Hoight led Mrs. Abernathy to her usual table, the one in the north end corner, so she could look up through the glass and watch the show as guests turned off their room lights one by one in the windows above.
As they approached the table, she noticed that it held three place settings rather than the regular two—hers and Johnny’s. She looked inquisitively at Hoight.
“How about some company?” he asked.
“I’d be enchanted,” she said.
They took their seats and the waiter came over. She ordered a martini. The precocious Hoight said, “Make it two.” The waiter mocked out a, “Yes of course, sir” and returned with a sparkling water and lime.
“We’ll see what kind of tip he gets,” Hoight scoffed.
The meal was steaks well-done and a side of mashed potatoes, studded with garlic and a parsley garnish. Mrs. Abernathy followed her martini with a red wine and another tea. They spoke of Hoight’s own history at the hotel. There for years, since birth really, and loving every second. But most of the night’s conversation was about Johnny.
“When he was your age, I tried to get him a job at a mechanic’s shop,” Mrs. Abernathy told Hoight. “Thought it would be good to get him some training. But the boy didn’t last a day.”
She laughed, until her laughter turned to tears—tears not of sadness, but of reminiscence.
Hoight unfolded the napkin from the unused table setting and flicked his wrist to offer it to her. She dabbed the outside corners of her eyes, leaving behind streaks of grey mascara.
“The next day, when it was time for him to go back to work, I found him in the backyard taking aim at a rabbit with a wooden gun that he’d carved out of a log,” she said. “There were no bullets or anything, no moving parts, it was just a carving.”
She sipped her tea.
“He was always sharp at whittling,” she said. “Guns, toy cars, tiny spoons. Kid sure had a talent.”
“Has,” Hoight corrected. “He has it.”
Mrs. Abernathy nodded, lifted her tea again.
They finished their meals and crumpled their napkins, Mrs. Abernathy’s stained with blotches of mascara. Hoight again offered his arm and she gently picked up her gifted rose. He walked her out of the dining hall, turning right towards the bank of elevators. They rode to the second floor.
Outside her room, he wished her a good night. She reached into her purse for three dollar bills—the kind of score that boys Hoight’s age could only dream about. He thanked her, pocketed the money, and said he’d see her tomorrow.
Mrs. Abernathy crossed the room to the window and looked out over the courtyard and into the night. Above, a few windows were lit by the rooftop sign’s red wash. Below, the dining hall ceiling still glowed white from within.
From her vantage, she saw the dining tables, all empty save one: “her” table, the one in the north end corner where they’d just had their steak dinners.
At one of the seats sat a man. Older, in his late fifties. Streaks of grey hair running along his temples. She smelled her rose as she watched him.
The man brought the fork to his mouth, finishing a last bite, and set it on the plate in a puddle of brown grease. The waiter came over—a different waiter, one she’d never seen before—and opened a small menu for the man to look over. As he shifted to point to an option, Mrs. Abernathy realized that the diner was without a left arm. Nothing but a loose sleeve safety-pinned up near his shoulder.
The waiter returned with a small bowl of ice cream and a new metal spoon. The man plucked up the spoon and offered it back. He wouldn’t need it. Instead, he reached into his front pocket and retrieved a rolled napkin that he set on the table and unspooled. Inside was a small wooden spoon.
The man leaned over his bowl. A dark brown military coat was draped over his chair. It was adorned with medals.
Perhaps this man knew about the war, Mrs. Abernathy thought. Perhaps he knew Johnny.
She slipped into her shoes, left her room, and returned to the elevator, still clutching her rose. She descended to the ground floor and walked the hallway, now lined with different stacks of luggage, suitcases seemingly of foreign design, ones that she’d never encountered before.
She turned right to peek into the empty lobby and was struck by the silence. She could hear nothing at all, not even the tick of the grandfather clock. She turned left to walk the stairs to the dining hall.
The one-armed man still sat there at the far end, licking the last bit of ice cream from his wooden spoon. Mrs. Abernathy took a long deep breath to calm her nerves, and then she walked over to meet him.
Halfway there he looked up with his sad, knowing eyes. She decided then that she’d gift him her rose.
Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.
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