The outdoor billboard declares: “NO MASKS OR VIRUS HERE!”
Finally, a place that serves a decent breakfast, minus the humiliation of temperature checks and forced sanitizing. No scraps of virus riding piggyback on strips of bacon; no waitresses sneezing Covid laced pollen my way. A pre-pandemic breakfast, the way it used to be. Great money making concept, I think to myself. Breakfasts of yesteryear!
The meal is perfect! A fluffy wrap of sunshiny yellow egg stuffed with spinach, onion, mushroom,and cheddar, with strips of crispy bacon, and a side of hot cakes drizzled with a sweet maple syrup that is to die for. I’m in breakfast heaven!
I peruse the Town Gazette, one of those freebie publications filled with local sponsors. Picked it up on my way inside, I suppose, but can’t remember. I stare at one particular advertisement while sucking down my sumptuous breakfast.
It says:
Grove Hill, the ultimate experience in communal living, sponsored and administered by St. Mary’s sisterhood. Alongside it, there’s a sketched image of a tree lined park, mostly vacant land with carefully spaced stone markers.
“I reside, worship, and work there,” the waitress says to me, pointing at the Gazette next to my plate. She surprised me with her sudden appearance at the front of my table. She’s a twenty-something girl full of tats, facial rings, and a potpourri of cuts lining the inside of her arms. Hard not to notice.
“Oh, Hello, you scared me!” I grab my chest with my right hand and chuckle. “You live there? Grove Hill?” This time I point at the Gazette, and then she points at it again, with an affirmative nod.
I imagine Grove Hill as a halfway home for people struggling to get back on their feet, seeking divine intervention; a local church and town renewal project, leveraging the last vestiges of hope for recovering addicts, offenders of this or that, and trauma survivors—giving them a new lease on life with practical skills and the fear of God. And of course, someone getting a tax deduction from the project.
“If you want, finish your breakfast and I will take you back there,” She offers.
“Take me back there?” I question.
“Yes, you like reading the stones, remember?” She looks at me with a half crooked smile, like a mischievous sister, taunting me about past quirks that only a sister would dredge up.
“No, I don’t remember, but maybe I’ve been there before, long ago. Or maybe you’re confusing me with someone else. Is that possible?” She does not respond but stares at me, one of those long stares, as if waiting for my aha moment, as in, YES YES, I REMEMBER! Instead, I stare back at her, silently now, trying to remember, chin resting in palm.
She breaks the silence. “More coffee, sir?”
“Sure, I’ll take another cup, Belinda. Right?” She gives me another blank stare.
“Just making sure I have your name right. I heard the customer over there call you by that name.”
“Oh, yeah, him.” She giggles. “We’re not so formal around here with names. Nobody remembers my other name by now, and so they call me whatever, mixing me up with someone else, another name they’ve seen. He’s just passing through, a connoisseur of stones, just like you, but you keep coming back.”
I become theoretical with her: “Nowadays, people have failing memories, more often anyway. Maybe the virus is corrupting them. I’ve heard it can screw with one’s brain and memory. He doesn’t remember your name and I don’t remember you or these stones you speak of.”
“Well, the virus ain’t here; there’s not enough life for it to cling to. And Belinda is not my real name. I’m Sylvia, the waitress here, among other things, past and present.”
“What other things?” I ask, sensing that she wants to tell me. A shade of seriousness abruptly travels down her face, like a curtain being pulled down over her.
“This place ain’t a favorite destination for anyone,” she says, “unless they have kin here or a friend they come to visit, like you do. There’s sadness here, lots of it.”
She kneels down to the floor and turns over her arms, laying them on the table, letting me see their undersides. I reach out for her left arm, tracing the scars with my fingers, especially the big one near the wrist. I look up at her forlorn, almost guilty smile.
“Do they hurt? You did this to yourself?” I ask in a subdued voice, feeling my insides shaking. I remember now, but say nothing, wanting to hide my face to hide my tears. Yet, we are locked into this moment, staring at one another, my hands holding her old pain.
A small silver cross dangles from the chain around her neck, hovering just above her scratched up arms. I reach for it, cradling it within my hands, and then her hands wrap around mine, God’s cross secured between us. We smile at one another for a moment, before releasing the cross.
“Please finish your breakfast, Isaac”
“I’ve lost my appetite, can I get it to go?”
She giggles. “No, please finish it. I made it just for you, so you can enjoy a warm breakfast with no worries. No fear of dying from it. You’ve not had a good breakfast in a long time, Isaac.”
“Are you a fly on my kitchen wall?” I jest. “How do you know what I eat for breakfast every day? How do you know my name? I don’t recall ever telling you my name.”
“I need to go back soon,” she says. “Please, enjoy your breakfast, I will sit with you, like you sit with me.” A tear rolls down her pale cheek.
“Go back where, Sylvia? Can you be more specific?” I want to hear it through her words…to confirm what I think or feel I’m remembering.
“To the stones, where you’ve been visiting me regularly, talking to me, leaving me pretty flowers. You’re the only one who visits, a stranger, but my only friend. I’ve been wanting to do something nice for you, to thank you for keeping me company. So please, eat your breakfast, Isaac. No more questions.”
Slowly, I savor every forkful of my breakfast, no more questions asked. There is a moment of shared lightheartedness between us, deliberately moving my fork in slow motion, as if never wanting this breakfast to end, and she giggles, and this eggs me on further, pardon the pun.
“Shall I call you Miss Giggles?” I ask. And she giggles some more.
I make funny faces and sounds, as if I’d entered the gates of heaven through her breakfast. “Ummm hmmm…this breakfast is awesome, Sylvia, the best I’ve ever had. Where did you learn to cook like this? OMG, sooo good!!! Yum!”
Her giggles turn into a hearty laugh, her eyes alive with the innocent joy of a little girl, and she giggles and laughs and giggles some more, never taking her eyes off my face, sometimes halfheartedly imploring me to stop it…
“Stop it, Isaac! You’re so silly,” she says, but she doesn’t want me to stop, anyone could see that. This is a moment, a special moment, our moment! I’m ready to stand on my head for her, just to watch her laugh and her eyes come alive, so alive!
Alas, the moment is brief. I take my last bite, my eyes locked upon her, desperately attempting to memorize every nuance of her angelic face, every gesture and expression, from her mischievous smile to the return of sadness in her blue eyes.
She reaches over, gives my face a quick caress, her hand feeling warm but quickly turning cold.
“Thanks for visiting me again,” she says in a whisper.
She turns as white as snow, as if her blood is draining away. I reach for her, but the blueness of her eyes quickly expands to fill the diner and my entire field of vision, temporarily blinding me, until I find myself on my back, outdoors, looking up into the deep blue sky.
There is a tap on my shoulder. I flinch and reflexively reach back, the back of my hand scraping the stone. “Wake up, it’s just me, Isaac! We’re back here.”
Quickly I rise up, turn myself around, and sit upright and cross-legged in the grass, her gravestone in front of me. A modern memorial, with a small photograph of her face, and the silver cross underneath—the one that hovered over her scars, the one that we’d held together, for a moment, but now locked in stone.
I’m not hungry like before, but catch a whiff of eggs and bacon riding on the breeze, probably from someone’s open kitchen window in the neighborhood, beyond the cemetery gates. I’d fallen asleep to the comforting scent and dreamed of it, of her.
“Thanks for the breakfast, Sylvia. I’ll be back soon.”
I wipe the tear from my face and touch it to the photograph of the sweet girl I’ve come to know, but never knew.
Sylvia Williams
1985 – 2007
Rest in peace
Grove Hill Cemetery
© 2022 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Notes from David 