“Thank you,” I said, and took the cup of coffee from him. After he walked away, I remained at the counter for a while, trying to will my body to carry out the duties that lay ahead. I had to clear the box of old lightbulbs Driss had left in the hallway, order napkins and toilet paper, decide whether we were going to put up Memorial Day decorations this year, and then try to find them. But in the end, I couldn’t face any of this, and I carried my coffee to the cash register and slumped in the chair behind it. I could do this much at least, I could make change for customers, hand out mints, or give packs of crayons to the children.
Outside, a young couple in hiking jackets and boots got out of a dusty car and stood in the parking lot, checking their tires as if for a leak, then came into the diner, barely glancing at me as they walked past, and found a table for themselves. In a few weeks, the spring season would be over, the tourists would be gone, and the town would return to its empty self. Perhaps then I wouldn’t be needed at the diner.
But had I ever been truly needed? My husband had bought this restaurant in spite of my objections and, perhaps because of our arguments about it, he rarely called on me to help. I came here only if he was short-staffed, when one of the workers was sick, or if it was a busy weekend. Maybe if I had been more involved, I might have been with him the night of the accident, I might have seen the car, or heard it coming, and maybe even warned him to get out of the way.
Footsteps made me look up. It was a young man in blue hospital scrubs, his beard neatly trimmed and his hair pulled into a ponytail, he was probably from the medical office two blocks from the restaurant. “I saw the notice in the newspaper,” he said as he handed me the bill and his money. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I said. My voice sounded like a stranger’s. I couldn’t bring myself to say more, talk to this man the way my husband would have, ask him how everything tasted, or how work was these days, or was he enjoying the nice weather. From the framed article on the wall, Driss looked on with a smile, a stack of blueberry pancakes and a cup of coffee before him on the counter. DINING IN THE DESERT, the headline said. My husband was proud of that article; it helped ease some of his frustrations, the humiliations he had to suffer through sometimes, working in a restaurant and waiting on people.
“Did they catch the guy who did it?” the customer asked me.
“No,” I said as I handed him his change.
“Well, I hope they do. People drive way too fast on the highway, it’s really dangerous. We need some kind of light or a signal at that intersection. Maybe you could raise this at the next city council meeting?”
He waited for me to say something more, turn my husband’s death into a public cause, rally others around it, but pain is a private business, it would be too difficult for me to talk about it in front of others, let alone strangers at the city council meeting. I had noticed this before about Americans—they always want to take action, they have a hard time staying still, or allowing themselves to feel uncomfortable emotions—so when I shook my head no, the man seemed disappointed in me, and after a moment he left, the door jingling as it closed behind him.
Jeremy
Fierro was waiting for me outside his apartment building, in jeans and a T-shirt, his USMC baseball cap pulled so low I couldn’t see his eyes. In the car, he turned up the volume on the radio when Metallica came on, but I didn’t complain, even though all that crying and hollering about being a rebel gave me a headache, and later when he went on a rant about the Dodgers’ losing streak, I just nodded along. Whatever it took to get the guy the support he needed. I’d sent an email to Hec, an old buddy of ours from Charlie company, because I’d remembered he was in a group like this, up in Oregon, and he’d said it had helped him some. I was hoping it would help Fierro, too.
A folding sign outside the community center told us that the anger-management support group met inside the gym. Flyers advertising summer swim classes for kids, ballroom dancing for seniors, and a family-movie night hung on the wall next to the double doors. Most of the chairs were already taken by the time Fierro and I walked in and joined the circle around the facilitator. His name was Rossi. He wore a bright yellow shirt that stretched tightly over his pectorals, and he spoke with a thunderous voice that I had not expected from a member of the therapeutic professions. “Who would like to share tonight?” he asked.
Immediately a hand shot in the air. It belonged to a middle-aged man whose knee bounced up and down like the needle of a sewing machine. “Hi, I’m Doug. I had a really bad week. My daughter invited a bunch of her friends over for a board game and they were loud. I came downstairs to get a drink. I wanted to tell them to be quiet, but I didn’t want to interfere because my wife had warned me to stay out of their way. Plus, she was already mad at me because she says I never help around the house. Which isn’t true. I mean, I run the vacuum and I empty the dishwasher sometimes. Anyway, I couldn’t say anything to my daughter and her friends, but it’s like, I couldn’t take the noise, either. So I just stood there, in the kitchen, feeling like I might explode.”
A woman in a nurse’s uniform who was slouching in her chair, arms crossed, sat up suddenly. “It happens to me, too. I’m Adriana, by the way. Sometimes I just want to scream when my kids ask me to take them to the park or the movies. I can’t go out looking like this.” She uncrossed her arms then, and I saw that her left hand was missing its ring and pinky fingers. “But I know I can’t say anything, because it’ll only make them think that my ex-boyfriend was right about me. About my temper, I mean. I’m in so much pain all the time. That’s what they don’t understand.”
I could practically feel the heat of Fierro’s disdain radiating from him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought. Maybe I should’ve insisted that he go through the VA, even though they wouldn’t offer him the private counseling he wanted and would just send him home with another prescription for Paxil or Zoloft or Wellbutrin. But then Fierro did something I didn’t expect: he raised his hand.
“Ah,” Rossi said. “We have a new member tonight. Please, introduce yourself.”
“My name is Bryan Fierro. It’s hard to find someone to talk to sometimes, so I ’preciate you all having me here. My problem is, I can’t sleep. I don’t mean, like, occasional insomnia, everyone gets that sometimes. What I mean is, I never get more than three or four hours of sleep, ever, no matter what I do. Been going on for years. I’ve tried everything. You name it, I’ve tried it. Even chamomile tea. You know how fucked up a guy is when he starts drinking a tea he can’t even spell. Nothing works. I stay up all night and think. Like, I think myself into circles.”
I looked at Fierro only once—when the word insomnia came out of his mouth—then stared at my shoes until it was over.
“Anger can cause all kinds of problems,” Rossi said. “And insomnia is certainly one of them. Lack of sleep can lead to exhaustion, which can lead to poor decision-making, which in turn leads to even more anger. It’s an ugly chain reaction. You may want to talk to your doctor about getting a sleeping aid. Without proper rest, it’s harder to make good choices, explore the source of your anger, and try to control it.”
“Right,” Fierro said, nodding. “Right.”
An older man with tattooed arms raised his hand to speak. He worked for Home Depot, he said, and had been put on probation at work because he’d had an outburst with a customer over an order of window shades. Another guy, a long-haul truck driver, said he missed his wife while he was gone, but as soon as he came back home they’d fight until it was time for him to leave again.
Finally, the wall clock chimed nine o’clock and the session was over. I waited until Fierro and I had left the community center and were alone in my car before I turned to him. “You think that stunt you pulled in there was funny?”
He thumped me lightly on the arm. “Kind of. Admit it, it was funny.”
“You can be such an asshole sometimes.”
“I told you it’d be a bunch of pussies talking about their feelings.”
“Try calling them that to their faces, see what happens.”
“Dude. Relax, it’s not a big deal.”
“Everything’s always a joke to you.”
Fierro leaned in. “What’s that?”