The Café

by Donna Schoenkopf

The café has always been here.

I remember it when I was in high school, all those years ago.

It never has attracted throngs of customers, but it has stood the test of time.

The café is brown.

Actually the small sign out front is dark blue with white neon lettering and there is a red awning and two kinds of bricks on the front of the building; one kind of brick is a russet red color and the other is a mottled russet red color. But never mind, it still looks brown. The whole façade looks brown.

The interior of the café is decorated in quintessential Oklahoma style. When you enter, first through a small foyer, the kind you use when you have inclement weather, and then to the main room, you see brown.

The walls are brown. Dark brown. They are paneled in the old paneling from long, long ago. The fifties? The booths are brown naugahyde. The floors are brown.

The art on the walls, oil paintings of landscapes and children, are all done by one artist (a family member?) and are brown. They would be cheery if it weren’t for their brownness.

The booths are plentiful, in two long rows, with a wide aisle between them and brown counters on the side with brown bar stools facing the booths.

The brownness is deep and ugly. Depressing. There is a slight feeling of staleness, of uncleanliness. Could it be that those brown paneled walls hide so much grease that they impart a subconscious scent of rancidness?

There are old fashioned juke box stations on the tables, but they don’t work. Handwritten signs on them tell you to use the big juke box at the front for your musical treats.

I have never played the juke box, nor have I ever heard it being played, so I have no idea what’s on it. Elvis? Merle Haggard? Glenn Miller? Surely not anything so new as The Beatles, let alone Dr. Dre.

Come in. Find a seat. Take the counter. You can get a great view of what’s going on. Here. Sit next to me and we’ll have an adventure.

It’s the dinner hour, six o’clock, so the place has some people in it. Groups of two, three and four people sit in the brown booths along the wall. About half the booths are filled.

It is very, very quiet.

This is where older people come for dinner. They come because they want a dinner their mothers used to make. Meatloaf or chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and canned turnip greens. Iced tea, sweetened. No one wants a salad—salads are sorry things here. Some iceberg lettuce on a plate with too much ranch dressing plopped on top.

A sweet and friendly waitress comes up. She wears a nondescript uniform. Apron, too. She is tired, but smiles and hands me a plastic menu.

It’s four pages. There is breakfast, lunch and dinner on it.

Today, I’ll just have coffee and pie, the two very best things in the place.

The pies are listed on the giant blackboard behind us. They are homemade and people come from miles around to buy them for their parties and their out of town guests. There are cream pies and fruit pies and chocolate pies, at least fifteen different kinds.

I think for a bit. It’s hard to choose. But I’ll have the cherry.

The waitress returns with the pie and the coffee. I have to ask for sugar and cream, because in Oklahoma almost nobody drinks coffee any way but black.

The coffee is so good, I am transported to a world of harmony and perfection. I tell the waitress that it is the best coffee in town and she looks at me as though I’m crazy. But it IS good. Really, really good. I have never, EVER, had a better cup of coffee. Ever.

She comes back now and then to fill my cup. Yes, I’ll have more of that perfection. It is exactly the right temperature. It is mellow. There is no bitterness at all. It is rich and full. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

The pie sits on the plate, its crust sparkling with sugar. And it’s good. But I’ve had better.

My mother’s pie, for instance ... the best there is. (You must use Crisco and cut it into the flour with two butter knives until the shortening is the size of peas. Don’t overdo. That will make a tough crust.)

And I’ve had pie at fancy restaurants in L.A. that were better. Their crusts were so light they almost floated off the plate and the fruit so exotic and with so many layers of sweet and sour that your palate was tickled to the point of ecstasy.

But the pie here is good enough. It’s a good, honest pie. It is a reward for eating all your dinner. It is worth its price.

Another sip of heavenly coffee.

The restaurant is completely quiet. No one talks. No one moves much.

Everyone just sits and eats their dinner.

The door opens and without looking up everyone in the place is aware of a powerful presence.

It’s a drunk grammaw. A drunk grammaw with her three year old grandson. His hair is long and blond and in a mullet. He’s hyper and squirmy and wants to RUN! Grammaw is loud, her voice low and raspy from too many cigarettes, her words slightly slurry. Her whole being is definitely out of step with the manners of the café. She is hollering at the little boy before she’s even through the door. She’s hollering about him not staying with her.

And he isn’t.

He’s running up and down the brown aisle, touching everything and totally ignoring the loud and threatening voice.

She’s bellowing, “Don’t touch anything! Come back here or we’ll go home right now! I’m gonna count to three!” Over and over again.

Nobody looks at her or the boy. Except me. I am intrigued.

She finally grabs the boy’s arm and pulls him along to the counter two seats away from me.

It is then I realize the owner of the café is also at the counter. I hadn’t noticed him much—just thought he was an old geezer reading his paper and whiling away his time. But he’s not. I can see him bristling with anger, his eyes drilling into them, as the old woman plows past him to her chair. He thinks she’s crazy, drunk, bad. And she is. But HE is judgmental, mean, and narrow.

The two worlds collide.

Grammaw and grandson sit down. I look over at the boy and say hi. He ignores me. Grammaw casts a sidelong glance at me, without a smile. The friendly, tired waitress comes up, menu in hand, just in time to see the boy lick the counter.

“Oh, oh, son. Don’t do that,” she says, and Grammaw hollers, “The lady’s gonna make you leave if you do that.” Then Grammaw smiles a horrible smile, complete with a few missing teeth, and apologizes for her grandson’s behavior.

She knows what she wants without the menu. Chicken strips, fries, and a coke. To go. The boy bounces up and down, gets off the stool, runs down the aisle. Grammaw threatens again. He ignores her. Every now and then a person in the booths sneaks a peak at the pair. The waitress takes the order and brings it back, lickety split. The sooner those two go, the better, she thinks. The waitress will catch hell from Evil Old Boss because he can’t do anything to Grammaw. You know how tyrants are—they always hurt the weak.

Grammaw gathers her grandson, who is happy to leave, and brings her gigantic self to the cash register, which is now manned by Evil Old Boss, who exudes hatred for her. The little boy begins to touch something on the counter next to the cash register and the Evil Old Boss snaps at him to leave it alone! This takes Grammaw by surprise and she fumbles with her money, trying to count it out. Evil Old Boss repeats the amount a couple of times, she gets more agitated. She’s a nickel short and the old geezer for SURE isn’t gonna let her slide.

I begin to grapple with my purse for some money but before I can get it out she comes up with the nickel.

The old geezer takes the money without a smile and tells the boy he shouldn’t touch things that don’t belong to him. No smile. A big old ugly frown.

He’s tough.

And he’s right in that regard. A person shouldn’t touch things that don’t belong to them.

But he’s mean. To the core.

The pair leave and there is a collective sigh of relief as the door closes behind them.

Evil Old Boss goes back to the counter and watches them from his roost while they get into their car and drive off.

Sweet Friendly Waitress fills my cup, smiling a smile of relief.

People begin to talk to each other in the booths.

The drama has ended and the world returns to almost normal. There is still a little edginess in the room. It’s not quite as safe as it was before, but near enough to let people breathe out and in, in and out, until the air smoothes out, and checks can be paid and they, too, can climb in their cars and drive away.

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