Salvation among the Chicken Pot Pies

Holly waited for Mr. Haslett’s response. She wasn’t nervous because she didn’t expect it to work out, just like the previous six times she asked for a job and was turned down.

“You’re too young,” he said gruffly, dismissing her.

Maybe it was frustration, the grimness of the office walls, or the attitude of a man who could do without a few meals, but Holly stiffened her spine.

“I’m not too young. I’m strong and hard-working and – and – and hard-working and strong. Besides, you need someone to clean tables on Friday and Saturday nights.”

Haslett looked up from his paperwork and stared at the girl. No one ever challenged him, except his wife and daughter, so he was unused to any resistance to his declarations, which, to him, amounted to ironclad law.

However, the girl was right. How she knew this was beyond him, but she had hit on a sore spot of late. He couldn’t keep a busboy on the graveyard weekend shifts. They were too lazy to work, or worse, they stole the waitresses’ tips.

“Beverly said you needed help. I’m here to help.”

Out of the mouth of babes. Haslett sighed and leaned back. His daughter spilled the beans. “Mabel!” Holly was sure that his voice carried throughout the restaurant, and well past the county line.

A blonde Amazon filled the room. She wasn’t as large as her husband, yet she seemed to take up more space than him. “You bellowed, my love?”

“This here girl wants a job. Says she knows Bev.”

Mabel eyed the girl with something approaching pity. “Well I’m sorry for that, young lady.”

Haslett was more than sorry. He shuddered at the thought of anyone forced to spend any amount of time with his daughter. He likened her to a James Bond villain, just shorter.

“I hear your mom is working at the beef processing plant.” Mable’s voice grew soft, a rarity for her. She was more like her husband in verbal intensity, firmly believing that the louder she spoke, the truer the words. She wasn’t used to feeling pity, but Holly’s mom deserved some. Her man ran off and the mother had to get some sort of job.

“Yes, ma’am.” Haslett and his wife waited to see if more was forthcoming from the munchkin-like creature in front of them. Haslett was of the opinion that more words would be forthcoming from the girl, his experience being that fourteen-year-old girls liked to get in a few thousand words a day. Mabel liked the girl because she didn’t talk much, which made for a refreshing change of pace from her daughter.

Mr. Haslett tossed his pen on the desk and leaned back in his chair. “Anyway, I done told the child we can’t hire her. Too young.”

Mabel stood up and patted the girl on the shoulder. Holly didn’t like being treated like a pet, but bore it with fortitude. “So what?”

Haslett looked at his wife through his glasses. “It’s against the law.”

“So what? You buy produce off the back of a truck that rolls in here at midnight to save a few bucks, and don’t think I don’t know about the bottle of schnapps you hide in the ice maker.”

Haslett blanched. Mabel smirked. Mabel won the day, not an unusual occurrence.

“Okay okay! Look, little girl—”

“Holly,” Holly said with defiance. The pat on the shoulder was as far as she was willing to go in the way of being patronized.

“We’ll start you at a buck an hour—”

“A buck fifty,” Mabel interjected.

Haslett glared at his wife, something that he would pay for later. “A buck fifty, though that’s ten cents above minimum wage, and we don’t know if you’re gonna steal tips or break all our dishes yet, but my wife has spoken and you have, so far, survived Beverly’s acquaintance, so I suppose we’ll take the chance, big as it may be—”

“Oh do shut your pie hole, my beloved.” Mabel turned to Holly and squatted down. “You’re hired. Be here at ten o’clock Friday night.”

                                                         ______________

“Clean table 23!”

“Move your ass, girl! I got two dirty tables!”

“Mop up that spill!”

“Where the hell are the clean water glasses?”

Holly wiped her brow, ducked her head, and plowed through. She hadn’t expected that the job would entail so much abuse, or that she would be asked to do the impossible on an hourly basis. The waitresses, so nice to her before the restaurant got busy, turned into gargoyles with name tags. The tubs of dishes that she toted to the dishwasher were heavy, her hair was greasy and sweaty, and her arms were numb from fatigue. She would have welcomed a patronizing pat on the head right about now.

“Tough night, huh?” Beverly smiled at Holly. A friendly face in a desert of hostiles was balm for the young busser’s soul. She smiled back.

The longest night of her life ended; everyone returned to acting like human beings. The waitresses praised her work, and her honesty. They each gave her a dollar for bussing their tables.

Holly didn’t understand the mercurial ups and downs of a late-night rush, but she accepted it as something she would have to accommodate into her worldview. Waitresses, she concluded, were Jekyll and Hyde. Cooks were ogres, and they may or may not eat you on sight. Mr. Haslett and Mabel were the king and queen, and they did things that would, in her opinion, never make sense.

Her final task of the night was to sweep and mop the floors. She swept assiduously. The cook came out of his lair, inspected her work, and told her to sweep the floor again. She did. He repeated the process when she mopped. Holly decided to hate the cook on general principles.

“He’s an asshole. Pay him no mind.” Holly laughed because Beverly said it loud enough for the cook to hear.

“Yeah, Dom, I’m talking shit about you. Deservedly so!” Beverly’s voice, like her father’s, carried across time zones.

Saturday night was the same, though Holly knew what to expect, so it felt less nightmarish and more like what would happen to a young David Copperfield. She was determined, like Copperfield, to be the waif that succeeded.

The waitresses tipped her again, and the cook made her sweep and mop twice again. She considered ramming the broom handle down his throat.

For starters.

                                                          ______________

“I want to be a cook.”

Mr. Haslett looked up from his work, wary of how to proceed. Like a rabbit being chased by a fox, he cast about for the safest place to hide.

“Mabel!”

His wife, the scariest woman on Earth, was Haslett’s lifeline in dealing with the second-scariest woman on Earth.

“You howled, oh sweet one?”

“This girl here—”

“Holly.” She reminded him once more that she had a name.

“Says she wants to be a cook, and women can’t cook. Not in restaurants. Not in my place!”

“Our place,” Mabel reminded him.

Holly, arms akimbo, stared at Haslett. He stared back. The staring contest, though, was a forgone conclusion, for Holly could outstare a statue.

“Let me ask you something. When you were a boy, who cooked for you?”

Haslett knew where this was going. “My mother, of course, but—”

“And who cooks for you at home?”

“Mabel, of course.”

“Both are women, right? Or do I have my genders mixed up?”

Mabel tried not to laugh, but she feared a rupture if she kept it in any longer. A strangled snort, a giggle/guffaw, and the deed was done.

“She has a point,” Mabel said, wiping tears from her eyes. It had been strenuous work, trying not to laugh.

“But this is a restaurant! We can’t have a little slip of a girl—”

“I’m seventeen, and a high school graduate. I’ve been working for you for three years, and it’s high time I’m promoted to a job that pays better. I have skills and abilities. And I have grit.”

Mabel snickered and nodded in agreement.

“You got a sassy mouth is what you have. I can see why Beverly likes you so much. I suppose you two’ll take over the world some day, God help us.” Haslett sat back and shook his head resignedly. He was beaten and he knew it.

“You can start next week on the graveyard shift, with Dom.” Haslett played his last card. Dominic would run her off. He had reduced strong men to tears and weak men to drink. Haslett liked Holly, but he couldn’t abide a woman in his kitchen.

“And you won’t get mad when Dom quits?”

Haslett looked up slowly, a strange intensity emanating from his eyes. It had the same light that his eyes had years ago when he first looked upon the beautiful and bewitching Mabel, but this time the gleam had no love in it. It was a look akin to a gunfighter’s cold stare, a look designed to quail the one stared at.

It was rather anticlimactic, then, that Holly spun on her heels and walked away.

                                                      ______________

“Order up!” Holly laid the ticket in the window, wiped her hands with a towel, and proceeded to chop onions, grind jalapeños, shred cheese, and sundry other odious tasks that new cooks do.

Dominic watched her, the suspicion in his eyes hidden from Holly due to the smoke from his cigarette. He dug out the schnapps from the icemaker and took a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on how you looked at it) swallow before putting it back. He would repeat this procedure several times before the night was out.

“You don’t belong in the kitchen,” Dom’s words slurred, a testament to his liberal libation intake. He had adopted this technique as a way of dealing with what he considered an affront to his manhood.

“I’m a better cook than you. All the waitresses say so.”

“They don’t know shit about cooking. They’re women.” Dom felt that his logic was unassailable.

“They know tips, and they get twice the tips now that I’m cooking.”

“Maybe they’re doing a better job.”

Holly clicked her tongue. “You’re an idiot. And you better stop letting air out of my tires.”

“Can’t prove it,” Dom muttered sullenly.

“Beverly saw you when she came to eat with me last week.” Holly fingered a knife, pointing it at Dom.

“Well, aren’t you two thick as thieves? I saw you kissing her. Maybe I oughta tell the old man about it.”

“Uh huh. Anyway, if you don’t want Bev slitting your tires, I’d lay off.”

Dom walked away, muttering imprecations and taking the bottle of schnapps with him. The threat to reveal her relationship with Beverly didn’t seem to bother her. He would have to try new tactics.

For the next six months, he tried to run off this interloper, but success eluded him. He dulled her knives, hid ingredients from her, and refused her access to company recipes. Holly never complained. She re-sharpened her knives, found the hidden spices, and picked the lock of the cabinet where the recipes were stored.

In a twist that everyone should have seen coming, Dom was arrested for DUI a week later.

                                                         ______________

“We need to change the menu. Keep it fresh and relevant,” Holly silently appeared in front of Haslett, shrugging on her cook’s jacket.

“Mabel!”

“You screeched, heart of my heart?”

“She wants to change the menu!”

Mabel gazed at her husband, turned her gaze to Holly, then back to her husband.

“Good.” She left, leaving Haslett alone with his tormentor.

Haslett wanted to say something pithy and sharp, but nothing pithy or sharp was forthcoming in his mind. He settled for moaning pathetically and sipping schnapps.

“Chicken pot pies can be served as a special on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They’re our slow days, and we can make them ahead of time. I say start with twenty and go from there. When we run out, we run out.”

Haslett waved his right hand, indicating that he would allow it but wasn’t happy about it. The schnapps was disappearing rapidly.

“And fresh fish.”

He sputtered. He choked. His feelings were so intense that he almost rose to his feet.

“We have fish!”

“We have frozen breaded shrimp that no one orders. They’ve been in the freezer so long I think they’re old enough to buy alcohol.”

“But—”

“Then it’s settled. Chicken pot pies and fresh fish. I’ll get started on it right away.”

Haslett wanted to yell for his wife again, but he didn’t. He opened another bottle of schnapps and daydreamed of what life would be like without women.

                                                          ______________

“I have good news,” Holly stood in front of Haslett, wiping her hands on a towel and straightening her cook’s jacket.

Haslett stared at her, suspicion invading his soul. Holly and good news didn’t go together. He considered it a universal truism.

“Yeah? Okay. Let me brace myself for the onslaught.” He took a shot of schnapps, felt that it wasn’t enough, and took another. He poured a third one and set it aside as a reserve bracer.

“I fired Jack.”

“What’s good about that? He’s a good cook,” Haslett spoke sharply. He liked Jack because Jack never complained and he was a man.

“He was stealing food. Loaded up the back of his car with beef and chicken.”

“I see, I see. Yes, the man had to go. Well, thank you for the information. I suppose we have to hire—”

“There’s more.”

Haslett downed the reserve schnapps.

“Your daughter,” Holly said, smiling shyly, “is leaving your home and moving in with me.”

“Mabel!”

She appeared instantly, as if she had been standing just outside the doorway and was waiting for the summons.

“You roared, my dreamy helpmeet?”

“This girl – Holly – says that Bev’s leaving us. Is this true?”

“’Tis true, my love. She will leave our hearth and home for another hearth and home.”

“With this one?” Haslett gestured toward Holly, not being sober enough to point a finger accurately.

“Yes. As you say, this one. They’re in love.”

Haslett felt like he missed something. “Uh – what?”

“In love,” Mabel repeated. “You remember love, don’t you? That feeling you get that may or may not be indigestion. Your knees get weak at the sight of your beloved. You gibber. At least, you did. I found it endearing so I married you.”

Haslett sat back and closed his eyes. “Are you telling me that our daughter is going to live in sin? With – with—” He pointed a finger at Holly.

“Well, they can’t very well get married, can they? What else are they supposed to do?”

Haslett thought about it. “I suppose no man would have her so she decided to inflict her personality on women.”

Mabel clucked. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“In love?” Haslett felt like asking the same question and getting the same answer would clarify things.

“Yes.” This didn’t clarify things for Haslett.

“How?”

“She fell in love with my chicken pot pies,” Holly said, her eyes taking on a dreamy aspect at the remembrance.

“Uh, um, so -”

“She could taste the love in them, according to her.” Mabel offered the answer, but Haslett’s brain refused to understand.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s quite simple, my darling life partner. They fell in love and are going to live together in Holly’s house. Maybe lay off the schnapps and you’ll understand simple things better,” Mabel said, glaring at her husband. He put the bottle away.

“Is there any more good news?”

Both women shook their heads and left, returning to their tasks. Haslett returned to his bottle. The world returned to normal operations.

                                                          ______________

“You’re too young,” Holly gazed at the girl in front of her. Fourteen. Has an earnest look about her. Cheap clothes. Ancient sneakers.

“Yes, ma’am, but we need the money.”

Holly sat back, sipping herbal tea and studying the girl. Ever since Haslett decided to step back from operating the restaurant, things ran as smoothly as could be expected in the food service industry. Profits were up. Drama was down, though still unavoidable. And bussers were still coming and going with alarming frequency.

“Beverly!”

“You screeched, my love?” Beverly didn’t so much walk in as glide in. The room seemed to brighten, just a little.

“This girl’s name is Janice. She’s fourteen and wants a job.”

Beverly smiled at Janice. “You’re too young, dear.”

Janice was not to be dissuaded. “I’ll do anything. Anything! My mamma works two jobs and we still don’t have enough for the rent. Bobby, my brother, is only twelve, so I need -”

“You’re hired,” Beverly and Holly said, in unison.

“Be here at ten o’clock, Friday and Saturday nights. You’ll clean tables. Four bucks an hour.” Holly laid out the basics. Beverly whispered in Holly’s ear before leaving.

She returned five minutes later with a basket. “Take this home, Janice. It’s your signing bonus.”

Janice eyed the basket warily. “My mamma says we don’t take no charity.”

“It isn’t charity, kiddo. It’s three chicken pot pies.”

Janice wasn’t old enough or smart enough to combat the verbal sophistry, so she took the basket, thanked the women again, and fairly skipped back home.

“Totally illegal, hiring that kid,” Beverly commented.

“Yep.”

Beverly kissed Holly’s neck.

“Wanna split a pot pie?”