The Café on Orange Street Josephine Sporte

The Café on Orange Street

By Josephine Sporte

My daddy takes me to lunch every Sunday. He and Mommy don’t speak much anymore. They don’t look each other in the eye when Mommy drops me off at his house. Sometimes she doesn’t even drop me off at his house; she just drives me straight to the restaurant and then picks me up afterward. She doesn’t want me in Daddy’s car, I don’t think. She’s probably right about that. But I wasn’t in the accident, so I don’t know why she’s trying to scare me about him so much. He’s careful now. But Mommy still won’t let me ride in Daddy’s car.

Mommy drops me off at the café on Orange Street today, but she doesn’t get out of the car. She just stops at the curb and kisses my cheek goodbye. I hop out of the car and close the door behind me, trying not to slam it because I know that the noise still makes Mommy jump a little bit. She doesn’t drive away until I’m in the restaurant. Daddy is sitting in a booth next to the window. He’s looking out at the street, and I wonder if he’s watching Mommy’s car. He does that sometimes when she drops me off. I think maybe that’s why she never comes into the restaurant with me.

I slide into the booth and smooth my dress under my bottom. My legs are too short for my feet to touch the floor, so they just dangle. They’re heavy, because of the thick soles on my shoes. One of the buckles is broken, so Mommy helped me put a safety pin in. Daddy offered to buy me a new pair, but she wouldn’t let him. I wish she wouldn’t be so stubborn. None of the other kids have to wear safety pins in their shoe buckles. Some girl at school, named Annie, laughed at me for the first week or two after the buckle broke. Annie is really mean. But Mommy won’t let me tell Daddy about her. She doesn’t like it when Daddy tries to talk to me the same way she does.

“Hi, kiddo!” Daddy says when he sees me. His face is shaved. I smile.

“Hi,” I say, folding my hands on the table in front of me and straightening my back. That’s how Mommy told me to sit. She says slouching is bad for your health. Daddy slouches.

“What are you thinkin’ today, honey?” Daddy asks, sliding a menu in front of me.

I open it and pretend to read the words on the flaps, but the letters don’t make sense to me yet. I shake the pages like a newspaper, the way I always see Daddy do. “I want a grilled cheese,” I say in my most businessman-like voice.

“I think that can be arranged,” Daddy replies, reaching across the table to take my menu. I let him have it. Pretending it’s a newspaper isn’t fun anymore.

Daddy places the menus next to him. There’s a lot of empty space at the table. He leans in toward me, smiling.

“So,” he says. “I feel like I’ve aged ten years since I last saw you! What’ve you been up to?”

“It hasn’t been ten years!” I say, giggling. I don’t think he’s very good at math. “If it had been ten years, I would be– I would be thirty by now!”

Daddy chuckles and glances out the window before looking back at me. “I don’t think you’d be quite that old, sweetheart. But you’d be a teenager,” he leans towards me again, hushing his voice, “and boy, am I glad you’re not a teenager.”

“Mommy says teenagers are all delinquents.”

Daddy frowns. “That’s a big word for you, Amelia. Did Mommy teach that one to you?”

I expected him to be more impressed. I don’t even know what that word means.

“I heard Mommy say it once, but I didn’t look it up in the dictionary or anything.”

Daddy nods and looks away from me. He seems sad for some reason. I wonder if he’s sad because he knows that Mommy taught me something, but he’s never taught me anything.

“You shouldn’t be using words if you don’t know what they mean.”

I pick at a spot on the table. Someone carved words into it, but I can’t read what it says. “It’s not a bad word, is it?”