Better Than Starbucks!

Old Flame

by Lori Dantuma

I plop two blueberry Eggo waffles into the toaster as the painted roosters on the clock above me squawk five times. The ice from the frozen artificially flavored “berries” sizzles on the hot coils while I place a set of thick black utensils at the head of the kitchen table. I still don’t understand what Jack sees in those pockmarked hockey pucks when my fresh scrambled eggs have been good enough for sixty years, but because they’re the only thing he wants anymore, we now have three boxes wedged in the freezer door. A pair of headlights streak past the window, and I crane my neck to watch the neighbor boy, Calvin, swing his truck around by the barn. He must notice the kitchen light on because he waves before climbing up the old John Deere combine and disappearing into the fields.

As my toe taps along with the timer on the toaster, I catch my warped reflection in the microwave door above the stove. Darker versions of my green eyes roam over the wrinkles crisscrossing my forehead, framing my mouth. My thin white ringlets feel like carded wool when I reach up to smooth out the same bangs I’ve cut myself since 1952. I swallow a laugh at the memory of that first day of high school. My mother and I had both known that I needed to look my best — we just had different ideas of what that meant. She’d already pinned back my rag-rolled curls, but I couldn’t take the way they all clung to the back of my neck in the humidity, and I thought just a trim wouldn’t be so hard. And bangs, of course. By the shade of Mother’s face when she found all the hair on the bathroom floor and the jagged remnants left on my head, I thought steam was about to come pouring out of her ears. Still, I marched proudly out to the bus with the scissors tucked in the waistband of my skirt. I could hear her yelling all the way down the gravel driveway, but I liked the curls cradling my ears, and how the fringe on my forehead fluttered like cornstalks swaying on the side of the road. And, frankly, if it hadn’t been for my wild hair, I might not have caught the eye of the handsome junior slouching behind the bus driver.

​

I waddled down the aisle as the bus lurched forward and found an empty spot across from my girlfriend Dot, but instead of saying hello, she just giggled behind her freckled hands. Leaning across the gap, she nodded towards a head peeking out of the front row and swore that that boy’s eyes had stuck to me like a tick the second I got on, and didn’t I notice? and didn’t I know who he was? Apparently, his name was Jack Doyle, a friend of Dot’s older brother, but more importantly — according to Dot — every girl was just itching to go out with a charmer like him. I rolled my eyes, but she was convinced that he’d be on my arm by the end of the week. Apparently, he was, too, because as soon as my foot hit the sidewalk, Jack sidled right up next to me and asked for my name. My friends called me “Bee,” but he wasn’t one of them, so I told him he could call me Beverly. He wanted to know if he could call me his girl, confidently ran a hand through his slick, combed blond hair, but I marched toward the school and insisted with my head held high that “Bev” would do just fine, thank you — take it or leave it.

After a couple weeks of Jack carrying my books to class, slipping his letterman over my shoulders when it rained, and escorting me home after the football games, I was beginning to think that maybe being “his girl” didn’t sound so bad after all. So when I got on the bus one day only to feel a tug on my sleeve, I let him pull me into the seat beside him. That’s when he asked if I’d go steady. I told him I thought he was crazy, and he said maybe so, but he swore the way I strolled down the lane that first day, I could have strutted straight out of Vogue and set fire to it on the way out. His nervous smile, thumb dancing across the back of my knuckles, burned away the butterflies in my throat. I stared into his steel blue eyes and realized I never wanted to look away again.

Four homecomings, a couple spring formals, and one special visit to my father later, I walked across the gymnasium with a diploma in one hand and a diamond on the other.

Jack’s labored coughing yanks me back, and I quickly pop the blueberry waffles onto his plate as he shuffles into the kitchen. The stains in the knees of his favorite jeans still smell like grease no matter how many times I scrub them, but at least his “Ag in the Classroom” t-shirt is clean. Faded from the sun, but clean. He grunts as he lowers himself into a chair that protests when he pulls himself as close to the table as his round belly will allow.

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Staring down at the steaming waffles, he mutters, “Throat’s dry.”

I hurry to the fridge, fill a glass with orange juice — careful not to catch any pulp — and toss in a metal straw. Setting the drink in front of him, I step back to watch him concentrate on wrapping his hand, permanently frozen into a claw from arthritis, around the cup. His movements are slow, calculated as a surgeon’s, but as he tries to tilt his palm just right, the glass slips and spills across the vinyl tablecloth.

His voice is still gruff with sleep when he yells to hear himself over his hearing aid, “Bev . . . ?”

I’m wiping up the juice with a dish towel before he can even finish.

“Thank you. Are the meds ready yet?”

“Dr. Bitale hasn’t called, no.”

“But my foot is—”

“We can elevate it while you’re eating,” I sigh.

​

After wrangling up a few couch pillows, I pile them under the table, gently rest his leg on top, and grip the edge of his chair to climb back off the floor. He nudges my arm.