A Fine Place

The square table was set for four. In place of the stiff, wooden chairs that filled the rest of the dining room, four wheelchair-bound men had pushed themselves or been pushed to each spot at the table. My grandmother and I sat at the corners of the table in two of the wooden chairs.


I sat between Pop and a tiny man named Nick who had served in the Navy. I knew about his time in the Navy from the hat he wore and I knew his name from the band on his shrunken wrist, but they had been beaten into my mind by Nick’s faulty one. Every time Nick turned back to his meal, which was often—he was a hearty eater for such a small man—his memory was wiped clean and he met me for the first time when he noticed me again. The two of us had shaken hands and introduced ourselves several times in the past 10 minutes and we’d do it several more before dinner was through.

The man sitting to the left of Nick was bony with cavernous cheeks. He had small, wet eyes that stared hungrily down at his meal, but each time he lifted a hand to his fork, he lost his nerve and the hand dropped back into his lap. Pop wasn’t eating either, but that was different. Pop chose not to eat for reasons the family could only guess at.
Completing the square, to the right my grandmother sat a man with a snow-white bowl cut and a vague, though undeniably serene smile. Had it not been cut into by wrinkles, his face could’ve been an infant’s.

The group sat listening to Nick, the only source of noise in the gloomy dining room, as he addressed me. “New York is a fine place to live, a fine place,” he said. “I used to live there, you know. Brooklyn.”

I actually did know, but I lied and said that was news to me. He nodded sagely, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin, and continued—or restarted. It was hard to tell which.

“I lived in New York—Brooklyn. Fine place to live. They’ve got fine eateries, much better than this joint.” Nick, who seemed to think he was in a restaurant, dismissed the room with a scornful gesture. A passing aide shot him a dirty look. “One diner I remember—had a hamburger tall as you, boy, and you’re pretty tall.”

With that impressive statement, he returned to his meal, which really didn’t look that bad. I voiced my opinion that New York sounded like a great place to live. Nick nodded fervently as he shoveled mashed potatoes down his throat. The man with the cavernous cheeks watched with wistful envy. Pop watched with undisguised hatred.

“It is! New York is a fine city!” responded Nick once his windpipe was clear. “Do you live there?”

I said that I didn’t.

“That’s a shame,” sighed Nick, looking truly regretful at the news. “It’s got great things, New York. But you’ve got to watch out for the women.”

He raised his eyebrows impressively, suggesting that a story was to come. Everyone except for my grandparents leaned closer; my grandmother looked haughtily offended, and Pop still stared at Nick with quivering dislike.

“Well, the women of New York can be put into two different categories: the good girls and the-the—” Nick tapped his knife on the table, struggling to think of the proper term. “The tramps,” he declared, triumphantly spearing a green bean with the tip of his knife. “Those are what you have to watch out for.” He paused, apparently forgetting exactly who had caused him to form such a strong opinion. To make up for the silence, he shoved the bean into his mouth. Everyone at the table relaxed, visibly disappointed.

There was a lull. Nick continued to eat, the conversation already forgotten. The man with the cavernous cheeks started to fidget with his meatloaf, wet eyes wide with inexplicable fear. The man with the bowl cut sat smiling benignly at nothing.
Turning back to me, Nick swallowed the meatloaf and grimaced. “The food here, it’s not great. It’s better than what I got in the Navy, but it’s not like the food in New York. One diner I remember—had a hamburger nigh to your height, boy, and you’re pretty tall.”
I feigned surprise and agreed that it sounded enormous. The man with the cavernous cheeks began to cry silently.
“In fact, I’d say it was nigh to you and your sister stacked on top of each other!” He pointed behind me, and turning, I realized that my mother had entered the room sometime during Nick’s spiel. She smiled tightly and told him that she was my mother, not my sister.
“Mother?” Nick recovered from the shock with admirable speed. “Well you have a beautiful mother and a young one too!”

My mother’s smile became slightly more genuine. She accepted the chair next to Pop offered by my grandmother, who half-ran, relieved, out of the room.

“I lived in New York, you know,” Nick confided to me, a knobby hand shielding our mouths as though he was sharing a terrible secret. To our right, my mother spooned sherbet into Pop’s mouth. It dribbled right back out and down his front, staining his shirt a pale orange. The man with the bowl cut roared with laughter. Noiseless tears raced down the cheeks of the other man. And Nick chattered on, oblivious to it all.

“Brooklyn, in fact. It’s a fine place to live, with fine eateries, but you’ve got to watch out for—”

“The women?” I suggested.

Nick was delighted.

My mother had abandoned all attempts at feeding Pop and stood up, preparing to wheel him back to his room. “Say goodbye to your friends, Daddy,” she said hopefully. Pop looked outraged at the mere thought. She gave that up too and carted him from the table. Nick watched them go, something like nostalgia in his eyes.

I thanked Nick for the conversation. Standing up, I said goodbye to him and nodded to the other men, one still chuckling and the other still crying over his dinner.

I had nearly reached the entrance, where my mother stood waiting with Pop, when Nick called me back. When I got close, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me down to his level. “That’s a beautiful wife you have,” he whispered, pointing at my mother. His voice took on a husky tone, and now his eyes shone with tears too. “She seems like a good girl. Don’t let her get away.”