Page 57 of Good Days Bad Days

Charlie

Present Day

The red neon “Open” sign is lit up in the window of Ike’s Diner.

It looks untouched, like it could be part of a movie set, and Betty seems to recognize it immediately.

We rolled up the windows after a few minutes of singing and driving, the chill getting to Betty, though she didn’t seem to realize it, her fingers turning a little blue, jaw chattering.

We’ve had the heat pumping since, and after using a small brush from Olivia’s bag, Betty seems ready for the visit to the café her mind hadn’t let go of.

It takes both Olivia and me to help Betty out of the low back seat, but her physical limitations don’t dampen her excitement.

If she could run, she’d sprint to the diner’s door.

It’s like this is the first thing that’s made sense to her confused mind in a long time.

At the curb, we have to remind her to lift her feet one at a time to climb up the edge.

Initially I thought the hour-long drive would be the biggest obstacle, but the walk from the car to the restaurant is proving far more challenging. It takes a full fifteen minutes to get to the chrome-and-glass entry of Ike’s Diner.

Inside, the establishment’s age is apparent: cracked floor tiles, booths with taped vinyl seats, and one topless stool with a handwritten cardboard sign saying “Broken” in wobbly black letters.

A flat-screen TV in the corner over the counter displays a local news station.

The neon lights that run around the perimeter of the diner are mostly intact, although the line nearest the painted crimson kitchen doors flickers as if it’s on its last leg.

The smell of chicken soup mixes with the sour scent of old fryer oil, making me both hungry and nauseous.

The diner was far more magical in my imagination, like the soda shop scene from Back to the Future. A middle-aged waitress shouts to us from behind the counter to take any seat as she collects plastic menus from the side of the gray cash register. I scan the tables. They’re all open.

Olivia excuses herself to use the bathroom.

“Where would you like to sit?” I ask Betty, checking her reaction to the underwhelming scene. I expected disappointment, but instead, she lets go of my arm and takes several solo steps, holding up her finger like she’s counting.

“This is Ike’s?” she asks.

“Yeah, it is.”

She looks first at the entrance, then the booths and the counter, and then finally lands on a booth in the back corner. She lets out a little breath and smiles.

“Over here,” she says, walking in the direction she’s pointing, folding into a clumsy crouch when she reaches the table. I sprint across the room to catch her before she lands on the floor.

“Whoa, there, missy. You almost missed.” The waitress, whose name tag reads “Taylor,” swoops in to offer help. She’s dressed in blue jeans, an oversized white T-shirt, and a red apron with “IKE’S” printed in white lettering. She tucks a pen behind her ear and tosses the menus onto the table.

“Thank you. I think we’re all right,” I say, helping Betty move away from the edge of the vinyl bench seat to avoid any further risk of falling.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Betty mutters, and I sit next to her as a human guardrail. Back from the restroom, Olivia settles across the table, claiming one of the plastic-coated menus for herself.

“I’ll grab you all some water and utensils, give you some time to look at the options.”

“I don’t need it,” Betty says, shoving her menu away. “I’ll have a number two with coffee instead of a Coke and a baked potato instead of fries.” The order spills out of her like a line from a script, and Olivia looks at me with raised eyebrows.

“A number two is . . .” Olivia says, projecting her voice as she reviews the interior of her open menu, “country fried chicken steak. Does that sound right?”

Betty’s nose crumples, making it clear that’s not the number two she remembers. “No, no. It’s a turkey on rye, and I’ll have the soup of the day, please. They have the best soup here.”

“It’s chicken and wild rice today, if that’s all right.”

“Oh, yes. One of my favorites.”

“Sounds like you’ve been here before,” Taylor says to Betty with a patient grin that I appreciate. I glance at the menu, my nerves masking my appetite.

“I have.”

“She’s been asking to visit every day for a week. She used to work around here. We thought it’d be a nice girls’ day,” Olivia explains.

“Oh, yeah? Where did you work?” Taylor asks Betty, but Betty is distracted by straightening the fabric of her skirt.

“I have a new dress.” Betty smooths her long baby-pink skirt over her legs. Taylor tells her how nice she looks, and I answer her question.

“A small television studio. It was in the old bank down the street.”

“WQRX?” Taylor spouts the call letters like it’s nothing, and the fact-finding part of my mind lights up.

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Of course I have. It was on in here nonstop when I was a kid.” She pats her chest, making her name tag wobble.

“My grandpa is Ike. I think the studio was bought out in the eighties and moved to Madison or something. Some of the crew over there were regulars. That’s how my mom met my stepdad, actually. ”

“Your stepdad also worked at WQRX?” I ask, putting down my menu.

“Yeah. Back in the seventies. My stepdad, Mark, opened a car wash in ’81, but we used to have some of their autographed pictures on our wall. But I . . .” She hesitates and then admits, looking a bit bashful, “I took them down when he passed and Mom moved to Tampa with my sister.”

“Makes sense,” I say, after giving a few courteous condolences, remembering what people used to tell me when they thought my parents were both deceased.

“She was on a Martha Stewart kind of show. The . . . something . . . Homemaker,” Olivia says, passing Betty a brush, which she drags through the ends of her short hairdo, oblivious to the conversation about her.

“The Classy Homemaker,” I fill in.

“I totally remember that show, but I heard . . .” Taylor glances at Betty and then back at Olivia and me like she’s trying to decide if she should say something else. “She’s your mom?”

“Yeah. I’m Charlie, this is my daughter, Olivia, and this is Betty,” I say officially. Taylor takes us all in, sweeping her gaze around the table twice before speaking again.

“Never mind. I think I’m confused.” She scribbles something on her pad and gives a tight, fake smile. “I’ll get those waters and that coffee.” She starts to walk away, but I leap out of my spot, following her fluorescent gym shoes to the counter.

“Wait. What did you hear?” I ask, after adding two more turkey on ryes to our order.

“Nothing. Just gossip,” Taylor says, setting out a coffee cup and saucer and grabbing the half-empty pot of coffee from the warmer. She seems uncomfortable, but the part of me that’s been chasing Betty Laramie’s ghost is begging me to keep pushing. Just a little. What could it hurt?

“I don’t mind gossip,” I say, leaning against the counter.

“I mean—you don’t already know?”

“Nope. I left home when I was pretty young and now my mom’s memory is bad. I promise you won’t offend me,” I say like we’re having some casual girl talk.

The pot’s glass clanks as she returns it to the warming plate. She sighs and puts her hands on the linoleum on either side of the steaming cup.

“When I took down the pictures before Mom moved away, she showed me your mom’s picture, asking if I remembered her show, which, of course, I did.

” She slides the coffee in front of me. “She told me the show was canceled ’cause something crazy happened with her house and .

. .” I hold my breath, wondering if my mother’s hoarding started so long ago, perhaps it was discovered and discredited her title of Classy Homemaker.

“I’m sure it’s mean talk, jealous people. ”

She puts three cups of soup on a tray and stops in front of me to grab the coffee. I look at her with raised eyebrows, my need to know the decades-old rumor intensifying.

“Fine,” she says. “People said she lost her mind and killed her husband and daughter. She was never arrested, but . . .” Taylor shrugs. “It kinda ruined her TV career.” She picks up the loaded tray. “But it can’t be true ’cause”—she tips her head to me and Olivia—“you don’t look so dead.”

Taylor sways to the corner booth, leaving me frozen next to the broken stool with the cardboard sign, my mouth suddenly sticky and dry. Killed. Husband. Daughter. Not dead.

It wasn’t the gossip I expected, and the words don’t make sense.

Killed. Betty Laramie may not have been a perfect mother, but she never laid a finger on me.

And my father—she may have buried him alive with her belongings, but she also kissed the nape of his neck when she thought I wasn’t watching, dreamily listened to him play the grand piano in the back room of Time and Again as though he was a virtuoso, made sure a hot dinner waited for him on the table every night and that his clothes were clean and pressed no matter the state of the rest of the home.

My mother was mentally ill, but a murderer?

As I quickly type a message to Cam, filling him in on the gossip, certain words stand out to me.

Husband. Until three days ago, I had no idea my mother had a first husband. Cam found the marriage license. Dad said he’d died tragically.

Daughter. I always wanted a sister or brother, someone to play with, to share the responsibility of being Betty’s child. Though I haven’t considered myself her daughter in a long time, I am Betty Laramie’s only daughter, or so I thought.

Not dead. Nope, I’m definitely not dead, so much so that I’ve passed Betty’s genes to my daughter, who sits with her grandmother, sipping on soup and checking my position across the room. When Taylor slips back into the kitchen, I hit send on my text and return to the table.

“Careful. The soup is hot—” Olivia starts to say, but I talk directly to Betty, sitting beside her in the red vinyl booth.

“Mom,” I say in a steady voice, trying to remain calm. “Do I have a sister?”

Olivia looks at me, confused.

“What?” Betty asks, like I’ve snapped her out of a trance. “Who are you?”

“Did you have any children with . . .” I search for the name my father said, the one Cam told me over the phone. “Don. Did you have any kids with Don?”

“Mom, what are you talking about?” Olivia says, a line forming between her eyebrows. I don’t let her question distract me.

“Did you have a baby with your first husband? Don.”

“Don?” she says. It seems like she recognizes his name and my curiosity swells.

“Yes, Don. Your first husband.” I push a little.

I know I’m breaking the deal I made with my dad but I can’t stop myself.

When I found out she was a Playboy Bunny, I let it go.

When I found out she was on a whole-ass TV show and wrote a book, I let it go.

When I found out she was married before, I let it go. But a sister? I can’t let that go.

The bell above the door rings. Betty’s eyes dart to the entrance as a family of three—husband, wife, and their teenage son—walks into the diner.

“He’s always late,” she says, disappointment abundant in her voice.

“Who’s late?”

“My husband,” she says. I lean in. “He’s late. He’s always late. I call and call and call, and he never comes home.”

“Don?” I ask, encouraging her to provide more details.

“It’s a girls’ day today,” Olivia says sweetly, doing a better job at noticing Betty’s growing agitation than my tunnel vision allows. “No husband talk.”

“He’s supposed to call when he’s late. Where is he?

Doesn’t he know I’m home all day with the baby?

” Betty’s temper flares as she pounds against the table, and I see the outrage of her motherhood years rise in her body, her shoulders tossed back like they carry the weight of the world.

And as always, when the mother version of Betty returns, so does the hurt child inside of me, only adding to my already heightened emotional state.

“What’s your baby’s name?” I ask, convinced she’s on the verge of telling me. A sister. Can I possibly have a sister?

Olivia talks over me, opening a packet of crackers.

“Mom. Stop. I think her blood sugar might be crashing.” She offers Betty a packet of saltines, which she bats away, sending them flying across the room, and that’s all I need to snap me out of my line of questioning.

Betty’s not okay. She’s agitated and disassociated from reality. This isn’t just blood sugar. She’s spiraling.

“Betty,” I say, reaching for her shoulder. At my touch she lets out a blood-curdling scream.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch my baby,” she wails, swatting at Olivia and me as though we’re kidnappers holding her at gunpoint with zip ties and duct tape at the ready.

In her frenzy, Betty sweeps the plates and bowls off the table.

The boiling hot soup and coffee splatter onto her hands and spill onto her lap, eliciting an ear-piercing scream.

I reach out to stop the spill, my forearm catching on a jagged edge of the table.

Olivia, who escaped the flood of hot liquid, pulls me out of the booth, and I notice my own hands are covered in red welts and small white pustules that grow as I stare at them.

Blood pours down my arm from a deep gash and my head spins. The room grows blurry.

“Hot! Hot!” Betty cries as Olivia and Taylor help her out from behind the table. Her new pink dress is soaked with yellow and brown splotches. I can only imagine the vulnerable skin underneath, remembering how easily her flesh tore when she grew frantic in the courtyard.

“Take it off. You have to take it off,” I say, lurching forward to unfasten the buttons running down the front of the garment, when a nice woman from another table holds me back, wrapping my hands in cool, wet rags.

“Tim’s an EMT,” she says, referencing the tall, middle-aged man she’d walked in with, encouraging me to sit down. Tim speaks calmly to Betty, who is still screaming.

Taylor emerges from the kitchen, carrying pitchers of ice water with a phone pressed to her ear.

Tim’s partner introduces herself and asks if there’s anyone she can call to help us.

Taylor retrieves my phone, dries it off as best she can, and holds the screen for Face ID.

The lock screen shows a picture of me, Ian, Olivia, and the boys on the beach, taken during our last family vacation.

“Oh, my God, I knew you looked familiar,” she says as sirens wail, mingling with the heartbreaking sound of my mom’s cries.