The Waitress Said 'Come See Me'

My friends spend altogether too much time reminiscing.  It seemed okay during the pandemic, when we'd call one another and just float time like a newspaper boat in a pond; but now it seems to waste precious moments we could be putting to use-- to age us.

Occasionally my son likes to see old photos of the Manhattan he recalls.  He's still young, so it's not as depressing when we share memories. He thinks he recalls subway tokens-- and I go on about the price of things on old menus and window-displays.  I remember when bus fare was increased to 35 cents.  You needed to come up with that extra dime to throw in the till.  

My first real post-college job was a gallery on 69th Street off Madison.  Every morning I'd buy a coffee and a buttered roll for exactly 35 cents.  I began to walk... to use my bus fare for breakfast. Inside at work we'd all sit and gab about the night before-- the 70's were exciting times in the city-- music, new restaurants... everyone seemed to know where everyone was.  The art shows that changed monthly-- we could cover most of them in a week on our lunch hour-- Castelli, Schoelkopf, Wildenstein, Knoedler, Martha Jackson.

I came back to New York post-college, to pursue a career in art restoration.  I'd worked hard to qualify for an exclusive dual-doctorate program affiliated with the Metropolitan Museum.  Just acceptance here was like an award.  I managed to score a house-sitting gig on the upper east side that first fall... I'd walk across 79th Street mornings and I'd pass this diner-- the kind you saw everywhere in those days, that no longer exist.  I'd look in and see the waitress in her pink dress and her white apron going from table to table with the glass coffeepot, refilling the cups of mostly businessmen with open newspapers and an egg-plate pushed to the side. I'd stare in at this waitress with her hair in a French knot, her efficient white shoes and her white-stockinged legs, like a nurse.  

Meanwhile my brain was memorizing images from 17th-century paintings, and Cathedral details from the Medieval Architecture course.  I was deciphering formulae for the sciences of pigment analysis, X-ray spectroscopy and varnish-removal-- examining textiles and canvas weaves-- identifying geographic provenance from materials... distinguishing forgeries and re-paints from the authentic object.  This fascinated me.  

But more and more I thought about the waitress.  I'd stop behind a telephone pole and watch her through the glass-- her every move and her signature gestures.  I began to envy her, as though my then-boyfriend was her admirer.  Her life-- it was so simple.  I was so broke-- picking up extra jobs, baby-sitting at night, living on cheap supermarket past-sell-date items... walking, borrowing books.  But the waitress--- her apron pocket full of change, she could break-- fix herself an egg-salad sandwich on rye toast (whisky down), smoke a few cigarettes with her coffee, read one of the tabloids a customer had left.  And then she could go home where I imagined she had a neat little studio, maybe a cat-- a plant, curtains.  She could do her nails and watch TV all night-- or meet someone for a drink.  

The academic soup of my life began to sour.  All that work-- four more years after eight intensive undergraduate semesters where I grew and learned and produced.  I couldn't quite imagine myself at the end of the road, applying for a museum position-- spending a decade on a single Rembrandt painting-- analyzing, cleaning, in-painting, repairing.  Who was I, I wondered, with this calling, to examine paintings, to fix things as though I were a doctor-- things that were dead, things that maybe were better off left alone, as they were?  

On the other hand, the waitress served people-- lonely men with bored wives who no longer fixed their breakfast-- single bachelors whose newspaper time before work was the best part of the day-- where for less than a dollar they'd be served exactly what they ordered-- eggs over easy or sunnyside-up, with buttered toast and that wonderful bottomless cup of coffee that washed it down. A quarter for the waitress who provided exactly what they needed.  

My boyfriend at the time was a guitar player.  He worked clubs late hours; I tried to be there, but my class schedule was demanding and a sleep-deprived mind was noticeably inefficient.  On weekends I'd hang out late; after gigs we'd go eat at a diner.  The waitresses flirted with the musicians... at 4 AM it was mostly bands, bartenders... a few drunk party-goers... but the waitresses were like 'home' to these guys. They welcomed them, brought them food, ashtrays, coffee refills.  One in particular was so beautiful... she slipped my boyfriend a note with her phone number.  I found it in his pocket.  She made silver jewelry in her spare time. She looked like Dylan's Susan... the perfect Greenwich Village silhouette.  Downtown girls could wear jeans with their white shirts... they looked good. They were mostly kind to me, except one who had actually slept with my boyfriend.  I tried not to be jealous.

It wasn't exactly the person, it was the simple symmetry of their life. They served, they laughed and talked, they smoked during breaks, they went home with full pockets.  They shared shifts and gossip. They slept all day and woke up to work, like the musicians.  How many songwriters have written odes to them, how many poets-- me included? 

Waitressing doesn't seem to have the romance it did in those days-- when it was like a template for something.  My morning trips past the diner haunted me beyond what was rational; I took a leave from graduate school, and never really regretted.  When I started playing bass in bands, I referred to my gallery job as my 'waitress' gig.  It enabled me to do what I needed to do at night where my life seemed to make sense.

Years later, as a young mother, I spent early mornings with the baby in a local diner, lingering over the breakfast special and looking wistfully at the passing cars. There was a career-waitress there who sat with me during breaks-- she had the deep voice of a chain-smoker and the hard 'r's of a New York accent. Cawfee, she said, and entered soprano-range when she cooed over my son.  I loved her; I trusted her even though she had terrible boyfriends who stole from her and abused her.  She didn't even make it to middle age; she got a brain tumor and suffered.  All those people she served and cared for, smiled at and nicknamed... they disappeared like a pack of cigarettes.  Her drug-addict boyfriend kept her rent-controlled studio for a time.  I saw him pan-handling one afternoon and choked back the urge to smack him.

There should be, among the city statues and landmarks, a waitress figure-- a woman with her hair in a ponytail, or a net-- an apron, a pad and pencil... a menu.  The real symbol of diner-lore, of the city... the person we've sung about and chatted up, the one who changed my life even though I never even spoke to her... who showed me maybe not the path to what I was to become, but the reality of what I was not.