Colin Bishoff
Waffle House
This is the story of how a Waffle House saved my marriage. Sort of.
It’s never easy being married to an academic. Get hitched to a tenured math professor while you’re still teaching Gatsby and Julius Caesar to high-schoolers and you can double that bet. I guess I knew that before I married Jessica, but knowing didn’t make things any easier when our vows began to crack.
In our twenties, it wasn’t so bad. We bounced around college towns across the Southeast, finally landing in a mid-sized town in southern Georgia. At parties, I became the token professor’s spouse. I’d get a nice meal, share a few cocktails, then fend off the inevitable questions of “what do you do” with assurances that I was quite happy as the steward of the five-paragraph essay and AP lit exam, thank you very much. Quite happy to take charge of after-school study hall while Jessica led faculty meetings and developed her CV. I started drinking not because I was bored, but because I was lonely.
By the time my principal called me into his office and requested I take some time off—for my health, he said—the rest of the faculty had taken to avoiding me as if they were afraid I’d keel over and explode while trying to diagram a sentence. I wasn’t a ticking time bomb. I was a goddamned Molotov cocktail.
My first weeks at home, I felt pretty indifferent about the whole thing. I checked email and graded papers. I even wrote a couple poems. Blame it on the writer every English teacher thinks he’s got in him. From Faulkner to Fitzgerald, Carver, to Cheever, every one of those sons of bitches drank like fish. I figured as long as I eased up a bit and stayed afloat, I’d be no different. I’d earned my master’s degree while teaching full time, had taught AP classes for three years, and knew twentieth-century literature like I’d lived through the entire thing instead of just the last two decades of it. Once everything blew over, I’d land right back where I’d been before: teaching impressionable young minds to appreciate the genius lyricism of modernism and the jazz age.
Jessica had different ideas. The first thing she said the night she kicked me out was that she’d set up a dating profile. That was news. Last I’d heard, online hookups signified everything that was wrong with the twenty-first century. The second was that she wanted me out of our condo by the weekend. It was Thursday. From what the news anchor was saying about the tropical storm blowing up from Florida, there was no guarantee there’d be a weekend left. I told Jessica as much around the time she poured my last bottle of scotch down the kitchen sink. Johnnie Walker Black: expensive. The next thing I saw was my bottle collection smashed to pieces on the linoleum. My record cabinet went next, all my Zeppelins and Sabbaths and Stones and UFOs flying like saucers out the window. My dignity took the next hit, and after that, my jaw. The rain had only just started when I grabbed my briefcase, climbed into my red Nissan Frontier, and headed south on Route 300.
Two hours later, I was driving down a river. I’d never seen so much water. Back when we could still laugh about my drinking, Jessica’d told me that if I kept it up, I’d grow gills. If only. As soon as the fishtailing started, I latched onto the first glowing thing I saw: a Waffle House sign, like a beacon in the storm.
I took a booth in the corner near the restrooms. A stocky waitress with a buzz cut and neck tattoos and a pimpled griddle cook who looked younger than my freshmen glared at me from behind the register. Graveyard shift: all I needed was a coffin. The only other customer was a small, balding man in a blue sweater vest and plaid bow tie who stood beside the jukebox with a newspaper and roll of quarters in his hand. Music crackled as he sat down on one of the stools. I recognized “Hotel California” by The Eagles.
I ordered coffee and watched the waitress scribble my order on a pink notepad. When she walked back to the kitchen, I became transfixed by a sweat stain on the back of her smock. For some reason, the stain bugged me. How long had it been there? A long time, probably. Maybe forever.
The view from my window wasn’t much better: all black clouds and dizzy lights where the streetlamps fuzzed in the raindrops. I checked the weather on my phone and put my head down in disgust: it was raining Genesis all the way to Atlanta. Through the gloom, I studied the outline of my truck beneath the sign and hoped the windows wouldn’t leak. I’d had that truck since high school. I’d have sold my soul before buying a new one.
I spent a good half hour grading some old papers I found in my briefcase, taking perverse pleasure scribbling red markings over each page, then started an apology letter to Jessica. The news about the dating app still bothered me. How long had she had a profile? Had she already met someone else? I tightened my jaw and stared into the dark parking lot. Fuck it.
When the waitress returned, I drained the sour dregs of my coffee and ordered an All-Star Special. Though I hadn’t realized I was hungry, the smells of grease and waffles and sizzling onions had awakened an animal in my belly I now struggled to tame. I tried and failed to remember my last full meal. Shortly thereafter, the ink in my pen ran out. I searched my briefcase for a spare and, not finding one, eyed the man with the newspaper. All night, he’d kept up a steady stream of hits—Jimmi Hendrix, Boston, Queen—and now hunched over his newspaper with a pencil in his hand. I hesitated, then walked over.
“Uh, hi,” I said, watching him scribble an answer into the crossword he was working on. He’d almost finished it. I summoned a smile. “You wouldn’t have an extra pencil, would you?”
He lowered the paper and stared at me. He had a long nose and large eyes that seemed too far apart, like a bird’s. An unclean smell I couldn’t put a name to—a mélange of ancient sweat and motor oil and tobacco—emanated from him. Wordlessly, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a yellow pencil with the eraser chewed off.
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for the pencil. He offered his hand instead.
“I’m Charlie.”
“Marshall.” I shook reluctantly. His fingers were cold, arthritic, and covered in coarse, black hairs.
He released me and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Storm’s one filthy motherfucker, huh?”
“Yes,” I said, too surprised to say anything else. “Yes, it is.”
The waitress arrived with a gap-toothed smile. “Here’s your All-Star, hon,” she said, setting down the plates. The smell of fried meat and sight of the food spilling across two plates turned my stomach: eggs, raisin toast, grits, bacon, a waffle. A mug of coffee and a tall glass of orange juice followed.
Charlie whistled. “Breakfast of champions, right there. Think a featherweight like you can handle all that?”
“I’ll manage,” I said. I’d been a runner in high school, and though I hadn’t maintained my fitness well in recent years, I’d retained something of a runner’s body. A flabby one. Jessica, a former gymnast, used to tell me I looked like a scarecrow. I buried the memory behind a forkful of eggs. The grease settled like a warm blanket over my stomach.
Charlie thumped the countertop. “Worst goddamned storm I’ve seen in my life,” he said. “And you know”—he poked my shoulder—“a lifetime’s longer than you think.”
“Sorry?” I choked down a mouthful of toast and rubbed my shoulder resentfully.
“Time,” Charlie said. “When shit happens, time slows down. Like a car accident. Or purgatory.”
“Never thought of it that way.” I crammed down more toast and poured syrup onto my waffle. In the same moment, I saw an image of myself sitting at the kitchen table grading papers between shots of Johnnie Walker. Instead of music, I heard Jessica’s sobbing. With a gulp of coffee, I suppressed the image. “I don’t believe in hell,” I said. “Or purgatory.”
“Different things,” Charlie said. He smiled, his forehead creased with wrinkles. “Care for a smoke?”
I pointed at the “No Smoking” sign on the door. Was he for real?
Charlie laughed. “Look around,” he said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “No one will kick us out.” I followed the motion of his hand. He was probably right. The waitress stood in her corner with her back pressed against a cabinet, staring into space. Nearby, the griddle cook sat on a stool with his phone out and sipped from a glass of chocolate milk. Charlie smiled at me and reached inside his sweater. One by one, he removed a leather pouch, a pack of thin white cigarette papers, and a brass Zippo.
“You make your own?” I asked, curious but cautious. I’d smoked Pall-Malls before I got married. I hadn’t been looking to start again.
“Can’t stand the store brands,” Charlie said. He pressed a wad of tobacco into one of the papers and rolled it through his fingers, then licked along the crease and rolled up again to seal it.
“No filter?”
“These don’t give you cancer.” Charlie winked and offered the cigarette.
I stared for a long time before taking it. “Thanks,” I said, holding up the cigarette for Charlie to light. I pressed it to my lips, inhaled, coughed.
“First time?” Charlie asked, rolling another for himself. He lit it but didn’t inhale.
“In a while,” I said. The next puff felt smoother and calmed my nerves. I felt like I was nineteen again. “My wife made me quit.”
“Married, huh? Boy, what a bitch.” Charlie wiggled his fingers at me. No ring. “She’s why you’re here, though, isn’t she?”
“Sorry?” I asked, almost choking on a bite of waffle. I gulped my juice and washed the sticky sweetness down.
“Your wife. She’s the reason you’re sitting here with me at three o’clock in the morning. Or am I wrong?”
“The storm,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “You sure as hell picked the right spot to ride it out. What is it you do?”
“I teach,” I said, loosening my shirt collar. Despite the coolness inside, I felt hot. The damp creases beneath my armpits had nothing to do with the rain.
“Teach what?” Charlie asked, taking no notice of my distress.
“High school English.”
“A bit late for a school night, isn’t it?”
“I was driving.”
“You asked me about rolling my own cigarettes,” Charlie said. He studied his palms. “There’s a reason I do that.”
“Fascinating,” I said. I was beginning to regret leaving my booth. Jessica was better at avoiding these types of conversations. She didn’t bullshit—just spoke her mind.
Charlie poked my shoulder. “Hold up and let me tell you something. I don’t know what you’ve been up to or where you’re going, but I get the sense that there’s more to the story when a man who says he teaches high school shows up at three o’clock in the morning smelling drunker than a skunk and smokes a number with me like he’s got no place in the world to be. I want you to hear me out.”
“I’m busy,” I said, no longer trying to be polite.
“You’re busy.”
“Grading papers.”
“Papers?” Charlie laughed in a way I didn’t like. “Look around, champ. Neither of us is going anywhere. Not for a long time. For all you know, all that puffing you did will put you out until Christmas and you’ll wake up in the gutter with your wallet missing and your hands tied behind your back.” A cold tremor ran through me when I considered that I hadn’t seen him inhale yet. He held the cigarette in front of his face as if to make his point. Finally, he took a puff. “Hear me out.”
Hearing the storm outside, I relented. Maybe thinking about someone else’s problems for a change sounded nice. The lights flickered and thunder grumbled in the distance. “Five minutes,” I said. “After that, I’m going back to my booth.”
“Five minutes?” Charlie studied his fingers as if to divine some mystery in the thick, black hairs. “All the time in the world.”
Charlie ordered more coffee for both of us and cracked his knuckles like a boxer gearing up for a brawl. “Let me go back to the beginning,” he said. “Plain and simple, I roll my own smokes because I watched my daddy do it every day until I was twelve years old. I’d stand at my window and watch him blowing out in the yard: puff, puff, puff, like a goddamned steamboat. My mother never let me within ten feet of him once he lit up, but she never stopped me from watching him roll them out. He had such smooth, brown hands. Not like these old things.” Charlie wiggled his fingers. “It was like poetry. I smoked my first one the day he died.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
“Don’t be. He wasn’t a good person. Gambler. Cards, mostly, but he sometimes bet on boxing matches or football games or horse races. He wasn’t violent. He never laid a finger on my mother and me. But he never gave us a dime, either. If there’s a hell, he’s there.” Charlie studied his hands. “These days, I think this life’s all we got, but back then, the shock of losing him shook the fear of God into me. I believed in…something…for a while. Studied religion. I kept looking for some way to bring him back, always telling myself it was only so I could spit on him and put him back in his grave.” He took a drag on his cigarette.
“Fast forward things a couple of years. I graduated from college in 1972. Maybe I got all the luck my daddy lost because I felt like the most fortunate son of a bitch alive whenever I thought about how my number hadn’t been called. I knew lots of boys who went to war and a few more who did wild things to avoid going. Crippling themselves, for instance.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Maybe I’d have done the same thing myself. But all I could think of when I took my diploma through those arches was that I wanted to find me a job where I’d never have to worry about going to war again. Seminary seemed a good bet.”
“For safety,” I said. It made sense: not everyone wanted to be a hero. Not everyone could be Ernie fucking Hemingway.
“Call it whatever you want. My mother was dead by that time and I’d long since decided religion was bunk, but I’d saved enough money to go to school and needed something to pay the bills. And besides that, I wasn’t finished with my old man. So I started in the divinity school over at Emory, figuring if push came to shove, I’d object to war on religious grounds. I stayed in seminary just long enough to regret it.” He wiggled his fingers again. “I was telling the truth when I told you I don’t know much about being married, champ, but I never said anything about falling in love.”
I stared at my own hands and realized I’d gotten red ink all over them. Jesus. I eyed the bathrooms, not sure I wanted to stay and listen.
Charlie kept going. “I met Martha during my second year, same time she started in the nursing program. To this day, I still believe that she was the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Brown eyes; long, black hair; a bit of a crooked smile that was all the more beautiful because it was human. Back in those days, I was a pretty good-looking man myself if you’ll believe it. I had hair, anyway. What we had was real for a while. Magic. Say what you will about chance, champ, but there was no logic to any of it. She happened to walk by me one day while I was sitting on a bench rolling up a cigarette. Next thing I knew, she was sitting down next to me asking if I wouldn’t mind rolling up another. I could tell right off by her uniform what program she was in, and I told her I’d be right happy to roll her a cigarette except that it was 1973 and I didn’t think nurses were supposed to smoke. She took the cigarette from my hand, puffed on it a little, and said she wasn’t that kind of nurse. Well, you can’t argue with a girl like that, so I did just what she asked me to. I reckon she must’ve seen my bible, because the next thing she said was that she didn’t think preachers were supposed to smoke cigarettes, either. I told her I wasn’t a preacher yet, but if I ever became one, I sure as hell wouldn’t be that kind of preacher.
“Things took off after that. For about a year, we lived in a one-room apartment a few blocks off campus with nothing but a bed, two desks, and a record player. She loved her music, that kid. Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Queen—you put her in a room with a Crosley and the best tracks of some of those cats and she’d have danced right on through the night. Not that there was always time for dancing. Money was tight. School was hard. Her parents were deader than mine. Even in the beginning, some part of me knew it wouldn’t last. Every night as we lay in bed, I swore I’d never let anything happen, that I’d never become my father. And I didn’t. But I couldn’t stop myself from being his son.
“The first time I won money at a card game was after final exams. I was ecstatic. I’d been drunk before. I’d done speed. Hell, I’d even gone bull-riding and was bound and determined to never repeat the experience. Those were nothing compared to what I felt like when I was winning. It was like I was…spitting…on my old man for all he’d never been to me. I’d seen what gambling did to him, but goddammit, I thought I could prove I was better. I don’t need to tell you I thought wrong.
“Martha and I spent Christmas in Savannah. She asked questions, but I just shushed her. Said I’d been saving my change for years, waiting for the chance to do something extraordinary with someone I loved. Such romantic bullshit. It wasn’t until we got back home and I started staying out late on school nights and coming back blue and bloody as a prize-winning turkey that she finally asked me where all our money was going. It was little losses at first, little fires, but pretty soon it seemed like every dollar I earned was going to some junkie or other who didn’t know a hooker from a horseshoe but still played the game better than me.
“Mid spring, she had her breakdown. It must’ve been near Easter because I remember all the goddamn decorations at the hospital. Such beautiful weather, all flowers and new life, but all she would do after she came home was stare at the wall. Every record we had, she broke. Then all we had to listen to was drunk men smashing bottles on our steps. Her grades plummeted. She quit going to classes. And then”—he inhaled deeply from his cigarette—"and then I killed her.”
My throat tightened. I could hear the rain pounding outside. And in the midst of it, I heard sobbing again. “You killed her?”
“I mean it was my fault. I never laid a finger on her, champ—my old man taught me that much—but I chased her to it. There used to be this old bridge near our room where we’d meet some days and walk home together. It was a nice place to just sit. You could stare out at the skyline; count the stars; watch the tail lamps blur with the city lights. I chased her there one night after we’d had a fight. Our worst. It was the only time she got physical, and if it’d gone on any longer”—he paused—“if it’d gone on any longer, I’d have probably hit her, too. I think she realized that.
“To this day, I’ve never seen a human being run so fast, her in that purple night gown that blended with the dark. When I reached the bridge, I found her panting over the guard rail, hair hanging down her face in long, black coils like they were snakes. Even then, she looked beautiful. I’d never seen such a calm night, blue and quiet and filled with starlight and chattering insects. I’d been smoking like my daddy taught me and could taste the tobacco on my breath. When I reached Martha, she pulled away like I was some beast. And when she looked at me…what I saw in her eyes that night was something that should never be on the face of another human being, certainly not someone as beautiful as she was. That look was animal. Disgust. Anguish. Terror. I went for her again, saw her stumble, catch herself, clutch the rail. And then she was gone: a flaw in the guardrail we’d held together a hundred times. Tell me, champ, what are the odds of that? What are the goddamn odds?” He rolled the cigarette between his fingers. “Each fire I light, I light for her sake. Each breath of poison I inhale”—he took a deep, long pull—“is a penance for my soul.”
We didn’t speak for a long time. When I checked my phone, I saw that nearly twenty minutes had passed. My palms were drenched in sweat, the ink from my fingers leaving a red film on the countertop. I felt dizzy. Sick.
“Listen, champ,” Charlie said, startling me. “There’s more than one way to live through hell. Best you learn that.” He put out his cigarette and hopped off his stool. I expected him to go back to the jukebox and was surprised when he walked the other way. Toward my booth.
“Where are you going?” I asked, mostly to myself. I couldn’t take another round of him.
He stopped and faced me with a thin, wrinkled smile. “Going? I’m not going anywhere. But one thing you realize once you live through as many lifetimes as I have is that the old pipes don’t work the way they used to.” He cupped his hand across his genitals. “So if you’ll pardon me—champ—I’d rather not piss all over this floor.”
It was morning before I realized I’d slept. I found myself sitting alone again at my table, my head propped against a stack of papers, not quite remembering how I’d gotten there. Dazedly, I looked around and saw Charlie slouched against the jukebox, a stack of quarters bouncing against his palm. The waitress and griddle cook spoke softly behind the register and polished the countertops. I had a funny taste in my mouth, like tar and syrup and sleep. My head felt like a truck had smashed into it. I massaged my temples and thought about what Charlie had told me. Some story. Someone could make a novel of it. Maybe me. I brushed the crumbs and ashes from my shirt. They sparkled like little fires as they drifted through the air.
I heard thunder in the distance. Though the storm clouds blotted out the stars, I watched the tips of pine trees swaying around the perimeter. I checked my phone: six o’clock. Shit. I had a new day in front of me and had never felt so lonely and bitter about it. I checked my messages and found one Jessica had sent two days ago, telling me not to wait on her for dinner. I wondered if she was up yet, drinking her earl grey, making our bed, collecting whatever bottle fragments she’d missed the previous night. If she’d slept at all, she’d slept better than I had. Her number, when I dialed it, went straight to voicemail. Of course. Sighing, I opened the web browser. Time to start looking for hotels.
I was chatting with the receptionist at a Motel 6 when the music started. I listened for a moment, slowly losing track of the sounds of the rain and the receptionist’s voice. There was something comforting about the tune—something that brought back first fragments, then images, then memories. Slowly, I lowered the phone. I recognized the song.
And then I was in a cornfield east of Athens where Jessica and I had gone for a concert on one of our early dates. I’d parked on the edge of the field so we could watch the concert from the bed of my truck. REM was playing, along with a few other no-name bands lost to time. It was one of these bands I heard playing now: the opener. I could taste the words but couldn’t remember the name of the song. I didn’t need to. That night wasn’t my first concert, and it wasn’t my first time picking corn, but it was my first time getting lost among thick rows of it that towered above my head. It was the first time Jessica and I slept together, too. Not that either of us slept much. We laughed a lot, though. Sweated. All the corn silk sticking to my fingers made it difficult for me to slip into the condom, and I remembered her sitting there and laughing at me the entire time, warning me to hurry up so we wouldn’t get caught. But getting caught was the last thing on my mind. I was too relieved to find out she wasn’t a virgin and scared shitless she’d realize that I was. We were a good quarter of a mile from my pickup when the clouds broke and soaked through the clothing we’d barely put back on. She ran from me when the rain started, and I chased her all the way back to my truck, screaming as we ran. Wet, laughing, spry with sex, we slid into the cab and felt the warm leather sucking at our skin. We shivered so much that I turned the heat on even though it wasn’t cold. All the way back to her dorm, we drank beer and lost religion and ran the lights without ever thinking we would stop. It was past midnight when I dropped her off at her room. It wasn’t until she closed the door and I saw the light click on inside that it occurred to me she’d never been wearing panties or a bra.
The song ended so abruptly I could almost feel the quarters grinding to a halt. I felt as if the walls were spinning. I stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I could hear the rain falling outside. My head pounded with the steady, ceaseless drum.
When I got back to my table, I found the waitress sweeping beside my booth. Through the window, I saw a thin mist creased by starlight falling over the parking lot. My truck remained where I’d parked it—wet but undamaged. The clouds were thinning, and the light shone pinkish gray across the sky.
I stuffed the loose papers into my briefcase, left five dollars on the table, and paid my bill up front. The waitress barely looked up as she printed my receipt. When she turned her back, I saw the grease stain, dark and livid as ever. The griddle kid had fallen asleep, the fuzz on his face a milky shade of brown. Charlie slouched on his stool, his face buried behind the newspaper. A peal of thunder sounded as he flipped the page. Outside, the rain began to fall more heavily. Without another thought, I grabbed my briefcase and went out into the storm.
Later, when the sun appeared, I pulled into our empty driveway and stared through the dark windows of our house. Of course: Jessica would be at work. The storm had broken tree limbs and knocked loose some shutters, but the home was whole. I saw some records in the yard and prayed one or two of them still worked. If not, so be it. There were bigger fires.
I crept through the back door, feeling like a criminal. In the darkness, I found the lights, turned on the record player, and fished a garbage bag from beneath the sink. John Fogarty’s swampy voice filled the space, my CCR record having survived the night, maybe many nights, atop the spindle. “Fortunate Son.” The place smelled of Earl Grey and liquor and something else. Hope, maybe? Fear? Disgust?
I searched for a note from Jessica and, not finding one, told myself to forget about it. Later. Everything else could wait. But for now? I studied the war zone of our kitchen, inhaled the fiery smell of the spilled liquor. For now, this.
Carefully, I knelt on the cool linoleum, grabbed the first bottle round its shattered neck, and dropped it into the bag’s dark, gaping mouth.
Colin Bishoff lives and writes in Hull (basically Athens), Georgia. He has an MFA in fiction writing from Georgia College and State University and is a PhD student in the creative writing program at the University of Georgia. His work has recently appeared in failbetter, Vast Chasm Magazine, the Southern Review of Books, and elsewhere.
