I Thought Love Had to Be Earned Through Chores, They Hugged Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Hundred Plates

Her father washes dishes beside her at midnight and sees Odette lift a tray with the wrist she 'sprained', and Minnie admits she already called Miss Noreen to report her new address.

Wesley didn't answer me.

He turned around and walked out of the ballroom.

So I took that as a yes.

The hotel dish room was in the basement, past the laundry.

It had a three-bay sink, a conveyor machine that wasn't running and a mountain of plates that went up past my head.

The night crew had been sent home early for the party.

That was fine. Nobody to get in my way.

I filled the first bay with water so hot it fogged the air, rolled the uniform sleeves to my shoulders and started.

Scrape. Soak. Scrub. Rinse. Rack.

By plate eighty my arms had found the rhythm.

By plate a hundred and forty, somebody was standing in the doorway.

My father.

He'd taken off his jacket and his tie.

He didn't say anything about the house, or bed, or that I didn't have to.

He just walked to the second bay, looked at it, and pushed his sleeves up.

"Show me."

I looked at his hands.

They were big and clean, with a gold watch on one wrist.

"Take the watch off," I said. "Soap gets in the band and it'll smell forever."

He took it off and put it in his pocket.

I gave him the rinse bay because it's the easiest.

He was terrible.

He held each plate, and he rinsed the front and forgot the back.

"Back too," I said.

"Right."

"And the rim. The rim's where the lipstick goes."

"There's a system to this."

"There's a system to everything, Mr. Westbrook."

He stopped with a plate in his hand.

"You could call me Dad."

"Is that extra?"

He looked down at the water for a while.

"No," he said. "That one's free."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I passed him the next plate.

We worked.

The machine in the corner hummed with nothing in it.

After a while he said, "Where did you learn to fix a breaker?"

"Online. The diner had a computer in the office. I did the courses at night, after close."

"Why?"

"In case I got sent back without notice." I scrubbed a gravy ring. "If you have certificates, someone always wants you."

He didn't answer.

When I looked over, he had stopped rinsing.

He was holding the edge of the sink with both hands.

I thought he was tired, so I told him to sit down on a milk crate and I'd take his bay too.

He didn't sit.

He picked up the next plate and rinsed the back of it first.

At about plate two hundred the door swung open again.

Odette came in, in a fresh white dress with no sauce on it.

"Dad! There you are. Mom's asking for you."

She looked at the dish mountain, then at me.

"Oh, Minnie. Let me help."

She went straight to a stack of clean plates on a tray, lifted the whole thing with her right hand and carried it to the shelf.

The right hand.

The wrist she'd held to her chest an hour ago, crying.

My father watched her set the tray down.

He didn't say anything.

But he looked at the tray, and then at her wrist, and then at the tray again.

Odette saw him looking.

She dropped her hand to her side and gave a little gasp.

"Ow. Oh, I forgot. It still hurts so much."

"Go upstairs, Odette," he said. "Tell your mother I'll be up soon."

She left.

She didn't say good night to me.

I didn't mind that either.

I started on the glasses, which take the longest.

"You should probably know," I told him, "Miss Noreen's going to want her cut."

He turned off his tap.

"Who's Miss Noreen?"

"The lady with my papers." I held a wine glass to the light to check for spots. "Whoever I work for, she gets a cut. She always gets her cut. Last time it was a hundred and fifty a month."

Behind us, something shattered.

Odette was back in the doorway, my father's jacket over her arm.

A water glass she'd picked up from the clean rack lay in pieces at her feet.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "Slippery. I came back for Dad's coat."

She was looking at me.

Not at the glass.

At me.

I got the dustpan.

When she was gone, my father sat down on the milk crate after all.

He sat there stunned, pale under the kitchen lights.

"Minnie. This woman. Noreen. Does she know where you are?"

"Of course."

"How?"

I swept the last of the glass into the pan.

"I told her. I called from the front desk before the banquet. You have to report your new address in the first twenty-four hours."

His face went gray under the fluorescent light.

"You told her where you are."

"I always do. It's the rule," I said. "If you don't call her, she comes anyway."

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