BREAKFAST
by
Nancy Allan
I ran into George Lunday last week at the hardware store. He looked terrible. I’ve known George and Charlotte
for 40 years, and Charlotte always kept him looking like a million bucks.
But now George looked haggard, and his clothes looked like they hadn’t seen a washer or an iron in a long
time. I heard gossip around town that there was a problem at the farm, but I don’t stick my nose in unless
somebody asks me to. So as not to embarrass George, I took a right into the plumbing aisle when I saw him
over in the paint department. But he caught up with me over near the faucet display.
“Can you come out to the farm for breakfast?” he asked, sort of desperate like.
“You mean this morning?” I said. “Right now, if you can,” he said, and I nodded.
“I’ll get my shopping done here on my way back. Do you have what you want?” I asked.
“I’m just killing time,” he said.
The ride out to the farm took about 15 minutes. I followed George. It struck me right away something was
wrong. Charlotte always had the yard looking special. She had an old fashioned flower garden around the front
of the house, and roses climbed up the side. But the flower beds were choked with weeds, and the roses
looked shabby.
Charlotte usually had something special hanging on the door, too. George used to laugh at the May baskets,
Indian corn, garlands and wreaths, and once a heart made of wood she had painted blue with little flowers.
George had hooted.
“Hey, Lady. Hearts are red. Boy, what a character,” he had laughed.
I parked my pickup behind George’s old truck. He had a real nice car, only a year old that he was proud of. He
wouldn’t even let Charlotte drive it, so when she went over to Maryville to volunteer at the nursing home she had
to drive the old truck.
“She don’t drive that car until she learns to drive decent,” George had remarked. “She won’t go one mile over the
speed limit, lets everybody and his brother pass her, and won’t drive unless everybody’s got a seat belt on. You
gotta learn to drive defensively,” he had said.
George left the side door ajar, so I knocked and walked right in. He had the kettle on and was stacking dishes
on the counter top.
“Maid’s day off,” he laughed, swiping the table with a dish towel he wet at the sink.
The house had the smell of neglect. The once shiny brick-like linoleum was dull, and bits of food were crusted
under the big wooden kitchen table. Charlotte had always kept plants or flowers on the table, and the kitchen
had smelled of lemon polish and general good will.
George took down two cups from the hooks over the sink. The last two clean cups, I noted. He put a teaspoon
of instant coffee in each and filled them up.
“Do you want corn flakes or corn flakes?” he asked with a big, forced smile.
“Coffee’s enough for me,” I answered.
But he persisted. “When I say breakfast, I mean breakfast. You get toast, too.”
I didn’t want to argue and waited for the story I knew would be coming. Plopping the toast on a big plate, he took
a jar of Charlotte’s apple butter out of the refrigerator and sat down.
“Breakfast. Boy, I never get going until I have my breakfast. I want my breakfast on the table when I get up,
whether I want to eat it or not,” he said. He looked earnest as he buttered a piece of toast made from limp, store-
bought bread, which lacked the character of the big, brown loaves Charlotte used to bake three times a week.
They never had a family and had worked the farm for more than 30 years. In the past couple of years they hadn’t
done any real farming, renting out some of the land. Charlotte kept a few chickens. They weren’t hurting for
money. Charlotte had inherited some money from her father’s estate, and the farm had done well through the
years. I stirred my coffee and waited.
“Old Charlotte could sure make a good breakfast, I’ll give her that,” George began. “She boiled potatoes in their
skins the day before. The next day I’d have eggs over easy, the boiled potatoes fried in bacon fat, biscuits with
pan gravy, and that apple butter she put up every year.”
“I’d come down to breakfast, and she’d have the table all set, the biscuits covered up with a napkin in that crazy
little basket, and the coffee pot plugged in on the table. When I walked in the door the eggs would be going into
the pan.”
“She always had this silly thing she did. She got all dolled up, hair fixed, and clean everything, just to get
breakfast. I’d come through the door every day and I’d say, ‘ Where the heck do you think you’re going?’ but she’
d just smile.”
I let him talk. Nodding in the right places, shrugging when I thought I should, shaking my head, smiling, biding
my time.
Did I tell you what I did some time back?” he laughed, slapping the table with his broad palm for emphasis.
“Well Sir, I got up, got dressed and came down to get my breakfast, and there’s only plates on the table and
nothing else. I turned around and went right back upstairs and climbed back into bed. She came running up a
few minutes later and says she had missed hearing me get up.”
“Well, I tells her. The rule is I get my breakfast when I get up. You broke the rule. I stayed in bed until 11 o’clock.
I didn’t even sleep, I just was making my point. Then I got up and got some clean clothes on and went out. I
took the Buick into town, had lunch, went bowling, stopped in at the Chatterbox Lounge, and had my supper at
the Elks Club.”
“I got home around 8 o’clock. She was looking kinda pale and fidgety, but I didn’t say one word and went right up
to bed. The next morning when my feet hit the floor I could smell the breakfast cooking,” he said, poking a
square, white tooth with a toothpick and gazing off through the kitchen window.
George said his breakfast had been right on schedule for a month after that, but one morning he got up and,
there were biscuits in the basket and coffee on the table, but no potatoes or eggs and no sign of Charlotte.
“I called out, “Front and center, Charlotte. What do you think is going on here?—but there was no answer,” he
said. “I went out in back where she had been spading up around the house for another one of those infernal
flower gardens she was always asking me to dig up for her, but she wasn’t there. When I looked in the garage I
nearly keeled over. The Buick was gone!”
I tried to keep my face straight as I could, but it wasn’t easy. “She took the Buick?” I managed to comment.
“She took the Buick and all her clothes and took the legacy out of the bank that her old man left her—minus the
interest it was earning—and went to live with her sister in the old family home in Maryville. She got herself a part
time job as a receptionist at the nursing home where she volunteered. How do you like that?” he said.
Well, I liked that just fine. George had dominated that beautiful little lady for as many years as I could
remember. No one could ever figure out what she saw in him. He was always a bully.
I wanted to say to him, “Listen you big galoot. Go buy a dozen roses, and get over to Maryville, and get on your
knees when you give ‘em to her,” but he’d be too stubborn to listen.
Instead I thanked him for breakfast and told him to hang in there. I backed out of the driveway and drove a
couple of miles before I pulled the pickup over to the side of the road.
“She took the Buick” echoed in my ears, and I laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks, and I had to mop up
with my handkerchief. She had a right to that Buick. They bought it after her dad’s estate was settled. “Good for
you, Charlotte,” I thought.
Starting home again I began to think it over. May be I’d drive over to Maryville one morning soon and take
Charlotte out to breakfast. I bet she’d like that. A good breakfast kind of gets you off to a good start. Anyhow, that’
s what some folks say. ∆
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