The Second Window

by Patrick O’Leary

“Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes for a damn Big Mac!”

“Dad,” my son says.

“What are they doing in there. Making buns? Inventing Beef?”

“Geeze, dad. At least we get to spend this quality time together.”

I look at him and crack up. He’s always surprising me. The silent type who waits for your guard to drop then smacks you between the eyes with a ballpeen hammer. This blonde ten-year-old who seems to regard the world as a homework assignment he has to put up with. I don’t recall when he became a wise child. And I take no credit for it.

Finally, we’re at the second window, and a brown arm hands me my change.

I sputter. “Excuse me, but there must be some mistake.”

“Sir?” the polite black woman asks, the warm draft of burger on the grille wafts past her, into the cold December night, into my car.

“You just gave me a hundred dollar bill.”

“That’s right. It’s our way of saying thanks for being a customer.”

“Cool,” my son says, as if the world had finally transformed into someplace worthy of his attention.

“I can’t take this!”

“Dad,” he explains. “Shuttup.”

“I can’t take this.”

“Sir, consider it our way of apologizing.”

“Apologizing?”

“Yes, for all those times we got your order wrong.”

“Well,” I admit in so many words how irritating it’s been to come home to discover your happy meal has mutated into a Spicy Chicken Extra Value Meal with Biggie Fries. But how could she have known that?

“That’s very…courteous of you, but I can’t believe this is a sensible way to run a business.”

“We want our customers happy. Our service has been pretty slack lately. We realize that none of us will have jobs if our customers aren’t satisfied.”

“That’s true,” I say. How many times have I bemoaned the lackadaisical attitude of our minimum wage help?

“We figure we owe a lot of people a lot of money for their inconvenience.”

“Yes. That’s fine. That’s noble, even. But how do you make any profit handing out hundred dollar bills?”

“Actually, they’re counterfeit. But most people don’t find that out until they try to cash them.”

I look at the bill and it does indeed seem a bit halfhearted in its attempt to mimic a federal reserve note.

“It’s the thought that counts,” my son comments, grasping the logic of it.

Somebody’s horn ponks behind me.

“Is there anything else, Sir?”

“Yes. Well. Our food?”

“That’ll be up shortly. Wayne is depressed tonight and it’s all he can do just to separate the cheese. And Felicia just had an abortion so she’s sort of slow. And me,” The woman holds back a sob, “Me—I got problems of my own.”

“Like what?” my son says quickly and she leans on both her elbows until she is almost eye level with us. Dark dark circles around her dark brown eyes.

I hand her back the hundred and say, “Keep it. You look like you need it more than I do.”

She receives the bill in her pink fingers and tucks it into her apron pocket. “Thanks.”

“Wanna talk about it?” my son says, before I can stop him. He has yet to learn the limits of empathy. Or the timing.

“Nahh,” she says. “It’s grown up stuff. Sex and bills and family.” She turns to the crew behind her and yells, “Come on people! Put some mantra into it!”

“Mantra?”

“New company policy. Each franchise has a mantra. Helps morale. Holds focus. Keeps your mind off the fact that you’re in a dead-end job serving swill to ungrateful customers.” She catches herself. “Sorry. That’s in the handbook, but not for public consumption.”

“What’s a Mantra?” my curious son asks.

She nods. “‘Burn it. Squirt it. Wrap it. Sell it.’ Try saying that a thousand times a night.”

“That’s kind of a weird mantra,” I admit.

“It’s realism. The first of seven principles. You are what you are. You do what you do. Do it and get it over with. Don’t complain. Don’t explain. Say thanks. And wash your hands after you use the restroom.”

“Sounds pretty bleak,” I say.

The car behind me ponks its horn. I hold up my hands in the universal non offensive gesture of helplessness. That Road-Rage Seminar is really paying off.

“Bleak?” she squinches up her face as if those weren’t the exact words she’d have used. She sighs. “Yeah, I guess it’s bleak.” She looks at my son. “Hey, boy? You want a few hundreds?”

“Sure!” my son says perkily. “I’ll take ‘em!”

“No, you won’t,” I say, putting a hand on his leg.

“It’s a job, you know? It beats roadwork. Try walking on a incline all day on the side of a freeway. Nothing but a scythe in your hand.” She tilts her head side to side like those dogs you see in the back windows of cars. “Wish, wish, wish.”

“I’d like that job,” my son says. “You get to wear those neon jackets, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s murder on your ankles.”

“Listen,” I say. “Let’s just forget the order. You guys have a nice night.”

“Hookay,” she says. “Thanks for listening.”

I pull away into the cold dark to see the guy behind me giving me the finger. Wonder what he’ll do with his hundred.

“She was nice,” my son says. “But I’m still hungry.”

“At least we got to spend this quality time together,” I joke and he smiles at the verbal return. And the quote.

I pull over to the side of the road. I feel the father need coming on and the opportunities to instruct are so few and far between that I relish the moment. I keep the car running, the heater going, and I turn in my seat to address him, to present the accumulated wisdom of my 50 years upon his delicate mind. I say this.

“Son. It is a crazy world. Nobody understands it. They just pretend to. People hurt you and there’s nothing you can do. There will always be someone more broken than you. Someone with less advantages. And barring any major upheaval, like a revolution or something, we’re just kind of stuck here. And it doesn’t make much sense.” I sigh, relieved to be unburdened of this truth, finally, having carried it for many years, waiting for the chance to tell it, relieved that I no longer have to lie, and prevaricate, convinced he can handle this awesome unsettling news.

“I know that, Dad,” he says.

He said much the same thing when I finally explained the mechanics of sex, assuring him that it all made sense later when vaginas and ejaculation were no longer technical terms but passwords to the realm of desire and pain.

“We just have to do the best we can. And try not to hurt anyone along the way.”

“Like the way you hurt mom?”

“Exactly,” I say, after a moment, proud of him. I see forgiveness and a slangy shrug of acceptance in his brown eyes and expensive jacket.

“I figured it was something like that. Hey, dad. You know what I wanna be when I grow up?”

I brace myself. They never tell you how often this happens to parents. How crevices will open before you and offer a whole new realm of terror and disappointment and possible failure. And how much, no matter how hard you try to be calm about it, how much you care.

“I want to be happy,” he says smiling.

Oh, god, I think—not for the first time. He hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.

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