Early American

Kathryn Scanlan - The Pig’s Back, Issue Four

At this place, which was called Al’s Place, you had to call in the afternoon if you wanted to eat there that night. Al’s wife, Ruth, stood by the old black rotary phone at the back of the restaurant with a pad of paper and pencil from one till three. Sometimes you had to keep calling because the line was busy. If you forgot and tried to call later, you were out of luck. 

When Ruth answered, you told her what you wanted to eat for dinner and she wrote it down. A max of thirty people fit in the restaurant’s dining room at once—Ruth had a lot of juggling to do. The second floor, glimpsed up a back set of stairs near the toilets, was where Ruth and Al lived. 

If you didn’t know what you wanted to eat, Ruth listed your options, but not without a little irritation, a little impatience, because most people did know—and in the meantime, others were trying to ring through. 

In the kitchen, it was just Al, who cooked pizza according to a recipe he’d spent his long life perfecting. His technique involved a secret set of well-seasoned pans, unexpected ingredients, and quirks of preparation, which was why, it was rumored, he wouldn’t hire anyone to help him. 

When you arrived—and you’d better be on time!—Ruth greeted you, seated you. There was no other waitstaff. Right away, she brought your drinks and salad, and she might rib you a little, too. I enjoyed any rough or razzing thing she said to me and I yearned for her attention and approval.

In the dining room were some dark wood booths, some dark wood tables with bentwood chairs. The floor was worn checkered linoleum. Near the windows were healthy hanging pothos plants and on a rail that ran around the upper walls, Al’s collection of antique clocks was artfully displayed. 

The pizza arrived in a deep black pan Ruth set on a special trivet. The crust was thick and the tomato sauce sat on top. Underneath, in flavorful strata, the molten cheese and other items you’d selected were stacked and oozing. It was an upside-down pizza to be eaten with fork and knife, slowly. We rarely spoke to or even acknowledged the other diners, yet to be in that place with people who liked it too felt jolly, convivial. 

I suppose you could say Al and Ruth were “old”—65? 70?—but they were vigorous, upright people with excellent hair and personal style. They had charisma. I loved to look at them. While we ate, beautiful Ruth would come and go from the kitchen in her laconic way, and lithe, white-bearded Al would step out on occasion in his tomato-stained apron and biker-style bandana, and a warm feeling would establish itself in the stomach and last for hours into the evening. 

The two of them wished you goodnight on your way out, which is the picture I now keep in my head—Al and Ruth waving goodbye, saying thank you in their gruff, authentic way—because when Al had a stroke, he couldn’t make pizza anymore. Ruth shut the heavy front drapes and disconnected the old black rotary phone. 

After that we had to find someplace else to go. We tried Picadilly’s, a local chain where you could pop in on a whim and they’d be happy to have you. The menu was bigger and the servers were more performatively solicitous and the pizza’s crust was thin and cracker-like and the cooks cut it into little party squares that were easy to eat quickly, one after another, with a pitcher of inexpensive beer. 

Occupying an entire wall at Piccadilly’s was a faux stained glass window—it was actually a painted plastic screen lit from behind—depicting Pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast together. Alongside pumpkins and ears of corn and overstuffed cornucopias, the table was spread with several large pepperoni pizzas. The screen’s paint had corroded a little—or burned, maybe—which gave the faces of the feasters a pocked, disfigured appearance. The forbears were diseased, plague-ridden—or were they melting? The downturn of their mouths—were they drunk, happy? Grim, weepy? They cast their heavy orange legacy upon us while we ate. 

Meanwhile, the place was loud with lively youths bent in tense postures over beeping arcade games, slurping fountain sodas, shouting, running, laughing, lightly shoving each other, their faces flushed with high fructose corn syrup, Red Dye #40 and Yellow #5. 

Next to us, a big group gathered in celebration of a child’s birthday. Surrounded by empty glasses and red-smeared plates of cast-off crusts, a small girl sat level with a vast white cake impaled by six slim, dripping pink candles. The little flames—like teardrops—vivid, animate—danced for the child in their ancient way and illuminated her face, which seemed suddenly to loom, ageless, from the gloom of an old master’s portrait. In her dark eyes were spots of fire. 

The girl took a breath, heaved it out, and snuffed all six spirits—that is to say, symbols—in one go. I had high hopes for her difficult future.

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