SERIES: Souvenirs
SUBTITLE: Family Reserve
FOLLOWS: Souvenirs, Fire With Fire, Bury That Jewel, High Sierra, Walking Lonely, Blues Along The Way, Balloons Land, Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans, Somewhere Sails, Baby, It's You, So..., Through The Looking Glass, Desertion, I Know You Rider, Midnight Musings, BattleLines, Bright Lights and Promises, Break, From Me To You, Wanderers, Right Beside You, Separate But Together, Kaleidoscope, Puzzle Pieces, Dependency
PART: 1 of 1
AUTHOR: Missy
EMAIL: lasfic@yahoo.com
RATING: PG
GENERE: Gen
PAIRING(s): none
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Drama
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: California-era; alternate post-show canon.
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Frank begins to wonder about what he's left behind...
***
After nineteen years in the restaurant business, Frank DeFazio remained as he was - single-mindedly focused. He had the tenacity of a man half his age. Even when supervising the wait staff.
"Let's go! Let's go! Table three needs Pepsi, Table one wants their rack of ribs, and table two is missing their fries!"
His voice still carried the power to intimidate - a fleet of waitresses in cowgirl uniforms appeared, balancing trays on the shoulder of their checked red-and-white shirts, rushing about the floor of the restaurant, their leather cowboy boots squeaking beneath the ordinary din of dinnertime conversations.
Frank carried a certain might within himself that could be, without his knowledge, frightening to the beholder. Sometimes, there was an intensity in his voice and eyes that the ones closest to him felt chilling. There were one person in the clan DeFazio, however, who held no fear for Frank's bluster.
"Honestly, that's the third time you've yelled at the girls today," Edna Babbish scolded as she crossed into the kitchen area.
"I got a right. They been lazy all through the breakfast rush," Frank whipped an ever-present towel from his belt buckle and smacked the bar with it. "Kids! I'm up to my eyeballs in kids that don't know nothin'!"
Edna snorted at Frank's hyperbolae. "You need a break, and you're going to take it now."
"Whaddyou talking about? I got a lunch rush commin' in."
"You didn't finish breakfast. I had Dorinda make you a nice tuna fish..."
"I hate tuna!"
Edna pressed her palm over Frank's mouth. "She put some piccalilli in it. And I poured some coffee for the both of us - AND had table six bussed."
She lifed her fingers from Frank's lips, revealing a crooked grin. "You got something for yourself to eat?"
"A little salad and soup."
"That ain't enough!" Frank appraised his wife's waist with his oversized hands, as if feeling for bones that were invisible to the naked eye. "You're losin' weight."
Edna laughed. "I wish that were true."
"Come on, you sit, we'll have lunch." Edna noticed that Frank had taken credit for her idea - but she was so pleased that he had finally listened to her that she allowed him to take credit and walk her to table six. Quickly, they settled down together before their lunches and began to eat.
Edna appreciated the silence in the moment - it was rare that her life with Frank had any real peace to it. Her marriage tended to resemble a log on a water flume - all rush and bluster. She watched him pick the top piece of bread off of his sandwich and place it aside, with an air of near-daintiness. Used to his habits, Edna ignored Frank - something more important weighed on her mind. Something that, she knew, would make Frank moodier than usual.
She had just received a postcard from Laverne - addressed specifically to Edna, and not even mentioning Frank, whom she had not spoken to since their argument four months previously.
Its contents were chatty and informative - relaying that Laverne and Lenny were living in Milwaukee, with hope, permanently - and that they were planning on marrying at the end of fall and before the cold weather set in. She explicitly invited Edna to Milwaukee for the upcoming ceremony.
But not Frank. And it would kill him to find out that his daughter would be marrying a boy whom - against all evidence - he believed had physically assaulted her. Alight with the fear of discovery, Edna had chopped the postcard into tiny bits and left it in a trashcan on a public beach, preferring to have no evidence left of the communication with her stepdaughter.
Laverne's dissertation remained only one of the problems facing the family. Cowboy Bills was failing financially, being eclipsed in popularity by the new Trader Vics further down the boulevard - the books were steadily declining into the red. With Laverne gone and no clue as to where she had settled, Frank had thrown all of his energy into making the business work - but his old-fashioned taste in running a business hampered him in the bustling, swinging scene of Burbank in the '60's. As all of his pain came to no fruition, Frank began to take his anger out on the staff. They had lost two girls to better jobs and one to the hated Trader Vics in the span of a month. Worse, Edna had seen Frank rubbing his chest, and occasionally he complained of a pain.
The only solution to their problem was simple, obvious, and staring her straight in the face.
"Honey," she said, dabbing her lips. "I've been thinking a lot about my property back in Milwaukee. We haven't taken a vacation since our honeymoon, so wouldn't it be great to go back to Wisconsin for a week to see how things are going?"
"Leave now?! With those Trader Vic bastards breathin' down my neck?"
"You need to get out of town for a rest."
"What for? This place'll fall down if I ain't around to keep an eye on it!"
"The stress is making you sick. You told me you've been getting chest pain..."
"So?"
"How did your father die?" She knew how - he had collapsed with a heart attack on the job.
Frank clammed up. "I ain't like my Pop. I go to the doctor every year!"
Usually when she told him, she amended mentally. "And what does your doctor always tell you? 'Take a vacation before the stress kills you'"
Frank grumbled at the memory of his doctor's heckling.
"Take a week off. We'll put Rosita in charge. She's trustworthy, and she IS the assistant manager..." Rosita had been appointed in Laverne's absence.
"How the hell can I leave the state? They keep puttin' too much pepper in the sauce, boillin' the corn too long..."
"Don't you remember leaving Rosita in control while you got your teeth drilled?" Frank had to admit he did. "Our take was the same - no worse, no better. And she had to handle opening AND closing because of your reaction to the sedatives!"
Frank stared at his sandwich. "You wanna go? Fine. We'll go. I got free miles left from flyin' out here I ain't used yet."
Edna beamed. "We'll have a fine time. We'll see the old haunts - and we'll go to the cemetery to visit Josephine."
His face brightened. "I ain't talked to her in a long time. I never introduced you."
There are so many things you need to do, Frank. You're just too stubborn to do them. "I'll book the tickets right now. We should be able to get a flight out tonight - we'll even be able to eat at the Pizza Bowl for dinner!"
"Waitaminute! I can't leave tonight! I gotta make plans, I gotta..."
"ROSITA!" Edna shouted, "can you handle running the restaurant for a week?"
"Why not? I need the overtime."
"OVERTIME!" Frank exploded.
"We'll pay you time and a half."
"Sounds fair," Rosita replied. "You need anything else?"
"Just bring in the mail. Thank you, Rosita!"
The young woman left her bosses alone, fantasizing about the new thigh-hi boots she had seen in the display window at Bardwell’s on her way to work.
Edna smugly finished off her coffee. "I'm going to go make those reservations."
Frank watched Edna over the rim of his cup, clearly amused by Edna's persuasiveness. "You're a piece of work, Edna."
"And that's why you married me," she joked. Leaving him to finish his tuna, she walked to the nearby phone booth and began pressing quarters into the slot. Watching Frank through the distance, he suddenly looked so lost and lonely to Edna - a man growing old without the comfort of a happy family.
Stay well, Frank, Edna thought. You'll make up with Laverne. Or I'll pound your thick heads together!