All We Had by Annie Weatherwax Page A

turned out that Peter Pam was Mel’s nephew and she lived in the apartment above the restaurant with Dave. It took us a while to figure out that Dave was not a man but a cat who wore a pink bow at an angle on his head. And Peter Pam spoke Yiddish because her stage character was Jewish, but Peter, the man, was not.
    And Mel was not a father after all. “He couldn’t have kids,” Peter Pam whispered, sipping coffee.
    We’d spent the night in the car and returned that morning. To help get us back on our feet, Mel was letting my mother work the breakfast shift and he was paying me to wash the dishes. He was giving us a kitchen tour, standing right in front of us, boasting about his grill, but that didn’t keep Peter Pam from talking about him.
    She leaned in, holding her coffee mug, pinkie extended. “They couldn’t conceive because of Svetlana’s accident .” She stood up, raised her eyebrows, and nodded.
    â€œWho?” I asked.
    Horrified, she drew her hand to her chest and gasped, “Oh my God, nobody’s told you about Svetlana yet?” as if we’d been working there for months.
    â€œThis here’s an old dinosaur,” Mel said about his grill, “but it still fires up every day.” He patted the beast, grease-stained and charred, then showed us how to light it. “It’s a beauty of a flame, isn’t it?”
    Mel was short and barrel-chested. His fingers were thick and his hands looked as if they could open any jar of pickles or peaches you brought him. His glasses had square plastic frames, the kind that were once in fashion, then went out of fashion, and even though they were back in fashion, on Mel they just looked outdated. He had a sad look in his eyes that never went away, even when he smiled. The roll of fat at the back of his head was deep enough to fit a nickel, and, except for a ring of salt-and-pepper hair, he was bald.
    He stepped over to the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall and strained to reach it. “There we go,” he said, finally getting it down. Then he pulled a handkerchief out from his back pocket and, without unfolding it, dabbed at his brow. “This here is how it works: you pull the pin out, and you pull this hose out and aim at the fire . . .”
    â€œHe’s always overexplaining things,” Peter Pam said. “Hey, Unc!” She put her mug down. “You’re losing your audience here,” and she presented us to him with her palms up the way Vanna White does with letters.
    â€œOh, yeah, well, you get the idea,” he said, and moved on to the walk-in refrigerator.
    Svetlana, we finally found out, was Mel’s wife. “Let me tell you something, honeys,” Peter Pam warned. “She was always abit of a drama queen, but since the quote-unquote accident ”—she paused to make air quotes—“left her in a wheelchair, she’s a total bitch. The last thing you ever want to do is try to speak to her.”
    Suddenly, Mel stepped out of the refrigerator. “Well, that’s the fridge,” he said. “And that’s everything you need to know about the kitchen.” He wiped his hands together, all finished, and with his glasses still fogged up he pushed open the screen door and walked out.
    A few minutes later at seven thirty sharp, the door opened again. A rectangle of light rolled out onto the floor and a woman stepped in.
    â€œDon’t listen to a word this knucklehead tells you,” she said to my mother and me, pointing at Peter Pam. She put her travel mug of coffee down on the counter and walked directly to Peter Pam. “Come here, you big lug.” She pulled Peter Pam down into the crook of her elbow and gave her a noogie. As if she’d been trained exactly what to do, Peter Pam closed her eyes and lowered her head. The back-and-forth slide of her wig was audible.
    The woman then pushed Peter Pam to the side and took a bold