The Next Empty Cup by Myna Chang

The Next Empty Cup | Myna Chang

We meet at the old Pandemonium Deli on 6th Street. Every Thursday morning, coffee and pastries, for more years than we can remember. Well, Cora, Elaine, and I get coffee and pastry. Diva preferred hot tea and chocolate cake. Always had to be different, that one. This morning when we shuffle in, there are only three of us.

We slide into our customary booth. Diva picked it because it offers a good view of the counter. To watch the action, she’d said.

The owner’s sexy grandson, Peter, brings out baklava and coffee. Three mugs.

“We need a cup of tea, too,” I say. “And a slice of cake.”

Peter glances at the empty seat and nods.

We wait, quiet, holding onto the foolish illusion that perhaps our best days are not all behind us. We know that once we begin, our tightly-held fears may spill out, the secret dread of our remaining years impossible to deny. We let the silence cocoon us for a few more moments.

Peter returns with the cake and a teacup, setting it gently in front of the empty chair, then retreats.

We pause for another heartbeat. Elaine inhales a deep breath, then begins: “Diva was a poet of men, wasn’t she? The way she understood them. Like Peter. Remember how she called him Pandemonium Pete?”

Elaine’s words wash away our reluctance. Memories emerge. And, of course, top of the list is a sexy man. It’s Diva we’re mourning, after all.

“It was his hair,” Cora says. “That’s what she found most attractive in men.”

Pandemonium Pete did have glorious hair. We studied him as he boxed up sandwiches for the coming lunch crowd. Morning sun streamed in the front windows, highlighting his untamed crown of chestnut waves.

“Remember how she said she wanted to weave her fingers into the storm of it?” I say.

We laugh and nod. She was the only one of us brash enough to flirt with a man as young as her grandson. Up at the counter, Peter locks his gaze on us, as if he can hear our thoughts. Cora and Elaine flush, and my own cheeks heat. He winks, and oh my god, he is a cocky thing. No wonder Diva fantasized about him.

Cora picks up her baklava, then drops it. Flakes scatter across the table. “My son wants me to go to a retirement home,” she blurts. Her hands tremble as she wraps them around her coffee.

I rub my eyes and reach for Diva’s teacup. A bag of her favorite black tea rests on the saucer. I dunk it into the hot water and press it down with the spoon. The bag splits and tea leaves spill out, swirling in the tiny whirlpool of the spoon’s wake.

“Ah, it’s ruined,” I whisper. “Isn’t that how it goes? Everything aswirl?”

“That’s the way she liked it,” Cora muses. “Everything aswirl.”

“Maybe you should consider it,” Elaine says abruptly. “The retirement home, I mean. It might be nice to have that safety net.”

Cora taps her finger on the table. “No. Don’t want to live with a bunch of strangers. Besides, it pisses me off when my son tries to boss me around.”

Elaine bites her lip. She’d only had one child, and he died years ago. We’re all widows, but Elaine holds the additional burden of a lost child. She shifts the conversation back to Diva.

“Remember when she set her kitchen on fire?”

Cora snorts. “Told her husband she’d been lighting the burner. Didn’t want him to know she was trying to learn how to smoke cigarettes.”

“They had to move in with me for three months while they repaired the damage.” I laugh until I wheeze. It’d been a cramped, chaotic mess, but I’d missed them after they returned to their own home.

We pause as Pandemonium Pete brings a fresh round of coffee.

Then it’s my turn to share a memory. The words catch in my throat. I’m thinking about Cora and retirement homes. About Elaine, with no children to dictate her final years.

My breath shudders. I’m overwhelmed by the terrors we share. The specific shame of getting lost, of falling, of embarrassing ourselves because our hands are too shaky, our fingers too clumsy to work the buttons on these goddamned new phones and touch screens and self-checkout kiosks. I’m burning with the anguish of young people humoring us, of doctors and receptionists and salespeople ignoring us.

It’s not the dying I’m afraid of. It’s living that scares the hell out of me. Living diminished. Living lonely.

I take their hands, my remaining friends pulled close. “Move in with me. We can cram our beds into the living room. It’ll be like the old days in the dormitory.”

No one speaks for a moment. Then Cora’s smile lights the room, more dazzling even than Pandemonium Pete’s hair. Elaine swipes at her eyes and says, “Yes, of course. We must stay together.”

Pent-up tension drains away with the decision. “We’re old enough, we don’t have to hide our vodka in the laundry hamper anymore,” I say. “Remember how Diva used to do that?”

Laughter bubbles freely now, spirits rising. I’m almost buoyant as I listen to my friends reminisce. I don’t tell them about my diagnosis. How the next empty cup at the table will probably be mine. I’ll leave them my apartment after I’m gone, but that’s a conversation for another day.

“Hey,” I say, “do you remember the time we stole twenty bucks from the bingo hall?”

The girls gape at me, puzzled.

“I don’t think we ever did that,” Elaine says.

I grin. “We’ve still got time.”

An excerpt of Myna Chang’s story read by Tony Allen…

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