The Diner

01: Job Wanted

"Amal bought me a yoga workout video," Cora is saying, smile on her face, basking in the glow of pregnancy—looking nothing like the sea-monster she had appeared as once the hot water had run out and she'd emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, hair hanging around her face—sipping on her glass of lemonade. Tonight, they're outside, the four of them sitting on garden furniture in the spacious back yard, though they are confined to one measly area on the insistence from her Mom that they don't damage any of the greenery she has finally managed to start germinating. There's a light wind, bringing with it, from the left, the sweet scent of the neighbours barbeque; Remi's envious as she pierces a potato with the tines of her fork.

"I haven't actually done the yoga. I sent Amal out asking for Eat Pray Love, so I threw it in the trash." Cora continues, moving her left hand to rest on her Mom's arm, the engagement ring on her finger flashing. What she leaves out, though, is her breakdown upon seeing the fitness video, then the cursing as she tried to follow along with the breathing exercises on the floor, followed by more crying in the sad realisation that she couldn't do it. Cora isn't a quitter—she's a let-me-try-until-I-either-hurt-or-embarrass-myself, something which Remi is thankful she got to miss out on.

"Oh, Remi," her Mom simpers, piling a generous helping of salad onto her plate, drowning it all in Thousand Island dressing and piercing spinach leaves with her fork. The smile on her face is sweet, salty, so fucking dangerous, and the time has arrived: the unspoken competition between Cora and Remi, where the time frame that the former has lived at will then be applied to her. Wesley's only saving grace is that he's male, leaving her Mom's experience with how to raise sons non-existent, and more time is spent reading books on How to Deal With Male Puberty:101. "Have you met anyone new recently? I'm sure you meet loads of nice people at the . . . coffee shop."

"Actually, I got fired today." This is Remi's third job in a nine month period—after the first dismissal, it had been an utter travesty for her Mom, along with offers to just stop messing around and trying to be artsy by taking up hippy-jobs and come work for her, but the second had been a subdued affair of an overwhelming wave of disappointment—the main reason for the lack of stability in her life right now is because Remi doesn't care; she is dissatisfied with dead end jobs where she is another face in an endless crowd of unemployed people desperate for quick money and easy work. Remi wants to be remembered, she wants to leave an impact—she wants a purpose.

A purpose which won't be fulfilled if she succumbs to her mother's wishes and becomes a shop assistant at her mother's business, Rose. Her mother becomes a goldfish, Cora blinks at her in that pseudo concerned manner, and Wesley almost chokes on his ribs. "Again, Remi? I'm sure if you apologise you could get the job back."

"I don't want the job back, Mom. It was stupid, anyway."

"So what are you going to do now?" Remi's Mom, Sandra Welch, is playing with the line of hysteria—the idea of one of her kids, age not included, not making their contribution, doing something that makes them an independent individual, sickens her, green salad and cold wine be damned. There is no reality wherein she has prepared for children who do nothing but skate by and hope for the best—shown through Remi being pushed for a job at the age of fourteen, beginning with gardening in the neighbourhood. Remi blinks back at her, matching hazel eyes, ski-slope nose and caramel coloured skin. This is what she has produced, another statistic where the middle child is always wanting to stand out.

Remi shrugs her shoulders, "Play it by ear, I guess."

At this, Sandra pinches her nose in despair, "Remi," she grits her teeth at this, all that time spent in the mirror practising the approach of always, always, always smiling, no-matter-what burning, the smoke from the neighbours barbeque wafting it right in from of them all. "I can't afford for you to share an apartment with Cora and Amal and not pay your way. You're eighteen years old—rightfully, you should be living here with Wes and me, but you pushed for this. The only other option—don't pull that face, Remi—is for you to move back home and work at Rose."