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This is a perfect little book. It is five days before Christmas, and the last day of operations at the Red Lobster in New Britain, Connecticut, shut down in a cost-cutting measure by Darden Restaurants, Inc. Thirty-nine of the branch’s 44 employees will be laid off, and many have already jumped ship, but not manager Manny DeLeon, a stand-up guy intent on making this last day as good as any other. Nature has other plans, and as a blizzard closes in on the area, no amount of ice-melter sprinkled on the walks or all-you-can-eat shrimp will draw in diners, and Manny’s skeleton crew hangs on to serve a dwindling crowd and collect their checks.
O’Nan portrays the staff with deft strokes: a jaded aside from brassy career waitress Roz; the inscrutable Leron’s freshly blackened eye; a wild vindictive gesture by the perpetual screw-up Fredo; the lottery ticket hopes of disabled dishwasher Eddie. Manny’s first mate is the rock-solid chef Ty, a Navy and Red Lobster vet, but his thoughts today center more on waitress Jacquie, with whom he recently ended a romance. They’ve both moved on, (Manny uses his lunch half-hour for a desperate pilgrimage to the deserted mall next door in search of a gift for his pregnant girlfriend, Deena), but something transcendent has been lost.
O’Nan is a gifted writer, and not the least of these gifts is restraint. He depicts the struggles and tradeoffs of these people without moralizing or simplifying, but with respect, compassion, and clear-eyed admiration for their tireless capacity to concoct meaningful lives out of such paltry ingredients as employee handbooks and strings of tinsel. That same restraint applies to O’Nan’s vivid descriptive power as he steals bits of poetry from the relentlessly prosaic. “Walking along the line, (Manny) passes his hand like a magician over the Frialators and grills to make sure that they’re off. …and from the front of the house comes the filter’s hum and water-torture dribble of the live tank. If he never opens, he thinks, they can never close.” O’Nan rivals Carver and Chekhov in his ability to set a deeply affecting mood without ever seeming moody. That mood is a little down, a little lost, just like Christmas. Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day. On Monday, Manny starts over at the Olive Garden. |
