Home by Another Way by Robert Benson Page A

appearance requires what is sometimes an overwhelming amount of conversation for a shy person.
    The restaurant opened about the same time we moved into the neighborhood, and it has become the place where we meet our friends and neighbors most often. When we have to travel, we find ourselves going there the night before we leave and the night we return. Our world is a small one in some ways, and we have to check on it and make sure everyone is doing okay. We also have to hear someone say they will miss us before we go, and someone say they are glad we are back when we return. Both are guaranteed at the Mirror.
    The other exception is Brown’s Diner, a small place about fifteen or twenty blocks away from our house, where I often have lunch. Brown’s has the best baseball talk I have ever heard and the best cheeseburgers on the planet, and if I do not have a certain amount of both each week, my well-being and my metabolism are affected in a negative way.
    When I get to Brown’s, Terry says hello to me from behind the counter as I come in. He places my order without my saying anything more than hello in return. I even have a semi-assigned seat at the counter. Thefour guys on my left sit together every day, and so seat number five, if you count from left to right, is the one I am supposed to sit in. Number six belongs to Harold. Or Kathryn. Whichever one gets there first. Someone will ask me to move if I sit too far to the left or right, and lately they have been moving other folks
—tourists
is the name for those who come in less frequently than once a week—out of my seat when I come in. Every once in a while, it occurs to me that I could actually be liming, which is kind of astonishing for a person as shy as I am.
    It took a lot of trips to Brown’s before I got my assigned seat. But after about four or five trips to the Heptagon, I noticed that the regulars were moving around so Sara and I could have a seat at the counter.
    What’s not to love about a place like that?

    Sometimes when we are planning the day’s food events, we want island food.
    We can wander into a snackette anywhere on the island to find saltfish and johnnycakes, a meal that holds the same place in the local cuisine as fish and chips do in Great Britain and a cheeseburger and fries do in the States. On Fridays there is goat water, a stew served nearly everywhere on the last workday of the week. The Water Department even throws a weekly Friday-evening goat-water party in town, a civilized public service if I ever heard of one. Although, I confess, I am not sure what goat water actually is and have been too shy to ask.
    Barbecue pits are going in St. Cecilia almost around the clock—chicken and lamb and spare ribs. Seafood is to be found in plenty, of course, steamed or grilled, fresh off the boat as one would expect. And all manner of curries and salads and, my personal favorite, rice and peas. We know where to go to find these things if we want them.
    Lately, though, when we want island food, we just call Mrs. Louvin.
    A friend on the island told us about her. What shesaid was that if we wanted local cuisine without going out, we should just call Mrs. Louvin, and for a reasonable amount of money, she would cook what we wanted and bring it to our house.
    So Sara called her one day, and they talked on the telephone for a while, figuring what we were going to have for dinner the next night and what time we were going to have it. When everything was settled, Sara hung up the telephone, and we went back to whatever we were doing.
    In an hour or so, there was a knock at the door, and I went to the door, and a woman was there who said her name was Mrs. Louvin. I invited her in and called for Sara, and before I could stop it, conversation broke out all around me.
    Mrs. Louvin had stopped by on her way home from work to meet the people she was going to cook for as well as to be sure that we had been properly welcomed into her village. Then she was going home