Chapter One

           

The Sacramento police station looked like a government building: gray and drab, one level with a sign indicating where to park when doing police business. I thought Dad might not go inside with me, and I didn’t ask.

After he parked the car, I opened the door to get out. I was surprised when Dad turned off the engine and said, “Let’s go.”

We entered the building, not knowing where we were going. To the left, a uniformed policeman greeted us from behind a counter with a large open window that protected the space. It was a secure area where no one but police officers were allowed.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Hi, I’m here with my dad to pick up my sister’s purse. Rhonda Faye Lyons. She died in the Mother Lode Bar shooting on October 1. I was told you have her purse.” 

My words sounded so forced and matter-of-fact. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I showed my driver’s license, which displayed my birth name, Rocklae. 

“Okay, let me go find it,” he said. Then he got up and walked into the bowels of the police station. 

I felt nothing—no drama or sense of danger. Yet I was standing in the police station, picking up one of the last things Rhonda touched.

She did nothing wrong. Why am I at the police station? I wondered. My emotional mind was in conflict with my rational mind. 

The officer returned moments later, carrying what I immediately knew was my sister’s purse, brown leather with flowers carved into the side and a long shoulder strap.   

“Is this it? Do you recognize it?” he asked.

I nodded, trying not to cry. I took the purse from him and opened it. I saw that it was filled with Kleenex, cigarettes, and some loose change. I touched her comb, which held one of her long blonde hairs.

It was her Rhonda comb.

#

Rhonda loved to comb Dad’s hair when she was little. He would lie on the couch, numb with fatigue after working eighteen-hour days, and Rhonda would climb behind him and gently comb all his hair forward, part it, then brush it again.  Sometimes he would sit on the floor, and she would climb onto his shoulders and run the comb backward and forward over and over. 

Years later, Rhonda was struggling to build new clientele for her hairdressing business in Sacramento. She was young, just out of beauty school, with no real business experience or clients. One day, Dad called me with an idea: we’d imprint Rhonda’s business name and phone number on combs and use them as marketing giveaways. 

 “Everyone needs a comb. Let’s make it easy for people to call and make an appointment with Rhonda,” he said.

I thought the idea was brilliant. Dad was always looking for ways to market Bob’s Café, our family’s diner. He loved the challenge of trying to solve problems and increase business opportunities. 

Some called the café the midwestern version of Cheers, the famous TV pub known for its regular and memorable customers. My parents, Bob and Ima, were the North Stars of Bob’s, which had been in business for more than sixty years at the same location in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. 

When I was about ten, I realized that because the café was open 24/7, one of my parents was always at work. During my early childhood, Mom worked nights, and Dad worked the rest of the shifts. 

A twenty-foot neon sign above the café displayed a caricature of my mother in a carhop uniform. She wore a pillbox hat with a pink plume standing straight up, a pink blouse, and a black skirt. She held a curb tray with a mouthwatering milkshake and juicy cheeseburger. Local legend was that airline pilots used the illuminated sign—Mom’s caricature and Dad’s name in bright lights—as a landmark for flying into the flatland Sioux Falls airport at night.

A photographer came to the parking lot when I was eight and took a picture of my mother dressed up in the carhop uniform. I wondered at the time why she was dressed that way. Later, when I saw the sign, I recognized the significance of the photograph. And I smile today at the thought of my parents, twenty feet high, lighting up the sky, welcoming visitors. 

#

As Dad and I were collecting Rhonda’s purse, I reflected on how we were a far cry from working at Bob’s Café. I’d never been to a police station before. The closest our family ever came to dealing with law and justice was Dad’s penchant for tracking down customers who wrote bad checks.

He was known for interrogating them if they misbehaved or their check bounced. For him, bad checks were like a detective story waiting to be solved. Next to the cash register was the wall of shame, where bad checks hung like trophies. Dad enjoyed the detective work of finding people and asking them to pay up. His line of questioning usually went something like this:

“Where do you work? What’s your manager’s name? What’s your driver’s license number? What’s your Social Security number?”

One summer, Dad’s catering station wagon needed some upholstery repair. So, he dropped the car off with Marty, a local upholsterer. When the seats were done, he took Rhonda and me with him to pay the bill.

“Marty, what do I owe you for the work?” Dad asked.

“Well, Bob, I guess it’s fifty dollars,” the man said, handing Dad the bill.

Dad pulled his own bill out of his wallet and handed it over. “Marty, here’s a bad check you wrote a year ago at my café. Let’s just say we’re even now.” Dad smiled as my sister and I climbed into the station wagon, which smelled of fresh upholstery. That’s Midwestern justice, says my husband. Some things you just can’t learn in books.

#

Holding Rhonda’s purse,

At the police station, I thought about Mom and wondered how she would have responded to picking it up. How would she have reacted to touching it? I wondered. And the long blonde hair tangled in the Rhonda comb? How is she going to process losing a daughter like this?

Customers loved Mom’s vivacious personality and sense of humor. Will that diminish?

After I became an adult, the café started closing at midnight. That was when Mom started working the morning shift. 

She opened the door to the café at five o’clock. At five foot four, she was two inches taller than Dad. And she was never without her apron, which protected her clothes from the grease spits that came off the grill when she cooked eggs, bacon, and hash browns. 

Her Norwegian name, Ima Reba, was unique and memorable, like her personality. She grew up in northern Canada, where her family homesteaded. She had three sisters and one brother. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father made a living building roads in the Northwest Territories. In her early twenties, she went to South Dakota to stay with her Norwegian relatives, whose love of lefse and lutefisk is a family legend today.

Lefse is a traditional Norwegian flatbread made with shredded potatoes, flour, butter, milk, and cream, then cooked on a flat griddle. It’s especially yummy warmed with cinnamon and sugar. Lutefisk is a white fish soaked in lye and served with lefse, butter, and boiled potatoes. The best urban legend is that half the Norwegians who immigrated to America came to escape lutefisk, and the other half came to spread the gospel of lutefisk’s wonderfulness. My father was in the first camp. Because of lye’s offensive smell, he used to call lutefisk contraband—a family joke that never stopped Mom from serving both it and lefse at Christmas.

During one of my mom’s last hospitalizations, when she couldn’t eat anything, she requested lefse. I immediately left the hospital and found some in a local market. When I warmed it up in the hospital microwave, Norwegian nurses came out of patients’ rooms, sniffing and asking, “Where’s the lefse? I can smell it. Where can I get some?”

To non-Norwegians, I think both lefse and lutefisk are an acquired taste. My dad might have been right, for once, about the contraband. 

#

It was surreal that Dad and I were in the police station collecting the last thing Rhonda touched. Mom was in Sioux Falls, managing the café and keeping the business running.

She was the queen of entertainment during the morning shift. As we collected Rhonda’s belongings at the police station, I imagined her routine. 

The birds are chirping with some promise of the sun greeting the day. Mom turns on the grill and makes a pot of strong midwestern coffee—black and thick. She wipes the twelve stools that will be filled with hungry regulars during the next twenty-four hours. The S-shaped Formica counter snakes around the room to accommodate more seating for customers. The space is wide open, with no separation between seated customers and the cook and server. The smell of strong coffee permeates the room, mixed with the aroma of bacon, eggs, and hash browns frying on the grill.

Mom always bantered with customers while cooking their food. If you wanted privacy while eating at Bob’s, you had to go out into the parking lot. At the counter, you were elbow-to-elbow with your dining partners.

Mom checks the cooler next to the grill to ensure she has enough eggs, hash browns, bacon, and pancake batter to feed the hungry morning crowd. Yes, the graveyard shift has done their prep, and Mom is ready to serve customers. The door opens. 

“The usual, Matt?” she asks.

Matt nods, walks to his favorite barstool (despite the place being empty), reaches for a hot cup of coffee, and looks for the local newspaper of the day.

I always found it interesting that regular customers claimed a favorite stool. I’ve seen customers stand and wait until their favorite stool was available despite open seating being within easy reach. We’re creatures of habit, I guess. It’s almost like that Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day: same place, same food, and same players, only everything is one day older. 

Slowly the customers start coming in until the place is full of laughter and loud voices. 

“How long can you guys talk about golf every day?” Mom asks the guys at the counter.

“Forever and always,” they reply, laughing loudly.

Mom rolls her eyes. 

A young woman enters the café, surveys the room, and finds a stool near the far end of the counter, where she can observe customers.

“Hi, this is my first time here,” she says to Mom. “My husband told me I should try you out. May I have a cup of decaffeinated coffee, please?”

“Oh, we don’t serve decaffeinated. We don’t have any here.”

“Well, I’ll take the real stuff then. Do you have bagels?” 

“Um, don’t have that either.” 

“Okay, how about a toasted English muffin?”

“Well, if you bring one in next time, I’ll toast it for you,” Mom says with a smile.

Customers often brought their jelly, peanut butter, and bagels to the café and learned to drink caffeinated coffee. They thought they were being funny and sly by bringing their own condiments. My dad was pleased because it meant he didn’t have to buy unpopular condiments that rarely sold. Win-win!

The local media sometimes featured my mom. In 1994, the Argus Leader reported, “Ima is one of the funniest counter people in town. Coffee, eggs and wit. Just the thing to wake up to.” 

South Dakota Magazine featured her in a 1995 article that read,

Ima’s down-to-earth style is at once aunt-like and authoritative. You can’t imagine anything going on without her saying so … yet another unique indication that you’re in a non-franchise sort of place is the fact that Ima Lyons might very well take your picture. This tradition started in 1992. She has photographed gruff-looking day laborers and bright-eyed children.

Joe sits in the corner on a stool, quietly waiting for his regular order of hamburger steak and a double order of hash browns. 

“Hi, Joe. How are you doing?” Mom asks.

Joe nods to indicate he’s okay.

“While your food is cooking, Joe, may I take your picture? I’m taking pictures of all my favorite customers and putting them in this album,” Mom says, showing him the photo album in her hand. The eight-by-eleven book, which is already showing signs of café wear and tear, holds dozens of photos in clear plastic covers. 

Joe kind of nods again but then quietly asks, “Could I come back tomorrow and have you take my picture? I want to wash my hair tonight,” His eyes lower as he continues eating, embarrassed. “I’ve never had anyone ever ask me for a picture,”

#

How did we end up in a police station, picking up my murdered sister’s purse, when no one in our family had ever been touched by violence before?

When I was six years old, we moved into a house only five blocks from the café. It was an easy walk, maybe ten or fifteen minutes if I didn’t dawdle. And when I was older and working at the café, I never wanted to be late because Dad made it clear that was unacceptable.

Our house was built in 1955, and it was on a very steep hill in a neighborhood with houses of a similar age. It had three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a full basement, which is common in the Midwest because people use them for hiding from tornados. The neighborhood was filled with kids similar to our ages, and we all walked to school together. We attended the same grade, middle, and high schools. Parents in the neighborhood were mechanics, carpenters, and U.S. postal workers. Everyone pretty much knew everyone because most people stayed in the neighborhood for many years. Kids played at each other’s houses. No one locked their doors. 

I thought of Pennie. How is she dealing with losing her best friend? I wondered.

We lived one house away from Pennie’s, and she and Rhonda became bosom buddies at an early age. They spent every waking moment together. 

One day, at around age four, they knocked on the door of the house between our homes. The house had recently changed hands.

“Hi, my name is Pennie. This is Rhonda. We live next door to you,” Pennie said when the new neighbor opened the door.

“Well, how do you do? It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” the woman said, smiling at the girls, who were dressed in their little-girl panties. It was a hot, hot day in the Midwest.

“Well, we wanted to let you know that the lady who lived here before you used to give us cookies,” Pennie said with all the seriousness of a four-year-old.

“She did? Really? Well, I guess we shouldn’t break tradition, now, should we? Let me go see if I have any.”

The woman went into her kitchen and returned with two chocolate chip cookies.

“Here you go, darlings. Will these do?” she asked, handing the treats to Rhonda and Pennie. 

“Thanks,” they both said in unison. Then they turned around and walked away. 

“She was nice,” Rhonda said to Pennie, her curls bouncing up and down.

“Let’s go to my house and watch some cartoons,” Rhonda said. And they walked across the driveway to our house. 

Rhonda and Pennie were soul sisters. They rode their unicycles up and down the street, singing, “We’re palsies-walsies, friends forever.” The entire neighborhood heard their singing and knew these two little neighborhood friends were inseparable. Wherever Rhonda was, there was Pennie. Wherever Pennie was, there was Rhonda.

Both had shoulder-length hair—Pennie’s dark brown, and Rhonda’s blonde—that hung in fingerling curls, and they dressed in cute clothes that Pennie’s mom made. Their matching style was symbolic of their friendship.

Rhonda and Pennie were also similar in size—both petite, having come from parents who weren’t very tall. (As Dad used to say, “We’re often the last ones to get rained on.”)

Once in a while, Pennie came with us when we visited our relatives on the family homestead about three hours from Sioux Falls. This was where my grandparents lived during the Depression and my father grew up. My Irish uncle, who had a wicked sense of humor, fondly called Pennie “One Cent,” which became her nickname for many years.

#

The policeman asked to see my driver’s license.

“You go by Rockie, yet your driver’s license shows your name is Rocklae. Why do you go by Rockie?” he asked.

My mother invented my legal name. And as a child, I got used to people being confused by it. I remember a doctor once commenting that he’d been expecting a big football player to come barreling through the door. And one year, I was assigned to the boys’ dorm for summer camp because the organizers assumed I was male.

I’ve always been called Rockie. I never even knew my legal name until I applied for a driver’s license at sixteen and read my birth certificate. And I don’t think my father ever really understood it. I recently received some life insurance policies he put in my name years ago, and he recorded my name as Rockala. In fact, my dad’s the one who started calling me Rockie right out of the gate, later saying he chose it in honor of Rocky Marciano, the boxer who held the heavyweight title from 1947 to 1952. Perhaps that’s a better story than “My mom made it up.”

#

As I gazed at the Rhonda comb, I couldn’t help thinking about how hard she’d worked to establish her career. She came by it naturally, I suppose. We’re all hard workers. Bob’s Cafe was the family hub for generations. When my kids were young, they worked at the café. But my brother says he doesn’t remember our parents telling us to take a break if we were tired like they told their grandkids. 

My son, Peter—at eight years old and not tall enough to see over the counter—greeted customers with, “Would you like some coffee?” He’d grab the coffee pot, raise it to the cup, and ask the customer to indicate when the cup was full. He trusted the customer to say when the cup was full. And the customer trusted this eight-year-old to pour coffee without spilling. 

When my brother interviewed for his first job out of college, he was told that part of the benefits included paying for overtime.

“What’s overtime? I worked for my parents, and they never mentioned overtime to me,” my brother responded.

“You’re hired,” the manager said. “We love your midwestern charm.”

I thought of the struggles Rhonda had with finding a career. After high school, she left South Dakota and attended beauty school in Sacramento, where she came to live with me. She then worked at a salon, where she needed to build her clientele.

“Rhonda, why are you late again?” Ron, the owner of the hair salon, called out somewhat impatiently one day when Rhonda was, again, late. He’d been outside the shop, probably looking up the road for his missing employee.

“I guess my alarm didn’t go off,” she responded, smiling as she climbed off the back of her boyfriend’s Harley-Davidson with a set of crutches in hand. Then, she arranged them to support herself and steadily limped into the salon.

Holding the door for her, Ron whispered in her ear in a firm voice, “Your client has been here waiting for fifteen minutes and is not happy,”

“I’ll sweeten him up,” she said confidently. She limped into the salon, then swung her purse onto her station’s countertop and leaned the crutches against the counter.

“Hi, Jeff, what’s rollin’?” Rhonda asked her client as she laughed and grabbed her scissors and Rhonda comb. “Wash first or just razor cut?”

“You’re late, and if you didn’t give such damn good haircuts, I wouldn’t keep coming back. Razor cut.” Jeff tried to be annoyed but enjoyed the banter. 

Jeff was a district attorney, a customer for more than a year, and he tolerated Rhonda’s antics. Large mirrors on Rhonda’s station enabled her to have eye contact with clients while cutting their hair. She used it to her advantage to read customers’ moods, always with an angle to ensure a happy experience. 

Rhonda limped to stand behind Jeff, who was sitting in the chair, waiting.

“What happened to your foot?” he asked.

Throwing back her long blonde hair and laughing, she said, “Oh, it’s a stupid thing, but I dropped a glass that ripped the muscle on my big toe. If I didn’t get it fixed, doc said I wouldn’t be able to keep my balance.” She laughed again. “Like I’m already balanced. It’s more of a nuisance than anything,”

She got started clipping Jeff’s hair.

“Sorry. Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Not really. Only when I try to play softball on crutches. For some reason, I can’t run very fast with these sticks.” She pointed her scissors at her crutches. 

Then she twirled Jeff around in the chair so she could cut the other side of his head.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

“Oh, not much. I’m going to meet my friend Pam at the Mother Lode. They’re having an end-of-the-summer party. Should be low-key. Pam has a friend who lives around the corner from the bar. We’re going to meet him and then maybe go to a movie.”

“Sounds like a nice, relaxing Friday night,” Jeff said.