Dinner With Your Mom

You both would like to be somewhere else.

You and your mom sit on the downtown bus at 6 p.m. on a weeknight. That morning she mixed up short ribs and barbecue sauce in the crockpot for the rest of your family’s dinner while you and she are out. She still wears the dress she wore to work and, underneath, a tight girdle whose stays burrow under her breasts. She presses her back against the hard seat to minimize the contraption from hurting any more than it already does. You try to concentrate on Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. You have to read it for school but love it anyway.

Your mom thinks this whole evening is ridiculous and, as usual, is finding it very hard to hide her annoyance. Her friend’s urging was the only reason she agreed to this nonsense. Your mom is secretly a little in awe of her friend, the only woman she knows who graduated college. She is vivacious and a successful writer who, on a number of occasions, has insisted you are talented, too. This is one of the few times when your mom disagrees with her. She can do without her contrary dreamy child who she worries won’t find her way in life is she’s egged on to pursue such an impractical career.

But, in regards to tonight’s adventure, it sort of fits with what your mom often claims is your gift to the world: You are pretty. She says your sister is smart and your brother—the perfect son—is her son. You rather be smart and special but your mom’s prevaling opinion is that, while she appreciates your sharp sense of humor, you’re shy of both smarts and specialness by quite a few levels. Given this, maybe she thinks this is your one chance to succeed at something. If so, she’s not doing a very good job at hiding her skepticism.

You get off the bus at Cherry Street and walk a short distance to a German restaurant that she and your dad frequent. The dark wood-paneled interior is oiled with decades of tobacco smoke and beer. The waiters wear long starched and spotless white aprons over white shirts and black ties. They’re not so much unfriendly as dour.

Your mom orders a Manhattan, straight up, schnitzel, and sauerbraten as soon as your waiter appears. Then she lights a cigarette and looks you over: Pretty might not be enough. She may not be thinking that but you are—an accident-prone, flat-chested 16-year-old who hunches her shoulders in a vain attempt to be less tall than everyone else. Unkind friends label your neck as long as a giraffe’s. The worst, especially for this evening, is your total muteness in social settings.

Your mom tries her best to give you an out. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure,” you reply. You’ve gotten this far. Your mom’s friend believes in you and you don’t want to let her down.

The waiter slides your plates down in front of you with a flourish: schnitzel and boiled potatoes for you, sauerbraten, boiled cabbage, and mashed potatoes for your mom. She requests another Manhattan, then cuts off a good chunk of sauerbraten and lays it beside your schnitzel. You reciprocate with a schnitzel slice.

One of the things you appreciate about your mom, that makes her so different than any of your girlfriends’ moms, is her insistence that her children (meaning her daughters) are steeped in a full understanding of what is imperative to good cooking. She deconstructs every meal she hasn’t cooked straight down to the smallest seasoning. She starts with your schnitzel’s pork, explaining how it is pounded to such an exquisite thinness that you could probably see right through it if you scrape the homemade bread crumbs off. And look at the sauerbraten, the beef free of fat and yet still so meaty tasting even under the sauce’s pleasant tanginess.

“I bet they use gingersnaps,” she says of the sauerbraten’s sauce.

Tonight, though, you’re not listening so closely because you’re too busy gauging how she’s doing with that second Manhattan. If she orders a third, then you’ll have an excuse to guide her home. In turn, your mom is watching you, noticing how little you’re eating and guessing right that you are anxious. Unfortunately, after your plates are taken away, she has coffee, drinks it fast, and pays the bill.

And so you walk the four blocks to the modeling agency that’s holding open calls for young girls, ages 12 to 16. Your mom and you are sheperded into a waiting room packed with impossibly gorgeous girls. One by one, they are led through a door to a small studio where they stand before a white background and asked by several men to pose in various ways for their photographs. Their instructions are like poured cement stiffening every single limb and bone in your body. Afterward, you are taken to a cavernous room and instructed to walk up and down between two lines of adults scribbling notes. Your mom has seated herself directly in front of you and repeatedly mimics how to pull your shoulders back. She also taps her hand under her chin, signaling you to raise your head. It is charitable to say that you are a complete disaster and extremely grateful to hastily follow your mom out the door. You jam your envelop of sad photographs in the first sidewalk trash can you pass.

On the ride home, your mom attempts to make you feel better by explaining the rules of a game she used to play with your Aunt Ann. It goes: After every slogan on a bus ad, tack on under the sheets. She demonstrates with a few: “We are waiting to take care of you…under the sheets;” “Finger lickin’ good….under the sheets;” “Have it your way….under the sheets.”

Yours is “Just do it….under the sheets.”

People standing and sitting about you appear alarmed at how hard you and your mom are laughing and blotting tears from your eyes with shredding tissues. They don’t stop you from continuing until the game is ended with the final ad by which time the bus pulls up to your stop.

Your dad is watching a late-night talk show when you walk in. He doesn’t want to look like he’s been waiting for you and your mom, but you know that’s exactly what he’s been doing.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

You head into the kitchen without saying hello and try not to hear how your mom replies. You fill up a cereal bowl with chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla ice cream and settle into your chair at the kitchen table. Your mom comes in and finds the jar of Bosco chocolate syrup in the refrigerator. There’s even a can of Reddi-Wip. While she makes herself a drink in a large juice glass—whiskey and orange juice over a scant amount of ice—you pour close to half the Bosco over the ice cream and sculpt two mile-high swirling cream peaks. She sits down across from you and slides toward her the book her friend lent her the other day.

It is 11. You have school tomorrow. Your mom has work. You eat your ice cream. She reads her book and sips her drink.