Ron
I start preparing for Church of Mary days before the Sunday event, much like my father would prepare and practice his sermon
in the days leading up to the Sabbath.
For many years, I have chosen themes for our Sunday services: In the summer, for instance, considering it is hotter than Hades,
I might channel the classic movie Some Like It Hot, with each of us dressing as a character from the film, or perhaps The Towering Inferno, with flambé as a featured course. One Christmas, we all dressed as versions of Dolly Parton throughout the years while her
Christmas album played, and I served delicate pastries called Minne di Sant’Agata that, fittingly, look just like boobs.
Last week we celebrated Valentine’s, and this week is a tribute to the Rat Pack and the kickoff to Modernism Week in Palm
Springs. For fashion, I’ve decided on fedoras, and for food?
My mother’s recipe box sits rather unironically in a Zsa Zsa–designed cabinet in the kitchen. When I pull the worn, wooden
box free and set it on the fancy countertops by the Wolf stove, the juxtaposition is jarring, a bit like finding a La-Z-Boy
recliner in the middle of the Frey House, a desert modernism masterpiece perched in the mountains, where I will be a docent
this afternoon.
I open the lid and scan the handwritten tabs—Appetizers! Salads! Sides! Entrees! Desserts! I pull cards I placed Post-its on and took photos of earlier this week from the box.
I trace my finger over my mother’s cursive, tilted letters that look as if they are being blown off their foundations by a
tornado like the ones that seemed to pop up out of nowhere every spring.
What is it about food and family? A favorite recipe? A beloved dessert?
Once you taste it, you are home, and the memories—no matter how bad—are, for a fleeting moment, tinged with sweetness and
nostalgia despite all the horrific storms.
In honor of bygone Rat Pack days, I already have the menu planned. For appetizers, I have decided upon stuffed celery and
pepperoni pinwheels. Brunch will be beef stroganoff with scalloped potatoes along with creamed peas and onions. Of course,
I will serve a salad: a Jell-O salad chock-full of carrots and marshmallows. When my mother used to ask if we wanted a salad,
she did not mean a healthy one—say, spinach or kale—but rather dessert before dessert. For dessert? A pineapple upside-down
cake.
Barry won’t eat a bite, of course, but he will critique my menu. He’s what I call “pretend Southern.” Barry is like a woman
from Charleston who leaves the South behind for good but then goes back for the holidays and starts saying things like “I’m
as happy as a clam at high tide,” although she didn’t even know clams lived in the water.
I sip some water and think of recent nights: My gays have not been so golden. Teddy, who has seemed off for weeks, tossed
a drink in a bachelor-to-be’s face (he did deserve it) and then left Streetbar without any warning; Sid followed suit; Barry
dressed in a tuxedo last night—a real one, mind you, not a tearaway tux—and left without any explanation, returning home and
heading straight to his room like a sullen teenager.
Me, you ask?
Not a single friend asked if I was okay being left alone at Streetbar. They just vanished. They still haven’t asked about it. I am sick and tired of being the tonic water in a cocktail, the one thing nobody notices is there but is essential to making the drink cohesive.
After being dumped at Streetbar, I ended up taking an Uber to Ralphs before it closed for the night. I shopped for this week’s
meal at midnight alongside drunks, crazies and lonely people with carts full of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and boxed wine.
Lord, I am a broken record playing the same Petula Clark song.
As I shopped, I grew so angry at being the responsible, overlooked one yet again that I went through the self-checkout and
shoved the most expensive items into a bag when the single cashier on duty wasn’t looking. My final receipt for today’s meal
was only twenty-one dollars.
On the way home, the pit of my stomach filled with remorse, so I tried to fill it with a bag of cherry Red Vines, part of
my illegal contraband.
I woke at dawn, showered and dressed. While everyone continues to get their beauty sleep, I am now cooking to keep the family
together and our traditions alive.
I open the fridge to begin pulling ingredients and see a bottle of tonic water.
Would anyone even notice if I was missing from our communal cocktail?
I sigh. The fridge is a mess again.
I cannot find the pepperoni I placed in the cheese drawer, so I begin to search for the carrots and celery, which I finally
realize were moved from the crisper at some point and wedged under a bowl of . . .
Something congealed and deeply disturbing.
I remove the cling wrap to find a yellow clot of cold cheese flecked with red. I pull my glasses down to the end of my nose
for a closer inspection.
My pepperoni.
I open the built-in cabinet that hides our trash.
It is overflowing. On top are egg shells along with an empty package of pepperoni and containers that once held the Gruyère and Swiss I was planning to use in my scalloped potatoes.
Beside that is a half-empty jar of maraschino cherries I was planning to use for my pineapple upside-down cake.
They were used for late-night cocktails—the glasses are still in the sink—and obviously to top the empty container of H?agen-Dazs I was planning to serve with my cake.
I take a deep breath.
Re-center, Ron. It’s all going to be okay.
I remove the trash—because it’s pissing me off so much to look at it—and take it to the garage. I add a new bag to the bin
and then begin to load the dishwasher. It is full. It has never been unloaded. I walk over to look at the laminated sheet
I posted for the week: Barry did not run and empty the dishwasher, and Teddy did not empty the garbage.
I place my hands on the counter and stare into the majestic mountains surrounding us. I say a prayer I remember from childhood.
“Almighty Father, in this moment, when it feels like the whole world is against me, I turn to You, my rock and my refuge.”
When I finish, I unload the dishwasher, then reload it, place a pod in the dishwasher, start it anew and hand-wash the glasses
in the sink. When I finally finish, I decide to start over. I open the fridge to retrieve the sirloin.
I open the wrapper. Half the meat is gone.
Steak and eggs. They made steak and eggs when they were drunk.
The world around me turns to static, and I do not realize I am screaming until Teddy, Sid, Barry—along with a very hot shirtless
young man who came over at some point last night to see Barry—are standing before me.
“Are you okay?” Sid asks, eye mask atop his head.
“What is going on?” Teddy asks. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“You scared the hell out of us, too,” Barry says. He puts his arm around the shirtless guy, who looks to be about a third of his age. “Are you okay . . . um . . .”
Barry hesitates uncomfortably.
“Vince,” the young man says. “My name is Vince.” His face droops, and his mountain-y shoulders slump. “You told me you loved
me last night.”
“I know what you’d love,” Barry deflects. “A big breakfast.”
“Yeah!” Vince rubs his taut stomach and then stretches. Eyeballs hit the floor.
“We worked up an appetite, didn’t we . . . um . . .”
“Vince!” he says.
Teddy releases a resounding laugh.
Barry looks at me expectantly.
“Have at it,” I say, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel. “I’m not your short-order cook.” I toss the towel at Barry. “This
whole routine is getting old.” I look at Vince while nodding at Barry. “Older than he is.”
Vince finally looks at Barry in this harsh morning light as if he is seeing him for the first time.
“You told me you were forty.”
Teddy laughs again.
“In dog years,” he says. “You just couldn’t tell in the dark that he has mange.”
“So why did you yell, Ron?” Sid asks. He sees the beef on the island, a knife beside it. “Did you cut yourself?”
“No,” I say. “You’re the ones who put the knife in my back.”
“What did we do?” Sid asks.
“Nothing!” I yell. “That’s the whole point. None of you ever do a damn thing around this house!”
“Dramatic much, Ron?” Teddy says, turning to walk away. “I’m going back to bed.”
“No, you are fucking not, Teddy!”
He stops in his tracks. I look each of my friends in the eye.
“I do everything around here. Everything. I cook. I clean. I grocery shop. I pay the bills. I balance our collective budget. I take out the garbage and wash the dishes. I print a list of chores for each of you that goes unnoticed each and every week, and has gone unnoticed for years. I keep up our traditions, from Church of Mary to the holidays.” I take a breath.
“Did any of you realize—or care—that you
left me alone at Streetbar the other night?”
Teddy, Sid and Barry glance at each other and then the floor.
“I’m sick and tired of doing everything in this house, which, by the way, I helped buy and redecorate on my own dime.” I try
to control my rage. “And I’m the one doing all of this while still working full-time . . .”
“I work!” Teddy interrupts. “I have my shop!”
“And I still work,” Sid says. “Occasionally.”
“I am very busy,” Barry adds.
“Yes, you are, Barry,” Teddy says, eyeing Vince. “You stay very active.”
I shake my head at their childishness.
“Let’s be honest for once, boys. I bring in the money. The repairs on this house are not cheap, and the monthly maintenance
on the pool, spa and lawn are outrageous, and you all act as if you live in a hotel.”
“We all put money into the budget to care for this house,” Sid says. “It is equitable.”
“It was equitable,” I say. “A decade ago. We agreed to put in an amount to cover our main expenses that was equitable given our individual
circumstances years ago, but, boys, everything is more expensive now, and that lid doesn’t cover the pot anymore.”