Dinner Ritual

Eugene swept the tiny, hissing flame across the sugar. Back and forth like a lawn sprinkler. His heavy eyebrows touched as he concentrated. The sugar bubbled, browned, and crusted, leaving a cratered moonscape on the surface of the dessert.

The front door closed. Keys clattered on the credenza and sneakers tumbled to the hardwood floor. His wife called, “I wish you had come walking—or hobbling—with me. The cherry trees are in bloom.”

Eugene placed the crème brûlée on the dining room table between the saffron rice and the Swedish meatballs.

As Sarah rounded the corner into the dining room, she whistled. “I thought I could slow you down by crippling you. You always cook tons, but this borders on vengeance cooking.”

A vase of fresh, red roses stood witness on the table. Sarah brushed the petals with her fingertips. “So you’re still mad about yesterday.” She broke a thorn off and rolled it between her fingers without drawing blood.

“We’ll  talk over dinner.” Eugene brought the lamb biryani and eased the meatballs aside to make space on the corner.

Sarah sat and plucked a piece of crust off the warm cherry pie. “Who’s going to eat all this?” She raised one eyebrow and lifted the crumb from her fingers with her tongue, which then slid behind her rose-petal lips. Eugene scowled and brought the next serving bowl from the kitchen.

“A celebration requires food.” He squeezed the bean salad onto the table at an angle, propped between the heavy, cut-crystal vase and the pot of rice.

Sarah rolled her eyes and placed the thorn like a palisade on the rim of her plate. She had long since stopped asking what they were celebrating.

“We’re celebrating us.”

“This is an odd time to celebrate our relationship, Gene.”

“It’s the same time every week.” Eugene served himself steamed broccoli and poured cheese sauce over it.

Sarah dipped her fork into the bean salad and sampled. “If you want to talk, start talking.”

They ate in silence for some minutes. Sarah’s plate remained clean aside from the thorn as she taste-tested directly from every pot, pan, and dish around the table. Eugene kept his eyes on his food, but the conversational eddy Sarah had left behind her pulled at him.

He said, “Monday is laundry day, so don’t forget to give me your dirty clothes tonight.”

Sarah blew out a sigh and slumped in her chair. Her fork clattered onto her plate, finally dirtying it. “Eugene, I swear to God—”

Eugene looked up. “Let me put this in the simplest terms: my hip still hurts. I couldn’t sleep well last night. Sitting is uncomfortable.” He placed his fork tines-down on his placemat.

Sarah’s mouth still hung open from her interrupted sentence. “What did you expect? The bruise on your hip looks like Jackson Pollock could have painted it. It’s going to hurt for a few more days.” She sliced into the pie and slopped some onto her plate. With a mouth full of cherries and crust, she added, “And I already apologized about a million times.”

“You placated me until we got home and you slunk straight to your workshop.”

Sarah shrugged. “I changed clothes first.” When Eugene’s mouth became thin and tight, she said, “You act like I’ve dealt you a mortal blow. It was just a little prank.”

Eugene crossed his arms. “Beyond being simply juvenile, your little prank hurt me, yet you deny me a real apology.”

“Maybe if you were a little more juvenile every now and again, you might understand. Bruises heal, you know.”

The hand-grated Wisconsin cheddar congealed around the broccoli on Eugene’s plate. The refrigerator hummed to the end of a cooling cycle.

Eugene picked up his fork, stabbed the last broccoli floret, and shoved it in his mouth. He took his dishes out to the kitchen and placed them in the sink. When he returned, he stood at his place and nodded at Sarah’s plate. “Are you finished with that?”

Sarah ran a hand through her long, red hair, then picked the thorn up and plunked it in the vase with the roses. She looked Eugene in the eye. “I’m sorry I capsized the canoe while you were standing in it.”

“Thank you.” He picked the vase up. “Are we reconciled? Can I put these back on the credenza?”

Sarah stood. “Do what you want with your silly flowers, Gene. I’m going to work on our new bed.” She took her pie with her, but stopped at the basement door. She came back and snagged a cup of crème brûlée, then retreated to her carpentry workshop downstairs.

Eugene returned the vase of roses to the credenza before the front door and packed the leftovers in the refrigerator. He ran hot water in the sink. The nearly empty bottle of dish soap wheezed when he squirted the last of the contents into the water.

#

“A celebration requires food,” Eugene’s mother said. It was the day before his sixth birthday, and he had awoken in the night of a stuffed-up nose, a parched throat, and a whistling wind across his forehead from under the window that didn’t quite shut. He had found her in the kitchen preparing golubtsi and asked why.

Her head sprang up, and her tight curls bounced at every loud drunk meandering through the back alley their apartment window faced; then she would scowl at the limp cabbage leaf in her bony hands. Eugene curled into the corner next to the trash can so Mother would forget he was there and let him enjoy the sticky heat of the kitchen longer. But Mother never forgot anything, and when Eugene started to nod off to the scent of onions frying in butter, she picked him up and carried him to bed.

Mother brought his father’s undershirt from their room and stuffed it into the gap at the base of the window. She kissed Eugene’s forehead, and before she left, twirled one of his curls around her finger, then let it bounce back as she drew away.

“A celebration requires food,” Mother said a year and a half later when Aunt Liya visited their cramped apartment on Liya’s birthday. Mother's arms were crossed to pin her impatient hands down; they would remain derailed until his father brought the meat for the borscht. Her cooking had layered heat on top of the unseasonably warm June sun. Sweat bled through her flower-print cotton shift in hanging ovals at her armpits and thin crescents under her heavy breasts. Liya’s curls drooped around the dipping corners of her mouth, and she gave Mother a pinched look every quarter hour when the church bells chimed.

Eugene sought the breeze at the window. He stood the dominoes his mother had given him for his sixth birthday on end in a row on the window sill. He was the first to hear his father approach. His father’s footsteps always stopped and started, as if he loitered at shop windows, played a round of jacks with the girls at the corner, chatted up a policeman twice his size, and checked for rain clouds. Eugene flicked the domino at the end of the row. Click-click-click they toppled.

#

While Eugene was still scouring browned remains of lamb and spices off a pan, Sarah slunk in with her empty plate and custard cup. “Why don’t we just order out for pizza sometimes? I lose you to the kitchen for hours every Sunday.”

But Eugene hated pizza. The grease dripped like it had on Aunt Liya’s birthday and collected in delinquent pools on his plate. Pizza displaced healthy food in a conscientious diet. He took her dishes and submerged them in the cooling, soapy water.

Sarah pressed herself against him from behind and slid one hand up his shirt and the other down his pants. She bent to nibble his ear. “Put the dishes in the dishwasher for once.”

He would need two more days of dishes to fill their oversized dishwasher that way. It would stink like meatless borscht left to foul on a sweltering Chicago night.

“If you want to spend time together, pick up a dish towel.”

Sarah clomped back down the wooden stairs to her workshop.

#

After Eugene’s mother took him to live with Aunt Liya, they ate dinner together at seven o’clock sharp on Sundays, and it was always a celebration. They could hardly see the table for all of the food piled on it. The food would last through the rest of the week when Eugene came home from school hungry, and Mother and Aunt Liya slumped into two tattered, blue wing chairs, too tired to cook.

“We’re celebrating us,” Aunt Liya would say every week when Eugene asked, and she would brush his bangs back and rub her sister’s arm with her spindly hand.

After dinner, one of them would collect the dirty dishes while another ran a sink of hot water. The third would sweep around the table, wipe the counters, and mop the kitchen floor. When the first clean dishes clattered onto the dish rack, the dirty-dish-collector would dry and replace them.

“Always the cleanest dishes first,” Aunt Liya would say when it was Eugene’s turn to wash, “so your water stays fresh for the dirtiest.”

“Everything in its proper time,” Mother would say, “and the proper time for washing dishes is right after dinner.”

The women laughed over a week’s worth of anecdotes they brought home from their jobs. After a time, Eugene didn’t miss his father as much, and he began relating jokes he picked up at school.

#

Saturday night was date-your-spouse night, and Sarah met Eugene at Da Mario with five Macy’s bags in her hands. When he cracked one open with two fingers, she slapped his hand and moved the bags out of his reach.

“You’ll see when I want you to, buster.”

Eugene rubbed his hand where her wedding ring had hit bone. Sarah took his hand and kissed the spot, then continued to kiss his fingertips while he ducked his head and looked around the nearly empty restaurant. When she bit the flesh at the base of his thumb, he pulled his hand back and put it in his lap. She blew a raspberry and studied her menu.

It was Sarah’s turn to choose an after-dinner movie, so they went home to stream Some Like it Hot. Eugene usually watched five to seven trailers before she was ready. This time, he was searching for his tenth when she settled down next to him in her white lace nightgown.

Sarah ran her fingers through his dark hair. “They say Marilyn Monroe was half-mad while filming this. She was so unreliable, she drove the director and her co-stars wild. But it’s a funny movie.”

Eugene raised an eyebrow and a corner of his lip. “Now you’ve made me feel sorry for the cast. I’m not sure I want to watch it.”

Sarah shrugged. “They’re dead now.” She kissed him and pressed the play button. “And they groused all the way to the bank.”

The next morning was Mass. Eugene’s mother and Aunt Liya had been Russian Orthodox in a hands-off way. While he was dating Sarah, she had been a recovering devout Catholic. Their wedding had triggered something old in her, and she had begun to attend Mass again and drag him with. He tolerated it wordlessly some weeks, but he often invented new reasons why maybe this week they should skip Mass. Despite his attempts, he found himself moaning the same old hymns every week with a congregation like a deflating pump organ.

Their old, metal-frame bed squeaked with every movement as Eugene rolled to a sitting position on the edge of the mattress and resolved to face Mass without complaint this week. Sarah stepped into the room wearing a new outfit: a slim, cream-colored funnel dress with silhouettes of lilies that reached from her modest chest down her side to the hem.

“I was so tired of the same old dresses that I bought this yesterday. Do you like it?”

Eugene narrowed his eyes and marched to the laundry room. The clothes he had washed on Friday, the ones he would have taken off the drying rack next to the furnace that evening, lay heaped on the ironing board. An assortment of dresses, skirts, blouses, panties, and bras he had never seen draped themselves across the drying rack.

Eugene confronted Sarah in the hallway. “Those clothes weren’t dry.”

“They were next to the furnace. Of course they were dry.”

“I leave them hanging two days. One isn’t always enough.”

Sarah put her hands on her hips. “They were dry. I checked.”

“That machine can’t have been full, Sarah.”

“Full enough, Gene.”

“I won’t have enough to wash tomorrow.”

“The Lord did not create the washing machine on a Monday. Wash on Tuesday this week. If you want, I’ll take care of it.”

“You? We’ll be down to the clothing we collected for Goodwill before the muse strikes you.”

He had meant to say something like, I want you to take it easy, or, This is part of my contribution to our marriage. Her last word before she stormed to her workshop was, “Petty.”

#

Mother strained the unfinished borscht after Aunt Liya’s birthday. That’s how Eugene knew they were never coming back.

After Eugene’s father brought home a stranger and two large pan pizzas with all the toppings instead of meat for the borscht; after his father celebrated his new job, introduced the stranger as another janitor at Brookfield Zoo, and privately asked Mother why Liya was there; after his father was in bed snoring off euphoria, Eugene went to complain to Mother of a sharp pain in his stomach and found her in the bathroom. She lowered a colander into the narrow toilet seat and poured her borscht through it.

Eugene hid behind the couch his father had salvaged from the dumpster three years ago and singlehandedly lugged up four flights of stairs. His mother had spent the next two days cleaning it, but it still smelled of stale urine with his nose right up against it.

When the slosh of broth into toilet water stopped, Mother emerged with the pot hanging in one hand and the colander held against her hip with the other. In the kitchen, she dumped the cabbage, beet, potatoes, and dill into the trash can and washed the pot and colander. Then she went to bed.

Her husband complained of the smell in the morning and left for work. Mother packed a suitcase and led Eugene to the elevated train stop.

#

Eugene showered slowly to give Sarah time to cool off, then he donned his navy slacks and the scarlet dress shirt she liked best. The starburst tie unified the outfit.

Sarah wasn’t waiting at the front door, so he tried her workshop. His patent leather shoes clacked on the stairs, but they were the only sound. The bed frame that had been taking form and hindering movement through the workshop for two months now lay dismantled. The individual planks hunched in a corner, largest on the bottom. The joints bristled with splinters. Sarah’s leather woodworking apron sprawled over top.

Eugene changed into jeans and a T-shirt. Over a small bowl of stale and sugary cereal, he watched his wife’s icon on his smart phone display jump down the road every minute when her location data was  updated. When she reached the cathedral, the icon stopped moving. Then his phone couldn’t locate her anymore—she always switched off for Mass.

He didn’t know what to do with himself, so he drove across town to a lake he had never visited. On his way back, he could shop for dinner. He would buy red roses, too. One good thing about Mass was that parishioners were admonished to forgive.

He walked around the lake for a good hour. Birds held council in excited chitters and stentorian squawks along the shore and in the reeds. A fish broke the surface where a mosquito skipped, then dribbled away. There were two small children, a brother and sister, splashing in the water close to the shore only a few feet from a No Swimming sign. Their parents chatted on a picnic blanket. Eugene stopped to watch a heron hunt.

#

When his stocky, bow-legged father took him to the zoo once, Eugene was fascinated by the heron’s long legs, long beak, and methodical movements. He had mostly seen pigeons before that.

His father picked him up from second grade right before lunch, when the siren song of the early June sun through Ms. Henshaw’s classroom windows was at its most alluring. His father knocked on the door and poked his head in with a winning smile on his face.

Once, when Eugene was six and Aunt Liya was over for a visit, his father had popped in around dinner time, kissed Mother, and told her he was helping a friend move that evening. He gave her the same smile and disappeared out the door again. Mother said it was that smile she had fallen in love with. A person who smiled like that must have a good heart. Liya said it was that smile that convinced her he was a conman. Mother had pursed her lips but said nothing else.

Eugene’s father told Ms. Henshaw he was taking Eugene with him.

Ms. Henshaw furrowed her brow. “We are in the middle of instruction, Mr. Komolov.”

His father waved Eugene to him. “Important. Family. Eugene, come.”

“I will mark him unexcused, Mr. Komolov.”

His father waved at Ms. Henshaw as if she had asked him to say hello to his wife for her. He scuffed in his jerky gait down the hall with Eugene and out of the school.

When they got off the elevated train, they went through the employee entrance of Brookfield Zoo.

“I’m not an employee yet, but I got a good feeling.”

Eugene skipped over the lions, elephants, and camels but stood in a trance before the birds.

His father ruffled his hair. “Pretty, aren’t they, Gene? They fly all around the world. No luggage. Go when they want to.”

A heron strutted a gangly few paces closer to Eugene and watched him.

At the Cermak Family Aquatic Center, his father fished the money he had out of his pockets, then asked Eugene for his lunch money. Together it was barely enough to buy a swimsuit for Eugene at the gift shop. Eugene was hungry, but he didn’t mind. He splashed and played and did tricks off the waterslide while his father smiled from the poolside.

It wasn’t until they arrived at the train station that his father realized they had no money for return fare. They spent another hour at the station begging change off riders, his father with that smile, and Eugene with innocence. In the train, Eugene leaned into his father’s arms and dozed as his father kissed his hair.

When they got home, the fried dumplings with mashed potato filling his mother had made were cold. His father waddled back and forth in front of the bathroom for the next hour convincing his mother to stop crying and open the door, first with apologies, then by begging a full bladder.

The next day was Aunt Liya’s birthday.

#

Dinner was over, though Eugene hadn’t eaten, and he was still alone with the red roses. He would move them to the credenza once Sarah came home and they reconciled, but he had checked her location on his phone before he left the lake: she was at her sister’s. She was still there when he got home with the groceries, and she hadn’t budged the whole time he cooked. When he finished cooking, he sent her a picture of the decked table. He was still waiting on the response.

Eugene packed the food in plastic containers and fought for space in the refrigerator. He could only slide the macaroni and cheese in sideways next to the pasta salad.

He went to stand in the front lawn and gawk down the street. He checked his phone again. Sarah was on the highway headed east. There was really only one reason she went out that way.

The first stars were overpowering the fading sun and suburban light pollution. Eugene wished he could get above the lights to see better.

#

It was three in the morning on his sixth birthday, and Mother had finally gone to bed alone when his father shook him awake and whispered for him to be quiet. His father wrapped Eugene in a heavy blanket, lifted him, and gave him a handkerchief when Eugene sniffed on their way up the stairs. Three floors later, they stood before the maintenance exit to the roof. His father put Eugene down, put a finger to his lips, and winked. He hopped to pull a key from its hiding place atop the doorframe. The winter wind on the rooftop drove Eugene back a step, but his father picked him up and carried him to the center of the roof. Stars stretched across the sky like accidental pinpricks in a cloth, but it was still more than Eugene had ever seen from underneath the blanket of streetlights and yellow kitchen windows.

“Watch! Watch!” Father pointed to the emptiest part of the sky.

A star streaked and disappeared. Eugene’s hands went to his mouth. Another streak. And another.

“It’s a meteor shower, Gene. I stopped to watch on my way home.”

They pointed and marveled until their toes were cold.

The next morning, Eugene had a burning fever.

#

Eugene put a hand to his forehead, then shielded his eyes from the living room lamp in the neighbors’ house. The stars were fixed in their courses tonight, but a shooting star might happen anytime. He and Sarah had never gone stargazing.

He considered waiting with the roses at her sister’s house. He couldn’t remember seeing flowers in his own home growing up.

His stomach rumbled, so he went back inside and opened the refrigerator. The sideways Tupperware container with the macaroni and cheese lay in a pool of hardened grease. He cursed, placed the container in the sink, and wiped up the grease with a paper towel. Then he ripped the top off the container and upended it over the trash can. The meatloaf landed next to the macaroni and cheese. The pasta salad covered them both. He washed the chocolate pudding, almost set, down the drain. Mangoes had been his mother’s favorite fruit—he smiled as he threw the pie in the trash. The upside-down crust cracked in three uneven segments and the pie slid off the mound of lukewarm leftovers. He plunked a colander in the sink and poured the potato soup through it, then scattered the potatoes, onions, and parsley over the rest of the food. He bound the trash bag and took it outside to the trash can.

Under a full moon, he thumbed through his phone, then dialed.

“Yes, I’d like to order a large Chicago pan pizza with all the toppings. The name on the order is Sarah Gibbonsdale. Uh, I don’t have the exact address, but do you know the Catholic cathedral right down the highway? Sarah will be by the votive candles.”

Author’s Biography

Andrew Rucker Jones is a former IT dweeb and American expatriate living in Germany with his Georgian wife and their three children. His greatest literary achievement to date is authoring ninety-eight iCloud reminders for every household chore from cleaning sinks to checking smoke detectors. http://selfdefeatistnavelgazing.wordpress.com/