A La Carte (6 page)

“It sounds unreal,” I say.

“You have no idea,” Sim groans. “She wants all of us to have our chakras aligned. You know what that might do to my social life?”

“I won't even ask.”

Sim keeps talking. Little by little, the knotted, tense feeling in my stomach goes away. It's like the last semester never happened. We sit and eat, and Sim talks about people I don't know, but I don't really care. I'm just glad he's here.

We're carefully polite. When Sim's cell phone battery dies, I offer to let him use my charger upstairs. Sim says he'll go as soon as he's got “juice,” and he politely sits on the floor in the hallway to wait.

“You can come in,” I tell him. I hand him the remote. “Here. Find a movie or something.”

Sim flips a few channels and finds an ancient episode of
Buck Rogers.
We laugh at the bad seventies hairdos, and things start to feel more normal. While I go get more banana bread, Sim gets comfortable, stretching out on my double bed. He pulls off his sweatshirt and his boots and gets crumbs on my comforter.

“Did you just spill
milk
on my bed?” I ask as I catch him furtively blotting at something with his shirttail.

“No, no, it's just on my shirt.” Sim skins out of it and tosses it on the floor. “See? Got it.”

“You're such a slob,” I say, and get up to get him another sweatshirt. “Here.”

“No, I'm going in a minute,” Sim says, waving his hand so I'll quit blocking the TV. “As soon as this show goes off.”

“Right.”

And that's how Mom finds us, hours later—Sim in my bed with the covers up to his chest (when did he do that?) and me, sprawled fully clothed right beside him, the plate of banana bread crumbs trapped between us, watching TV with barely open eyes.

“Lainey?” My mother comes up the stairs. “Did you notice…
Elaine?
” Mom's voice skips an octave up the scale and my body flings itself upright.

5

“Oh, hi, Mom!”

My voice doesn't sound normal. It's too high. I clear my throat and wish I could start over again. Stay calm, Mom. It's nothing. Honest.

“What's up, Mrs. Seifert.” Simeon yawns. He sits up and rubs his face for a moment, then blinks. There is an awkward silence.

My mother is standing in the doorway, very still, her arms down at her sides, her fingers rolling the red piping on the edges of her white chef's jacket. Sim pulls back the covers and climbs out of my bed, markedly casual as he shrugs into his milk-damp shirt and steps into his shoes. He grabs his sweatshirt. “I guess I'd better get some homework done before work tonight, huh?”

I would laugh, except I can see that Mom is on the knife edge of being upset. Simeon never does homework; we all know that.

I can see conflict clashing across my mother's face. Why is Simeon in her daughter's bed? Should she ask him to stay? Should she hurry him away? What's going on?

“We're just watching old sci-fi,” I babble to fill the silence. “
Buck Rogers…
you know. Bad costumes.”

“I see.” She directs her dark glance at me, riffling her fingers through her cropped natural hair and sighing. I can read words in her expression.
Elaine Seifert, you will explain this later.

“You're on at five-thirty?” I ask Simeon, turning slightly toward him.

“Yep. You coming out?”

I glance at my mother. She doesn't look like she's up to me going across town to hang out at Sim's new job. Not tonight.

“Nah. See you tomorrow, huh?”

“Right. Bye, Mrs. S.”

“It was so good to see you, Simeon,” my mother says tiredly, then her genteel Southern instinct bursts forth in ultra-politeness. “Please don't rush off on my account. I brought back some fresh rolls from the restaurant.”

Simeon grins. He knows when he's got my mother off balance. “I think I've cleaned you out of sweets again,” he says, giving her a charming glance that never fails to thaw her. “I'd better go while you might still let me come back.”

My mother, predictably, gives a wry smile and shakes her head. Today, though, her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes as she turns back toward me.

Sim thanks me for the banana bread and finishes buttoning his shirt as my mother's glance goes from my bed to me to the boy who is leaving my bedroom and back to me. As soon as Simeon is gone, I can look forward to Vivianne Seifert's Twenty Questions. I can tell Sim feels the vibe too, 'cause he's gone before I know it. Coward.

I've said before that Mom is pretty cool. I know she's reminding herself of this fact as she unbuttons the red cloth fastenings on her chef's jacket. Her fingers move slowly, and I can practically hear her plotting how this should go.

Mother: Tell me everything.

Daughter: Oh, Mother dear, of course!

“So…it's nice to see Sim around,” my mother says conversationally.

Mom's sermons are always worse when she starts out so calmly. “Yeah. It was good to hang out. He has a job now at that coffee shop, Soy to the World.”

“That's good….” Mom trails off, clears her throat. “Elaine, I'm…a little concerned with what I saw today. I'm going to make some guidelines. About visits.”

“Visits?” I tilt my head and try a look of polite curiosity, feeling the blood coming to my face. “We're just hanging out, like always.”

Mom levels a glance at me. “I can appreciate that. It was good to see you with a friend over….” Hervoice trails away. “Your friends are always welcome here, but as it stands, we need to make some rules for now.”

“Rules? Mom.”

“Elaine,” Mom says warningly. “Old friends or not, I…well, I was caught a little off guard by…by a boy in your bed with no shirt on.”

“He always takes off his shoes over here.”

“Elaine.”

I sigh. “He spilled something on his shirt.”

“All right—” Mom lifts a placating hand. “Fine. That's not the issue. But I think…” Mom clears her throat, plunges in. “Honey, we still need some guidelines. I know”—Mom waves her hand over my objections—“that you don't need to have the little talk I gave you in the fifth grade. I just want you to be clear in your own head, Elaine, what's going on. You don't want to have any…regrets…about your friendship now that things have changed between you two….”

“They
haven't,
” I snap, my ears heating up. “It's not like that. Sim doesn't see me like that.” As soon as the words are out, I wish them back. My mother is looking at me with a little worried furrow in her forehead, her eyes getting all shiny and soft with pity.

“Oh,
Lainey,
honey, you're such a beautiful girl,” she begins, and tentatively reaches out a hand.

There is nothing more lame than my parent apologizing because I
don't
have a love life for her to worry about. I hold out my arm, stiff, to ward her off. “
Mom
. Please.”

My mother straightens and blows out a sigh. “Well, Elaine, here's the bottom line: I'm glad that you and Simeon are friends; you know I've always liked him, and I want your friends to be welcome in our home. However, I would prefer if when you two come over here that you stay…downstairs.”

I shrug like I don't care, but I can barely lift my face. How humiliating. I have so little social life that I don't need to have a curfew. Now Mom doesn't have to give me rules about Simeon, but she's doing it anyway.

“I'm sorry if this is embarrassing,” Mom says like she's reading my mind. “Simeon is welcome to come here anytime, and when he visits, I know you guys will have fun. I'd just feel better if I didn't have to come upstairs to find you and wonder…what you'd been doing.”

I grind my teeth, wishing she'd shut up. “We weren't doing anything. This is so unnecessary.”

“Elaine,” my mother says tiredly, “give me some credit for knowing a little about human nature. You weren't doing anything today, but another day, who knows? When I was your age—”

I sigh, feeling my shoulders slump in defeat. In high school, my mother had tons of friends, bunches of boyfriends, and a life totally different from mine. She always brings up her life like it has something to do with me. When Mom talks about her big homecoming-queen high school days, I feel stupid. This isn't
necessary.
It's like I'm six and my mom's still arranging my playdates, telling me what I can and can't do when she's not there to watch. Even when she's not watching, nothing is going on with Sim and me.
Nothing.

“Well.” Mom realizes she's started reminiscing, and her voice fades. She clears her throat. “Look, let's drop this, okay? How about we split a piece of that banana bread? Did you use up all my pecan bark?” My mother trails off, turning toward the kitchen.

“Wait a second, Mom.” I clear my throat. “I'm not hungry, and I need to say this.”

I don't want any food. That's how I always used to deal with things.

When I used to skin my knees, Mom would give me a cupcake. When the first boy I ever liked threw rocks at me in the second grade, Mom taught me how to make frosting. Pretty soon I made frosting every time I felt bad. And I ate it. Now whenever Mom and I argue, we split something. A bite of bread, a piece of cake, a bar of chocolate. It's a little sugar to make the bitterness ease. If Mom and I can't eat together, she gets worried.

Sometimes it's hard to resist being given treats like a little kid. Everyone wants to be comforted, to have the hurt taken out of a fight. But food makes a sloppy bandage.

“Look, whether you believe me or not”—I face my mother—“I'm telling the truth. Sim just spilled something. It was totally innocent. We are not getting involved. But if it makes you feel happy to make up rules for your daughter, who isn't actually dating the guy without a shirt on, who was under her covers alone, without her, then fine: we'll watch TV downstairs from now on, okay? With our
coats
on.”

Mom's eyebrows lower. “Watch your tone, Elaine.” She exhales and rubs her hands against her face. “Look, I didn't mean to infer…I know he's not your boyfriend, but I also know how boys…Well.” She takes a breath, shaking her head. “Let's save that for another time. So, Simeon liked the banana bread.”

I sigh and change gears. “Yeah. I didn't use the pecan bark, and the sugar substitute really worked out well. Sim couldn't tell the difference.” I clear my throat and try to relax my shoulders.

Mom shrugs out of her chef's jacket and walks toward her bedroom. “Good. Oh, I meant to tell you…” I unfold myself from the bed and follow as she keeps talking. “We've been experimenting with the gingerbread you started the other day. If I don't add any crystallized ginger, I could use it on our light-dessert menu.”

“Yeah? I think you should do it. With a tiny bit of that ginger-carrot sorbet, that would be awesome. Or maybe you could just have an ice cream sandwich?”

“Oh, good idea! And I could just put it on the regular menu, with the ginger ice cream, and it would be a ‘half the sugar' dessert; we could roll the edges in some chopped crystallized ginger.”

I flop down on Mom's bed and envision the dessert, plated on the square red dessert plates…a dusting of powdered sugar and sprig of mint…perfect. I imagine having my own show, where how you plate something can make the difference between a dish that's a dud and a dish that wins you national acclaim. For Saint Julia, it was a simple omelet—a big “French” food to Americans back in the sixties. For me, who knows? Someday I'm going to make this gingerbread for someone who can take me to the top.

Mom pokes her head around the edge of the closet. “Well, I came home in the first place to see if I could pick you up for dinner tonight…. Pia made hot and sour soup, and there's always fresh rolls, of course.”

“I'm coming down to the restaurant, but I'm walking. I ate a
bunch
of bread today.”

Mom sighs. “Lainey. You are a size-fourteen woman of African American descent. This is not unheard of in Western civilization. Eating bread will not kill you. Lord, I
knew
I should've never let you play Barbies.”

I close my eyes. “Mom…”

My mother worries that I'm going to end up with some eating disorder. This after I lost only four sizes in two long years of trying. I've got Mom's height (five foot four) but my father's big bones, wide shoulders, and flat butt, plus Mom's high waist, big bust, and skinny legs, which, unless I work at it, gives me the figure of Humpty Dumpty on toothpicks. Mom and Pia are two of the best chefs that I know, and I am not about to miss out on that. However, I know my body, and I know that if I let bread sit too long, sugar free or not, it's going to stick. I've already been the tubby freshman, thank you. No need to carry that into college to add to the freshman fifteen.

“Look, Barbie Junior, I'll tell you what—I'll walk with you. Pia can drop us home after the dinner rush.”

I make a face. “And I'll have to lug my laptop and all of my books?”

My mother sighs. “Fine.”

“You know what other kind of dessert you could make?” I say, placating her sense of motherly duty. “Carrot macaroons! See, these are the kinds of thoughts I have when I walk. Now, I'd be depriving you of my great cognitive abilities if I just sat in the car with you, did you know that?”

My mother groans and pushes me out of her bedroom. “Go away, child. Carrot macaroons is taking your healthy-desserts thing just a
little
too far.”

“I'll make some tonight!” I holler through the door.

I hear the sound of the shower and smile.

 

It's a quick walk to the restaurant on a Sunday evening, and I kind of walk, kind of jog to get there. Mom's in her office when I finally go down, showing the new “busboy” how to tie her red silk tie in the traditional half-Windsor knot the waitstaff use. The girl looks rushed but smiles at me as she leaves, wrapping her long white apron around her black slacks. I laugh when I settle into Mom's desk chair and look at the notes on her computer.

“I thought you didn't like my idea for carrot macaroons.”

Mom sighs and rolls her eyes. “I was trying to get it out of my mind. My
Southern Melodies
cookbook has a recipe that uses a cup of mashed carrots, but I haven't found anything I like in the macaroon category.” Mom shrugs. “If you can find me something that works, I'll put your name to it in the menu.”

“What's the special tonight?” I ask as my mother buttons herself into the white silk jacket she wears during dinner. It isn't anything I would cook in, but Mom mostly walks around smiling and schmoozing, and the coat, with its double row of knotted frog fastenings, rarely gets dirty. Mom has four of them just in case one does.

“I think we've got a garlic squid pasta,” Mom says, pulling out the low chef's toque she wears with the formal chef's jacket, “and Pia's said something about a pecan-encrusted catfish. The soup is white asparagus with prawn and coconut milk, a little spicy, very warming for this nippy evening, a nice pumpkin curry soup as well…and then there's the usual.”

I nod, trying to keep my face still as I think of squid pasta. Bleeuch. In my cooking show of the future, we'll only have vegetarian dishes. To me, animals are pretty much either too ugly to consider eating or too cute to imagine dead.

“I'll come up for some of Pia's fresh spring rolls later on. I've got to finish a paper.”

Mom doesn't look at me. “If you'd like, we can run by Sim's job, that Soy World place, after the rush is over and have some coffee.”

I blink.

My mother turns back toward the closet, rummaging for her lipstick. “Only if you want to,” she goes on. “And if it wouldn't bother him.”