I’m not sure what my parents thought of my friends, but I did enjoy theirs and liked doing things with them. Dinner parties offered great opportunities for fascinating stories. I had no time to become bored, nor did I ever want to retreat from the adults. When their talk sounded like a foreign language, I watched how they laughed or moved their bodies to emphasize parts of their narratives. Even the silences, when a storyteller paused to light his pipe or pour some wine, held my attention.
On one stormy Saturday, my mother was preparing for a dinner party of her own she’d planned two months earlier. During that time, she devoted hours to calling and recalling invited guests to inform them that the dinner was off; and then back on, as long as they understood that it would be ‘nothing elaborate’. By the day of the party, my father was doing plumbing on the house and I was bringing different fittings and lengths of pipe up to him on the third floor.
All week my mother had tried out different menus for the dinner to get my father’s reactions, as well as mine. On Monday, the fish was overcooked and she and my father agreed it would not be a good choice. On Tuesday, she tried lamb chops but there was an oven fire, and my father suggested something less exciting would be better, although my mother disagreed. On Wednesday she tried a stew, and told us she had a big surprise for dessert. The stew might have been good but was served so cold my father thought it was the special dessert. After it was reheated and some of it eaten, my mother brought a large bowl to the table. It was filled with crumbs.
“What’s this?” My father asked.
“Taste it. It’s really good. And because it didn’t stay together I don’t have to bother with icing,” she said. She was really proud.
“Florence, what is it?” He seemed concerned.
“It’s chocolate cake. I just couldn’t get it to stay together but we could serve it like this.” She took a fork full to demonstrate. It did taste a bit like chocolate cake but I missed the icing, and was embarrassed that my mother’s cake couldn’t stand on its own.
“If you serve that, I’m leaving. I’ll buy a cake. We can’t eat this.” My father and mother began their combat over the pros and cons of atomized cake. I couldn’t wait around for the conclusion and went to my room to work on a model airplane.
By Saturday, my mother was frantic. Every pot got used and she must have cooked three different full meals. When she took breaks from cooking, she hurriedly tried on dresses and necklaces and ran up to the third floor, pulling my father out of a crawl space to get his opinion. The few times she and I bumped into each other that day, she told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from her, or else I would see my mother fall apart before my eyes.
The doorbell rang and she yelled for my father to get it. “I’m not ready. Why are they so early? It’s a disaster. Don’t they know there’s a storm? They should have stayed home.”