Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) (5 page)

M
att says that he first saw me at the
triangle
, which refers to a triangular-shaped grassy island in the middle of his street, which was also Emily’s street. But I don’t remember seeing him there.

In my memory, we first met at the Mt. Lebanon Lanes bowling alley during that last week of summer before school started. In retrospect, though, I’m not sure the word
met
quite fits to describe our interaction, as we didn’t exchange a single word. But I certainly noticed him. It was hard not to. Emily and her friends were all in bands—punk bands, to be specific. They wore patched-up jeans, band T-shirts, and lace-up boots. Knowing this, I began to transition into this scene as best I could. I listened to the few punk bands I actually liked (Operation Ivy and Blink-182), acquired a pair of navy blue Doc Martens from a store downtown that specialized in punk-appropriate attire, and as previously mentioned, had my hair cut super short.

But Matt, I would soon learn, was a step ahead, already transitioning out of his punk phase and into a New Wave one. That day at the bowling alley, he was dressed in all black except for black-and-white-checked socks and a khaki trench
coat, which he eventually removed to bowl. At six feet two inches tall, he towered over all of his peers and possessed a kind of relaxed self-confidence rarely found in boys that age.

I liked him immediately, and when it turned out that we had Western Civilization together, I made a point of getting to know him, finding out that he was in a band and “really into The Cure.”

“Oh yeah? Me too,” I said, lying. (That night, I asked my mom to take me to Sam Goody, where I bought The Cure’s
Wish
album and began listening to it on repeat.)

I turned fifteen toward the end of September, just a few weeks after school began. It was a quiet birthday, as it fell on a weekday and I didn’t yet know enough people to form a typical celebration. When I got home from tennis practice, there was a birthday card waiting for me from my dad. He wrote that it was the first birthday he wouldn’t actually see me and told me how much he missed me. I went up to my room, listened to R.E.M.’s
Automatic for the People
, and cried.

I had been silently regretting my decision to move to Pittsburgh for the past three weeks. I’d done it to make my life better, but so far it felt far from it. My new school was enormous. I got lost on a daily basis, and despite the tennis lessons I’d taken all summer, I hadn’t made the varsity team and was stuck on JV with a bunch of freshmen. In Saegertown, I was Bill Morris’s little sister. I was
known
. In Mt. Lebanon, I was no one.

The following day, in a bit of a dramatic move, I passed a note to Matt in Western Civilization telling him I was considering moving back to Saegertown. I hadn’t told anyone this, not even my brother, and I’m not sure why I chose to tell Matt except that perhaps I knew I would get the response I was hoping for.

Which I did. Matt wrote back saying he didn’t think it was a good idea, saying he’d be sad if I left. It made me smile, at least for a few moments.

On the last day of September, I got a phone call from my dad. He sounded terrible. Travis, my twenty-seven-year-old stepbrother, had committed suicide. He’d shot himself in the head.

I hadn’t been back to Saegertown since I’d left the previous June, but I returned for the funeral.

I don’t remember so much of that trip back. I don’t remember if I slept in my old room or if I just went up for the day. I don’t remember if my dad picked me up in Pittsburgh or if my mom drove me there. I just remember arriving at the funeral home, immediately seeing that the wake was open casket and being shocked. Dolly was standing in front of the casket receiving people. I don’t remember waiting long. I don’t remember waiting alongside Billy or anyone else from my family. I remember Dolly encouraging me to come forward, waving me toward her. I could see Travis’s face as I approached her. He didn’t look like he was just sleeping, like some people say. His skin looked fake and thick, like there was a layer of nude panty hose covering it.

I began to cry, and she reached for me. She hugged me tightly, trapping my arms between our bodies. I smelled the smoke on her. “I’m sorry,” I told her. She grabbed me by the shoulders and we turned to face him.

“He loved you. You know that?” she said. I didn’t know that, but I wanted to believe it.

I remember riding in the back of Dad’s white Previa minivan with Billy, Margaret, and Paul as we followed the hearse
to the grave site. Dolly was in the passenger seat, and I remember her turning around to see all of the other cars that were following us. “If only he could’ve seen this,” she said.

Afterward there was a reception. I think it was in the basement of a church. I remember the poor lighting, the metal folding chairs, and bad food—ham and cheese sandwiches on dry rolls. But mostly I remember that this is where my dad told me that he’d thought that perhaps I’d made the right decision to leave.

He didn’t say anything more than that. He didn’t need to.

I never considered moving back again.

A
fter the divorce, holidays were divvied up. While Christmas alternated between Mom and Dad every year, Thanksgiving was firmly and perennially Mom’s. Or should I say Grandma’s? Even though the annual dinner took place at Mom’s, there was never any doubt that Grandma was really the one in charge.

Grandma and Grandpa lived but a mile and a half away in the house my mom grew up in, and though they had always played an active role in Mom’s life, now that I lived so close, they were playing an active role in mine—picking me up from practice if Mom or Bruce couldn’t, taking me out to lunch after church, and slipping me the occasional ten- or even twenty-dollar bill.

Despite the potentially crushing setback of having my phone privileges revoked for a month because of a nonsensical prank call (with lots of yelling in the background) Emily and I had made, which brought two cops to my front door asking about a potential domestic dispute, by November, my new life in Pittsburgh was taking shape. I had made some new friends, had gone to the homecoming dance with one of them, and
was simply enjoying living in a house with two people who clearly and convincingly cared about me.

And then came Thanksgiving.

Grandma’s life was cooking for people: whether it was a church breakfast for a hundred, a dinner party for twelve, or later, after Grandpa died, a simple meal for herself and her dog.

And Thanksgiving was obviously no exception. Sometime in the early afternoon, our grandparents’ car would pull into the driveway. And this is when Billy and I would do our best to hide, as what came next was a clown-car-esque removal of foodstuffs from Grandma’s trunk and/or backseat.

The worst thing to get stuck carrying was the turkey, which Grandma transported in the roasting pan with all of the grease sloshing around in the bottom.

“But Grandma,
why
do you have to bring the grease?” I would ask, whining no doubt.

“How else are you going to make the gravy?”

The items she brought over didn’t stop with dishes she’d prepared ahead of time, e.g., cranberry relish, ambrosia salad, and an assortment of pies. She would also bring ingredients, some of which weren’t even Thanksgiving-related.

“The yellow cake mixes were on sale at Giant Eagle,” she’d say to my mom.

And though there was no longer any free space in the kitchen for said boxes of cake mixes, Mom would simply nod. “Great.”

In his late sixties, Grandpa had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which meant that he could no longer eat much of what Grandma was cooking, or at least as much of it as he wanted. The bulk of my memories of Grandpa involve him
sneaking food behind Grandma’s back, and/or Grandma scolding him for having eaten something he shouldn’t have, and/or the two of them bickering over how in the world his sugar could be so out of whack if all he had
supposedly
eaten that morning was oatmeal.

But Grandpa wasn’t the only one having to watch what he ate. See, the thing about the trio of Billy, Thanksgiving, and high school wrestling was that they were completely incompatible. That year, Billy was a senior wrestling in the 134-pound weight group. And though he, too, was a late bloomer and still growing at age seventeen, any fool could see that Billy’s body did not want to weigh 134 pounds. His cheekbones sunk into his face, and in his wrestling singlet, his hip bones protruded in a way that a female runway model would have admired. Therefore, Billy’s presence at the Thanksgiving table was a sort of torture for him and a buzzkill for everyone else.

Relatedly, since quitting gymnastics, I’d undergone a bit of a growth spurt. Over the summer, I had worn a size zero, but all of a sudden, in a matter of months, I was buying clothes in a size two or even four. Of course, I didn’t see it as a growth spurt at the time, and so I began to dabble in watching my weight as well. Emily and I together had decided to cut out soda, and because tennis wasn’t half as exhausting as gymnastics practice had been, I’d taken to going on long runs, specifically to burn calories.

To talk about Thanksgiving, I must also talk about Christianity. Because of Bruce’s leadership role in the church as a Sunday school teacher and occasional stand-in for the pastor, members of the church looked up to him. They came to him for help, for advice, for guidance, for friendship, and on
Thanksgiving, they came for dinner. At fifteen, I found these loners who didn’t have families of their own and who usually had really sad stories behind their singular status to be major downers—even more so than Billy’s perma-diet and Grandpa’s diabetes.

And last, to talk about Thanksgiving, I must also talk about the way in which my mom and Grandma would both eat so much during the making of dinner that by the time we all sat down, they would be exhausted
and
full.

“Oh dear, I’m stuffed!” Mom would say, as she sat down at the table with outstretched hands, signifying we could now say grace.

And by we, I mean Bruce, who would then say a really long mini-sermon during which Billy and I, as a form of silent entertainment, would squeeze each other’s hands as hard as we could. Once grace wrapped, we could finally eat. And since Billy and I had recently emerged from the game room downstairs, we were ripe for questioning from any and all of the out-of-touch Christian strangers at the table.

“What grade are you in, Amy?”

“Tenth.”

“And what are you studying?”

“Just like the normal stuff.”

“You don’t have a major?”

“No, that’s college.”

“Oh. Well, any chance you’ll go into medicine like your mother or the seminary like your father?”

“My
step
dad, and no, probably not.”

And then to Billy:

“My, you aren’t eating very much, are you?”

“No, I have to make weight.”

“He’s a wrestler,” Mom would say.

“Oh.”

At the far end of the table, you could hear Grandma scolding Grandpa: “Bob, that’s enough.”

And then, Mom sighing. “My goodness, I’m stuffed.”

W
hen you’re fifteen, you don’t call it “dating.” You can’t drive and you don’t have an income, so you can’t really go on a date. Luckily for Matt, he lived within walking distance of one of Mt. Lebanon’s two malls
and
he had an allowance. Because, that winter, just a few months after we met, we went on a date.

It was a Saturday afternoon. I must have gotten a ride to Matt’s house, or more likely, to Emily’s house—as a way of not having to give my mom any extra, potentially embarrassing information—from which I walked down the street to Matt’s, but once I was there, the two of us, him in his trench coat and me in my Gap peacoat, walked to the mall together. It wasn’t snowing, but there was snow on the ground. I had to have known it was a date beforehand, but knowing you are going on a date and being on a date are two very different things, particularly for a fifteen-year-old girl. Suddenly, it was just the two of us on our own, with no friends nearby to ease the awkwardness. Suddenly, the idea that Matt
liked
me back was very clear and felt very weighty. And what did Matt have planned for our date? Lunch at China Gate, a sit-down, cloth-napkinned Chinese restaurant situated in a little nook on the top floor of the mall.

It’s only now, as I write this, that I realize this was my first date of my entire life. For all of my flirting with my brother’s friends in Saegertown, not one of them had ever taken me anywhere. And despite having danced a couple of slow dances with these boys at the homecoming dance, I hadn’t actually kissed anyone before.

And so, as we entered the mall, I felt the intimacy of it and panicked. I told Matt I wasn’t hungry. I told him I’d already eaten, in fact, and that maybe we should skip eating altogether. But he was already halfway up the weird annex-like stairs to China Gate. He was confident. He waved me on. He assumed I would chill out and at least order a wonton soup.

He assumed incorrectly.

I ordered nothing and ate nothing. But Matt remained undaunted, ordering himself a single egg roll and a bowl of hot and sour soup. Afterward, he led the way to the Godiva chocolate store two floors below and bought me the tiniest golden box with two perfect little truffles in it. I think most girls would have been completely won over at this point, but it was too much for me. I was getting an anxiety-induced headache and couldn’t wait for the date to be over. We walked back—my hands safely in my pockets lest he tried to hold one—past Matt’s house and directly to Emily’s, where at last I could relax a bit in the comfort of the presence of a third person.

It didn’t take long for our entire group of friends to find out that Matt had asked me out, and yet, we weren’t
boyfriend and girlfriend
, and of course, to make fun of him for it. And while I know that this is just the first of many examples of how I made high school difficult for Matt, I also know that something amazing happened after this. Because after this, I
cast Matt into the realm of
just friends
. And because we were just friends, I no longer had to impress him or feel the need to be perfect around him. Instead, I could be myself. I could actually have a real conversation with him—you know, one where if you don’t hear the other person correctly, you can ask them to repeat themselves instead of just nodding and smiling and moving forward as if you’d heard because you’re too uncomfortable to show even the smallest chink in your armor, even if it’s not a chink at all.

And so, we were friends. Friends who watched
Party of Five
and then called each other after to discuss what Charlie or Bailey had done this time. Friends who tied up our parents’ phone lines to such an extent that his mom or dad would inevitably jump on the line to say, “Time to wrap it up, Matt.” Friends who made each other laugh so hard during Western Civ. that Mrs. Caskey, our teacher, had to separate us. We were friends who made mix tapes for each other. Well, mostly Matt made them for me. I listened to them on the long runs I would take through Mt. Lebanon’s suburban streets, unable to ignore the fact that so many of the songs centered on the topic of unrequited love.

Junior year, we were friends who went to homecoming together, after which, when I ended up leaving with someone else, someone I had wanted to be more than friends with, we became friends who were
on a break
.

“We’re on hiatus,” Matt told me outside of our separate homerooms the following Monday morning before the morning bell.

It would be the first of many hiatuses. And of course I knew why, but I pretended I didn’t. “Oh, c’mon! Really?” I was comfortable with this distance, when there was an obstacle
in our way—though preferably an obstacle I was in control of. Later, it would bother me to no end when I heard that Matt was
hanging out
with someone else, especially when that someone was very pretty, very tall, and known to miss school for modeling gigs in Italy.

We were even friends who kissed, really kissed, one day after school, after tiring of the hiatus, after I’d been missing my monthly mix tapes, after I’d panicked that I might lose him as a friend forever.

In college, years later, the guys in my social circle would often ask me if I was high or drunk because of the way I was talking and/or joking, and when they realized I wasn’t, that I was just being myself, they deemed me the “weird girl.” And I think it would have offended me if it weren’t for Matt, because those moments when I was apparently being my
weirdest
reminded me of how I was when I was with Matt. And the person I was when I was with Matt—apart from the times I really did hurt him—was my favorite person to be.

All I can say is that some people are ready at seventeen to start the rest of their lives with the person they love, but I was not one of them.

At our high school, for Valentine’s Day, you could arrange to send someone a carnation with a little message attached, both of which would be delivered to your homeroom on the morning of the fourteenth. I didn’t hold on to the carnation, but I do still have the message Matt sent me senior year. Perhaps in an effort to keep the messages appropriate, the school made them quite generic. “Happy Valentine’s Day” it read at the top of a blue strip of paper, underneath which you were given five options—“Love, Friends, Crazy, Thank You, or Other”—and the directive to “circle one.” But Matt
hadn’t circled any of these options. Instead, he had written in his own message and circled that: “I hate you,” it said in the small printed handwriting I knew so well from all of our passed notes and mix tapes.

Though I’m no hoarder, I held on to this piece of paper for all of these years because, even though I couldn’t digest it at the time, I think some part of me knew the feeling was mutual. That I hated him too—with my whole heart.