Spur of the Moment (24 page)

Marin slipped the phone back into its cradle and stared at it.

“What's up?” Ana asked quietly.

“Dad had to get back to work, something came up at the office, and Mom said she was feeling really tired, she thinks she may have caught a bug on the plane and may be coming down with something.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“Oh no, don't be. It's a relief really. We pretend to get along but we really don't. It's no big deal.”

Marin didn't perform with them that night. She said she had a migraine, probably from all the stress of having her parents visit.

That was when Ana finally realized that when fate or God or whatever was assigning parents, Ana had gotten a much, much better deal. Her mother was boisterous, unfashionable, and unschooled—and she loved Ana ferociously. Every success Ana had achieved, Grace bragged about as if it had been her own. Grace had seen every performance of the Iron Pyrits, every football and basketball game Ana had cheered at, every gymnastic meet that Ana had competed in. Ana was extremely, extremely lucky to have the mother that she did.

All the same, Ana desperately wanted a different life than the one her mother had. She didn't want to be satisfied with living in a too-small condo and working for fifty years at a job she didn't like, just so she could pay the bills. She wanted her life to have meaning, to be a part of something bigger than herself. She wanted to be part of a community of artists and writers and actors and comedians. She wanted to be part of a group of innovative thinkers like the Impressionists—Van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Lautrec, and Rousseau—hanging out, drinking absinthe and changing the art world forever, painting pictures that would be loved across continents, purchased for extravagant sums, and continued to be reproduced widely as posters, calendars, coasters, and note cards a hundred years later. Ana wanted to be as influential to acting as Stanislavsky, to improv as Viola Spolin, to sketch comedy as the founders of Second City and the original
Saturday Night Live
players.

Ana didn't know how she was going to touch the world in her lifetime, but right now, she just needed to survive tonight.

“Need any help, Mom?” she asked.

Her mother gave her a look like a little kid who had broken a vase and knew she had to fess up.

“I thought I had enough blue cheese, but it turns out I hardly have any left at all. Would you be a dear and pick some up? I need four ounces.”

“Sure, of course. No problem. Need anything else?”

“Oh no, that's it.”

“Okay, I'll be right back. Scott, you wanna come?”

“Oh no, Scott, stay here with me and keep me company,” Grace said.

“Scott?”

“Sure, I'll stay here. See you in a few.”

The store was only a couple of minutes away, but Ana hadn't shopped there in years, so it took several minutes of wandering to find the blue cheese. She'd spent the entire day doing shopping of her own, cleaning the house, and doing laundry, and having to go to the store now, while not that big of a deal, was just one more task that kept her from being able to just slow down and relax already, and she couldn't help feel a prickle of irritation.

When she got home, her mother and Scott were both sitting on the kitchen floor, searching the bottom cabinets. An array of pots and pans was spread out around them. Her mother looked up at her sheepishly.

“What's up, Mom?”

“I can't find the bottom to my springform pan. I know I have it. Look, here's the top.” She waved a pie-sized metal loop. “We've looked everywhere and we just can't find it.”

Ana was amazed that her mother owned such a device. She'd certainly never used it when Ana lived with her.

“Do you want me to run to the store and get one?”

Grace sighed deeply. “I guess. Do you mind?”

“No. Where should I go?”

“The grocery store has them, that's the closest place.”

“Okay, and if you had all the pieces, what would it look like?”

“It looks like a pie pan. We're missing the silver disk that goes on the bottom. The idea is that you can just unclasp the sides like this”—she demonstrated—“so you don't have to flip the casserole upside down to get it out of the pan.”

“And it's imperative that we not flip it upside down?”

“It has all these decorative loops in filo dough on top. Look,” her mother stood and pointed to the open cookbook lying on the counter. It pictured a savory looking filo casserole filled with cheese and vegetables. It looked fattening, but, therefore, had the potential to be good. Maybe dinner would turn out to be palatable after all.

“Okay, I'm off. Do you need anything else?”

Grace shook her head.

“You're sure? Okay, Scott, you okay here?”

He lifted his wine glass. “I am
awesome.”

Ana put on a smile, which was replaced by a look of weary annoyance the minute she closed the door behind her.

She got to the grocery store and wandered helplessly up and down several aisles until she finally came to the cooking utensils. After walking up and down the aisle, her eyes shooting up and down the rows of pots, pans, cookie sheets, measuring spoons, and whisks, she finally found a nonstick springform pan. For twelve dollars!
Twelve stinking dollars! Free dinner my ass! Why couldn't we have just gone out to eat? It would have been so much more relaxing and most likely significantly cheaper as well.

She returned home thoroughly grumpy. She and Scott had gotten there half an hour ago, and Ana had spent that entire time driving to the store, wandering through the store lost and confused, and waiting in line.

“Oh god, what is it?” Ana said, as soon as she saw the look on her mother's face.

“I didn't realize the recipe called for cream cheese. I thought I wrote every ingredient down. I just . . . I just didn't see it,” she shrugged helplessly.
Yeah right, as if the cookbook were written in ink that becomes invisible every now and then on whimsy, like a book from Hogwarts.
“But don't worry!” she said quickly, seeing the annoyance on Ana's face, “I'll just quick dash off to the store and pick some up. You stay here and have some wine and relax.”

Ana sat at the table next to Scott and downed her entire glass of wine in one long chug.

“Impressive,” Scott said.

“I am
starving.
Do you see why I don't cook? Because every homemade meal made in this house costs about sixty bucks, takes hours to make because you have to go to the grocery store about forty times because do you think she would ever once actually check to make sure she actually had eggs or enough milk or blue cheese or the right cookware? No. Then it inevitably tastes like burnt snot, then there are always a zillion and a half dishes to do—there's just no point.”

“Shh, Ana, it's okay. I'm having fun. Just relax.” He poured her some more wine.

Because her stomach was so empty, the wine took effect almost immediately. It warmed her stomach, giving Ana a temporary feeling of—not fullness, but at least not quite such acutely ravenous hunger.

Which was a good thing because when Grace returned from the store she spent fifteen minutes finishing preparations on the dish then squealed, “Oh dear!”

“This can't be good,” Ana muttered under her breath.

Grace appeared at the door. “Are you two terribly hungry? I didn't realize it takes almost an hour to bake.”

Grace saw Ana's annoyance. Ana quickly replaced that expression with one of sympathy when she saw her mother start to tear up.

“It's no problem, Mom, don't worry. Maybe you could put out some cheese and crackers?”

“Yes! That's a great idea.”

“I'll help.”

Ana promptly poured herself another glass of wine. If she couldn't eat, at least she could get tanked.

Her mother did put out some Triscuits and American cheese. As American cheese was not the most savory of appetizers, the three spent far more time drinking wine than snacking on crackers, so by the time dinner was ready, they were all feeling very, very relaxed.

To Ana's surprise, the dish wasn't
disgusting,
it was just very odd, which was a huge improvement over her mother's usual cuisine. Ana would take a bite, and it would taste incredibly sweet. The next bite would be piercingly bitter. Every mouthful, though, was packed with cheese and pine nuts. More pine nuts than Ana had ever seen in such a small slice of pie. Every bite must have been at least a hundred calories and a couple dozen fat grams.

“So Mom, what are these sweet and bitter tastes I'm tasting?”

“Apples and brussels sprouts.”

“Really? I don't think I've ever had a brussels sprout in my whole life,” Ana said.

“I have. They aren't bad as long as they're drenched in butter,” Scott said.

“I just thought it would be a good dish for a vegetarian.”

“But Scott's not a vegetarian, Jason . . .” Ana stopped herself. There was no point. Her mother was trying so hard.

“This is a great girl you've got here,” Grace said, somewhat drunkenly. “I'm always bragging to the girls at the office how proud I am of her. Just the other day I was telling everyone how Ana was thinking about studying for the GED.”

“You mean GRE? You said GRE, right?” Ana said.

“G-E-D.” Grace emphasized each letter, as if she were explaining the correct term to Ana.

Ana said, “No, Mom, I was thinking about taking the GRE, as in the Graduate Record Exam, for grad school. GED stands for General Equivalency Diploma. The only people at my high school to get them were the kids who were addicted to drugs.”

“Ffff,” Grace fluttered her hand as if to say, “Bah, it's practically the same thing.” Ana crumpled in embarrassment. Her mother was always doing that, trying to brag about Ana but getting all her facts wrong. Usually it wasn't a big deal—Ana didn't care if her mother's friends thought she was a pom pom girl and not a cheerleader, or if they thought she was a stand-up comedian and not an improv-er—but sometimes, her mother's announcements made Ana want to die of shame.

After another glass of wine, Ana didn't care if her mother's friends and coworkers thought she was perhaps the first student from a suburban high school in the history of the universe not to earn her high school diploma by the age of 24. She was feeling
good.

40

Thanksgiving

E
veryone was going his or her separate way for Thanksgiving. Ramiro was going to go to his family's, then over to Nick's for Thanksgiving just with their friends. Jason would be with his family in south Denver, and Marin would hang out in L.A. She had the day off, but only one day, so it didn't seem like there was any point in flying home. Although if she were honest with herself, the real reason she wasn't coming home was because of the possibility she might get to spend time with Jay. He had to visit his family in Santa Barbara that day, but he said he hoped he'd get back to celebrate with her that night. She'd vaguely hoped that he'd invite her to dinner with his family, but she knew that was ridiculous, they'd only been dating two weeks. It was much too early to meet the folks.

Since Rob's foot was still in a cast, Chelsey promised to drive him home for Thanksgiving. She'd spend the night with him, meet his folks, and then head home to Chicago to visit her family. She'd pick him up on her way back.

She didn't want to be apart from him for four days. She wasn't sure how she'd make it without him.

Chelsey took the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off, and they drove straight through to South Dakota. It was dusk when they arrived, and Chelsey had a hard time making out where she was supposed to go once they got off the highway and onto the reservation. The roads were unpaved and had crater-sized potholes.

Rob had told her about the numerous fatalities that occurred between Pine Ridge and the Nebraska border. Alcohol wasn't sold on the rez, so Indians had to
drive
to Nebraska to buy alcohol. Some couldn't wait till they got home; some took off for more after already working on a serious buzz. As a result, the per capita number of drunk-driving fatalities was catastrophic. Crosses marked the sites where individuals and entire families had died, lining the way to the rez like a canopy of oaks might line the streets in wealthier neighborhoods.

Chelsey couldn't help gaping at the homes she saw as she drove through the reservation to Rob's family's house. They were little more than outhouses—cheaply constructed boxes with worn paint.

“That's mine. The brown one there,” Rob said, pointing to a small house.

“Where am I supposed to park?”

“Next to the Oldsmobile.”

“On the lawn?”

“It's not really a lawn.”

He was right. It wasn't. There were little patches of worn grass, but mostly it was just dirt.

Chelsey parked next to the Olds—it looked to be about fifteen years old—and walked up to the door with Rob. Slabs of wood were leaning against the house, garbage littered the area around the place. Rob entered without knocking.

His mom and sisters greeted him with smiles and hugs, but none of the loud shouting that Chelsey received when she went home to her family. Something was cooking on the stove, something fatty and oniony—the smell permeated the room.

“Chelsey, this is A'Marie and this is May. This is my mother, Elise,” Rob said.

“It's nice to meet you,” Chelsey said.

All three women were chubby, Chelsey noticed; his mother was seriously obese. Chelsey did her best not to be horrified by the small, dirty house or Elise's morbidly unhealthy weight.

“Hey, bro,” A'Marie said. She was sixteen, a junior in high school. “How's the ankle?”

“Better.”

“Dinner's just about ready,” Elise said.

“Posole?” Rob said.

His mother nodded. “Posole and fry bread.”

“What's that?” Chelsey asked.

“Posole is a stew with hominy and jalapeños and pork. Fry bread is fried bread,” Rob said.

“Fried bread?” Chelsey couldn't contain her horror.

“It's good,” May said quietly, with a shy smile. Rob had told Chelsey that May was twenty and going to the community college in Pine Ridge. “It's easy to make. Just baking powder and flour and water.”

As if white bread weren't enough of a nutritional wasteland, on top of that they fried it? Good Lord!

“Chelsey's a little bit of a health nut,” Rob explained to his family.

“You need to put some meat on your bones,” Elise said. “You're going to waste away.”

Chelsey shrugged. “I'm a personal trainer. I work out a lot.”

Rob did most of the talking over dinner. It was obvious that his little sisters looked up to him and his mother adored him. Chelsey tried to get down a little of the Posole to be polite, but it nearly killed her. Pork! It had been years since she'd eaten pork. And the fry bread? As if.

It was only a two-bedroom house, so Chelsey and Rob had to sleep on sleeping bags on the living room floor. A'Marie and May said they'd be happy to give up their beds, but Chelsey and Rob insisted. Chelsey was feeling so guilty, she would have slept outside with nothing to shield her from the elements. She thought about her home in Denver—it was at least twice as big and infinitely nicer than this place, and yet she was a single woman without any kids. She remembered thinking how broke she felt after buying her house. She felt like an idiot that she ever could have thought that.
This
was poverty. This was completely different.

She snuggled up next to Rob that night and held him tight. Somehow, seeing where he'd come from made her love him even more.

 

 

A
na and Scott left work early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and headed off bright and early for the long drive ahead of them.

As always, Ana had vigilantly prepared ahead of time, packing a cooler full of food and water so they could keep their stops to a minimum. She'd also borrowed a few Bill Bryson books on tape from the library, and his humorous travel narratives kept them laughing all the way to Texas. About the time they got to the border, however, Ana was quite ready to get out of the car. Her butt was sore, she was sick of sitting, and there was something about driving long distances that made Ana feel dirty and queasy. She wanted to shower and eat vats of vegetables to make up for gorging on half of an industrial-size bag of pretzels.

They stopped at about eleven o'clock that night to stay at an overpriced, under-comfortable hotel. Despite the lack of luxury, Ana was ecstatic just be able to get out of the car and stretch her legs.

After a good night of sleep, they took off again the next morning and pulled into Scott's family's driveway around noon. Scott's dad was outside tearing weeds from what was probably supposed to be a garden but was so desiccated it looked like a tumbleweed convention.

Scott rolled down his window. “Is it okay if we park here?”

“Park yonder,” he pointed to the far left side of the driveway.

Yonder? Had she really just heard the word “yonder” uttered without irony?

Scott parked and he and Ana got out of the car. Scott gave his father a big bear hug. When they finally broke from the embrace, Ana started to mumble a “hello, it's nice to meet you” and extend her hand for a handshake. Instead, Scott's father, Ron, smothered her with an enormous hug and told her about fifty times how happy he was to meet her and how happy he was that she could come down. Apparently Texans were a little more forthcoming with their affection than Coloradoans were.

When the tsunami of welcome abated, Scott noted that his parents had planted new trees in the front yard. At this point, the trees weren't much taller than Ana and were so skinny they looked like they'd lose a fight with dental floss.

“Me and Jack was gonna put a coupla of'em over dare”—Ron indicated a spot closer to the house—“but me and him wasn't sure if that'd be too close to the house.”

Holy improper use of the English language! “Me and Jack was”? “Me and him wasn't . . .”?
Ana wasn't some grammar snob, well okay, maybe she was, but ouch, it hurt her ears to hear this.
“He
and
I weren't,”
Ana corrected silently.
Note the placement of the “I” after the “He.” I didn't make the rules up. I just enforce them. If we didn't follow the rules, all would be anarchy and my ears would commit suicide from the horror.

They went inside and Ana was introduced to a mob of people, but she forgot everyone's name in seconds, despite her best efforts. Over the course of the day, as everyone bustled around to prepare dinner, she simply could not remember who was Jack and who was John. And Lettie and Laura, honestly, Ana didn't even bother trying to call them by name. She just did her best to get in their line of sight before she asked a question so they'd know who she was talking to. Nobody in Scott's family called his sister anything but “Sis.” Ana thought that was adorable. Very Dick and Jane-ian. The whole family seemed like a
Dick and Jane
book.

Ana learned that Scott's dad worked in a meat-packing plant, and his mother worked as a checker in a grocery store. Sis was a stay-at-home mom. His brothers were a cop, a carpenter, and a well digger. Scott was the only one who'd gone to college. The only one who had any artistic interests. The only one without a thick Texan accent. In some ways, he seemed so different from his family, but in other ways, he fit right in. The love they shared was palpable. Everyone cracked jokes and told stories and it was constantly loud, but Ana felt comfortable in the midst of the hubbub. They looked out for each other, in small little ways that Ana probably only noticed because she came from such a different family. At Scott's house, nobody got up from the table without asking if they could get anyone anything. If Ana's glass of iced tea was getting low—they drank vat after vat of tea in this place—it was instantly refilled, usually before Ana realized she was running out.

Ana thought of all the times Scott had made a face and told her a joke to cheer her up. She understood now that he came from a family that looked out for each other fiercely, and if one of them was unhappy, they all were.

Despite having little kids running around and a huge crowd of people to feed, no one got stressed or freaked out or short-tempered. No one got teary-eyed when things didn't turn out exactly like they were supposed to—Ana thought it might have been the first Thanksgiving she'd ever had that didn't end up with somebody (well, her mother) crying.

After gorging themselves silly, they played epic rounds of Taboo, Scattergories, and Cranium. At last worn out, they all retired to the living room to watch TV. It had been five hours since dinner, and still Ana's stomach ached from the food she'd shoveled in. But when everyone else started making their way to the kitchen for leftovers, she started to panic—they'd take the last of the mashed potatoes and candied yams and stuffing and pecan pie. . . .

“Can I get you a plate?” Sister-in-Law-With-the-Curly-Blonde-Hair said.

It would be rude to turn her down, right? “Sure.” She was just being polite, really.

 

 

A
couple hours later, Ana and Scott lugged their protruding bellies to the room Scott had grown up in to get some sleep. As they lay next to each other in bed, she asked him when he'd lost his accent.

“I never really had a strong accent growing up, I guess because I was always a national broadcast news junky, and Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings don't have accents. I thought they were so cool, that they knew everything, you know? And I lost any vestiges of a Texas accent when I went to school in Colorado.”

“So you could fit in?”

“No, it's just that you start talking like the people around you. If everybody says ‘cool' and ‘awesome,' it's hard not to start sprinkling ‘cools' and ‘awesomes' in your speech, you know?”

Ana nodded. What she really wanted to know was, “How did you learn to speak English so well despite spending eighteen years with people who say ‘we was gonna put a coupla of 'em over dare'?” But she knew that if she made any kind of remark that could be construed as disparaging his family, he'd hurl her out the window. He was that kind of loyal.

 

 

R
amiro's Thanksgiving, like all holidays with his family, was an exercise in method acting. It could have been titled: Gay Man Plays It Straight, Ignores Huge Part of His Life. That was how the charade went—Ram pretended Nick didn't exist, and his father pretended he could tolerate his son.

Ram spent the meal thinking about Nick having a great time partying it up with their friends. If it weren't for Yo, the baby, and his mom, Ram would be right at Nick's side, being able to be himself and enjoy his life.

Yo's husband, Kevin, would have never been accepted into the family if Ram hadn't come out of the closet. After Ram's little admission, though, suddenly a European-American pale-skinned non-Catholic didn't seem so bad after all.

“It's so great to have a four-day weekend,” Kevin said. Their desserts had been reduced to crumbs, the cups of coffee were getting cold. Ram's mom was off doing dishes, but the rest of them sat around the table, busily digesting.

“You just need to tell your boss you're some kind of unusual religion,” Ram suggested.

“Jewish. Jewish people have all kinds of holidays off,” Kevin said.

“No, no good. Your boss could figure it out eventually. I told a boss once I was Druid.”

“You did not.”

“Oh, but I did. He was this white Catholic guy, right? All concerned about not pissing off the Hispanic guy, you know, worried about getting slapped with discrimination charges or something. So he said, ‘Oh really? How interesting. What do you believe in?' I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, we're all into nature. Arbor Day, that's our big day. The big Druid holiday. '”