The house in Madison was loud and crowded with my aunt’s granddaughters, who were home indefinitely from school. Mom and I ended up eating lunch alone in the kitchen, while my aunt attempted to corral the girls into the living room for homework time.
Mom was keeping nervously quiet; she had told Jimmy that he would have the house to himself for once, and so she didn’t know what else for us to do but hang around my aunt’s house until it was late enough to head back. It was Sunday, and a pandemic; there was nowhere else for us to kill time.
I suggested, then, that I could make something for dinner that evening, which would require us to stop for some ingredients. Mom agreed immediately.
“You could make your pizza,” she said, suddenly excited. “I’m always so jealous when I see the pictures.”
I was about to say that I’d like to make something else, but then I thought about it. We had been hard pressed since I’d arrived to find anything that Jimmy and I would both enjoy, and pizza was vague enough to be just about anything. So I said, sure. Let’s do it. By two o’clock we were riding down the long stretch of Wisconsin dairyland back to their house in Illinois, looking for some good cheese.
My phone led us to a farm store on the side of the highway amidst a sea of rolling hills. They appeared to all be different shades of green, varying by distance and the amount of sunlight. There was a small patch of dark cloud over the field ahead, but which appeared to be passing us by, like a ship sailing quietly in the distance.
The store looked crowded so Mom and I waited around for a few minutes in the unpaved lot, looking this way and that over the hills and trying to keep the wind out of our hair. Wisconsin was turning out to be less flat than I’d thought. We used to drive out here when I was a kid, spending what felt like days trying to escape the same endless field of corn. That was the way I came to imagine the vast majority of America, from Pennsylvania all the way to the Rockies, one flat expanse with a road running through it.
She asked what kind of cheese we should get for the pizza. I wanted to say something surprising—curds filled with briny olives; havarti infused with flakes of red hot pepper. But I knew it was just a question. Mom liked to hear me talk about cooking, which I had never enjoyed as a kid. I told her we should get something that would actually melt, and plain enough that Jimmy would consent to eat it. She allowed herself a chuckle.
I was surprised how spending the day doing nothing could feel so pleasant. Our only objective had been to see the family, so now anything else felt like a surprise. The bell rang over the door and a couple came out with a large paper bag. We threw on our masks, peeked through the window, and went on inside.
Mom was our designated shopper, so she went by herself into the Food Lion to grab the rest of the ingredients: canned tomatoes, assorted toppings, a few more packets of yeast. From there we rolled across the street to the gas station, where we chewed gum and sucked on Tic Tacs with our doors open, waiting for the pump to click.
“We should watch something tonight,” I said, my thoughts having already wandered to that idle point after dinner when Mom and Jimmy watched television until they were tired enough for bed.
“Sure,” she said, always amenable. “What do you wanna watch?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Whatever Jimmy won’t hate.”
She scoffed, either at me or at Jimmy, I couldn’t tell. “You watch what you want to watch,” she said, “and he’ll be fine.”
I didn’t think Jimmy would really hate anything, but he didn’t seem to care for much other than his lawn and watching old Westerns. He had each and every episode of Gunsmoke recorded on the DVR from when they’d aired on cable—rather than, say, owning them on DVD. The previous week I had put on a gritty sci-fi flick from the 70s, the old and grainy look of which I thought would appeal to the two of them; and Jimmy had clammed up, went off to bed early, as if I had made him watch something lewd. Since then I’d backed off, spending my nights outside taking walks around the neighborhood.
On the final stretch of the drive I tried to make a mental list of the Westerns I wouldn’t mind seeing, but could only think of Back to the Future Part III and soon lost focus. With eyes closed I watched myself preparing the pizza, walking through each step and sorting out which could be done first and which would have to wait. I saw an empty kitchen with clean counters, all ready to be used. When we finally pulled back into the driveway, we saw that Jimmy had mown the lawn, laid down a fresh layer of mulch, and put up the new birdfeeder. In the garage were his dirty work boots, resting neatly beside the door.
Back in Mom’s newly remodeled kitchen I cleaned up the detritus from breakfast, threw together my quickest recipe for dough, and checked the refrigerator to make sure we had everything. There were still hours before dinner, and I was trying to stay quiet so that Jimmy might feel like he still had the place to himself. He was in the living room watching his reruns, from which I could hear the faint buzz and bang of revolvers. Eventually I allowed myself to start on toppings, slicing up the vegetables and a pack of sausage and doling all of it into convenient little bowls.
I had given up trying to think of something to watch, but then out of nowhere I remembered The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which my father had shown me in middle school. It struck me as one of my oldest and fondest memories, and yet I hadn’t thought of it in many years. I pictured Clint Eastwood squinting into the Spanish sun, a fedora casting shade across his face and a burnt cigarillo tucked in the corner of his mouth.
It had all the hallmarks of Jimmy’s kind of thing: the outfits, the guns, the bleak waterless vistas. It felt strange to consider that we might both enjoy it. I figured that our enjoyment would be for completely different reasons—for all Jimmy would see was the imagery of the American West, while I would be privy to something else, some kind of art—and then I stopped. It all felt rather petty.
Mom stopped in the kitchen to find some beer as she and Jimmy moved out to the porch for the remainder of the afternoon. The sun hung just over the neighbor’s roof, casting the backyard in a lazy kind of glow. “How you doing, hon?” she asked as she opened the fridge.
“What does he want on his pizza?” I asked, looking up from the cutting board. “Like I know he only likes meat. But does he want the cheddar we bought? I think we have mozzarella in there, too.”
She considered it for a moment, staring down at the case of Miller Lite on the bottom shelf. “Let me go ask,” she said, making a little rush out to the porch.
I knew there was a stack of burger patties in the freezer that Jimmy would enjoy more than anything I might spend my afternoon preparing. It felt important for me to try. Mom came back into the kitchen without a word and went right back to the fridge. She began rummaging through the drawers, moving jars and tupperware to see into the depths. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but felt like I knew something about what she was going to say.
“Do we have any slices of American?” she asked. “He says he only eats American cheese. I swear that I’ve seen him…”
I thought about saying that American was not actually cheese, but I did not. I had put down the kitchen knife and was looking out the window above the counter. Jimmy was leaning back in his lawn chair in the middle of the porch, bathing in the warm light of the stained wood while behind him spread the canopy of an oak that stood at the end of the yard. Down the street would be the main road where there stood the general store, which would surely have big orange blocks of American cheese for burgers or sandwiches or whatever people used it for. Mom continued to mutter into the light of the refrigerator. “Didn’t we have some in here this morning?”
“It’s fine,” I said, without looking away from the window. “I’ll run out.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, unconvincingly. “He’ll be fine.”
A few minutes later I was patting my pockets, checking for a wallet and phone. I continued to feel unsure of myself until I was out the back door, launching off the porch and already halfway across the freshly hewn lawn. It was a relief to really move, to stretch the legs, the blood rushing from head to toe. I felt the blades of grass, a pleasant kind of bristle, through the thin material of my shoes.
“Make sure you have a mask!” Mom hollered, her voice drowning in the open air. I thought about how it must have sounded to the rest of the neighborhood, like a parent’s call to their child heading alone into town. I waved my hand through the air to show that I’d heard.
I had yet to enter a grocery store since I’d left New Jersey. It felt strange to drift so absent-mindedly through the automatic doors, to not be rushing to get out as quickly as possible. The place was empty. How unbelievably pleasant to loiter in the snack aisle, debating with myself over the different varieties of chips. The alcohol here was slightly cheaper, and the dairy section felt incongruously large. My basket filled itself with unexpected purchases, and I left with bags in both hands.
The sun had finally disappeared behind the houses and trees, while heat continued to radiate from the blacktop. I would have said there was a universal pleasure in the feeling of heading home to make dinner. Along the walk I reflected that my time with Mom and Jimmy had been restorative, if nothing else. It had given me so many long walks and good hours of sleep. I imagined saying these things to the two of them over the dinner table that night, because it was the kind of thing that would make Mom smile.
It was after six by the time I got back into the kitchen. I went straight to work, cranking the oven and removing the cheese from the fridge. I thought about putting on some music but quickly forgot. Once I’d dusted the counter with flour and threw down the dough, all the extraneous thoughts fell obediently away.
I struggled to get the first piece of dough into shape. The shortened rising period had made the texture slightly unfamiliar, though I was also out of practice. I knew the crowd wasn’t picky, but still I decided to make the second pie for Jimmy in the hope that it would come out looking more professional. I threw down the remainder of dough and topped it with sausage, the necessary layer of American cheese, and some shredded mozzarella which I was sure wouldn’t kill him. In the oven, the grease from the sausage spread out across the melted cheese, giving it a mouth-watering sheen that reminded me of late nights in New York.
In the end some rather large bubbles rose in the crust, which pushed the toppings and cheese into piles and ruined my attempts at aesthetics. “Don’t worry,” Mom said, as we looked down at the pizzas on the table. “Your father used to love the bubbles.”
She said this in a lower voice so that Jimmy, who was fetching the paper plates and an assortment of condiments from the fridge, didn’t hear. She was trying to make me feel better, but I’d heard this story before and wasn’t quite so sure that it was true. I gave a grunt and went back to making even slices with the pizza cutter. I took the slice with the largest and most unappealing bubble and dutifully set it on my own plate.
Jimmy ate continuously and in silence, as usual, while Mom and I took time between each bite to smack our tongues and take sips of water. I kept my eyes to myself, as if I did not care what anyone thought. After a few bites I realized that the pizza was good. Maybe it was even really good. You couldn’t taste the difference between the varieties of cheese—they had all melted together and were now indistinct—but the crust had come out crispy and fluffy and flavorful, despite all the confidence I had not provided. Pizza speaks for itself, I thought. You just have to give it the chance.
Finally I looked over to Jimmy’s plate. He was working diligently on his third slice and was heading for a fourth. I couldn’t help but notice the small lake of Ranch on his plate, into which he dipped each bite. I told myself this was understandable—everyone liked pizza differently. Even I used hot sauce every once in a while.
“Good pizza, hon,” Mom said finally, wiping her hands after her first and only slice.
Jimmy looked up, taking his cue. “Yeah, great job on the pizza, Jackie. You know I grew up with that deep-dish stuff—now that’s real good.”
He paused then, mid-bite, worried that he had said something rude. “But I like this a lot, too,” he amended. “Really, really good stuff.” He continued on to his fourth slice. In a few minutes he was finished, wiping his fingers with a paper napkin. Then he stood up and began removing things from the table.
Mom lingered for a moment, then got up to help. Together they put the kitchen back in order, moving things from one place to another until the counters were clean and the dishwasher was running. I sat in silence at the table under the slightly dim light of the chandelier, nibbling at my slice that was no longer warm and staring absently out the dining room window. I was imagining what we would look like from the street, my silhouette centered in that square of light while the profiles of Jimmy and my mother crossed through the smaller and more narrow rectangles of the kitchen. Surrounding it all would be nothing but a bluish darkness, that fuzzy world of a Polaroid taken at night in summer.
Mom returned to her spot at the table, holding a bag of baby carrots she used for snacking. She offered them and I said no, thank you. We heard the TV come to life in the next room.
“How’d you like the cheese?” she asked, finally.
“It was good,” I said, trying to sound enthused. I looked down at my half-eaten slice, at the little air bubbles in the crust.
I tried to say something, paused, then tried again. “The crust was pretty damn good, wasn’t it?”
Mom smiled.
“Yeah. I liked that it wasn’t too thick.” She bit in half a miniature carrot. “Did you still want to watch a movie?”
I took my time wrapping up the leftovers and running my hands under some warm water at the sink. I brought a fresh bag of popcorn out to Mom on the couch, and she unironically gasped in excitement. She seemed too distracted to notice that I’d put on a hoodie and a pair of old flip flops. For a moment we all just stared at the television, waiting for me to decide whether I’d sit down or just walk away.
“Jimmy said we can pause it whenever,” she said. “Just let us know what you want to watch.”
Jimmy’s focus didn’t break from the screen. It was no longer Gunsmoke but still the American West, only newer and more colorful. A figure rode on horseback across a grassy field, with mountains in the background. It struck me as being Montana, to which I’d never been. I tried to imagine what it might be like for the three of us to stay up and watch a three-hour movie together, and it made me aware that I was very tired.
I looked down and saw the part in Mom’s hair, her eyes lit from the screen, and a handful of yellow kernels. I looked back to the screen and saw a shiny pickup truck riding in the grassy field, which suddenly shattered the illusion of fantasy.
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