Just For You, Honey

Clear-air turbulence over Ohio, and the neighboring passenger's rum and coke in Joan's lap. She pressed the overhead button and waited, patient and resigned as ever, for the flight attendant as the drink soaked into her new cream woolen skirt.

Then she had to remind the sullen cab driver to turn the meter on, and the music down, and so endured thirty minutes of reflected hate in the snowbound gridlock.

Eventually she stood in the grimed slush opposite her parents' house. She watched the distorted shadows pass across the front-room blinds, and the stuttering lights of the Christmas tree.

"Oh, honey, it's so good to see you!" said Joan's mother as she dragged her in off the porch and kissed her cheek, leaving the smell of Lavender and Pall-Malls over the background aroma of stale food.
"Hey, everybody, it's Joany," she called out, and propelled her daughter into the humid living room.
There was a chorus of greetings from the long table. Joan's father sat at the top, his gray head bent low over his plate, thick elbows jutting out to protect the food from thieves or unseen circling birds.
"Joan, grab a seat," he said between forkfuls. "Edie, David, shift your asses, make some room there."

Joan's young cousins shuffled their chairs reluctantly aside and Joan squeezed in as a plate appeared before her. A pallid mound of mashed potato jutted from a lake of congealing brown gravy, while glistening chunks of dark meat slithered across the plate until they met the defensive line of limp green beans and surrendered.

Bowls and crockery of various sizes and contents crowded the table: peas and potatoes, turnip and dark stew, broccoli and beans, carrots and corn. Hungry hands darted across the table, flew from pot to pot, pecking at the food, sometimes clashing in mid air.

"So, how's Toronto?" asked Aunt Sylvia across the busy table, her dark hair pulled back tight across her head.
"Fine, fine," said Joan, picking at her plate, moving the lukewarm food around. "There's plenty of room in the new apartment, and a good view of the city at night."
"And what about that lousy husband of yours?" Her father spat crumbs of bread over the cloth.
"Arnold!" Joan's mother remonstrated. "Don't embarrass your daughter."
"That's okay, mom," said Joan, "I'm fine with it; Robert is old news now."
Her father took a long gulp of beer. "Good riddance, too. You take your time, sweetheart, don't rush into things."
You mean like last time, Joan added silently.
"Anyway, how are you? You've lost weight, haven't you?" Her mother's tone sounded accusing.
Joan nodded. "A few pounds, just trying to cut down." Not trying to become the size eight willow-reed that Robert had run off with.
"You look good, Joan, you keep on with your diet," said her grandmother, with sharp blue eyes glaring at Joan's mother.
Joan chewed at the gristly stew and swallowed. "Thanks, grandma."
"You think that's why Robert left you?" asked her mother, plowing ahead regardless. "You think that if you lose some weight, he might come running back?"
"Annie, that's a terrible thing to say," Joan's grandmother erupted, her thin neck reddening above the collar of her blouse. "I despair of you, sometimes, I really do. That's not the reason, Joany, is it?"
"No, grandma, it's not. It's something I want to do, for me. And as for Robert," said Joan, turning to her mother, "It's over. Period."
"Good, honey, I'm glad, really," said Joan's mother. "Maybe we should change the subject?"

The muted conversation turned to the familiar, and comfortable, subject of the weather, and the last minute Christmas shopping trip planned for the next day.

Joan's grandmother smiled often, her soft sallow face breaking into a filigree of wrinkles. Joan's cousins, as tall and heavy in their teens as Joan was now, bickered quietly and constantly around her.

Joan waited for a lull before she casually delivered her news. "Actually, I might be moving from Toronto."
"What? Where to?" her father demanded.
"Mexico. The company is opening up a new pharmaceutical plant and they're talking about relocation. They've offered me the Network Manager post."
"Ah, Mexico. Enchiladas, burritos, fajitas and chili," said her father, tasting the words. "Margaritas and Tequila. We could visit you, take in the local color."
"Do you think you could stop thinking about food for just five minutes?" asked Joan's mother.
"I was only-"
"I know, I know, you were only," her mother interrupted, and looked at Joan. "So, what do you think about it? Do you want to go?"
Joan pushed her unfinished meal away. "I guess so; it could be a new start."
No chance of running into Robert and his new girlfriend, anyway.
"Well, it sounds dangerous to me," confided Aunt Margaret. "I've heard all kinds of stories..."

The family voiced their opinions from around the table, listing murders, attacks, robberies, and record high temperatures that caused mass heart attacks.

Joan helped her mother clear the dishes away and wash up. The congested kitchen had hardly changed from her childhood: the tall refrigerator, big as a wardrobe, with its halo of hissing cooling fins; the old cracked-enamel stove next to the chipped sink; the dark patch of linoleum where Joan had dropped the pan of boiling sugar as a child. Joan and her mother filled the small space.

"Are you coping?" asked her mother when they were alone.
"I am, really," said Joan. "It's been tough but it's not the end of the world. I thought Robert was okay, turned out he was a creep; you learn, you get on with things. I'm over him."

Her mother passed the dripping dishes to Joan and said, "You should have come back home, honey, we would have looked after you."
"I'm twenty-eight, mom, not eight," said Joan, toweling the worn china.
"All I'm saying is that we're here if you need us," her mother continued, her eyes focusing on the soap bubbles. "You know we never really liked Robert; I didn't want to say, before now, I mean, it's your life, but..."
"But you think I screwed up, right?" demanded Joan. "Just like all the other times? In school, at camp, at the prom, at college, right?"
"No, honey, it's not like that." Her mother watched Joan pummel the delicate china with the towel. "You trying to take the pattern off that?"
Joan tried to slide the plate into the drying rack but misjudged it; the china hit the draining board and then the floor, next to the old sugar stain, before shattering into a hundred shards. "Shit!"
"Joan, please." Her mother bent to retrieve the pieces. "You go in, I'll pick these up."
"I'll help." Joan bent down and sliced her finger on a delicate floral splinter.
"You go in, get a plaster for that," said her mother, shooing her away. "Go, I'll do it."
Joan wrapped a napkin around her finger and slumped in front of the TV as cousins and aunts argued through the old black and white film. Her father sat hunched over a bowl of popcorn, his wide body filling the La-Z-boy, mechanically shoveling handfuls into his mouth.

Edie and David played cards beneath the old standard lamp, some loud quick game unknown to Joan. Grandma lay dozing in the cramped, converted ground floor parlor that had become her room.

"So, what did you get your mom and dad for Christmas?" Sylvia sank into the couch next to Joan, a brimming glass of sherry in her hand. The monochrome glow of the TV picked out the few gray strands in her chestnut hair, and the frayed gold threads in her ornate shawl.
"Well..." Joan looked over at her father.
Sylvia chuckled. "Don't worry about him, once the TV's on he can't hear a thing."
"I bought them a new coffee-maker, top of the range," whispered Joan. "I knew the old one burned out."
"You didn't?" asked Sylvia. "That's what David bought for them."
Joan sighed. "I'll take it back, get them something else. Or give them the money, whatever."
Sylvia squeezed Joan's hand. "Don't worry, they'll understand. It's the thought, after all."

Joan looked across to her father and wondered what other present her parents might appreciate. They had every kitchen gadget under the sun, they seldom read books or listened to music, and they were uninterested in clothes. Joan was considering videotapes, maybe some old film comedies, when the front door chimed.

"That'll be your brother," said her father. "He said he'd come over after dinner.
"And it's okay, Joan," he continued as she rose from the sofa, "another coffee machine would be great: it's always good to have a spare."
He smiled at Joan, dislodging popcorn crumbs at the corner of his mouth, then turned back to The Road to Morocco.
"Hey, Sis." Philip shrugged out of his overcoat and hugged Joan. "You lost weight? You're looking great."
"Thanks, I don't feel it. Where's Hannah?"
"Working late at the hospital," said Philip and turned to the rest of the family. "And how's my favorite Aunts? And my favorite cousin, no, sorry, cousins? Been a long time since we were all together."

Philip passed from relative to relative until he finished up on the sofa, sandwiched between his Aunts Sylvia and Margaret. After another thirty minutes of reminiscing and family updates, Joan grabbed her coat and headed for the garden.

She walked between the rows of dormant plants under their snow shrouds, and blew misted wreaths of breath into the night air.

A raised flowerbed had taken the place of her old swing, but Joan remembered the smell of the rusting metal supports, and the cloying surface of the damp wooden seat as she was pushed higher and higher until eventually she broke free and soared through the garden. Ten stitches and a week off school, that had been.

"You okay?" Philip's question hung in the air before dissolving.
"Yes, I just needed some fresh air," said Joan, kicking at the snow. She continued as Philip waited. "It's just...you're doing so well, what with the kids and Hannah, your business, everything. I don't begrudge it, honestly; I guess I'm a little jealous."
"Don't be," said Philip. "These things go in cycles. We're doing okay at the moment, God willing, but it hasn't always been like this."
"I know," said Joan.
Philip looked at her. "I thought Robert was a good guy, but he fooled both of us. Things will get better for you, I know they will."
Joan smiled. "I hope so. Thanks."
If I only believed that, she thought.
"Good." Philip shivered and wrapped his arms around his body. "You coming in?"

"Sure, in a minute," said Joan. She followed the flickering lights of a jet as it crossed the starscape above the city. She could still hear the distant rumble of engines as she lay, later that night, in her cramped childhood bed. The sounds of the house gradually faded as her family slipped away to their shared rooms.

Joan could hear the house cool, just as she had years before, and the walls and floorboards contracting, the old joints popping. She had often thought of the house as an animal, softly breathing, settling into its own deep slumber. It had been a comforting thought for a child.

Moonlight through the thin curtains picked out her worn furniture and the frozen families of dolls and teddy bears. Joan recognized Jemima and Penny, her favorites, their blond cotton hair unevenly trimmed with kitchen scissors.

The stuffed animals were ragged and worn, much loved, their glass eyes sparkling in the night. The many posters had long since vanished from the walls, David Cassidy and The Osmonds now sharing some forgotten drawer.

Sleep eluded Joan. She contorted her large frame in the bed, trying to find some comfortable compromise. The darkness brought unwelcome introverted memories, hot moments of needle-sharp embarrassment throughout the years: the tailored darts of her Prom dress splitting to reveal cheap underwear; the wizened college tutor reading her first assignment to the guffawing class; finding Robert with that girl.

Joan clambered from the bed and looked at her body in the wardrobe's full-length mirror. She looked stocky, despite the diet. Her skin appeared silver in the moonlight, her hair pure jet.

She traced her muscled thighs and wide hips, her heavy breasts, and believed she could see some difference, some slow change to her figure. Or maybe it was self-delusion.

She pulled on her chenille robe and padded downstairs. The old refrigerator creaked open, spilling cold light into the kitchen.

"Joany?"
Her mother's sudden question caused Joan to drop the milk bottle. Joan caught it, miraculously, with her other hand. "Mom, you gave me fright."
"Sorry, dear," said her mother, yawning, her blue-rinsed curls captured securely in the hairnet. "I thought I heard you come downstairs. Feeling hungry?"
"A little." Joan poured milk into a small pan and lit the gas.
"Would you like me to do that?" asked her mother, hovering at Joan's elbow.
Joan opened her mouth to speak, then shrugged and sat at the small melamine table as her mother picked out a whisk and worked on the milk.
Joan let her mother's chatter wash over her, and just for a moment she was eleven years old again, sitting at the table in her flannel nightdress and rabbit-eared slippers, woken by the shapeless horror of some recurring nightmare and waiting for the anaesthetic of hot chocolate and cake.

"Joan, I was going to save this for tomorrow but I think you deserve a piece now." Her mother lifted a plate out of a deep plastic container and placed the perfect, dark-brown squat cylinder on the table.

Sachertorte. Joan knew exactly what was in the cake since she had tried, and failed, to make it herself. The cookbook put four chefs' hats next to the recipe; one hat meant an easy dish to prepare, two meant quite difficult, four meant forget it, go and buy something from the store.

The thick chocolate icing looked glossy and smooth, and beneath it, Joan remembered, lay a rich dark sponge made with seventy-percent plain chocolate, six eggs, extra butter, and unbleached caster sugar.

"I made it just for you, honey," said her mother, smiling, and the words took her daughter back to all the other times she had repeated the line: Joan falling off her bike, losing her schoolwork, getting poor grades. Screwing up.

Her mother's hand held the cake slice over the Sachertorte, waiting, expectant.

"No, mom," said Joan, finally. "Thanks, but I'll leave it. I know you put a lot of work into it, but I'll stick to my diet."
"You don't like the cake?" Her mother pulled back, disappointed, her eyes wide in surprise.

Joan stood and wrapped her arms around her mother's body for a moment.

"It's a wonderful cake, the best cake in the world. And I really do appreciate it," she said. "But it's time I got some sleep. We've got a lot to do tomorrow."

Her mother stood at the stove, the cake slice forgotten in her hand. "Joan, this isn't like you; are you alright?"

Joan smiled back from the doorway. "I'm fine. See you in the morning, mom."

She padded through the somnolent house and slipped gratefully between still-warm sheets, and drifted into sleep.

Contributor: Tom Brennen