Eating Heaven (2 page)

T
he first time I met Benny, I was six years old. I’d never have guessed, based on that night, that in time he’d become a member of our family.

Mom had invited her fellow students from the beginning photography class at the Lake Grove Community Center over for a Sunday night barbecue. Entertaining was her hobby, as was taking whatever class she considered avant-garde, a term that made my father roll his eyes. Once it had been artificial-flower arranging; another time it was Renaissance art appreciation. She’d majored in art history at Northwestern University, where she met Dad, who was finishing up a geology degree. She quit school to marry him, and I’ve often wondered if she regrets it.

Rock solid, she used to call him, and it was a good bet she didn’t mean it as a compliment. Dad’s interests consisted of work and disappearing into his basement den, an ugly utilitarian room filled with core samples and lumps of quartz, obsidian, pumice, hardened lava, and creepy-looking stalactites or stalagmites, whichever is which.

I don’t know why Mom married him, especially since she knew moving to Portland—more specifically Lake Grove, the wrong side of the preferable Lake Oswego suburb—came with the package, but I know why he married her. In the black-and-white photographs of Mom as a young woman in Chicago, she looks like a movie star: perfect Cupid’s bow lips, dark curls framing her heart-shaped face. In just the tilt of her
head, the sure carriage of her slender shoulders, you see that she knows she is beautiful, she knows she is special. It’s intoxicating.

That night may only have been a backyard barbecue, but she looked just as alluring, maybe more so with the confidence of maturity. She’d dressed in a new red-and-white floral sundress, red lipstick to match, delicate white sandals upon her pretty feet. She smelled like lilies and hairspray, as sexy as a smell can be, as far as I was concerned, and I tried to stand near her whenever she stood still for a moment.

At six o’clock sharp, three couples arrived, one with a sullen teenage boy who looked at my young sisters and me as if we were piles of dog doo on the sidewalk. Moments later, a man came by himself. Earlier in the day, Mom had informed us that he’d lost his wife and that we should make an effort to be nice to him.

“He’s a kind man,” she said, “but he’s very sad.”

Later, I overheard her talking on the phone in her bedroom with the familiar tone that meant it was her sister in Chicago. “Why shouldn’t I invite him? We’re just friends—you know that.” She paused. “Besides, why shouldn’t I be able to have this one thing—” Her voice broke then, and the bed, where she’d been sitting, creaked as she stood. “This one person who is so simpatico.”

The sound of her voice drew nearer to the door, so I beat it down the hall to my room. I sat on my bed, running my hands over rows of yellow chenille, and shivered at this development—this would be no ordinary dinner guest. I pondered the word “simpatico.” Finally, I decided it must mean they were both sad.

That night was a scorcher. The men’s shirts stuck to their backs in dark patches, and the women fanned themselves with cocktail napkins. They milled about on the patio, forced cheerfulness in their voices, first beers in hand. The teenage boy had found the television set in the living room.

My sisters and I loitered around the swing set, wearing the dresses Mom had laid out, so we couldn’t hang by our knees from the monkey bar. We’d never had to dress so formally for a barbecue before. We moped on the swings, kicking at the worn dirt underneath.

“Don’t get those shoes dirty,” Dad warned from the concrete patio,
for not only were we wearing dresses, but we’d been made to wear our patent leathers. Mine bit at the heels, and I slid them off and on for relief. “Kids today don’t realize how much shoes cost,” Dad commented to the adults on the patio, with the tight, uncomfortable smile he wore whenever my mother entertained. His tall frame stood rigid over the other guests, all awkward right angles as he tried to place his hands casually on his chino-ed hips.

“Well, thank God for that,” the lone man replied, tapping ashes off his cigarette. “They’re just kids.”

I perked up my ears, looking at my sisters to see if they’d heard. Anne had stiffened, a deer awaiting the next sign of danger, but Christine was too young to notice anything. She babbled as she lay on her stomach across the yellow seat of a swing. Anne and I looked at each other, then back at the patio. The man winked in our direction, then lifted his beer to Dad. “No disrespect intended.”

The flush on Dad’s face was visible across the yard. He said he’d see what was taking Mom so long in the kitchen and yanked the patio screen door from its tracks, then righted it and closed it carefully behind him.

The man stubbed out his cigarette and sauntered across the yard.

“Need a push?” he asked, squinting into the late-day sun.

Anne and I looked at each other, then nodded our complicity and settled onto hard plastic seats, clamping sweaty fingers onto steel chains. He pushed each of us in turn, up and down the row, Anne, me, Christine, over and over. The rush of wind was invigorating after the hot day, and my insides lurched into my throat as I crested high in the sky, feeling like I could see my whole neighborhood, maybe even the world. I wondered if I could see heaven if he just pushed hard enough, or the deep, dark indigo of space with its twinkling stars and multicolored planets. I wondered if the two were the same.

“You girls get off that swing set. You’re wearing Mr. Sloan out,” Dad finally called. “Besides, it’s chow time.” He’d now had a couple of beers; his voice was friendlier as he relaxed into his role as host, the murmur of adult conversation punctuated by his offerings of beer refills, lights for cigarettes, more chips and dip.

The man slowed and stopped our swings, then held his hand out to each of us to shake: “Benny Sloan. Good to meet you.” He was smaller than our dad, thinning hair slicked back and eyes the color of a swimming pool.

We tittered and snickered, embarrassed by the attention, but we each shook hands with him, our hands swallowed in his work-worn grasp. His interest in us was captivating.

“Are you the sad man?” four-year-old Christine asked, staring up at him. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he saw it: She was going to be the beauty of the family.

“Christine!” Anne shoved her with an elbow. At eight, Anne was already lanky, forever trying to accommodate the length of arms and legs she’d inherited from Dad, along with his long, hatchet-nosed face.

The man just chuckled and said, “It’s okay. I get that a lot.”

As we headed toward the patio, Anne and Christine ran ahead to ensure they got the best spots at the kids’ table, slowing when they saw the teenage boy already sitting there. Benny ruffled my hair and said, “You, kiddo, look like your mother.” I’d heard it plenty of times but never believed it. I was nothing like my mother. I was too tall already, too bulky. She was dainty and ladylike; she was perfect.

As my sisters and I endured the pimples and greasy hair of our dinner guest, I sneaked glances at Benny with the other adults. He smiled a lot, I noticed, especially at my mother, and a gold-framed tooth flashed from the outer edge of his grin. He seemed to watch her every move as she cleared the table, replenished beers, swinging her summer dress through the sliding door and laughing in that melodic way of hers.

At the end of the evening, after the couples and the teenager had departed, my sisters and I sat, tired and worn out from the day, picking at our second servings of marionberry pie. Benny had long ago stood to leave with the others, but he and Mom kept smoking and talking in the deepening twilight, their words foreign to the rest of us: focal length, aperture, f-stop, shutter speed. The embers of their cigarettes danced through the air like fireflies.

Dad hovered near them, but Benny and Mom didn’t notice until Dad
finally stood right next to her and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Don’t you think it’s time these girls were in bed, Barbara?” he said. He was the only one who wouldn’t call her Bebe.

“Oh, hey. Yeah.” Benny backed up a step. “I didn’t mean to monopolize your wife here.” He placed his beer on the table and reached into his pants pocket, withdrawing keys. “You have one heck of a family, Richard,” Benny said. “But who am I telling? You know that.”

“You bet I do,” Dad said, only his voice didn’t sound so friendly. The air on the patio had grown still; even the crickets had quieted. My stomach knotted and I reached for Anne’s plate, where half a piece of pie sat untouched. She narrowed her eyes at me but didn’t object.

After a protracted silence, Benny shook Dad’s hand. “Well, thanks for your hospitality, and for inviting a fifth wheel like me.”

Mom intervened then, taking Benny by the arm and walking him into the house, saying, “Of course you’re not a fifth wheel. We’re delighted to have you.” I followed, licking berry juice and crumbs from my fingers.

“I really enjoyed meeting you girls,” Benny said at the front door, then turned and disappeared down the front walk into the darkness.

“He seems awfully nice for a sad man,” I said.

My mom smiled and nodded, and we both stood gazing after him for a long while.

It was the closest I’ve ever felt to my mother.

The next morning, before I even brush my teeth, I call Benny.

“Myello?” he says. After all these years, I still smile at his odd pronunciation.

“You feeling any better today?”

“A little tired is all.”

“You need to go to the doctor,” I tell him. “Even if it is the flu. They have stuff now that can make you feel better.”

“You know I hate those sons of bitches,” he says. I can hear him slapping down playing cards on the kitchen table, reds on blacks, jacks on queens.

“Yeah, well, who doesn’t?” I say.

Slap,
I hear,
slap, slap
. Then silence.

“Uncle Benny.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He sighs, takes a slurp of something—day-old coffee would be my guess. “I know.”

“So you’ll call today?”

“Since when did you get so bossy?”

“Someone’s got to take care of you.”

He’s quiet. After a too-long moment, he clears his throat. I’m relieved at the sound of cards snapping against the table.

“You winning?” I ask, trying to turn the moment back to light.

“Only when I cheat,” he says.

Later in the morning, I hike eight blocks through the drizzle gray from my apartment to one of my favorite guilty pleasures: the expensive and exceptional Nob Hill Grocers on Northwest Twenty-third Avenue—Trendy-third, as it’s called for the upscale shops and restaurants along its sidewalks. A true-blue Portlander, I don’t carry an umbrella, but I do have hooded rain gear and an eco-friendly canvas shopping bag, along with my detailed list. This could well be the best part of my job.

I push through the door of the market into the fragrance of Stargazer lilies and roses, then coffee brewing and briny oysters fresh from the coast. I stroll the aisles as if in a museum, looking at every item, loading work recipe ingredients into the wire handbasket along with the odd little goodie: Cozy Shack flan, Scharffenberger chocolate. What I’d really like is ice cream: Tillamook Brown Cow or a Dove dark chocolate on chocolate ice cream bar—heaven on a stick—but it would melt long before I could get it home. I grab another Scharffenberger bar to compensate.

Inside the gourmet deli case, white plastic tags poke out of luscious mounds of cheese, each with handwritten names bordering on the orgasmic: B
URRATA
WITH
T
RUFFLES
, E
VORA
, B
RESCIANELLA
, B
LEU
D
’A
UVERGNE
. I can almost feel the creamy sensation against my tongue, smell the musk of perfect aging, taste its tang, when an unmistakable laugh coming from the wine aisle jerks me to attention: a charming bell-tinkle sound almost certainly accompanied by a coy tilt of the
head. I’ve alternately loved, blushed under, yearned for, and despised that laugh my entire life.

Immediate remorse at my choice of rumpled sweat clothes makes me clammy and frantic. One hand flies to the frizz of hair left untamed after my shower; the other swings the handbasket in front of my midsection.