God is in the Pancakes Read online

  Lolly jabs at the END button on the phone and throws it on the kitchen counter.

  “Lolly, I’m sorry,” I say, looking down.

  “Oh, I’ll bet you are,” she hisses. “You loved that, didn’t you? You loved telling me he cheated on me. You probably couldn’t wait to do it.” Her voice catches in the beginning of a sob and she storms out of the kitchen, then loudly runs up the stairs.

  I wait to hear her door slam—which it does a few seconds later—then I open the cabinet next to the refrigerator. But instead of pulling out the potato chips, my eyes land on a jug of maple syrup.

  Pancakes.

  That’s what I really want. So I take out two eggs, a stick of butter, and a carton of milk. I grab the flour, sugar, salt, vanilla, and baking powder from the pantry and start beating the ingredients together with Mom’s old hand mixer. As I spin the mixer around the bowl, watching the chunks of butter break and fold into the batter, I’m mesmerized by the pattern the beaters spin into it. I keep moving the mixer around and around the bowl until the thick batter looks almost silky. My hand starts to ache from the movement and weight of the mixer, but the pain, so simple and easy to locate, is almost a relief. You’re supposed to leave a few lumps so the batter doesn’t spread too thin when you pour it. Thin is not an attractive pancake trait. So when I’ve beaten away all but the last few lumps and imperfections, I detach the mixer blades and lick them clean.

  The round griddle, which I find packed away in a high cabinet above the oven, hasn’t been used in a long time and it takes me a while to free it from under all the other random and rarely used kitchen crap stored up there. My father had given it to my mother as a Mother’s Day present. Even at age eleven I knew Mom wasn’t going to be pleased by the gift. Mom didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day. When she finally spoke to him the next morning at breakfast—for which Dad made pancakes—I remember hearing the word selfish thrown around a lot. I also remember Dad yelling back that everything he did, he did for the family. When Mom snorted, he said her problem was that she’d never had faith in him. He said a man couldn’t fully exist without others believing in him, and that it was killing him. Mom said if he needed her to believe in him so badly, he had to provide more than hokey promises for the future.

  The first Sunday after Dad left—the first Sunday I missed church and our pancake brunch—I spent the day wondering if the reason Dad was now with Nancy Falton was because she believed in him more than Mom did, and whether that made his decision okay. It’s like that question “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”

  I wipe off the griddle, then grease it before putting it on the stove and turning on the heat. As I drop generous dollops of batter on the griddle, I stay focused on the symmetry of the circles I create, which expand before they shrink again on the hot surface. I smile when I see the air bubbles pop to the surface—I always do—and today I think they make it look like some spirit inside the molten batter is trying to escape. I flip each pancake when it becomes firm, and they slide off the spatula with ease, leaving no chunks of batter behind. Once they’ve turned the perfect shade of golden brown, I take my stack of eight over to the kitchen table. I don’t know how long the jug of Aunt Jemima syrup has been sitting in the cabinet, but I don’t really care, and I squirt what remains all over the huge mound of pancakes.

  I take the first bite and close my eyes to block out any other sight, sound, thought, or feeling. I do this with every bite thereafter, chewing as slowly and deliberately as I can. I tear through pancake after pancake, kneading each bite against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. I run my index and middle fingers through the stream of syrup pooled on the sides of the plate, then lick them clean.

  But something’s off.

  Eating pancakes alone isn’t the same; it almost feels like I’m missing some of my taste buds. For the girl who used to guard her plate so that no one would reach a fork over to steal a bite, the need to share this experience feels strange. I pick up the phone and dial Dad’s number.

  “Hullo?” he says. But the fact that his voice still sounds exactly the same when so much else has changed isn’t a comfort, it somehow seems unfair. He should be affected too.

  I can’t do it.

  It’s too much.

  I hang up and set the phone down on the kitchen table, biting my lip as I push my plate away.

  The last communication I had with Eric was our series of text messages on Friday when he accused me of lying to him about being sick. The last time we saw each other, my face and lips were pressed against his and then I ran out of his bedroom. So when he called over the weekend, I screened and didn’t return the call because I didn’t know what to say and it was just another thing I couldn’t handle. When I see him at school this morning I don’t have any clearer idea of what to say to him, so playing it cool—or as cool as I’m capable—feels like my only move.

  “Hey,” I say, approaching Eric at his locker. “What’s up?”

  “Hi.” Eric continues unloading his book bag, and I keep standing there like an idiot. Hi, that’s all I get.

  “So how was the Vietnam test?”

  He slams the top half of his locker shut with his palm. “Well, you would know if you’d called me back.”

  “I—I wanted to,” I reply, looking down and away, “but my mom took away my ‘weekend phone privileges’ again.” The lie comes out easily enough.

  Eric stops, seeming to consider this. “Because she caught you cutting?”

  “No,” I say, wanting the reason to be even more extreme. “See, I told Lolly that her relationship with Jake was over, and she went ballistic. Then Mom started hassling me and I was just so done with the whole thing, I told her that that was exactly the type of behavior that caused Dad to leave.” The lie keeps rolling.

  “You said that to your mom?” he asks, squinting. It’s hard to read what Eric makes of this, so I just shrug. “Harsh.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I reply, “I just kind of lost my head.”

  Eric nods, then turns back and closes the bottom half of the locker. I start to get a vague sense of relief that this explanation could have done the trick until he turns on his heel and faces me. “Grace, look.” Eric’s head dips forward. “The reason I wanted to talk to you was because I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with us. You know chatting about feelings or whatever isn’t exactly my thing, but aren’t we supposed to talk about what went on the other night?”

  In front of me is the guy I’ve been friends with since fourth grade, and he’s staring at me so closely right now, it feels like I’m standing naked in the school hallway. What is he seeing? What is he thinking? On the one hand I want to know, but on the other, what if, in a chat like that you discover the other person—the one person you look forward to seeing more than anyone else—doesn’t like you as much as you like him? Would I really be better off or happier knowing that?

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be a big deal,” I say, now turning my attention to my shoes. “We could just agree not to talk about what happened that night and then we wouldn’t have to worry about it, right?”

  Eric opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything for a moment. “We could, but I mean—”

  “Yeah, you know, this way there won’t be any weirdness and we can just go back to the way things have always been, right?” I let my eyes tag Eric’s, then I give him a playful punch on the shoulder.

  “You’re sure?” he says, making it sound like he just bit into something that tastes a little funky.

  “Absolutely,” I reply, absolutely sure of nothing.

  “Okay.” He nods. “I guess I’ll see you at lunch then.”

  Lunch.

  Terrifying.

  I sit down at an empty table and half expect Eric not to show up. The thought of again eating alone—especially in the middle of a crowded cafeteria—is almost sickening. But he does come, and when Eric takes the seat next to me, he nods, making me feel l
ike an awful friend for doubting him. When I see Natalie and Jake talking at the front of the lunchroom, I can’t resist bringing us back to a conversation that I know will spark Eric’s interest.

  “What do you think they’re saying?” I ask him, nudging my head in Natalie’s direction.

  “Well,” Eric replies, “if I’m Natalie, I’m looking at Jake and wondering what it ever was that I saw in him. And I’m probably saying something like, ‘Jake, you jerk, why is it that you’re not buying my lunch for me, carrying me piggyback to our lunch table, and insisting I cross puddles by stepping on your head.’ ”

  “I can see that,” I reply, watching as Jake begins gesticulating somewhat more aggressively. “And I’ll bet now he’s saying, ‘But Natalie, my friends will think I’m whipped if I throw rose petals on the ground wherever you walk—I mean, I want to—but I have a reputation to uphold.’ ”

  Eric laughs and continues in his Natalie voice, “Oh, Jake, that’s so funny—you don’t have a reputation. And let’s be real, you couldn’t be more whipped! I mean look at me, tee hee!”

  “But Natalie,” I say, staring at Jake, who is now rather wildly moving his hands in a chopping motion, “you know I’d do the Tomahawk Chop for you as many times as you asked me to. But I’m a dude, and we dudes need some sugar.”

  Eric rolls his eyes and breaks character. “We dudes need some sugar?” he repeats.

  “Look, just because I live in a house of crazy women does not mean I don’t understand your gender.”

  “Uh, yes”—he extends his pointer finger in the air—“it does.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I reply, grabbing hold of his finger. Eric then grabs hold of my other hand and begins twisting as we both start laughing, “Hey! No fair using the moves you’ve learned watching the Wide World of Wrestling all these years.”

  “If it weren’t for what I’ve learned from TV wrasslin’, I wouldn’t know nuthin’ at all.”

  Because we’re both now focused on our wrestling match that’s playing out above our lunch bags, neither one of us notices that Natalie has approached our table until she pulls out the seat across from us and sits down.

  “Hey,” she says, causing both Eric and me to drop our hands immediately, both of us feeling like morons.

  “Oh, hey,” I reply.

  Natalie nods to Eric, then says, “Hi, I’m Natalie.”

  “Eric,” he replies.

  “Oh, this is Eric! I’ve heard about you.” Natalie smiles at me. “You’re right, Grace, he is totally cute.”

  And somehow the moment just got more embarrassing still.

  “Wait a second.” Natalie cocks her head to the side. “Are you Eric Ward?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Oh, that makes sense!”

  “What makes sense?”

  “Well, your name came up. Let’s just say Grace isn’t the only one who’s talking about you.” She practically twinkles when she says this.

  I’ve never had the impulse to ram a Ding Dong in someone else’s face before, but I’m quite certain that would take the glint out of Natalie’s eye, at least temporarily. I watch as she brushes the hair that’s fallen across her eyes off her face, and follow her hands as they fold across her waist.

  Natalie sighs and leans in. “I just talked to Jake.”

  “Oh, really?” I try to sound blasé as I see Eric, who still looks a little uncomfortable, give me a conspiratorial smile.

  “I told him I’m not going to go to the dance with him.”

  “That was a good decision.” I nod.

  “But here’s the thing.” Natalie idly clasps and unclasps the hook on her wristwatch. “I still really want to go. Are you guys going?” She looks between Eric and me.

  We both kind of shrug, trying hard to avoid eye contact for the moment.

  “I don’t think so,” Eric responds for the both of us, “we’re not, like, typical dance people.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with you two? They’re so much fun!” she replies. “Wait, okay, I have this great idea, we three should go to the dance together.”

  “Oh, uh—” I hesitate.

  “Um—” Eric says simultaneously.

  “Excellent, I’ll take those two eager responses as a yes.” Natalie smiles. Then she pushes her chair out and stands up. “See you guys later! And practice up on your moves, because we’re going to be out on the dance floor all night.”

  Eric and I sit there for a moment in silence after she’s gone, then we both take a bite of our respective lunches and chew, mulling what’s just happened and what it means.

  At the very least it means that Eric and I will be going to the dance together after all.

  After explaining that I’d come down with a terrible twenty-four-hour virus, and was ready to make up the Vietnam test, my skeptical—but ultimately kind—American History teacher, Mr. Leightem, let me retake it after school. The questions were exactly the ones Eric and I had quizzed each other on, so for the first time in I don’t know how long, I actually felt confident giving my answers. When I finished writing up a “working definition of Vietnamization,” I handed my paper back to Mr. Leightem, and headed for home since today was one of my Hanover House off-days.

  Mom gets in from work around seven thirty, again looking like she’d been to war herself. “And how was your day?” I ask as she drops her bag and takes her shoes off by the door.

  “Terrible. Refrigeration system broke in the restaurant on Lancaster Avenue.”

  “So all the food went bad?” I wonder if this makes us the lucky recipients of a hundred pounds of almost spoiled ground chuck.

  “Funny you should ask,” Mom replies, plopping down to the couch. “The answer to that is no. And why not? Well, because Jim, the chief operating officer—the guy you’ll recall I’ve had some issues with before—well, he thought this was a grand opportunity for us to have an impromptu ‘all you can eat’ promotion.” Mom puts her hand on her forehead. “I thought for sure it was a joke, but no. So Peter not only had me trying to call in as much press as I could to promote it, he then insisted I help hostess in the restaurant to handle the overflow.”

  “You’re kidding! You had to hostess?” I picture my mom wearing one of those awful You Say Potato . . . uniforms, and though part of me can’t help thinking that it is sort of funny, the other part knows how horrible this would have to be for her.

  “Do you believe that? I’ve worked there too long to have to put up with that shit.” Anger flashes across her face. She’d started working in one of the chain’s restaurants as a kitchen manager when Dad quit his job at the roofing company, and gradually worked her way up. That makes this return to in-restaurant work literally a move back down the food chain for her.

  “Well, I hope you told them it was beneath your dignity,” I say, suddenly feeling a wave of anger rising on her behalf. I look around our living room and realize it’s a mess. After the day she had, I feel bad that Mom has to come home to this, so I start picking up the stray magazines and newspapers and making piles. “Hope you told him you wouldn’t take it, Mom.”

  “Sure,” she laughs, lying back on the couch, “and if I’d said that, he would have frog-marched me out the door.”

  “Well, just so you know, I’d be happy to go into that restaurant and tell him off for you if you want.” I walk over to Mom at the couch and put my hand on her shoulder. “I mean, that’s insane. You are just way too old to be hostessing!”

  “Thanks, Grace,” she replies, “that makes me feel much better.”

  “I mean—” I say quickly, “well you know what I mean.”

  “I do and I thank you anyway.” Mom laughs again, then suddenly sits up and narrows her eyes at me. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Just straightening up. You had a long day, and I just wanted to help out.”

  “Well, thanks again,” she says, rubbing her feet. “You wouldn’t want to take over the foot rubbing thing for me here, would you?”

  “Um, gr
oss.”

  “Worth a shot. You know what?” Mom says. “I don’t really feel like cooking tonight, and I definitely didn’t want to take any of the food home from work. What do you say we just order Chinese?”

  “Good call.” I pull the menu from the drawer in the kitchen by the phone and hand it to Mom. But even before I do, I know what she’s going to order: egg drop soup and chicken in black bean sauce. Then she’ll tell me to remind them to put in extra of those “crunchy things.” But she surprises me tonight.

  “I need red meat. This hot and spicy beef sounds good. And let’s get a scallion pancake to start. What do you want?”

  She needs red meat? Yikes.

  “I’ll get the chicken chow fun,” I reply as I pick up the phone and dial the number for Hunan Pan.

  “Is your sister around?” Mom asks, and when I shrug, she says, “Well, I suppose there’ll be plenty left for her if she deigns to eat with us tonight.” She smiles at me slyly. Lolly’s let it be known that she’s no longer talking to me, and though I don’t think Mom knows exactly why Lolly’s been so angry, she definitely knows something’s up. I know she’s not supposed to take sides, but especially tonight, I’m glad Mom’s chosen mine. “Oh, and Grace, remind them to put in extra of those crunchy things.”

  “Of course.” I smile back at her.

  As Mom and I wait for the delivery guy, I sit down on the couch next to her. It’s the first time that I can remember being in this position and not immediately reaching for the remote, but it wouldn’t feel right.

  “So Mom,” I say, lifting her legs over my thighs so she can still stay sprawled out on the couch, “what ever happened to that guy who owns the dry cleaner’s next to the restaurant?” She’d mentioned his name a bunch of times recently, and I had a feeling it wasn’t just because she was fond of the way he pressed her cuffs.

  “Funny you should mention Tom,” she says, a slight smile coming across her lips. “He’s good. He actually came into the restaurant today.”