“Poodle, set the table,” Mom shouts. A blue curl of smoke from the tip of one of her never-ending Marlboro Lights wafts back at me as she leaves the kitchen. I ignore her. Day three of the silent treatment. Her punishment for hurting my teenage feelings. She’s off to flip the chicken breasts, barbecuing in the backyard, since she won’t cook meat inside. Because of the odor, she says, but cigarette smoke she tolerates. I swipe at the air in vague annoyance and sad acceptance. I look down at the geometry theorems in front of me, wishing I were digging for spikes at volleyball practice instead.
The table sits under a window with white blinds that overlooks the grassy yard and a large, wooden playhouse. Four Scandinavian chairs flank its lengthier sides, and the adjacent walls are dotted with local art fair posters framed by Mom. It does not seem impressive, but our fine-grained kitchen table, approximately the honey-toned hues of my hair, is the central force of our entire suburban household. The sun around which all planetary orbs swing.
I look over at Mom’s stack of papers, biding time. Her stack of administration includes an impossibly long to-do list labeled ‘Tuesday’, only one day old by now, and several Democratic ‘Get Out the Vote’ call sheets. The heft of a glossy L.L. Bean catalog supports it all. Mom’s most important papers are not tucked away but exposed to light and the collateral damage of coffee rings and ketchup stains. Edges akimbo, these papers dance the perimeter throughout the day: Migrating through each quadrant of the rectangle, marking the passing hours in their own time and rhythm. When dinner is ready, my homework will also disappear into the precarious tower of clutter at the far end of the table.
I am seated atop my wooden stool, the one with the high back, across from the window with the view of the towering birch. Mom’s propane grill lies at an acute angle from the tree’s silvery bark. As the youngest, this end of the table is reserved for me. I assume it’s where my highchair once stood, but in this fatherless household, I’d never budged from the head of the table. Here, playdough morphed into cookie dough. Family games of Sorry gave way to Solitaire. Berenstein Bears made room for The Crucible. Paint-by-numbers was set aside to understand the geometric significance of nine-point circles. Years later, although I don’t know it yet, I will register as a Democrat and apply to university from this sturdy quadrilateral, a witness to the fractals of family life.
Some days, mostly the rainy ones, this table is our entire plane of existence. The surface upon which all activities play out. In the evenings, along with the world, we watch TV on a screen half the size of a cereal box. The first night-vision images of the Iraq War were broadcast live but grainy. Most nights, however, it is just Jeopardy or, if I am extremely lucky and finish my full glass of skim milk, The Simpsons. I love my mother. But I do question her taste. Spaghetti Bolognese and cow’s milk do not mix.
She’s no domestic goddess, but I believe she could run the world from this table with just a notebook, seltzer water, and the telephone cord stretched across the kitchen. Sitting with left ankle over right knee, receiver scrunched between shoulder and ear, cigarette dangling. Her long, often bright-pink manicure gently tapped against the table’s surface as the other end of the line prattled on. Mom can accomplish anything: I bear witness as she wins school board elections and encourages businesses to donate care kits to Hurricane Andrew-stricken schools.
It is all possible from the kitchen table, so long as she has her trusted landline phone. I never question her unwavering commitment to our kitchen landline despite the advent of cordless and then mobile phones. An umbilical cord tethering her to the outside world from this four-sided base of operations. A line segment with touch-tone dialing. Mom and I were once so intimately linked, yet now we roam untethered. Not fully dislocated, the wooden polygon draws us back into proximity.
Our split-level house has enough space for an office, or I can do my homework from my own bedroom desk. We all, even my older brother, dismiss the dampened quiet of carpet and closed doors for the overcrowded kitchen. Overhearing half of all Mom’s calls, I tune in for the gossip, treating whatever adult nonsense I do not understand as white noise. Just taking comfort in the sound of her voice nearby, even if directed at some airline or credit card company.
My mother, the CEO, approaches her boardroom table carrying barbecue. Plonking the plate down on top of my Girl Scout cookie order form, I hear the telltale scratch then hiss of the BIC as she lights another cigarette. “Time to eat!” I wave my way through the haze to retrieve the cutlery and the microwaved broccoli, listening to the shuffle of paper from across the kitchen as the table is rearranged. Life’s paperwork, sticking every which way and always on the verge of toppling, momentarily pushed aside for a plate of chicken. Yet I’m still feeling uncommunicative, and the fetid mix of cigarettes and grilled meat begins to revolt me.
It is tonight that I vehemently declare my vegetarianism. Mom throws up her hands, exasperated, and says it is all up to me now. The cooking that is. In the midst of my newfound interest in tofu, my brother suddenly moved out. Another empty chair. Still, a few times a week, she grills. Chicken mostly. But increasingly, London Broil, dangerously rare, now that her kids’ tastes need not be factored into the equation. Yet rain or shine, she stands outside cooking. A sentinel next to a propane grill, cigarette in hand to keep her company.
