The Middlesteins(22)

“Fine, take the fries,” she said to her daughter.

She cracked open the McRib box and eyed the dark red, sticky sandwich. Suddenly she felt like an animal; she wanted to drag the sandwich somewhere, not anywhere in this McDonald’s, not a booth, not Playland, but to a park, a shrouded corner of woods underneath shimmering tree branches, green, dark, and serene, and then, when she was certain she was completely alone, she wanted to tear that sandwich apart with her teeth. But she couldn’t just leave her children there, could she? You didn’t need to be a graduate of Northwestern Law to know that that was illegal.

And then, finally, there was her husband coming through the door, wrinkling his nose at the assault of that particular McDonald’s smell (which Edie loved, so much hope in that grilled, salty, sweet, meaty air), striding over to the table with his last burst of energy for the day, which he had reserved solely for his children and only a little bit for his wife. He scanned quickly the detritus of the table, the damage that had been done by Edie, and then slid in next to Benny, who threw his arms around his waist. Richard picked up the McRib box—the sandwich still untouched—and peered into it.

“Can I have this?” he said.

“I was going to eat it,” she said.

He leaned over Robin in her high chair and kissed her curly-haired head, then took one of her fries. Robin said, “Mine,” and Richard said, “What’s mine is yours, kid.”

“You’re twenty minutes late,” said Edie.

“Traffic,” said Richard.

“Give me a break with the traffic,” said Edie. “You work less than a mile away.”

“Do you want to go look outside and see?” he said. “Bumper to bumper.”

“I hate you,” Edie said in a peaceful-sounding voice. Did Benny know what that word meant yet? What it meant to hate?

“Well then, it must be a Thursday,” said Richard cheerfully. “Benny, look at what you did here.” He fished through the detached plane parts. “I need to eat something, wife. I really can’t have that?”

“No, you can’t have that,” said Edie, no longer peaceful, now spitting. “Twenty minutes ago is when we ordered our meal. An hour ago is when I picked them up from day care. Ninety minutes ago is when I got off work. Ten hours ago is when I dropped them off—”

“Hey, I have an idea,” said Richard.

“You have so many wonderful ideas,” said Edie.

“Why don’t I take these kids over to the Playland and you sit here by yourself for five minutes and eat your sandwich?”


“I don’t even want to sit here,” she said. She suddenly didn’t want to be reminded of what she had eaten, the wrappers, the garbage, the junk.

“So sit somewhere else,” he said. “I don’t care where you sit. Anyone care where your mother sits?”

No one cared where their mother sat.

She walked to the far corner of the restaurant, to the booth closest to the bathroom, where no one ever sat but the employees on break, looking back only once at her husband gathering up the children; he gave her a nod, and that was it. She sat down with her McRib sandwich and then started shivering, because it was suddenly cold in the restaurant, away from the mess, the heat of her family, the source of her frustration. She pulled out the newspaper from her purse. Edie took a bite of her McRib and flattened out the front page. Was this really happening to her? Because this was perfection.

This happened a lot in the future, in their family, in their lives, going out to dinner with Edie sitting at a separate table. For years this went on, until they all stopped eating together entirely, Benny and Robin growing up thinking it was something everyone did, and not realizing that it wasn’t until it didn’t matter anymore anyway. As an adult, Robin found herself behaving exactly the same as her mother without even knowing it, always alone at meals, eating, reading, alone, while Benny married young and his doting wife, at home with the kids, had a hot, non-fast-food-related meal on the table every night. In the end it was not the worst thing that had happened to them in their lives. “It could have been much, much worse,” Benny said to his sister at their mother’s funeral, and she could not argue. “They could have starved us,” said Robin. “They could have beat us,” said Benny. It was a game they could play for hours.

The day Edie dined alone with her McRib sandwich was the one-year anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption. It had made the front page, even though it happened in another state. Tragedy ripens in memory. Fifty-seven people had died. They believed that the mountain was their friend. They didn’t want to leave their homes behind. Who would they be without their homes?

What fools, thought Edie. I’d run like hell if I could.





Exodus



After thirteen successful years of rejecting Judaism—this included no High Holidays with her parents, no bar mitzvahs of distant relations, no hanging out at the Hillel House in college, no Purim, no Passover, no Shabbat, no nothing except for Hanukkah at her brother’s house, which got a pass because gifts were exchanged, and also because her niece and nephew, both of whom she was fond of, had always enjoyed that holiday so much—Robin wasn’t exactly sure how she had ended up at this crowded seder, but there she was, in her trim blue dress, holding her I-guess-he’s-my-boyfriend’s hand in his parents’ living room in Northbrook, Illinois. She had instinctively grabbed it, because otherwise she thought she might have been swept away in the crowd of people. She wasn’t trying to be cute or affectionate; she was just trying to save her life.