Danielle 11

                                               Mind Your Manners



“Vince, honey, come down to dinner!” my mother yelled from the bottom of the stairs.  I closed my calculus book and stood up from my desk.  I had been staring at the same page of problems in my math book for over an hour, and I had only written down three of them.  Blake hadn’t pestered me the rest of the day, and we—he, Andrew, and I—weren’t doing anything later tonight.  Still, the whole affair had left a bad taste in my mouth, and I found it hard to concentrate on my homework.

It was not as if my mind was muddled; the ever-nagging thought was perfectly clear:  why couldn’t I bring myself to tell Blake anything about Danielle?  I made out with the girl of my dreams after only one date—and an awful one at that!  I should have been bragging.  It just would not come out; her name, her face.  I couldn’t even tell him whether she was hot.  She was, wasn’t she?  Of course she was!  I can’t look away from her!  When I go to sleep at night, she is my dream.

Was it a trust issue?  I hadn’t known Blake as long as Anne, but he and I talk about things that never pass my lips when I’m spending time with Anne.  We do talk about women; we talk about them all the time.  Blake has had his share of romantic misadventures, and Andrew is so verbally impulsive that he more or less blurts out anything that pops into his head, crushes being no exception.  We joke about sex and who’s hot and who’s not…and in this game I have proven to be a very adept liar.  Melissa Wainwright?  Moderately hot.  Harriet Sohmers?  Most decidedly not.  The one instance when Andrew made the mistake of mentioning Charlotte…Blake jumped in and gave him a verbal beating that would have made Limbaugh cringe.  Would he do the same thing for me now?  Would he defend me, or would he laugh?  If I were honest with myself, I knew it would be both.

I paused at the top of the stairs.  I couldn’t go to dinner with these thoughts cluttering up my brain.  Something might slip out, and I might not realize it until it was too late.  I closed my eyes and tried to picture that conversation.  Who is she?  What’s her name?  What does she look like?  When can we meet her?

Do I really need to tell them?  After all, people have secret relationships all the time.  Mine could be secret, too, couldn’t it?  I’m awfully good at keeping secrets, and who knows whether Danielle has told anyone yet?  Why should Blake need to know?  It was none of his business.  The only reason I’d tell him is because I might want to talk about it with someone.  It would be different, though, to not have to say “no.”  I would probably miss the questions.  Would the relaxation be an even trade for the control?

“Hey, Vince,” Dad said when I sat down to dinner.

“Hi, Dad,” I replied with a smile.

I have been told that I look very much like my father.  We both have dark hair and blue eyes; we’re both fairly thin and about the same height.  My father’s chin, however, is squared strongly below a mouth that has been molded for the purpose of smiling at people all day.  Sometimes, like tonight, the top of his head looks a bit greasy where his hairline is receding, and perhaps it is partly due to realizing the middling of his age that his typically bright eyes have of recently turned a little sour.  Standing up, we see almost eye to eye, though his neck is longer than mine and boasts a more prominent Adam’s apple that lifts his balding head just barely higher than mine.  He never wears his suit jacket to dinner; he removes it immediately after he gets home, but it makes him feel more than especially urbane to wear a tieless arrow-collar and spend all night in his shirt sleeves.

“Both of you get up and get some chicken before it gets cold!” Mom scolded the both of us.  “You can sit and talk now if you want, but I’m starting without you.”

My father and I stood from the polished pinewood dining table and carried our plates to the kitchen island where Mom had laid out dinner.  It would be too much to bill my mother as some sort of modern Julia Child about the kitchen, but she always strove to keep it clean and neat.  The oak-finished cabinets above the yellow Formica countertops were dust-free, and every pot and pan that had been used in cooking was either stacked carefully in the sink or stowed out of sight in the white-paneled dish washer.

We didn’t talk while we put food on our plates, but when he sat down again, Mom told my father, “Gerry, you need to mow the lawn tonight.  It’s starting to look like the Aaron’s.”

Dad smirked.  “You could always ask Tim to do it since you seem to think it looks so much like his yard.  He’ll probably know what he’s doing better than me.”

“Fine,” she said taking a bite of potatoes, “but you’re going to be the one to explain it to our son when we lose the dog in there.”

As if on cue, Kali nuzzled against my lap, and she peered into my face with melting eyes.  I looked down and stroked her head behind her ears secretively.  She whined softly and thankfully, sat back on her haunches, and scratched a paw over my thigh plaintively.  “Shhh…” I whispered to her.  She put her paw down and began panting, completely unfazed by my scolding.  “Fine,” I said and quickly slipped her a thin scrap of chicken.  “But you have to go lie down!” I whispered harshly.

“Don’t feed the dog scraps, Vince,” said Mom, who had apparently seen the whole thing.

“I’ll mow it tomorrow, El, alright?  Or why doesn’t Vince do it?  It’s supposed to be his job anyway,” Dad said, looking to me.

I shook my head and said through a forkful of vegetables, “I have too much math homework.  I have a test on Wednesday.”

“Why can’t you do it tonight, dear?” Mom asked him.

“Because I had a long day at the office, and tonight I’m not in the mood to go traipsing around the yard getting all hot and tired,” he said crossly.

“Did something happen?” Mom asked, putting down her fork.

“I am just getting fed up with some of the idiots I have to work with!” he said with a sweep of his arm.

Mom rolled her eyes at him and dangled her fork between her fingers teasingly.  “Carla forgot to refill the paper in your printer again?”

“No, that is not what I’m upset about!” he refuted.  “But, for your information, she did forget, which meant that I had to spend twenty minutes negotiating with the greasy stockroom monkey this morning for a three dollar stack of paper!  For Christ’s sake, it’s practically her only job!” he fumed.

“Of course, dear,” Mom mumbled, not really paying attention to her husband’s exasperation.

“But that isn’t it, El.  It’s everybody’s attitude anymore—you know what I mean?” he asked, slumping in his chair.

“What attitude?” Mom asked.

“Nobody takes anything they do seriously, and they all look like such slobs!  Honestly, it’s practically getting to be like every day is casual Friday, and ‘casual’ is turning into ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass,’” he spat.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.  I needed to insert myself into the conversation just to keep the subject going for the duration of dinner.  I wasn’t in the mood to talk about myself, and I knew my mother would turn her attention to me as soon as she lost interest in the regular series of complaints that my father reiterated every few nights.

“I—ok!  Let’s take Carla, for an example,” he said with a snap of his fingers.  “Now, I know that she doesn’t have the most glamorous job in the world, but practically everyone sees her on our floor every single day.”

“Carla is that younger girl, right?  The Hispanic one?” asked my mother.

“Mexican,” Dad said, considering it an important fact.

“I think I remember her from your company picnic last year; she was there, wasn’t she?” Mom asked.

Dad toyed with the fastener of his collar button between his thumb and forefinger.  The collar was not tight around his neck, but it lent him a sort of unconscious relief to be able to control the tension at his throat.  I had often considered wearing collared shirts more frequently but resisted the idea for the risk of too closely emulating my father.  Once satisfied with the freedom afforded his jugular, Dad continued his narration, inattentively at first but with gradually mounting enthusiasm until he resembled a colorful circus ringleader, robed in red velvet and brass, bringing himself to a fever-pitch with excitement over his own announcements.

“Yes, it’s the same Carla from the company picnic,” he said without inflection.  “The same Carla who has been giving me grief for the past eighteen months.  You know, there was a lot less of her when HR hired her—who knows if they would have even considered it, now—a lot fewer tattoos, too,” he added scornfully and pointed his fork at the center of the dining table.

“She is supposed to keep them covered in the office.  To be fair, she usually comes in wearing a sweater in the morning.  I guarantee you, though, that it doesn’t stay on her five minutes,” he said, once again brandishing his utensil like a radio talk personality stabbing a pen uselessly toward his microphone and imaginary audience.  “Not five minutes before it’s hanging on the back of her chair, and her ‘ink’ is plain as day for all the world to see.  Now, it’s not my problem,” he observed almost apologetically, “and I really could care less what she does to her own body, but it’s company policy!  I don’t know what she thinks ‘covered at all times’ means, but everyone in the office can see them all over her shoulders and the base of her neck and on the small of her back—”

“The small of her back?” my mother queried, genuinely interested in how her husband acquired this particular point of vantage.

“Well, maybe if she wore some goddam pants that fit!” Father responded loudly.  “It’s pretty obvious that she still has the same wardrobe she was wearing when she started, only now she needs to wear twice as much to cover anything—or at least that is what she should be doing.”

“Oh my,” Mom remarked.  “Has she really put on that much weight already?”

“I can’t believe it, either,” said Dad, sensing his wife fall into the conversation in earnest.  I hovered warily on the periphery of the discussion, too ashamed to add anything constructive and burning internally for letting it go on unimpeded.

“She really has let herself go,” Dad continued, “in more ways than one.  All those tattoos and dressing like a slob—I wonder what she’s still doing working with us?  I haven’t the foggiest of what sort of things she must do on the side!”  He emphasized the last word with the same severity he would have use in accusing Carla of secretly working for a mafia.

“Just because someone’s clothes don’t fit perfectly doesn’t mean they dress ‘like a slob,’” I mumbled, more to myself than for either of my parents to hear.

“If I’m thinking of the same girl, she was actually quite pretty last year,” Mom thought out loud, choosing to ignore her husband’s ridiculous insinuation.  “You mean that she’s really changed that much?” she pushed with insistent skepticism.

I remembered Carla, too.  She was a fairly short young woman with light brown hair and Cuban features, and she was, in fact, very pretty.  Her arms and shoulders were painted with twining rose vines and singing birds, and her ears were pierced at least a dozen times between the two of them.  Her face was a tad smudgy, but whenever I saw her she wore a haughty smirk as if she knew far more about what was going on in any given moment than anyone else around her.  Carla had been bottom heavy when I had last seen her over a year ago, but in a highly alluring way; her thighs seemed to be more “heavy,” sturdy really, than fat.  More remarkable than any other feature, though, was her flawless, supine skin.  A vibrant, red-Earth canvass for her body art, Carla’s skin sparkled with a luster I found in only one other—Danielle.  Even so, despite my obvious bias, how smooth, how supple she was! tight and shimmering and dusted over with light, fawn hair.

“I can’t imagine…” I muttered aloud.

“What’s that?” Dad had heard me.

“I can’t imagine someone ruining herself like that,” I said without hesitation.  I felt a little light headed …bad oysters again…

“It’s a terrible shame,” my mother nodded in agreement.

Dad, however, shook his head.  “It’s no surprise to me!  All she does all day long—eat, eat, eat!  It’s a doughnut in the morning, pizza for lunch, snack cakes all afternoon—some of that stuff is expensive, too!  It isn’t as if she can’t afford things that are better for her, but all she eats is total crap!”

“Gerry, don’t talk about a grown woman like she’s a child,” my mother scolded Dad.  “Besides, you make it sound like she’s as big as a house.  Don’t exaggerate; it’s just mean,” she continued gallantly, but she added in guilty curiosity, “How big is she, really?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Dad spluttered through a bite of mashed potatoes.  “At least two hundred,” he guessed.

“That’s big enough for someone her height,” I remarked coarsely.  No…it isn’t lightheadedness, really, more of a slight cold tremor…just a small twitch.  It’s not so bad, after all:  I can look straight ahead, make eye contact; I will never flinch, a practiced expert.

Mother placed her fork slantwise across her plate and folded her hands over her lap pensively.  “I just don’t know why some people get that big,” she said with a sad sigh.  “I know how easy it is to get food that is bad for you these days, but it is practically an epidemic now—and it seems like most people today don’t even want to bother to take care of themselves.”  She swept a stray lock of her short brown hair behind the earpiece of her glasses, suddenly reminding herself of her own appearance inadvertently.

“I know!” I exclaimed with contributive fervor.  It’s nothing at all now, to be part of this.  It doesn’t matter, and I have a good point to make.  “You’d think people would realize that the heavier they get now, especially someone Carla’s age, the more health problems they are going to face when they’re older.  It’s not that hard to understand.”

It makes perfect sense, you know; that’s the trouble of it.  It’s all true; I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.  Being overweight—being fat—especially at a young age is unhealthy; it’s dangerous, and it is almost the same as hurting a fat person if you do nothing to help them or if you support their lifestyle.  It’s mollycoddling; it’s ignoring the unpleasant aspects of a disease so that life can go on as usual—all of this is inescapable.

“It’s short-sightedness,” I added, “laziness.”

My mother seemed a little at odds with my last remark.  Her expression was odd as she regarded me, as if she wished to correct me somehow but couldn’t find anything wrong with what I had said.

“You know how those people are,” Dad interrupted her thoughts before she had a chance to respond.  “La-teen-as,” he enunciated mockingly.  “Most of them are just as fat and lazy as Carla—it’s their culture,” he explained with a nod of certainty.

“Gerald,” my mother sighed.  She lifted her glasses off her face and pressed a palm against her forehead soothingly.  This was not a conversation that either of us wanted to sit through at the moment—or ever, for that matter, but there was not much we could do to switch him off once he had gotten himself going.

“Elaine!” he accused right back at her.  “Now I’ll bet what Carla’s real problem is,” he continued unabashedly, completely rolling over our obvious distaste for his theory, “is that she went and got herself pregnant.  They’re always having babies right and left—three, four children at a time; all of ‘em under the age of five!  Mark my words; I won’t be surprised when she goes on leave in a few months…”

This was one conversation in which I had no interest in contributing, and I could count on my mother here, at least, to talk Dad down.  It was really harmless, just talk, not that he would ever say anything or treat Carla differently in person, but Gerald Bernheim made damn certain his family knew what was what.  With my parents preoccupied with each other, my thoughts turned as they often did to Danielle.  What would she have said to me if she were sitting through this?  Wouldn’t she be mortified, embarrassed for me?  Could she be angry?  Was she capable of that?  

Sitting in the chair next to me in her stretched yellow shirt and black pleated skirt, she frowned, but not with anger; with sadness.  Her hair was fastened behind her ear with a white metal barrette on the side of her head nearest me, revealing the whole of her face and letting the soft yellow lights of my dining room fully ensconce her deeply confused eyes.

“Vince, what is this?” she asked me through daintily, absently parted lips.  Her voice sounded as an hollow echo, sluggish and distant.  “Why are they talking about me like that?  I’m right here…why are you being so awful to me?”  A single tear welled up in each of her shimmering eyes.  They were fixed imploringly to my helpless features, and my chest was seized by cold, clutching fingers.

But I’m not talking about you, I protested.

“Yes you are!” she insisted.  “You’re such an awful hypocrite!” she denounced me and held her head in her hands.

Don’t cry, please!  I don’t mean any of it; you know that I don’t!

“But you do!” she shook her head, still hiding her face.  Her voice belied how deeply I had hurt her, and her fingers twitched in tiny, flickering instants while she fought back tears at my expense.

Such delicate hands she had, such brilliant fingers…black hair, olive skin dusted with fawn hair…or was that Carla?  But isn’t Danielle the same as Carla?  At this table, she was.  They were unavoidable: the small tummy stretching out her shirt, her wide hips spreading over the hard wooden chair, her dark skin and hair; they can’t be hidden, can’t be forgotten or ignored.  They are the only things to see here, and the last things that should be seen.  Oh, I want to—need to—feel her touch again!—hug her close to me and squeeze her with all her weight against me as I did just days before!

Why did I have to produce such an unhealthy obsession?

“I’m telling you, it’s just obscene!” Dad declared.

My mother rolled her eyes at his clear hyperbole, but she was far from offended.  “It is hardly obscene, Gerry,” she said, though without much enthusiasm.

“Border line…” he mumbled as he returned his attention to the cold jumble of peas on the edge of his plate.  With as much zealotry as my father attacked the issue, it would seem absurd to point out that this was a fairly common ritual at my dinner table.  My father had always possessed a streak of ambiguous motives with regard to his opinions.  He might lecture with wild eyes on the merits of good health and physicality but always in negative comparison: what not to eat, what not to wear; a veritable genetic hatred for McDonalds and similar so-called affronts to “common sense” and wellbeing.  Admittedly, he always had his points.  His disdain for fast food, large corporations, and people indifferent toward personal appearance were singular and matter-of-fact; firmly grounded and, practically speaking, inarguable.  Nevertheless, as with many sensible policies, my father’s opinions tended to extend themselves well beyond their justifiable limits, and they quickly mutated from reasonable condemnations into judgmental prejudices.

And yet it is this thing and not this thing.  Did my father ever once say “I hate fat people?”  No he did not; not in so many words.  It was always something more practical, something more specific and indirectly related to that issue.  Those tattoos are ridiculous; she should take better care of herself; she should wear pants that fit her.  She is a little chubby, isn’t she?  Oh, no reason to ask; just saying.  Forget I said anything about it.  As if it were as easy as that….

Where I dropped back into the conversation was apparently its end.  My mother turned to me and asked, “Vince, you’ve been awfully quiet this evening.  Did you have a bad day at school?”

“Of course not,” I shook my head, dismissing the utterly inconceivable notion of drama afflicting me at school.  “Just the usual,” I added with a shrug.

Mom eyed me sideways.  “That sounds an awful lot like ‘fine,’ which is the same as saying ‘bad, but I don’t want to tell Mom about it.’”

I looked placidly down at my plate, and I did not contradict her.