Dinner at Jack's

by Rick R. Reed

  I busied myself for the next twenty minutes or so, chopping, adding oil to a skillet, beating an egg…I called out to Maisie to have a good night when I heard her at the front door. She left quickly, but not before wishing me the same.

  I was just getting ready to bread the fish in some panko bread crumbs when Jack came into the room. He stood in the kitchen archway again, watching, his blue eyes intense. I smiled at him. “You like fish? I hope so. This is tilapia. It’s really mild, kind of sweet.”

  “I’ve had it before.” Jack came and stood behind me, watching over my shoulder as I dipped the fish filets first in flour, then a beaten egg, and finally in the bread crumbs.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Why not just dip it in egg and then the crumbs?”

  “The flour with the egg helps make a stronger glue, if you will, so the bread crumbs cling better to the fish. End result? Crispy fish. Yummy!” I felt suddenly nervous. I suppose it was a good thing Jack was taking an interest, but it had been a long time since anyone had watched me cook. And it had been forever since a man I cared about had done so.

  Is that what Jack was? A man I cared about? Even now?

  I let my mind go blank as I laid the two filets in a pan, in a mix of olive oil and melted butter. They sizzled just the way I wanted. “Only a couple minutes per side,” I said, “and they’ll be perfect. Golden brown.”

  I turned, and he was looking down at the fish. There was a smile of anticipation on his face. “Mom used to take me fishing when I was a little boy. On the Ohio. I was terrible at it. I was always hoping I wouldn’t catch any fish, because I didn’t want them to die.”

  “That’s sweet. I’d feel the same.” I opened a cupboard. “You want to set the table? This won’t take long.”

  “And I’m in your way.”

  “No. I don’t mind. But I just have to get the salad going. The quinoa’s already made—we’re just having it with a little salt and pepper and butter.”

  He nodded and moved to the cabinets opposite the stove to pull down plates and glasses. He dug in a drawer for flatware.

  “You like quinoa?”

  “I do if I remember right. I don’t think I’ve had it since I’ve been home. I honestly don’t think my mother even would know what it is.”

  “I like it better than rice—and it’s better for you.” I felt like I was babbling and that Jack was talking a blue streak. It’s all relative, right?

  I pulled a couple of handfuls of baby kale out of the container and tossed them into the glass mixing bowl I’d laid out earlier. I added some sliced red onion and diced apple to the greens and then dressed them with a vinaigrette of apple cider vinegar, a little mustard, some honey, and olive oil. I smiled at Jack, who waited, still standing, by the side of the table. I popped a leaf of the kale into my mouth to test the seasonings of the dressing. Perfect. “It’s the salad that’s really the star of this show,” I said.

  “You nervous?” Jack asked.

  The zombie aspect he’d had last week was gone. Right now I would say he was almost amused by me.

  “You seem nervous.”

  “A little.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not acting the way I’d expect, and I don’t know—”

  “What’s come over me?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” I turned back to the stove and took out the fish filets, perfectly golden. “You want lemon?” I said, staring down at the pan.

  “I don’t think we have any.”

  “I brought some.”

  “What’s come over me is that I remember you, Beau. I remember our date.”

  I was so stunned I froze. And then, to buy time, I hurriedly plated our dinners with shaking hands. I poured the wine. The presentation was nice—simple. Organized. Completely at odds with my emotions, which were all over the place.

  Behind me, I heard a chair scrape the linoleum floor as Jack sat. I literally was at a loss for words.

  I set a plate before Jack, one at my place, and sat. Then hopped back up. “Oh! Wine. You like wine? I brought a Chardonnay.” I brought our two glasses to the table and hovered.

  “Sit down, Beau.”

  It was weird, having him in control. I wanted to pinch myself, wondering seriously if this was a dream. But other than Jack’s abrupt change in behavior, this quiet supper in this yellow kitchen had all the earmarks of reality. Because I didn’t know what to say or even do, for that matter, I lifted my wineglass. “To Soldano’s and good Sicilian cooking!” I said, with more good humor than I felt. I wondered if my mentioning the location of our first date was a kind of test. Would Jack really remember?

  Jack raised his glass and clinked it against mine. He didn’t smile, and the sadness in his gaze, in his whole aspect for that matter, remained. We began eating. We ate so long in silence, I thought his admission might be the end of our talking. I was just about to ask him specifically how and why he remembered when he spoke.

  “Soldano’s. Lovely place, wasn’t it? I remember all the different chandeliers they had, a whole bunch of them. They were beautiful.”

  A smile flickered over his features, and for just a second, I saw him as he was then.

  He continued, “When you got back from your Christmas holiday, I was thinking we should just go there again. Things were so perfect. And there were so many other things on the menu I wanted to try.” He drew in a quivering breath. “And not just on the menu.” He looked away, blinking.

  “Things were. They were perfect,” I said softly.

  Again we fell to silence. We were almost finished with our meal when Jack spoke again. “I debated, you know, on whether I should even let you know that I remembered.”

  I smiled. “I debated the very same thing.”

  He cocked his head. “Then you remembered?”

  “Not right away. But it came back to me. I think it was the snow that reminded me. That night was one of the nights it snowed in Seattle, which is kind of rare. Did you know right away?”

  “I didn’t. Things are popping up in my head all of a sudden, and I figure you as maybe the trigger?” He looked to me to see, I suppose, if I understood.

  I nodded. I didn’t say anything, as a way of encouraging him to say more.

  “Anyway, I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak,” Jack said. “I just—” He hung his head and pressed the back of his hand to his eyes.

  I rose and stood behind him. I let my hands rest on his shoulders. I didn’t move. Hell, I barely breathed. I knew he was trying not to cry in front of me. That much I understood about Jack. He was slow to reveal emotion—even when we’d had that first date, he’d wanted to take things one step at a time. Little did I know, back then, just how slow things would be.

  And then he did something that touched my heart, that almost made me tear up a little. Without looking back, he reached up with the hand that was not pressed to his eyes and covered my hand with it. I stared down at it, thinking that maybe this was the first touch we’d shared since that winter night all those years ago.

  Again, the fear came back—that if I moved even in the slightest, the moment would shatter, like the most delicate blown glass.

  Jack drew in a great quivering breath and laid the hand that was against his eyes down on the maple veneer of the tabletop. “I just didn’t want to tell you, because I know who or what I was then is not who I am now. We may have had a bit of magic that night on our date, but how you could have even a part of that magic now, with someone like me, is beyond comprehension.”

  “Oh, Jackson—”

  “No.” He cut me off. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear your hollow denials. I need only look in a mirror to see the changes. Not that many years have passed since that night, but God, Beau, I’ve aged. I’m frail. I’m a scared old man.” He paused, breathing heavily for a minute or so. “I’m empty. You may have wanted me then, but you couldn’t want me now. I’m not the same.
” He pulled his hand off mine and turned to look at me. “And if you could be honest, you’d admit neither are you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we had a moment, back then. A little magic, a little spark. But we were both different. I wasn’t so scarred.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and I wondered if he was holding back tears again. What the hell had happened to him?

  “We’re not in that place anymore.” And finally, “You deserve better.”

  My mouth opened, maybe in surprise, maybe to offer up some protest about how he was wrong, about how he couldn’t speak for me, how he didn’t know how I felt or what was going on inside my head. But he stood quickly and left the room. I heard his bedroom door slam, music from a sitcom rise up, loud, on the other side of his door.

  I sighed. Not again. Not this again, please. We came so close.

  I stared down at the remains of our dinner for a while. Jack had cleaned his plate! I laughed but felt no joy.

  I went to him. I tried the door, but he had not only slammed it but also locked it. I jiggled the doorknob.

  “Jack? Please don’t do this. Can I come in?” I knocked. Knocked again.

  But the only response I got was the TV volume going louder. I almost stumbled back to the kitchen, my footing and emotions both unsure. What had just happened?

  I gathered the plates, glasses, and cutlery from the table and stacked them on the counter alongside the sink. I could have just loaded most everything into the dishwasher but decided against it. I squirted some Dawn into the sink, put the stopper in the drain, and then began running hot water into the basin. Washing the dishes by hand would give me more time. Time for what, I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe time for Jack to relent and emerge from his room so we could talk more. Maybe just more time for me to think.

  Was what Jack had said true? Was I just being romantic or fanciful in thinking our brief encounter could be rekindled into something? And what was that something?

  Love?

  If the answer was within me, I wasn’t sure I was ready to face it.

  I started in on the dishes, trying to keep my mind empty by imagining it as an old-school slate blackboard. Tonight was my last night this week of cooking for Jack, and I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

  Apparently Dad and Maisie were coming to my place for dinner on Sunday. Maybe there’d be a Sabbath miracle and Jack would show up with them.

  Chapter 20: You Never Saw a Rabbit Wearing Glasses, Did You?

  Fancy-Schmancy Carrot Soup

  1 T olive oil

  6 large carrots, peeled, and roughly chopped

  2 garlic cloves, minced

  2 shallots, minced

  2 t cumin

  1 t ground coriander

  1 t fresh ginger, grated

  32 oz. chicken or vegetable stock

  1 T harissa (or more to taste)

  1/2 cup heavy cream

  Salt and pepper to taste

  In Dutch oven or large soup pot, heat olive oil until shimmering. Add in carrots, shallots, and garlic and sauté briefly, until fragrant and just beginning to soften.

  Add in stock and reduce heat to medium low. Add in cumin, coriander, and ginger. Throw in some salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes to a half hour. Remove from heat. Let cool.

  Pour soup into a blender, add in harissa, and pulse until it’s smooth and creamy.

  Reheat just before serving and stir in cream at that time. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

  Serve hot. Serves 4.

  * * * *

  When I want to impress someone and cheat by making it easy on myself, I always choose to splurge a bit and get the freshest, nicest cut of ahi tuna I can find. If you start off with a good piece of fish, you need only rub a little olive oil on it, add a bit of salt and pepper, and then lay it gently in a hot, nearly smoking cast-iron skillet—or a grill if it’s summer. Let it sizzle for a minute or a minute and a half, flip it over, and count out another minute or so. Remove to a cutting board and let it rest. When you’re ready, just slice across the grain and you have a beautiful protein that, when laid atop a bed of mixed greens dressed lightly with a little champagne vinaigrette, looks food-magazine-cover worthy. And it only takes a few minutes and surprisingly little effort. That’s the thing people who say they hate to cook don’t realize—it doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t need a shopping cart full of exotic ingredients. No meticulous timing required. Sometimes the best dishes are the simplest, the ones that arrive with little effort but come from the heart.

  Yesterday I’d driven up to Pittsburgh to the Whole Foods there to purchase the ingredients for Sunday supper, because I knew I couldn’t find most of what I wanted here at the Walmart superstore on the outskirts of town. I’d come home laden with mesclun greens, a couple of oranges, and a beautiful, almost ruby-red hunk of ahi, which cost far too much. But what the hey? It was for Dad and Maisie—they deserved the best. I’d also grabbed a bunch of beautiful organic carrots, a jar of harissa—an amazing Mediterranean chile paste—and a few other things I’d need for my soup. Dad would be surprised when he saw the carrot soup—he always tried to bribe me as a kid to eat my carrots by telling me how I would always have good eyesight if only I would eat them. Before he could even get the words out, my mother and I would say, in unison, what we knew was coming next. “You never saw a rabbit wearing glasses, did you?” I chuckled at the memory.

  Last, I set out dessert. I’ve never been much of a baker, so I let Whole Food’s bakery provide an already-made decadent dark chocolate flourless cake.

  As I was coming in with my bags, I passed Daisy on her way to her own car, and we stopped to chat for a minute.

  Eying my groceries, she said, “Ah. Whole Paycheck. Fancy-schmancy. I need to charge you higher rent, buddy. Us common folk shop at Kroger or Walmart.” She grinned.

  “I’m splurging. It’s for a special occasion.”

  She cocked her head.

  “My dad and what I think might be his new girlfriend are coming over for dinner tomorrow.”

  “How nice. Does he have a lot of girlfriends?”

  I snorted. “Hardly! Far as I know, this is the first since Mom passed a few years ago.”

  Daisy nodded.

  I set the bags down in the brownish, brittle grass at the side of the gravel driveway. My arms were getting tired. I stretched. “Jack might come too. Remember? I told you about him.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wondered why I’d said them. Jack wouldn’t come. Of course he wouldn’t. All I had to do to get at the truth of that was to remember how Maisie had reacted when I suggested she bring him. I could tell she’d been very shaken up, probably because a simple thing like bringing her son along to a dinner was out of the realm of her personal possibility.

  “Really? That’s wonderful.” Daisy smiled. “The way you talked about him before—his PTSD, his agoraphobia—I wouldn’t have thought he’d leave the house.”

  “He probably won’t. I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe I was talking with my heart instead of my head. Maybe it’s what I’m hoping for instead of what will be.”

  “Well, sometimes, and I believe this, our thoughts, or hope if you will, are more powerful than we realize. Maybe if you believe, really believe, Jack will come for dinner, he will.” She giggled. “I know that sounds new-agey and simplistic, but in my work I’ve found our minds and our faith can really move mountains.”

  “Really? Mountains?”

  “Well, maybe mountains are an extreme. But a frightened young man a couple of miles? Sure. Why not? Act as though he’s going to come and he will. You watch and see.” She groped around in her oversized handbag and then brought out her keys. “I should get going. Good luck with your dinner tomorrow!” And she was off.

  I walked up the stairs to my apartment, wondering if Daisy understood something I didn’t. I realized I’d bought enough food for at least four people.

  And if Jack didn’t come, no loss.
Ruth would eat his portion. That girl loved her some fish!

  As I opened the door and Ruth waddled in to greet me, I wondered, if Jack did show up, what he would think of the dog.

  * * * *

  They would be here in a half hour. I had everything ready: the table set, the cast-iron skillet on the stove, the salad prepped—the dressing in the bottom of the salad bowl with the greens on top of it, waiting to be tossed; I’d add in the orange wedges at the last minute—the fish filet on the counter, shaking off the chill from the refrigerator.

  By the time I’d showered, dressed, and shaved, they were here.

  Dad was pounding on the glass at my door and peering intently inside. Ruth stood on the opposite side of the door, barking furiously. I shooed her away, wondering where both my dad and dog got their manners. I hurried to open the door, and Dad barged in, practically knocking me over in the process.

  “Do you know how long we’ve been out there? In the rain?”

  Ruth waddled back into the living room area of my one-room castle and hopped with surprising agility onto the couch, to watch from there. She curled up at one end, paws folded in front of her.

  “No, Dad. How long?”

  “Smartass. Where do you want me to put my coat?” He was already shrugging out of it. I took the damp jacket and threw it on the bed. I smiled at him, smiled at Maisie, who looked radiant in a royal blue wrap dress and high heels. I took her coat, made small talk about the rain outside, and got them seated on the couch. Dad shooed Ruth off, wondering why I allowed her on the furniture, reminding me that “Dogs belong on the floor.”

  I bit my tongue and refrained from telling him he belonged on the floor.

  * * * *

  I served them the soup first. It was a lovely mélange of carrot, harissa, shallots, and cream.

  Maisie took a spoonful and closed her eyes, her spoon still poised in midair. “Oh my God, that’s beautiful. I have no idea what’s in here. But it tastes truly divine.”