Chapter 4
Not So Terrific
Moving to Pittsburgh meant that I would attend one of the best high schools in the state as a sophomore. And just in case that’s what I decided to do, at the beginning of the summer, my mom made an appointment for us to meet with the guidance counselor there to plan my class schedule.
And this is when I discovered that excellence in Saegertown translated to mediocrity-at-best in Pittsburgh. As it turned out, at my potentially new school, I would be a year behind the majority of incoming sophomores in both Spanish and science.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. In Saegertown, Billy was in the running for valedictorian (he would eventually graduate that year as salutatorian), and I had assumed I would follow in his footsteps. Unwilling to completely accept my new fate, I got a language tutor, and at the end of the summer, I took a test to skip a year of Spanish. I tried to do the same with science, but ultimately, I couldn’t find a class or teacher willing to go over a year’s worth of biology in two and a half months.
Although I suspected as much, I came to the same realization in terms of my beloved sport: that my high skill level within Meadville’s YMCA gymnastics program equated to nothing special at the private Pittsburgh gym I attended, and a few weeks into the summer, I made the sad decision to retire my leos, or for the layman: quit the sport. This left a time slot open to focus more seriously on tennis, a game my mom loved and one we played often as a family.
Between Spanish tutoring, tennis lessons, the giant backyard trampoline I’d spent my entire life’s savings on the previous summer, and hanging out with my one good friend, Emily, whom I’d met through the aforementioned Pittsburgh gymnastics school, summer flew by.
There was just one more hurdle to get through before I began my new life. I had to tell my dad that I wouldn’t be coming home.
I waited until the last moment, a few days before school started in Saegertown and Dad was set to pick me up to take me back home to rejoin his family, as well as Billy, who’d spent most of the summer at his girlfriend’s family’s house. And though I knew it would be a difficult conversation to have, I also knew my dad. I knew he wasn’t a fighter.
Or was he?
I don’t think that loving people is an easy thing for my dad. At least it never appeared that way. To hug him is a thing of great awkwardness for all parties involved. His personality is tailor-made for the Internet age—he belongs alone in his office with the computer in front of him, communicating through message board forums on a chess site. He is not a father who calls you to check in. He is not a father who calls you at all. He is simply not someone who has made it a habit to show his emotions in any visible way, though when he does, he really does. I immediately think of a funeral my brother and I went to with him when we were young. It was for an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old kid named Adam who had died in a car accident, whom we all knew through the world of high school wrestling. We went to the funeral, the three of us, and Dad could not stop crying. It was the second time I had ever seen him cry—the first time being at the courthouse when Billy and I met with that mediator—but it made that first time seem like a fluke. This was not a quiet kind of crying. It was loud and unavoidable. People were staring, including me. His face was distorted. His skin was pink; his eyelashes dark black and shiny; his nostrils rounded and flared. “He was just a kid,” he kept saying, over and over.
My announcement that I wasn’t coming home unleashed this version of my father.
In those few days before school began in Saegertown, my dad called nightly and begged me to come home. I don’t remember the exact details of these conversations as well as I remember the setting, the finished basement of our house in Pittsburgh, the so-called game room, where I’d sit on the beige, scratchy, tweedlike couch that Mom had brought from our house in Meadville, and cry.
It’s hard not to do what your father tells you to do, especially when what he’s asking is for you to come home. The only reason I was able to stand firm was because I knew that when I hung up, I would head up the stairs, which opened into the hallway that led to the kitchen, where Mom and Bruce would be sitting, and whose faces resembled what I imagine those of a couple waiting for the verdict from an adoption agency might look like.
Though school had yet to start in Mt. Lebanon, it had started in Saegertown, so I felt I was in the clear. Inertia was now swinging me toward my new life. So, when my paternal grandma, who also lived in Pittsburgh, called me and wanted to have lunch, I didn’t think too much of it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I happily recommended Burger King, as they had a chicken Parmesan sandwich I really liked at the time.
Even though her age was only a few years shy of my maternal grandma’s—Grandma Felt—Grandma Morris always seemed decades younger. Grandma Morris dyed her hair brown, while Grandma Felt had let hers go gray. Grandma Morris lived in an apartment with mirrored walls and a balcony. Grandma Felt lived in a home that always seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Grandma Morris went to Las Vegas monthly. Grandma Felt went to church weekly.
So when Grandma Morris picked me up and took me to lunch, she did it in her typical youthful way, whipping around the bends in the road, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the open window ledge. I ordered my sandwich and should have known that something was up when Grandma didn’t order anything for herself. There’s something about going to lunch with someone who doesn’t order anything that instantly puts the two of you at odds. Suddenly, you’re not communing as equals but self-consciously consuming food while being watched.
And thus began my earliest lesson that just because she goes by the innocuous name of Grandma doesn’t mean she has your best interests at heart. See, Grandma was there on business. Grandma did not understand why I hadn’t returned to Saegertown like I had every other autumn. Yes, she understood I had a poor relationship with my stepmom, and yes, she agreed that I had been treated unfairly. But, did I realize that I was breaking my father’s heart? Did I know that he called her crying last night? Why was I choosing to split up the family like this? And by the way, did I realize that his heart was breaking?
Truth be told, I had sort of felt like I was breaking my dad’s heart. And, when I thought about it for a second, I was going to be starting high school the following week at a place four times the size of my last high school, where I had the sum total of one friend.
And so, at the pay phone stationed right outside of Burger King, with change provided by Grandma, I called my mom at work. The receptionist told me she was seeing a patient and asked if she could call me back. “It’s kind of important,” I said.
When my mom came to the phone, she was a bit out of breath, and I could hear the worry in her voice. “What is it, Sweetie?”
“I think I want to move back with Dad.”
And then I heard something different in her voice, something very desperate. “Just wait until I get home. Just please don’t make any decisions until I get home. OK? We’ll talk about this tonight, OK?” I don’t know what she thought—that I would call Dad and get him to pick me up before she even came home from work? But I did wait.
That night, once Bruce came home from work, we all discussed it, as a family. And away from Burger King and the dominating presence of my grandmother, the decision was clear. I was staying. School started on Tuesday, and I would be going—all five feet two inches, barely one hundred pounds of me.
Oh, and did I mention that I was a very late bloomer who had just gotten her hair cut boy-length short and who, since then was often mistaken for a young boy? Or, in the words of my homeroom teacher, “Welcome to your new school, Sir!”
In my mom’s new life in Pittsburgh, she’d joined a practice with five other partners and was able to work less. This meant that she cooked much more often. And this meant that instead of frozen chicken cordon bleu from a box, she made it the old-fashioned way. She pounded the chicken breasts nice and thin, layered on the cheese and ham, and rolled up each one before breading, fryi
ng, and baking it to oozing-Swiss perfection.
It may not be the quickest recipe to prepare (in some ways, for Mom and me, it was years in the making). But it’s completely worth it.
A few notes on the process: When Mom and I made this together recently, by the time she was finished butchering the three chicken breasts, she had six large slices of the breasts along with a couple of smaller (bonus) pieces that had detached themselves in the process, and which made for delicious mini chicken cordon bleus. For the bigger pieces of chicken, if you need to use a toothpick to secure the wrap closed, use it like you would a safety pin (instead of how you would skewer an hors d’oeuvre, which is what I did the first time I made this on my own, and which makes it difficult to pan-fry each side).
MY MOM’S CHICKEN CORDON BLEU
Serves 4
3 to 4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1½ pounds total)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 to 8 ounces sliced Swiss cheese (about 6 slices)
4 ounces thinly sliced ham
1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch of cayenne (optional)
¼ teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1½ cups panko breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon butter, plus more if needed
2 tablespoons olive oil
If the chicken breasts are large, you probably will want to slice them in half horizontally. In my experience, the thinner the piece of chicken, the easier it is to wrap up and the more delicious it tastes because the ratio of chicken to ham and cheese is almost equal.
Place the chicken between two sheets of plastic wrap, and using a meat mallet or rolling pin, pound each one out to ¼-inch thickness or thinner. You want to get them as thin as possible without tearing them.
Sprinkle each breast with salt and pepper, then top each with a layer of cheese and a slice of ham. Roll the breasts up as tight as possible, starting with the thinner side and working toward the thicker side. If necessary, secure them closed with a toothpick.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Place the flour in a shallow dish and season with salt, pepper, the cayenne, if using, and the garlic powder, if using. In another shallow dish, whisk the eggs with the milk and season with salt and pepper. Place the breadcrumbs in a third shallow dish and season with salt and pepper. Dip a rolled-up breast in the flour, shaking off any excess, then dip it into the egg and milk mixture and, finally, in the breadcrumbs. Transfer to a plate. Repeat with the remaining pieces of chicken.
Lightly oil a wire rack set on top of a large rimmed baking sheet.
Melt the butter in the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Place the chicken roll-ups in the skillet and cook until they’re golden brown on all four sides (it depends on the size of the chicken pieces, but it should take 2 to 4 minutes per side). Then, using tongs, hold each piece of chicken upright to fry each end briefly, 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Transfer the fried pieces of chicken to the wire rack on the baking sheet, place in the oven, and bake until the cheese is melted and bubbly and the chicken is cooked through, 10 to 15 minutes.
Chapter 5
September
Matt says that he first saw me at the triangle, which refers to a triangular-shaped grassy island in the middle of his street, which was also Emily’s street. But I don’t remember seeing him there.
In my memory, we first met at the Mt. Lebanon Lanes bowling alley during that last week of summer before school started. In retrospect, though, I’m not sure the word met quite fits to describe our interaction, as we didn’t exchange a single word. But I certainly noticed him. It was hard not to. Emily and her friends were all in bands—punk bands, to be specific. They wore patched-up jeans, band T-shirts, and lace-up boots. Knowing this, I began to transition into this scene as best I could. I listened to the few punk bands I actually liked (Operation Ivy and Blink-182), acquired a pair of navy blue Doc Martens from a store downtown that specialized in punk-appropriate attire, and as previously mentioned, had my hair cut super short.
But Matt, I would soon learn, was a step ahead, already transitioning out of his punk phase and into a New Wave one. That day at the bowling alley, he was dressed in all black except for black-and-white-checked socks and a khaki trench coat, which he eventually removed to bowl. At six feet two inches tall, he towered over all of his peers and possessed a kind of relaxed self-confidence rarely found in boys that age.
I liked him immediately, and when it turned out that we had Western Civilization together, I made a point of getting to know him, finding out that he was in a band and “really into The Cure.”
“Oh yeah? Me too,” I said, lying. (That night, I asked my mom to take me to Sam Goody, where I bought The Cure’s Wish album and began listening to it on repeat.)
I turned fifteen toward the end of September, just a few weeks after school began. It was a quiet birthday, as it fell on a weekday and I didn’t yet know enough people to form a typical celebration. When I got home from tennis practice, there was a birthday card waiting for me from my dad. He wrote that it was the first birthday he wouldn’t actually see me and told me how much he missed me. I went up to my room, listened to R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, and cried.
I had been silently regretting my decision to move to Pittsburgh for the past three weeks. I’d done it to make my life better, but so far it felt far from it. My new school was enormous. I got lost on a daily basis, and despite the tennis lessons I’d taken all summer, I hadn’t made the varsity team and was stuck on JV with a bunch of freshmen. In Saegertown, I was Bill Morris’s little sister. I was known. In Mt. Lebanon, I was no one.
The following day, in a bit of a dramatic move, I passed a note to Matt in Western Civilization telling him I was considering moving back to Saegertown. I hadn’t told anyone this, not even my brother, and I’m not sure why I chose to tell Matt except that perhaps I knew I would get the response I was hoping for.
Which I did. Matt wrote back saying he didn’t think it was a good idea, saying he’d be sad if I left. It made me smile, at least for a few moments.
On the last day of September, I got a phone call from my dad. He sounded terrible. Travis, my twenty-seven-year-old stepbrother, had committed suicide. He’d shot himself in the head.
I hadn’t been back to Saegertown since I’d left the previous June, but I returned for the funeral.
I don’t remember so much of that trip back. I don’t remember if I slept in my old room or if I just went up for the day. I don’t remember if my dad picked me up in Pittsburgh or if my mom drove me there. I just remember arriving at the funeral home, immediately seeing that the wake was open casket and being shocked. Dolly was standing in front of the casket receiving people. I don’t remember waiting long. I don’t remember waiting alongside Billy or anyone else from my family. I remember Dolly encouraging me to come forward, waving me toward her. I could see Travis’s face as I approached her. He didn’t look like he was just sleeping, like some people say. His skin looked fake and thick, like there was a layer of nude panty hose covering it.
I began to cry, and she reached for me. She hugged me tightly, trapping my arms between our bodies. I smelled the smoke on her. “I’m sorry,” I told her. She grabbed me by the shoulders and we turned to face him.
“He loved you. You know that?” she said. I didn’t know that, but I wanted to believe it.
I remember riding in the back of Dad’s white Previa minivan with Billy, Margaret, and Paul as we followed the hearse to the grave site. Dolly was in the passenger seat, and I remember her turning around to see all of the other cars that were following us. “If only he could’ve seen this,” she said.
Afterward there was a reception. I think it was in the basement of a church. I remember the poor lighting, the metal folding chairs, and bad food—ham and cheese sandwiches on dry rolls. But mostly I remember that this is where my dad told me that he’d thought th
at perhaps I’d made the right decision to leave.
He didn’t say anything more than that. He didn’t need to.
I never considered moving back again.
Chapter 6
Giving Thanks, Sort of
After the divorce, holidays were divvied up. While Christmas alternated between Mom and Dad every year, Thanksgiving was firmly and perennially Mom’s. Or should I say Grandma’s? Even though the annual dinner took place at Mom’s, there was never any doubt that Grandma was really the one in charge.
Grandma and Grandpa lived but a mile and a half away in the house my mom grew up in, and though they had always played an active role in Mom’s life, now that I lived so close, they were playing an active role in mine—picking me up from practice if Mom or Bruce couldn’t, taking me out to lunch after church, and slipping me the occasional ten- or even twenty-dollar bill.
Despite the potentially crushing setback of having my phone privileges revoked for a month because of a nonsensical prank call (with lots of yelling in the background) Emily and I had made, which brought two cops to my front door asking about a potential domestic dispute, by November, my new life in Pittsburgh was taking shape. I had made some new friends, had gone to the homecoming dance with one of them, and was simply enjoying living in a house with two people who clearly and convincingly cared about me.
And then came Thanksgiving.
Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) Page 3
