Chapter Nine
The math was done. The science questions were done. The shoes had been put back into the closet, all lined up in pairs. Brandon had done everything he could to put off studying for the Giant Test.
And now he was starving.
No mother had come to ground him from school tomorrow. So he still had to wrestle in the Fake Tournament.
Life was hard.
Brandon got up off the floor, opened his bedroom door and started down the hall towards the kitchen. There, he found his father, still dressed in his office clothes, staring at something on top of the stove. Brandon’s mother was nowhere in sight.
“What’s going on?” Brandon asked.
Brandon’s father looked up. “I don’t know,” he said. “Where’s your mother?”
Brandon shook his head. “I’ve been doing homework,” he said virtuously. “What’s that?” he asked, looking at the thing his father had been studying. It was a kind of greasy brownish pinkish blob sitting in a bread pan.
“I think,” his father said, “that it’s a half-cooked meatloaf.” His father leaned over and opened the oven. “Nothing in there,” he observed sadly.
“I’m hungry,” Brandon complained.
“Me, too,” his father said, scratching his head and looking helplessly around the kitchen. “I wonder if we are supposed to be making something ourselves.”
“No,” Brandon told him. “Mom said meatloaf in an hour.”
“When was that?” his father asked.
Brandon looked at the clock. His mouth fell open. “About two hours ago,” he said. “She said she’d call when it was ready.” This was beginning to encroach on TV time.
His father went over to the kitchen window. “Her car’s gone,” he said. Then he sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll go take off the monkey suit,” he said. “Maybe she left a note on the mirror.”
Then Brandon was alone in the kitchen with the meatloaf. “I wish mom would come home,” he muttered and went off to fold his T-shirts.
When he finally heard the kitchen door slam, he dropped his HammerDogs, World Tour 2002 shirt on the floor and headed down the hall to see what was going on. By this time, Brandon was just about fainting with hunger.
There was his mother, flushed and grinning, pulling groceries out of the two big bags she’d just put on the kitchen table. Brandon’s father came up behind him.
“What’s going on?” he asked carefully. There was a family rule about this, also: nobody was ever allowed to ask “What’s for dinner?” unless they felt like doing the cooking themselves for a month.
“Oh,” she said cheerfully, shrugging, “I just didn’t feel like meatloaf tonight after-all.”
“You didn’t?” her husband asked, looking at the forlorn pink blob on the stove.
“Nope,” she said. “I’m sick of meatloaf. And I’m sick of fried chicken and roast beef and macaroni and cheese. You know, Rudy, sometimes I think we’re really boring. Boring people. We need some excitement in our lives. Some zest. So, tonight, I decided to try something new. Something fun.”
Brandon looked at the clock. His favorite TV show was just starting.
“So, what are you trying?” his father asked, still carefully.
She held up a bag full of whitish blocky looking things. “Home made pizza,” she said, beaming.
“And you’re going to use frozen bread?” her husband asked, very politely.
“It thaws in the microwave,” she said, putting down the rock hard bread and pulling some cans of spaghetti sauce out of one of the sacks. “And the best part is,” she went on, fishing up several plastic bags full of produce, “you guys can help me.”
As Brandon opened his mouth to reply to this, he felt his father’s warning hand on his shoulder.
“Sure,” his father said, trying to sound supportive and interested. “Whatever you want us to do.”
This is how Brandon found himself cutting mushrooms into tiny pieces, while his father wept over the onions. The bread did not exactly thaw in the microwave. The bread had to be treated to a series of different processes before anything could be done with it. But nobody seemed to mind the wait. That is, Brandon’s mother didn’t mind, and nobody else dared to.
Finally, she spread corn meal all over the table and got out her rolling pin. “What’s that?” Brandon asked her.
“We’ve really lost touch with the simple things,” his mother told her husband sadly. Turning to Brandon, she said, “This is a time-honored tool of the traditional cook.” And then she proceeded to explain as she tried to roll out the bread dough.
“Cool,” Brandon said as the stretched dough slowly re-collected itself. “It’s like elastic or something.” His mother smiled at him a little grimly and started all over again. “Get out the cookie sheets,” she told him. Her hair was falling into her face.
In the end, she almost had to beat the bread dough into submission. Finally, there were two cookie sheets, each one liberally sprayed with no-stick stuff and spread with a more-or-less oval shape of rolled out dough.
“Now comes the fun part,” she said. Brandon looked at the clock again. It was eight thirty. He was distressed until he realized there was no way he could have studied for the Giant Test under those conditions.
“You spread the sauce,” she said to Brandon. “Not too thick—and then we put on the sausage and the mushrooms and the onions—”
“I don’t like onions,” Brandon said, smearing the sauce all over the first oval. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
“I’ll leave them off half of this one,” his father said. This was unlike his father. The family rule was: whatever is being served, you will eat it. No whining. Brandon figured that his father must be as light headed from hunger as he was himself; Brandon had never been one to pass up a good opportunity.
“I wish we had pepperoni,” he said.
His mother stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “Do you?” she asked.
“I love pepperoni,” Brandon said, looking at her sadly. “But you guys always get sausage.”
“You know,” his mother said. “You’re right. That’s really not fair, is it?” She went over to the sink and began to wash off her hands. Brandon’s father was staring first at Brandon, then at her. She dried her hands on a towel and went over to pick up the purse she’d dropped on the table next to the grocery bags.
“What are you doing?” her husband asked.
She looked at him like he was stupid. “Going to get pepperoni,” she said.
“Now?” her husband said, his voice rising slightly.
“Of course, now,” she said. “We want to cook the pizza don’t we?”
Her husband’s mouth was hanging open.
“It’ll only take a second,” she said. Then she looked at Brandon. “You clean up the kitchen while I’m gone, okay? Just clean up all the—” she flapped her hand at the cutting boards, “—and clean off the counters and put away the rest of the groceries – oh, and find something to put the meatloaf in. I’ll be right back.”
And then she was gone.
Brandon and his father looked at each other.
“You heard what she said,” his father told him. “I’m going to go lie down.”