It’s my turn to make dinner. First, I make rice. We have a Japanese-style rice cooker that steams the grains perfectly every time. I can measure the rice, wash it, and add water pretty much with my one good hand. All I have to do to get it cooking is push a button.
In the meantime, I do some homework, check e-mail, take a look at the number of hits on my webpage since yesterday—ten!—then go back into the kitchen. I pull open the freezer door. Cold air blasts into my face. The inventory is getting low. There’s nothing but a box of fish sticks, some frozen enchiladas, a package of peas, and a pizza. Since we had Italian last night, I guess it’ll be fish sticks and peas tonight.
I open the cupboard and take out a copper-bottomed saucepan and fill it halfway with water, then set it on the burner. Easy enough. I hold the frozen pea package against the counter by leaning against it. I cut the top off with a pair of scissors. The cold against my middle makes me flinch, and the bag drops to the floor, spilling a few peas. They go bouncing across the linoleum. I’ll get those later. I pick up the bag and dump the rest of the peas, which are clumped together, into the saucepan. I open the package of fish sticks in the same way, but manage not to drop them. Those go onto a plate, then into the microwave.
The microwave makes everything easier. And when you’re used to eating frozen food, going out to dinner becomes a huge treat. But sometimes, it would be nice to have a home-cooked meal. If I were Gadget Girl, or even a normally-abled person, I’d be able to whip up all sorts of gourmet concoctions in no time at all. I imagine rolled roasts, Chinese dumplings that you pinch together with both hands, even rice balls.
I set the table, one plate at a time, one glass and then another. When the microwave dings, I call out to Mom.
“Raoul is coming to dinner next week,” Mom tells me as she sits down to eat.
“Oh,” I say. “Great.”
I’ll finally get to meet this guy, this music professor/disc jockey that Mom’s been seeing for almost six months now. But what are we going to feed him? Frozen enchiladas and pizza? Not if she wants to impress him. Maybe she’ll remember to hit up the store for once. Maybe she will actually cook.
The last time we had a guy over for dinner was a year and a half ago. That was when she was dating Rolfe, the foreign correspondent. She didn’t see him much because he was always flying off to one war-torn country or another. Most of their relationship played out via e-mail and phone calls, although they had a weekend together in New York, during which I stayed at my grandparents’ house, and another weekend in Miami. That time I spent a couple of nights at Whitney’s.
The evening that Rolfe came for dinner, the first time I met him, Mom ordered Chinese take-out.
He came to the door with a huge bouquet of roses for Mom, and a jigsaw puzzle for me. When I dumped all the pieces onto the coffee table in the living room and started to turn them all over with just one hand, he apologized.
“Why are you sorry?” Mom asked. “She’s good at puzzles. Amazingly good, in fact.”
She’s right. By the time we sat down to eat, I’d already finished the border.
I noticed that whenever his eyes landed on me, he looked away quickly, which was odd, considering the places he’d been. He’d probably seen lots of people who’d lost arms and legs to landmines, crippled beggars in the streets. Maybe he just wasn’t comfortable with kids.
After dinner, when the white cartons of moo goo gai pan and kang po chicken had been emptied, I went to my room to do homework, but I could hear their voices coming through the register in my room.
I heard Rolfe say, “Come with me.” I imagined him begging on his knees, pulling her hand.
And Mom’s reply: “What about Aiko? What about school? How will she keep up her art? Her Japanese?”
I knew that she wasn’t worried about my study of art or Japanese. After all, she was an artist. She could teach me about colors and clay. And I was studying Japanese on my own. For my foreign language elective, I’d chosen Spanish. Maybe she was worried that he was trying to lure us to some remote country that didn’t have trained physical therapists. Or maybe she was just casting about for an excuse not to go. Maybe she was ready to break up with him.
I heard him say, “… excellent facilities… independence… be good for her.”
I couldn’t make out my mother’s muffled reply.
Not long after that, I heard a door slam and then, outside, a car engine rev up and fade away. Then my mother cranked up the blues. It was loud and I couldn’t concentrate on my homework, but I didn’t ask her to turn it down.
The next morning when I stumbled out of my room for breakfast, I found a brochure on the kitchen counter. It was for some residential school in Massachusetts. The photos showed kids in wheelchairs, kids with braces and helmets and crutches, all smiling while kind-looking adults hovered in the background. I felt a moment of panic, thinking that I was about to be sent away. I’d never see Whitney again. And my mother would be off in the Congo or the streets of Baghdad. I’d only see her via webcam, or maybe she’d come back for holidays.
When I heard her footsteps coming down the hall, I put the brochure down and moved away from it. I pretended that I hadn’t seen it at all. Mom didn’t mention the school or Rolfe or why he had left so suddenly. That afternoon when I came home, I looked around the kitchen till I found the brochure. It had been shredded into pieces and dumped into the trash. I breathed out a sigh of relief.
We never saw Rolfe again.
I can’t help wondering if dinner next week will be Mom’s last date with Raoul.