Boiled Water Is Not a Good Dinner

I was dragging my feet by the time I walked up the driveway at home. Step-drag, step-drag, scuffing the white rubber fronts of my Keds. I’d won the bet with Mr. Mee on many levels—but still things weren’t working out. The sun was lowering, and the way it shone through the leaves and branches of the sugar maple tree behind the garage swept used-car-lot-type spotlights over the fifteen or twenty squirrels leaping around the back steps.

“Get out of here, you stupid squirrels!” I yelled. I picked up a handful of pea gravel and threw it far, and the stupid squirrels went for it as if I’d tossed their beloved peanuts-in-the-shell, a treat that used to be mine! “I hope you choke!” I hollered as I ran up the steps, threw open the door, slammed it shut, and backed against it for good measure.

The kitchen looked exactly like a TV cooking show does not. Pots and pans covered the counter. A row of pasta boxes stood like dominoes on the table. Cans of beans and chopped tomatoes had been opened, their sharp-edged tops sticking up and dripping. Water bubbled in a soup pot on the stove, and from it steam was rising. I put a lid on the pot and turned down the flame under the burner.

“Hi, Grandpa.” He was sitting in his recliner in the den, eating dinner off a tray. The TV was on full blast. He hadn’t even waited for me to eat his… bowl of Oatios with… orange juice poured over? As I watched, he picked up a bottle and drizzled some soy sauce into the bowl.

“Grandpa—”

“Shhhhh,” he said. He barely glanced at me. “This fellow Brock,” he said in a low voice, as if he might disturb other TV viewers, “the one without any shirt, he’s threatening to spill the beans about the other one’s problem with serial embezzlement, the one in the sarong.”

“Brock! Don’t speak!” came from the television.

I went to clean up the kitchen. Sometimes when you’ve had a disappointing day, you’re not very hungry, and good thing since all Grandpa had made for dinner was boiled water.