The beer paradox. While wearing the goggles, a given “what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this” becomes more intriguing as mate material as the evening wears on; in a subsequent situation, a few glasses of the amber nectar can assist when reality bites, either to you or to her. Thus, I climbed out of my Snezana rut unexpectedly quickly; the closure beers followed by a revenge hangover performed as attested on the label. Had I not, the change of scenery would have cured me as soon as we arrived and walked inside Rice Islands, the institution which was one part Caribbean bar, one part Cajun restaurant.
We left Linda behind, even though this was her reservation, her much loved bar/restaurant, because she had Queens mother-daughter dilemmas of her own to resolve on short notice that weekend. It took me a while to warm to her, because she spoke in the dialect she created. She walked over to everyone’s desk on Monday and quizzed us on the experience. She got Tech Mike’s take on the shrimp étouffée, while upon request Jo Number 2 presented a full exposé on the Sausage Po-boy. Linda figured me for a cocktail person, and asked if I tried their fruit daiquiris. ‘Of course,’ I replied. Eagerly, she asked, ‘What flave?’
‘Blube,’ I replied in deadpan fashion, and she laughed out loud, and laughed out loud some more. Predicaments resolved, I suppose, for this month. When the parents are traditional and working class and have worked all the hours granted to provide for their children and the opportunities they were not going to have, such as Stuy High and Ivy League college and grad schools, clashes of generations are inevitable, although hopefully not every month. I was thankful for Linda’s pro-action, Rice Islands having long closed because it was of the 80s, and the enthusiasm of the owners could not last, but I was sad on her behalf that she was unable to join.
Sad isn’t the word, I didn’t feel downbeat or forlorn that she had to attend to family matters, I felt guilty that I was enjoying myself and she didn’t enjoy her Friday, that I relished an evening when she wasn’t there, that the occasion could be fun without her. I didn’t feel that guilty, but I did step out mid-morning on Monday, all the way to the Fledermaus Café in the Seaport, to buy her a fancy coffee and Austrian pastry to recompense. The heady opera music of Fledermaus was “student body left” to the “student body right” of Chiclete com Banana, a Brazilian beach music band, and it brings back goose bumps remembering both.
Voa, voa.
I was like that, extra resolve to show appreciation without going over the top. I’d get nothing in return, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t asking for anything, I didn’t expect anything, and virtue is its own virtue, now as then. However, this afternoon I found a 33-year-old letter in a large corrugated box, which helps me understand the steady state anxiety of a mother, any mother, but especially her mother.
I’m sitting in my parents’ basement, smoking, sipping tea, listening to my brother’s CDs on his latest purchase. The first week was crazy. The arrangements, the anger at city bureaucracy, the rage at fate. Everyone said at the services that I must remain strong for my parents. I was handed forms to retain forms to get court permission to get his wallet. To this day, I have no clear idea of what happened at the intersection where a cab hit his car and firemen had to pry him from a crushed can. There was so much senseless loss. “Why” became the question of the century. So, I buried myself in this basement and made a good dent in the scotch. I look at the door from the garage and picture him walking through, as my mother must have as she waited for him all night before we knew. When I stop to think, nothing truly matters. Except that when I board the express bus to work in the morning, and as I walk home in the dark, I am without a brother. If you have any insights from your own tragedy last year, please send them in my direction.
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