Smart Mouth Waitress (13 page)

“You all think you're a clever lot, don't you!” I yelled jokingly.

Someone tapped his cup on his table, chanting, “Coffee, coffee.”

I filled it as quickly as I could, but they wouldn't let up with the whistling, enjoying seeing me scramble. One older gentleman gulped down his whole cup and told me I forgot to refill his. Everyone laughed.

“You pranksters!” I shouted. “Little do you know, I control the stereo, and you're all about to hear James Blunt sing
Beautiful
. You'll all be laughing out the other side of your mouths while tears are streaming down your cheeks.”

Dodging past me with a tray of food, Courtney said, “Oh dear, not again.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “It's happening.”

With my poor feet back in some sensible waitress footwear, my pirate boots with the buckles, I finished the shift without further incident, which left me time to ponder two huge problems: was the dinner with Marc actually a date, and what was I going to make? Bonus problems included all the potentially horrifying things my family would do.

I imagined my brother telling Marc about the time I peed my pants when we were camping because I thought I saw a bear. My father could imbibe in a beer or two then bring up marital problems and all the woes of being wed to a rock star.

Anything could happen.

I had a date!

Chapter 10

Later that Monday night over dinner, I told my father and Garnet we'd be having a special guest the next evening, and asked what they wanted in exchange for good behavior. I didn't have much to bargain with, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Garnet asked, “Are you trying to get him to touch your boobies?”

“Not at the dinner table,” I said.

My father put his face in his hands.

Garnet said, “My friend Kyle, he pushed the fat on his chest up so we could feel it. We all closed our eyes to see what it would be like to feel a girl's boobs.”

My father kept his hands over his face and didn't comment on this particular revelation.

“How'd you like that?” I asked Garnet.

His expression pensive, he said, “When I closed my eyes, I really tried to pretend it was a girl. It felt like a butt. I don't see what the fuss is about.”

“You'll feel differently when it's a girl,” I said. “And she'll touch you, too.”

“I've touched myself plenty. Isn't it just the same?”

“No,” I said. “Put your finger in your ear and take it out.”

He did so. Then, I put my finger in his ear.

He giggled. “It tickles!”

“Felt different when it was someone else, didn't it?”

My father interrupted us with, “You two, that's enough.”

Garnet turned to our father. “Dad, how old were you when you touched your first boobs?”

“Older than you.”

“Were you a virgin when you met Mom?”

My father, his cheeks turning red, poked around at his lasagne. “I understand some parents have to drag honest conversation out of their teenaged children. How did I get so lucky?”

Garnet and I laughed at our father while he separated his lasagne into distinct layers.

“Let's all be on good behavior tomorrow,” I said.

My father said, “I look forward to meeting this young man with an interest in engineering.”

I said, “If it helps things be less weird, for the record, you should know he's never touched my boobs. We barely shook hands, though earlier today he did sneeze on me.”

“Strangely, that does help,” my father said.

“Can I bring Kyle?” Garnet asked, snickering. “
For the record
, I have touched Kyle's boy-boobs.”

“Your mother is missing out on
so
much,” Dad said.

At the mention of my mother, I felt the tension ramp up in the room. I prepared myself for more talk about Mom, but my father changed the subject to Garnet's grades in school, which was a fairly standard dinner-time conversation.

Since the previous week, when my father had mentioned they were having troubles, he hadn't brought up my mother much. She hadn't taken my hint about making him feel missed, because he didn't say anything about getting any sort of gift delivered to his office. 

At least they'd been talking on the phone almost every day. From my room upstairs, I'd heard him pacing around the lower floor, talking. Either because of his ADD or his personality, my father doesn't sit still when he talks on the phone. He paces from room to room in a circuit. It's really annoying when you're watching TV and he keeps passing through the room, but I guess he could have much worse habits.

When I'm talking on the phone, I like to lie on my back on the couch or my bed, because it sends all the giggles into the top of my head and makes me laugh more.

For my big maybe-date dinner on Tuesday, I got a recipe from Donny at work for a home version of our most popular dinner item: cottage pie. Cottage pie is similar to shepherd's pie. In fact it is commonly mislabeled as shepherd's pie, but it has ground beef under the mashed potato crust, whereas shepherd's pie is made of lamb. A shepherd tends sheep, which is another word for lamb, hence the name. Where the cottage part came from, I had no idea.

Donny told me cottage pie was
comfort food
and thus the way to a man's heart. Comfort food is hard to pin down, but seems to usually involve potatoes.

I was going to make Caesar salad, but wised up at the last minute, since eating a bunch of raw garlic could lead to kissing disasters, and I did hope the dinner would end in some kissing.

The meal planning and food shopping was so all-consuming, I nearly forgot to email Marc my address. After half an hour of debating over the wording, I finally sent him my carefully crafted message:

Hey Marc, what's up?!

See you for dinner at 8. Just bring your fab self. Dad is looking forward to meeting you.

Peridot Martin (Perry, from The Whistle)

I ran it past Courtney, who felt the part about my father seemed a tad creepy, but in the end she agreed it sounded fine, especially with the phrase
fab self
, which was her idea.

I attached a google map showing the house, and included my cell phone number in case he got lost.

I wondered where he lived. If he ate at The Whistle, on Main Street, that meant he wasn't that snobby. What would he think of our house?

My parents bought the ol' homestead when I was twelve or so, which would have made it either 2005 or 2006. The place cost something like four hundred thousand dollars, which I know sounds like a lot of money, but Vancouver real estate has been insanely expensive since before I was born, and houses at that price level are near lot value.

I was lucky to be born into a family that could afford a house, even though it's not a fancy one. Dad makes decent money at his job and Mom had a lot of cash from her first two records—what little her former manager didn't embezzle, but that's a whole 'nother story. Before we moved to our current place, they sold their smaller but more expensive house in Dunbar, on the west side, and paid cash for the new place, so they didn't even have a mortgage. The plan was to take the pressure off Mom to have to make money, so she could relax and recharge her creative battery.

They figured they could always sell and move back to Dunbar later, but in the last twelve years, prices have shot up so much that our old house is now worth over a million dollars. You would think that would make my parents happy, but the idea causes them distress, because the gain is only on paper, and one day it might plummet.

Whenever people bring up real estate and how much they're making, Dad gets a constipated look. Yes, the house we have now is awesome, but even if we sold it, we'd never be able to get back to our old neighborhood, where my grandparents live and where my dad grew up. The house they sold is worth two million, last I heard.

The price of houses here has a way of making everyone feel poor, even if they aren't. My parents both grumble over the cost of artisan cheeses and fancy organic foods, so we shop at the cheaper grocery stores. I'm glad they save on some things, and that they'll help pay for my college tuition, even if it means selling the Land Rover.

I'm glad I've never had to worry about money, because it left me so much time to worry about other things, like what to wear when Marc came for dinner.

From the vintage side of my closet, I chose a retro 1960s dress that looked like something Betty Draper on Mad Men would wear. I put on antiperspirant, then stuck folded-up paper towels in the armpits so I wouldn't get stink-pit on the polyester while I was sweating over the dinner prep.

To help me in the kitchen, I had not one, but two teenage boys.

At my suggestion, Garnet did invite his friend Kyle over. I figured they would cancel each other out, and they could goof around with each other instead of trying to get entertainment from making me squirm. I was rather proud of my cunning plan.

Kyle has kind of an androgynous look, with no facial hair, but a bit of rosacea that makes his cheeks flush really red, all the time. I'd feel sorry for the kid, but he's got such a positive attitude and a sunny smile. You can't meet him and not want to grab him in a headlock and rub your fist on his fluffy, baby-chick-like, pale gold hair.

When he stands next to Kyle, you can see how grown-up Garnet is getting these days, with my father's solid square jaw, but not the hairline yet.

We were nearly done making dinner when Garnet disappeared to the bathroom to “birth Godzilla,” so Kyle and I had some bonding time over dinner preparations.

“So, Kyle, what are you going to be when you grow up?” I asked as we tore lettuce together.

“Tall,” he said, grinning with dimples so big you could stick quarters in them.

“Fair enough. I don't know what I'm doing either.”

“Are you any good at singing? Couldn't your mom get you a record deal?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah.”

I belted out the opening of
The Sun'll Come out Tomorrow
from Annie.

“There's always trade school,” Kyle said.

As punishment for his sass, I continued with the rest of the song, and Kyle joined in for the ending. What we didn't have in pitch, we made up for with enthusiasm.

From behind me, a male voice said, “Nice harmonies.”

I whirled around to find Marc, standing in the kitchen doorway with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of spring irises.

My father, standing behind him, said, “This young man was knocking on the door for at least a minute. He was about to call the police to report some wild animals in the area.”

Garnet returned from the bathroom. “The bathroom, no, the whole back of the house is a biohazard. I didn't light a match, because I thought it might explode.”

“Welcome to dinner,” I said, taking the wine from Marc and grabbing the flowers eagerly.

“Do you need help?” he asked, surveying the mess all over the kitchen island.

Kyle, with his thumb in his mouth, said, “You can help me find my thumbnail and a chunk of skin in the carrot sticks.”

I grabbed the bowl of carrot sticks and quickly dumped them in the kitchen garbage.

Kyle pulled his thumb out of his mouth, revealing it to be undamaged. “I was joking.”