Day 175

Writing Exercise

…

Don’t ask me how I got in the middle of the family version or World War 3, but I just happened to call in at the family home on my way home to the residence I’d always wanted after finally moving out of the home.

Enough parental hints had been dropped that it was time to leave the ‘nest, and I agreed.

My older brother had moved out a long time ago and went overseas. I never understood why, and he never explained. He just didn’t come back, and oddly enough no one talked about it.

My younger sister was still at home, and she had hinted there was going to be some news if I decided to come to dinner, and since she was cooking, I agreed. She was a professional chef, and her cooking was not to be missed when on offer.

But…

When I let myself in and announced I’d arrived, there was … silence.

Very unusual, because the house was always a cacophony of noise for one reason or another. At the very least, Susannah and my mother would be exchanging ideas in what my father often called a robust discussion.

Then my mother came out of the dining room at the sound of my arrival, much like a spectre out of the darkness.

“You go talk to Sue. She’s under a great deal of strain and not thinking clearly.”

This meant if I interpreted the tone, my mother had tried to tell her, rather than suggest, what to do, and Sue didn’t take orders very well. She never had, and her last three years at high school had been fraught. Things had settled down after she left for college and cooking school, but it all started up again when she returned home.

Mother had a death wish, father said. He understood that Sussanah needed to find her own path, but Mother had always expected her to follow in her footsteps. She had started the family restaurant but was now getting on, as she called it, and wanted Sue to take over.

Sue said she would if she could modernise the menu. That was the proverbial red rag to the bull.

I went out to the kitchen, but it was empty, so that meant she would be upstairs in her room. I slowly climbed the stairs, thinking back on the last time I had been in the house, about a month before. Sue had just returned from a culinary tour of the south of France and was full of enthusiasm and new recipes.

I’d picked her up from the airport, and we had a discussion, whether mother would ever change her mind, or bring the restaurant into the modern era. I was sure then as I was now, the only way anything would change was if she were to retire or die. Neither option was a possibility.

The door was closed, a bad sign. Mother-daughter arguments had been the mainstay of my youth. She was too much like her mother. My brother and I just kept out of her way.

I knocked, then said, “It’s me.”

“What do you want?” It was not the most welcoming of tones.

“You did ask me to come around, with the offer of fine dining. And a revelation. I guess there’s not going to be a revelation.”

The door opened, and once again I noticed that the sister I once knew had gone, replaced by the new and more mature version of what had always been a brilliant chef. But it was the youthfulness, charm, and playful manner that made it hard to believe just how good she was.

She stood to one side and let me pass. It was probably the third time ever that I had been let into the inner sanctum. It was where she and Matilda, the girl I had always hoped to marry one day, plotted to make my life miserable.

She went back to the unmade, messy bed, and sat cross-legged in the middle, next to several stuffed animals. “How is Matty?”

Oh, by the way, I did marry her, despite the prank my sister pulled that almost made me miss the wedding.

“Wishing she didn’t have to work in New York, but it won’t be for much longer.”

“She told me.”

To further her career and make an impact back home, she had to dazzle the media moguls. That done, the prestigious award for her news coverage, which was recently presented, was enough to impress the local media people, and they finally offered her a job.

“And you? Mother says you are under a great deal of stress.”

“Who wouldn’t with her looking over your shoulder, micro-managing. I was cooking dinner until she decided I needed a hand. When is she ever going to realise I am not her clone or her lackey, that she is only partially responsible for the chef I am today?”

“Funny how she never says that about me.”

“You’re a short-order cook at the local diner. That is not fine dining, that is feeding slop to the pigs at the trough.” She said it with the exact tones and emphasis my mother did when she decried the fact I was wasting my talent in such a den of iniquity.

The truth was I had no talent. Just the ability to make slop look more appealing to the customers, at least better than what Harvey, the previous short-order chef, did. “That’s not what you said about my baseball legend hamburgers.”

She smiled. “OK. You have a knack for presenting edible food, which is a first for the diner. They’re lucky to have you. It’s better than being a busboy in our mother’s place.”

She was right. I did that every summer from the time I could wash dishes. Just because we were family didn’t mean we got privileges.

“True.” I sat down on the chair beside the makeup desk and saw, in the corner, a pile of clothes tossed in a suitcase, the one she had come home with. Hadn’t finished unpacking or getting ready to leave?

“So, silly question, but I’m guessing dinner is off?”

“Yes. She’s annoyed with me for the last time.”

“Meaning?”

“I got an offer to help update the dessert menu for a restaurant chain in LA. One of the instructors at cooking school heard there was an opening, and he always liked my desserts. I’m going to take it while my mother tries to decide what she wants to do.”

“You’re going to do a Jeremy?” My older brother, who’d stormed out after another ‘robust’ discussion with the matriarch.

“I’ve tried talking, olive branches, and common sense. She hasn’t any. That place is going downhill, and she can’t see it and can’t be told. Even father has given up. I know you’ve tried, but she is what she is.”

“When are you going?”

“I was just waiting to see you, ask you to take me to the airport. I’ll stay the night at the hotel and leave tomorrow.”

“You can stay with me, and I’ll take you.”

“Don’t you do the breakfast shift at the diner?”

“Fred can fill in. Pancakes, beans and eggs. Anyone can do that.”

She shrugged. “OK. Down in ten.”

…

By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I still didn’t have a clue how I was going to break the news. The one person who didn’t deserve this was my father, but he always knew life was going to be difficult. He’d accepted that years ago, and just got on with his own life.

Sometimes it seemed to me they were not even connected. I’d always got the impression he knew Jeremy was going to leave, and I also knew, quite by accident, that he frequently visited him in his new home. Being in sales for a company that dealt with a lot of overseas customers, he was able to travel without letting on.

I’d suspected getting me out of the house was so he could move forward with retirement plans, but that dream had been parked.

I went into the lounge room, or what was their TV room, where the TV was on CNN.

“Did you talk some sense into her?” Mother seemed agitated.

“No. But sadly, I have to agree with her. You should consider semi-retirement, and let her run the restaurant. She would be like a breath of fresh air.”

If I’d thought first, I might not have said it. It got the expected reaction.

“While there is still breath in me…”

“Yes, that’s all well and good, mother, but it’s going to be very painful when there are no customers. You know and I know what was great thirty years ago, is not any more, and you can’t deny business has dropped nearly fifty per cent. If you persist down this path, the doors will close in less than six months. You have to move with the times or close the doors. It’s that simple. Three other restaurants, like yours, have closed in the last four months.”

She glared at me. She knew as well as I did what was happening around her. Closing her eyes and hoping it would go away was never going to happen.

“This is coming from a cook at best at the local slophouse.”

“Call the diner whatever you like, mother, but it is always full. People want simple and affordable food. Families can’t afford the cost of dining out fancy any more. The diner isn’t fancy, but it’s homely, they can sit together in a booth, and it’s where their friends go.”

“So, I should turn my place into a slophouse?”

Sue had come down the stairs and left her case at the door.

“Maybe you should, if you want to still have a place.”

“You’ve been cooking for a week, what would you know about anything?”

“Only what you taught me, and if you’re denigrating your own talented mother, then I think it’s time you took a good, long, hard look at yourself. Let’s go, David. I don’t know who this woman is, but it’s not my mother.”

Then she turned and walked out. This was exactly how it ended with Jeremy. I shrugged. There was not going to be any resolution this night.

Mother looked at me, and I thought, perhaps for the first time, she realised what was happening.

“Where’s she going?”

“Away. She’s going to work in LA. At least others think she is a talented and innovative chef. By the time you realise that, it will be too late. Good night.”

I followed Susannah to where she was waiting for me at the front door. She took a long, last look around. “Pity,” she muttered.

I opened the door, and she went through, heading towards my car, parking in the street.

She didn’t look back.

…

©  Charles Heath 2025