Famous Fathers & Other Stories - Running the Room by Pia Z.

Running the Room



My mother comes to stay with us once a week because for the last eight months she’s been having an affair with Eddie Royce, our city councilman. Wednesdays she drives to Mandeville from Lumberton in time to have an early dinner with my husband, Howard, and me. Howard’s reserved, or tries to be, because he’s fond of my father and not comfortable harboring my mother under these circumstances. She’s all charm with him, flirty and interested in what he’s doing, and when she’s like this she’s hard to resist. She’s lost ten pounds, and tonight at dinner she asks Howard if he notices, and when he says yes, she explains that’s why she’s picking at her food, not because it isn’t delicious. “There is room for one bite of dessert,” she says, reaching for his plate with her fork, and he pushes his pie over to share. She’s meeting Eddie at 6:30 and I ask Howard if he’ll do the dishes so we can get across the Causeway a little early. He says, “Sure,” but doesn’t look too happy about it.
My mother and I get in the car and drive across the lake to New Orleans where for the last year and a half we’ve been working toward apprenticeship degrees in culinary arts at Delgado Community College. My mother is a wonderful cook and our dream is to open a restaurant; she’ll be in the kitchen, and I’ll be out front running the room. We’ve found a tiny cottage on the edge of the Warehouse District, and the act of sale is in a couple of weeks. My dad’s an accountant and he’s secured the financing, and Howard’s going to help out with some of the renovation. It’s a family project, but I’ve been trying to slow things down because I don’t know where this affair is going. Right now Mom couldn’t crack an egg. Dad doesn’t know about Eddie and he’s happy “his girls” are doing this restaurant together.
On the Causeway my mother fidgets in her seat. We’re in my Miata and her perfume is overpowering. The first semester she actually went to the classes with me, pre-Eddie, and driving across the lake the talk was all restaurant. She came up with the name Bijou and I like it, although I know a poodle with that name. Tonight I try to get her on track again, to see if we can figure out the timetable, but it’s hard to pull her away from Eddie-talk. She spares no detail, chatters like a teenager about how Eddie loves to touch her hair so now she only blows it dry and doesn’t spray it anymore. Last week she pulled a cassette tape from her purse and pushed it into the player in my car. Eddie had recorded himself doing ordinary things for her, like reading his morning paper or describing what he saw out the car window on his way to a meeting. Every ten minutes or so he would say, I love you, Gail, out of nowhere, and she had punched the buttons and fast-forwarded, looking for those places, touching the hollow of her neck when she found them. He made the tape to keep her company on her drive back to Lumberton. She also played me part of one she’d made for him of herself whisper-singing Peggy Lee songs, “There’s a Small Hotel” and “It Never Entered My Mind.” I’d like a copy. I remember that voice lullabying me to sleep, and how she’d put her arms around my dad’s neck and sing in his ear until he brushed her away like a moth. My parents used to look happy. Their problems were the kind everyone’s parents seemed to have, like billpaying and jealous moments, stuff that blew over. But now that I’m married I understand what can happen over time, how you run out of new material and repeat yourself, zone out of your own thoughts because they’re kind of dull, and so what? You go to bed at night and say, was your day any good, dear, mine was fine, and let’s hope tomorrow is like today, and months go by and you lose sight of the fact that you’re way out of range, a hundred miles from thrilling.
My mother says she’s in love again at fifty-seven, and she’s a little embarrassed about it but can’t help herself. I usually enjoy when she’s acting like a middle-aged version of me at twenty, full of happy energy, always ready to change plans, go with the moment. Tonight, though, she’s antsy and I want to slap her and tell her to get over it. I’m feeling bad because I forgot to kiss Howard good-bye on the way out the door, and I picture him bent over the dishwasher, moving water glasses so the mugs will fit. Mom tells me Eddie and his wife are fighting about this addition they’re putting on their house, and she’s completely on Eddie’s side. I’ve seen this lopsided intensity off and on my whole life. When I was a teenager, she and my dad gave me constant trouble about spending too much time away from home. I loved staying at my friend Betty’s because her parents left us alone to talk all night and sleep ’til noon. And I loved Joey Vujevik, a slide guitarist who played in local clubs. For three years they ragged on me about how pathetic I must look to people, sitting there all those nights waiting for him to finish. I figured my dad was jealous, so I tried to confide in my mom, woman to woman, about how much I liked watching Joey play, but she and my dad were a united front. She didn’t want to hear about the dark rooms and my table near the stage, how his eyes found me, glowing and warm, and pushed me back in my chair.
I’m dropping my mom off to meet Eddie at a bar called Sweet Williams, where politicians take their girlfriends. She’s checking her lipstick for the fifth time, smoothing powder around her mouth. “Goddamn lines,” she says. “Do you like my perfume?” She’s lovely and ridiculous. Her hair’s cut short and she has on black pants and a shiny red blouse tucked in to show her flat stomach, a pretty silver pin Eddie bought her over her heart. She wears the skinny bracelets Dad gave her for Christmas. As they slip up and down her arm, they make a soft chanking noise.
“What are we learning in school?” she finally says, settling back into her seat.
“Purchasing, requisitioning and storage techniques,” I say. I turn on talk radio and Dr. Laura is trashing some poor woman who should wake up and smell the coffee. My mom says, “Fuck her,” and dials around for music.
“How’s Dad?” I ask.
She looks at me and pats my leg like I should wise up. My father’s had a girlfriend for three years. Her name’s Lily and she’s twenty-two, fifteen years younger than I am. She works in his office and meets him in the morning sometimes to walk around the practice track at Lumberton High School. These walks are discreet, careful, like neighbors bumping into each other, but he also takes her on NASCAR race weekends, overnighters. I guess he thinks with all those cars roaring around the track no one will notice this old guy and his baby girlfriend.
“You want to meet Eddie tonight?” my mom asks. I’m watching the concrete railing shoot by on the Causeway.
“Sure,” I say. I’ve seen Eddie in town meetings on cable access. I like the crumminess of Channel 10 because after you watch it, real life seems prettier, like running with leg weights and then taking them off. You think you could jump an eight-foot wall. On TV, Eddie looks like somebody on an old game show. You Bet Your Life. He’s always behind a long desk with his nameplate in front, and you can’t imagine he’s someone’s boyfriend. Howard watches to see how smart he is and compares him to my father.
Mom looks at her fingers and stares at the light bronze polish she’s chosen for this week. “I wish age did not go right into your fingers,” she says. “I used to have such pretty hands.” She gives me her wedding ring to hold until the drive home and I stack it on top of my two rings.


I’m running late for class, so the parking place I usually find under the sweet gum tree on Toulouse Street is taken. Delgado Community College is the place in New Orleans to learn trades. Mom and I are going at this slow, three credit hours a semester. The semester she took with me we completed Cooking and Seasoning Methods. The last two semesters I’ve been alone. Class is four hours long, and I take good notes and go from there to Kinko’s to xerox a set for her. Usually on the drive home, she’s melancholy because she won’t see Eddie for another week, and I tell her about the other students and the professor’s jokes, dumb anecdotes so she feels included. The class is a mix of people who do every kind of thing for a living, but we all envision having our own restaurants. There’s a blond CPA named Joan, Clyde the lawn guy, Patty the schoolteacher, and short, frizzy-headed Bob the attorney, who sits beside me. Our instructor is a young guy named Frank and tonight he’s showing us how to make schedules for the back of the house: prep people, sous chefs, busboys, dishwashers, and who needs to report first, second, third.
Bob leans over and puts his hand on my desk. “Wanna get drinks after class? A few of us are going.”
I say sure. My mom and Eddie are at dinner and then the Airport Hilton, and I have plenty of time. Some nights I just drive around after class, roll down my windows to catch the sound of sprinklers or the smell of cooking through an open window, and try to see the world in some new way. Sometimes it works.
We head over to Liuzza’s, the neighborhood bar across the street from school where they pour cold beer in frosted goblets and make thin, perfect hamburgers topped with Chiclet-sized bits of fried onion. I’m hungry. Most classes we cook stuff and eat the samples, but tonight was all paperwork.
We’re waiting for food when Bob leans over and says, “I hate the law.”
“You’re not alone, Bob,” I say.
He says, “I’m a good lawyer, but it’s boring. I want to open a steak house with a short menu: steak, oniony hash browns kind of burned at the edges, Creole tomatoes, broccoli, and gallons of crabmeat hollandaise.”
“You can fill my bathtub with hollandaise,” I say. “My mom and I are going to open a bistro kind of place. Pommes frites, steaks pounded thin with pepper, grilled asparagus.”
“Cassoulet!” he says.
Pieces of frost are floating in my beer and I take a sip. It’s perfectly cold.
Our teacher, Frank, is at the end of the table and Joan is leaning into his shoulder, asking him about food costs and how you figure out what to charge on the menu. She’s in this for the money. Patty and Clyde have decided to go into business together, open a seafood place called Amberjack’s, and he’s drawing logos on a napkin. My cell phone rings. It’s Howard.
“Your dad just called, Beck. I don’t want to lie to him.”
I can’t hear Howard in the restaurant, so I go outside and stand by the front door. “What’s wrong? The truth isn’t going to do any good tonight. Tell him class ran late and we’re at Liuzza’s.”
“When’s your mom gonna be ready?”
I look at my watch. “Eddie’s bringing her to the toll plaza in an hour.”
“Your dad wants her to give him a quick call. He’s looking for some piece of paper.”
“Tell him our phones are off, we’re not answering.”
“Is this really my problem, dear?”
Bob is watching me and I give him a little wave. He holds up my empty glass, raises his eyebrows, and I nod sure. He signals the waitress for two more beers. I call my mom on her cell phone but that irritating recording comes on.
“What’s up?” Bob says when I sit back down.
“My missing mother.”
“I remember her from last year. Did she give up on school?”
“I hope not, or I’m gonna be asking you for a job.” I offer him my fries and he puts my plate on top of his and pours on ketchup. “When you’re done with those, want to take a ride?” I say.
We pour our beers into go-cups and get into the Miata. I put the top down and turn the heater on, because it’s March and chilly, and we head for the Hilton. The interstate is almost empty, sleek dark lanes, perfect painted lines, phosphorescent streetlights, lurid and elegant as hell. The air whips my hair around. I love this car, and driving fast.
“Where we headed?” Bob asks. He puts his hand on my leg.
“Probably not there,” I say, shifting into fifth.

(continued)