"Did the phone wake you?"

"Who said I’m awake?" She squinted at me and then at my plate. "What’s that?"

"Nothing. Breakfast. Nothing."

"What the hell…?" Amanda plunged into the plume of steam coming off the stove sparing me any further explanation.

Our teakettle had lost its whistler a week ago. I'd been meaning to get a new one.

"What an ass you are, Baxter." Amanda deposited a hunk of melted, maimed, metal into the sink and dowsed it with cold water. "You could have burned down the house."

"Don't you want to know who called?"

"Your mother, I imagine. She's the only one up at this God-awful hour. What happened, Sybil blow a tire on the van? Forget Pinocchio’s nose in Kalamazoo? The leading man run off with a singing waiter? I can't wait to hear the latest." Amanda tapped a fuzzy slipper on the linoleum and managed to look imposing. I stared down into my plate and wondered what prompted me to cook Sybil Vaughn's blue plate special, the meal my mother produced in under five minutes for breakfast, lunch or dinner, the one I swore I'd never eat again after I left home.

When I was seven, Sally Wilson came home with me for lunch--quite a coup, Sally was the prettiest girl in the second grade. I enticed her with stories of my attic, the home of vaudeville trunks, sequined gowns and grease paint—the most magical place I knew.

Mother tossed us our plates, said "ta-ta, chicks, off to learn lines, big audition tomorrow," and disappeared.

Sally looked at the repast in front of her and recited from Dr. Seuss, replacing "green eggs and ham" with "raw eggs and Spam," which was pretty much what my mother served. The eggs weren't quite raw, but runny, runny enough that they slid down your throat leaving an oily residue in their wake. Runny enough that in recent years the food police convinced me that I had ingested millions of little salmonellas floating along on uncooked, orange tides.

I was accustomed to people spouting verse at the table. I'd sat through many potluck parties attended by thespians who could pull Romeo's soliloquy, or better yet Mercutio's, out of memory. My mother's favorite monologue was Maggie's from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," which she liked to perform wearing only a white slip after drinking a few tumblers of wine. I knew Maggie the Cat intimately, but I’d never seen a whisker of the Cat in the Hat.

"I could not, would not, on a boat,
I will not, will not, with a goat,
I will not eat them in the rain…"

Sally quoted and I was awe struck. The rhyming, the rhythm, piping away in her sweet voice was perfect.

"I do not like them here or there,
I do not like them ANYWHERE!
I do not like raw eggs and Spam!"

When she finished, I applauded.

Had she recited from Checkov's "The Cherry Orchard," or even a little something from the "Plaza Suite" it would have rung a bell. But this rhyme sounded so new to me that I fell all over myself telling her what a wonderful poem she had made up. She looked at me funny, gagged on her Spam, and called her mother to pick her up.

I often accused my mother of ruining my childhood. Depriving me of Dr. Seuss was just one of many things that set me apart from my peers.

Amanda’s voice brought me back to present. "Do you know what's in that stuff? The fat? The sodium? I can't watch this." She turned away in a flounce of terrycloth.

My mother kept no less than a dozen cans of Spam in the pantry. Her ideal food, it never went bad like the milk in the fridge that inevitably became cheese, or the Chinese takeout that grew fuzz before we finished it. We ate few meals at home; buying foodstuff in a responsible manner was not our forte. Either too much went bad, or empty shelves greeted growling stomachs--mostly mine as Sibyl was always on some diet. For a full month I once saw her consume only water---gallons a day in preparation for a role that necessitated the wearing of a teeny bikini.

In college, on my own at last, I struggled to find my niche. I knew how to focus stage lights and splice reel-to-reel tape having been drafted into running shows in church basements and other venues where no one could afford to hire real technicians. When word of my techie skills got out I was in high demand. All the school productions needed some jerk willing to pull the midnight to dawn shift readying the stage so that lights and sound worked for opening night. Professors rewarded me with massive key rings, and my own tools, to guarantee that the thunder and lightning cues happened in the prescribed order and that the scenery didn’t fall down. My social status fell one rung below the pimply boys in the A/V club, but I loved being the one behind the curtain.

Amanda rescued me from all that, gave order to my existence, forced me to eat real foods and learn computer programming. She coaxed me out of the wings, and stripped me of my black tee shirt and jeans. I emerged upon graduation, a corporate Joe in a suit with a slew of job offers. She said she loved me, and kept telling me, up until a few months ago when she started asking why I was surrendering to my upbringing.

Mother’s career went up and down like a pogo stick, and, in absence of offers to star in the next Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, she signed on with a touring children’s theater. Children’s theater, almost a professional gig, but not quite. Sybil got up daily at four a.m. to drive the Periwinkle Players and their cardboard scenery to Wilkesbarre PA, or Rochester NY, or Englewood NJ. My mother, who poo-pooed fairy tales as being too juvenile for her brilliant son, now performed Mother Goose in school auditoriums for little better than minimum wage, and talked about her adventures as though she was playing Lady Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare. She never took a break, never lost her passion, never let anyone mold her into something other than her own startlingly unique self.

I, on the other hand, lost my job due to downsizing and moped for a month utterly lost with no direction. One day I went to shoot hoops on the schoolyard and was drawn like a paperclip to a magnet into the high school auditorium. The voices of kids rehearsing, strained affected pronunciations of words, made me stop and listen. By the end of the afternoon, I’d signed on as director of the drama club.

Amanda slammed a pot on the kitchen counter when she heard the news. "What a colossal waste of time!"

"It’s my time," I growled, trying not to wither under a look that would have terrified a smarter man. "It’s not like I’m working anyway."

"No, you certainly are not!"

Lately I wondered if I fell in love with Amanda because she confirmed my own worst fears. She saw me as a misfit loser and convinced both of us that she alone held the power to redeem me.

Amanda came out of the bedroom, her legs stuffed into hose, her androgynous brown suit creased in all the right places. She had smudged her lipstick a little—likely my fault for upsetting her, for not living up to my potential. It pained me that my news might cheer her up.

"My mother died last night."

Amanda’s mouth fell open a crack.

"She had a stroke. The girl who plays Little Miss Muffet made the super let her into her apartment when Sybil didn’t pick up the cast on time. They had to cancel the show."

"That’s awful." Amanda came around behind me and placed stiff hands on my shoulders in what I surmised was meant to be a comforting gesture. "I mean about Sibyl," she said, "the world will survive without the early morning 'Adventures of Mother Goose.' Is that why you’re eating that slop? As some bizarre tribute?"

"I’m eating it because I like it."

"You only think you do. You’re clinging to a childhood image, albeit a revolting one. It’s not abnormal when someone dies, it’s just a shame that you don’t have some quality memories to hold on to."

"My childhood didn’t suck, Amanda. I had a lot of fun. I only stopped having fun when people made me feel stupid for being different."

"Baxter, that's grief talking. I can’t be late for my staff meeting, we’ll discuss it tonight."

I listened for the slam of the front door and decided that packing my things might be the best tribute of all.

Copyright ©2001 Amy Coombst.  All Rights Reserved