Memoir of the Sunday Brunch

by Julia Pandl

  “Hey, get up!” Jeremiah shouted.

  He stood still, but as I looked over, his body seemed to splash about the doorjamb like a rubber duck.

  “I’m sick,” I said.

  “No kidding.”

  “No, Jere, I’m like, hospital sick.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m not kidding. I’m not gonna make it.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I can’t. I swear.”

  “You know what Dad’ll say.”

  “What?” I asked rhetorically, knowing that suffering was my only way through, knowing that the path back to bed ran directly through the brunch, no detours and no excuses.

  “ ‘You gotta pay to play, baby.’ You better get movin’. I’m leaving. You’re riding with Dad.”

  “No, I can’t. You have to wait for me. You have to . . .”

  He was already gone, up the stairs and out the door. His car started with a rumble I hadn’t noticed the night before. I heard him grind it into reverse and back out onto the gravel road.

  I stood up and bounced from the closet door to the footboard to the dresser to the doorjamb to the wall and to the other wall until I reached the bathroom. I filled my trembling hands with cold water, splashed it on my face, and looked in the mirror. I expected to see a carcass on my shoulders, bulging rigor mortis remains, something akin to roadkill, but I looked pretty good. I was amazed at how I could feel so utterly exoskeletal, yet appear so . . . well, normal. Aside from the waxy grayish pallor of my cheeks, the rheumy pileup around my eyes, and the angora sweaters on my teeth, I looked like I did every other Sunday morning.

  The ride to the restaurant was marked by a searing pain that came on the heels of opening my eyes. The sun shone brightly that morning; it bounced violently off the snow-covered cornfields and sent unyielding, searing rays of reflective light directly into my irises. My father, chipper as usual, talked, but about what I have no idea. The words disassembled themselves upon exiting his lips—they didn’t line up like they were supposed to. Instead, they formed an angry mob, wielding baseball bats, brass knuckles, and rubber hoses inside my brain, quieted only by the brace of the icy window against my forehead.

  MY FATHER CONFIRMED the fact that he was on to me when he dropped a box of smoked trout next to my cutting board, said, “Set these up,” and laughed.

  One of my co-workers, a kid named Jeff, was peeling pineapple on a board a few feet away.

  “Very funny,” I said, gagging.

  George’s shoulders shook as he walked away. I had shown weakness a few months before, complaining about how disgusting this task was, when Amy had originally taught me how to do it. Dad knew that even on a good day, cleaning trout made my stomach turn, and this was not a good day. I had no one to blame but myself.

  Jeff looked over, took pity on me, and said, “I’ll do ’em if you want. I’m almost done with these.” It’s what we did, watched each other’s backs. I was the boss’s kid, sure, but it didn’t take long for all of us to unite as a defense around George’s Sunday weirdness.

  “No, thanks,” I said, knowing that the assignment was a punishment, effective and efficient, and any attempt at worming my way out of it would be met with the dreaded “Dad disappointment.”

  Breathing through my mouth, I pulled off the waxy box top and peeled back a shroud of baking paper flecked with bits of brown gelatinous goo. They were dead, all right, good and smoked, laid out in three neat rows, but there was something strangely alert in their lifeless eyes, like they were just an impossible blink away from shouting, “Ha, ha, you have to work the brunch.” I picked one up between my thumb and forefinger and dropped it on my cutting board. “You stink. You know that?” I said. It stared blankly at me, like fish do, dead or alive. “And you’re stupid too.”

  I grabbed a boning knife, slipped it above the gills, pressed down until I felt a spine, twisted, and slid it down the length to the tail. The sensation, and the noise the blade made, snapping through tiny bones like teeth on a comb, made me shiver. I could handle a chicken breast or a tenderloin just fine, but I never liked having the whole structure of a thing—its lifeless, breathless shape—under my knife. There was something too immediate, too apparent about its pre-edible existence. It’s not that I felt sorry for it; no, I could not have cared less about the fish. I felt sorry for myself, for having such an unsympathetic father who made me perform such atrocities, ignoring my weakened condition.

  I set the first side on a tray next to my board, cut off the head and tail, and went to work peeling the spinal column from the second side. The trick was to pull the spine out in one piece, which meant less digging for errant bones. It came out clean. I was feeling around for pinbones when George came back and spotted the lonely head sitting off to the side. “Don’t forget the cheeks.”

  “God, Dad, I know, I got it, all right?” I snapped.

  “Don’t throw those away. They’re the best part, you know,” he said happily.

  “I know.” If there was a part, a disgusting part that no one else—no sane person anyway—would dare eat, my dad inevitably declared it “the best part.” I think it was a Depression trick. I swear to God, if he saw you throwing away the crusty anus off a roasted duck, he’d swat your hand away and say, “Hey, hey, hey, what’re you doing? That’s the best part!”

  Before I had the chance, he grabbed the fish head, poked his index finger into its cheek, pulled out a slab of smoky flesh, and stuck it in his mouth. “Delicious. Here,” he said, and waved a piece under my nose. “Try some.”

  “Dad, c’mon,” I pleaded, putting my hand up and backing away.

  “All right. You don’t know what you’re missing, though,” he said as he left.

  It was the half-eaten head that finally did it. I couldn’t resist the urge to look at it. Like standing on the edge of a cliff and feeling compelled to jump off, I stared. There it was, just a severed head, a dark tea-colored shadow of itself, gaunt and bodiless, staring back at me through a hazy membrane that covered the rubbery eyeballs. I brought a shaky hand up to my mouth.

  “Are you okay?” Jeff asked.

  “I’ll be right back.” I turned and ran for the bathroom, where Katie’s thirtieth birthday finally exacted its hefty price. It equaled twenty minutes of ribs and diaphragm colliding, in attempt after excruciating attempt to break free from my torso. When I came back, each fish was laid neatly on a bed of leaf lettuce, halves side by side, with lemon slices, parsley sprigs, and queen olives instead of heads. They actually looked . . . sort of . . . appetizing.

  I HAD SWEAT out the nausea during my job of running the brunch, but blood continued to stretch my temples tight, making them throb. I gripped the steering wheel as we headed home.

  “Jeff asked me for a raise today,” George said, looking at the paper.

  Why my father decided to share this information with me, crippled as I was with consequences, I can’t say. It was odd, though. We never discussed pay rates—not even mine—before or after that day. Decisions like that belonged to him and him alone. After all, at sixteen, what did I know?

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said I’d take it up with the board.” He smiled.

  Probably because I had spent the entire brunch hovering between life and death, I had a minor epiphany. Turned out, I did know something. I worked in the middle, in that place where my co-workers, who had become friends, met my father. Crazy, absolutely, but I could not have them thinking he was unfair. I looked over at him with my hands on the wheel.

  “Dad, that is soooo mean.”

  “What? Why?” He laughed.

  “There is no board, Dad. You’re the board. God, I can’t believe how mean you are.”

  “Well, I told him the board would consider it.”

  “Dad, c’mon, you gotta call him tomorrow and tell him he can have it.”

  “Well . . .” He took a sip of his drink and raised his eyebrow. “It’s under consideration.” He nodded affirmatively.


  His nonchalance pissed me off. I slid a sweaty palm down my cheek. “No, Dad. Do you know how hard it was for him to ask? Give it to him. He works really hard.”

  “I guess it was.”

  “I know it was, Dad. Just give it to him.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “No, Dad. Tell me you’re gonna do it.”

  He paused for a second, squinted at the car in front of us, and said, “You think so?”

  “Yes! I think so.”

  “I think I will, then.”

  I flipped the blinker right and checked over my shoulder to switch lanes. He turned back to his paper, but I caught him, in the passenger’s mirror, just for an instant, smiling a contented grin.

  9

  Walkin’-around Money

  As a kid I had two sources of income: walkin’-around money, which was a gift from my father’s wallet, and loose change, which I stole from a box full of quarters hidden on the top shelf in my parents’ closet. The notion of receiving an allowance in our house was really just that, a notion. It was talked about, but mine never once materialized; in fact, to save my life, I couldn’t tell you what the imaginary dollar amount was. My father supported the idea of an allowance, though, because he needed it in order to champion an elaborate system of fines, established in an effort to teach us that everything, by golly, comes at a price. For instance: if we left the lights on when exiting the family room, he’d say something like, “Do you own stock in the electric company? I’m docking your allowance a nickel.” Or if he called the house and I answered the telephone saying just “Hello” instead of “Hello, Pandl’s,” it cost me a nonexistent quarter. Leaving an unfinished can of grape Graf’s soda on the coffee table cost an uncollected buck. I have no idea why, but the system seemed to work.

  I suppose an allowance of, say, five bucks a week, multiplied by nine and then again by four, would have taken a sizable chunk out of the monthly budget. So instead of adhering to any weekly obligation—outside of his imagination, that is—from time to time, my father reached in his wallet and pulled out what he called “walkin’-around money.”

  The St. Robert’s Fair meant there’d be walkin’-around money for all of us. The fair happened—and continues to happen—on the first weekend in June. I looked forward to it with anxious anticipation that rivaled my birthday and Christmas Eve. The fair marked the end of the school year and was a rare day of absolute freedom. Beginning the summer after second grade, my parents let me fly solo.

  I remember those first weeks in June being warmer than they are now, or perhaps I’ve gone colder with age. I wore a pair of white Izod shorts with green trim, a matching green T-shirt, and a battered pair of PF Flyers. My new bike—a First Holy Communion gift—parted the heat evenly around me. It pulled my hair softly to each side as I rode down Prospect Avenue, cut across Jarvis, and turned the corner onto Farwell. Dozens of wood-paneled station wagons lined the street next to the playground. I pedaled up the curb and onto the sidewalk, tossed my bike in the rack, and went to hunt down my dad.

  “He’ll be in the book bin!” my mother had shouted as I skipped down the back steps, the screen door slamming behind me. As if I didn’t know.

  Even at age eight I knew my father’s first love was books. Certainly they came before the restaurant, perhaps even ahead of my mother and all of us. Words lined up and found a welcome home in his heart. They formed an easy escape, the same way a fishing pole or a set of golf clubs did for other dads, except the escape they offered him was effortless and ever present. His sport required no tackle and no country club membership, so it spoke to his frugality as well as his soul.

  I found him at the back of the playground in the shade near the rectory, browsing among rows and rows of musty castoffs, smiling at the thought of finding a hidden ten-cent treasure. “Dad, can I have some walkin’-around money?” He reached in his wallet without a word, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and pressed it into my sweaty palm.

  I bent over, tucked the soft bill carefully in the bottom of my moist shoe, and said, “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and there it was, the easy smile. It piqued my curiosity, that smile, but its quiet, generous beauty was lost in my impatient desire to get a wagonload of cotton candy evaporating in my cheeks and then bounce around the Moon Walk.

  OUTSIDE OF THAT first Sunday in June, I knew better than to ask my parents for money, because as an eight-year-old, what did I need money for? But I needed money, like every other eight-year-old kid in my class, to buy Mike and Ikes, Lemonheads, and Fudgsicles at Hayek’s Pharmacy on my way home from school. This is where the box in the closet came in. Having no allowance yet needing to support my growing candy addiction, I quickly resorted to a life of casual crime.

  My parents’ closet was an L-shaped walk-in and therefore a good hiding place. I spent a lot of time in there, sitting on top of my father’s polished wingtip shoes with dry-cleaning bags hanging around my ears. It smelled like Old Spice and Ammens powder, but soapy and feminine too. In springtime, the scent of lilac and magnolia hung in my mother’s blouses.

  I was five or six when I first laid eyes on the change box, young enough to be excited over the mere sight of it. The box was tall, at least a foot, and square, and was made of clear plastic. Stuck to the rim was a torn remnant of a tag; the other half presumably had been discarded with the lid. The box was full of quarters. Quarters my father retrieved every week from the cigarette machine at the restaurant. I remember thinking, I can see that money up there. I looked over both shoulders and whispered to no one in particular, “They left it right where I can see it.” At the time, coins were much more valuable to me than paper money. They weighed more. They could be jingled, stacked, spun, and flipped. And they could be found; on the table next to the washing machine, in between the cushions of the couch, and up there, in a plastic box on the top shelf.

  Twice a month I made that climb. The shelves were ill fitting and wobbly, vertical and slippery in my grip and under my socks, yet my fear of dropping backward like a sack of onions onto the hardwood floor was overpowered by my sugar jones. The thought of an endless supply of candy propelled me higher and higher until all I had to do was anchor my feet against the corners, where the shelf met the wall, hold on to the edge of the shelf with the fingers of my left hand, reach over the top of the box with my right, and grab a fistful of cold hard change. It felt fantastic.

  For the record, “stealing quarters from the change box in my parents’ closet” was written on a tightly folded wad of loose-leaf paper I carried into my first confession—and my second and my third. This sin appeared just above others, like “fighting with my brother” and “not brushing my teeth.” I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I took advantage of the gift of absolution in a way that I’m pretty sure neither the Catholic church nor the Holy Spirit intended. It wasn’t exactly crippling, but the guilt did stick with me for years until I found out that Jeremiah had pinched his fair share of quarters as well. I don’t know why, but his admission made the deed seem less like a matter of confession and more like a matter of fact. The good Lord didn’t forget, though. My penance arrived just a month or two ago. After polishing off an entire box of Mike and Ikes, something I used to do with ease, I developed a case of heartburn so scorching it had me clutching my chest and contemplating a visit to the emergency room.

  As we grew older, walkin’-around money became less of a fiscal anomaly and more of a necessity. See, none of us Pandls got paid for working at the restaurant. There were checks, of course, but we never saw any of the cash. That just wasn’t part of the deal, so it never even occurred to me to ask. And even if I had thought of it, I was too afraid to say anything. The money was reserved for college and came with boring lessons regarding financial responsibility. When I was fourteen, my father handed me a paycheck bearing my name—I still remember the amount, $137.17—and told me to go open a checking account. I did. And then I promptly exercised my newfound fin
ancial freedom by running to the Id, an aptly named, trendy clothing shop for teenage girls. I picked out a pair of pleated teal pants; a matching blouse with a collar that magically stood “eighties” erect; and a necklace, a gold-beaded, ropy number that hung just below the blouse’s second button. It wasn’t until after the saleslady took an hour wrapping everything neatly in tissue paper and ringing me up that I realized a library card was an insufficient form of identification. I can’t remember how the deal was finished—I believe she had to call the president of the United States—but I do remember leaving with the outfit.

  The real lesson came a few weeks later, after my first bank statement arrived. My father balanced his own checkbook to the penny every month, as if he were responsible for the federal budget. Therefore he expected me to do the same. I had written only two checks, one to the Id and one to my mother for “cash.” It should have been simple. Instead, it was a process. He slipped his letter opener in the corner of the bank’s envelope and slit it along the long edge like he was trimming a tenderloin. He laid the statement on the kitchen table, smoothed it flat, and began sorting the checks and cross-checking them against my register.

  “Give me a break,” I said, rolling my eyes. “There are only two checks there. Here.” I grabbed them and slapped one on top of the other. “One, two.”