The Kitchen Shrink

by Dee Detarsio

  Elgin had ordered food and popped the corks on several bottles of champagne as we all gathered around the island. It was like the end of an episode of Saturday Night Live, where during credits the guest host, guest band and cast members stood around laughing and joking and remembering the week, and talking about how great the show had been, and how fun it was when someone goofed up. Except I felt isolated. I was the loner cast member stumbling around, who didn’t have anyone to talk to.

  Elgin climbed up on my island counter to make his announcements.

  “To Lisby,” he began, holding up his glass of champagne. “You were a mess when we got here, and now,” he paused. We waited.

  “And now?” I asked, lifting my glass, trying to smile even though I couldn’t see Sam.

  “And now we’re leaving,” he ended. The crew booed.

  “I’m just say-ing,” he said as he usually did. “Seriously. Lisby. You know I love you.”

  “I do?” I said as the crew laughed.

  “And I know you love me.”

  My eyebrows overcame my Botox and inched up my forehead.

  “I really am going to miss you,” he said. “But, we will be together again.”

  “Huh?”

  “The show will begin airing in a couple of months. They’ve already got the first two episodes cut. My kitchen kicks ass.” He raised his fist. “Anyway, listen up. They’ve decided to offer a $50,000 prize to the most improved person based on viewer votes.”

  “Wow.” I pretended to be surprised.

  “So, all the homeowners with their designers will appear on the grand finale, live, in LA, the night after the final show, to see who wins.”

  Oh crap. Live? As if I didn’t make a big enough ass of myself on tape. “Live?” I said.

  “I’ll be right by your side,” Elgin reassured me.

  I’ll bet. The crew gathered their gear and I was genuinely sad to say goodbye to them. For so long it seemed as if I wanted everyone out of my house. Now I knew I would miss them. I hated saying goodbye. Karl, the head carpenter, Dustin, the audio guy, Trisha, who always made me look so much better, especially when I needed it. I would even miss Joe, the gopher, who always brought me my Dr. Pepper. I missed Phil-O of course, he’d been gone for two weeks already, but the thought of not seeing Sam throbbed like my finger that got pounded by a hammer. If only Karl could pierce my heart to relieve the sadness, like he had done to my poor smashed fingernail when it turned black and blue.

  Chapter 30

  Ta Da

  The show had wrapped shooting and was being edited. They were finally finished with me. I could do no more damage. The house was so quiet with everyone gone. I signed up for yoga classes, and was so used to being busy and productive I actually managed to paint my bathroom. Brown. I really liked it. I thought it was quite elegant, especially with the Spanish style wrought iron stand I found cheap at a flea market. I rolled up fluffy, white bath towels and put them on a shelf and added some bath salts and a decanter of coconut vanilla oil with bamboo reed diffuser sticks. It created a little haven. Next project, I thought I’d paint my family room. I know my bedroom was just sitting there, disapproving of me, waiting for me to clean it, paint it, do something to it, but I just wasn’t ready to tackle it yet. I needed to recoup and regroup. I was nervous about the show, The Kitchen Shrink, which was finally airing. I made the kids watch it with me.

  Nicole was on the couch in the family room with me, and Ryan still hadn’t come down yet. I squeezed my daughter’s feet. She’d been doing OK and getting tired of my microscopic mothering. She still gets freaky around her period, but she knows she can come to me about pretty much anything.

  “Mom?” She asked me.

  “Yep?” I thought she was going to ask me to get her a snack, or try to wheedle a new pair of shoes out of me.

  “Can a girl still get pregnant if a guy pulls out before coming?” she asked instead.

  I’m sure the benign smile on my face froze as I tried not to stammer. Dear Mother of God. Ew. Would I rather have her smoke dope or worry about, I swallowed, the withdrawal method? Act normal. I mentally pinched myself.

  “Well. Yes. You can always get pregnant when you don’t use protection.” She didn’t say anything, so based on my ‘if they’re asking...I have to answer them as honestly as I know how,’ I continued. “There’s a fluid that builds up on the tip of the penis before ejaculation,” I’m sure she hated hearing that more than I did saying it, “and it can be very difficult for the guy to control when he’s going to pull out.”

  “Rub my feet,” she said.

  “With pleasure.” I squeezed hard.

  “Your hands are sweaty.”

  I wiped them on my jeans and hollered up to Ryan to come down because the show was starting.

  The show open had a nice montage of all of the participants, with our families.

  “You guys look great,” I said. My kids shushed me. They were bored with the other people’s stories but glued to our own. As I watched the show, even though it all began only a few months ago, it felt as long ago as high school, so much had happened.

  I thought back to the impetus that propelled me onto this show. The Martinator. Who was now hot and heavy with Daria. Who’d have thought that? I saw a shot of Phil-O on the screen, and smiled. He had just emailed me, wishing me luck for the show. Oh brother. The kids were laughing at the show. I looked ridiculous, in the middle of some fight with Elgin. There is no way my voice is really that high, is there?

  The other stories on the show were all good, and I was pulling for everyone. I already knew, thanks to Polly the producer, who got engaged, who lost weight and who was just a big ol’ weirdo. Although, I wondered what the others were told about me? I could picture it now. The lady in San Diego hates her designer and they fight all the time? She fought with her mom, daughter and best friend. Had a blind date with the blind guy. Got thrown out of Home Depot. I could only count my blessings about the things they didn’t know. Good God, did they just show me flirting with Phil-O? Talk about wearing my heart on my sleeve. I hated the way I looked and sounded on TV.

  “Do you have a crush on that guy?” Nicole asked me.

  “Look at her, her face is all red.” Ryan pointed at me on the couch and laughed.

  “That’s OK, Mom. But isn’t he like a lot younger than you?” Nicole asked.

  No comment. I wondered if Sam was watching. I missed him and still thought about him, but I was keeping busy in my post Kitchen Shrink life. I don’t know if it was the show that was the catharsis, but I think my life has changed. I looked forward to each morning, made it a point to appreciate my kids more, and I’m trying to cook and make my kids sit down to dinner with me at least a couple of times a week. I’m not saying they join me, I said I try. I call my mom more and I’m even tackling some home improvement projects.

  The show continued. I couldn’t tell if it was a good show or not, because I was too close. Honestly, it seemed kind of boring, but I would be so embarrassed if it got cancelled. Thank goodness for the things the cameras didn’t see. Oddly enough, they managed to catch things I didn’t even see. There was a look of longing at my kids, then a shot of me beaming with pride, just because they were my kids.

  “Good job, Mom,” Ryan said, as the camera followed me mudding a seam of drywall.

  As the show headed into the last break of commercials before the end, I asked them. “What do you think?”

  “It’s alright,” Nicole said. The producers had made her look adorable.

  “Yeah, it’s fine,” Ryan said. And they made him look sweet.

  “Are you embarrassed?” Nicole asked. I, on the other hand, looked as goofy as I had feared.

  “Honey, that board has been nailed,” I said. “Of course I’m embarrassed. But, I’m just glad it’s over and we got our kitchen and ended up having a pretty good time, right?”

  They agreed with me until the next segment. Nicole was caught screaming like a banshee and Ryan was buste
d stealing an extra twenty from my purse. They were pissed and wanted to sue.

  The only thing that calmed them down was that I ended up looking worse than they did as the show went from a shot of me making goo-goo eyes at Sam as he was filming me and then cut to me yelling at my kids making me look like someone should be calling Child Protective Services. I swear I don’t remember that. There’s a number of things you don’t want to be filmed doing on TV, and I’d have to say looking like you were abusing your kids has to be right up there.

  “See, see?” Ryan said, pointing to the TV. “You look like you should go to jail for that. We should sue them.”

  “What was I yelling about? I don’t even remember.”

  Nicole was laughing. “Weren’t you just hollering at us upstairs to find the phone or something?”

  “I think you’re right. They make me look like I’m was the world’s meanest mom.”

  “TV doesn’t lie, Mom,” Ryan said.

  I threw a pillow at him. “Oh, no,” I said as I watched, knowing what was coming next.

  “Hey, there’s David,” Ryan said, pointing to the screen that featured Nicole’s stupid boyfriend. Nicole sat up on the couch, watching.

  “Hey, Mrs. Shaw,” he was saying to me and Daria, weeks ago, inside my torn up kitchen. On screen, I was trying to smile and be pleasant, but the kid always bugged me. I looked like a mean librarian or something, trying to act nice because people were watching. Or, perhaps because an XD-Cam PDW530 was zoomed in on my pores.

  “I passed my drug test this morning,” he said.

  My mouth drooped and I visibly struggled with something to say. I quivered out a little smile and gave him a wobbly 90 degree angle thumbs up. Daria whispered in my ear, which could clearly be heard, and in case it couldn’t, the producers thoughtfully captioned her saying, “Yeah, and who’s urine did you use, you little…” The censor beep was nowhere near as loud as my kids’ laughter.

  Oh brother. I could have really done without Druggy Davie. I’d be hearing from my mother on that one, as well as knowing all the other smug parents out there would be thinking I was a terrible mother for letting my daughter date a kid like that. I practiced my speech to my mom. “They just broke up, with no help from me. Besides, parents who don’t know that they can’t stop their teens from doing what they want to do, really need to get a reality check.”

  Ryan and Nicole snickered at me, glad the heat was off of them.

  “I can’t believe you went out with that guy,” Ryan said to Nicole.

  She just shrugged her shoulders. Thank goodness time and the universe intervened and allowed me to allow her to come to a good decision.

  “Be quiet.” My phone started ringing as soon as credits began to roll. It was Daria, and I begged her to lie and tell me I didn’t look that bad. In the olden days, before the Martinator, she would have been at my house, watching the show with me. I tried not to mind.

  “The bottom line is,” Daria said, “you have changed. A lot. Look at where you started. Did you see that one interview?”

  “Oh my gosh,” I said. “That’s the interview where I didn’t know Sam was taping me. Remember how mad I got? I was furious with him for lying to me.”

  “Well, he was doing his job and he ended up making you look like a real person, not some reality show train wreck. You were really vulnerable and if I didn’t know you, that’s when I would have fallen in love with you.”

  “Because I was so pathetic and you felt sorry for me? Were there flies buzzing around my mouth and did you want to adopt me?”

  “No, the truth was buzzing out of your mouth and because you didn’t think you were being filmed, you basically summed up the show by revealing that we are all nothing but one big home and life improvement project. We are all looking for some TLC, and we could all use help.”

  Not what I wanted to hear. “How about telling me I looked thin and sexy?”

  She laughed. “That goes without saying.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I think now is a good time to call Sam and thank him for his incredible cinematic skills, don’t you?”

  “I thought about it,” I said, knowing that was pretty much all I had thought about for the last two weeks. “But, I just feel like I burned that bridge.”

  “Hey, it’s not going to hurt to just tell him thank you. Guys love that sort of thing. Especially if you follow it up with, ‘Sorry, and do you want to have sex?’”

  “Daria! Very funny.”

  “Gotta go. Lisby, seriously, you were great.”

  I heard the kids get ready for bed and I passed by their doors. “NightIloveyou,” I said, waiting to hear if they would respond. You never knew. “Mmm,” came a rumble from Ryan, followed by a “good ni-ye-ttt,” from Nicole, in that way teenage girls can make single syllable words draw out to three beats.

  Daria was right. I should call Sam. I just didn’t know what to say. I know he’s an amazing photographer; I loved the scenes of my kids, and a lot of the stuff he shot of my house and the workers. But, it’s hard to be objective when you have your butt hanging out on national TV, and no matter what anybody says, I couldn’t believe how terrible I looked. I don’t have a forehead, I have a fivehead. And my voice. I swear I could have my own cartoon. I brushed my teeth and stared in the mirror. None of us can ever see ourselves as we really are. It’s a physics-slash-perception conundrum. And I wasn’t sure I liked what I saw.

  Daria was also right, though, about that one segment. One of the nicest moments in the show, featuring my motley crew, at least, was during that first interview. The one where Sam shanghaied me into relaxing enough to give some coherent sound bites. Even though my voice wasn’t as screechy, as it usually went up a couple octaves when I was arguing with Elgin, it was still pretty nasally. What did I say? Something about wanting my kids to be OK and wanting to live a good life.

  I guess it could have been worse. Who knows, there’s still six more weeks of shows left, so it still could be. I needed to talk to Sam. Even if it was too late to date, I did want to clean the slate. I thought back. I was so upset when I learned that he tricked me, but I got over it. Then he became my friend. A friend I could fantasize about. Then I got mad at him again when I thought he was dating Daria, but flirting with me.

  What a head case. I wouldn’t date me. Especially after being all up in my business after seven weeks of crazy. I don’t know what happened during that show, but it really was a concentrated vortex of my life on steroids. Oh well. I needed to make good with Sam. Who was I kidding? Damn my imagination. I couldn’t stop pictures of Sam scooping me up in his arms like some episode of Knots Landing. (Padded shoulders and short skirts used to be a good look for me.)

  I applied my super-duper anti-aging-anti-gravity pro-collagen complex, that obviously wasn’t working, as seen on TV, and tried to think of something else. I didn’t get to my ripe old age without realizing if I daydreamed something, especially since I had no extra sensory perception skills whatsoever, that was the best way to ensure something wouldn’t happen. Of course, this could be used to my advantage, by thinking that when I try to make up with Sam, there’s a horrific earthquake. Imagining that disaster probably upped the odds that wouldn’t happen, either.

  I tried to just visualize him accepting my apology, maybe shaking hands, and lesson learned. What was my lesson again? Oh, yeah. I do have pretty good instincts about people, and I always thought Sam was one of the good guys. I should have gone with that.

  I was going to take Daria’s advice. Besides, if it went terribly wrong, as in I ended up being even more humiliated than I already was, I could blame her for making me call him. However, being the cowardly lion I am, I didn’t trust myself to go through any awkward ad lib phone conversation. Email was my efriend.

  “Dear Sam.” Or maybe just “Sam.” I went with just “Sam,” which took me ten minutes alone. “I just finished watching The Kitchen Shrink and thought your work on the show was…” Oh great. What was his work?
Exciting? No, that was my reaction to his work. Well, at any rate, I told him I thought his work was amazing and thanked him for not making me look too terrible. “Sorry again for my misunderstanding.” This stinks, I thought. I sound desperate. Besides, I did apologize to him already. If he was interested, he knew where to find me. I was too old to be playing games like this. No. I did not want to save this message.

  Chapter 31

  Here or There

  You’d be surprised how many people watch reality TV. I’ve become somewhat of a mini-celebrity. The paper boy, who was an elderly Chinese woman, wanted my autograph. I graciously gave it, knowing that this year for sure, I’d have to give her a Christmas present. Even the deli lady, at the grocery store, who could and would ignore me for up to ten minutes, suddenly was my new best friend. I didn’t let it go to my head, because it’s not like I was famous for being a hero or anything. I was pretty much a sideshow, that I imagined made people feel better about their own sorry lives. Although I did graciously accept free samples of the sliced salsa turkey. Suddenly, the fact that my life’s most embarrassing moments were going to be dragged out on national TV during prime time over the next few weeks didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.

  The show was nearly over. The ratings were OK enough that they didn’t cancel it, a mixed blessing, I guess. And I still haven’t heard from Sam. Oh well. Life goes on, says the cliché churner in my brain. I was keeping busy, interfering in my kids lives and repainting the entryway for a woman from my bunco group. I couldn’t wait for the last show to air, and then hope for Paris Hilton to become a dolphin trainer or something for The Kitchen Shrink show to become yesterday’s news.

  The kids didn’t even want to watch the last show, but I made them. I tempted their royal hineys with bowls of ice cream and made them hang out with me. At least we were together. The show was nearly over and I was beginning to feel as if I could finally let go of what felt like a five-gallon can of ugly paint I had been carrying around. I was even fantasizing that maybe Sam would finally get in touch with me after the show was over. Maybe they had some rule about not dating the contestants or something. Visions of Sam were dancing in my head. I would like him here or there. That Sam-I-Am, that Sam-I-Am. I think I’d like him anywhere.