Shallow Creek

Dinner was a grand affair featuring too much food for too few people.  Brendan wondered if his mother hadn’t bothered asking anyone over, or if she had made the calls and no one cared to show up.  Either way, she’d never admit to either one, so he just chewed his green beans and sliced off another piece of ham.  The woman couldn’t bake to save her life, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t cook up a storm in a hurry.

As the three of them quietly plowed through mountains of food, Brendan realized that this wasn’t even weird.  Most of the family dinners during his formative years had passed in this laconic manner.  Nothing short of an upcoming high school playoff game could distract his dad from shoveling away his dinner, and his mom was too shallow to engage in any conversation that might’ve actually mattered.  So instead, they would sit in silence, enjoying each other’s physical presence, but not much else.

Unfortunately, the scene didn’t suit Brendan anymore.  Chow was a time to talk and to discuss, to joke and to bullshit.  With that in mind, he strode into dangerous waters right off the bat.

“How’s Taryn doing?” he asked before forking a piece of ham into his mouth.  His sister was five years older than him, and he hadn’t really seen much of her in the years before he’d skipped town, never mind the last decade.

His mom pensively looked to his father, who glared at him with his fork frozen halfway to his mouth.  The seconds ticked by and his mom started fidgeting with her food, pushing it around her plate and avoiding Brendan’s questioning gaze.  His dad broke eye contact and resumed eating as if nothing had transpired.  Well, technically nothing had transpired, and that was really the problem.  Brendan watched his mother until she finally looked up with a feeble smile.

“Taryn moved out a few years ago,” she said.

“Karen—”

“She moved in with her boyfriend,” she said, ignoring her husband.  She was visibly unhappy with this living situation, and Brendan knew why.  His parents liked to believe that everyone should stick to what they called traditional values: No beer before twenty-one and no sex before marriage.  They drilled that mantra into Brendan’s head all through high school, but it hadn’t really helped.  He could’ve probably avoided a lot of trouble if he’d heeded their sage advice.

“So who’s he?  Anyone I know?”

“His name is Serge,” his mother replied evenly.

“Damn WOP,” his dad grunted.

Brendan smiled at his dad’s racism, and not in an approving way.

“So he’s what?  Eastern European or something?”

“Something like that,” his mom said, a little unsure.  She’d have a difficult time pointing out Europe on a map, so the eastern side was probably beyond the scope of her radar.  “We don’t see her much.”

After high school, Taryn had developed a habit of sneaking out and shacking up with a couple of different guys after any number of drag-out fights with their parents.  Brendan could only assume a huge, cataclysmic bust-up had driven her off into the arms of Serge, whoever the hell he was.  Must’ve been a pretty good fight if she’d stayed gone for years, although maybe she’d just grown up and gotten sick of living under the burden of their parents’ narrow view on life.

“The Shallow Creek pie-eating contest is coming up fast,” his mother declared cheerily out of the blue.  Did he have the heart to tell her he didn’t even like— “You should definitely enter, Brendan.”

Before he could say anything, his mother disappeared into the kitchen.  His dad looked up from his empty plate with fire in his eyes.  “Don’t bring up your sister in this house again.”

Brendan stared his dad down, but relented.  This was his father’s house, not his.  “Yes, sir.”

His dad probed his face for any hint of sarcasm or deceit, but finding none, snorted gruffly.  Brendan’s mom flew into the dining room a moment later, wielding a large knife and a freshly baked pie.  She squeezed it into the small amount of real estate left on the table and started cutting without another word.  Brendan tried not to wince as her knife revealed syrupy piles of cherries inside the pie shell.  There was only one thing he hated more than pie, and those little red bastards were it.  Of course, Grant loved them, so this shouldn’t have been a surprising revelation.

His mother switched out his dinner plate with the one covered in everything he hated in the world of cuisine.  When he hadn’t taken a single bite by the time she returned from stacking all the dirty plates in the kitchen, she reprimanded him playfully.  “Come on, hun.  You’ll need the practice if you’re going to win that contest again.”