today?”
I knew he had me.
I showed up at seven and did my job, but the whole situation with Gunnar never left my mind entirely. Sure, it was vacation, but there was a big fat Gunnar-themed rally waiting for me when vacation was over. I was irritable, but maintained an air of professionalism for most of the evening. Things would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the single certified idiot at table number nine.
He arrived at around seven-thirty with a scowling wife, and two kids who wouldn’t stop fighting. From the moment he sits down, this guy starts complaining. His fork has spots on it; the wine isn’t cold enough. The appetizer came out too late and the main course came out too early. He demands to see the manager, and my father comes over. I’m standing there, refilling water glasses, after having been chewed out by the guy for not having refilled them the instant he took a sip. For him I don’t bother with skillful pouring.
“How can you call this a restaurant?” the guy complains while his kids kick each other under the table. “The service is lousy, the food came out cold, and there’s a horrible stench in the air.”
Well, first of all, the service was perfect, because my mother was his waitress, and she is the queen of quality control. Secondly, I know the food was hot, because I served it myself, and nearly burned my hands on the plate. And third, the horrible stench was coming from his son.
But my dad—he gets all apologetic, offering free dessert, and discounts off the guy’s next visit, and such. That just makes me angry. See, my dad used to work in a big corporation, full of guys like this, so he had developed an idiot-resistant personality. I, on the other hand, had not. All I had going for me at the moment was a big pitcher of ice water.
This is why I could never get a job as a busboy in a restaurant my family didn’t own ... because, for the first time in my water-pouring history, I missed the glass. In fact, all the water in the pitcher missed the glass, and found the top of the guy’s head instead.
After I was done pouring the pitcher of ice water on him, he finally fell silent, and stared at me in total shock. And I said, “I’m sorry—did you want bottled water instead?”
To my amazement, the rest of the restaurant started applauding. Someone even snapped a picture. I was ready to take a bow, but my father grabbed my arm. He grabbed it hard, and when I looked at him, the expression in his eyes was not one of gratitude. “Wait for me in the kitchen,” he growled. Very rarely did my father speak in growls. When he was mad he usually yelled, and that was okay. Speaking in growls was not. I hurried off to the kitchen, sat on a stool, and waited, feeling more like a little kid than I had in years.
Christina came up to me. I don’t know if she saw what happened, but I’m sure she guessed the gist. “I made a swan for you,” she said, and handed me a folded napkin.
“Thanks,” I said. “Got any Himalayan mantras I can recite for the occasion?”
“I’m beyond that now,” she told me. “I’m into chakra points.” She massaged some spots on my back that failed to relax me, then went to fold more napkins.
Dad did not come back to talk to me at all that night. He just let me stew on the stool. Mom would occasionally pass by to pick up orders and would scowl, shake her head, or wag her finger. Then eventually she gave me a plate of food. That’s how I knew Dad was truly, truly angry. If Mom felt sorry enough for me to feed me, it meant I was in a world of trouble.
Eventually Mom just sent me home, because she couldn’t stand to see me sitting there so miserably on that stool.
Before my parents got home that night, I got a call from Old Man Crawley, who must have had spies in the restaurant again.
“Did you actually pour a pitcher of water over a man’s head?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I replied. I was too exhausted to make excuses.
“And did it feel good to do so?”
“Yes, sir, it did. He was an idiot.”
“Was this a premeditated attack on your part?”
“Uh ... no, sir. It was kind of... spontaneous.”
He paused for a long time. “I see,” he finally said. “You’ll be hearing from me.” And he hung up. He didn’t even bother to torment me with how much I had disappointed him—that’s how bad this was. I couldn’t help but feel that “you’ll be hearing from me” were among the worst possible words to hear at the end of a conversation with Crawley. It was even worse than “you’ll be hearing from my attorney.”
This water incident might have meant a whole lot of bad things—including retribution against my father somehow—after all, it was Crawley’s money that got my dad’s restaurant going. Crawley could shut it down with a snap of his fingers, and I wouldn’t put it past him to do it.
Dad did not punish me when he got home. He didn’t punish me the next day. He just avoided me. It didn’t feel like an intentional cold shoulder—it felt more like he was so disgusted, he just didn’t want to have anything to do with me. It wasn’t until Monday that I found out why.
On Monday the news had a headline that read:
BUSBOY BAPTIZES BOSWELL
And there it was, not on page four of the school paper, but smack on the cover of the
Getting your picture on the cover of the
That morning my father was already scouring the classifieds for job opportunities, as if he was expecting the restaurant to shut down in a matter of days.
“Dad, I’m sorry...” It was the first time I tried to breach the silence between us, but he put up his hand.
“Let’s not do this, okay, Antsy?” He didn’t even look up at me.
That’s how it was for most of Christmas vacation. And it hurt. See, in our family we fought, we yelled, we gouged at one another’s feelings, and then we made up. Our fights were fiery—never cold, and it got me to thinking about what my mom had once said about hell—how it’s all cold and lonely. Now I knew she was right, because I’d rather have fire shooting out of my dad’s mouth like a dragon than suffer this nuclear winter.
My dad and I used to be able to talk. Even when something was bad, even when we were ready to strangle each other, we could talk. But not now.
Entire species died in that kind of cold.
14. Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I’ll Eat Some Worms
Christmas came and went uneventfully, which, considering the previous set of events, was a good thing. For reasons that may or may not have been retribution for missing Thanksgiving, most of our relatives had other plans. We could have gone to Philadelphia to be with Mom’s side of the family, but with Aunt Mona coming on Christmas Eve, we had to pass. Then Aunt Mona calls at the last minute to tell us she can’t come till after New Year’s. Typical.
“It wouldn’t be a visit from Mona,” Mom said, “if she didn’t ruin the plans we made around her.”
“She did us a favor,” Dad responded, because he was simply too burned out to travel all the way to Philly anyway. Besides, he never spoke out against his sister, no matter what the situation. It was a sore spot with Mom.
“You watch,” said Mom, “when she does come, she’ll show up without any warning, and expect us to drop everything.”
