Between sobs, I asked him, and he exhaled a long slow column of smoke, turning his head to the side so he wouldn’t blow it in my direction.
I’m not crying … he began. I’m not crying because now he has no more pain.
I try to focus on that when my mind goes toward the video. The video is an horrific, stomach-churning, memorialization of prejudice and brutality. Of agony, and fear. Of pain.
But now, his pain is no more.
I reached out and touched Lila’s hand.
She looked up at me, surprised.
But she didn’t recoil. Her eyes softened a little and her lips parted to say something. But our turn finally arrived, and I pulled back. Both of us focused on ordering our meals.
Lila ordered pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and “on the side, one egg, sunny side up, please?”
Our order-taker looked at her. “You want the extra egg on the side? In a different container? Just the one? Not with the scrambled …”
“Yes. On the side in a different container,” Lila said. “Just one egg. Sunny side up.”
The order-taker scribbled down the instructions and then turned to me to take my order, then handed us our coffees and left us to go into the back.
Lila must have seen how I was looking at her, curious, amused. Because she shook her head and laughed a little.
“I’m not OCD or anything,” she said. “It’s just … it’s a thing.”
“Cool.” I shrugged, not wanting her to think I was judging her or thinking she was strange or anything. Even though it was kind of strange.
“It’s this thing me and my dad do. Or at least …” She paused to sigh. “I used to see him do it. Once in a while, either early in the morning or late at night I would walk into the kitchen and he’d be there, frying just a single, perfect egg. With the unbroken, perfect sphere of a yellow yolk.
“And he’d get his spatula …” She motioned with her hands as she described it. “And carefully slide this perfect egg, yolk up, onto a plate. And then he would sit with it in front of him and look at it for about ten seconds. With … satisfaction, studying it. And then he would eat it, slowly, deliberately, like it was the most perfect, best thing he’d ever eaten in his life.”
Lila looked at me, a hint of a smile on her lips, like the telling of the story had been the most perfect, best story she’d ever told.
“I don’t get it,” I admitted.
“I didn’t either,” she said, adding two little containers of creamer to her coffee. I noticed that she didn’t add sweetener though. “So, when he wasn’t around, I tried it myself.”
“And?”
“It was … I don’t know. The whole process had a weird … ceremoniousness to it, the cracking of the egg, watching it go from translucent to solid as it cooked, removing it from the pan and sliding it onto the plate without breaking the yolk, taking a few moments to look at it and admire its … simplicity. Then to deconstruct and consume it. It was a meditation. It made me feel, I don’t know, centered.”
“Do you add salt and pepper?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. It has to be … unadulterated.” She said the last word as though she had chosen it very specifically, like no other word would do.
“And … does it still work if you order the egg? Like from a carryout like now? If you don’t make it yourself?”
Lila narrowed her eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Nope. Serious question.”
“It still works, but it’s much better if you make the egg yourself,” she said slowly, like she was thinking about it to make sure her answer was accurate. “Because it’s the ritual of making it, not just looking at it, not just eating it.”
And that was the moment. Right then, I knew. I knew she was my wife.
“Did …”
My voice hitched a little and sounded weird, like something was stuck in my throat for a second, or like I’d had the air knocked out of me. Because the feeling I got, it wasn’t a vague sensation. It wasn’t one of those, ‘I-know-this-person-is-going-to-be-important-to-me,’ feelings. It was a very specific knowingness. I looking at the woman I was going to marry.
“Did you ever ask your dad?” I managed. “What the ritual means to him?”
Lila shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because maybe it means something very different to him. And also, even though it wasn’t something he did in private, it felt very private. Y’know what I mean?”
And that was another moment, the moment I realized that Lila might not come easy. She came with layers, and to break through some of them, I was likely to encounter resistance.
She ate the lonely egg first, and slowly. I pretended not to be paying attention, but I watched everything. The way she first pierced the yolk and watched the yellow liquid spread. The way she used her plastic fork to cut it into three pieces, folding each one before she speared it, then directed it to her mouth. The way she chewed slowly, with her eyes shut.
When it was done, she shoved that container aside and pulled her “real” meal toward her.
“You’re not eating,” she said.
I hadn’t been as subtle about staring as I thought I was.
“Tell me more about your dad,” I said. “The man who meditates over a fried egg.”
She laughed.
I think it was the first time I heard her do that. It was a pretty laugh, and her eyes crinkled shut like the laugh began at the top of her head and moved downward where it settled somewhere around her shoulders which hunched a little.
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“Back over there by the
