DINNER DURING THE PLAGUE

A Biblical plague came upon us that purgatorial summer week I was alone with Dad in the wonderful brick house in Austin, Texas, the house that contained my loneliness.

Another move, another school, another chance to make the best of it. I would race home from the school of strangers to sit in that house, alone reading book after book. When I read Dostoyevsky I would drink cups of tea, pretending that I was there in Russia too, anyplace but in my own skin. Thank God for the books. And for that house. When we moved in, I loved that house so much that I spent a month making elaborate architectural drawings, alone on the front porch under a canopy of oaks and maples and the flowery explosion of fruit trees.

Now, I cursed those trees which had suddenly brought with the change of season a civilization of tent caterpillars all around us, everywhere in Austin that summer, a nightmare all day long, even worse during the dark of night, nighttime, nightmares of being covered and eaten alive by creatures sent as retribution by a stern and unforgiving God. I could hear the echoes of the cursing of this plague, and yes, the cursing of the God who sent it, coming from inside the brick fortress, where we manned our stations to hold the invasion at bay, one caterpillar at a time.

They started dropping the morning we took mom to the airport, dad and I, kissing her before she walked across the tarmac towards the metal stairs. She turned and waved and entered the plane that would take her home to Louisville, to the funeral of a brother I had only met once.

Now, three days later, the furry inches of individual insects had become a carpet, spreading out in all directions, everywhere you went in town. An undulating invasion of terrifying primordial creatures, devouring whatever lived in their path. It was impossible to avoid them as you walked. You made a sickening crunchy squishing noise, you had a universal reaction of nausea, not so much because it felt like murder, although it was, but because of that sound, drawing your attention down to a footprint of caterpillar pus, half dead creatures wiggling and oozing in your wake. I quickly learned not to linger. The caterpillar legs on their undersides would take hold anywhere as they squirmed towards their unknown instinctual destinies, and they wouldn’t let go, even when you tried to shake them off. All of Austin’s citizenry could be seen enacting antic pantomimes of leg-shaking and finger-flicking, punctuated by sudden spasms of horror as a falling caterpillar landed someplace on the body, just another part of the world that would be coated by the communal fur commanded by these creatures’ life cycle.

We had stuffed the edges of the ancient window air conditioners with old rags and crumpled-up copies of the Austin American-Statesman in a vain attempt to keep them out. Still, some pioneer, driven by God only knows what logic and desire, would find its way through the convolutions of the stuffing, emerging onto an black-and-white shard of the newspaper, and then down the wall towards the seat of our real nightmares, the bed. Dad had bought me an extra vacuum cleaner of my own, its red plastic housing now a permanent fixture in the middle of the floor in my bedroom, suction at the ready to deliver any errant larvae to a final resting place inside the sealed bag.

“Good luck, buddy,” Dad said as he left for work. It was Saturday and I was cooking dinner for Dad, just the two of us. My menu was purloined from Mama: fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, white gravy and chocolate cream pie. Pulling down the Fannie Farmer cookbook I sat at the metal kitchen table, doing my homework, preparing for the exam that my Dad would be forced to administer without his consent later that evening. I had an image of our sitting together, happy and together, the world shut out, his eyes beaming proudly upon me as we ate the food that I had prepared just for him, a vision that drove me even as I began to trot the three blocks to the market for provisions.

It was early in the day and not yet scorching and humid, so I encased myself in long pants, a turtleneck shirt with sleeves that drooped over my wrists. Just to make sure, I used rubber bands at the terminus of each fabric opening, stretched them tight enough to block even a recent larvae baby from gaining purchase on my flesh. I wore a straw hat with a big wide brim, and I carried a bandana for flicking. It was hard to run in boots, but they had no openings for the pests to enter, so I clomped along, swishing and praying towards the store, my list in my pocket, my heart in my throat, the madness of daddy love wrapped around me.

My precautions were successful. Only a dozen caterpillars crawled on the surface of my sweaty garments, easy to knock off with a well-aimed forefinger or the pop of the bandana. None breeched the barriers onto my flesh. Even more important, I escaped ridicule, a darker fear. My costume did not seem unusual in Austin during the infestation. You would see the young and the poor, those without cars, wrapped in gauze or festive fabrics, all manner of homemade shields. The horror showed in their eyes, gripped in the exercise of some ancient ritual, squishing along and wincing and cursing at an uncaring universe.

By noon the ingredients laid like loot on the Formica counter, the humming of the old Kenmore fridge and the muffled clicking of the kitchen clock my only companions. I was lost in the zone of individual tasks, a labyrinth of chopping and heating and measuring and stirring, covered with a thin sweat coating of terror that somehow I would fail and lose the love, the special kind of love that mama got when she cooked these very items for him. Time yawned and napped, and poked at me to hurry up.

Somehow the individual dishes managed to get finished, and they all looked roughly like the color pictures, grouped together in the center of Fannie’s cookbook, bright green beans, golden crispy chicken, tan peaks of meringue, and the pale comfort of the potatoes and beige gravy.

Right on time, his face in an involuntary mask of caterpillar terror, Dad burst into the back door. “Just look at what you’ve done,” and I beamed. We sat down, and because Mama was not there, we did not say grace.

Shame and gratitude cannot be stirred together, cannot be blended. Like oil and water, they repel, they separate, they make a mess. I was that mess that evening, staring at the floor where a brown furry caterpillar inched along his trail from the door. The chicken was fried on the outside, raw on the inside. The beans were vivid green, but impossible to chew. The potatoes turned out fine, but the glutinous mass of lumpy beigeness in the gravy boat induced a gagging that even my father’s pity could not stifle.

We made it through, picking and trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, but the pie pushed into the territory of emotional destiny. My knife sliced cleanly through the meringue, the first cut was fine. The second cut was fine. The wedge tool scooted under the graham cracker crust, I lifted, and the whole chocolaty mass flopped, the filling not a fluffy solid pudding, but instead like a milkshake.
I started to tear up, staring back at the floor and a second caterpillar.

“What happened, son?”

“I don’t know, I followed the recipe,” and the weeping became orchestral, a symphony of sobs.

He got up to investigate the remains of the ingredients, still arrayed on the Formica.

“Here’s the culprit,” he said, holding up the flat rectangular box of Baker’s chocolate — semi-sweet chocolate. “Did you add too much sugar?”

“Sure, I added sugar, just the amount in the recipe.”

“No,” Dad said, now holding the dark blue Fannie Farmer in his big hands. “It calls for unsweetened chocolate….”

I sniffled, looking up from the floor to my Dad.

“Hey, anybody could make the same mistake. Hell, I do it all the time. You did good, thanks for a beautiful meal.”

The gratitude was a rush, flowing over my body like honey, a balm, a sweet coolness that calmed my palpitations, my aching heart, most of my shame.

“Thank you, Daddy,” I said, as he scooped up the big pie mess into bowls, and opened the freezer in search of some ice cream.