Sudden Mischief

chapter nine

FOR DINNER AT Chez Henri, Susan was wearing a gray top with gray pants and a wide black belt. It was one of my favorite outfits. Chez Henri was in Cambridge, just off Mass Ave, a nice informal room, open and high ceilinged, with a plate-glass window across the front that looked out on Shepard Street. I suppose it would be less egocentric to remark that it also looked in on the restaurant from Shepard Street. But from my perspective, it looked out. And I had no real wish to avoid egocentricity. I was eating baked oysters with some spinach on them. Susan had chicken and mashed potatoes. I was helping her with the mashed potatoes.

"You remember the first time you ate out?" I said.

"Sure," she said. "And you?"

"Yeah, some diner outside Laramie, I think. One of my uncles took me. I had a ham and egg sandwich."

She smiled. "My father used to take us to dinner every Friday night at the dining room of the Hotel Edison in Lynn."

"Lynn?"

"Before the shoe factories moved out. The Edison was still quite fancy."

"What did you have?"

"Lobster pie." Susan smiled at the memory. "Lobster out of the shell, covered with bread crumbs soaked with melted butter, and baked. If someone served that to me now, I would probably feel faint."

"But then?" I said.

Susan was drinking Merlot with her chicken, daring to be different. She looked into her glass for a moment and sipped a small amount.

"I loved it. Who knew about good for you?" She smiled again. It was the smile which hinted of fun and something slightly evil. "And it drove my mother crazy."

"Lobster pie?"

"No, me. I know she wanted to get a sitter and leave me home."

"They ever do that?"

"No," Susan said. I could hear the echo of childhood triumph even now. "I went almost everywhere with him."

"Way to go," I said.

She laughed.

"Do I still sound that triumphant?" she said.

"Yes."

"One never entirely outgrows one's childhood," she said.

"You going to eat those mashed potatoes," I said.

"Just leave me this much."

She marked off a section with the tines of her fork.

"So your mother was jealous of you," I said.

"Yes, I'm sure she was. My father was her link to the world. She didn't drive. She rarely went anywhere, except with him. She was aaaalways home."

"And now she had to share him."

Susan smiled again.

"Unequally," she said.