Page 39 of On His Schedule
I stop where I am and feel my lungs constrict. “Mom’s cooking?”
“Yeah.”
My mom doesn’t cook. I walk to the kitchen to be a witness. She’s at the stove with an apron on. The apron is white with a navy stripe, and I have never seen it before in my life. Tyr is at the counter next to her, grating cheese into a bowl. He looks up when I come in.
“There she is.” He smiles warmly.
My mom turns. “Lucy! You’re early.”
“I’m exactly on time,” I say.
She looks at Tyr. “Then we’re late.”
“We’re not late,” Tyr says, going back to the cheese. “We’re fashionable.”
“You guys are going to make me sick,” I announce.
My mom giggles. Likegiggles.
Is it bad that I’m waiting to watch her crash and burn? The feeling in my gut swirls, so I shove it down.
I set the bag down on the counter. “You brought the wine?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“What is it for?” I ask when she takes it.
“Cooking,” she says in a high-pitched tone.
“Here I thought we were getting drunk off of wine.”
“We most definitely can,” she says.
“You’re old enough to drink?” Tyr asks.
My mom swats him. “She bought the wine, Tyr. Hello? Where have you been?”
He resumes his task while she opens the bottle and sets it aside.
We sit down in four chairs.
Bear’s homework has been moved to the counter. There’s a candle in the middle of the table — Yankee, vanilla. Tyr serves us like we’re at a restaurant. The chicken parm is on real plates. The salad is in a real bowl. There’s Camdend, sliced, in a little basket lined with a dish towel I do not recognize.
The food is good. It is annoyingly, genuinely good.
“This client of mine,” Tyr is saying, halfway through dinner, “calls me last week. Says,Tyr, I need a wine fridge in this closet.I say great, send me a photo of the closet. He sends me a photo of the closet. I say, sir, that closet is load-bearing. He says,what does that mean.I say, that means if I take that wall out so you can put your Pinot in there, your second floor falls into your kitchen.”
Bear laughs, mocking what the collapse would sound like.
My mom laughs too.
Tyr eats a bite of chicken. “He still wants the wine fridge. He keeps texting me. I keep telling him, sir, it’s a bedroom or a wine fridge, you cannot have both.”
“Is he getting the wine fridge?” Bear asks.
“He’s getting an under-counter unit in the kitchen. He’s mad about it.”
