It’s a windy Wednesday night and I have just driven for three hours to take a seat at an awkward table tucked into a private room in a buffet restaurant. On one side of me is my father and on the other, my grandfather’s new wife. It’s a family gathering, of course–the once-a-year holiday dinner. None of us are very close, though, and it would probably be reasonable to assume everyone here only came for the same reason–to see granddad.
He’s currently occupied with Uncle Number Two at another table and the remaining five of us aren’t saying much to each other. I scrape bland potatoes off my plate and into my mouth as the conversation struggles to gain momentum. A cousin makes a passing joke about the last few teeth she has left and my father, feeling superior, has to say, Did you brush?
She says, I did before I lost my teeth.
He forgets his better-than-her attitude and blurts in genuine surprise, Before you lost them? Not after?
Yup. Before, not after. She recounts how brushing became more and more painful over time as her teeth began to decay and fall out. I listen to her spin the tale and widen my eyes or give an oh my goodness when it’s called for. She’s earnest and unembarrassed as she explains it all to us. Her mouth is mostly darkness with minimal flashes of bone on the sides when she speaks, an empty rectangle under her top lip where little white squares used to be. She says she was on some shot I’ve never heard of and I nod like I know what that means. She says she doesn’t brush anymore to keep the few remaining teeth she still has left. She says the plaque buildup is the only thing protecting her teeth now.
I don’t tell her that losing my teeth is one of my worst fears because she’s already gone and lived it. I don’t tell her I think she’s still pretty when she smiles because it’d just sound like a platitude you spit out when you feel sorry for someone. Instead, I just work on the plate of ham and flavorless vegetables while she talks to me. She tells me her autistic son is finally starting to talk–tells me like I already knew this was something we were waiting for. She tells me that he’s going to start school soon because he’s almost three.
Three years old, that’s when you start school, huh? She’s on baby number four, so it’s gotta be old news to her by now. But I don’t know what age children do anything at. Walk, talk, tie your shoe. No clue.
Preschool, she clarifies.
Is that not still school? Fun. I remember preschool. I watch the boy as he crawls around on the floor underneath the tables that the restaurant employees smushed together to create one big long one. I lift my legs up and set them on the chair across from me, making a bridge for him to duck under as he passes by. He looks like he’s having much more fun than we are.
I let my cousin tell me all about her kids and her lack of teeth and I offer nothing about myself in return. And she doesn’t ask. No one does. I get to sit quietly like a closed book and don’t have to admit anything about what I’ve been up to. Don’t have to explain my agonies, don’t have to admit to my failures. It’s nice, though, really, it is, listening to her.
Usually I end up on an island at the end of the table (population: me, my father, and his brother) chatting amongst ourselves while all the other guests sulk in silence or fight for my grandfather’s attention. I also usually end up next to my grandfather’s new wife while the others largely seem to ignore her. She’s feisty and tiny, her eyes always sparkle with humor, and she’s always so sincere. I would much rather sit next to her out of all the other strangers that make up the “family.”
I had originally imagined this night going a lot differently. This year, I was planning to bring my lover. I was going to stroll into this small town restaurant with the most beautiful man in the world on my arm. And he would introduce himself so formally to my grandfather like the gentleman he is and everyone in the room would stare at him next to me in awe–the same awe I felt every time he smiled down at me.
We would sit at this scratched up wooden table together looking so young and beautiful and he would talk to Uncle Number One about the restaurant industry or talk to my grandfather about school. He’d charm everyone at the table with his conversational skills, with his perfect smile, with his precious laugh that gives away how young he actually is. I would hardly be able to look away from him with pride and adoration glowing out of my face like a supernova. And my grandfather’s wife would grip my arm with surprising strength and give me a look that says, you’d better hold on tight to that fine young man and never let him go. She would ask me under her breath if she would get to come to another wedding soon and I would smile and whisper back to her, let’s hope so.
Instead, I sit at the table between my father and his father’s new wife mostly in silence, devouring the bland food because someone else paid for it. All the while, the absence of my once-lover aches and tears at me like a missing organ.
I finish a too-sweet slice of chocolate cake and start to wait for our turn to leave. I focus on staying entirely motionless–as if I might actually be able to disappear. I sit as still as possible–as if drawing attention to myself would allow someone to literally see my pain. They would say, Wait a minute, you’ve got an enormous hole through your chest. How can you breathe? How are you even alive?
How, indeed. A question no one will ask and an explanation I’ll never find. I sit suffocating at a beat-up table in a buffet restaurant surrounded on all sides and no one knows about the agony simmering underneath my sparkly silver shirt except for me.
To them, I’m mysterious and cool. To them, I’m funny and playful. Don’t get the green beans, I say. If you have any self respect, do not get the green beans. We take photos and I’m the tallest person in the room. I wasn’t supposed to be. I look so disco and cool in my sparkly shirt and my wide cut blue jeans and my white not-quite-go-go boots. My life is so good with my vibrant youth and my respectable job and my still-there teeth.
I smile in the back of that family photo and let the lie take over the image of me. No one knows what I’ve lost. No one knows that anyone was missing from this table except for me.
Method of Mancy 