The Dinner Table

The Dinner Table

Angie's legs hung from her seat, she stretched them subtly to see how far they were from the ground. Last week they seemed to be about an inch off, they seem farther this time. Perhaps she’s shrinking.

Her parents, Marie and Joe, are seated at opposite ends of the table both stabbing at the salads on their plates. Angie can’t tell if the heat in the room was coming from the oven, which was broiling the chicken they were about to eat, or the friction that her parents are trying, and failing, to hide. The two of them in the same room created a burning fire that everyone was all too eager to ignore. It caught the drapes and the carpet and they sat in the heat, the only thing that extinguished the flames once they got too high was nine year old Angie.

 So she sat there, feet stretched to the ground, too scared to swallow in fear that she’d set them ablaze.

As her parents kept their eyes fixed on their meals, Angie kept her vision locked on the floor. She listened to the clanging of forks on plates, the sizzling from the oven, the drip from their wonky sink. She listened to the squeak of her chair everytime she slid lower. She heard the ticking of the timer counting down the minutes, hopefully seconds, until the chicken was ready, which would sound the ding of the oven. She listened to every sound in the room in hopes it would drown out the silence between her parents' passive aggressive sighs.

Once the chicken is ready she’s halfway through dinner, then she can leave the table. She’d take a couple bites and pretend to be too full so she could be excused. She wished one of them would do that instead; she loved when her mom made chicken. By the time she packs her leftovers for lunch tomorrow it won’t be as rich, the juices would be stripped from it by the radiating heat of the microwave.  

She knew her parents would never be the ones to cut dinner short though. That may be a sign that their marriage was stripped of whatever first brought them together. They didn’t realize that Angie had already taken note. After their little spats in the car she wondered if her father being a bad driver is what caused the rift, or if her mother turning his white socks pink had been the breaking point.

These days, it seemed there didn’t need to be a reason for the animosity, as if all that had happened up until this point was justification enough for their cold demeanor. Angie couldn’t remember the last time she noticed any real affection between the two. She cringed whenever she saw her father plant a dry kiss on his wife’s cheek when he greeted her in the morning. Her mom plastered on a fake smile that disappeared in record time once he walked away, but Angie saw it. 

She watched her parent’s transform from husband and wife to two people merely playing the role of a married couple, hugging when they were meant to hug, holding hands when their friends were around, then ripping away once their audience retired. All the while Angie watched and wondered what part she’d play in this drama. 

So she pretended not to see the dirty looks, and she brushed it off when she found her father sleeping on the couch in the middle of the night. She stared at the floor during dinner. It was a family act, complete with the role of the oblivious child.  

Her father let out an exasperated sigh as he dropped his fork onto his now clear salad plate leaving a ringing in the air. Angie’s eyes trailed from her feet to her father’s as he kicked off his work shoes, the fresh black polish from this morning having faded since then, leaving a dull sheen on the Italian leather. He used his foot to push them to the side and flexed and relaxed his toes, hidden in the reindeer socks that Angie picked out for him last Christmas. His big toe popped out through a hole where a reindeer's head would have been. Angie wanted to laugh as the decapitated animal pranced along with each flex, but she didn’t. She knew that breaking the silence would leave room for conversation, and she feared how that would end. 

The sound of a chair scraping on the hardwood floor turned Angie’s gaze towards her mother's feet, sheltered by her fuzzy bedroom slippers which now traveled to the oven, they squeaked with each step she took. Left, right, left, right, Angie listened, until she heard the click opening the oven door, all the heat trapped inside slowly oozed out, filling the room. Angie peeked underneath the table, sliding lower in her chair, the sound of her seat hidden by the sizzling of the chicken. She watched her mother poke and prod at the meat, turning it and lathering it with more of the lemon baste. She’d seen her mother do this a million times.

“You have to keep turning the chicken, so it cooks on both sides,”she’d say,  “then you have to let it sit for a little and the heat will cook the inside. You have to make sure you let the inside cook or you’ll get sick.” Angie would watch as her mother made an artform out of cooking, methodically turning each piece of meat, her dainty wrist poised as she added more seasoning. Her father would make the same joke he always made. “You know how she knows that?” he’d ask with a chuckle, and although she heard the story a million times, she’d let him go on.

“How?” she’d ask eagerly.

“The first time I let your mother cook for me, I cut into the chicken and it’s completely pink inside. It looked like she’d just slaughtered it and put it on the plate.” He’d pause the story and look up at Marie, whose head would already be buried in her hands as she laughed at herself. “ I had to eat, she was so excited, so I had to eat it. I spent the entire weekend bent over the toilet.”

“I never undercooked a chicken again”, Marie would say, as their laughter would fill the room, Angie would take in every smell that had soaked into their bright yellow walls, and watch as the warmth of her parents' love radiated through these walls. 

Those moments became few and far between until they stopped all together. As she sits here now with her eyes fixed on her Hello Kitty sneakers, she can’t recognize the happy couple she’s envisioned in her head. Her parent’s searing heat filled the room, and made it seem impossible for anything to survive in this climate. Baking from the inside out, Angie adjusts and re-adjusts herself in her seat as she lets her feet swing. 

“How much longer?” she wants to ask, but the fear of going off script consumed her every second she was in this house. If she spoke, what would she say, and how would they respond? She bit her tongue so much she was sure her teeth had left a permanent indent, but she didn’t care. She’d rather sit there, marinating in her discomfort, overthinking every sound in the room, than cut into the flesh of the beings she struggled to understand. 

She must not have been doing a good job at hiding this discomfort because finally her mother broke the silence. 

“Are you okay, honey?” she asked.

Angie kept her eyes locked on her feet, paralyzed. She didn’t know what to say , she quickly nodded her head not allowing her mother in on the mess going on in her mind.

“She’s probably just cold, maybe turn the heat up,” her father responded.

“She’s not cold Joe, it’s like 80 degrees in here,”Marie threw back dryly. Angie’s hands gripped her chair, and she watched as her knuckles went pale, and her toes curled in her shoes. She thought maybe if she slipped low enough she would disappear into the floor, becoming one of the happy memories she replayed over and over.  Her parents had turned their attention away from the cowering child between them and went on. 

“Well if you know what’s wrong with her why’d you ask,” her father said under his breath. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Marie said in a sharp, but composed tone that sliced through the air. 

Maybe they wouldn’t fight, she thought to herself, but she quickly abandoned the fantasy of a peaceful dinner as their voices continued to rise with each response. Angie shut her eyes to keep back the tears that fought to break free, she should’ve sat still, she should've said she was fine, she should have done anything to prevent what her parents were doing now. 

She tried to listen for the ticking of the oven, but it got lost in the dissonance of their argument. She tuned out what her parents screamed at each other, as she felt herself get swallowed by their words, sweltering in her chair with each response.  She began to miss the dreaded silence of before.

  Her feet finally reach the ground, and with nowhere else to go she let the floodgates rush open. Her hands find her face, wiping the tears before her parents notice, but it doesn’t take long for her to figure out that they won’t. The two of them, who had spent the entire meal staring at their plates now had their eyes locked on each other. With each retort they spewed out they rose a little more in their chairs, closing in on Angie, her entire body throbbed as their heat engulfed her. 

There was no way for her to ignore this.  She struggled to understand how her parents had become so comfortable living with all this discomfort. She didn’t want to become that way. She feared growing up in a house where the people barked instead of spoke, but the aching she was feeling told her it was the only way they knew.

“STOP” Angie finally exclaimed. Her parents took the first look at their daughter since the argument began. Her eyes still fixed on the ground, she watched as her tears trailed down her face and plopped on her shoes. She took deep shallow breaths between each sob, and found the ticking in the air again. The oven let out a ding. The chicken was ready. She exhaled.