Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

I ate dinner at my friend Skyler's house at least once a week. It was just him and his mom; his dad lived in Denver. His mom was really nice, told me to call her by her first name, Madeline. She let me cook with her. She taught me how to flip an omelet. How to cook a grilled cheese slowly, so everything melted without the bread burning.

And she didn't thaw anything. All the ingredients were fresh.

I'd made meatballs with her. We chopped onions and garlic. She said, "You're a natural in the kitchen," and I said, "Really?" and she said, "I'm cooking with a future chef."

We rolled the meat into little globes and put them in the oven.

She drank wine, not from a box, but red wine from a bottle.

"Do you think I could cook these for my mom?"

"She'll love it."

"Really?"

"Of course she will."

When they were ready, me, Skyler, and his mom sat around and devoured the meatballs.

"Aren't they delicious?" she asked us.

"I love them," I said, smiling at her.

"They're fine," he said, not looking up from his plate.

I'd given my mom a shopping list, and she'd gotten everything I needed. I diced garlic, and they watched me.

"Look at Rhonda," Letch said, "putting his balls into cooking."

"No thawing!" I said.

"Whose son are you?" my mom said, rubbing her arthritic wrists and taking another pain pill. She'd spent the afternoon trying to play songs on the keyboard, and she wasn't happy with the way they'd sounded, swearing and slugging tcha-bliss. "With my son it's thaw or bust."

"Maybe there was a mix-up at the hospital," Letch said. "You guys don't really look alike."

I dumped the garlic on top of the ground beef and onion. I put a little olive oil like Madeline had told me to do. I mixed everything in a big bowl. I didn't like how the animal squished in my hands, but it would be worth it when we all sat at the table together, laughing and eating.

I rolled the first few, a little bigger than golf balls.

"No mix-up," she said. "He was adopted."

"He wasn't adopted," Letch said. "I thought you found him, abandoned."

"That's right. I found him at a bus stop."

"In a paper bag," he said.

My next meatball wasn't round, shaped like an egg.

She laughed and said, "Do you remember that, baby? When I found you at the bus stop?"

I nodded, kept rolling, rolling faster.

"It must have been cold in that paper bag, Rhonda," Letch said.

"He was shivering when I found him."

"Why do you think his real mom got rid of him?"

My meatballs weren't little spheres anymore, but geometric deformities. Monsters. Odd renovations.

"Maybe she was young," my mom said.

"Maybe she was poor," Letch said.

I rolled the last monster and dumped them all in a pan. I was supposed to use a low heat, but I didn't, wanted to cook them as fast as I could so they'd have to shut up and eat. I dumped oil on top of them and shook the pan around.

"But I'm glad she did it because now this angel is mine," she said, laying an arthritic hand on my shoulder.

"What do you think, Rhonda?" he said.

"About what?" I said.

"Why did your mom leave you at that bus stop?"

The meatballs sizzled. I shook the pan again. "She didn't want me."

"Let's change the subject," my mom said.

"She didn't like spending time with me."

"How was school today?" my mom asked.

"She thought her life would be better if I wasn't around."

Some of the meatballs cracked and broke apart. Some stuck to the bottom. I should have been shaking the pan, but I let it sit there, let the meatballs burn and smoke.

My mom filled up her tcha-bliss.

"Your mom asked you about school."

"School's fine."

"You're burning them," my mom said, grabbing a spatula and moving the meatballs around. Most of them had disintegrated into little clumps. Really smoky now

"Like mother, like son," Letch said. "I'm sure dinner's going to be fantastic."

"She's not my mother," I said. "Remember?"

"We were only teasing," my mom said.

"Watch your mouth," he said to me.

"Baby," my mom said, "will you set the table?"

She pushed the charred meat around the pan.

"She found me at a bus stop, remember?"

"Knock it off," he said.

"No fighting," she said.

Letch glared at me while I set plates, forks, and paper towels on the table. I thought he was going to lose his temper, but he didn't.

"I lost my appetite," he said, walking out of the kitchen and into the garage.

My mom looked at me with a phony smile. She brought the pan over and pushed meat onto our plates. Some of it was burned, some still vaguely pink, none of it edible. We sat down. Neither of us picked up our forks.

"Sorry," she said.

"What for?"

She grabbed my hand and brought it to her mouth. She kissed it. "Do you want me to thaw some taquitos?"

She set our plates in the sink and walked over to the freezer, opened it, and said, "Damn. No taquitos." She pursed her lips. She shut the freezer and peeked in the refrigerator and shook her head. Then she opened a cupboard. "You want some chips?"

"Can we go to Burger King?"

"I've been drinking, baby, and I'm still on probation. I can't drive."

She brought the bag of barbecued chips over and set it between us.

She said, "Voild, dinner is served."

She said, "Come on, baby: Smile for me."

I tried.

The guy was saying how I'd cheated him in a game of pool, months earlier, and that he'd been hoping our paths would cross again, that he'd been coming back to Damascus waiting for me to slither in so he could settle the score.

I asked him, "What score?"

I said, "How can there be a score if I've never seen you in my whole life?"

He ran over to the pool table and snatched a cue stick and tried to hit me in the face with it, but I'd brought my arms up for protection and he hit me in the forearm. The stick shattered, and I buckled to the floor. It hurt so bad that I knew it was broken. Mewling in anguish. There were five or six other people in the bar, but no one was going to get in this guy's way, not when he had that rabid look in his eyes. Not even Vern.

The guy stood over me, saying, "See? See? See how things have a way of coming full circle?" He screamed for a couple minutes, asked if anyone else wished to "bump with the champ." I, to this day, don't remember wishing to bump with the champ. Since no one responded to his universal threat, he walked out.

A couple men helped me off of the floor and got me on a barstool.

"We're going to need whiskey," one of them told the bartender. "Stat!"

I told them my arm was busted and they asked if I wanted to go to the ER and I said, "Are any of you giving me health insurance for Christmas?"

They laughed and muttered and paid for two more whiskeys, but there was no way I could handle ER bills. I would wait for my arm to heal au naturel.

The guys asked about my arm every time I walked into Damascus.

They would stare at it, disbelieving. "You've gotta have that bone set. It's curving like a huge banana."

A week later, they told me it was getting worse. They couldn't believe the bruising, the harsh, dark colors that looked like burned bacon under my skin. They said that I had to go to the hospital, with or without insurance, like it or not, and that I had to do something before it got so bad that it couldn't be fixed.