May We Be Forgiven

ugly clarity of my thoughts. She is singularly unattractive—grotesque. All too proud of what some would call a good figure, she’s wearing an emerald-green dress that’s too tight with a scoop neck and her boobies spilling out. She looks less like a hostess than a hooker, or a homely drag queen. Her lips are thick and wide, smeared with cheap frosted pink goo. Her pores are large and black, each like an individual cesspool, each blackhead a black hole. There’s a thing or two I have half a mind to say: Don’t tell me you can’t manage a reservation that I made months ago; what’s the point of my making a reservation if you can’t keep track of it? And then I remember that I never made a reservation, and I imagine turning over her little bowl of crème mints, tipping her toothpicks, telling her to shove her creamed spinach up her cunt, and then whisking the kid off to some lousy diner twenty-five miles from here.
    I imagine doing it, then hear Nate say, “You’re disgusting, just like my dad.” It stings, hurts deeply. I don’t want him to think George and I are demented doppelgängers, I don’t want him to have a clue about what goes on in my head.
    “Are you all right?” Nate asks.
    “I think so. Why—am I doing something?” I can’t help but wonder if perhaps I’ve been talking out loud.
    “You seem distracted.”
    “I didn’t get my nap. Ever since the stroke I need a nap every day. As the doctor explained it to me, my brain has been insulted and needs time to recover.”
    The hostess comes back with a short, mustached man who shakes my hand. “Sorry for the delay; we weren’t sure you were coming. I have your table, of course; right this way.”
    It couldn’t have been easier.
    I dig around in my pocket and find twenty bucks to slip the man as he settles us into a prized banquette.
    “Did you really make a reservation?” Nate asks.
    “Your mother must have made it long ago,” I say. “She was very organized.”
    Before the waitress comes to take the drink order, Nate leans forward.
    “FYI,” he says, “it’s a tradition that you order me a beer.”
    “You’re underage.”
    “It’s the tradition,” he says. “You order it, I drink it.”
    I look around; none of the other tables have kids drinking beer.
    “You’re working me,” I say.
    He says nothing.
    “Why don’t you be honest with me? It’s better all around.”
    “Fine, I want a beer,” he says.
    “Fine, have a beer; you’re not driving, you put in a good day’s work, what do I care. Is there one you prefer?”
    “A Guinness if they’ve got it …”
    “Really?”
    “It’s like a meal in a glass. I got used to it last summer, when I was at Oxford.”
    I order one Guinness and a root beer, and when the beer comes I take a sip and then put it down in front of the kid. “Do you want a straw with that?”
    He drinks, closes his eyes, happy. Clearly this is not a first.
    “I saw you checking out the hostess,” he says when he comes up for air. “Maybe you should ask her out? You are single now, aren’t you?”
    If only he knew what I really thought of the hostess. “I had no idea you were such an athlete,” I say, changing the subject. “No one in our family has ever been an athlete.”
    “It doesn’t all come from your family. Mom’s grandmother was a great swimmer, she was the first woman to swim around the island of Manhattan.”
    “Really?”
    “Yep. And her husband, my great-grandfather, was a fire-eater—apparently he had enormous lung capacity.”
    “I never knew.”
    “You can’t assume everything is all about you,” Nate says.
    “What can I bring you boys?” the waitress asks. I notice the Headmaster, still in his skirt, walking in, his pleats flouncing on his hairy, very white knees.
    “How are the crab cakes?” Nate asks.
    “Perfect,” the waitress says. “One hundred percent lump meat.”
    “I’m not sure crab is in season,” I say.
    “I get them every year,” Nate says. “I’ll start with the iceberg and blue cheese, and then have the crab cakes.”
    Why am I picturing vomit everywhere? Beer, blue cheese, crab cakes?
    “I’ll have the iceberg and blue cheese as well and the steak special,” I say.
    “Baked or fried?” the waitress asks.
    “Grilled,” I say.
    “Your potato—baked or fried?”
    “Baked, please.”
    I sip the kid’s root beer. The Headmaster is coming in our direction. “What’s that you’re drinking, son?” he asks Nate.
    “Just