It was a beautiful spring Sunday: warm but not hot and not a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day for a cookout and, spontaneously, I made a couple of phone calls.
“Can you and Judson come for dinner?” I asked my middle sister, and she accepted immediately.
“What are you getting?” she asked; she knows I usually buy dinner at Publix.
“I’m cooking!” I said with enthusiasm. “I just thought I’d throw some burgers on the grill!” There was a long silence.
“You’re cooking?” she asked faintly; in the background I could hear Judson whispering frantically.
“It’s just burgers,” I heard my sister whisper to him. “How bad can it be?” There was another silence during which I assume Judson was pretending to stick his fingers down his throat and gag. “We’ll be there,” my sister said stoutly.
About five minutes later I called my younger brother. “We’d love to come,” he said. I heard his wife, Cecily, whispering in the background. “But how about if you let me do the cooking?” he asked. My brother is an accomplished cook.
“Thanks, but I’m in the mood to cook,” I said. “Besides — it’s just burgers on the grill.”
I heard him sigh heavily. “We’ll be there,” he said grimly. I heard Cecily mumbling in the background. “But Cecily won’t be able to make it,” he said hastily. More mumbling. “She says today is the day she was planning to fertilize the orchids.”
“For the whole day?” I asked, but he had already hung up.
My mood was beginning to sour when the phone rang. It was my older sister. “What a gorgeous day!” she said brightly. “Why don’t you guys come over for a barbecue?”
“Because I’m having a barbecue here,” I said testily. I paused. “Who called you?” I asked, and she was busted.
She changed tactics. “You’ve been so busy at work,” she said. “Why don’t you relax?”
“I am relaxed,” I said through clenched teeth. “What’s the problem?”
She sighed. “Sometimes when you cook,” she said tactfully “it doesn’t end well.” I started to protest but she felt compelled to remind me of various menus that included bloody chicken breast and pork chops charred to the consistency of hockey pucks and the time I dropped an entire tray of cooked burgers onto the lawn.
“It could have happened to anyone,” I said.
“But you served them anyway!” she said.
“It was ground sirloin!” I said defensively, adding, “And no one died.” She couldn’t argue with that. “Are you coming ?” I asked.
“I’ll be there,” she said without inflection.
Rounding out the little party were our neighbors Carlos and Kenny. They are easy: they’ll pretty much eat anything as long as there is plenty of wine to wash it down, and they’re generally too polite to dredge up the past. Except for today.
“You’re cooking?” Kenny asked. “Really? After what happened last time?”
“We agreed we would never speak of that again,” I said shortly.
“We’re the only ones who aren’t,” he said, and laughed out loud. I was silent; in the background I heard Carlos say something in Spanish and Kenny responded to him in Spanish. “Fine, fine, fine’” said Kenny to me. “We’ll come.” In the background I distinctly heard Carlos say, “Dios mio!” Kenny ignored him. “But we have our friend Donald here from New York City,” he said. “Can we bring him?”
“Of course,” I said. “The more the merrier.”
Several hours later as I was getting ready to serve I noticed that despite the fact that I had been watching them like a hawk, the burgers were burnt beyond recognition. A minute later I discovered that the baked potatoes were still hard as rocks. I had steamed some broccoli but I got distracted by the burgers and left it on the stove way too long and by the time I got back the broccoli had assumed the consistency of baby food. There was also a salad, but the lettuce was older than I remembered; I was picking out the brown, slimy pieces when my partner walked into the kitchen. He surveyed the scene and gulped.
“I’d better open another box of wine,” he said. “Or three.”
Over dinner as everyone politely pushed the food around their plates and guzzled wine by the gallon I turned to Donald; he was examining his burger as though it were an alien life form . “So,” I said, “what kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a writer,” he said. “I’m a free-lance food and wine critic.”