Thanksgiving

I took my son to his second favorite steakhouse for dinner on Monday.  His favorite steakhouse shares a name with the neighbour who lived behind my apartment several years ago, when I first moved back to Seattle from London.  The neighbor was a poor gentleman with a history of drug problems; he had dealt with them, mostly, and was a wonderful partner.  My son thought he was terrific, and he watched over him (the neighbor watched my son, that is) several times.  The steakhouse was over the lake on the east side of King County and the cheapest steak they served was roughly a hundred dollars a plate.  For my birthday one year, I took the backyard neighbor, my upstairs neighbor, and my son for dinner at the steakhouse.  It was a glorious meal and reminded me that the United States was only slightly less racist than it was in 1876.  But my backyard neighbor got an amazing steak, with sides, and we all got the opportunity to tweak management.  It was a good day, although I still feel awkward about it.  The backyard neighbor wasn’t comfortable, even though he felt kind of amazing being able to invade the land of white privilege.  The idea of it was, though, that white privelege would have been comfortable with the backyard neighbor.  I was wrong, and that still kind of bothers me.

In any event.  On Monday, my son wanted to go to his second favorite steakhouse, which is a neighborhood place in northeast Seattle.  It was probably the swankiest steakhouse in Seattle in 1962, with vinyl booths and exposed ceilings, and back in the early 60’s you ordered your steak and naturally, the salad, and two sides, came complimentary – a far cry from today where swank means you order your steak and the sides, the salad, the appetizer, are separate both to expand the bill and to expand your options.  The floor was an off-brown thin pile, and the lampshades were still dimmed from cigarette smoke two decades old, back from when you still were legally able to smoke indoors.  We pulled up in my rental truck – rental car shortages meant a pickup truck was the same cost as a sedan, so why not – and the staff, knowing us by sight, gave us a choice table.

The waitress, battle hardened and not a day less than forty nine, asked us if we wanted a drink to start.  My son said “I’d like an apple juice with no ice, please.”

I swooned.  Please, he said.  I’d like, he said.  No ice, he said.  He’s ordering drinks like a pro and he’s six.  He’s my boy.

Of course, the waitress said, and winked at me – every thought I had, had been repeated in her heart, and she was in love with him.  “And you, love?”

“A double Beefeater Gibson up, please.”

There exist certain moments of deja vu which are real.  We all have those moments of “wait, I’ve experienced this before,” but mostly that’s wrong – our minds fill in details which never existed and thus make us think we are reliving something but, in fact, we are not.  But when I asked for my drink, I realized suddenly that I had a kind of deja vu, only I wasn’t reliving my own life, I was reliving my father’s life.

I was maybe six, maybe seven years old.  My dad had taken me to F. Parker Reiddy’s, the premier restaurant of Portland, Maine, at the time (don’t think too much of this, those of you who read the New York Times and know of Eventide Oysters and Fore Street Grill and a dozen even more hip places which have displaced them in the pantheon).  He took me out to lunch once a year, and I’d order a Roy Rogers (if I remember, a ginger ale with Grenadine and a cherry) and he’d order a double Beefeater Gibson on the rocks.  I’d order the steak tips, he’d order a New York strip steak, both medium rare, and we’d have a father-son luncheon of 1950s perfection.

Nothing of that sort had happened yet in Wedgwood.  But my son and I, we had entered a kind of trance, a kind of dance.

We looked at the menus and I asked him what he was going to have.  He said clam strips, and I asked him what I should have.  A New York strip, Dad, he said, and looking at the menu, he said And you should get the eight ounce.  I don’t think we’re that hungry tonight.

The drinks came back.  He sipped his apple juice, no ice of course.  I swirled the pickled onions in my Gibson and asked him, inevitably, would you like to try one?

Mmm hmm, he nodded.  Just like I had, back at F. Parker Reiddy’s, back thirty-eight something years ago.  I stuck the toothpick in my mouth, ate one of the onions, and handed the stick to my son.  He looked at it, sucked at the remaining onion, and said This tastes like your drink.

Yes, I said.  That tastes just like the drink your grandfather likes too.  But the really good thing is the onion.  It’s salty and oniony and I know you like both tastes.  Bite into it.

He did.  He munched.  He smiled.  This is really good, he said.

I remembered the same sensation.  Salt, sweet, bite, faint bit of gin and vermouth, smell of my father, smell of being alive with my father, smell of knowing faintly – and at the same realizing entirely – a world that I couldn’t understand of my father.  Knowing I had been initiated and it was good, not candy not apple pie not Mom’s chicken gravy good, but Dad’s good, a good which was separate and perfect and yet not knowable without being a part of Mom’s good either.  And not good too.  Dad’s world wasn’t all good, like Mom tried to pretend her world to be.  His world was salty and raw and delicious and wrong.  And more understandable.  It made more sense.  It all came together.

He swallowed and looked at me.  Could I have another, he said.

Yes, you can.  Finish your apple juice.  I’ll finish my drink.  I’ll get extra onions on my next Gibson.  I get to have two, but you can have the rest.

The waitress brought our salads – iceberg lettuce, blue cheese dressing, salami bits and Cheeze-Its.  He got my salami, the Cheeze-Its went into a bread plate.  We devoured the salty-buttery-creamy lettuce, and the waitress came and cooed at how he was the only six year old in the neighborhood who could devour such a savoury salad.  I finished my drink and asked for another; he asked for some water.  I asked for extra onions, winking at the boy, and the waitress – without judgment – understood.  She took the empty salad plates and smiled at both of us.  I think she smiled extra at me, knowing I was reliving something.  This steakhouse had been around since 1962, the vinyl and the lampshades and, probably, some of the staff since 1962.  This wasn’t the first ritual they had noticed.  She knew her role, she understood the magic she had performed, even if she engaged in the ritual nightly and the magic usually never came.  Tonight, though, the magic was there in full force, the swirling sparks of mystery whirling above our table, above the paper napkins and curled bamboo toothpicks and empty martini glasses and basket of rolls and butter.

I looked at my son and saw myself.  He looked at me and smiled.  How could he know we were repeating a ritual.  And there was no ritual.  It was just a dinner, just a conversation.  We talked about his teachers, and we talked about the games he had played.  He asked about my work during the day.  What ritual, I realized.  This was just him, my son, and me.

The steak and the clam strips came, and they were perfect.  Not perfect in the way the high-priced steakhouse with the same name as my back door neighbor was, but my son only asks for that once a year at most, and forgets about it quickly.  Every week he wants to go to Wedgwood Broiler, and watch me have a Gibson, and share a steak and a plate of clam strips, and talk about my work and his life.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Give Thanks again.  Happy Thanksgiving.