I hear the knock and I bolt into action.
“I’ve got it!”
I hurry down the hall, but before I open the door, I pause, take a breath, and run my fingers through my hair. It’s important not to seem anxious and frantic. Especially at times like this, when you are anxious and frantic.
“Hi,” I say as I crack the door open to reveal a smiling Ben.
“Hey,” he says in his superspecial dreamy way. The swelling in his cheek has gone down, and I no longer worry that I’ve destroyed the masterpiece that is his face.
I lean out and whisper, “You know you don’t have to do this. It’s not too late to run away.”
“I want to,” he says. “Besides, I brought these.”
He holds up a small bouquet of flowers, and I fling the door open.
“You got me flowers?” I’ll admit it. There’s a hint of giddy in my voice.
“Actually,” he responds with a cringe, “they’re for your mother. I wanted to thank her for inviting me to dinner.”
“Hmmm,” I say, with raised eyebrows. “So that’s how you’re going to play it. And here I thought you always knew the right thing to say.”
We walk down the hall toward the kitchen.
“Ben’s here!” I announce. “He brought flowers.”
“For me?” Dad says, looking up from the pot of spaghetti he’s stirring.
“No,” I respond. “They’re for . . . Mom.”
Dad cocks his head to the side and wags a wooden spoon at us, splattering some red sauce across the stove. “You better watch it, son. That woman’s married and she’ll break your heart.”
My mother comes in from the dining room shaking her head. “Would you two give the boy a break? Sometimes I feel like I live with wild animals.”
Without missing a beat, Dad and I both do jungle animal noises, which only makes her shake her head that much more. She ignores us and takes the flowers from Ben.
“Thank you, Ben. They’re lovely.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” Ben says.
She motions to Dad and me. “It certainly would have been understandable if you had declined. How’s that cut?”
“Better,” he says. “Thanks for that, too.”
Mom was the one who treated the cut when we got back to the house. She checks to make sure it’s healing okay.
“Needless to say, living with these two has made it necessary for me to develop basic first aid skills.”
Dad and I do the jungle noises again, and Mom just shakes her head.
Even though Ben’s been hanging out at the house on a regular basis and has eaten with us on multiple occasions, this is the first time he’s “officially” been invited for dinner. My mother has some old school South in her, and she wants to make sure he knows that he’s welcome in our house. She’s even insisting that we eat in the dining room instead of the kitchen like we usually do.
At first I didn’t get it, but judging by the flowers and the fact that Ben wore nice khakis and a button-down shirt, I think that she may have been onto something I missed. Once we put the flowers in the vase and finish setting the table, I have to admit that it does feel special.
Ever the English teacher, Mom asks him, “Have you had to do any summer reading for school?”
I start to answer no for him because I haven’t seen him near a book, but he surprises me.
“I just finished The Grapes of Wrath a few nights ago. It was great. Steinbeck’s my favorite author.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“Which part? That I just finished The Grapes of Wrath? Or that Steinbeck is my favorite author?”
“Either.”
He shrugs. “You never asked.”
“I love Steinbeck too,” says my mother. “Although I prefer Of Mice and Men.”
“That book’s too sad for me,” he says.
“You don’t think The Grapes of Wrath is sad?” she asks.
“Incredibly sad,” he says. “But somehow it has a sense of hopefulness about it.”
I look across the table at my mother, and the only way to accurately describe her reaction is to say that she is actually swooning.
“Why, yes it does,” she says, with a glow to her cheeks. “There certainly is a lucky English teacher up in Madison, Wisconsin.”
“Did I miss the memo about book club?” I ask.
“No,” says Dad. “It’s not really book club. He’s just kissing up to your mother.”
Ben shoots Mom a look. “I’m not kissing up. I really do like Steinbeck.”
“I know,” she says. “We can talk books later.”
“Great,” he says.
The conversation continues, and a few minutes later Ben finishes a bite of spaghetti and goes to say something but stops.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I was going to say how great the spaghetti is, but then I realized your dad would just think I was kissing up to him, too.”
“No, no, no. Feel free to compliment the spaghetti,” Dad says. “That’s totally different.”
“How is that different?” I ask.
“Because unlike the collected works of John Steinbeck, the epic greatness of my spaghetti sauce is indisputable. Go ahead, son, kiss away.”
“I want to make it when I go back home, so can you tell me what jar it comes in?”
My mother and I burst out laughing, and Dad’s eyes open wide in horror.
“A jar? You think I make spaghetti sauce out of a jar? I’ll have you know my mother was born in Italy. And not the one in Epcot. The real one.”
Dad loves giving people a hard time. He calls it “bustin’ their chops,” but I refuse to use that term because I’m not some high school boy in the 1980s. But the truth is, he loves it even more when someone is willing to bust his right back.
“I’m just kidding,” Ben says. “It’s delicious. Is it your mom’s recipe?”
“Actually, no,” Dad says, bursting with pride. “I invented it.”
“I think ‘developed’ would be a more appropriate usage,” the English teacher across the table from me says. “‘Invention’ usually implies some sort of groundbreaking shift or advancement.”
“Like I said,” Dad replies with his booming voice, “I ‘invented’ it.”
Mom and I laugh because we know that Dad has just begun. He could talk about his sauce for hours.
“I’ve spent years perfecting it. It is perfect, don’t you think, Ben?”
“‘Perfect’ is exactly the word I would use.”
“And I’ve never written the recipe down. I keep it all up here.” He taps his right temple. “I make it for my team the night before every big race.”
“Then let’s hope it pays off tomorrow.”
“It most definitely will.”
While the inspiration for the meal may have been good manners, the menu selection was all about carbo-loading. Tomorrow Ben and Dad are driving to Cocoa Beach for the Rocket Run, a 10K road race whose name was inspired by the nearby space center. They’ve trained together a couple times a week and have turned it into some sort of male bonding thing.
“The trick is that you have to make sure the sauce is not too heavy. My mom’s sauce is great, but if you ate it the night before a race, it would slow you down. This is light but still has enough kick to make it worthwhile.”
“Too bad it doesn’t come in a jar,” Ben says after another forkful. “I’m sure my team back home in Madison would love it.”
“I can teach you to make it,” Dad says out of the blue. “You’ve just got to promise not to tell anyone else. We’ll keep it between you and me.”
“I promise.”
Ben’s happy. Dad’s happy. I, however, am . . . not happy.
“Excuse me?” I say.
“What’s the matter?” asks my dad.
“When I asked you how to make it, you said that I couldn’t be trusted.”
“That’s because you’re terrible with secrets,” explains my father. “But I trust Ben.”
I know this started out as a joke, but there’s a part of me that is semi-offended here. I really did ask him to teach me, and he really did refuse.