Blue String by Tess Thompson

Author:Tess Thompson [Thompson, Tess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tess Thompson

13

Wyatt

After supper that evening, Chris and I each took a modest dish of ice cream out to the patio. Teagan remained in the kitchen, cleaning up our dinner. She’d insisted on cleaning since I’d grilled the chicken, made Mama’s potato salad, and steamed green beans. I hadn’t cooked much in the last few years, usually choosing the takeout option. When alone, cooking a meal always seemed silly and a little pathetic. But growing up, as soon as I was old enough, I’d taken over cooking dinner for Mama and me. She was always exhausted after a ten-hour shift at the diner. The last thing she wanted in the evenings was anything to do with food. Around age nine, I’d asked her if I could make spaghetti one night. After that, I started going through her recipe box, making all the old family dishes. My grandmother had written them on index cards in old-fashioned cursive. At first, the dinners weren’t great. Who knew, for example, that spaghetti noodles had to be stirred or they’d stick together? My grandmother hadn’t thought to write down those kinds of specifics. In her day, maybe everyone knew these things, but a nine-year-old boy did not. Mama, bless her heart, never complained. She said, after a bite of the stuck-together spaghetti, how interesting it was that I’d made them that way. “Most people like them the other way, but I think this way is very innovative. You’re always doing things just a little different.” She’d beamed at me then, as if I were the most clever boy in the world.

Regardless of my first disastrous meals, cooking had become my thing. Even in high school when I was busy with sports or music after school, I’d come home to put a meal on for her. She’d change out of her uniform and take a quick shower while I finished dinner. Then she’d sit on the couch and I’d turn on the soaps I’d recorded for her during the day. I’d put our plates on TV trays and we’d watch the two soaps back-to-back. I knew the stories of those characters as well as she did. Not that I’d ever have admitted it to my buddies.

After we finished our recordings, we’d turn on a sitcom or whatever else was on and watch until it was time for bed. Unless I hadn’t finished my homework, in which case, I went to the kitchen table and studied until I was done. She didn’t ask for much, but she insisted I do well in school. Even if I ended up making it with my music, she would say, there’s no excuse not to take advantage of school if you could.

This might sound like a bleak existence to those who lived in fancy houses and had fathers, not just a worn-out mama. But to us it was normal. We were as happy as the next folks. Maybe more so, because there was never a doubt how much we loved each other.

When I was a junior in high school, a local bar hired me to play music on Friday and Saturday nights.

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