Chapter 33: Saturday Evening

We stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, and clasped the hands of those next to us. Dad calls this a family ritual. He says rituals are important. I suppose they are but some rituals are better than others and this one isn’t my favorite. We don’t do a family circle all the time, just on special occasions. They always remind me of the circles that sports people get into when they want to rev up the team. I always feel cheated at the end when we don’t all put our hands into the middle and yell “Freeman” or something equally stupid.

I was standing between Dad and Liz. She had her dad on the other side of her. Across the circle from me, Pearl was standing between Dan and Tara and looking around curiously. I suppose when you go into someone else’s house, you expect them to do things a bit differently. Pearl seemed like she was happy to join in with this, even though she had no clue what was going on. I figured that was a good thing. I decided that if I ever landed up in someone else’s house and they started doing weird stuff that I would try to be like Pearl and go along with whatever happened.

Angie was standing in the circle between Mum and Dan. It was the first time she was actually joining the circle properly as a child rather than as a baby. I mean, last time we did one, Mum had held Angie in her arms. I know it counts as being in the circle but I don’t think that’s the same as actually taking up a place in the circle. I smiled at Angie but she was too busy admiring her purple shoes to notice me.

Dad cleared his throat and all the shuffling and arranging died out as everyone looked at him.

“The main reason we’re here is a birthday but before we get to that, we should welcome our guests. Dan, would you start.”

“This is Pearl Wong. She’s a friend of mine from college.”

Pearl smiled and it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “Hi everyone! Thanks for inviting me into your home!”

We all chorused hello and welcome to Pearl.

I know it sounds a bit strange for Dan to introduce Pearl to us when everyone had already met, but like I said – this is a family ritual and introducing and welcoming guests is a part of it.

Dad turned to look at Liz. “Liz we’ve done this a couple of times with you over the last few years and welcomed you as a guest each time. You’re virtually a part of our family now and have been for some time so it seems a bit silly to keep describing you as a guest. But you have someone with you today. As a part of our family, maybe you would like to introduce your guest to us.”

Liz threw a doubtful glance in my direction but then she nodded to Dad and turned to her head to smile at her own dad. “This is my father, George Davidson.”

Mr D. grinned at everyone around the circle. “Heya folks! I’m glad to be here.”

Everyone chorused hello and welcome.

We all looked at Mum because it was her turn to speak, “Welcome to our home, Pearl and George, and welcome to our hearts. May your visit with us bring you joy.”

“Now,” said Dad, “does anyone have anything they want to share with us?”

He looked at Dan again. Dan always gets to go first because he’s the oldest. “Last night was the last game of the season. That means it might be the last game of college football for me. I say might be, because I’m applying to go to State for two years to finish off my degree – they have a scholarship for their engineering course that I have a chance at getting. If I get in, I’ll try for a walk-on place in their football team. Who knows, I might get lucky.”

There was a moment of silence after that. I don’t think he’d talked to anyone recently about his plans after college so that was genuine news for everyone. I looked down at the floor. I could hear Mum and Dad both making happy comments. I had mixed feelings about it – I was happy for Dan that he had a chance to make a better future, but State University seemed so far away. Dan would have to move there; move out of home; move away from me.

“Anyway,” continued Dan, “it was awesome to have Dad and Bec and Pearl and her friends there last night to support me...”

“And see you score a touchdown!” Dad butted in.

“ ... and I got to score a touchdown,” finished Dan.

I kept looking at the floor. I’d been kind of hoping that Dan would mention my touchdown and stuff so that I wouldn’t have to say it. I sighed quietly to myself and looked at my feet. I lifted my toes up off the floor and rocked back onto my heels, then rolled forward again.

It was Tara’s turn to speak. “I really want to say how sorry I am that I messed up so badly last night.” The misery in her voice went right through me like a spear. I looked up at her and I saw that she was truly regretting having gone to the party and done all that stuff – it wasn’t just her being unhappy because she was being punished. I could see a tear making a trail down her cheek. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hug her tight. She was stuck between Pearl and Mr D. Neither of them was family so neither could help her.

Mum seemed to realize that. She suddenly broke out of her position and walked across the circle. She wrapped her arms around Tara and squeezed. I could see Mum whispering in Tara’s ear but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It didn’t take long before Tara nodded and straightened up. Mum let her go and returned to her place in the circle.

As soon as she was back in place, Mum looked at me – then everyone looked at me. Did I mention how this isn’t my favorite family ritual? This is the part I hate. This is the part where everyone looks at me and expects me to say something. Everything I could possibly say, they knew already – but they wanted me to say it again, just because! And that’s hard for me to do. It’s really stupid. This is my family, people that I love and people that love me. I have no problem sitting with them around a table and joining in with discussions. I have no problem talking to any one of them – making speeches to them even, like the speech I made to Dad. The thing I hate is them all looking at me and me making a speech in front of everyone.

I chewed on my bottom lip and looked around the circle. Everyone was staring at me and waiting. The people who knew how hard this was for me, which was pretty much everyone except for maybe Pearl and Mr D, had encouraging looks on their faces. I stared into space and tried to make everyone go out of focus – sometimes that helped.

“I really had fun last night at the football. It was really...”

At that point I stopped because I noticed that everyone was leaning towards me, trying to hear what I was saying. It was like a cartoon when the characters all lean on an angle because of the wind or whatever. It was pretty funny, except that it wasn’t funny because it meant my voice wasn’t working properly.

“It was really fun,” I finished off lamely and looked down at my feet.

The next few minutes disappeared into a kind of foggy blur. Vaguely I was aware of Dad prompting Liz to contribute and her responding but I have no idea what she said. Then Mum and Dad each said something. Finally Dad started his speech about dinner. I know what he said, but it’s more like I remember all the other times he’s given that speech rather than because I listened to it this time.

“A long time ago, I forget when, I heard a story. I don’t know which part of Asia it comes from. In fact I don’t even know if it’s true or not, but it’s a great story so I’ve always remembered it. The story goes that there is a place somewhere in Asia where they describe hell as a place where a huge banquet is spread out. The sinners who deserve to be there are seated around the banquet but their hands have been replaced with long chopsticks. The chopsticks are so long that they can’t bring the food up to their mouths. So the sinners sit around all that glorious food and they starve for eternity because they can’t feed themselves.”

“The story goes that heaven involves exactly the same situation. The people in heaven also sit around a wonderful banquet with chopsticks so long that they can’t feed themselves. The difference is that those people use their chopsticks to feed each other. They rely on each other to feed them the delicacies set out in front of them. Everyone is well fed and happy.”

“We’re going to have our own little slice of heaven right here, right now. The simple rule, the only rule, is that you can’t feed yourself. Does anyone have a cold or anything like that? No? Well then, let’s get started.”

It’s good that nobody had a cold because what we were about to do isn’t very hygienic. As Mum once said, living together as a family, you tend to end up catching colds and things from each other anyway so this only hurries up the process a bit.

Mum and Tara got the food out of the oven where it had been keeping hot and set it out on the table which had been pushed against one wall. Dan got Pearl to help him walk around and hand out little plastic disposable bibs – it can get a bit messy. Each of us got a bowl of some different type of food and a pair of chopsticks. Dougal, Sampson and Lucy had been lined up at the back of the table and the banquet was spread around them like they were the lords and the lady of the feast.

I’d dug myself into a pretty deep hole during the family circle and if this had been a normal meal I might have fled to my bedroom and hid for a while before I was ready to face the world again. The thing was that this wasn’t a normal meal – it was like the most fun you could have with food. A part of me didn’t want to miss out on that and that part of me pushed and dragged the rest of me until I was out of the hole and standing in the kitchen with the rest of my family. Okay, my voice hadn’t come back, but the rest of me was there.

I discovered a bowl of Kung Pao Chicken in my hands. It was fairly mild but still too spicy for Angie. To help Liz understand how the system works I went to her first. Carefully I hooked up a piece of chicken and fed it to her, straight into her mouth. She licked her lips and chewed on it. Then I gestured to her and she fished out a sliver of meat from her bowl and tried to feed me with it but she didn’t have a good grip and it dropped – fortunately Liz was quick enough to catch it in the bowl. She tried again with her tongue poked firmly out the side of her mouth. This time she successfully transferred the meat from the bowl to my mouth. It was teriyaki beef and it was delicious.

We exchanged smiles and Liz told me that now she understood what was going on and that it was going to be fun. Then we fed each other a bit of vegetable, trying to both do it at the same time which was a bit of a challenge. We succeeded, and we somehow avoided making a mess so that was a small victory. Then we each turned away to find someone else. Liz turned to her father who’d been watching us to figure out what he was supposed to do. I went to Mum because she had the sweet and sour shrimp which is my all-time favorite Chinese food and I didn’t want to miss out.

So that’s basically what happened. The aim is to end up having tasted a bit of everything, which also means you’ve spent a bit of time with everyone. There was an enormous amount of laughing and talking (except from me) and quite a bit of mess ended up on the plastic bibs or on the floor but we had wet cloths ready for that.

Angie was using a fork rather than chopsticks, but in every other way she joined in with the rest of us. She had great fun guiding forks full of special fried rice into everyone’s mouth and was giggling almost constantly. I guess that we’d all fed her that way at one time or another and this was her chance for revenge. Since she couldn’t eat the Kung Pao, I fed her some fried rice instead.

Mr D. was also having hysterics. He’d ended up with noodles and he’d figured out that the best way to feed someone noodles was to dangle a long string above a person’s head and have them tilt their head back so he could lower the noodle into their mouth. The problem was he then started to tease people and move the noodles further and further back to see how far he could get them to lean over backwards. I think he met his match with Pearl though, with her gymnastics background she folded herself over backwards and sucked up the noodle without a murmur – but she was grinning an awful lot.

It was nice – no, it was more than nice ... It was wonderful, spending a few moments with each person in my family and with the others. It was really special having a chance to put food into their mouths and seeing the different way each person took and enjoyed the food. It’s an awesome feeling to have each person select something from their bowl and feed it to me. Sharing food like that is an amazingly special thing to do. It left me feeling closer to everyone as a person – as if by simply feeding each other we had strengthened the bonds that connected us.

Eventually everyone got to the stage where they’d had enough to eat. I ended up with a huge smile on my face. Like I said, it’s the most fun you can possibly have with food.

Somehow Liz and I got volunteered to scrape out all the bowls and stuff while Tara went around taking the disposable bibs off people and doing the disposing. Mum took the lid off her big steamer that had been sitting on the stove and used the tongs to distribute hot towels to everyone. Washing faces is an absolutely essential way of finishing that little family tradition and the hot, damp face-washers feel glorious.

Dan looked at his watch and said we should get a move on if we were going to spend time at the carnival. The weather forecast had been for rain overnight so jackets seemed sensible. Liz and I retreated to my room to pick up our jackets.

Liz picked up a book that was sitting on my bedside table. “Parenting Teens 101,” she read. “What the heck are you reading this for?”

I shrugged. “I went to the school library. I wanted to read about how to be a teenager but all those books were out on loan already. I found this among my parents’ books. It’s pretty interesting. Somehow, I don’t think either of The Parents have read it.”

“Trust you to try figuring out how to be a teenager by reading a parenting book. Is this where all that stuff came from that you said to your father this afternoon?”

“Yeah, sort of!”

I took the book out of her hand and replaced it with her jacket. I put the book back down, picked up my own jacket and we were ready to go out.

Mum and Tara were bathing Angie so we poked our heads into the bathroom and said our goodbyes.

Our two dads had settled into the living room and opened beers. They both looked like they were content to sit there and drink beer and yarn for the evening. A moment of plotting and giggling in the doorway led to Liz marching up to my dad and sitting on his lap while at the same time I went over to her dad and plopped myself down in his lap.

Mr D. looked at me a little bit surprised. He was more surprised when I leant forward and kissed him softly on the mouth and said, “Bye, Daddy. I pwomise to be good.”

I heard giggles from the other side of the room as Liz said more or less the same thing to my dad.

I poked Mr D. in his broad chest. “Don’t drink too much beer or you won’t be able to ride home.”

I hugged him again. “I wuv you, Daddy!”

He pushed me away with a big grin on his face. “Get out of here, you. Have a good time at the carnival. And tell that faithless sister of yours – you know, the one who used to be my daughter but seems to have abandoned me – tell her to have a good time, too.”

I laughed and climbed off his lap.

“Wait!” called my dad and pulled a handful of bills out of his shirt pocket and waved them at me. “This might come in useful.”

Without speaking, Mr D. reached into his jeans for some money and held it out for Liz. We exchanged glances and Liz took the money from my Dad while I took the money from Mr D.

“Thanks, Daddy!” we chorused in unison. Then we joined hands and skipped out of the room. Later we compared the haul and found that each dad had handed over exactly the same amount of cash. We suspected a conspiracy – dads can plot and scheme too you know!

Outside Liz leaned against Dan’s car and settled herself to wait for Dan. I wandered over to where Mr D. had parked his bike. It sat there on the nature strip like the statue of some huge, hulking monster just waiting for a wizard to wave his wand and make it spring to life. I ran my hands over the painted letters on its side.

“Hey, do you remember when I first saw your dad’s bike?” I said to Liz. “I said I thought it was cool how your dad had his name painted on the side.”

Liz laughed. “Yeah! That was pretty dumb.”

“Well, how was I to know your dad’s first name isn’t Harley?”

In the car, Pearl and Liz spent the first few minutes raving to each other about our little slice of heaven. They both quickly agreed that it was intense and they’d love to do it again. Then Pearl wanted to play some more Car Monopoly. That meant we had to explain it to Liz. Then we had to allocate her a piece which ended up being the wheelbarrow. So we played Monopoly. I was in charge of keeping track of the board of course, but that was fairly easy. It was huge fun and we all laughed a lot. Paying for things turned into just about anything crazy you could do in the car. Well mostly in the car.

One time when Liz landed on Marylebone Station, we were stopped at the traffic lights, so she jumped out of the car and did a crazy dance in the street outside the car until the traffic lights changed and she had to get back in the car again.

Oh, and one time Dan landed on Fleet Street but Pearl already owned that so he had to pay rent. Dan pulled into a 7-eleven store, ran inside and bought her a bunch of flowers. It was kind of sweet, but mostly it was really funny.

There was lots of other stuff too. The worst thing I had to do was when I landed on Chance. Somehow during the change from Monopoly on a board to Monopoly in a car, Chance has turned into Dare. It seems like that anyway. Pearl told Dan to stop near a bus stop. There was a really old guy sitting at the bus stop. He looked a bit lonely and sad. Pearl gave me a flower from her bunch of flowers and said I should go give him the flower and cheer him up. That was pretty hard for me to do because he was a total stranger.