The Lost Pancakes

People often tell me I sound bitter when I don’t mean to. For that reason, I’ll start by saying the move did me a world of good.

“The move” – that’s what we always called it inside the family. I was fifteen and fresh off an awful freshman year at high school in my old hometown, rife with bullying – some of it from a teacher – and underperforming on my part. Here’s what you need to know about my hometown: it was a down-at-the-heels New England milltown, full of broken families and kids who saw no future except maybe the army, and adults in dead-end jobs if they were working at all. You can imagine what that was like for a quiet, shy boy who didn’t like sports and did like reading and bright colors and sappy movies.

Dad finally got his big promotion that summer, and we moved 600 miles to an affluent suburb. My new school was just what you’d expect in an affluent suburb, with plenty of cliques and teenage angst running rampant, but no one knew of my past and I made plenty of friends and my grades soared. I did often feel like an extra in a John Hughes movie, but that’s not the bad thing it sounds like. The worst I can say about those three great years is that I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself that we didn’t make our escape there years earlier. But on prom night, as I waltzed Kathleen McCarthy from the French club around the floor, enjoying the envious looks from the sidelines almost as much as I enjoyed her arms around me, it occurred to me that if my life had been this great all along, I would never have appreciated how much my life improved after the move.

Regrettably, all that positive change did not come about all at once on the last day of ninth grade. If only! At least my grades were somewhat better that quarter. I still remember the joyful ride home in the summer rain on my mother’s old bike (my own having been stolen some months before), for once looking forward to showing off my report card with no C’s. But Mom was still a nervous wreck over the move and angry at the world in general, and my kid sister was growing brattier by the day. One morning in late June, I awoke to her pouring water over my head. At first I thought I was dreaming of diving into a pool, until I remembered I wouldn’t bring my favorite pillow into the water with me, but here it was, all soaking wet. My eyes flew open to find Heather snickering at me as she dribbled the water onto my hair.

“What the hell, you little brat!” I grabbed at her shirt and knocked the now-empty glass out of her hand.

“Mom!” Heather shrieked. “Help! He’s after me!”

“Me?! I’m after –”

Heather and I both knew the score: whoever got their two cents in first, that was what Mom would believe. If Mom had been downstairs, I might have had the time to get my thoughts together and get the words out. But she was right across the hall, and stuck her head in the door before I could do or say anything. “Andrew!” she growled. “You let your sister go right now, you shithead!”

“But I –”

“But I!” she mimicked. “You know I don’t ask twice, mister. Now both of you’d better behave yourselves. I’ve got to have the house ready for a realtor in one hour!” Only then did she notice I was wet. “Andrew, what the hell are you doing pouring water all over your sheets? Now you’ll have to change the sheets before the realtor gets here.”

“But – ”

“Shut up, stupid! And don’t let me see you touch your sister like that again! No breakfast until you change the sheets!” With that, she was off downstairs in her usual huff of rage.

“What is the big idea?” I snapped at Heather, who was still standing outside my bedroom door, looking smug.

“I didn’t mean to spill it on your head, Andy. I was gonna stick your hand in it.”

“You what?”

“That’s supposed to make you pee.”

“I know! What’s the big idea!?”

“ANDREW!” came Mom’s voice from downstairs.

I swallowed my rage and set about stripping the bed. There was no use pushing things any farther with Heather; we both knew she had won. We knew Mom would never hear another word on the subject. We knew when Dad came home, he would listen very politely and remind me that Heather was only nine and everyone was stressed out and I would just have to be a grownup for a change.

With all my friends off to summer camp or staying with relatives out of town, I spent those last few weeks in my room, reading and listening to my records and trying to think of anything but what was going on just outside my bedroom door.

Remarkably, the big day finally arrived without actual violence. In the final week as it approached, Mom and Dad told us kids we could each choose one thing we wanted to do one last time. Heather wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s. I knew better than to try to explain that there’d be one of those in our new town – after all, it wouldn’t be that one. At least I got to spend a wonderful hour or so playing air hockey and arcade games.

My choice: breakfast at Rosemont Hall.

Rosemont Hall was on the wrong side of the tracks, but it was a perfectly clean and safe diner, and its pancakes were the best in town. The only trouble was, I only knew that thanks to Jimmy.

You probably had a Jimmy too when you were a kid: the friend your parents couldn’t stand, and deep down you knew they were right, but you didn’t care because he was so much fun to be around – at least until he got you in real trouble. Jimmy never got me in real trouble, but he did beat me up a couple of times. A couple of summers before the move, when I’d come home with a black eye to learn the cops had called to confirm I wasn’t in any trouble because I had tried to stop Jimmy from breaking into the old Bernstein place on Peak Street, I’d been forbidden from ever seeing him again.

Alas, that was several months after my one and only sleepover at Jimmy’s place. In the morning, his mother and her boyfriend had brought us to Rosemont Hall for breakfast. It wasn’t just the pancakes, although as I said, they were the best in town. It was also the salt-of-the-earth fellow customers, laughing and enjoying the Sunday morning and actually seeming comfortable with one another’s company, and the waitresses with their thick accents and the way they doted on us, and didn’t even bat an eye when Jimmy ordered Coke with his breakfast. (I’d been tempted to do the same but I’d gone with orange juice – even when Mom didn’t know where I was, there were lines I just couldn’t cross.)

On the morning of our last full day in the house I’d always called home, Dad finally relented. “So where’s this Rosemont Hall?” he asked me as we piled into the car.

“Down at the far end of Hall Street, corner of Seames Road,” I said.

“I don’t like that neighborhood one bit,” Mom grumbled.

The drive down Hall Street was a story unto itself, from the old but well-kept houses on our block to the seedier parts along Bridge Street, into the worst slums of the city and back out into the only borderline slums. I admired it all, one last time, telling myself yet again I should remember all I could about my hometown. For better or worse, it was what made me me. I even managed to ignore Heather’s poking and pulling my shirt up.

Now, it had been a few years – a long time when you’re only fifteen – so I didn’t remember there was no “Please wait to be seated” sign, or whether or not you were in fact supposed to wait. I also didn’t remember smoking was permitted. So we stood uncertainly just inside the door, fielding a look or two from already-seated folks (but I honestly don’t remember more than that), Mom clutching her purse like she was being mugged. When the smoke made Heather start to cough, I spotted a free table near the window and figured if we were supposed to wait, they’d tell us.

When we were seated without objection, I immediately set about studying the menu in depth. The best pancakes in town, but also waffles, French toast, omelettes, and this would be my last chance at any of them. I changed my mind a dozen times or more in that first minute of wonderful anticipation.

“Are we invisible?” Dad said.

“They’re busy,” I offered, and it was true, they were. With that settled, I made up my mind: pancakes it was. I knew how good they were. Everything else was a gamble.

I’m not sure when Heather started whimpering. I do know I was aware of it once I’d made my decision. Not wanting her to ruin this for me too, I looked around to catch a waitress’ eye. It was a race against time.

Time won. Mom spoke up for the first time, glaring at Heather. “Everything you see disgusts you, doesn’t it?” she said in a tone that we all knew meant she felt the same.

“Yes!” Heather said, on the verge of tears.

“That does it.” Mom scooped up her purse again and stood up. Dad and Heather were out of their seats as well a beat later, the latter with a dramatic sigh of relief. I had but a moment of denial to work through before I followed suit, my heart breaking as I saw a waitress stopped in her tracks near our table, looking as surprised as I was defeated.

Outside, Dad said to Heather, “What do you mean it disgusted you? I saw pancakes, I saw waffles, you love those!”

“I didn’t!” Heather protested. “I saw stuff like pork chops and meatloaf. Pork chops for breakfast?”

“She was looking at the wrong side of the menu,” I said. With one last reed of hope, I asked, “Can’t we go back and have her look at the right side?”

“Can’t we go back!” Dad sounded like it was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard. “We’re in there ten minutes and they don’t even notice, everybody looks at us like we’re from another planet, they’re smoking…”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I grumbled under my breath. But it was no use, and I knew it.

Back in the car, Mom broke the stony silence. “Who brought you there, Andrew?”

I was still trying to work up the courage to say it was Jimmy’s mother, when Dad saved the day. “Leo’s mother,” he said.

“That figures,” Mom said.

I never dared ask if Dad really thought it was Leo’s mother. I had told him the truth before but it was just like him to forget. Leo was my best friend, and his mother was an awful basket case, always blaming Leo for his father running off and reminding him that she hadn’t even wanted him – but Mom liked Leo himself, almost like a surrogate son. So Dad’s answer, although wrong, was the safest answer.

Not that Mom was quite done twisting the knife. As we made our way down Seames Road to downtown, she said, “My son likes scum,” with a cry in her voice.

The grilled muffins and eggs we finally got for breakfast at Drake’s were great. But the Rosemont Hall pancakes were to remain but a sweet memory.