“Did you know that we have a dead horse in the bathtub? “ my mother asked my father.
“No, dearie, I was totally unaware of that.” my father replied, leaning in closer to my mother, across the white tablecloth that covered the restaurant table for two.
“I have it on the best of authority.” my mother added coyly, lifting her glass to her lips and fluttering her eyes at my grinning father. They continued to enjoy the sumptuous meal in front of them.
After a bit they paused eating. My mother leaned forward, and in hushed tones, so that my father had to almost touch his ear to her lips, she said, as if asking a question, “One two three, four five ? “ She gazed at him with breathless anticipation, waiting for my father’s response.
“Six, seven eight, nine ten.” he replied, with quiet confidence, a knowing smile on his face.
They resumed savoring their entrees, slow bites, between smoky glances to one another. When dinner was over, they would pay their check, and exit the restaurant hand in hand.
* * * * * * *
Mom liked quality of life. She didn’t have the means to indulge in luxuries, except for the rare occasion. She would do without all things frivolous for months at a time, saving dollars and dimes, and then treat my father and herself to a five star restaurant dinner “night out”. It was her great joy to work toward the reward of that evening out event.
When they would treat themselves to those dinners, it was to my mother’s distress to see restaurant patrons, who could obviously afford the privilege on a regular basis, sitting across from one another for the entire meal, not uttering one word between them.
“They all look so unhappy,” she would lament. “They don’t talk to one another at all !”
Mom put forth so much effort to get her night out, that she felt it unfair to have to be surrounded by all that lack of appreciation between dining couples. “The least they can do is pretend to be having a good time!” she would tease, but really meaning it sincerely. “It just ruins my atmosphere !”
Mom was big on “atmosphere”. She made sure we had candlelight for every dinner at the kitchen table, and sometimes for gloomy weather breakfasts. Fragrant food, cloth napkins, good china, and candlelight, all the time.
“Why save the good china and silverware for when company comes to dinner? “Why can’t we eat from the good china all the time ?” she would ask. “Who made the rule that we have to put it away once the company is gone?” she wanted to know.
We eventually got rid of the ‘everyday’ dishes, and just used the good ones all the time. It made you feel special, particularly on a gloomy winter morning, to eat your Cheerios, by candlelight, from Copenhagen china.
“I hate to think that we are ever going to be such old married people that we stop talking to one another over dinner.” my mother told my father. “Let’s make a deal that we never get that way!”
“Certainly, dear.” my father agreed.
“I know what we can do to make sure we always have something to talk about at a restaurant, over dinner!”, my mother continued with excitement. My father knew she had already devised a plan, and he was all too willing to be agreeable.
“What can we do?” my father asked, on cue to my mother’s silence, which was meant to prompt him to ask.
“We can make up funny things to say to one another… you know… how about, ‘There’s a dead horse in the bathtub’? Or we can just count. I’ll say ‘one two, three four five?’, like I’m asking a question, and you say, ’six seven, eight nine ten.’, like you are answering me! If we keep our voices low, nobody will really know we aren’t in deep conversation! It will be fun, and may even get those old fogies to talk to one another some!”
When we all went out to dinner next time, I sat with my napkin folded correctly in my lap, no elbows on the table, and there came a lull in the conversation. Mom leans over to Daddy and says, in her best sultry low voice, “John. Did you know there is a dead horse in our bathtub?”
Daddy was momentarily caught off guard. I knew what was going on, and that he was supposed to play along, but he had forgotten. He looked up from his shrimp cocktail, and stared at my mother as if she had grown the proverbial second head. “How did that get in there?” he deadpanned, but loudly, so that the patrons and waiters close to us heard him and took notice.
Mom didn’t miss a beat. She was determined that Daddy be trained right the first time.
She leaned across the table, and brushed underneath my father’s chin with her hand, drawing his face close to hers. He glided in, like smoke being wafted, to hear her say, in a softer, more sultry voice, “One two three, four five? ”
“Six seven eight nine ten!” Daddy answered, realizing finally, what he was to say, and smiling like someone on the inside of a good joke.
People around us began to murmur to one another, no doubt curious as to what those two at the next table could be discussing in such intimate terms.
Mom winked at my father, then returned to enjoying her dinner. She intended to bask in her very special atmosphere for dessert.
Leslie
