The lord of the wings
It’s a nice Sunday, with the sort of angled winter light that reminds you of the mountains. I spread out the sports section on the dining table, where a less-savvy host would place a boring tablecloth. Pay attention, you could learn a lot here.
“Mom says she’s not coming,” the little girl announces.
“Where?”
“To your party,” she says.
She has never forgiven me, really, for my lack of input in our wedding planning. Should the salad be Caesar or mixed greens? Should the wedding singer have brown eyes or blue? Twenty years later, she is still getting even in a million tiny ways, like a scorned wife in an Updike novel. Flinty and unforgiving, but still delicious beneath that expensive makeup.
“But you’re invited,” I tell my wife.
“I just don’t want to come to your Super Bowl party,” she says.
“It’s in your honor,” I say.
“Um ... no.”
I didn’t even get a chance to ask her about the salad: mixed greens or Caesar. She’s out the door with that new baby of hers, who by the way is soaking up a lot of the extra attention I used to receive. After all these years, I’ve lost her to another man. One who wears diapers and plays all day with his tongue.
“Where’s Mommy going?” the little girls asks.
“Paris. Rome. Maybe Milan,” I say.
“Will she be home for dinner?”
Like a lot of today’s children, our kids are never quite sure where their next meal is coming from. Could be Domino’s. Could be from the sushi joint. Often, it is directly from the kitchen of their dear Italian mother, who learned to make a nice red sauce when she was all of 3. At our house, there are many potential sources for good food. What they are pretty sure of, our kids, is that their father isn’t one of them.
And this is Super Bowl Sunday, the greatest and longest feast of the year. We will serve much the same fare you’d get at a Halloween party: chili, hot dogs, lots and lots of chips. It’s far too important a meal to leave to a dad. Several courses. Tight deadline. Dip, seven layers deep.
“OK, everybody’s going to help,” I warn them.
“Where’s Mom?”
“She went out.”
“Where?” asks the boy.
“To Paris,” sighs the little girl.
“Hilton?”
“No, that other Paris,” I say.
When you split up like this, even if just for a couple of hours, it’s important to maintain some sense of routine. Allegedly, kids value routine. I grab a bag of chicken wings from the freezer and squint at the directions.
“This oven, is it convection or conventional?” I ask.
“I think it’s both,” says the boy.
“Wow, we have a nice oven,” I say.
“Dad, we’ve had it for about a year,” notes the little girl.
I mean, I knew about the new refrigerator. It has this feature where you can chill a bottle of wine in minutes. I’ve never used it. But it’s nice to know it’s there. This new refrigerator also spits out ice cubes at such an alarming rate of speed that they will occasionally shatter the drinking glass you’re holding. That’s handy in a refrigerator -- killer ice that bolts from zero to 60 in 1.2 seconds. Believe me, you’re never standing around waiting. It comes to you, this ice.
The new oven, meanwhile, has more buttons than a schoolmarm’s blouse. One says “convection.” Another, “roast.” Squinting again, I look for one that says “spicy chicken wings from Costco.” No luck.
“This isn’t a very good oven,” I say.
“What time is the Super Bowl?” asks the boy.
“What time is Mom coming home?” asks the little girl.
“Do we have, like, a can opener, you think?” I ask, banging through cabinets, the essence of cooking.
I’ll spare you the nasty details, but I have the sort of Super Bowl that Janet Jackson had, except that I manage to keep myself covered. Minutes before kickoff, a few of my buddies start to show up, which might be the real reason my wife left me. She generally likes my friends, except that they occasionally remind her too much of me, the guy who didn’t help enough with the wedding. Really, I think it all goes back to that.
“Should the bridesmaids wear jewelry?” she asked me once, nearly a quarter century ago.
“You know what might look good on them?” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“Handcuffs.”
“This isn’t your fantasy,” she explained.
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s our wedding.”
Over time, guys learn the difference.
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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
