The Small Pleasures

The family has pizza

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Lies I Tell My Kids. This is episode 15, “The Small Pleasures.”

Our family practice (Sadee refers to it as a tradition) is never to eat pizza at the kitchen or dining-room table. We clear off our conveniently round main coffee table in the living room, put the pizza in the middle, and sit around it on the floor. There is lots of room for drinks and napkins and general elbow room, and the kids like the fact that they just have to raise themselves a little to take whatever piece they want without having to ask a parent to do it for them.

I position the pizza in the middle—another part of the, ah, tradition is that whether it’s Sadee or me setting out the pizza, we remove the cardboard flap lid so that it doesn’t impede access.

“Okay,” I say when I’ve gotten everything set and I’m sitting on the floor. This one word is the equivalent of a starter’s gun at a track meet. Everyone rushes in and takes what has over time become their usual position around the table.

“I’m starving,” Lolly says.

It’s a scene of undiluted affection and laughter and love. I try not to make too much of it in my head as I sit back for about a minute to observe the interactions and the reaching and the slice of pepperoni that should have been on someone else’s slice and so initiates a friendly battle and discussion (“Hey, Grady, my slice is loaded with it. Take two,” Sadee says as a charm to get this over with and keep us moving along to the next spurt of joy). Forget school, work, heated arguments about finances, a house that needs a new roof—that all seems like such trivia as we are so engaged and focused on this meal. I smile briefly to myself when I consider that our family could easily recover from the roof caving in on us, but if a pizza night got interrupted it would be time for divorce and farming the kids out to foster care.

“Earth to Dad,” I hear, “Earth to Dad,” and it’s Grady catching me mulling.

I pause to reorient. “Oh, hey. I was just thinking of other planets before I take all the sausage from that slice you just took.”

He pulls the food toward him for feigned protection and the gathering goes on, all chatter and sustenance.

Things get back to normal for another half-hour or so and then the pizza is gone and so is the energy of the kids.

“Why don’t you get them settled in upstairs,” I say to Sadee, “and I’ll clean up down here.”

Grady and Lolly don’t need any convincing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them literally drooping like this. They follow their mother upstairs and I just stand there in the living room for a while, catching the odd sound as toothpaste is spat out and drawers are open and shut. What an evening, what a day this has been, and I wonder just what is wrong with me.

I do as I usually do, but this time without an audience, and throw the paper glasses and napkins all into the middle of the pizza box and then crunch and scrunch it so that it is as small as possible. My record was last year, I think it was, when the resulting blob was not much bigger than a basketball. Lolly likes to see me press and squeeze while my face turns red from the exertion, but at some point she usually chastises me for not recycling too.

Sadee comes back downstairs just as I am sitting back down on the couch in the newly cleaned space. She’s got dark purple silk pajama bottoms on and a raggedy T-shirt. The flash of skin from her waist as she sits down perpendicular to me on another section of the couch has an effect I didn’t anticipate. I’m surprised. The rush of arousal is strong and persists even more strongly as she lies back obliviously to stretch her neck and then comes back up again to my eye level.

“Tired?” I ask.

“Totally zonked,” she says. “That was a fun day, thanks for suggesting it, but it took everything out of me. I think I’m getting old.” She laughs.

“You’re still a young thing, for God sake,” I say. “You look great.”

She either doesn’t notice what I’ve said or is too tired to be attentive to details. A short time later I’m in the middle of a story about rubber shoes we need to get the kids for when they’re swimming, and when my eyes swerve to Sadee again, her chin is on her chest and her face is turned away from me. Asleep.

I smile and sigh, but then get her some cushions and set her head on them. As I lift her legs and grasp that silk in my hands, lift her calf and the lack of friction is as if it’s trying to get away from me, slipping, and I feel it again, feel that I want her. What the hell is going on? I get a blanket and cover her up, pull it back and have one last look, and then cover her up for good. It’s blurry after that and the lights seem to have turned themselves off and my legs have taken me upstairs to our bed, where I now lie restlessly.