Overheard

McDonald’s Family Restaurant

Glendale, Calif.

Oct. 14, 2011

12:17 p.m.

The loud waves of static and country twang normally bludgeoning us from speakers in the ceiling are gone. Management has finally gotten the message: The intermittent warbling of Porter Wagoner isn’t what this population of Armenians and speakers of Spanish as a first language wants to hear while eating.

Check that: Management has merely turned the volume down. Between bites we hear what sounds like people whispering about us from the next room.

A woman sits hunched in the red plastic booth before mine. She stares blankly at the table as she chews. The motion is slow, like a cow’s, the upper plate of teeth grinding her quarter pounder with cheese against the lower.

Suddenly a brown paper bag is heaved onto her table. It lands with a thud, as though filled with sod. Without a word, a similar-looking woman – her sister? – lumbers past, making her way toward the counter.

A third sister, just as bovine in appearance, soon arrives. She slides heavily into the booth and sets down her tray. “My blood sugar’s low. I gotta eat,” says the first sister, explaining why she’s already begun to dig in.

At last, the sister who announced her presence by whipping a grocery bag into their booth reappears. She doesn’t see her sack. “Where’d you put my shit?” she demands.

And here we have the only words spoken, as the three eat in complete silence for an hour, each staring at the table beneath her elbow. Finally the three struggle to their feet, look at their iPhones, and shuffle out to the parking lot.

Artwork by John T. Quinn III

Picture This

          Here's an exceprt from a story in progress. In this piece, a woman discovers that finding her place in life is no laughing matter. 

                There were no pictures of Marie on her sister’s mantel. There wasn’t a single one in the house. If it were true that we cradled those we loved in little wooden frames, then Marie’s ranking was lower than that of her sister’s cat, who was represented twice.

                In keeping with Los Angeles tradition, Marie’s sister and her husband had over a dozen photos of themselves about the premises. There was even an exquisite painting of the pair above the fireplace. It was no wonder, really; they were a stunning couple, with their movie-star looks and winning smiles.

               

                Their kids were no less dazzling. The house was home to more than a few pictures of them, as well. Marie had to admit that even the cat had the look of a matinee idol.

                Still, she couldn’t help but feel slighted. After all, she was careful to have current pictures of her sister and her family on display in her own apartment. Shouldn’t they do the same?

                Marie wouldn’t confront her sister over the situation. She couldn’t. To even broach the subject was out of the question. The wrong – if it could even be called that – would doubtless immediately be corrected, but it would be done out of obligation, not regard.

                So Marie secreted photos of herself into the house. Here she was, sitting on Santa’s lap just last Christmas, at 40 years of age. Here were she and her sister at their high school winter formal. How the family would laugh months from now, when Marie’s picture was finally discovered. What a hoot was the stunt.

                But no matter how deeply she hid herself in her sister’s forest of frames, her photo was found in days. It was sometimes found in hours. On her next visit she’d notice her offering lying face down upon the table. “Oh, you came across my little joke,” she’d say, and the thing would be handed back, big laughs all around.

                “You need to get yourself some outside interests,” Marie’s friend Stephanie told her one day over coffee.

                “Oh, come on, that’s funny. You don’t think I need my own TV show?”

                “What you need is a life. These people don’t care about you.”

(To be continued)

Excerpt: The Lady Wrestlers

Even at 11 years of age, Sylvia had an eye for foreshadowing. She was the daughter of would-be writers, after all. She looked at her parents, both the size of Subarus, and realized a sedan-sized fate was something she would not outdistance.

The prospect depressed her to no end.

            “It’s genetics, honey. Don’t worry about it. Got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above,” advised her dad, borrowing from Bruce Springsteen. The longtime aspiring songwriter was always borrowing from someone. He liked to think of the practice as homage. Others, like music publishers, for example, saw it as something closer to plagiarism.

            “Big girls don’t cry, Syl,” added her mother. “Besides, all the great intellects of your world have been husky – the ones who’ve really made a difference. Look at Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling or Judy Blume, for heaven’s sake. God, Stephenie Meyer!” The authors she envied were not plus-sized, of course. The so-far failed writer of young-adult literature just wanted to believe she wasn’t so different from those who’d made it.

            Sylvia was young, but she recognized a classic case of projection when she heard it. Plus, she’d Google-Imaged all those literary giants and judged them to be of standard proportion. The central dramatic question for her was if she’d end up like those ladies she watched on embarrassing weight-loss reality shows and saw confined to gargantuan beds on TLC. Would she be a woman who one day needed to be removed from her bedroom by crane? Lithe little things populated the romantic vampire films she so loved, and they positively oozed with influence.

            “Go have a snack. You’ll feel better,” continued her mother.

            “Nestle makes the very best chocolate,” said her dad.

            When Sylvia reached her 12^th birthday, she appeared no more rotund than any other Los Angeles school kid. She was bright beyond her years, interested in dance, obsessed with Disney Channel pop stars. Alarmed, her parents wanted to take her to the doctor.

Sylvia wanted to jump for joy.  Perhaps, she allowed herself to believe, she had beaten the Carrasco Curse. She didn’t share this information with her little brother for two reasons. First, she didn’t like Steven. He was stinky and gross. But chief among her complaints was that he poked about her room when she was gone. Her suspicion of his snooping led to her leaving a video camera tucked between the stuffed animals upon her bed when she’d leave. Sure enough, surveillance footage confirmed Steven’s breaking and entering.  It also showed his wiping of a booger into the rug.

 To put an immediate end to this activity, she’d left a cache of realistic-looking water guns behind her door, accompanied by a Bratz poster with red “X”s scrawled across all of their faces but one. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but it had been enough to keep young Steven a shooting’s distance away from her after that.

The second reason she didn’t celebrate in front of the boy was because she loved him. It was plainly evident that Steven had not beaten the Carrasco Curse. He was 10 years old and had the waistline of a man at middle age.

(To be continued)