In Loving Memory of Charles H. Lawrence (August 8, 1934 - June 1, 2009)

While his Lilliputian wife is setting the table, Charlie Lawrence takes his seat at the head. The dining room settles around him; smoke squeezes away in the dim light and the pale yellow walls seem to take a step closer. His voice, dripping with phlegm and hoarse from fifty years of tobacco smoke, matches his bear-like stature: “Don’t forget the mustard,” he grumbles in a thick New York accent. Behind metal-rimmed spectacles, he surveys the room and stamps out his cigarette with a grunt.

Dottie, his wife, scurries out of sight into the kitchen. Charlie seizes the moment to pour vodka from his secret stash under the table into his Sprite. He knows about hiding spots. “Back in Brooklyn, my father used to hide beer cans in the water tank over the toilet.” With a knowing smile, he leans back as his little Dottie places a bowl of boiled potatoes and cabbage in front of him. “The mustard Dotka!” “Charlie, ya know, you’re really startin’ to aggravate me.” The windows shake as he breaks into roaring laughter.

He is still chuckling when she brings in the plate of corned beef and the infamous mustard. “The key is Coleman’s dry mustard with JUST A TOUCH of Worchester sauce. Any more and the whole thing is ruined.” He dips his massive index finger into the bowl, jabs it onto his tongue, and smacks his paw on the table. “Dottie, get me the Worchester sauce.”

The war of roses between these two has been going on since 1958, when Charlie met Dottie at a party on Long Island. “She was sittin’ in a chair in the corner with snot on her face. I gave her my hankie and said ‘Wipe your face.’ She’s been listenin’ to me ever since.” He washes down some corned beef with his “Sprodka” and looks directly at her. “She didn’t even know how old I was when we got married. Told her I was 24. I was 21. Didn’t tell her til the honeymoon.” Dottie smiles at him and says it’s a good thing that he lied. Pointing her fork at him she says, “If I knew I was a cradle-robber I would have sent you back to Brooklyn.”

At hearing the word Brooklyn, Charlie’s jowls sag lower. He pushes away his plate and calls for his coffee, “Café, Dotka!”

As she hustles towards the kitchen he takes a large swig of his drink. Charlie mumbles that he was thirteen when he found a note from his mother to his father. She was fed up with his drinking. And she refused to leave. Charlie would follow his dad to Saddle Brook, New Jersey, until dropping out of high school to join the Army in 1951. His mother would stay in Brooklyn until she died of brain cancer on New Years Day, 1973.

His coffee is served while the bowl of cabbage and potatoes stagnate on the table. He dumps in sugar from the bowl and the ‘clink, clink’ of a metal spoon swirling inside liquid inside ceramic temporarily hypnotizes him. A pack of Benson & Hedges breaks the spell. The cigarette looks like a toothpick in his hand.

“The only good thing about the Army was the shoes. Most comfortable shoes I ever wore.” Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was stationed, holds a dear place in his heart: “The anus of the country. You could see fifty miles standing flat-foot, and a hundred miles if you stood on a can of tuna.”

Dottie clears the rest of the table with the precision of a well-rehearsed dance routine. Charlie smokes and sips his coffee, fixing his attention to some mystery on the wall. As his wife sets down a plate of her homemade Baklava, he scoffs.
“Apple pie, Dottie. Irish meal, Irish dessert.”
“Have some Baklava, Charlie. Your Irish ancestors will forgive you for it.”
“Can’t. Paperwork.”

Dottie brings the Baklava back to the kitchen. Charlie puts his glasses in his shirt pocket, rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, and looks around the room once again. With a moan from his chair, he delivers himself from his thrown.