Eggplant Pie

1.

There are five stages in the process of dealing with grief and tragedy: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
It is a Saturday morning when things start getting out of hand.
“Sweetie” my mother’s voice chirps in the kitchen. “Would you like waffles or pancakes for breakfast?”
From up here in my room I can’t see either my mother or my father, but I know exactly where they are and what they are doing. My mother in front of the kitchen counter, cutting and squishing eggplants for breakfast, my father in the living room in his chair, hiding behind a newspaper and stubbornly ignoring everything that is happening behind the black and white printed articles. Since my seventh birthday he has been astonishingly indifferent to all events outside of his paper and his old drum set, which has been hiding from my mother in the tool shed ever since my parents got married.
This Saturday morning though, my mother’s eggplant pancakes did not make it all the way to the dining table. A scream and the sound of plate and pancakes hitting the floor shake the house for a split second. Then a door slams loudly and my older sister comes stomping down the stairs.
“MOM! How can you expect me to concentrate with all this noise going on?!” My sister is an aspiring poet and a classified lunatic who loves to complain about how miserable her life is. When I was five years old I made it a point to collect insects of all sorts and hide them in her bed, simply to see her reaction.
“Pumpkin” says my mother upon my sister’s arrival in the kitchen, “not right now.” She begins picking up the ruined breakfast off of the floor, then points a shaky finger at my father. “Sweetie, what is this?”
My father’s head pops up from behind his paper just long enough for him to glance at his drum set, standing fully assembled in the middle of the living room. “It looks like a drum set” he assesses and disappears behind the headlines.
“Your drum set.” My mother moves past my sister to the trash can.
“I didn’t do it, that’s all I know” says my sister and sits down. “Mom, what rhymes with ‘syringe’?”
“Of course you didn’t do it, pumpkin” soothes my mother, ignoring her question completely.
“Are you cutting up more eggplants?” my sister demands to know.
“Pumpkin, don’t you see that our breakfast just went down the trash chute?”
“Mom, I’m going to overdose on eggplant!” My sister pulls out a pen. “That’s actually really good. What rhymes with eggplant?”
My mother grows her own eggplants, and very successfully at that. Unfortunately, you can only eat so many eggplant recipes until you get sick of them. My mother starts slicing and dicing again.
“Sweetie, why is your drum set in the spot where my couch used to be?”
“I wouldn’t know” my father responds. My mother shakes her head.
“It is a mystery. My couch was replaced by a drum set. It is a mystery.”

2.

On Sunday morning things are getting worse. Over night all the furniture in the house, except for father’s drum set, was conspicuously moved onto our front lawn. The bedrooms were the only rooms that had remained untouched, so no one really notices until it is 8 o’ clock and my father walks down the stairs. The sight of the creepily empty living room barely changes his facial expression. Without a comment he walks outside, finds his chair next to the rose bushes, and carries it inside.
Compared to the day before, my mother is starting to have some trouble keeping her composure.
“MOM! Someone robbed our house!”
“Pumpkin, be quiet please. I need to focus.”
“Oh, now it’s all about being quiet. But when I try to flow my artistic vision into a poem, no one cares!”
“Sweetie, we need to do something” my mother tells my father. “Someone is terrorizing us.”
“Mom, the TV is outside too!”
“Don’t watch TV in the morning, pumpkin, it’s bad for you.”
“Mom, do you think someone is trying to tell us that they are going to kill us?”
“If so, this would be a strange way to do it, pumpkin. Very strange.”

3.

That afternoon the family gathers on the front yard for lunch.
“How do you like my new cheese platter?” my mother asks cheerily.
“Is that a cymbal?”
“It sure is, pumpkin.”
“For Christ’s Sakes, you’re using my drum set as dishes?” It is the longest sentence any one of us has heard from my father in a long time.
“Not only dishes, look!” My mother skips across the lawn. “Your drums also make great side tables, and I can use the drumsticks for my growing eggplants.”
Now, some people might think that my mother is a little bit on the crazy side, but she just happens to be very passive-aggressive. I know for a fact that my sister has written numerous poems about it – I sneak a look at them every now and then.
Without a single more word my dad grabs his newspaper and buries himself behind it.
“I am not to hold responsible for anything that is happening” claims my sister and helps herself to some eggplant lasagna.

4.

There is no way that things could get any worse on Monday morning, with a cold war going on between my parents about the drum set and the furniture. Unless, of course, someone were to take all of my sister’s poems and plaster them all over the house and the neighborhood.
“I WILL KILL SOMEONE!”
“You will do no such thing, pumpkin. Calm down. I think your rhyming visions are very nice.”
“Artistic visions! No one understands my poetry!”
“That is so interesting.” My mother’s voice sounds icy, like I’ve never heard it before. “Because when I try to create my eggplant visions, no one seems to appreciate them either.” My father diligently turns a page as my mother turns to him to continue her complaint. “Sweetie, you never compliment me on my eggplant pie.” She is now looking straight at him, and I can tell that it is getting harder for him to ignore her piercing stare.
“Well.” My father looks lost for words. “It’s eggplant.”
“I am growing it!”
“Who cares about your stupid eggplants!” My sister is running frantically all over the house, ripping poems off of walls, doors, and ceilings.
“Hello!” A loud voice comes from our front step. It is the mailman who was stopped to read my sister’s poem on the mailbox. “Who’s the one with the ‘broken soul’?” My sister squeaks and dashes outside to find the perpetrator. The mailman excitedly shakes her hand. “So it’s you? How great! I’ve been reading your poems for the last three blocks. They’ve kept me very entertained.” My sister’s face goes white, then red, and then she just looks like she wants to pass out.
“WHO DID THIS?!” she screams. “I want to know right now!” She runs back to the living room and stops herself just in time when she sees the fight going on between my parents. The first fight in this house since my 7th birthday.
“How could you put your dirty drum set in my living room?”
“I said I didn’t do it. And it’s our living room.”
“Our living room that you moved to your front yard! You could’ve easily destroyed my eggplant beds with that!”
“Your eggplants are all you ever think about, mom!”
“We don’t need your commentary young lady.”
“Dad, that’s so mean!”
“Quiet!” My mother has taken off her apron and wipes pearls of sweat off her forehead. “Quiet, both of you!” They stop arguing and look at her. “Would Timothy want to see us fighting like this?”
The room falls silent, as if someone has sucked out all the noise and left a vacuum. There. She said it. I can’t wait for the responses. For a second I think about going to hunt for a camera and capture the moment for the family album, faces all around stripped of their usual masquerade, unable to uphold it when facing the truth.
“He wouldn’t want us to ignore what’s happening either” mumbles my sister in an attempt to break the silence. If my mother had a white flag, she’d be waving it now. It is clear that she doesn’t know anymore what she should do. My father folds his newspaper in half and puts it down next to him, then he puts one trembling hand on her shoulder.
“I think we should light a candle” he says and gets up out of his chair. My mother and my sister still haven’t moved when he returns with the candle and lights it. He places it carefully in front of the framed picture of me as a 7 year old, the little boy I will always be in their heads, with a happy smile on my face and a birthday hat on my head.
Finally, after years of pleasant conversation and day-to-day business, handkerchiefs appear out of pockets and silence sinks over the house, except for the sound of my mother quietly sobbing into her apron.
There are five stages in the process of dealing with grief and tragedy.



Dedicated to my Dad on his birthday.