KIDS EAT FREE by Kathy Preston

Certainly, no one is here for the food. If you cared to, just about every detail of the place could be described with the prefix “faux”-- faux-rustic, faux-Americana, and so on. This restaurant, a self-proclaimed “brew pub” with a middling selection, has a couple things going for it. The brew vats take up the center of the two-story building, which creates a cavernous interior with so much background noise that the sound in there, even when half-empty, is cacophonous. This is a plus when you have small children. They also offer a Wednesday night special-- Kids’ Night-- where children can eat free if their accompanying adult orders dinner. I’ve done this many times with different combinations of parents and kids, it’s always been fun, nothing too eventful, pleasant or unpleasant. So I’ve been looking forward to this night.

It’s Phoebe’s 4th birthday, and she’s chosen this, of all things, as the one thing she wants for her birthday. Her mother, Donna, is bemused but has made the reservation. I’m running late. We pull into the parking lot at the same time as Loretta and the triplets, they tumble from the minivan and I take one boy’s hand, Nora on the other, Loretta holding the other two boys, and we march six abreast to the big stone building. Loretta and I joke that we can’t wait to tell the hostess that we’re with the Donna Party.

The kids want deep-fried mac and cheese (this dish exists, yes. It is triangular.) and deep-fried chicken “tenders” and grilled cheese that may as well be deep fried, and even our organic free-range mamas go along with this because once in a while won’t kill you but giving up the opportunity to all be together like this just might. There is an intensity of feeling in these relationships between us that I have not felt before-- it is a magnified version of friendship, akin to sisterhood, but different. We are a community that exists through our love for our children. That fierce bond spills over into us, and there is a palpable excitement in a simple thing like putting everything else aside to talk face to face as we see our children grow together.

There have been some bad days leading up to this one-- even more reason to come together and recharge the way we do. We don’t know any of this (most of the conversation has been about Miriam’s decision to change Ellie’s preschool) and conversations are stopped and started at abrupt intervals as we corral the kids (hungry, excited) and are able to get most of them sitting down for bread and butter. The bad days-- I spent most of this one on or over the toilet, thanks to what I am praying is a 24-hour bug. Michele has just come off a fourteen-hour shift in Labor and Delivery after staying with a mother as she pushed out her stillborn baby, Loretta and the boys have just gotten back from their pulmonologist in Westchester and Loretta has to choose between potential death from asthma or potential death from asthma treatment. But we don’t share any of this right now. We say hello, we try to get our kids some food.

Our party is alone upstairs. Nora is sitting on my lap, lunging for the bread basket, imperiously overseeing the buttering process. Phoebe twirls in her fancy party dress and I look around for the waitress and decide to hell with it, a margarita it is. Orders are placed for the kids and we try to read the menus in between. We manage to order and hope the food comes soon.

I am taking Nora’s hands out of the butter when I hear the commotion. I am surprised to hear it in the soupy reverberations between the upstairs I-beams, there’s this sort of dull roar from downstairs, then all the high-pitched toddler squeaking. I look up and see this woman at the top of the stairs. I can not tell if she is young or old, thin or heavy, blonde or brunette. I know immediately that she is angry, and she is moving toward us, shouting. I can not catch her words. Now she is within earshot. She thinks our children are out of control. We are bothering other diners. They need to sit down. I can see Michele is holding back. She explains that we have been waiting 45 minutes for the kids’ food, this is kids' night, it’s a kid’s birthday party, that that is an unreasonable expectation. I gather this is a manager? A hostess? I am perturbed and intrigued, but pinned down so do not offer comment or get up to join in. Michele and this woman move away, toward the top of the stairs. The body language is riveting. I can tell that Michele is on edge, the woman is not making eye contact but flailing her arms and I can hear her shout, “They need to calm down!” Michele takes a breath. The woman stops for a moment, turns angrily and screams over her shoulder as she descends, “WHERE ARE YOUR HUSBANDS?”

Michele gasps, comes over quickly to tell 8-year-old Ruby to stay put and mind her sister, Loretta gasps and looks at me, wide-eyed, and I can not hear a thing. The roar of the restaurant has been replaced by the sound of blood rushing through my head, at least that’s what I think it is. It sounds like my hands are over my ears, I feel a constriction in my chest and something rising up. It is something I have suppressed for over a year. It is Rage. I fought it down each time I was told it was a blessing Nora was so young when Byron died. I fought it down each time I was told that I was still young and I had my whole life ahead of me. Even when someone I had met once told me that Byron manifested his own death, that negative thoughts cause cancer. The voice rips through this time and I hear that voice come out of the place in my chest, bellowing “Mine’s DEAD, sweetheart!” I realize I have said this, and recoil.

Where IS my husband. I’ve stopped thinking of him as my husband, started calling him “Nora’s dad” in conversation, trying to feel as though not having a husband was something normal and not a loss. But now this. Without thinking, I put Nora on my hip and go downstairs. The roar inside and outside my head are indistinguishable.

Michele is in the glassed-in foyer with the woman, fiery, close. I open the door, a quick burst of cold air brushes my cheeks. They are burning. I have never done this before. I tell her that what she said was horrible, that my husband is dead. How can she say something like that? I need to tell her what those words did, but her eyes only light on mine for a a moment-- since she has identified Michele as her adversary, her target, her focus is not on me, literally or figuratively. She says, “Yeah, well, your children are out of control.” I can not stop the tears. Nora is confused. "Why we downstairs, Mommy? Where Phoebe’s birthday is?" I can not stay. I grab Nora too tightly and go back upstairs.

I barely notice the table, or my friends. Our food is there, I can not touch mine but Nora digs in. She wants to be in my lap, and I am glad for this because I can not stop crying. Her need for ketchup becomes an anchor and a shield. I need to remain upright. Every mother here knows why I am crying. The kids do not. I hear quiet explanations, gentle reassurances. I am hugged, and I feel hands on my shoulders, but now I have this question inside me. Where is my husband? And I only know where he is not. I see him vividly in the hospital bed where he no longer is. I hear him moaning, he won’t open his eyes, and the bedsores are here, the black liquid pouring from his body is here, his wasted arms are here. Each time I blink I see the hole in his side, an unstoppable wound, the blood and the bandages that are soaked with it. The foul, wrenching memory of his death is here-- now his eyes won’t close and his skin is cold.

“Why you are crying, Mommy?” I am crying because of a question I have not found the answer to. I do not see him in the shadows any more. I don’t dream about him. His ashes are in an Apollo Space Launch lunchbox on a rocky cliff’s edge looking out over the ocean in County Kerry, a short walk to Niall’s house. His body has burned. Where he is is not here.

We are the last ones to leave-- Nora has dropped her goody bag and we stay to look for it. I will be damned if she bears one single disappointment this night. I buckle her in, and close the car door, and try to cry as much as I can in the privacy of the cold and unlit lot so that I can leave that there and face my daughter again.

It is bedtime when we get home. I put Nora in the bath, and I start to cry again. “Why you are crying, mommy?”

I’m crying because of what happened at the restaurant. I’m okay, I just can’t stop.

“That lady was mean? She make you cry?”

Yes she did.

“Why?”

Because she said that there should be husbands there, and that made me miss your daddy.

“You miss him?”

Yes, I do.

“You want to hug him?”

I do, but remember how we talked about how Daddy doesn’t have a body any more?

“Oh. I will hug him.”

I can not respond. She continues.

“We dance in the living room. I will hug him, Mommy.” Then we talk about bubbles, and washcloths, and teeth, and pajamas, and the evening fades in and out around us as I put my daughter to bed, where my husband is not.


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Kathy Preston is an artist and mother who lives in New Paltz, New York. In her spare time she is learning to navigate the New York City subway system. Her website-in-progress is www.gnorasaurus.com.