Cheeseburger

The Gummer does not call me Laura. Ever.  She calls me “Laurie”, and she pronounces it like this: “LAH-RIE!!” She says it with that Midwestern accent that makes the word “slacks” feel like it’s actually made out of polyester:  “Damn it, Laurie. Put on some slacks. It’s time for Mass.”

                “LAH-RIE!” is my “kitten”.

(These first posts, you see, need to provide some background information.  I want to write about the weirdo plumber who was here last week, but first I need to explain why she was yelling “Laurie, what color is the water in the toilet?” This is where “Laurie” came from, and what follows is the quintessential “Laurie” of my childhood. It’s what you would find if you had to, I don’t know, stick a pin in the Laurieness of it all and plot it on a map.)

             In the summertime, my neighbor/friend, Stephen, and I would play catch or tennis or croquet… things like that… while we talked and talked.  We talked, I think, like grown-ups.  We squinted and paced and said “someday” while staying within the invisible dog fence boundaries of good kids in a good neighborhood.

             My Dad would grill. He liked to grill. But then, he married a woman who cannot cook. Maybe my dad just liked to eat.

Anyway…he would grill.

Midafternoon, the thawing would begin.

Just typing that, I can picture the whole thawing construct: the, what is it… 10 x 10?, Corningware pan on the kitchen counter with a hot dog and couple of hamburgers, the real kind made from actual meat from an actual butcher shop and pressed into wax papered-patties with some heavy silver something from my grandmother’s house…everything pink and frosted over with this faint almost–snowy  haze that disappeared when you touched it, and that barbequing tray,,, the one with the pencil sketch of a grill, a mustard-colored center, and a red and white checkerboard border, the tray that said “Carter wasn’t  Kennedy, but Reagan just makes me think “Yes, we can!” You know… THAT tray.

  Before the thawing could begin, an announcement had to be made, like we were in Elizabethan times and the town crier needed to put forth a call for action.

My mom would step out onto the back patio and shout: “LAH-RIE! HAMBURGER, CHEESEBURGER, OR HAHT DOG??!”

From somewhere in the distance, a faint reply: “cheeeese-bur-ger!”

So anyway, she calls me “Laurie”, and last week, we had this weird plumber guy at the house…

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