Sometimes, on vacation, a meal out is just another meal. You find nourishment. Maybe you pay too much. And you leave full, but empty. Then there are those special meals out. There's a spark to conversation. The food is better. Commensality.
On our family vacation to Baltimore last weekend, we had a few of those successful, special dinners together. The best was Saturday night. Meg had made the reservations, and she and I had chosen dresses to wear, and Meg and dressed my not-yet-seven-year-old niece Aida in a twirly pink skirt. When Dad saw that Stephen was wearing a collared shirt, he felt under-dressed and returned to the room to change. As we all piled into the shuttle, I wondered why "dressing for dinner" had ever gone out of fashion. It separates the work from the play. I can appreciate people better after I feel I have taken care of myself.
We walked along the piers of Inner Harbor, arriving at the restaurant just before sunset. The inside was inlaid with rich woodwork that reminded one of lavish captain's quarters. Final rays of sunlight peeked through the westward windows, illuminating specks in the air. We all attempted to sit up straight and act as though we always ate in places with multiple forks. I ordered the flounder
We chatted while Aida colored a picture of a shrimp wearing a hat and a hook. (She must have colored ten of these pictures by the end of the weekend.) When we slowed our eating, Dad remarked that we should save the fish that we don't eat so that he could feed it to the starving cat at the hotel. If you don't know my Dad, you'll appreciate that he gave me a little book called 101 Uses for a Dead Cat when I was eight years old. But you should also know that I am an avid cat-lover, and he was less than 50% joking about the book.
So when he issued a proclamation regarding the saving of scraps for a cat, one wondered how much he had had to drink. And one wondered a lot more when the honest answer was that he was not drunk; he was serious. Stephen corroborated the story: a skin-and-bones cat had been wandering about the hotel gates, meowing pathetically, clearly the victim of some tragic human.
When the waiter came by, my father asked for a small box, "So we can give the rest to a starving cat."
No. Joke. I was mortified. So was my Dad.
"The food was excellent, though," I tried to clarify, "It's just... we're all full..."
"--and this cat, it really is starving," Dad helped. The waiter seemed to understand.
Megan laughed, "This is something Princess would love to eat, right Aida?" Princess lives across the street from Meg and Stephen. She often wanders into their yard, and is more a community cat than the property of any one household. Everyone loves her as if she were their own, and my niece and nephew especially so. My brother would often come outside in the morning to find Princess on the top of his car, waiting to say good morning to him. "By the way, where is Princess? It's been a long time since she's been around. Have you seen her, Steve?"
"Yeah, she died a month ago. She got run over," Stephen said matter-of-factly. He immediately realized his mistake.
Aida looked up at him, then put her head down on the table, covering her little face in her little hands. When she looked up again, she was close to sobbing, her face streaked with tears, her nose reddening, "P-Princess," was all she could manage. Megan held her as Stephen tried to mend it.
"I'm sorry, Pickle. I meant to tell you better." Dad and I looked at each other, nearly crying ourselves. I mean, we'll all miss Princess, but my young niece experiencing the first death of a pet (suddenly, over dinner) was almost more than we could bear. She pulled it together after being promised candy from some overpriced, sassy shop in the Harbor.
The night was warm and breezy, and filled with a jazz band. The perfect night for dancing under a crescent moon hanging above the skyscrapers.
Interesting fact: The starving cat rejected everyone else's fish except for the flounder.
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