Page 18 of Spectacular Things
Nighttime Routines
Six nights a week, Liz waits tables at Primo Bistro, an Italian oasis in nearby Portland with fresh pasta, award-winning desserts, and a shamelessly pricey wine list. While her mother collects menus and drops checks at Primo, Mia tidies the bungalow and cleans up from dinner.
At ten p.m., Mia coaxes Cricket into bed by reminding her she can only continue to grow tall if she sleeps.
Thanks to the Stallions head coach, Cricket is already obsessed with becoming a professional goalkeeper.
She knows she needs every inch she can get because the taller the keeper, the smaller the net.
Most nights, Mia falls asleep on the pink floral couch and wakes to the familiar screech of worn tires pulling into the driveway. She turns off the TV and stumbles out to the kitchen, then fills two glasses of water. With the only usable knife in the house, Mia slices lemon wedges.
“Hi you,” Liz whispers through an exhausted smile.
Mia watches her mother as she locks up, slips off her clogs, and holds out her arms. She envelops her older daughter who has worked all day for precisely this.
In the briefest of seconds, the whole kitchen smells of garlic bread and Liz’s end-of-shift cabernet.
Mia notes the red smudges of Primo Bistro’s famous homemade tomato sauce on her mother’s white button-down as Liz reaches up and pulls out her high bun, unleashing a blond mane that tumbles halfway down her back and smells like another evening of hard work and sautéed onions.
As they do every night, mother and daughter sit at the kitchen table and Liz takes out the wad of cash from her server’s apron and sets it between them.
Mia grabs it and organizes the bills into Monopoly piles as her mother recounts the day’s kookiest patients at the dental office.
“You wouldn’t believe this guy,” Liz says.
“Amy called me back to try to help him relax—I’ve never seen someone so scared to spit. He kept puffing his cheeks like this—.”
Mia laughs at the impression but doesn’t lose count of the money.
There are several twenty-dollar bills, two fifties, and then a bunch of tens, fives, and ones.
She counts the ones last while her mother stares into space.
Nodding at the thick slab of singles in Mia’s hand, Liz asks, “How much you got there?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“It’s all yours, my girl.”
Since Mia took up the mantle of being Cricket’s backup mom, the tradition has become just this: Sit at the kitchen table drinking water with her mother, catch up, and count the tip money.
Mia is allowed to keep the one- and five-dollar bills that Liz makes at the restaurant as compensation for her unconventional extracurricular activity.
“My good night is your good night,” Liz says, rubbing one of her knees as she stands up and hobbles over to the sink with their empty water glasses.
Mia knows that her mom was a soccer star in high school.
All the big universities and Ivy Leagues wanted her, and out of dozens of offers, Liz chose UCLA only to lose everything when she became pregnant.
The worst thing Mia ever did in her life was exist, and she’s been trying to make up for it ever since.
“The National Team is looking good this year,” Mia says.
“Knock on wood! Right now!” Liz demands, rapping on the kitchen table herself.
Mia does as she’s told and bangs on the table. Like her mother, she believes in good luck as much as she invests in hard work. For better or worse, their superstitions have rubbed off on Cricket, who refuses to wash her lucky—albeit rancid—soccer socks until the end of the season.
“What’s more important,” Mia asks, hungry to engage her tired mother for just a few minutes longer, “the World Cup or the Olympics?”
“World Cup,” Liz answers as she limps back to the table. “More teams, more money, more coverage—although not as much as the men—at least not yet.”
“But you think someday?” Mia asks.
Liz gives her a side glance. “You know what I’m going to say to that.”
“Be positive?”
“Exactly.”
Liz believes her sunny outlook is quite literally inscribed in her DNA.
At the Red Cross annual blood drive, Liz rolls up her sleeve as her daughters look on, waiting for the day they’re old enough to donate.
They dutifully listen to their mother proselytize that the blood running through their veins—and the blood type they share—isn’t just a double-helical polymer but an overarching life directive: B-positive.
“Do you think Cricket will really play on the National Team some day?” Mia asks as her mother turns off the kitchen light and follows her down the hall into the bathroom so they can brush their teeth, side by side.
“Only if she wants to, and only if she listens to Steve,” Liz says, glancing at the Steve Prefontaine poster hanging above the toilet. “But do me a favor, just to be safe?”
Mia grins at her mother in the mirror and raps her knuckles on the wood window trim.