Tuesday 200 - #62

It seems more like a fourth grader’s lunch than a grown man’s dinner.

The simplest of grilled cheese sandwiches. Nothing fancy like those pompous TV chefs espoused as comfort food. Seriously, whose mom ever toasted up thick slices of crusty home-baked sourdough, dripping with freshly melted Emmenthal and tart autumn apples?

Wonder Bread, two slices. Kraft Singles, three of them because they seem smaller now. Memories of the suburbs waft from his galley kitchen, not much bigger than his sister’s old Easy Bake oven. Weekend lunches after little league games, stomach still sloshing from one too many suicides.

Coke, 7-Up, and orange soda … all in the same paper cup.

Another large one please! Not too much ice.

“Don’t know how you drink those,” his mom would grimace. He wondered how she could drink all that whiskey so early on a Saturday morning.

That was then. Tonight, he swirls Jim Beam in a jelly jar tumbler. The charcoal scent blends with the smoky aroma coming from kitchen … shit, the sandwich is burning.

“Well, nothing’s perfect,” Mom used to say, using the back of a knife to scrape black dust into the sink.

“It adds flavor,” she promised.

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