By Art Foster
My wife loves chicken noodle soup.
When she isn’t feeling well, chicken noodle soup, a fuzzy blanket, and the Golden Girls bring her comfort. I assume that’s how her mother cared for her when she was young, and it makes her feel safe, it makes her feel loved. When I’m sick, I want a cheeseburger. But not just any old cheeseburger, I want the kind of burger where the corners of the cheese stick to the wrapper and drops of juicy goodness collect on your chin when you bite into it.
If you want a good cheeseburger, there are plenty to be found. My personal favorite is the Holick Burger at The Blind Rabbit on Jacksonville Beach. It’s stacked with a sunny side up egg and a slab of braised pork belly that’s cooked until the fatty skin becomes gelatinous, and it just melts in your mouth. I’d join close friends there for bourbon and burgers whenever I was in town. I can’t think about the Rabbit without thinking about Mike, Meg, and Jes, and the laughs and tears that we shared over the years. A close second is the Classic Cheeseburger at Skybox in Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan, Philippines. Their burgers were hand formed and grilled right in front of you at the outside bar. Served with a simple house sauce on a Kaiser bun, they were a warm reminder of home when I felt so alone on the far side of the world.
Sadly, both restaurants are now closed.
The most recent addition to my favorite burger list is the double cheeseburger from Tasty Burger right there in Harvard Square. I’m not trying to take anything away from Mr. Bartley’s, The Boston Burger Company, or any other place in the area, because I’ve had some fantastic burgers in Cambridge. But after downing a few pints of IPA at Grendel’s, or Shay’s, a double Tasty Burger is about the best way I can think of to end the night.
Well almost.
“You’re going to turn into a cheeseburger,” my wife has told me on several occasions. My doctor isn’t fond of my guilty pleasure either. The 20 mg of Rosuvastatin he prescribed for high cholesterol is proof of that. So, I ask myself why I do it. Why do I slowly poison myself? And I have come to realize that it’s the same reason my wife loves her chicken noodle soup.
When I was eight years old, my parents divorced, and my mother soon remarried. My new stepfather, Harry, a 6-foot, 350-pound truck driver, apparently hated his lot in life and took it out on us. He was the kind of guy that blamed everyone else for his problems and was angry at my brother and me for being the latest burden on his wallet. We weren’t allowed to use the dishwasher because it used too much water. I wasn’t permitted to iron my clothes because the iron used too much electricity. But at the same time, we had a swimming pool, and a satellite dish installed; it clearly wasn’t about the money.
The psychological abuse, and what some people call gaslighting today, was ever-present. He convinced me that I was a bad kid, just the worst kid to ever live. Never mind the fact that I was an “A” student in the Gifted Program at the time. As I look back, I like to think that he was jealous. Can a grown man be jealous of the abilities of a child? I think so, and I think he was.
And then there was the physical abuse. It wasn’t often, but when it happened, it left marks. For the high crime of being late for dinner. Yes, you read that right, late for dinner, my thirteen-year-old stepbrother experienced the wrath that was Harry. I watched from the corner of my room as Harry beat the boy, his own child, with his fists. When my mother stepped in, Harry shoved her to the floor. He had gone too far. I leaped onto Harry’s back and, in vain, tried to choke him into submission. But my seventy-five pounds was no match for his massive size, and I was quickly thrown across the room. About the time I made it to my feet, he grabbed me by the throat, denying me of oxygen, and threatened me with death. Not a beating, whipping, or time out. Death.
My little brother still has a scar on his forehead from being slammed into a wall over forty years ago. At ten years old I learned headwounds bleed profusely. The two-inch gash on his head seemed to bleed uncontrollably. There was so much blood, it covered his face, his chest, his hands. My hands.
But every other weekend, and two whole weeks during the summer, we were granted a reprieve. Our father picked the two of us up and took us to his house for his court ordered visitation. Every other Friday at 6pm, my little brother and I would be packed and ready to go. Our bags were full, but our bellies were empty. There was no way in hell Harry was going to feed us a meal he didn’t have to.
There wasn’t ever much food at Dad’s house. He lived quite Spartan, he rarely turned on the air conditioner, he didn’t even have a phone. As a tradesman, he worked every day and was seldom home when we weren’t there, so he ate on the go. The cupboards were, more often than not, bare.
But on the way to Dad’s house, there was a McDonald’s. Mack-Donald’s, he called it, heavily accentuating the Mc. Sometimes we would get Happy Meals to go, other times we would eat in and play on the playground. This was a time before the arrival of indoor ball pits, taking off your shoes, and no one over twelve allowed. This playground was outside and made of concrete and steel. We would slide down the winding red and yellow slide and climb inside Mayor McCheese’s head. And Dad was right there with us, climbing and sliding and laughing.
On the weekends we spent with Dad we were always on the move. We visited family, we camped quite often, we toured nearby Civil War forts, went fishing, we even went to Six Flags a few times. And when we were on the go, breakfast, lunch, and dinner were often eaten from a paper bag. “Let’s get it and go,” he would say. I have very few memories of him sitting in a restaurant. Much of his sustenance consisted of convenience store snacks. “Let’s stop and get a Coke and a pack of crackers,” was what he would say when he wanted a snack. He would get a drink of some kind, not always a Coke, and a small bag of roasted peanuts, or something like that. He seldom actually got a Coke and a pack of crackers, but that’s what he would always say.
And when the weekend ended and we had to go back home, our Sunday evening meal was often at the same McDonald’s we had eaten at when he picked us up on Friday. He knew dinner wasn’t waiting for us at my mother’s house. We ate cheeseburgers and we slid, and we laughed, and we climbed.
That’s how it went for a while, until he moved four hours away and I saw him less often. But when I did see him, cheeseburgers were often on the menu. The years passed quickly, and soon I had a career and a family of my own. I did my best to hold it all together. But as fate would dictate, I found myself at a McDonald’s on Friday evenings, feeding two hungry children who had to be back at their mother’s house by 6pm on Sunday. By this time, the playground had moved indoors and was made of plastic. So, I watched them play as I ate my cheeseburger, stealing a hug and a kiss when they ran back to the table to grab a swallow of Sprite, or a fist-full of fries.
Last year, after my son’s college graduation ceremony, Dad, my son, and I, accompanied by my ex-wife, her second ex-husband, her current husband, and her daughter, had lunch at Surcheros Tex Mex; my son’s favorite restaurant. I had a chicken and rice burrito, and Dad had a veggie burrito bowl. If there had been a cheeseburger on the menu, I might have ordered it. But there wasn’t. If there had been a playground there, dad would have probably played on it with me if I’d asked. At seventy-five, he was still a meandering soul. He had never remarried and still lived alone; cupboards still bare. It seemed that my mother leaving him had just as a profound effect on his life as it did mine. We had lunch, we ate cake, and we celebrated my son’s academic achievement. I didn’t talk to Dad as much as I should have, because I thought there was plenty of time for just the two of us to get together. But there wasn’t.
My son, my little brother, a couple of other family members, and I have reserved a deep-sea fishing charter out of Key West on May 13th of next year. We plan to do a little fishing and spread dad’s ashes at sea, just as he always wanted. On the way, I think we might stop for a cheeseburger.
P.S. In 1999, Harry was hit, head-on, by a moving truck when he crossed the center line. We buried him next to his parents.
No one wept.
