The all-you-can-eat restaurant

Jim Mullen

The fridge is full, the pantry is full, the freezer is full. But it’s not enough. The Fergusons are visiting for the weekend from the city. There are only four of them, but Beverly is lactose intolerant. We have to make sure there’s some soymilk for her. Sixteen-year-old Cartier is a strict teenatarian — she will eat no food recommended by or served by anyone older than Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. While she eats next to nothing, she constantly comments on what others are eating — “I can’t believe you are eating something with a face. That’s disgusting. Doesn’t it bother you that some cow died just so you could eat bacon?”

What a little charmer. She’s been here for 36 hours now, and the only thing I’ve seen her put in her mouth is a salt-free pretzel and the skin from two dried cranberries. She looks as if she’s recently been exhumed. Well, not so cheerful.

Bresson, now 15, won’t eat vegetables, is allergic to gluten, nuts, latex, penicillin, cats, bees and shellfish. He is, against all odds, overweight. And surly. But there is nothing Bresson’s father Bob won’t eat. There is also nothing he will cook. But he is not against making suggestions on the best way to prepare, oh say, his eggs. “No, no, no, not fried. Poached. Where’s your egg poacher? Really? You’re pulling my leg, right? You really don’t have an egg poacher? Well, I guess this is what they call ‘roughing it.'” On the table next to him are his cell phone and his mini iPod. Similar to the ones used on the wagon trains, no doubt.

This one can’t have salt, that one won’t touch lima beans. Did I mention that Beverly is allergic to green peppers? Neither did she until after I made the tuna salad. Maybe, she suggests, it would be easiest if I just threw it all out and started over again.

Why do we even let them in the house? Bob is an old, old friend we knew before he met Beverly and before they spoiled their children. I was best man at their wedding. He seems to think his family is absolutely normal, that everything is working perfectly. It’s Einstein’s little-known theory of relatives. People at a distance can see Bob being sucked into an emotional black hole, but to Bob everything seems normal.

At breakfast, Cartier wanted to know if fair-wage workers picked our coffee. I feel her gravity tugging at my atoms trying to pull them apart.

“We used to,” I said, “But then we found out they were buying baby seal fur coats with all the money, so we switched to ‘Keep Them Poor’ brand coffee.”

She didn’t hear me. She had caught her reflection in a window and had run upstairs crying.

“Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Beverly. “She’s going through a stage. All kids have funny eating habits. It’s a phase. I don’t know where they get these crazy ideas about food.”

While she’s talking Sue pulls some bread out of the toaster and hands it to Beverly. She butters it and puts Sue’s strawberry rhubarb jam on it.
“This is delicious,” she says. “Where did you get that jam? I have to buy some.”

“Buy some?” says Sue. “I made it with fresh rhubarb last spring.”

Beverly gags as if she’s just flunked the challenge to eat kitty litter clumps on “Fear Factor.”

“You made this? Here? In this kitchen? No health inspector? No quality control? No hairnets? Last spring? That can’t be sanitary. You know, if you two need money for food, Bob and I will be happy to give you some.”

Yeah, who knows where her kids get such funny ideas about food?

Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life” and “Baby’s First Tattoo.”