Sundays are slow. A day for books and easy meals, movies, and rain. I made macaroni-and-cheese from a box last night: a little garlic and olive oil in a pan, heated to allow the garlic to sweeten, shell shaped noodles, milk, the cheese packet, a little grated cheddar, a little sour cream to be sure that everything blends. I steam a bunch of kale on top of the noodles while they boil and it's a ten-minute meal until milk is spilled down the cabinets, into their drawers, on to the floor, under the edge of the stove.
I hear my mother's voice tell me not to cry over spilled milk as we sit in the dollar movie theatre.
I am eleven, maybe, or twelve, possibly I am ten. It is a big event for us to go to the movies. We drive ten miles north up I-5 to Medford, she must have had something to do there that afternoon. Twenty years is a long time to remember clearly.
The dollar movie theatre, the house of the second run, no longer on the blockbuster list, not eight dollar movies, dollar movies are for people who want to go but have to wait till the market weakens. I harbored a fear of being spotted there, miles away from home, by someone I knew or even a someone I didn't know, but was my age, that they would mock our poverty.
I got a small soda, which cost more than the price of admission. It was a sprite, I have never liked 7-up, but sprite is cold and clear and clean, it doesn't leave the taste of chalky vitamins in your mouth. I got real soda with cane sugar in it maybe twice a year. My mom was a real stickler for not allowing sugar in the house or in my mouth, so it was a big event. Soda at the movies is expensive and I felt the double pleasure of seeing a feature film and drinking a forbidden beverage slip through my hands, down my seat, and spill over the slippery floor.
Tears came. Not that I had spilled and was ashamed of the childish action. But that I had wasted my mother's money and my moment with her, that I had been clumsy and it had ruined my opportunity to forgot our poverty in the darkness of the dollar movie theatre.
"Don't cry over spilled milk," my mother said as I held my breath in my hot throat. If I could hold my breath long enough I could stop crying. I knew that. She bought my a new soda as easy as that and it tasted good on shame.
Easy come, easy go.
