Pizza

I would have to convince them that I liked it, too.

May 1965

Chris Day had Beatle boots. His hair was long enough to hang over his right eye, and he knew that flipping his head back every once in a while would not just get the hair out of his eye but would make him look terminally cool doing it. He wore rings on his pinkie fingers like Ringo. He slouched and shrugged regularly; he even made his stammer sound cool. He had athletic skills but was not necessarily interested in sports. This was baffling to me but it added a bit of mystique to his coolness. And even though we were in the 5th grade and were way past the girls are icky stage we were generally clueless about the female state of mind especially in regards to how they decided whether they liked one of us or not.
But for Chris, they would gather around him, comb his hair, straighten his already straightened collar, slip notes to him and offer up their place in line wherever we were required to line up. That kind of effortless attention from the opposite sex annoyed some of my peers but to me it one more reason to nominate Chris to the coolness hall of fame. There was something about him—a wounded hero quality—that impressed me; I even would give him back rubs.
“You’re the b-best,” he would say, “you s-should do this for a living.”
“Ha-ha. Yeah, maybe.”
“You’d make a lot of m-money.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you s-said you are? Y-you know, your nationality?”
“Armenian.”
“Yeah. Armenians are g-good massagers.”
“We dyed rugs, actually.”
“Yeah, but this is b-better than dying rugs.”
“Guess so.”
The rumor of his birthday party started on a Tuesday morning. It was going to be big, at night and there would be massive quantities of food. There would be games the older kids play; we had no idea what that was but we all knew we would be very willing participants. Then Friday during lunch the invitations began appearing. The card featured a race car and a checkered flag, and the party was to be held that night.
I could see Chris all over the playground, talking to one or two kids at a time, nodding his head and flicking his hair back. After lunch during arithmetic, Chris made several trips to the pencil sharpener so he could distribute more invitations. He passed me by three times. By 3 o’clock it was clear that everyone else was getting a checkered flag but me.
It was a long, slow four block walk home. I couldn’t figure it out. I wondered if I had said something that offended him. I wondered if his parents had set a limit and I was the limit plus one. I wondered if I wasn’t cool enough, but how could I have been less cool than every single kid in Miss Moore’s class? Didn’t Dale, Ross and I get an A++ on our report on whales?
On the last block before home I tried to rethink the situation. I tried to block out the hurt by being logical. It was his party and if he didn’t want me there then, well, I mean, that’s what he wanted. It was his birthday, and maybe me not being there was part of his birthday wish. It wouldn’t make sense to be there if he didn’t want me there and so it followed that my wanting to be there didn’t make sense.
I was still troubled though when I walked through the front door. I headed for the kitchen, found some molasses cookies and poured myself a glass of milk. A few minutes later Mom came home and tooted the horn, usually indicating that she had groceries. I helped bring them in and then while we put them away I debated whether or not to tell her about the day’s events. At first I didn’t want to tell her, then I did, then I didn’t. Sometimes she had a tendency to overreact and somehow blame herself or ask too many questions, or get on the phone and discuss it with her best friend Pearl Laws or another friend’s mother, Mrs. Gullian. Other times she would underplay it to diminish its power to hurt. “Oh well,” she would she say and shrug and then bite into an apple as if I hadn’t said anything terribly important. But there were also times when her words were full of wisdom and insight. I decided to take a chance.
“Hey Mom,” I said while we put the last of the groceries away.
“Hah.”
“Something kinda funny happened today,” I said as lightheartedly as I could.
“What’s that?”
“Well Chris Day was inviting everyone to his birthday party today.”
“Yeah?”
“He was giving out cards.”
“Cards?”
“Uh, invitations. And well, everyone in Miss Moore’s class got invited.”
“Wow.”
“Except me. I didn’t get a card,” I said in a high voice like it was an amusing mystery.
“What?”
“I-I wasn’t invited!” I tried to laugh but no sound came out.
“You weren’t invited?”
“No.” She looked at me for a while, and then her upper lip curled up to the top of her nose—a sign of deep cogitation—while she looked at the telephone.
“I’m gonna make some phone calls,” she said with much gravitas.
I grabbed three more cookies and went to the living room to watch Felix the Cat. I didn’t know who she was going to call; I knew she didn’t know Chris’ mom. When I wiped out the last of the cookies and a commercial came on I went back into the kitchen. Mom was on the phone, nodding her head.
“I can see how that could happen,” she said twisting the cord of the receiver until it was wrapped around her fist. “I’m glad, too. Oh, fine. Dah. Thank you.” She liberated her hand and gently put the receiver down.
“What happened?” I asked impatiently.
“You’re going to the party,” she replied in a cheery but resolute voice.
“What did you….”
“Never mind. Just be ready to go at seven. And change that shirt. Did you go to school in that?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with it?”
“Just change it.”
“What about a present and stuff?”
“I’ve got a card. I’ll put five dollars in it.”
The card had flowers on it but I didn’t care. I felt funny being not invited and then being invited after Mom called but I couldn’t undo that. I was in; I stayed focused on that.
I arrived late and the front room of the house was packed with peers. For a moment I was afraid that they knew I wasn’t invited but the feeling evaporated as soon as I was greeted by my friends and heard the Beach Boys decrying the unfaithfulness of Wendy. The front room had wood paneling and a painting of cowboys on pinto horses looking over the range and another branding a steer and another sitting around a campfire. The lights were dim but you could still see the deep shine of the wood floor. I wanted to go say hi to Chris but he was encircled by the prettiest girls in our class and I didn’t want to disrupt the revelry. There were chips and dips and M&M’s. We stood and ate and yammered and were relieved and thrilled to be together away from the tedium and rigors of school. It was as if someone had unlocked shackles that we didn’t even know we had. We were free to laugh, be loud, act silly, be funny and clever without the presence of well-meaning teachers looking to keep us out of trouble and on task, and when Chris’ brother shouted over the frenzy of “You Really Got Me Now” that there would be no adults at the party, that feeling of exhilaration intensified.
I was pouring myself a coke—a rare treat for me because Dad had a ban on sodas—when Chris came over.
“I’m g-glad you came.”
“Me too.”
“What happened was I r-ran out of invitations.”
“Oh, that’s ok.”
“And my m-mom said I couldn’t have anymore than the number of cards.”
“Uh-huh.” It was hard to imagine Chris negotiating something, anything, with his mother.
“But when I got home she said it was all right.” He was twisting one of his pinkie rings.
“Yeah, that’s good.”
“So like, sorry.” His eyes blinked in rapid succession.
“It’s all right.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say and he flicked his hair and walked off.
I was talking to Barbara Neese when Chris’ brother returned in a Cowboy hat brandishing a pistol.
“Hey, kids!” he shouted. No one paid him any mind. “Hey, ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please?” He raised the pistol over his head and the last thing I thought was he’s not gonna shoot that in here, and then BLAM! There was the collective shriek followed by dead silence. I was shaking and my ears were ringing.
“My b-brother’s a little crazy,” Chris said breaking the silence.
“All right, now that I have your attention, listen up.” It was so quiet I could hear the needle skipping at the end of a record. “We’re going to have a great time. Are you having a good time?” We quickly answered in the affirmative, not wanting to make him resort to shooting his pistol again.
“We were having a g-good time, until about t-two minutes ago,” Chris said, only half kidding.
“Do y’all like pizza?” his brother continued. Everyone cheered. “Well, the pizza is on the way, and there’s gonna be plenty for everybody. We got eight pizzas!” Everyone went bonkers, except me. I was mortified; I was 11 years old and had never even seen a real pizza.
Dad had a no restaurant policy and Mom had four basic meals: chicken and pilaf; roast beef and pilaf; dolma sarma and pilaf; and then there was mashed potatoes, which was fine and meatloaf, which was inedible even if you drowned it in ketchup. As a result the Chavoor children had a limited palate, to say the least. I knew nothing of pizza except that it smelled funny, and I gained that tidbit of knowledge because Doug, my best friend who lived next door had pizza at least once a week. My only other exposure to pizza was the school’s version of it and that was a disfigured mess that made their brick of spaghetti look great.
The doorbell rang and the kids cheered again. Chris and his brother brought the pizza to a banquet table that had been set up in the living room. The funny smell filled the room and was making my stomach curl up in retreat. I began considering different strategies to get out of eating the stuff. Just ate? No, why would I have done that? I have the flu? Why would I come to the party? Allergic? That might work, unless someone who actually had allergies shouted out YOU DON’T HAVE ALLERGIES! I didn’t like being devious. The pizza was being offered in good faith; how were they supposed to know I was raised in a weird family that ate only four meals? It wasn’t their fault. The only fair thing to do was eat the pizza. I would have to convince them that I liked it, too.
We lined up and I gazed at the row of pizzas while my peers oooed and ahhed. “Pepperoni!” they shouted with delight. But when I looked, it didn’t seem to have the same appeal. Then there was another with what looked like very thin ham slices and pineapple. It must have been someone’s idea of a joke. Hot pineapple? Ultimately I picked one unadorned slice and another with bell peppers on it. I decided to start with the plain cheese and if I survived that, I would advance to bell pepper. I sat down on the couch, placed the plate on the coffee table, moving the copy of Guns and Ammo out of the way, and situated my glass of Coke so that I could grab it quickly if necessary. I took a bite. It was delicious. I ate heartily then moved on to the one with bell peppers and found that it was even better.
I had an epiphany: there are things you know you don’t like and then there are things you think you know you don’t like, and it was true that without trying there would be no chance of knowing which is which. And trying would lead to lead to more and more discoveries. I was sipping my coke like I was a captain of a luxurious yacht, looking out across the ocean when Chris came over.
“You want some more p-pizza?”
“Yeah!” The Byrds’ rendition of “Mr. Tambourine Man” floated over us.
“Pizza’s the b-best, huh?”
“Yep, it sure is, Chris.” A minute later we got up and got seconds. I went for the linguini and then the Canadian bacon.