By Adam Shaw
The day the McDonald’s Diner opened in my hometown, Dad came home from his shift at the factory with his head shimmering and the pits of his shirt soaked and sagging. Isaac and I looked up from the TV; Sum 41’s video for “Fat Lip” had landed in the top spot on Total Request Live, and Deryck Whibley sang about lower-middle class brats while a girl I wanted to marry shaved her head in the middle of a halfpipe. Dad spoke over the music, said we were going to the new McDonald’s. I almost quipped it’s not new, just lipstick on a pig like I’d heard Nick Morgan say in the cafeteria that day, but Dad tossed his lunch box toward the sink, disappeared into his room to shower and change clothes.
Dad had been talking about the McDonald’s Diner for months. Our town had been selected for a pilot alongside a few others, an upscale renovation to the location by our mall complete with new signage, a dedicated hostess, phones at each table for ordering food and requesting refills. He’d come home from work only to load us into his Jeep so he could drive by it, monitor its progress, tell Isaac and me about the tiling, painting, repaving that had been done. He was the type of guy who could strip a house to its studs, rebuild it. I was the kind of kid who built a life in The Sims, locked myself in the family computer room and ate Doritos while it grew.
Isaac and I wore gym shorts that draped past our knees, Hawaiian shirts baggy enough to cover the ballooning of our waists that had started when we’d quit football the year before. Dad returned from his shower in a polo tucked into slacks and told us to stand up, get into church clothes, so we did.
A hostess greeted us at the McDonald’s Diner. Behind her, red pleather booths sat pristine, taut. The place was empty except for a man in a bleached Appetite for Destruction shirt dipping McNuggets into a sauce cup. Dad asked for a booth and we were taken to one, handed plastic-coated menus that read, It’s McDonald’s with a diner inside! Two classic restaurants in one great place. A bottle of ketchup rested in its carrier at the far end of the table, a thickened spurt sticking out from under the cap like a skin tag. Above it, mounted to the wall, hung a phone that the hostess said we could use to order straight from the kitchen.
Watch this, I told Isaac, and I picked up the phone, shouted whassuuuuuup? like the Budweiser commercials I’d seen on TV. Stuck my tongue out and everything. Dad grabbed the phone from my hand, muttered an apology into the receiver and hung up.
What’s wrong with you, he said. I wiped spit off my chin with the side of my hand, shrugged.
Dad asked what we wanted. My brother asked for a Big Mac and I said the same, but Dad said, no no no, that we were eating off the diner menu. Behind him, the man in the Appetite for Destruction shirt scraped a half-eaten McNugget around the edges of his sauce cup, popped it in his mouth.
But it’s the same menu, I said. Two classic restaurants in one great place.
Dad lowered his head, ran his thumbs across the cover of his menu. His tongue slipped out from between his lips, wet them, and he said, fine. He picked up the phone, ordered Big Macs for my brother and me, meatloaf with gravy for him, and when he hung up he exhaled and relaxed into the booth. It squeaked against his back in a way that reminded me of the beatboxing at the start of the Sum 41 video, and I exhaled, too, turned and stared out the window at girls walking into and out of the mall on the other side of the parking lot.
The food arrived slowly for McDonald’s but quickly for a diner. Our Big Macs were boxed, fries nestled into brown and red cartons, but Dad’s meatloaf had been plated, gravy cascading over its side, mushrooms shimmery. He said let’s eat and picked up his fork, cut into the meatloaf. There was a spurt of grease, maybe gravy, the clatter of his fork hitting the plate, and he took a bite, chewed, said, it is one great place. I flipped open my Big Mac box, slid my thumb underneath the sandwich to wedge it free. The back end fell limp and spilled lettuce, a pickle, some onion onto the table. I looked up at Dad. He cut another piece of meatloaf with the side of his fork, pierced it and slid it across the gravy pooled in the bottom of his plate.
My sandwich tasted as sweaty and tangy as I expected, and I pictured us coming back, back again, maybe after visits to the Circuit City that anchored the west side of the mall, an afternoon of arcade games at Aladdin’s Castle. I pictured us walking into the McDonald’s Diner with our arms around each other’s shoulders afterward, laughing with my brother about the aliens we’d picked up by the hair, punched into space in Battletoads, Dad slugging us on the shoulder, saying, you gave ’em a run for their money. The hostess would greet us and we’d sink into our booth, this booth, and Dad would pick up the phone to order us ice cream sundaes, caramel and hot fudge both. I pictured telling him about bands, showing him made-up logos I’d sketched between class notes even though the only instrument I’d ever played was the trombone. I pictured him nodding, smiling ear-to-ear, asking how’d you come up with that? and me shrugging while I ripped open a packet of peanuts, shook them onto my ice cream, shoveled a spoonful of it and caramel and fudge all into my mouth.
I finished the Big Mac, closed the box, said, can we get ice cream?
Dad set his utensils in what was left of his gravy. He grabbed his menu, and I stared at the cover as he flipped through it, two classic restaurants in one great place, and for a second, I believed it. He picked up the phone and I scooted forward, realized that my mouth had fallen open, that the drool had started to pool in the space beneath my tongue, and I searched his face for a sign that we would eat our desserts and talk and laugh even though our mouths were full and we’d have to press our palms against our temples to fight back brain freeze, but he asked for the check and I closed it, collapsed back into my seat.
I caught Dad’s eyes as he hung up the phone, set down the menu. Nobody brought our check, so Dad pulled a handful of bills out of his wallet and pinned them under the ketchup bottle. He grabbed a napkin and wiped at the glob that had been under the lid, tossed it on his plate and nodded toward the mall, said let’s go. Everything rushed forward like a kiss to the forehead, arms wrapping around my shoulders and pulling me close. But then a swell of adrenaline like that moment just before the razor meets your skin and shaves off your hair, that half-second of flight when you don’t know if you’ll stick the landing or crumble down the halfpipe: the world old but new, fresh and full of possibility.
Adam Shaw‘s work has previously appeared in Pithead Chapel, Autofocus, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughter in Louisville, Kentucky, and can be found online at theshawspot.com.