Lumpy Mashed Potatoes

by Jeanne Lyet Gassman

The stainless steel potato ricer is not my mother's but a replica purchased online. The mint-green Bakelite mixing bowl belonged to her. After she died, I found it in a box of chipped plates, carefully wrapped and preserved, still like new. A receptacle packed with memories.

The steam of cooked spuds rises into my face. My hand steadies the familiar translucent vessel, and I press deep, squeezing them into Play-Doh shapes. Time flows backwards. My mother’s voice murmurs against my ear: "Add more milk. It will make them smoother."

I don’t want to listen, but she is here, and I am there, back to a bitter winter day my sophomore year in high school where the kitchen table is not yet set, and my math homework is spread out before me. My fifteen-year-old eyes watch my mother's shoulders hunch as she leans into her work, plunging the ricer, up and down, up and down, into the boiled potatoes. Like the mystery of solving for X, she will never remove all the lumps.

"Your father must be working late," she says. Her harsh tone grates the silence. Metal scrapes against glass, and tiny particles of white, no larger than snowflakes, fly up with each pass. Outside, the sunset slivers into streaks of orange and gold over the high desert horizon. It will be cold tonight.

The dog whines to be let into the backyard. When I open the kitchen door, he races for the pear tree where he raises his leg and kicks up a spray of dried grass in triumph. Not fully housebroken, he will poop tonight on the layers of newspaper my mother spreads across the pine floors in our living room. It will be my job to clean up the mess in the morning.

She draws the baked chicken, bathed and swimming in butter, lemon juice, and oregano, from the oven and prepares three servings: A drumstick for me, the thigh for her, and for my father, the breast. We each get canned peach halves, their hollows topped with cottage cheese, and a dollop of mostly mashed potato. His filled plate rests in front of his empty chair like a recrimination. She glances at the clock on the stove, watching the second hand move forward. "I guess he was delayed."

I clear off my papers and spoon lemon butter over my potatoes.

After we finish, she wipes up the crumbs and scrapes off my father's plate. The peaches are returned to their covered dish, the cottage cheese tossed in the trash, and the chicken back to its baking pan. Only the potatoes remain, cold and congealing. "I'll heat him up something later."

When the dog barks once, we both jump.

The front door bangs open, and a voice calls out, "Hello, hello. Anybody home?" My father swings into the kitchen, trailing the frozen air in his wake. He sniffs. "Smells good. I'm starving."

My mother stiffens when he kisses her cheek.

His scent, stale and sweet, fills the room. Stale: the cigarettes he stopped smoking over a year ago. Sweet: a woman's perfume.

Not my mother's.

* * * * *

Jeanne Lyet Gassman holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her first novel, Blood of Stone (Tuscany Press), received an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2015. Additional honors for Jeanne include fellowships and grants from the New Mexico Writers' Foundation, Ragdale, and the Arizona Commission for the Arts, as well as nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions. Her work has appeared in Skink Beat Review, Tales of Fear, Superstition, and Doom (Redwood Press), and Clerestory, among many others. Learn more about Jeanne: www.jeannelyetgassman.com