Her mother nodded enthusiastically. “It’s the best restaurant in the city. Without a doubt. So exclusive, so refined.”
Michael also began to eat, though I noticed he avoided looking at me. He kept his eyes fixed on his plate, concentrating on breaking apart the lobster as if it were the most important task in the world.
Coward.
My son—the man I raised to be brave, to stand up for what’s right—had become a coward.
I remained seated, hands in my lap, observing. My glass of water was still there, untouched. I didn’t even feel like drinking it. It wasn’t about thirst. It was about dignity. And in that moment, I felt like they had ripped every last ounce of it from me.
Marlene’s father, a heavy set man with a gray mustache and an air of superiority, finally spoke.
“Michael, your mother is very quiet. Has she always been like this?”
He spoke about me as if I weren’t there, as if I were a topic of conversation and not a real person sitting less than three feet away.
Michael swallowed his bite before answering. “Mom has always been simple, humble. You know, she comes from a different generation.”
“Humble,” Marlene repeated. And there was something venomous in the way she pronounced that word. “Yes, definitely humble.”
I wanted to say something. I wanted to scream at them that humble didn’t mean invisible, that simple wasn’t a synonym for stupid. But I held back because something inside me told me to wait, to observe, to let them keep digging their own grave.
Marlene’s mother poured herself more wine. The bottle was already half empty.“These must be such difficult times for people your age, Helen. With no stable income, not enough savings. It’s a shame the older generation didn’t know how to plan for their future better.”
There it was—the first direct blow, disguised as concern, but it was a blow nonetheless, implying that I was a burden, that I was poor, that I hadn’t done anything with my life.
“Mom gets by just fine,” Michael said, but his tone was defensive, weak, as if he didn’t believe what he was saying himself.
“Of course, of course,” Marlene replied quickly. But her smile said the opposite. “We all do what we can with what we have. Although, well, some of us have more than others.”
Silence. A silence so thick you could cut it with a knife. No one defended me. No one said, “Hey, that was out of line.” No one.