Some Things Are Just Better Homemade

SOME THINGS ARE JUST BETTER HOME MADE
by Lawrence Beatty

It was the best spaghetti Lloyd Rivers had eaten in a long time. Perhaps it was even the best. Big, tasty round meatballs covered in savory red marinara sauce, one of his favorite dishes in fact. The old balding relic fervently began to wrap another mouthful of the cuisine around his fork. He sat at an old tiny wooden table, battered with scratches and coffee stains atop the surface hidden under a mass of books, papers and articles. His plate was adjusted in a small clearing amongst the clutter.

Just another Halloween alone he had thought earlier. And as usual, he didn’t even bother with preparing any candy, for the house was located far away from any local children’s trick’ or treat routes. Wouldn’t knock on this door even if they did see the damn spooky place! he had thought.

The small kitchen of the time worn house held a view of the surrounding woods from a bay window. The chipped, cracked glass panes were dusty, and draped from the outside with spider webbing. Green mold crept from underneath the exterior of the house and fingered upwardly to the rooftop. Any passerby would probably think it was in fact haunted.

He wiped a bit of sauce from the corner of his wrinkled mouth with his hand. Better even than Aunt Lillian’s famous homemade! he thought. Soon he felt somewhat guilty for comparing his own cooking to that of his beloved late relative, he reiterated to himself ‘well almost as good'. He subconsciously wiped the sauce onto his pant leg as he glanced briefly upward as if the old coot was somehow watching him, reading his every thought.

Often he did feel her watching him, after all she lived and died right here in the same house. He glanced over at the picture hanging on the wall in the adjacent living room. There her portrait hung, over an ancient cobblestone fireplace which was in desperate need of maintenance . She looked about sixty; all her hair was gray with a hint that it had perhaps been dark brown or black decades before. She smirked interestingly, with an expression that often boggled Lloyd.

But how amazing it was! The juicy balls of beef seemed to hold so much flavor, and it seemed to him mind blowing considering they had come from a plastic bag that had been sitting in his freezer for quite some time, and God knows how long ago it was that the meatballs were originally packaged.

He recalled his skinny Aunt, wearing an almost colonial-times looking dress and apron, over the very same counter top he was sitting across from, laboriously loading tons of onions, oatmeal, and sliced garlic along with a selection of seasonings into a large wooden bowl, combining the ingredients together with her bare hands. The ground meat squeezing through her scrawny little fingers like play dough. He took another bite. God, this is actually better than hers! finally he couldn’t help but admit to himself.

The corner of the plastic meatball packaging peered at him over the top of the small plastic trash can beside the counter. ‘Delicious! Pre-cooked!‘ The bag exclaimed. His pace of eating slacked suddenly, as he imagined a disgruntled factory worker, trudging pounds and pounds of red pulverized meat into some sort of gigantic industrial machine like paint into a spray hopper.

He swallowed unnervingly.

He then pictured the raw meatballs being boiled by the thousands in some sort of behemoth caldron, afterwards drained in some sort of monstrous net or colander. The little bland balls making their way down an endless black rubber conveyor belt still faintly steaming and finally into the sixty-two ounce plastic bags of which Lloyd had spotted in the frozen foods section of the grocery store.

His appetite lessened substantially. However he had just began eating and surely he couldn’t let this masterpiece go to waste. He slowly managed another gulp.

“Get back to work!” he imagined a fat, sweaty shift supervisor of the factory yelling at the disgruntled meatball employee, who had just stepped out for a smoke, now outing a freshly lit cig. The aging, underpaid young woman wasting her late twenties at a depressing industrial gig, getting bossed around by an asshole. Well surely, she could come up with a couple schemes for revenge in that depressed- almost pushed over the edge head of hers, smothered by bundled-up undernourished hair wrapped tightly in a cafeteria style hair net.

He pictured the girl even more vividly now. “Son of a bitch! He’ll see..” she mutters under her breath as she takes a look around to make sure the coast is clear. She reaches underneath her apron and down into the back of her breeches, making sure to get every bit of sweat and grime from the crack of her bottom and between her thighs. Satisfied, after sniffing the rubber glove to ensure the odor worthy, she continues shaping the balls of meat.

Ugggghhhhh! Splat! Lloyd threw up his Tour de Force all over the table and all it’s contents. He stood up, shocked and speechless.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled out loud, his echo muffled silently throughout the ancient damp wooden house. Angrily, he slammed down his fist on the table, splashing up reddish sauce and stomach acids all over the kitchen. He kicked the garbage can sending it’s contents all the way over to the next room.

Aunt Lillian’s portrait suddenly fell from the wall onto the floor, the dusty glass frame shattering like a sheet of brittle frozen ice.

Lloyd sighed heavily, and stomped over to the living room temporarily forgetting the huge mess he had to deal with on the table. He crouched down beside the portrait, carefully not to strain his old back. It had fell face down. As he huddled down close he could see an old piece of newspaper was revealed that had been secured behind the picture frame apparently for ages.

He precariously plucked the folded paper from behind the frame. Lloyd’s mouth gasped at what he was looking at. He fell over from his crouched position beside the frame, his heart now beating hard and fast.

‘MEAT BALL FACTORY SUPERVISOR ARRESTED’
Lillian Rivers , 29, working for Thompsan’s Meatball Co. filed for physical abuse charges in May 1949 against her shift supervisor, Aden Lansky. October 31, the man was arrested, and the factory forced to settle with Rivers. This marks the first successful suit in Maschechusetts for a female factory worker being physically abused. One month after the winning lawsuit she’s purchased a lovely old house built in the 1870’s near where her parents grew up. Lansky, River‘s superior at the factor claims she concocted the whole scheme up as a means of revenge. Authorities report...

Lloyd lay in the middle of the floor, sprawled out on top of the various items from the trash can he’d sent flying moments ago. His heart still pounded as he read the ancient newspaper article. In the picture was his Aunt, much younger, with a bun of black hair underneath a cafeteria style hair net. Beside her was the fat sweaty shift supervisor being hauled away by police men in their late forties’ uniforms with their little bats at their side. The fat man had a ghastly look of terror on his face as he was being drug away, his throat wide open yelling out curses at the woman with ferocious eyes.

After reading the paper he tossed the article to his side and lied completely sprawled out on the floor. His right hand brushed up against a familiar feeling piece of plastic. His heart suddenly erupted as his eyes fixed on the label, ‘THOMPSAN’S MEATBALL CO.’