TALE OF THE SALT CELLARS

A long, long time ago, when I was about 10, my mother married a man we can call Brownie. I was one of the witnesses at their marriage at a J.P.’s. They bought a house on South 11th in the same area where my mother’s father had built so many houses though this was not one of them. It cost $7500! I’d be curious what it would sell for today except that it is razed, as are most of the decrepit edifices in which I spent my childhood.
Shortly after we moved in I noticed some strange medicine in the dining room. I asked mom about it and at first she said something about Brownie’s recurring bouts of malaria. I guess that would explain his lying, sweating in their bed quite a bit. But later she revealed it to be Antabuse. Perhaps today they would force it on one, via patches or subdural pumps but in those days it was voluntary and it didn’t take long for Brownie to stop taking it. As I look back and never noted before, mom was remarkably sober during this time. It may have been an effort to support Brownie in his efforts.
But I get ahead of myself. Before the drunken fights, before he fell off the antabuse wagon, before the missing cat, before the abuse, before the dog, before I almost died, twice, before the attempted molestation, before the police came, before my mother thought I wanted to kill her, before the men in the white coats came, before all the after, mom started setting a table and cooking for the 3 of us as I had never seen, as I could not remember our life with my father before their divorce.
It was summer and she brought out a couple of place set items with which I was not at all familiar: corn holders and saltcellars. A set for each of us. The corn holders were the ubiquitous plastic, yellow, pronged affairs still popular. But saltcellars have fallen from favor. This set was plastic also: a tiny recessed area for the salt, surrounded by an ornate, flowery lip and each with its tiny spoon, one color for each color of the rainbow. For whatever reason it is the latter that stick in my memory as symbolizing so much of the civility, the domesticity, the gentility, the femininity, the normalcy etc. that my mother wished to evidence, all of which would be eclipsed by the fights, the drinking, the abuse.
Perhaps in some distant universe far, far away, in some unknown future, my mother will stand beside a dining room table in a modest house, a table set with corn holders and salt cellars, a gentle husband, a responsive, intelligent, comely child or children and be happy. But not in this one. No, never, not ever, ever, ever, ever in this one.
Of all the memories of that place, and there are many, it’s the cellars that bring me always to tears