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Monday, May 21, 2012

TUESDAY TALES -WRITTEN TO THE PROMPT "PIE' FROM "IF I LOVED YOU"


Thanks for stopping by. This is a snippet from my work-in-progress, "If I Loved You". Chaz is a movie star and Megan is his finanacial advisor.
 "Meat Loaf"
Chaz took a big swig of the fine champagne when she left the room. Then a big breath and let it out slowly. Calm down. Meatloaf and “I love you”. Can’t handle this.
            Megan approached the dining table carrying a platter with a meatloaf covered in a chunky tomato sauce with roasted potatoes lined up on one side and green beans on the other.
            “It’s…it’s beautiful,” Chaz managed, his eyes clouding with tears.
            Meg put it down on the table and turned to him. He was dabbing a handkerchief to his eyes. She stepped over and hugged him.
            “What’s wrong? Don’t you like meatloaf? It was the easiest recipe I had and Mark loves it so I figured you would, too.”
            “It’s my favorite.”
            “Then why are you upset?” He eased her arms away from him, seized his champagne, took another big swig and refilled the glass. Then he sat down where she indicated.
            Megan began to cut the loaf into one-inch thick slices.
            “So, give.”
            His mouth watered as he watched her cut the perfectly browned meat.
            “God that looks great. Okay. You deserve an explanation. On holidays when my mom was okay…between her bouts with drugs…she’d make a meatloaf. We had nothing…no money, so we ate pasta every day because it was cheap. We lived on food stamps and welfare checks most of the time. Meatloaf was the cheapest special food she could cook.”
            “So it became your favorite.”
            He nodded.
            “She made a terrific meatloaf. I loved it. Her meatloaf was our special holiday dish. She always managed to have a small gift for me at Christmas but on Thanksgiving and Easter, we had meatloaf. I’d dream about it for days. After she died, none of my foster families made meat loaf. It was back to pasta. On Thanksgiving we had turkey and stuffing and but with so many kids there wasn’t a whole lot to go around.”
             “Do you love turkey, too?”
            “I love everything about a normal Thanksgiving Day…watching the parade, football games, eating too much…”
            “But you didn’t have a lot, right?”
            “When you’re not used to big portions, just a normal portion makes you feel stuffed.”
“I baked you an apple pie for dessert.”
“Homemade apple pie? This will be a first for me.”

5 comments:

Iris B said...

I love it how you describe the emotions for a simple dish. Great sample.

Tai Vicari said...

Chaz is a closet foodie for sure. I love meatloaf one of my fav meals. What's the old saying? A way to a man's heart is through is stomach...I love this exerpt.

SherryGLoag said...

Love the way you take us back into Cahz's past. I can almost smell that meatloaf :-)

Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy said...

I loved how we learned so much about his past just from a simple meat loaf!

Lindsay said...

That is such an emotional scene