He doesn’t want to say the place has fallen off, not here, not today, even if it has, even if she’s probably thinking it too. There’s no call to spoil a moment, and she struggles to create these, always saying he’s hard to shop for, hard to surprise. She was proud and excited to think of this, he could tell, and it’s important to keep it nice, protect it, make it pleasant.
It's a reach back to the early days, this pick, a place that was the benchmark for a big splurge, back in the days they talk about in joking tones now, as if it was a lark and not a terrifying time of counting pennies and dreading the mail, turning down the volume on the answering machine so the kids didn’t hear the messages.
When things weren’t quite as oppressive, or when they were tired enough of being poor to simply pretend they weren’t and damn the consequences, they’d come here, her fretting that she didn’t eat enough to justify the cost, him certain that he was one big lucky break away from being regulars at places like this, being able to order another mimosa knowing only the first one’s free, stacking plates and digging in.
The allure of the brunch buffet came from even murkier depths of history, his anyway (her family simply never went out to restaurants). The words “all you can eat” are a tease and a challenge for white trash with an insatiable teenager mid-growth-spurt on the roster, and the jokes about the manager locking the door when he saw them coming started before they even left the house.
That place was a franchise, a step above fast food at best, but in their tax bracket and in their town, it had a middle-class cachet that might as well have made it a yacht club. They had a menu, regular entrees and sides, but those finite meals were for people who worked indoors, who didn’t hustle. If you were all about the bang for the buck, you got the buffet, and if you wanted to show your appreciation for being allowed to go at all, you ate till you sweated.
It was an epoch from those days to their first family trips to this place, but the allure of the buffet was still ingrained. This was prosperity and plenty, even if you overdrew the checking account to pay the bill. The food was better, the ambience and people-watching a step up, and he didn’t see anyone he recognized from the bus at these tables. But the need to get every possible morsel, to hoard food like he was stockpiling for hibernation, to somehow get one over on the house, was still strong.
And now he’s here, in yet another era of life (who knew there would be so many?). The big lucky break, that cleaving of a life into old and new, poor and rich, instead turned out to be a million tiny stumbles down a path toward a relative stability. Going out is still nice, but it’s not a dizzying treat, the bill not a panic-inducing sugar crash. This is a special occasion because they both say it is, but it’s really no more momentous than their dinner out last Friday.
The way now to recreate that sense of playing imposter, of sneaking into a place above their station, lies at the podiums inside dim doorways where you’re expected to put on a tie, and where the menus say things like market price, or print the dollar amounts in whole numbers without punctuation.
It always makes him think of highway signs. DAYTON 67 LOUISVILLE 132 MISO GLAZED SEABASS 54
They’ve done this, and will again, but the exhilaration of being intimidated isn’t as intoxicating as it used to be. Better to return in comfort to a place once aspirational, to remind themselves that they’ve moved up, that things have changed for them, and that they’ve earned the right to be here, even if the only one challenging their place at the table was themselves.
The layout is different, the protocols left over from the drastic days of the pandemic. Everything is served by staff, who dole out tiny portions with a look that reminds you that you can always come back up for more. There’s still the same breakfast and lunch options, the carving station, the pastries and cakes, and he’s sure some of it’s different than it used to be, but it’s been so long, and the experience feels so different, he can’t trust his memory.
But he’s pretty sure it’s fallen off. It’s good. It’s fine. The company’s great, of course, and they do a lot of those little contented sighs. The church crowd is starting to come in, brash and clanging, and he tries to remember feeling like a spy in a genteel parlor, one crass word from being outed and ejected by his betters. Now the two of them people-watch, and arch eyebrows, and judge, tired and catty and old.
The coffee’s still amazing. He wants to ask where they get it, and he realizes it’s because he’d be okay with never coming back here again. This feels like a visit to a childhood playground at this point, whether it’s fallen off or not. Some places become encased in myth and emotional resonance, too much an artifact to be experienced by the current self. He might as well make reservations inside a photograph.
He goes back for a third plate, knowing why he’s doing it, resigning himself to a wasted afternoon on the couch. It would have been early in his warmup game, a lifetime ago, but now it’s just a turn on a swing he can’t fit on anymore. The prime rib’s lukewarm, the fried potatoes overdone. There’s a tip jar for the kids with the ladles. He gets back to the table, where she’s ordered a free mimosa she won’t drink so he can have it. She gives him another smile.
It can be such a good day in such a comfortable life and still ache like such a rending stretch across the decades. He figures it’s not fair to pin all that on a plucky little brunch place, and realizes they’ll do this again, at least once more, when it’s been too long since they’ve dined with their own wistful ghosts.
They step out into the summer sun. The rest of the day is theirs to do as they please.