MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter seven

October 2000

Staff Room of Chilton Preparatory School

13:30

NEHA'S HIJAB is a summer-sky blue to match her dress. She barely looks up from John Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' as she scoops fish and rice into her mouth, some dish she must have made at home. She's been eating it every lunch for the past three days. I take bites of torn apart cheese-filled croissants between turning pages of the knitting magazine I bought on the way to work. We don't talk. It's better that way, just a simple hello as we take our usual seats at the far corner of the staff room where nobody bothers us. She looked surprised at my knitting magazine.

So was I.

I'm still not sure what convinced me to buy it. I was just stopping at one of the small stores on my drive to work, picking up a sweet snack because I can never be bothered making breakfast, and I saw it sitting in the magazine aisle. Just sitting there. A row from the top. Surrounded by far more interesting magazines that I barely even glanced at. I grabbed it and added it to the conveyor belt along with my breakfast items.

Only now, I've cracked it open.

None of this makes sense to me. I can barely read the patterns and it has all started to look the same. Every second page there is another ad for another place to buy yarn. Who needs this much yarn? Why would you not just get enough yarn for the project you're working on? I never should have bought this magazine.

I slam it shut just as the extra seat at our table scrapes against the floor.

All heads have turned our way. Nobody sits with us, deciding instead to just leave us be unless they wish to sit in silence for an hour. Most of the other teachers want to chat, to complain about their students of the day, to grumble about the shitty coffee from the machine, to gossip about the people sitting too far away to hear. I used to join in. Back when I first started and I wanted everyone to like me. Back when they'd ask about Harrison, and our wedding, and if we were planning on having kids. Back when they'd mention bumping into my mother at some DAR event. Back when I was happy to try.

Trying is too much effort.

"Is that mutabbaq samak?"

Neha's eyes narrow at Jethro as he takes the empty seat at our table. "Yes?" The last syllable is dragged out. It sounds less like an answer than it should and he chuckles, pulling out his lunch box and laying it on the round table.

"Evie's obsessed with food. She's got to make every recipe she can find, and about three months ago, she found a recipe for mutabbaq samak and now she won't stop making it."

"What fish does she use?"

"Whatever she can get her hands on. There's this fishmonger in New York that does zubaidi that she's been bugging me to take her to so she can 'make it right'. I'm taking her for her birthday next month, she just doesn't know it yet."

My fingers toy with the edges of the knitting magazine as I watch them talk about Kuwaiti dishes. Every so often, Jethro trips up on the pronunciation of an Arab word and Neha laughs as she corrects him.

He hasn't even noticed the magazine.

I get up from the table. His eyes find mine and I can see he wants to stop me, wrap his hand around my wrist and pull me back down into the conversation. But, I was never a part of the conversation. I was just the lonely woman clinging to the buoy closest to me. I had always just been happy to not have to sit alone, thankful that all those years ago Neha sat at my table. But, we've never talked. I don't even know what we'd talk about.