Weird Meatloaf

St. Louis Park, Minnesota
Summer, 1968

Julie opened the refrigerator and wrapped her fingers around the long, cold glass neck of a Coke bottle. It hissed when she pried off the cap. On the counter next to the stove was a sheet of waxed paper blanketed with a thick layer of ground beef with a whole celery heart resting on top of it. Julie’s mother lifted the wax paper to wrap the beef-blanket around the celery. It was the same technique she used for making Swiss rolls -- those flat cakes rolled into a cylinder with a swirl of sugar-whipped lard in the middle. 

“What is that?” Julie asked, her upper lip curling. 

“Dinner,” her mother said, curtly. Once she’d rolled the beef tightly around the celery, she layered the outside with strips of bacon, its white fat gleaming. 

“I’m not eating that,” Julie said. She put the glass soda bottle to her lips and took a long pull. 

“I’m not fixing you something different.”

“I mean I’m a vegetarian.” 

“Since when?” her mother asked as she turned around, an iron-on puppy staring at Julie from the front of her apron. She wore her hair in a poodle cut like Lucy, though even Lucy didn’t wear her hair that way anymore. 

“I told you about this yesterday,” Julie lied. She crossed her arms behind her back. She wore yellow cotton twill capri pants and a striped top that matched. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her reflection in the kitchen window, the image of her face layered over the ruby red of the hummingbird feeder that was just outside. 

“Well,” Mom said as she turned her back, “You can eat the hearts of palm salad and the baked potato.”

Julie rolled her eyes and padded out of the room, leaving Mom alone with her stupid weird meatloaf and her stupid puppy apron in the stupid kitchen with the red drawer pulls and stupid red cherries on the wall. 

The green carpet in the hallway, which Julie had just vacuumed, cushioned the soles of her bare feet. She passed her father’s wood-paneled den and peeked inside, but he wasn’t there. The purple heart that he displayed on his tiger oak desk was missing; he’d kept it tucked away in a drawer ever since the fight with Robbie. 

“You’ve always been so proud of that thing,” Robbie shouted, pointing at the medal. “And now you don’t want me to go?”

“Three weeks in a MASH unit somewhere off Okinawa, fighting off sepsis while my fractured pelvis healed just enough so that I could get up to take a piss. It’s not all medals and cute nurses!”

They argued like that for so long, it was dark out by the time Robbie slammed the front door and vanished down the street. The last Julie saw of him was a glimpse of his denim shirt under the corner streetlamp. When he didn’t return by the next afternoon, Mom went down to the police station to report him missing, but they said he’d probably just run away, and the department didn’t have the resources to go after every kid who got sick of home. There were so many of them these days. 

Four days later, Robbie called from some Air Force base on the west coast. Julie remembered Dad’s face reddening as he gripped the phone receiver. 

“You come home now,” Dad shouted. 

“It’s too late,” Julie heard Robbie say, his voice sounding small and far away, “I’ve enlisted.” Then, a dial tone. Dad stared at the receiver in disbelief before he finally set it back onto the hook. 

Now, Robbie was at Bien Hoa, and they received letters from him every month or so…three weeks if they were lucky. 

Julie went to her room and flopped down on her bed. Robbie’s room was across the hall from hers and bigger, but she didn’t want it when Mom suggested she move into it. It smelled too much like boy and the wallpaper had baseball players on it. 

Julie hated the wallpaper in her room too: waterlilies against a yellow background. Through the window, the scent of fresh-cut grass wafted on the breeze.  Two yards over, a neighbor was pushing his mower back and forth over the lawn. 

She pulled the “Hey Jude” single out of its sleeve and dropped it onto her GE Wildcat record player. She plugged in her headphones and sat on her bed, legs crossed Indian style, and shut her eyes as Paul McCarntey’s voice filled her ears. 

When the song ended, she moved the needle so she could hear it again. After a while, the smell of ground beef, crisp bacon, cheddar cheese, garlic, green pepper, onion and celery warmed the house. Julie’s mouth filled with saliva and she swallowed hard. You’re vegetarian now, and that smell makes you sick. She ignored the growling in her stomach. 

Julie put Rubber Soul on the turntable. Just before the last track, the door to her room flew open and her mother stood on the side, her Max Factor Blue Mist eyeshadow caking on her eyelids. 

“What?” Julie asked as she pulled her headphones away from her ears. 

“Set the table. I’m not going to ask you again.”

Julie switched off the record player and left the headphones resting on her pillow.

“Remember, there’ll be five of us tonight,” Mom said. 

“Five? Who’s coming?” Julie hasn’t meant to whine, but her parents’ friends were so boring. 

“Hank and Blanche,” she said. 

“Again?” Julie asked.

“You be nice,” Mom snapped. 

Hank and Blanche were the king and queen of boring -- no, the high priest and priestess of boring. The United Nations of boring. The Pharoah and -- whatever a woman Pharoah was called -- of boring. Hank’s company made dog food, and the only thing he ever talked about was what new flavor coating they’d invented to spray on the kibbles, and Blanche was always on some new diet. Julie wondered why Mom bothered with the meatloaf when a wedge of iceberg lettuce and a plate of cheese cubes would do. 

“Use the Blue Heaven china,” Mom commanded. She and Dad had fought about that too. They’d received 12 place settings worth of that apple blossom china for their wedding. Why did she need to go out and buy a whole new set? Mom said she wanted another set for more casual gatherings so she could save the apple blossoms for holidays, but Dad reminded her that they had the Spode that she used on Christmas and accused her of wanting the newer stuff because it was fashionable. 

Julie set out the china atop linen place settings and folded a matching napkin to sit next to each one. She arranged the silverware according to the diagram her mother had clipped from the newspaper and stuck up on the refrigerator with a plastic magnet shaped like a banana bunch. 

An hour later, Dad came in from the garage and showered. Then he wheeled the bar cart out of the closet and mixed himself a Manhattan. The doorbell rang. Hank’s scalp was pink under his comb-over and Blanche’s skirt was too wide. Hank dabbed his forehead with a pocket square. 

“It’s a scorcher today,” he said to Julie. 

Julie sipped a Shirley Temple while Dad made cocktails for Hank and Blanche. She swirled the grenadine with her straw just to watch it settle again. It reminded her of the lava lamp in Robbie’s room. Whenever it wasn’t plugged in, the ‘lava’ just looked like old beets. 

At dinner, Dad cut through the crisp layer of bacon to slice the meatloaf. The celery heart inside steamed; it almost looked like a rose. Blanche gasped while Hank applauded. 

“Now that’s a meatloaf,” Hank said. 

“I’m so glad we’re eating here tonight,” Blanche said. “With this new diet, I eat half a grapefruit for breakfast and the other half with cottage cheese for lunch. But then for dinner, I can have whatever I want.” 

“I always make her get extra olives in her martini,” Hank said. “Otherwise, she’s three sheets to the wind before dinner hits the table!” 

Dad laughed and lit a cigarette. 

Mom dished the meatloaf, leaving a slice on everyone’s plate but Julie’s. 

“Our daughter has decided to become a vegetarian,” Mom said. 

“Oh, how wonderful,” Blanche slurred. 

Julie took a spoonful of hearts of palm salad and stared at the wrinkled skin on her baked potato. 

“So,” Hank said, “any word from Robbie?”

“Well, he doesn’t tell us much,” Dad said. “You know how it is.” 

“You must be so proud,” Hank said. “My idiot son keeps talking about going to Canada. I tell him, if he keeps talking that way, I’ll toss him out on his ear. He can sit in jail if he doesn’t want to serve his country.” 

Julie watched her father and waited for his mouth to harden the way it had on the night when Robbie ran away. “If he goes to Canada, they won’t let him back in,” Dad said and drained his glass. 

For dessert, Mom brought out a Broken Glass Cake; white, pineapple-flavored gelatin surrounding translucent cubes of cherry, lemon and orange Jell-O, all nestled on top of a buttery graham cracker crust. Mom handed a slice to Blanche, and Julie watched, amazed, as Blanche inhaled it before everyone else got their piece.

An hour later, Hank helped Blanche to the door and they drove off in their Buick Wildcat. 

“Why do you insist on inviting that idiot?” Dad asked once their car had pulled away from the curb. 

“What are you talking about?” Mom asked as she scraped plate scraps into the trashcan. 

“He wants his son in the war? Even after that mess back in January? He’s an idiot.”

“I thought he was your friend,” Mom said. 

“That was before I knew he was an idiot.” Dad shook his head and disappeared into the living room where he stretched out in his recliner watching Bonanza while Mom covered the leftover meatloaf with tinfoil and Julie gathered up the dirty dishes. 

“I saw you eyeing the meatloaf,” Mom teased. “It’s not too late. It’s cold now, but you can still have some.” 

Julie shook her head as she filled the sink with hot water and Palmolive. 

Mom leaned close and whispered, “You know, you’re not like Blanche. You’re tiny. You don’t need to diet.” 

“Oh, Mom!” Julie brought the cake from the dining room table and set it on the kitchen counter. 

“That has to go in the fridge,” Mom said. “Did you see the way Blanche attacked hers? I was surprised she didn’t demand an extra slice!”

Julie smirked. 

Julie took the box of Saran Wrap out of the cupboard and sliced off a sheet to cover the leftover cake. As she slid it onto the top shelf of the refrigerator, she said, “Dad’s right. Hank is an idiot.” 

Julie waited for her mother to react, but she said nothing. Finally, she said, quietly, “I’ll take care of the dishes. You can go.”

Julie went to her room and put Fifth Dimension on the turntable. The album was Robbie’s. He’d told her in a letter she could listen to all of his albums if she wanted; she kept the letter in her diary in case he needed reminding when he came home. She fell asleep to “Eight Miles High.”

While she slept, she dreamed that she and Robbie were up north, floating in big black inner tubes while pine cones dropped into the water. Later, at the picnic table, he told her to shut her eyes, and he put a big daddy longlegs in her hair, its ugly little orange body pulsing in the center of its long, bent black legs. She screamed and Dad swatted him with a greasy spatula. Robbie laughed and ran along the shore, hamburger fat streaking down his spine. 

Julie woke to see the turntable spinning silently. She switched it off and went into the living room where Dad was asleep in front of a test pattern. 

In one of his letters to her, Robbie wrote, “You should see it, Jules. We fly early in the morning when there’s a soft golden light kissing the jungle treetops. There’s this moment of calm right before we start our run, and I feel like I’m joyriding. Then we carry out our mission and fly back to base. Then, three weeks later, those same treetops have got no leaves left and there’s nothing down there but charred sticks poking up out of the ground. It’s ugly as hell, but it means there’s no place for the goddamn VC to hide. It means we’ve done our job. Leaves are my enemy. I fight them so that the boys on the ground can fight the real enemy. We do it so we can win.

“Jules, don’t show this to Dad. It would just set him off.”

Julie didn’t show the letter to Dad, but she knew what he’d say. He’d say the same thing he said after he hung up the phone the night that Robbie first called to say he’d enlisted. 

“Whatever he thinks now, someday he’s going to think the opposite. And then it will be too damn late.”

She shut off the TV and covered Dad’s feet with an afghan. 

Her stomach growled. She tiptoed to the kitchen and hauled the meatloaf out of the refrigerator. She pulled back the tinfoil as quietly as she could and pulled off a strip of bacon. It was clammy and congealed but the edges were crisp. Julie folded the thick, savory ribbon into thirds and shoved the whole thing into her mouth, not bothering to wipe the cold grease that dripped down her chin. 

Author’s note: This meatloaf recipe comes from the 1968 Better Homes and Gardens BBQ Cookbook. I plan to try making it some time for a dinner party at which I will serve a menu similar to the one Julie’s mom serves to her guests. Before I can do that, however, I have to find people who are willing to eat it. If I pull it off, I’ll let you know. And if I don’t, I’ll let you know that too.