"You know Rita - from Mackey's Luncheonette?", Mother began.
Father nodded.
"Well, she's thinking of bringing her mother up here to live. The mother's even fatter than Rita, white trailer trash who's lived in Tennessee all her life. She's used to hanging out with the other trailer women in her mumu and curlers; all her friends are down here. But Rita insists on bringing her North, says she's sick and can't afford home nursing. But up here, to Willistown? She'd never fit in, not with her missing teeth -"
"I'm missing teeth," PeeWee piped.
"That's different. You're a child, you're supposed to be missing teeth."
"You're missing teeth, I heard you say so."
"That's different. I wear dentures. Rita's mother has a set, but she won't wear them. Says they don't fit, but's too cheap to get them fixed. They dropped right into her soup one time when she was yawning over her dinner and someone else had to clean slipt pea off of half the floor. And when she talks on the phone, there's this click and clack, like a bad connection somewhere or a screw loose in the receiver, but it's just Rita's mother's dentures jiggling in her mouth. So how's she ever going to make it here? Can you see her walking into theh Willstown bank to get money and flashing her toothless grin? The tellers will push the robber alarm."
PeeWee imagined a musical mouth. When Rita's mother danced or nodded her head in time to the music, her head would tap out the rhythm. She was a walking castenet.
"There's this lady manager at work," Father began. "One of her front crown feel out the day before she had to make a speech in front of two hundred people. This one up here, what do they call it, the eyetooth?"
"Vampire tooth," PeeWee added solemnly. The lady might grow fangs there, if she didn't fill the gap quickly.
"So, she didn't want to get up in front of the crowd with a gaping hole in her face. She thought about using superglue to hold the old crown in place until she could get into the dentist's, but the label said the stuff was highly toxic, to see your physician immediately if even a drop got in you. Same for rubber cement. She tried Elmers, safe for 1st graders, but the glue dissolved in her saliva. Finally, she settled on gum. She chewed Trident and Dentyne and Wrigleys until the flavor and color went out. Then she inserted the crown into the hole and stuck it in place with a wad. She made it through the speech, even though she worried the whole time that the tooth would dislodge when she made too many "t" sounds, and that some executive would be whacked in th forehead by a flyng crown and gumball. She would've gotten a standing ovation though, if that was considered businesslike."
"That's different, "Mother snapped. "Rita's mother's been toothless for a decade. And besides, Rita's mother's not much different from Rita, Rita's just a step up from trailer trash. If she wasn't married to Bob, who's a perfectionist, she'd have every flat tire she'd ever owned in the front yard and live under a swayback roof patched with scraps from the dump. We saw her eating dinner at home just the other night. Of course, she sat there like the Queen of Crass, her Lardliness, and Bob had to serve her. PeeWee, tell your father about the potatoes."
"The mashed potatoes?......Bob had made mashed potatoes but she wanted hers watery."
Silence, glares burning through the little girl.
"He kept adding more and more water. Then, he finally poured the potatoes into a big glass. It looked like watery cream of wheat; she gulped down the drink like a milkshake and asked for seconds".
"See what I mean?", Mother asserted. The proof was in the potatoes. " At least Rita didn't add ice cubes and use a straw. But her mother?"
"Now that I think about it," Father mused, "Rita does look like a potatoe. A peeled one. Same body shape. Her hair's potatoe white, her skin's potatoe white and lumpy. And her hands look like little potatoes budding off the original. She's blandness all over."
"White potatoe trailer trash, " Mother concluded. She drank white potatoe shakes; she bacame what she ate.
But maybe, the woman just needed a little pepper in her life, father thought. Anyone could become a bland potatoe in a life where everyday was the same, where Tuesday differed from Thursday only by its placement on a calender. People stopped moving, became rooted to one way of being, then started sprouting leaves. The vegatative existence.
Father and PeeWee rose and left the room, each to think about white potato trailer trash from the bango and bingo backhills of Tennessee.
