10. The Sandwich and the Bishop

When I was five years old, I believed that I had invented a sandwich: the mustard, mayonnaise, cheese, and ham on sliced Sunbeam white bread. The ingredients were non-negotiable. The mustard had to be brown. The mayo had to be mayo; Miracle Whip would invoke a stomped foot. The cheese could only be yellow American singles, and the ham could only be the processed kind that — when sliced at the deli — flopped onto the parchment in perfect rectangles. Non-negotiable... except I was more forgiving with the bread. Sunbeam was preferred, but Wonder Bread could do in a pinch. Whenever I asked my mother to assemble me a mustard, mayonnaise, cheese, and ham sandwich, I was careful to ask for it with the Oxford comma vocally obvious. She would ignore me otherwise.

For months, I bragged about creating this culinary masterpiece to my stuffed animals, to my infant brother, to William (my twin cousin), to my father’s business associates who visited our home. I told everyone I could and soaked up all the praise. That Thanksgiving, I was thankful for having invented the MMCH, as it came to be known, and I couldn’t wait to tell Papa Gray all about it when he arrived at my house for our big family dinner.

“Papa Gray, guess what?” I jumped into his lap while he was watching football in the recliner. “I invented a sandwich.”

I told him all about the MMCH. When I finished boasting, I folded my arms and waited for the accolades a five-year-old expects from his grandfather.

Papa Gray put his hand on my back. He laughed and said, “What? Are you fucking stupid? Do you really think you’re the first person in history to put those four things between two slices of bread?”

I felt my mouth fall open and my cheeks go flush. I hadn’t realized William had been watching and listening until I heard him cackling just a few feet away.

“Listen, Jack,” Papa Gray continued, “everything that could ever be done has already been done. There’s nothing new or special left to get excited about. Do the TVs keep getting better? Yeah, and now we got these VCR things on top of them. But even when it’s new, it’s not new. It’s just the same shit repackaged and resold to the same assholes over and over again. You’re going to do what every American male has done since Jesus Christ was a corporal. You’re going to grow up, go to work, get married, have some kids, and die. If you’re lucky like I was, you’ll be able to go to war and kill some people somewhere in between all that boring shit. So, no, you didn’t invent a new sandwich. There’s no such thing as a new sandwich. The sandwich was the invention. And what is a sandwich? It’s something between two slices of bread. That’s what’s important, the two slices of bread. Put whatever the fuck you want between them. So you’re not special and you’ll never see anything new. New to you? Sure! But not new to the world.”

“Papa Gray!” William exclaimed as he wiped away tears of laughter. “I can say The Lord’s Prayer in Latin. Would you like to hear?”

My grandfather pushed me off his lap and invited my cousin to take my place.

William hopped up, cleared his throat, and began, “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum…”

“Fuck Papa Gray!”

“What’s that, Dad?” Liam asked.

My son and I were chilling on the couch, whiling away the afternoon. He was reading some old Batman comics and I was eating a ham sandwich for lunch. It had no cheese or mustard, the bread and mayo were homemade, and the ham came from a pig that was just butchered by Jimmy Orson up the street, but I guess it had triggered my memories of the MMCH.

“Sorry, did I say that out loud?”

“Yeah...” Liam raised an eyebrow. “Who’s Papa Gray and why should he be fucked?”

“You’re ten,” I said, “so stop saying fuck.”

“I’ll be 11 in a couple months,” Liam argued, “and this is the apocalypse. I could die tomorrow. So I think I should get to say whatever I want.”

“Anarchy is not the answer to survival,” I chided my son, “but... neither is an antiquated system of pseudo-moral social constructs.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Liam frowned.

“It means say ‘fuck’ all you want.”

“Fucking right!” Liam laughed. “Now who the fuck is Papa Gray?”

I threw down my sandwich, burst out the front door, and marched into the killing field. My cousin’s gold tent towered above those of his knights.

“WILLIAM!” I bellowed. “Get your holy ass out here!”

He emerged with the flourish of a king. Several knights took defensive positions at his flanks and drew their side arms.

“Stand down, knights,” William commanded. “Holster your weapons, and no matter what happens in the next moments, do not interfere. This was inevitable.”

“Why are you here, William?” I growled. “Why?”

He unstrapped the saber from his back and gave it to the nearest knight. “I will not talk to you while you are in this state, Jack.” He removed his red and black cape and his wide brimmed hat and handed them to another knight. “Let’s have it out.”

William closed the gap between us and assumed a boxer’s stance. I charged him. I know I took a fist to my stomach and to my left cheek, but the rest is a blur. Somehow I managed to put him on his back and wrap my hands around his neck.

“Look at all the newness!” I squeezed his white collar into his throat. “Behold the novelty! You miserable fuck. How lucky am I? War came to me. I didn’t have to go find it. How lucky am I?” I squeezed harder. The muscles in William’s neck fought my intent as he grabbed my wrists and pulled against my grip. “I’ve gotten to kill, just like Papa Gray said I would. Not people, though, only monsters — no — one person.” I started to cry. “Just one person. Just Walter, who was robbed of being a wonderful grandfather. Look at how lucky I am!” My tears and spit rained all over William’s determined face. “You are a monster,” I whispered.

“Allistair Jackson Gray!”

I froze at the sound of my full name. My hands popped off my cousin’s neck as though it had suddenly become too hot to touch. William wheezed in a sharp breath and coughed. I stood up, pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, and wiped off my face. I was dizzy. The valley began to spin. I fell to my knees and threw up.

It was Betty who had yelled my name. It was Betty who had stopped me just in time. She raced over to me as I stumbled back onto my feet. She slapped me across my already injured cheek.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed.

I looked past her. William waved away his knights after they helped him to stand. He straightened out his tunic and his Roman collar and brushed himself off. “Do you feel better?” he asked hoarsely.

“You had it coming,” I said.

“To be strangled by you in field of zombie bones?” William scoffed. “A creative penance, I’ll hand you that.”

“You’ll hand me an explanation as to why you’re here,” I argued.

“Very well,” William nodded, “I accept your invitation to dinner. Elizabeth, at what time should I arrive? And should I bring white or red?”

Betty looked at William, then to me, and back to William. “Seven,” she said, “and red.”

“Excellent,” William smiled, “I shall arrive with a wonderful bottle of merlot I’ve been saving. Oh, and the explanation your husband has so assertively requested.”

I said nothing. All the rage had left my body. My hands were numb. My teeth were sore. I don’t remember making our way to our kitchen where Betty began cleaning me up and dressing the cut that had opened on my left cheek.

After she had applied the butterfly and the cover, she sat next to me at the kitchen table and asked, “You were really going to kill him?”

“You let him invite himself to dinner.”

“If he wanted you or anyone else dead, that squad he has looks more than capable of wiping us out.”

“So you capitulate,” I shrugged, “out of fear.”

“Out of practicality,” Betty pounded the table. “I don’t know what this is! You nearly murdered your cousin… you won’t let the dogs or the cat out of the bunker… there’s a madness in your eyes… and I know you well enough after all these years to understand that you’re not going to tell me. And since you’re not going to tell me, shut the fuck up and behave like a human being. I’m going to fire up the generator and turn on the water heater. Have a drink, take a bath, and then get a nap. I’m going to check on our son and talk to him about what he just saw.”

“Liam was watching,” I sighed.

“The whole fucking neighborhood was watching, Jack! Your son was watching. I was watching,” she wept, “and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of you.”

I looked into her eyes.

“Because,” she wiped away her tears, “it’s the first time I’ve ever seen you lose control.”

“I’ll go get that drink now,” I stood, “and then that bath...”

Betty leapt up and threw her arms around me. “I love you, Jack,” she cried. “Please, promise me. Never again. I don’t ever want to see that again.”

“I love you, too,” I returned her embrace, but I wouldn’t promise she wanted.