Metamorphosis In A Diner

       I was lunching with my English friend Vanessa at the sort of old-fashioned Los Angeles diner that has checked curtains at the  windows and pies on display in a glass case by the door, and still has a section on its menu called Diet Plates.

Photo by Ralf Sauter on Unsplash

       “Do you remember when we used to go on diets?” I said. “We thought if we starved ourselves into misery, we’d turn into thin people, but all it did was make us make everyone around us as miserable as we were?”

       “The last time I went on a diet Rob nearly divorced me,” said Vanessa. “He said it was bad enough being eviscerated by a screaming fire-breathing harpy every morning before breakfast, but to have a harpy who talked like Mary Poppins was crossing a line.”

       Somehow, I found myself looking at the diet selections anyway. It’s not that I have anything against diet food per se – in fact, in moderation and under controlled circumstances, I quite enjoy some of it. I have never understood, for instance, just how the amiable cottage cheese attained its position as the ultimate by-word for all that is dismal about calorie counting. I wouldn’t necessarily demand it for my last meal on earth, but nevertheless have always found it perfectly agreeable: it’s light, refreshing, and on more than one summer evening in my single youth when it was too hot to cook, I had been known to stuff it into a tomato and serve myself a tasty solo supper. But that was back before Mr. Los Angeles had introduced more substantial meals into my life and my waistline: I hadn’t eaten cottage cheese, I now realized, here in a restaurant with a dear woman friend on this bright Southern California afternoon, for years.

       “I think I’ll order the cottage cheese salad,” I said.

       Vanessa’s brows folded.

       “I wouldn’t,” she said darkly.

       “Why not?” I said. It was true that the establishment in which we had chosen to meet was not what anyone would call a temple to fine dining; but this was cottage cheese I was aspiring to, as opposed, for instance, to stuffed quails’ tongues alla crema di tartufo. “It’s just cottage cheese, lettuce, and some chopped up fruit on the side. They can’t do anything very bad to that.”

       Vanessa shook her head.

       “We’d be here forever,” she said. “And I have to pick up my dog from the vet at 3.00.”

       “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “It’s cottage cheese. It comes in a tub, they take it out of the tub, and dump it onto a plate. How much time can it take?”

       “It’s not the cottage cheese,” said Vanessa. “It’s the way we say it. They won’t understand you. And Randolph hates to be kept waiting.”

       “What are you talking about?” I said. “Of course they’ll understand me. Everyone knows what cottage cheese is. What’s not to understand about it?”

       “What can I get you ladies?” said the waitress, appearing at the table. Her nametag identified her as Marcie, and she had kind eyes and faded blonde hair scraped back into a bun.

       “Egg salad sandwich on wheat and an iced tea,” said Vanessa.

       “Egg salad on wheat,” nodded Marcie and scribbled on her pad. “How about you, hon?”

       Across the table, Vanessa frowned a warning. She was being thoroughly absurd and I began to wonder if before we met she’d perhaps been nipping at the industrial strength Beefeatertini jar that she keeps in the freezer for emergencies. I glared at her defiantly.

       “I’d like the cottage cheese salad, please,” I said.

       Marcie remained still, her hand poised above her pad.

       “Say what?” she said after a moment.

       “Cottage cheese please,” I repeated. “And salad.”

       Marcie blinked in non-comprehension.

       “Sorry, hon,” she said. “I guess you’ll have to say the first part again.”

       “Cottage cheese,” I said. And, speaking slowly and clearly, since we were both of us apparently native English speakers, and both of these words, as far as I knew, were as accepted a part of the American vocabulary as they were of the English, “Cottage. Cheese.”

       Slowly, Marcie shook her head.

       Vanessa sighed.

       “What she would like,” she explained to Marcie, “is …”

       Without warning, my English friend Vanessa leaned her elbow across the table, slumped her shoulders, opened one side of her mouth, and, before my very eyes, transformed herself into a pampered housewife from the San Fernando Valley.

       “… khahd-idge-chiz,” she drawled in what had become suddenly the most perfectly world-weary Glendalese. I swear that, just for a moment, her earrings grew bigger.

       Marcie’s face cleared.

       “Oh!” she exclaimed as all became plain to her. “You want cottage cheese! Got it, hon, it’ll be right with you.”

       Humming a contented tune, she made her way to the kitchen.

       Vanessa regarded me sternly.

       “I have to pick up Randolph from the vet,” she said.

       I looked at my friend, who had turned from an Englishwoman into a San Fernando Valley housewife, and then back into an Englishwoman again.

       “How did you do that?” I asked her.

       “I’ve had practice,” said Vanessa.