It was a dark and stormy night—inside me, that is.
“I’m so sorry we have to do this, guys,” I said as I slid into a Volvo station wagon with my husband and his parents. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and we were leaving their tiny suburb for a decidedly more Middle America burb.
And I was sorry. Very sorry.
My parents had divorced after thirty years of marriage, and we were on our way to see my dad and his new wife, who had recently tied the knot. My stepmother grew up nearby, and we were meeting thirty or so of her relatives at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. It was the kind of place with pictures of unrecognizable actors and singers hanging on the walls, where you pay twelve dollars for an entrée and get a heart attack on the side.
My stomach had already started to rumble. I was still unsettled by my family’s broken home drama—it was even more difficult to embark on my own marriage after the recent revelation that my parents, in the end, failed at theirs.
So to soothe my anxieties, I chattered about how lowbrow my stepmother’s relatives would be. Fat was a given. Perhaps even stupid. Maybe mean? Certainly they’ll talk with their mouths full and fail to place their napkins in their laps.
I regaled my in-laws with stories of my fine upbringing and why my new status as a stepdaughter gave me heartburn. I was quite sure none of her relatives would be wearing fancy jeans, or have such urbane experiences as I’d racked up in my twenty-something years.
“Oh my God. Is this the restaurant?” I gave my mother-in-law a knowing look as we parked. “Is this where they shot Goodfellas?”
Once we had the niceties out of the way, we sat down in a cordoned-off corner of the restaurant. Three long tables overflowed with mayonnaise-soaked macaroni noodles, ribs, and French fries. I gingerly picked through a rack of ribs, glancing around to see how my dad was holding up. It couldn’t have been easy to introduce his daughter to his new “family.”
My husband was on my right side, my mother-in-law to my left. My dad and step-mom were across the table. I’m embarrassed to talk about bodily noises, but suffice to say that I have burped only a couple times in my life. Gas just doesn’t usually come out that way.
I leaned forward to grab my glass of water, and a loud earthquake began in my belly. I froze. The tidal waves rose up, up, up, and exploded out of my mouth. I let out a screeching BELCH so loud that conversations halted and you could hear a pin drop. It was the loudest burp I have ever been witness to. It was, literally, a burp to write home about.
My mother-in-law, after a couple beats, put her head down and to the side, looking past me in the direction of my husband.
“Thomas, was that you?”
I ran with it.
“Thomas, I cannot believe you just did that!” I whispered loudly, just to make sure my stepmother’s uncouth relatives did not think I was the one who had spiraled into trashy behavior.
The relatives looked around at each other. They were not amused; they were disgusted. My dad looked like he wanted his chair to fall into a trap door in the ground.
“That was Lois!” my husband said. “I cannot believe you’re trying to blame that on me! You’re disgusting!”
I looked around again, realizing I couldn’t escape the truth. My husband would not be a martyr.
“Excuse me.” My cheeks turned purple.
The rest of the dinner is a blur. I sat at the table, shoveling French fries into my disgraceful mouth, trying to forget that horrific noise my 115-pound body had just made, and at the same time trying not to laugh my head off.
