Pei Wei

I’ve been talking about this whole experience so far, chronologically. But I have to stop, to pause for a second, and interrupt how we got here to speak about what “here” feels like.

Last night, in spite of having more than enough leftover food from five days worth of making meals that walk a line between what I can get M to eat, and what he really should be eating, M didn’t feel like there was anything appetizing in the house for dinner. And he was getting hungry. And he’d had a bad day and was impatient and unhappy. For my part, I’m tired of throwing down hundreds of dollars every week (yes, every week) to buy the ingredients to make healthy meals and create leftovers, and then to spend my after work hours every night preparing those meals, only to have the meals and/or leftovers go to waste. Cancer is fucking expensive, even with insurance, and I’m growing increasingly frustrated being the only breadwinner in this house, with a very sick husband who is exhausted and in constant pain, a stepson who is old enough to contribute but doesn’t, and four goddamn dogs to feed and care for. I feel like a string that’s been pulled so taut it sings without strumming. I feel like I could snap in two any second.

I got online and ordered M some Mongolian beef from Pei Wei…even though we’re supposed to be eating a plant based diet only, but we’re not (for reasons I’ll cover another time), and that stresses me out. But he needs to eat, and he hasn’t been eating, so Mongolian beef it is.

Before I explain what happened next, I have to take us back just a little earlier in the evening. I was driving home from work and I stopped at a Shell station to buy some beer, a local IPA I like. I walked into the Shell. It’s a nice Shell, less than a year old. There was music playing, as there always is in these places. But the song playing was by a band called ‘Til Tuesday, fronted by Aimee Mann. They were popular in an indie sort of way (save for one mainstream hit) back in the mid-eighties, when I was a teenager. The song playing there in the Shell was obscure and was called “Coming Up Close”. You’d have to be a fan of the band to have ever really heard of it, much less know every lyric. But I was a fan, and I had heard of it, and I was singing the song softly to myself as I picked out my beer. Here’s the thing: the lyrics are beautiful, haunting, and ultimately sad. It was a song I’d sort of forgotten about until this past June when, I don’t remember why, something triggered me to download a bunch of ‘Til Tuesday songs on my phone, and I’d been listening to them, this one included, on the regular. But only if I could handle it, because the songs are emotionally charged and, while gorgeous, tend to wear me down. I have to be ready to hear them, in a good place to experience them. When I walked into this Shell and heard this song playing, I was totally unprepared, emotionally, to hear it. Even so, it was pleasant, but it got to me a little. I’m already emotionally wobbly these days, so I’m vulnerable to unexpected emotional hits.

I got in my car, listened to NPR like I always do, drove home. No biggie, really.

Back to Pei Wei. I didn’t place the Mongolian beef order until after 8 p.m., and I needed to get some work done. I sort of lost track of time working, and didn’t realize until it was nearly too late that Pei Wei closed at 9 p.m. It was 8:42 p.m. I started driving, but first I put on a playlist of songs I’d downloaded back in June, which included all those ‘Til Tuesday songs. “Coming Up Close” is lovely, and earlier in the night it had put me in the emotional state to “receive”, if you will, other songs with similarly emotional lyrics, but I didn’t want to hear that song again right then. I wanted to hear “Looking Over My Shoulder”. That one gets me, too, but it’s less about the lyrics, more about the music and about the passion Aimee Mann sings with. I usually try to sing with her, even though I sound like a wounded animal, and last night was no different. Driving in the blackness along Evans Road, I sang.

But as I drove, I also hit every stoplight, and there’s construction, so I got turned around in the dark, trying to figure out where to turn in to the strip center where the Pei Wei lives. Driving on a busy highway (that I should never have even gotten on, but, fuck, I was turned around), I tried Googling directions to the goddamn Pei Wei. Google decided that I was on foot rather than driving. It was 8:54. I couldn’t drive 60 miles an hour in construction in the dark and switch my phone from walking to driving directions. Weirdly, it wasn’t about anyone’s safety, it was that I just kept thinking 1) I have to get food or M will be pissed; and 2) we don’t have the money to pay for traffic tickets or wrecks right now.

And that’s when I lost it. Just fucking lost it. I started screaming at the top of my lungs. Not horror movie, girly screams. Angry screams. Screams that turned my throat ragged. I screamed, yelled “fuck!”, screamed even more, yelled even more. I started to think I might never stop. I just kept screaming. I wanted to scream on top of screams.

I did stop screaming. I made it to Pei Wei at 8:58. The doors were locked, but there was a little girl behind the counter, cleaning. I yanked at the doors harder than I needed to, harder than I should have. The girl let me in. I picked up M’s order and got back in my car. I considered screaming some more. I wanted to, but I was afraid I’d never stop.

I put Aimee Mann on again, had her sing “Looking Over My Shoulder” to me again. I turned the volume up. I sang with her. I turned the volume up more, and still more. I yelled the lyrics with her. I couldn’t hear myself, the music was so loud. I yelled the lyrics until I cried, and then I yelled them some more between sobs. When she was done, “Burn It Down” by AWOL Nation came on, and I didn’t sing, I just kept the volume up so loud that I couldn’t hear the thoughts in my brain anymore.

By then I was home. I pulled my shit together and brought M his Pei Wei.