I Pledge Allegiance by Chris Lynch Page B

maybe three times in my life, the crying. “Please, Ma, don’t,” I plead. It is not sloppy sobbing. There are no cries to the heavens of
my son, my son, thank God he’s alive.
But in her own way, in
our
way, this is a highly emotional demonstration.
    “How is it possible that you got skinnier?” she asks, examining each rib with her fingers the way a tailor would check seams.
    “It isn’t possible,” I say rather feebly, “because I’m not skinnier.”
    “You’re telling me? You are telling
me
about
this
?” She gestures at the totality of me, a sweeping gesture from my head down to my feet as if I am a magic trick she just conjured out of nothing.
    She raised me all by herself after we lost my dad. So in a way, I am exactly that.
    I’m wearing my uniform, which if you have ever seen the uniform of the United States Navy, you will realize it exaggerates whatever body you’ve got. Brilliant white flared trousers topped by a brilliant white blouse and a blue kerchief, all topped by the white cupcake hat. If you’re fat or short or tall, you’re fatter or shorter or taller in this getup. If you’re thin …
    “Get in here,” Ma demands, pulling me by the hand through the front hall toward the kitchen. I can smell her meatballs percolating away in her homemade sauce. I can smell that there are forty of them. Just for me. It’s ten a.m., and I know this meal has been on for a minimum of four hours.
    “I was going to take you out to eat tonight,” I say as she just about throws me into my chair. The kitchen set. Aluminum frame. Two-foot by two-foot table with a pebbled silver Formica top. Just-about-padded red vinyl seat and back on the chairs. I want to be buried with this set.
    “So who says you can’t take me out? Tonight is a whole day away, and you have a good few meals to catch up on.”
    I spend a good portion of the day eating, and still she doesn’t change her mind about going out for dinner. Then the curse of the Navy uniform starts to grab me, and I feel like a loaf of bread stuffed into a half-loaf bag.
    “That’s more like it,” Ma says, standing in front of me, in front of my bedroom door. She pats my stomach with great professional chef satisfaction. I’m not any bigger, just more like a garden hose that got a rat stuck in it.
    “Where are we going to eat tonight, Ma?” I ask, and I am so looking forward to this exchange.
    “Oh, no place special. I don’t want to be any trouble. Someplace nice, inexpensive …”
    “Anthony’s Pier 4,” I say powerfully. It feels really good.
    She gasps. “Oh, my, no. That is just nonsense. All we need to do is —”
    Cheesy as it sounds, I take the greatest delight yet in drawing my wallet out of my pants pocket, opening it up, and fanning a selection of bills I am sure she has not seen since my father died. And quite possibly not before then, either.
    She gasps again.
    “I thought you were in the Navy, not the Mafia.”
    “Ma. I get paid. And I don’t spend hardly any of it.”
    She is actually blushing. This is my most successful day as a son, topping my graduation, even. And it may be my peak, so I plan to milk it.
    “So, lady,” I say, pointing at her, “while I’m takingmy nap, you can just call Anthony’s Pier 4 and make us a reservation.”
    I approach my bed with a grin on my face. Ma always thought of Pier 4 like it was some kind of holy grail of dining experiences, talked about it as if it was this mystical, not-really-possible ideal that was great to think about, without ever quite getting there. Now she’s getting there.
    I strip off my crisp Navy issue whites and take devilish pleasure in dropping them right there on the floor. It’s like escaping the regimented military life and slipping back into my kid self all in one smooth, sloppy move.
    I flop onto my bed.
    How did this happen?
    I stare up straight over my bed. My room is upstairs, where my mother and I occupy the top half of my uncle’s two-family house. They