Thursday, August 19, 2010. Last Supper At Acme. The countdown continues as Mary Leigh prepares to leave home Saturday. You can feel the electricity of her excitement from across the room. She is ready willing, and able to live on her own, and that's good enough for me.
This is a lot different from when I left home. I wasn't thinking about doing that, but a friend wanted to rent a house with some other guys (we were all in the same fraternity at UNO). I realized I had plenty enough money to swing this (I had two jobs). A few days later I informed my parents, and just left. I'd been paying all my own bills for years anyway. The mood over the change was dark and tinged with the unknown.
I was nineteen and a half then. I always hoped that my kids would be gone by twenty-one. Mary Leigh just turned eighteen. Jude left home when he was sixteen. I never imagined that either of them would beat my record, let alone both.
We have gone through a long list of Last Times For Everything in the past few weeks. Tonight's entry: Last Time For Dad And Daughter To Have Supper At The Acme In Covington. It's been our special place for the past few years, with dozens of wedge salads, plates of red beans with hot sausage, and grosses of grilled oysters put away by the two of us. We were only rarely joined by Mary Ann. Even when I want to eat the Acme's food, I have not gone there if Mary Leigh wasn't going to join me.
The Acme was shockingly empty. The seafood thing has everybody bothered, even though there still has not yet been even one instance of contaminated seafood in a restaurant. To my knowledge, the Acme has never been without good oysters. We went through our usual dozen grilled, and they were as good as usual. (I think the oyster shucker, who knows us as regulars, gives us extra-good bivalves.)
The Acme has a new menu. It looks different, but all the same items are on it. But with higher prices. Mary Leigh continued her new love affair with seafood gumbo. Then the inevitable wedge salad, which has gone up a dollar to $6. (It always did seem much too cheap to me.) I had a soup-and-poor-boy combo: mushroom bisque and fried oyster sandwich. Very good, all of it. We talked about the past and the future. She has a decided preference for the latter. Absolutely all the cards are going her way. What a lucky young woman she is.
It's a good thing she wants to have dinner with me in town once a week. I think I'm going to miss her more than I missed Jude. But there's that surprising, special and sweet daddy-daughter thing again.
Acme Oyster House. Covington: 1202 US 190 (Causeway Blvd.). 985-246-6155. Seafood.
