Omelette du Jour

udley Dexter was most concerned with the publicity of the thing. That his mother did not respond to the timid triple-tap of his knuckles against the bedroom door did not alarm him; nor did his discovery, upon admitting himself with some trepidation, that in the place of his mother in her large sunken bed lay a comparably large smooth white egg. Indeed, his utterance on the occasion -- "Oh dear" -- was due entirely to the sudden fearful image of Mr. Surly, his supervisor at the bank in which he served as a clerk, frowning imperiously at poor Dudley from across the broad oaken desk which filled a considerable portion of the man's office, and informing him with tones of severity, "Mr. Dexter, I do not approve of irregularities."

In the silent dim-lit room, Dudley licked his dry lips and peered guiltily sideways. Did anyone know of this thing? Surely if another person had discovered his mother in such a state, he or she would have informed the proper authorities in the matter immediately. Dudley had noticed no unusual interest or excitement in the streets as he shuffled from the bus stop to the door of his mother's house. Besides, his mother never entertained visitors and to his knowledge had no friends. No one would have reason to enter the house, except for the meter man, and he came only on the first of the month.

Dudley tried to recollect. When he left the house that morning, his mother had not kissed him goodbye, which she normally insisted upon, and now he could remember that she had not emerged from her room at all. He had made breakfast for her and placed it on the table before he left, but on his return from the bank that evening, the omelette still sat there cold and curdled. He wondered if the transformation had taken place during the night. He tried to remember exactly how many eggs she had consumed last evening.

In his position at the bank, Dudley was never indecisive. Whenever a situation presented itself which seemed to require the offices of an authority greater than his own, without hesitation he would transmit the matter to the appropriate department and himself be done with it, but in this case his course of action seemed less readily apparent. To notify others would be to invite public scrutiny into a situation which he preferred might be kept private. His mother's current condition was a thing which he was certain Mr. Surly would consider an "irregularity." Indeed, in Dudley's terrified imagination he saw vividly Mr. Surly's furrowed hairless head register its keen disapproval with that slow revolving motion about the neck, and as for the stern words which would issue from the man's mouth.... Dudley shuddered and refused to expand upon the dream any further.

It occurred to Dudley more than once that the very tenability of his position at the bank could with public release of his mother's condition be placed in serious jeopardy. The possibility of no longer holding the clerk's position he had maintained so smartly for seven industrious years chilled him. It also inspired in him a firm conviction not to allow the evidence of his mother's condition to spread beyond the blankets which swaddled her round hard girth.

Dudley pondered his options.

Hoping to hide her condition from prying eyes, he attempted to pull the blankets up and around her ovoid armored form, but her shell was so vast that the blankets could not cover all of it and so slippery that they refused to stay where he spread them. Instead, they slid stubbornly down his mother's smooth steep curvature to settle into ruffled airy bunches. He briefly considered rolling his mother across the floor and into the closet. Who would find her there? Unfortunately, the doorframe was too narrow to admit her considerable circumference, and Dudley's strength was insufficient even to allow him to lower her to the floor without cracking her open and creating a most distressing mess.

At this point, Dudley's thoughts became quite a bit more confused. The voice of Mr. Surly continued to haunt him; "This is most irregular," he mumbled several times under his breath. He stared transfixed at his mother for a long time, and memories of her as she had been arose before him. She was a large woman with several pendulous flaps of pink flesh between her chin and her neck, which always were in some sort of fluttering motion. Her eyes were green and lacked moisture; they seemed not to reflect the light that was shone on them, but rather to absorb it. Her skin was hot and wet; her face was puffy and red with noticeable pores. When she moved her enormous body, currents of wind would swirl about her, and often bits of dust or paper caught in her wake would eddy frantically from place to place. Dudley, when he was a child, used to imagine himself drifting among those aimless specks, his movements dictated by the breeze of his mother's passing.

When he was a child, his mother had dressed him in the styles which were fashionable when she was younger. Once he had protested meekly, for the other boys at school pestered him mercilessly about his "funny fag threads," but she had pinched his sallow cheek between her fat sharp fingers and intoned her favorite stricture: "Honor thy mother!" He did not protest again. One morning, a bully roughed up Dudley sufficient to tear a ragged gaping hole in the elbow of his woolen jacket, and Dudley all that day labored under the pleasant fancy that his mother would now be forced to furnish him with new clothes (for he owned only this one suit, which he wore every day). He imagined selecting them himself, informing the tailor of the exact specifications he required. He would fit himself with a wardrobe of high style and be the envy of all his peers. This fancy was detonated by the furious indignation with which his mother exploded upon his return from school that afternoon. She brought her son to school herself the next day, and while he stood abashed near the teacher's desk, his mother invoked a rancid diatribe against an educational system which harbored, indeed fostered, such brutes as the one who had ransacked her darling son, innocent and brave as he was. His fellow children observed in silent amazement as the darkness of his mother's sweaty face increased in proportion with the levels of her wrath. If his peers had treated him with contempt before, now their delight in his ignominy reached ecstasies of malice. His mother mended his jacket with fat expert fingers, and the issue for her was resolved. As for Dudley, his misery at the hands of his schoolmates continued, as did his determination to honor his mother.

A shy and delicate youth, Dudley excelled in his subjects and was the favorite of his teachers -- all except Mr. Churlish, the recreation coach, who seemed to resent Dudley with more passion even than his school chums. At play time, when teams were formed and games established, Dudley was usually excluded, and although the policy of the school administration was firm that all children should be involved in sport and play, Mr. Churlish persisted in overlooking Dudley. When his gaze did come to rest on the boy, his lips curled into a sneer, and his eyes moved away. Dudley would sit quietly on the sidelines and watch his chums play, and it did not seem odd to him that he was not among them.

Something which worried him to no end, however, and to which he devoted much effort of thought and concentration, was the failure of his left testicle to descend. Once a week, his mother would reach into his pants in the hope of discovering the missing companion; each time she would be bitterly disappointed. "You mustn't worry yourself, dear," she would sob as her fat callused fingers pinched his single nonrecalcitrant testicle, launching wet needle-sharp slivers through his eyeballs. "Your testicle will descend. Then you will be capable of growing into a man." Her prophesy was not fulfilled, however, even after seven years of faithful service to Mr. Surly at the prestigious Trust Security Chemical Bank.

Once, Dudley fell in love with a girl who rode his bus every morning. He often thought of her during the fifteen minutes he was allowed for lunch at the office. He never, however, allowed his emotions to compromise the quality or focus of his duties; dreams of love he reserved strictly to his free time. Each day that passed found him more infatuated with the girl, until finally he decided to risk sitting next to her. She smiled at him, and he smiled back at her. They spent the remainder of the seven-minute ride in silence. The encounter encouraged him, and he sat next to her almost every day after that. Some day, he vowed, he would develop the courage to speak; he was patient. She was very pretty. Her face was oval and pale, and her eyes were perfect circles of amber-flecked blue. Her thin pink lips formed a gaping black hole in the shape of a kidney bean when she was unconscious of herself. Dudley often wished he could place his fingers upon her lips, for they fascinated and excited him.

He mentioned the girl to his mother. Her face registered deep shock and revulsion. "Really, Dudley dear," she said, "You know better than to pay attention to common girls on the bus!" Dudley was instilled with a profound distress. He was sure he was in love with the girl, but the power of his mother's injunction held considerable sway over him. In one of his rare moments of indecision, he vacillated wildly between honoring his mother and obeying his passion for the girl. Weeks passed, and he became miserable. He no longer sat near to the girl, and when she smiled at him, elastic pink lips stretching seductively across two rows of crooked yellow teeth, he did not smile back. One day, in a moment of brash defiance, he decided that he would talk to the girl. Apprehension filled his belly that morning as he awaited the bus. When he entered, he saw that the girl was not there. He resolved that the next day he would talk to her. She never appeared on the bus again.

But that was the past. Dudley sniffed and considered the present. Of late, his mother had been developing a curious obsession, one which he felt might be responsible for the fate to which she had succumbed. She would eat nothing but eggs. The icebox was filled with them, rows and rows of cold white embryos. Dudley would prepare them for her in every imaginable fashion: fried eggs, scrambled eggs, soft-boiled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, deviled eggs, eggs Benedict, egg salad, quiche, souffle, even French toast -- for breakfast, lunch, dinner, endless snacks in-between. The possibilities were endless, and Dudley had cooked every one of them. The old house was always filled with the aroma of eggs in some state of preparation. Often, when he returned from work, his mother would ask him sweetly, "Dudley dear, would you be so kind as to prepare me an omelette?" He would nod and comply. His mother was fond of Dudley's omelettes. Her fat whistling lips would smack and blow when the delicate scent of spices, peppers, and -- most delectable -- eggs wafted from the sizzling pan into the withered decrepit dining room where she waited most impatiently for her meal. Her eyes would narrow when he approached with the platter, and their colour would change. Once flat and dull, now they would gleam with animal cunning as she stalked the morsels on her plate. Her fork allowed no pepper to stray, no flap of yellow egg to stick: all went into her gullet. Yes, Dudley felt certain that this obsession was at least one of the factors responsible for her transformation. The parallels were too uncanny for mere coincidence.

But Dudley was not really concerned with the causes of his mother's condition. He was concerned with its ramifications: the displeasure of his supervisor, Mr. Surly, the possibility of eviction from a position which brought Dudley considerable esteem and self-satisfaction as well as a steady paycheck. The dilemma upset his hungry stomach, which often was sensitive to this sort of anxiety. Dudley gazed long at the smooth white shell as slowly the confusion of his thoughts coalesced into a happily simple solution to both problems. After all, his mother had frequently remarked on his excellency with the egg beater.

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