THE OTHER NIGHT, I went to a fancy gala at the National Building Museum. As I strolled between the towering, golden Corinthian columns of the great hall, I felt sophisticated in my off-the-shoulder black dress, and chatted easily with a friendly professor about his course on the American presidency. When dinner was announced, we made our way to elegantly set round tables. But soon, the aura of refinement surrounding the whole occasion started subtly slipping, till all at once I realized I was out of place. It may have been the little gilded chairs. You see them at wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs and generic black tie business functions: rented chairs recalling a hundred such events I’ve attended in my many years on the capital’s social circuit–as the hired help.
Watching the servers emerge from the edges of the vast room and fan out among the tables bearing trays and tureens to serve 900, I underwent a role reversal in my head–from guest to gofer.
No longer was I one of the gracious pampered. My sense of identification with the servers was too strong. Feeling like a fraud in my finery, all I could think of were the innumerable weekends I’ve spent in a bow tie and neatly pressed tuxedo blouse working as a caterer’s assistant, a job I sometimes think of as “whining and dining.”
“Yes, Sir, I am aware many people prefer Sweet’N Low, but I’m afraid all we have is sugar.” “Actually, tonight we’re serving Chardonnay, not Zinfandel.” “Oh, no, Ma’am, we wouldn’t dream of having you eat beef. Your request didn’t make it to the kitchen, but I’ll be right back with a vegetarian meal.”
Patience isn’t the only virtue catering forces you to cultivate. Brute strength is useful, especially for rolling tables and portable ovens up hills. And coordination. I can wipe cocktail sauce off my lapel while holding a shrimp platter steady for double-dipping wedding guests with the greatest of ease.
Not that I haven’t had my off days. My least favorite memory is the time I spilled an entire tray of lemonade at a wedding reception whose price tag would have made J. Lo blanch–and got a piece of glass stuck in my finger. After the tray went crashing, some guests clapped. For the rest of the evening, no matter how inconspicuously I tried to go about my duties, guests kept coming up to me with the same dreaded question: “Were you the girl who spilled the lemonade? That was something!”
At the opposite end of the catering-memories spectrum is the best party I ever worked. I have a picture to remember it by. It shows me crouching next to my fellow servers, with lots of children and miscellaneous grownups. I’m smiling broadly. In the center of the group, sitting on his father’s lap, is a 6-year-old shielding his face from the sun. He is Elián González.
The party was held at a house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a thank-you and farewell in honor of the people who’d helped take care of Elián during his stay in America, while the courts and politicians wrangled over the fate of the young Cuban refugee. In a few days, the boy and his father would return to Cuba.
The afternoon was sweltering. I was stationed at the bar, serving Coronas to the grownups–aunts, uncles, INS officials–and Coca-Colas to Elián and his cousins. I got to practice my rudimentary Spanish, and talked with the fisherman who’d discovered Elián at sea, floating in an inner tube all by himself, after the boat had capsized and his mother had drowned.
The Gonzálezes were lovely people, the most gracious group I’ve ever had the pleasure of serving. The sun was setting as they left and we waved goodbye. I remember closing up the bar, loosening my tie, and sitting down with my own ice cold Corona to relive the day.
“Coffee, Ma’am?” the server at the National Building Museum asked, jolting me out of my reverie. “Yes, please,” I replied.
The gala din of 900 forks clattering against 900 dessert plates was all around me. People were starting to put on their glasses and turn their chairs so as to get a good view of the after-dinner speaker, a famous conservative writer. It seemed like a good idea. As I shifted my own gilded chair, I felt my world getting larger.
–Erin Montgomery
