On a stifling summer day many years ago, Ana and her brother Dan first created the MMV – a Melted Marshmallow and Velveeta cheese sandwich. They were inspired, as so many kids are, by television. Their mom and only parent was at work, leaving the siblings home alone. They were watching a movie which showed the kind of American kids they only saw on TV, making s’mores while camping in the great outdoors. It was then that Dan came up with the idea.
“Let’s go camping, right here, you and I!”
Ana looked around the room. They lived in a small brick building in Queens, NY. Their tiny apartment was crammed with furniture, books, toys, a television, but nothing related to camping. Even the tall palm tree in the corner of the room was a fake. Only a few houseplants lining the windowsill suggested cooler, fresher places. Ana wondered if by “here” Dan was talking about outside. Looking out the window, she saw concrete and cars, but nothing that resembled a campground. Ana imagined people would think they were homeless if they slept in a tent on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, Dan was eleven and knew many things, so Ana agreed to the plan, without knowing what it was.
“First, we need to set up camp,” Dan instructed.
He went to the kitchen, where he began rummaging through the closet and cupboards. Though, in the spirit of camping, one might more accurately state that he was foraging. He moved through the apartment like a bloodhound with his sister trailing behind him, until he found his quarry in the bedroom they both shared with their mother.
“This will do!” he declared, pointing to a large cardboard box used to store blankets and sheets.
Picking up the box, he emptied the contents onto a bed.
“Why’d you do that?” Ana asked.
“This will be our tent.”
Bringing the box into the living room, he propped it up with a chair on one end. It gave the appearance of a giant mouse trap, poised to fall upon anyone inside once a trigger was touched. However, if a person squinted hard enough, it could pass as a type of shelter, like a rustic lean-to.
“Now we need the forest!”
Dan dragged the fake palm tree over to their camping circle. Following his lead, Ana ran to the windowsill and carefully relocated the potted plants around their tent.
Their little camp was looking lush and verdant. Ana redirected the fan in their direction, which not only offered a cool breeze but made the leaves flutter. The effect was, relaxing — exactly how the children imagined an excursion in the forest must be. Yet, camping is more than the beauty of nature, it is the conviviality of man, and though the children were too young to think in such terms, they felt that a communal focal point was lacking.
“I know,” Dan declared. “We need a campfire.”
He carried a chair over to the closet where their mother kept candles on a high shelf. He took the largest, a red cylindrical one in a glass decorated with snowflakes.
Dan placed the candle on the floor in the center of their camping circle. He got a match, which Ana was still too young to touch, and lit it. It smelled of cinnamon. They sat for a while, admiring their vacation paradise.
It was at this moment that Ana’s stomach growled, reminding her of a crucial missing element.
“We need s’mores.”
The kids marched into the kitchen, searching desperately for chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows.
They got a bag of marshmallows, which though old, looked edible. But the other ingredients were not to be found.
“We could just eat the marshmallows,” Dan suggested.
“It’s not the same,” Ana replied.
Noting the crestfallen expression on his sister’s face, Dan got an idea.
“It doesn’t have to be a graham cracker. A plain piece of bread will do.”
They both looked hopefully to the loaf of bread lying on the kitchen table.
“And for the chocolate?” Ana asked.
“Well, we just need something tasty that melts easily,” Dan suggested. “It could be anything.”
“I like Velveeta. It melts easy.”
They retrieved the long rectangular box from the refrigerator. Lifting off the orange-colored top, they set it aside and took hold of the item within. The cheese log was wrapped in aluminum foil, and once unwrapped, it resembled a bright orange plastic brick. They carefully sliced it and laid all the ingredients on a plate.
“Watch,” Dan said, as he stuck a marshmallow on the tip of a fork.
He placed the marshmallow near the candle. The children looked on silently, entranced by the flickering flame that slowly transformed the soft white exterior of the marshmallow to a crispy brown.
After several minutes, the first marshmallow was done. Dan placed it on top of a slice of Velveeta on white bread. True to expectations, the glorious “processed cheese-flavored” product began to puddle under the bubbling marshmallow, like the sun melting under a drift of snow.
“Because the flavors are so different — sweet and salty — it’s important to mix them together. We shouldn’t let them separate,” Dan said, as if an actual recipe existed.
Using the fork, he carefully swirled the streams of orange and white into an artistic and unified goo.
“There, now they’ll stay together!”
With that triumphant declaration, he topped the concoction with another slice of bread, cut off the crusts, and carved the sandwich into two small triangles. He presented the plate to Ana and they each took a bite.
The taste reminded Ana of eating a cheeseburger while drinking a vanilla milkshake. It was an indulgence of junk food in one bite.
“Here,” Dan said, offering Ana the second marshmallow impaled on a fork. “You try.”
Ana held the fork over the candle as Dan had done, but her brief six years of existence led her to perceive even small increments of time as vast. In her impatience, she stuck the marshmallow into the flame. It ignited like a vanilla-scented torch. As she withdrew it from the fire, she smiled.
“You should blow it out now,” Dan advised. “Like a birthday candle.”
Taking her brother’s advice, Ana made a silent wish and extinguished the flame with her breath.
***
As the years passed, MMV sandwiches became increasingly rare. When Dan was a young teen, he began working part-time. The demands of both school and work meant he no longer had time for such frivolity. Ana could have made MMVs without him, but she felt awkward making such an arguably strange snack just for herself.
Time also changed the outside world. Velveeta became a food of the past, replaced by real cheese. Like other foods of their youth, such as Tang and Kool-Aid, Velveeta faded into memory. Most importantly, the circumstances of their little family took an upward turn. Dan, now a young man, contributed to the family income. They enjoyed comforts such as meals at restaurants. Pretend vacations fell to the wayside once Dan bought a car.
“We can go somewhere now,” he told their mom. “On a real vacation.”
With this newfound luxury, the three of them drove to the Catskills and for the first time, Ana smelled the forest she had so often visited in her imagination.
It was clean and good, but it was not enough for Dan.
Ana and Dan both attended college, worked, and traveled, but their styles differed in the latter. Ana wished to explore new places and meet new people. After spending a summer volunteering in Thailand, she eagerly shared her adventures with Dan and his new girlfriend Suzanne.
“The principal of the school took us all to the countryside. We went to a lake by a small waterfall hidden in the jungle. It was gorgeous and so quiet. Really only the villagers go there, since some of their homes don’t have running water. We even saw…”
“They don’t have plumbing?” Suzanne interrupted.
“Well, some don’t.”
“So, how are their bathrooms?”
“They have water pumps.”
“But what about the toilets?”
“They have outhouses.”
“Is that what you used?” Susanne asked.
“Yes,” Ana replied. “They were clean.”
Susanne looked over at Dan and chuckled.
Dan responded with a slight smile.
“To each her own,” Suzanne said. “When we go somewhere, we want to feel pampered. Like that whale watching cruise. The seafood on that boat was exquisite.”
Dan never liked fish. Ana wondered if Suzanne knew this.
Dan and Suzanne got married and the couple enjoyed their honeymoon at a resort in the Dominican Republic. Ana visited their new home a few weeks afterward. Her sister-in-law offered her appetizers catered from one of the local restaurants as they looked through photos of their trip.
“Here’s Dan trying to parasail.”
Susanne pointed to one of the pictures.
Dan sat quietly at the end of the sofa, sipping his coffee.
“Dan was so wobbly you would think he’d never been on skis before,” Susanne laughed.
It struck Ana as a strange thing to say since they never did go skiing as kids. It was a sport Dan only took up recently, along with tennis, golf, and all the other sports they used to see on television when they were children.
“Did you take any trips outside of the resort?” Ana asked.
Susanne waved her hand dismissively.
“We saw the country from the car during our ride from the airport. There isn’t much to see. It’s a real banana republic.”
Ana looked over to her brother, searching for the indignation that he, as a husband, would be at liberty to express, but to her disappointment, there was none.
“That’s not what I hear,” Ana replied. “I have Dominican friends who invite me over for mangu and talk about how much fun they have when they visit their relatives.”
“Mangu?” Susanne repeated.
Ana didn’t bother to explain.
By and by, Ana met Marco, a teacher originally from Venezuela. Her mother had time enough to approve of their union before she passed away. In the months and years that followed, the siblings, along with their spouses, still planned holiday gatherings together. Dan and Susanne usually offered to host, since their house was bigger and had a formal dining room. Ana and her husband would obligingly show up with a bottle of Bordeaux as requested.
One gathering, in keeping with the French theme, Suzanne put out a cheese platter with brie, gruyère and gouda. Ana resisted the urge to point out the Dutch origins of gouda.
“Please try some of the baked brie with berries,” Suzanne offered. “It’s the perfect mix of savory and sweet. My absolute favorite!”
It was indeed a gooey mix of sweet and slightly salty.
“This reminds me of MMV,” Ana noted cheerfully, directing her statement to Dan who sat across from her.
“What’s MMV?” Marco asked.
“Melted Marshmallow and Velveeta sandwiches. Dan and I used to make them when we were young.”
“What would possess you to make such a thing?” Susanne asked Dan, who was sitting next to her.
“We did it while pretending to camp in our living room,” Dan explained. “We wanted to make s’mores.”
“Dan, you could have just made real s’mores while camping.”
“We never went camping,” Dan replied, adding, “We never went on any vacation when I was a child.”
Suzanne placed her hand on Dan’s shoulder.
“That’s so sad, darling. But leave it in the past. That part of your life is over now.”
Ana waited for Dan to correct his wife, to smack her hand away and shout out that it was magical, more magical than boring small talk around overpriced appetizers.
“It was wonderful!” Ana blurted out.
Marco and Susanne stared at her, confused, which was to be expected. But Dan too looked confounded. Was this amnesia or betrayal?
“I mean, it was fun. I was happy…I thought…we were happy.”
Marco squeezed her hand, hoping to steady the unease in his wife’s voice.
“I’m sure it was great,” he said. “Heck, I’d love to try one of those MMV sandwiches one time.”
Marco suggested a toast to lighten the mood. Ana looked across to Dan, whose eyes remained downcast and impassive.
***
Their families grew with children, cousins who saw less and less of each other as the years passed. Even Marco, with his good nature, began to openly resist their yearly obligations.
“I always feel that I have to watch what I say and do. I once blew my nose in a paper napkin, and Suzanne glared at me as if I had sneezed in her face. It’s uncomfortable. They’re not like us.”
Ana knew it was true. No doubt Suzanne felt the same way. Her protest against get-togethers at Ana’s home came in the form of preposterous excuses such as the inability to leave a sick parakeet alone. But Marco and Suzanne’s fleeting feelings of discomfort were of no consequence to Ana. A lifetime of her feelings were on a scale, balancing the past against the present. The weight of the present was slowly sinking, overpowering memories of the past. Ana felt grief and loss.
Eventually, despite the familiar bonds that Dan and Ana professed to value, gatherings devolved into virtual “hellos” on calendar holidays.
And so it surprised Ana to receive a video call from Dan one afternoon. She wondered if she had forgotten some event, maybe the commemoration of their mother’s birthday or a milestone of one of her nieces, which prompted the call.
But Dan called to talk about something else.
“Look what I made!” he declared as he pointed the phone camera at a plate of white triangles with thin ribbons of orange and white in the middle.”
“Are those MMVs?” Ana asked.
“Yes!”
“But I thought you didn’t like them anymore.”
Dan took a bite of one.
“They are pretty disgusting.” He grinned. “But they have their charm.”
“Okay,” Ana responded, “and Suzanne and the girls? What do they think of MMV?”
“Ah,” Dan sighed. “They’re not here. They wouldn’t want to try it anyway. No, I figured it would be better to share this moment with someone who would understand.”
Ana wasn’t sure she did.
“What brought on this surge of nostalgia? Is everything alright?”
“Yeah,” Dan smiled. “It’s just….we don’t talk much anymore. I wanted to remember a time when we did.”
A flicker of anger rose in Ana. It was Dan who ran away from the past so fast and hard that he lost her in the process. She blamed him for the years wasted.
“I didn’t think you cared,” she said, choking on the words.
“I know,” he mumbled.
They stayed silent for a time until Ana spoke.
“You never asked me what I wished for.”
“What?”
“On our first camping trip, when I blew out the marshmallow.”
“Oh, yeah. You were about to burn down the place with that thing.”
Ana realized he still wasn’t going to ask, so she spoke.
“I wished that all our days could be perfect — like that one.”
“All our days,” Dan echoed. “I’m sorry, Ana. I guess we don’t always get what we want.”
They steered their discussion to talk of favorite television programs, a topic less weighty upon their hearts.
Two months later, Dan passed away from prostate cancer.
***
On occasion, Ana hunts for a log of Velveeta. She waits until she is alone to roast a marshmallow by candlelight. Closing her eyes, she immerses herself in rustling leaves and the smell of cinnamon. She watches a smiling girl march behind a boy who wills into existence an outdoor adventure. Then she bites into the sandwich, savoring the oozing sweet and salty swirls.
She can never decide whether the sensation is pleasant or unpleasant. She only knows it makes her cry.
*****
Prudence Soobrattie spent years teaching English in various countries. After finding love abroad, she moved back to the States where she now raises a family, teaches and writes whenever she can. One of her recent stories will soon be published in the Museum of Americana. Find her on Twitter @prudencesoob.
