Grace's Table

by Sally Piper

  ‘Maybe her family should find her somewhere for a stint of respite care,’ Susan suggested.

  Grace looked up at Susan, one hand poised on top of the pot’s lid, the other gripping its handle. ‘Isn’t that just another quiet mountain but with a different view?’

  Susan shrugged. ‘If it helps.’

  ‘I’ll see her well again,’ Grace said, and she used all her strength to shake the potatoes about in the pot, to the point where she doubted any would need further scoring with a fork before roasting.

  5

  Enough food cluttered the tops of Grace’s benches and kitchen table to make a refugee weep and she didn’t feel proud. But her family was a hungry one, for all manner of things – food, attention, victory – so there was a level of expectation they’d be fed well.

  There were several kinds of vegetables to be steamed, roasted or baked in béchamel sauce. A rich master stock simmered for gravy. The shredded mint leaves and vinegar and sugar had come together to make an unattractive swampy green-coloured sauce, the look of which belied its pleasingly sharp taste. The lamb continued its slow spit and sizzle in the oven, and every time the oven door was opened, the smell of caramelising fat filled the room. Soft and hard drinks chilled down in the ice-filled laundry tub. And the kitchen sink was crowding with the dirty dishes needed to make it all happen.

  Grace thought of those documentaries where images were sped up to show the life of a plant from seed to shrub or the decomposition of a gazelle, accelerated to seconds. Imagine doing that across a kitchen’s lifetime. What quantities of food! What industry! What consumption! Other rooms would look like forgotten domains in comparison.

  The kitchen gave a family structure, shape – a space in which to exist. And Grace imagined her cooking as its beating heart. She was tireless in the task, but despite the heart’s unwavering commitment, the work was largely ignored. Yes, Grace thought, cooking was much like the hidden work of the heart, unseen inside the cage of the chest.

  Mother’s chest had been made of glass. Her skills and work in the kitchen were never overlooked, and certainly not by Pa.

  Her preserved peaches and plums and chutneys weren’t allowed to remain unnoticed in the dark cool of the pantry, gradually diminished by greedy appetites along with custard, cream or cold meat. Each year the better ones were moved to the produce competition sheds of the local Agricultural Show for a few days. There, housewife pitted herself against housewife in draughty, corrugated-iron sheds where their wares did their best to impress the judges. She entered fruit cakes and plum puddings as well. Pa’s shoulders hitched with amusement at the frenetic lead-up and increased heat in the kitchen as Mother, red-faced and short-tempered, poured, chopped and stirred. Mother responded to his humour with tight lips or a snapped, Well, I’m cooking them for Christmas anyway. Pa, not so easily fooled, declared, We’re going to eat well after this weekend, kids, when the Swiss rolls and jelly cakes and date loaves arranged on pretty plates appeared on the kitchen benches too, items that had nothing to do with Christmas.

  But while Pa might have teased and chuckled at Mother’s cooking madness before the Show, he was the first into the shed to see what she’d won when the judges finally opened the doors. He would lead the family round the long trestle tables, ebullient over the blue ribbons she’d received – and there were many – and disparaging of the lesser or absent ones. Look, she’s done it again, kids, he’d say or Judge must have forgotten to taste this one. Mother, in her publicly pious way, would say little, but Grace noticed her town accent – the normally dropped ‘g’s suddenly finding their way back onto the ends of her words – even more noticeable when she spoke to those women who’d been less successful than her.

  The Show weekend was an important one in a countrywoman’s calendar, Grace came to realise. Those produce sheds gave her mother the chance to be recognised, known as the one who made the best lamingtons or Madeira cake in the district. Her recipes would be requested for inclusion in the church fundraising cookery book and her plates of gem scones or ginger nuts were the first bought at school fêtes, usually by the women working behind the stall before the public had a chance to even see them. But success was also the feeding ground for jealousy, so sought-after were these small accolades. Grace would eavesdrop on the not-so-quiet mutterings from women as they studiously walked the aisles of the shed. Looks a bit dry if you ask me, they’d say at halved chocolate cakes, or Couldn’t call that one a blowaway at the sponges. Grace would prickle with rare defence if she heard such utterings around any of her mother’s winning entries. She’d scowl at these women until they shuffled off, pretending not to have noticed, but afterwards they’d speak in whispers.

  When it came time to reload the boot of the car with the cakes and rolls and slices, her mother had a sad, faraway look despite the bundle of ribbons in her handbag. It was only as an adult Grace recognised the look as the same one people got when a much-enjoyed party was over. As the trestle tables were packed away and the produce shed locked up for another year, so too was Mother’s moment in the spotlight. But Pa was right – they certainly ate well once the Show was over.

  It felt a bit like Mother’s pre-Show cooking frenzy in Grace’s kitchen today. Susan stirred cheese into the béchamel sauce on the stove, with efficient clockwise then counter-clockwise motions. Grace ran hot water into the sink and started the dishes before the tap disappeared behind a wall of dirty pots and pans.

  ‘I bet you’re wishing now we’d gone to a restaurant.’ Susan removed the wooden spoon from the pot, wiped her finger across the back of it, and tasted the sauce. She added a further pinch of nutmeg, three grinds from the pepper mill.

  ‘Not at all,’ Grace said. ‘I’m happy to be having it at home.’ She ran the pot scrubber over two knives, their blades fanned out in a victory sign, then set them on the draining board.

  ‘On my seventieth I’m going somewhere nice like Fiddlers or The Croft.’ Susan tasted the sauce again then poured it over the cauliflower she’d arranged across a baking dish. She scraped the sides of the pot with the spoon to get all of the tenaciously cheesy sauce from inside, craned her neck to look inside. ‘Air conditioned. Someone else doing the cooking – and clearing away.’ She banged the wooden spoon on the edge of the baking dish then brought it and the pot to the sink, dropped each in the sudsy water.

  Grace retrieved the two glasses already in there before the water went milky.

  ‘Where’s the pride in that meal?’ she asked Susan.

  ‘In somebody else paying for it.’

  Grace saw Susan’s restaurant meal as one consumed out of duty: a family brought together on the condition of convenience and ease; the time-frame predetermined by the restaurant’s hours or next bookings; the menu at someone else’s discretion, their tastes, their preferences. Not a beating heart anywhere, Grace thought. And no blue ribbon moments, except in the opening of a wallet.

  Sadly, many of the meals Grace had prepared in the past hadn’t shown a beating heart either. Today she hoped to make amends. She wanted this food to mean something more than mere sustenance to her family and friends; she wanted it to be seasoned with goodness, to show them she cared, to make this lunch one to be remembered, just as Mother’s Show cooking and preserves had defined her.

  In the past it had been difficult to show love in the preparation of certain foods. Meat was one such food, or meat the way Des liked to eat it anyway. He took his roast beef rare, sinewy, the fat inside still pale and soft, which meant they all had to take it that way. It looked like the haunch of a recent kill when he carved it at the table. Grace would struggle to eat hers, push her vegetables to high ground on her plate to keep them from the blood pooled there. The children learnt to like theirs the same way as Des, having known no different, but Grace never did. Some days she felt as though she was feeding a lion when she placed the bloodied joint in front of him, feared he’d reach across and devour her arm
along with it. Delicious, she imagined him saying as her blood filled the gaps between his strong white teeth, Rare – just how I like it.

  Susan jiggled the baking dish back and forth on the bench. The thick sauce settled into gaps and gullies. She sprinkled the top with a mixture of grated Parmesan and cheddar cheese then opened the oven and slid the dish inside.

  ‘Next job?’ she asked, slamming it shut.

  ‘Peas.’ Grace dried her hands on her apron and took a large bag of fresh peas from the crisper.

  ‘Not frozen?’

  ‘This is no ordinary restaurant,’ Grace said, and up-ended the contents of the bag onto the kitchen table.

  They each pulled out a chair and sat facing one another, shelling the peas into a metal pot. The empty pods started to build on sheets of newspaper beside them.

  ‘Do you remember how I used to cook your favourite meal for your birthday dinners when you were young?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘You always wanted curried chicken with rice followed by steamed chocolate pudding for dessert. You’d drown the pudding in cream – twice.’

  ‘You remember that?’

  ‘Of course. Peter always had steak and chips, no vegies, followed by trifle. Claire’s—’ Grace had to think a moment. She opened a pod with a satisfying pop and ran her thumb along the row of peas inside. Each hit the metal pot like rain on an iron roof. Then she remembered. ‘Claire’s was cocktail sausages and green jelly with Neapolitan ice cream. She’d ask for more chocolate than strawberry.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

  ‘For some things.’

  Her memory for other things, the minute details of a day or season long past, were usually lost to her. Like the sun streaming in the kitchen window and onto the table now, warming her left arm. It was one of the everyday things from her past she no longer felt sure she knew. What had childhood summer sunshine been like? She presumed it had been hot and dry and often burnt her skin. She guessed it had made her sweat and caused the long walk home from school to be a listless, fly-flicking meander instead of her usual purposeful journey from ink-welled desk to door. She remembered swimming in the creek near her home in the summers but she couldn’t recall the sensation of the cold, brown water as it hit her body. She even had a faded glimpse of a child shielding her eyes from the glare as she looked through a heat shimmer from house to horizon. But were these memories trustworthy, ones she could claim as her own? Couldn’t they just be visions loaned to her from a movie or a magazine? She never could be sure. Not anymore.

  ‘Remember how you used to do a ring of rice round the plate first then fill in the centre with the curry?’

  ‘Presentation’s everything,’ Grace laughed.

  ‘And the curry was always bright yellow.’

  ‘Straight from the Keen’s curry powder tin. Never could tell what was in it but it was the only one your father would eat. Same flavour and colour regardless of whether I was currying egg for sandwiches or meat. Now there’s so many different ones on the supermarket shelves I don’t know how people choose which one to buy.’

  ‘You try them all. Eventually the field narrows to a few favourites.’

  Grace preferred to make hers from scratch. All she needed was a well-stocked spice rack. She’d juggle combinations of coriander, cumin, cardamom and turmeric. At times she’d add fennel seeds or fenugreek. And to fire it up she’d grind a paste of chilli, garlic and ginger and add to the mix. Some were tomato based, others of coconut milk. She’d rarely produced the same flavour twice.

  ‘Do you make a favourite meal for Jorja and Jaxon?’

  Susan shook her head. ‘No, they choose a restaurant they’d like to go to.’

  How times had changed.

  ‘Jorja always picks Thai. Jaxon, Mexican.’

  Grace had been an adult before she went to her first restaurant. At the time Des was trying his hardest to win her over, to give a country girl a taste of life with a city boy. What she’d really got was a false taste of the man he’d never be. Later, when they were married, she’d ask him to take her out for a meal and he’d rarely agree. He’d won his trophy and preferred to enjoy the culinary accoutrements that went with it, in his own home.

  ‘Why d’you wanna eat out?’ he’d ask.

  She couldn’t tell him she needed to break the pattern of the same sounds from the same people at the same table every night. He wouldn’t understand or care how the monotony of such a routine crushed a woman’s courage to be able to live a different mealtime performance.

  ‘Besides, who’d look after the kids?’

  ‘Bev says she’ll mind them any time. Come on, it’ll be good to get out.’

  Once he’d agreed to take her to their local hotel for dinner. To recall the day now was like viewing an old silent movie.

  She could still see herself – the memory not borrowed, but real – spending an hour shaping her eyebrows and pressing her best dress in between feeding and bathing crying children who were sensitive to a predictable pattern being suddenly hurried. Des came in from work and got ready like a man preparing for a hat-in-hand appointment with the bank manager. Later, she wondered if he’d spent his journey home from work thinking about ways he could get out of it.

  At the hotel, he hesitated at the junction in the hotel’s long hallway that brought the choice between turning right into the Ladies Lounge or left into the Public Bar. Grace gently steered him through his hesitation to the door on the right with an arm she’d linked through his.

  Her silent movie showed her scanning the menu for some of her favourites – grilled flounder, baked snapper – but not finding them. She couldn’t remember what she ate now, only that Des cleared his plate quickly; her own meal was still only half-eaten by the time his was finished. He sat back in his chair then; licked food from his teeth; fidgeted with a corner of the tablecloth; wound his watch.

  The hotel’s dining room was a characterless backdrop to the picture ticking over in Grace’s head. The walls weren’t adorned beyond their flocked wallpaper and the backs of curtains were yellowed by the sun and cigarette smoke. When people spoke she saw their lips move but heard nothing. She could see their knives and forks working at their food but there was no audible scrape or clatter. She and the other diners looked like extras in some staged drama with the real actors, the important people, yet to arrive to bring on the action. She remembered how part of her missed the chaos of home, where food fell or was thrown to the floor and a spoon or cup was slammed up and down on a highchair table. The other part of her, the one eager to play the role, ate her meal slowly and with care, savouring tastes she could no longer recall the flavour of.

  Des declined dessert; Grace ordered one. When it arrived, Des spoke to her, said something about nicking in next door for a minute, left Grace to finish on her own.

  Grace’s dessert bowl had long been cleared but Des still hadn’t returned. She watched the odd assortment of couples around her – some chatted intimately, held hands across the table; others didn’t say a word to each other, but stared off, instead, at some undefined spot in the room. With calm resolve, Grace gave one final dab to her lips with her napkin, gathered her handbag and got up from the table to take herself home. On the way out she saw Des in the public bar. He was with a group of men who each had their hands round a glass of beer. Grace remembered how his white teeth flashed as he laughed, sharing a joke even the barmaid enjoyed. She never knew if he went back to check on her. She never asked to be taken out again. Grace clicked off the reel to the memory.

  ‘Your father never liked eating out much.’ Grace rained another row of peas into the pot.

  ‘That’s because you fed him too well at home. Keep them a bit hungry. That’s my motto.’

  ‘Is that why Richard’s skinny as a pin – you starve him?’ Grace joked.

  Susan laughed. ‘His m
other says he’s been scrawny since birth. Just before we married she told me if she’d never been able to fatten him up then I didn’t stand a chance either. I didn’t hesitate to tell her he put on a kilogram in the first month after our wedding. She put it down to inactivity beyond the bedroom, not my cooking.’

  It was Grace’s turn to laugh. ‘Did he lose it again – the kilogram?’

  ‘Yes, by the next month. Like I said, you have to keep them a bit hungry. Not that I ever told his mother he’d lost it. For years she always thought he weighed a kilogram more than when he left home. Richard said she’d squeeze his sides whenever she saw him. I think she was trying to work out just where that extra kilo was. Middle age takes care of it for me now.’

  Richard’s mother’s inability to relinquish her role as feeder – reduced as it was to an advisory level, and even then the advice taken begrudgingly, knowing Susan – didn’t surprise Grace. She supposed it was the only means by which his mother could continue some sense of control over her son’s life. To hand over the secrets and idiosyncrasies of his eating since birth, packaged like precious memories and entrusted to the care of another to be remembered. For some, Grace thought, this must feel like a blood-letting, but for others the task of feeding could carry a more malevolent power. It provided an avenue through which perceived wrongs could be redeemed – the worst, fatty cut to the belligerent; the yolk with a blood spot to the cruel; a disliked dish to the ungrateful.