Secret Ingredients

by David Remnick

  Out the window now the sun is setting. It’s the summer of 1995. I see Lynn is crouched between the vegetables, picking peas and pulling up weeds.

  This garden is a pretty thought—it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever done. We have snap peas growing along one row. I read in the paper that they like to climb so I built a trellis beside the row, criss-cross lattice-wood slats, about two feet tall. I painted it white. We have eggplants, squash, tomatoes, and yellow flowers, and next year we’ll plant tubers. When I hate Lynn, or when I can’t stand to look at her or be near her, when I feel disgusting, when I wish God would just erase me, I look at the garden. When she gets angry or yells about something terrible I did and we’re fighting, I look out the window at that thing we made, the garden, at the lawn when it’s been mowed and raked and looks like a putting green, cool and flat and smells sweet. You want to lie down on it and tear the grass up with your hands. Sometimes I think I’m just about ready to kill her.

  How come I never do what I’m supposed to do? How come everything I do is such a fucking disaster? Doesn’t anybody get what they want? And that line of hers about how she might want to have it. She came out of the bathtub with a towel on her head, fluffing her hair. “Honey,” she said. She never called me “honey” before in her life. “Honey, I’ve been thinking about our child.” I could feel all the blood draining from my head. White flecks on the edges of my vision. There was a narrow window of opportunity there, before I calmed myself, where different pictures whizzed into my mind. Space travel, that sort of thing. I told her, You have it alone, honey darling, in your little purple dreamworld—I’ll be in Australia by the time the thing comes out.

  There’s the great Colorado sky, there’s the grass, there’s the clothes on the line, fruit hanging ripe in the trees, the smell of wet cut grass. The land ripping out flat to the Mississippi with the sun leering on top in every direction. And you’re standing above it, a million miles from bumper-to-bumper commuter-nightmare New York. You’re not there anymore, though, you’re here, at the foot of the Rockies, cow-town college town on the American prairie. Great American steer farm. Steroid-fat cows. Transistor radios in barns, cows chewing all night long.

  There were five of us in the room during the procedure: the doctor, her assistant, the hand-holder, me, and, of course, Lynn. She was the star. This was her show. Then it would finally be over. The hand-holder was a therapist, trained in female personal crisis. She was never more than a foot from Lynn all day that long day.

  The staff was ready to go. A stainless-steel machine is used by the doctor to vacuum it out, and the doctor needed Lynn’s okay to begin. The whole thing was supposed to take five minutes.

  Lynn got weepy from nerves, and we all waited while she collected herself. Everyone was anxious to get on with it. I bet Lynn was, too. I held her hand and kissed it, she wasn’t even looking at me, she stared up at some poster on the ceiling. The sound, the way she cried, choking a little, the way you do when you’re sobbing lying on your back, so the spit runs down your throat, swallowing, laughing underneath the crying for how absurd the scene was—even Lynn could see it—lying there with her legs propped up in the air, all these fucking people around her holding her hands and her knees and her privates, watching her like she was—ha ha!—about to give birth (sorry). Boo-hoo. But in my mind I keep coming back to that sound, not loud, not shrill, that crying, it was almost a noise an animal would make. How much trouble Lynn was having even crying right then, without strangling on her own spit. Is there a way to describe how much I wanted to get the fuck out of there? I wanted to shout, God of New York, turn off that sound, get me out of this room before I’m seared and split open, before I develop breasts myself. The other half of my brain, though, recorded her voice for all time.

  “You’re okay,” Lynn said to nobody, to herself. “You’re okay.” She’d planned to get through it without tears.

  Then it was quiet and she told the doctor to go ahead, and the doctor nodded to her assistant. The assistant turned on the machine, and the machine made a sound like any vacuum.

  Lynn is outside, bent over the row of peas. The chicken is sitting over there in the pan. I guess it’s ready to bake. She put garlic, butter, lime juice, chili powder, chopped nuts, oranges, cloves, parsley, coriander, half a banana, and paprika on it. What’s left? Jean Naté? A cigar up the butt? The rice is cooking away in a pot. The chicken sits there like a drag queen, waiting to get roasted.

  When it was over Lynn went into another room and fell asleep. The therapist came over and said, “You were so good today. Guys aren’t usually so good.”

  I nodded. The woman looked at me sweetly. I guess I was good. So what. Maybe it wasn’t the norm for her. Or was she just looking for a tip? My voice, though, was so much deeper than everybody else’s in the room. Whatever I said that day came out sounding like a frog croak. Like a belch. My voice was unnaturally deep. I nodded as much as possible. Other than an arrest for drunk driving in college, it was the most nodding I’d ever done in one five-hour stretch.

  “What are you doing?” I yell to Lynn out the window. She’s bent over the rosebush. Her head is down and her shoulders are rounded, as though she’s concentrating on something small.

  Lynn says, “There are beetles on the roses.”

  I look over at the roasting pan again. “Do we cook this thing or what? I’m getting hungry. What temperature do you set it at?” No answer. She’s busy with the roses.

  “Lynn, you didn’t turn the oven on. I’m going to come out there and pull you in by your hair.”

  Her hair is hanging around her face. She’s looking down. “Relax,” she says. “The oven is on. What time is it?” I can feel myself getting annoyed so I take ten deep breaths, counting the numbers slowly, saying the word “relax” as I breathe out.

  “Damn it, Lynn, I can’t hear you.” She looks up finally.

  “It has to cook for an hour,” she says. “And you have to move the rack.”

  The pan is heavier than I thought. She said move the rack. What does that mean, up or down? I grab it and then drop it, hot rack, and then the roasting pan, too, onto the oven door.

  “Fuck it.”

  “What’s going on?” she says.

  “The rack is on fire.”

  “Of course it is, Jack, it’s three hundred and fifty degrees in there. Did you burn yourself? Better put cold water on it.”

  I stand over the sink and let the water run on my fingers. There’s a welt on my palm. I am a moron. She says, “Didn’t you ever hear of an oven mitt?”

  Man. My fucking hand. Did I ever hear of an oven mitt? What is that, sarcasm?

  She says, “Do you want to try something weird?” Out the window I see her looking up toward me, her face flushed from leaning over for so long. “Should we put dandelions in the salad? Look at this,” she says, holding up a bunch of dandelions from our lawn in a little bouquet. “Mexicans kill for these, the little leaves,” she says. “And they fry the flowers.” I never ate dandelions before. And who cares.

  “Is that too weird?” she says.

  “Hey, yeah,” I say, drying my burned hand gingerly on my T-shirt. “Momma had a baby and the head popped off.” When I was a kid, we used to pick a dandelion and say this when we flicked the head off the stem. The water in the rice pot foams over the sides.

  “Excuse me, Momma didn’t have a baby and the head popped off,” I say, correcting myself.

  I walk over and grab a towel, move the rack down, push the chicken in, and close the oven. The door goes sping against the metal. It’s 7:02. Nothing comes to mind. Outside she looks up at the window.

  “Is that a joke?” she says.

  At this angle the sun cuts right through the house. It’s orange, purple, rose-colored light, blasting right through the house and spilling against everything.

  “Fuck you,” she says.

  It’s about time somebody said it. I can hear the familiar sound of it ringing in the background.

&nbs
p; “You can never keep anything to yourself,” she says.

  “What?” I say.

  “In your head,” she says, standing at the doorway. “Forget it.” Over in the rice pot, there isn’t any water left. So the bottom is cooking way too fast. It’s, like, black. I use a coffee cup and dump some water in. It sizzles, a cloud of steam comes up. One more cup of water. The rice starts cooking again. My eyes are tearing. In a few seconds the whole wet mess is bubbling away. I feel like I scorched my face.

  Lynn’s basket is overflowing with greenery and edible dandelions.

  “Get out of my way,” she says. “You are an animal.”

  “I’m sorry. Why did I say that? Is it too late to take it back?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” she says.

  Lynn goes over to the oven with a dish towel and slides the roasting pan out. She carries it past me, not even hot yet, out the back door and I hear it go gong against the metal basement doors. I step up to the window. The chicken’s in the grass, onions, carrots, sliced oranges—the whole thing.

  Lynn is standing in front of me now. The dish towel is wound around her hand.

  “Cool,” I say. “How symbolic.”

  She says, “I think we need therapists.”

  “What can I say? I’m sorry,” I tell her.

  “Why don’t you get down on your knees.”

  I say, “I will if you want.” No one moves.

  “You’re mad at me,” she says. “How can you be mad at me?”

  “I’m sorry. Jesus Christ. It’s my fault.”

  She shakes her head, staring at me. “Now what?”

  “I’m too hungry,” I say. “I can’t make any big decisions.”

  “What the hell happened to your face?” she says.

  Outside, I pick up the roasting pan out of a pile of leaves. Lynn comes up beside me and puts the chicken back in it, and we shovel up the vegetables and carry everything over to the garbage and throw it all away, even the cracked enamel pot. Whiskey is already there at the fence, meowing and sniffing around.

  “Go on, Whiskey,” I say. “Not for you.”

  “Make sure the lid’s on tight,” she says to me. “I don’t want to clean this up a second time from some raccoon.”

  Let’s say, for the sake of something, that I never loved her, that what we have here is a housing arrangement, with scenes of nude touching, that we joined for a little comfort, that it’s missing some key element of normal love. It’s not normal, it’s more like high-school love, or freshman-year-in-college kind of love, the kind you’re glad to stick with as long as it’s great, as long as it doesn’t start ruining your life. The very, very flawed kind. That’s my idea of love, actually, the perfect first two weeks, early on, when all you care about is love.

  We get a pizza. We pay the man. We eat the salad she picked and lie on the rug in the living room, eating pizza, watching TV, together on the floor. We have no furniture—we aren’t there yet. The vibe between us is two people very tired and in shock, but amiable. I put some cream on my face. The welt on my hand throbs. I’d rather have pizza anyway, chicken sucks. I love her. Who else would accept me in this condition?

  I should say I’ll make dinner tomorrow night.

  “I can make dinner tomorrow night.”

  “You gonna make some chicken?” she says.

  “White Christmas lasagna,” I say. “With spinach and salad and bread.”

  “Sounds good,” she says. “Move over,” sliding toward me. She slings her leg over both of mine, sticking her face in my neck. “This way,” she says, and I move to accommodate her. I can feel Lynn’s warm, clean breath on my skin. What a feeling, from one person to another.

  “I don’t understand anything,” she says. Her eyes close. Her breath slows.

  Lynn gets up from beside me and takes the dinner plates with her. I must be insane. She gives me what I need, and I love her. Hollow but true. I have to remember these things, about her and about the chicken in the grass—is that how it works? Perfect. Stupid. Shared. Turn off the TV now. Turn off the lights.

  1997

  SPUTNIK

  DON DELILLO

  The Demings were home this afternoon, busy at various tasks in their split-level house, a long low two-tone colonial with a picture window, a breezeway, and bright siding.

  Erica was in the kitchen making Jell-O chicken mousse for dinner. Three cups chicken broth or three chicken-bouillon cubes dissolved in three cups boiling water. Two packages Jell-O lemon gelatine. One teaspoon salt. One-eighth teaspoon cayenne. Three tablespoons vinegar. One and a third cups whipped-topping mix. Two-thirds cup mayonnaise. Two cups finely diced cooked chicken. Two cups finely chopped celery. Two tablespoons chopped pimiento.

  Then boil and pour and stir and blend. Fold spiced and chilled gelatine into chicken thing. Spoon into nine-by-five-inch loaf pan. Chill until firm. Unmold. Garnish with crisp lettuce and stuffed olives (if desired). Makes six entrée salads.

  Do not reuse this bottle for storing liquids.

  Erica did things with Jell-O that took people’s breath away. Even now, as she prepared the chicken mousse for final chilling, there were nine parfait glasses in the two-tone Kelvinator. This was dessert for the next three evenings. Each glass was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle either against the wall of the refrigerator or against another object. This tilting method, handed down from her grandmother and her mother, allowed Erica to do Jell-O desserts in a number of colorful diagonal stripes, working the combinations among half a dozen flavors. She might put black-raspberry Jell-O, slightly thickened, into a parfait glass. She puts the glass in the fridge, tilting it at forty-five degrees. After the gelatine chills and fully thickens she folds in a swath of lime Jell-O, and then maybe orange, and then strawberry or black cherry. At the end of the process she has nine multistriped desserts, all different, all so vividly attractive.

  Doing things with Jell-O was just about the best way to improve her mood, which was oddly gloomy today—she couldn’t figure out why.

  From the kitchen window she could see the lawn, neat and trimmed, low-hedged, open and approachable. The trees at the edge of the lawn were new, like everything else in the area. All up and down the curving streets there were young trees and small new box shrubs and a sense of openness, a sense of seeing everything there is to see at a single glance, with nothing shrouded or walled or protected from the glare.

  Nothing shrouded or secret except for young Eric, who sat in his room, behind drawn fiberglass curtains, jerking off into a condom. He liked using a condom because it had a sleek metallic shimmer, like his favorite weapons system, the Honest John, a surface-to-surface missile with a warhead that carried yields of up to fifteen kilotons.

  Avoid contact with eyes, open cuts, or running sores.

  He sat sprawled in a butterfly chair and thought nobody could ever guess what he was doing, especially the condom part. Nobody could ever guess it, know it, imagine it, or associate him with it. But what happens, he thought, if you die someday and it turns out that everything you’ve ever done in private becomes general knowledge in the hereafter? Everybody automatically knows everything you ever did when you thought you were totally and sneakily and safely unseen.

  Prolonged exposure to sun may cause bursting.

  They put thermal pads on the Honest John to heat the solid fuel in preparation for firing. Then they remove the pads and launch the missile from a girderlike launch rail in a grassy field somewhere in the Free World. And the missile’s infallible flight, the way it sweeps out precise volumes of mathematical space, it’s so saintly and sun-tipped, swinging out of its apex to dive to earth, and the way the fireball halos out above its column of smoke and roar, like some nameless faceless whatever. It made him want to be a Catholic.

  Plus she’d have three chicken-mousse salads for leftovers later in the week.

  Out in the breezeway husband Rick was simonizing their two-tone Ford Fairlane convertible, brand-new, like the houses and the tree
s, with whitewall tires and stripes of jet-streak chrome that fairly crackled when the car was in motion.

  Erica kept her Jell-O molds in the seashell-beige cabinet over the range. She had fluted molds, ring molds, crown molds in a number of sizes, she had notes and diagrams, mold techniques, offer forms for special decorative molds that she intended to fill out and mail at her earliest convenience.

  If swallowed, induce vomiting at once.

  Eric stroked his dick in a conscientious manner, somber and methodical. The condom was feely in a way he’d had to get used to, rubbery dumb and disaffecting. On the floor between his feet was a photo of Jayne Mansfield with her knockers coming out a sequined gown. He wanted to sandwich his dick between her breasts until it went whee. But he wouldn’t just walk out the door when it was over. He would talk to her breasts. Be tender and lovey. Tell them what his longings were, his hopes and dreams.

  There was one mold Erica had never used, sort of guided-missile-like, because it made her feel uneasy somehow.

  The face in the picture was all painted mouth and smudgy lashes, and at a certain point in the furtherance of his business Eric deflected his attention from the swooping breasts and focused on the facial Jayne, on her eyebrows and lashes and puckered lips. The breasts were real, the face was put together out of a thousand thermoplastic things. And in the evolving scan of his eros, it was the masking waxes, liners, glosses, and creams that became the soft moist mechanisms of release.

  Intentional misuse by deliberately inhaling contents can be harmful or fatal.