by Jael McHenry
We all have our own patterns, I guess. Gert has hers. I have mine. And whether we like it or not, they persist.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Biscuits and Gravy
On Thursday afternoon I hear Amanda on the phone, which is nothing new, because Amanda is frequently on the phone. But afterward she calls out to me, and I find her staring into a box of Christmas ornaments and slapping her phone against her open palm. Ma used to pound certain cuts of meat flat with a wooden rolling pin. It made that same sound.
“There you are. Listen,” she says. “Brennan got called away, damn, this is such bad timing. He has to go back to the L.A. office. Could be a few days, maybe longer, we don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“They won’t let him extend his bereavement, their policy, it’s just draconian.”
Draconian is on a page with drab and dragée and dragnet. “Okay.”
She goes on, “So he can’t watch the girls anymore. So I’ll have to bring them here.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not okay, not really,” she says, bowing her head down and tying her pale hair back in a ponytail. “You’re not responsible for other people, you don’t understand what it’s like.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“Well, at least you know it. So. I need to go home now. Why don’t you come?”
“Now?”
“Yes, like I said, now.”
“To do what?”
“What does it matter, Ginny, geez!” She slaps the phone against her hand again. “Brennan’s flight leaves in three hours. It’s a half hour drive. And the girls are freaking out. Probably we should stay there overnight, we can come back here in the morning. We’ll have to bring over something to keep them occupied or they’ll be breaking all the knickknacks. The right book will take care of Shannon for hours but Parker won’t sit still for that, not that Parker sits still for anything, that girl, I swear.”
“There’s no rush,” I say. “Stay home as long as you want, then come back when it’s convenient.”
“If I wait for things to be convenient nothing will ever get done.” She makes a sweeping gesture toward the staircase. “Run upstairs and get a change of clothes and let’s go.”
“Okay.”
I tuck a pair of jeans and a navy polo into a backpack. I think about taking the Normal Book but it’s too risky. I pack the laptop, and my wallet, and a pair of underwear.
“Come on,” yells Amanda.
I’ve got my foot on the first stair and my hand on the pineapple finial when I remember what Nonna said.
Do no let her.
My senses are flooded with oregano and tomatoes and long-simmered beef. I try to swallow past a sudden knot. Maybe I’m not supposed to leave the house. Maybe that’s what I’m not supposed to let Amanda do: convince me to leave. Take me away.
She stands at the base of the stairs with her face toward the door. I look at the spot where her ponytail sprouts out of the back of her head.
I say, “No, I’ll stay here.”
The ponytail whips the air. “You said you’d go!”
“I changed my mind.”
Amanda points her chin up the stairs at me. “I swear, Ginny, you are so frustrating.”
“I don’t want to leave Midnight here alone.” This is the truth, though not all of it. “I need to stay here and take care of her.”
“The cat will deal.”
“I’m not going.” I tighten my grip.
“Fine. Stay. We’re going to have to figure this out when you move in … long-haired cats make such a mess. You probably don’t notice because Gert takes care of it.”
“Move in? I never agreed to that.”
“Oh, great,” says Amanda, “you’re gonna pick now to start an argument?”
I swallow my anger. Instead I say, “You should go.”
“Yes, I should. Love you. Be good.”
And she’s gone.
One thing at a time.
I listen for the car door closing, the rev of the engine, the tires hissing down the snowy street. Once I’m sure she’s gone I spring into action. I’ve been guessing and I have to stop guessing. I have to find out.
I have to ask Nonna what she meant.
With the ribollita recipe out on the counter I start cooking. I try to get through each step as quickly as I can without rushing. If I cut myself and have to stop, that could throw everything off. I go through the whole recipe. Onion and garlic, slicing and chopping. The beans, the tomatoes, the kale. The bread. Stirring it all in the pot, checking back to make sure everything’s correct.
But nothing happens.
I taste a bit of the ribollita, and go back over the directions. It isn’t that. I didn’t screw up. There just isn’t anything there anymore. No magic. Did it get used up?
There is a whole stack of cards here I could use. Nonna’s other specialties. Ragu di carne or bistecca fiorentina, for example. I’d have to go out and pick up some ingredients but I can do that in an emergency. I can go to the Korean grocery on the corner and put the credit card down on the counter and sign the slip. I can do it if I have to.
I want to be brave. Maybe if I just go ahead and do what I’m afraid of, I’ll find the bravery. Maybe that’s how normal people do it. Not normal, don’t think normal, I tell myself. Average people. Other people. Bravery means forging ahead instead of asking questions. Act first, ask questions later never made sense to me. Act first, sure, that makes sense. The second part, not as much. Once you’ve succeeded, there are no more questions. Or at least the questions are different ones. And if you fail, questions won’t help.
I remember Amanda saying, You only have two speeds, scared and angry. Maybe I could try something in the middle.
But this is much more than just walking down to the corner. There’s something even scarier I can, and should, do.
Not Nonna this time. I need to talk to Ma.
I’m scared but it can’t wait. I don’t know when I’ll be alone again. This might be my only chance. I go upstairs and fetch the pictures and the letter from their hiding places. I look at both things and make a decision. I bring the pictures into the kitchen and place them on the butcher block.
I get up on the step stool and take the chrysanthemum-patterned tea box down from the top shelf. The greasy, translucent stain on this note card is Ma’s. The fingerprint on the hand mirror in the top drawer of the vanity in the back bathroom is Ma’s. Knowing she’s dead isn’t what makes me miss her. It’s the little things. They take me by surprise. Then I get stomachaches and I have to distract myself and disappear inside a dark small space or a process so deep it swallows me. I miss her because she’s not here. If I invoke her ghost, she’ll be here, and I won’t have to miss her then. With Dad, I don’t have a choice. Ma is different.
If I don’t do this, I will always wonder what would have happened if I did.
I shuffle the cards. I take a deep breath. I shuffle them again, and then make myself open my eyes to read what’s on top.
Okay. Biscuits and gravy it is.
No shopping to do. I have everything I need for this. Simple enough I could do it without looking at the recipe, if the recipe weren’t the whole point.
Will it even work? Only one way to know.
More deep breaths. Lots of deep breaths. Shortening cut into flour, pinching it with dry fingertips into clumps the texture of oatmeal. Dusting the counter with a thin layer of flour, holding half a cup aside in case the dough needs more. Kneading the dough exactly the right number of times, keeping track, eighteen nineteen twenty. Rolling the dough out exactly an inch thick. Punching through circles with the biscuit cutter. Not twisting the cutter, very important. That can seal the edge and keep the biscuits from rising right. Gathering and re-rolling the scraps, working them as little as possible, also to preserve the rise. Biscuits go in the oven, timer set.
The gravy is even easier. Brown the sausage. Sprinkle on a tablespoon of flour. Stir and cook.
Watch the powder absorb the fat from the sausage, blunting the shine. Judge by the smell and color to know the raw taste of the flour is gone. Add milk, stirring as you go, until the milk covers the sausage. White swirled with a sandy tan color, until the barrier between the two breaks down. Low heat and lots of stirring. It all thickens up. A veil of gravy clings to the spoon. Almost done.
The last step on the card. Lots of black pepper, ground directly in.
A little translucent at first, she resolves into a solid-looking body on the stool. Her hair is longer than I remember, but otherwise, she looks about right. White cotton pajamas, a matched set. A navy blue sleep mask, narrow in the middle like a peanut shell, dangles loose from a cord on her neck. Flushed cheeks. There is a coin-sized stain on the right knee of her pajama pants, the color of chocolate or old blood, which I’m sure she’s not happy about.
“Hi, Ma,” I say.
“Oh … oh, Ginny. My God. I can’t believe I’m here.” She gestures around at the living world.
“You’re a ghost, Ma,” I say.
She says, “I never believed in ghosts.”
This makes me laugh uncontrollably for at least half a minute. Truly uncontrollably, I can’t control it, the laughter coughs out of me. As I start to calm down I can kind of hear her laughing too.
I look up and see her make a familiar gesture. Ma pushes the hair out of her eyes. Usually I only catch a glimpse of this but this time I am watching closely as she moves. Her hand, her hair, her face. This hurts my heart more than anything else. I have to hold one hand in the other hand, nails biting the skin, to keep from reaching out to her. I push until it hurts and keep pushing.
“Is Amanda here?” she asks. This hurts most of all.
“No, Ma, she’s not here right now.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Of course.”
“Where is she?”
I say, “At home. She’s coming back later. I’m the one who brought you, Ma. You’re here because I made one of your recipes.”
“Biscuits and gravy,” she says. “I smelled it.”
This reminds me the biscuits are still in the oven, so I hasten over to remove them.
Ma says, “Those smell a little burnt.”
“I’m sure they’re okay.” They’re not. On the bottom they are as brown as the soles of Dad’s shoes. I should have taken them out earlier.
“So is it anything you cook? Can you see anyone?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Have you talked to Julia Child?”
“Why would I bother Julia Child, Ma?”
“That’s what I’d do. If I …” She pauses a long time. Finally she adds, “… could.”
“We’re different.”
“I know.”
Seeing her here, I’m overwhelmed. I want to be logical and grownup and intelligent. I also want to curl up and put my head in her lap and sleep for decades. More than anything I want her to tell me she misses me as much as I miss her.
“We miss you,” I say. “Amanda and the girls and me. Gert. Everyone.”
“When is she coming back?”
“Gert?”
“Amanda.”
“Talk to me,” I say, louder. “I’m the one who brought you.”
“Here I am. And we’re talking.”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Don’t be difficult.”
“You always say that! I’m not being difficult. I’m being me.”
Ma says, “Then maybe difficult is what you are.”
My fear has become anger now and my control is going fast. More than anything else I want to chuck one of these biscuits right at Ma’s head. But that would prove her point. Only difficult people chuck warm biscuits at their dead mothers. I assume.
Breathe in, breathe out. To calm myself I pretend I have a green grape on my tongue and am pressing it gently against the roof of my mouth. I want to spend more time being calm, but I don’t know how long Ma will stay. “Difficult,” she called me. The imaginary grape drops out of my mouth and rolls away across the floor and I snap, “I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, can you?”
“Ma!”
She says, “I’m just asking.”
“No, you’re not!”
“I just want you to be honest with yourself.”
“You didn’t care about honest. You cared about easy.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You liked Amanda better because she always did what you said.”
“That isn’t true,” she repeats. Repeating yourself is a sign of lying, and she’s the one who taught me that.
“You never liked me.”
“Ginny,” she says, “please. Do you really think now is the time for all this?”
It’s a very reasonable question and it makes me want to chuck a biscuit at her head again. Instead I say, “You’re right. Let’s focus. Tell me who this is.”
I pick one of the pictures and hold it toward her. The black-and-white picture of the woman against the gray sky. Looking up at the camera or the person behind the camera, my father.
Ma looks down. This feels so strange to me because I have never met her eyes and had her be the one to look down. I was always the one. Things are different now.
She says, “I’m not going to talk to you about that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s for your dad to tell you. Not me.”
“But is she—Who is she?”
“She’s not anyone, Ginny.”
This is infuriating. “Of course she’s someone.”
“She exists, yes. But—you don’t understand, Ginny. She’s not important.”
“Tell me who she was anyway.”
“Okay,” Ma says. She sighs. “She was a nurse at the hospital with your dad.”
“What was her name?”
“Ginny, how could that possibly matter?”
“I want to know.” I shake the picture at her again, so she knows I’m serious.
“Okay, fine, her name was Evangeline.”
“That can’t be right!” Evangeline, the ghost. Skinny, hairless, terrifying. She cried out against Doc, her love for Doc, her hate for Doc. If she was a nurse at the hospital—if Dad had all these pictures of her—
Ma says, “Why do you look so scared? Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” She reaches out a hand toward me, but stops, so it hangs there outstretched in the space between us.
“Was she … were they …”
“Sweetheart, slow down, be calm. Tell me what you want to say.”
“Is she … did they … is this what you had to forgive Dad for?”
She pushes the hair away from her face again, shaking her head, looking up at me. “Your father never needed my forgiveness for—What are you asking, Ginny?”
“I just said it. Is this what you had to forgive Dad for?” I brandish the picture.
“You don’t understand at all, Ginny,” she says.
“Then help me understand!” I want to fling the picture down but I don’t want to damage it. I want to throw something, hard. I can feel my arms tingling, my throat closing. I slap my free hand down on the butcher block so hard it stings. I focus on that feeling so I don’t crumble.
“I can’t,” she says. “Your dad has to be the one to help you.”
“But I can’t talk to him! I can only talk to you!”
With her frustratingly cool, gentle spearmint voice, Ma responds, “Ginny, your dad never wanted to talk about this with you and I respected that. I still respect that.”
I shout, “But you’re both dead! I’m still alive! Don’t you think what I want is more important?”
She looks me in the eye and says, “No.”
This time I look down. I put the imaginary grape in my mouth again. I set the photo down safely, pick up the spoon, stir the gravy. I can still smell it, and as long as I can, we can keep going. I have to make myself be calm, so I do. I make myself speak slowly. I say, “There was
a letter from Dad asking for your forgiveness …”
“What letter?”
“Up in the chimney. In the bedroom fireplace.”
“I never—Oh.” The tension in her shoulders shifts. “I guess I did put a letter up there. And forgot about it. If I’d remembered I would’ve gotten rid of it. That was … that was a long time ago.”
“But I found it. I have it. It asks your forgiveness, and all I want to know is, was an affair with Evangeline the thing he wanted your forgiveness for?”
The spearmint voice again. “Sweetheart, that’s none of your business.”
“Of course it’s my business! You’re my parents.”
“No, that doesn’t make it your business, not at all.”
I’m confused. “But you said Dad could talk to me about it?”
“That’s different. That’s totally different.”
“You don’t make any sense.”
Ma says, “Sweetheart, I love you so much, but you just don’t understand and there’s no way I can explain any of this to you.”
“You know I’m not stupid,” I say, still clutching the spoon, unable to let go.
“Of course you’re not!”
“Why don’t you think I’ll understand?”
Ma says, “Just trust me.”
I say, “No.”
The smell is getting faint. Stirring doesn’t help.
“Ginny. We don’t have time for this. I’m trying to tell you. About Amanda.”
“Always Amanda!” I shout.
“No, you don’t understand. Listen to me. Are you listening?”
I look straight at her, and listen.
She says, “It’s very important that you not let Amanda,” and her mouth is moving but I can’t hear what she’s saying and too late I notice her edges are translucent like an aspic and she’s gone.
I sit down hard on the kitchen floor, reeling, exhausted. I spent too much time asking all the wrong things.