Olivia

by Judith Rossner

  I nodded. “Good point. Actually, in my experience, young boys and girls are equally interested in cooking. But their interest is not in learning how much water to boil green vegetables in. What they want is to cook something they like to eat. Most often this means baking. As they grow up, if they retain any interest in the preparation, as opposed to just the eating, they branch out some. Not that they beg to make vegetables. But the ones who stay are the ones who’re interested in the process.”

  Someone asked why I thought it was that so many males lost interest in cooking. I said I gathered little boys didn’t like sleepovers, either, and I didn’t know the reason but could probably get into trouble speculating. In fact, the only thing I couldn’t get into trouble with today was chocolate, which, as far as I could tell, was beloved by male and female alike.

  “Did Hitler like chocolate?” someone called out.

  I shrugged. “Who knows? He had to fill up on something. Vegetarians are always hungry. Before anyone asks, Mussolini was probably never offered any, except maybe when he went to Vienna. The Italians aren’t that big on chocolate; it’s used more as a flavoring than a major ingredient, although there’re a couple of good desserts that use chocolate bits. And there’s a rabbit dish they make in Milan that has grated chocolate in the sauce. Closer to home, many of us have heard of the Mexican turkey mole.”

  There were loud groans from the audience.

  I smiled. “It’s largely a question of what you’re accustomed to. I once cooked for a Sicilian who’d have had me arrested if I made a turkey, never mind with chocolate sauce. He’d grown up in Sicily, never seeing a turkey. He thought of them as chickens gone haywire. Unfit for human consumption.”

  Someone called out, “No! It couldn’t be true!”

  “But, you see, years later, I was reading something about wild turkey in the Audubon Field Guide, and here’s what I read: ‘Although well known to the American Indians and widely used by them as food, certain tribes considered these birds stupid and cowardly and did not eat them for fear of acquiring these characteristics.’ ”

  “Boo!” a couple of people called out. “Turkey is wonderful!”

  I nodded.

  “It also says that turkeys are polygamous, and the male gobbles and struts with fanned tail to attract and hold his harem.” I grinned, put away the book. “Oh, well, maybe this guy identified with turkeys too closely to want to eat them.” I waited for the laughter to die down, wondered uneasily how a program that had begun with my wanting to reach out, as they say, to my daughter had turned into something I’d be afraid for her to hear.

  “Anyway, I have to believe that this last recipe on the board, for Michael Batterberry’s Chocolate Truffles, would, if I’d known it then, have converted my Sicilian, uh, friend and anyone else I wanted to convert. As far as I’m concerned, it makes all other chocolate recipes unessential if not obsolete.”

  I began creaming the butter and sugar, set up the saucepan with the chocolate and other ingredients to melt.

  Someone asked if it was true that chocolate had a chemical in it that made you happy.

  I laughed. “I remember reading that one of those chemical-psychology guys had found such a chemical. He claimed that was why everyone loved it. There’re people who can find a chemical to explain anything and everything about human nature. I’m just as happy to stick with the simple idea that people feel good when they eat something delicious.

  “Chocolate isn’t a universal food, actually. I don’t know how many things are, aside from salt. I read that in the thirties, the Chinese Communists were occupying some area near the Yangtze River, and they had to get out because there was a blockade by the government and they couldn’t get salt. I don’t think there’s anything else like that. Incidentally, the way the word salary got its name is that Roman soldiers were given an allowance to buy salt. The s-a-1 in salary is from salt.”

  “Do you think there’s a difference between men and women, in how they feel about chocolate?”

  “Oh, dear. I’m not sure about chocolate, but I’m extremely interested in the differences in food tastes between men and women. I’d love to hear from any of you who have something to say on the subject.”

  “Are you going to do a program on it?”

  I hesitated, finally said, “If they let me.” I winked conspiratorially. “I mean, if . . . uh . . . Seymour lets me.” Since the first show I’d not referred to my producer, but now it came naturally, though it also came naturally to give him a pseudonym. “That’s pronounced See-more, always in a sort of singsong. Seymour’s in charge of differences. I mean, he’s in charge of me. Making sure I don’t offend more than a couple of people per show. Any time I get into the matter of differences, I have to check with See-more.”

  My mythical character Seymour infuriated the unbelievable real person Sheldon, but drew more mail than Hitler had, so that he was permitted to take on a life of his own, and got me through shows that would have been slow without him. Within days he began to receive fan mail, including proposals of marriage from women who said that it was clear he was not appreciated at “home.” When Sheldon grumbled, Bob Kupferman always pointed out that See-more had become one of our best hooks on the viewer line. It probably would have been no use, anyway, trying to get rid of the Seymour fantasy; my mail, often containing favorite recipes, sometimes with one “Seymour might like,” others asking about his favorites, still others having nothing to do with food, had convinced me that when you adapted a public persona, a number of faithful viewers would grab hold of it and run where they’d wanted to go anyway, usually on some field that failed to resemble, except coincidentally, the one where your real life was played.

  For a while, it seemed that the field had become level. I was working very hard on the show, which seemed to be maintaining its level of success, if not raising it. Sheldon continued to shop for a network as Bob Kupferman and I developed better and better rapport. Bob had taken to winking when Sheldon made suggestions that clearly had to do with his desire to interest a network rather than with improving the show.

  I made Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment for Leon and my family, who’d never met. Livvy and Pablo went to his family’s; Leon’s kids went to their grandparents. Gus and his wife and his wife’s children came in for the first time in years. His wife had always been pleasant, but it was wild to have Gus, usually a caricature of the disengaged scientist, asking me detailed questions about TV procedure, commenting in an intense manner on one or another show.

  I had been given to understand that on top of the other problems she was enduring with a kid sister having her five minutes of fame, Beatrice was hurt that I never called her anymore. I’d done thumbnail sketches of family members for Leon, who proceeded to convince my sister that almost everyone in the world was mad at me because I never called anyone anymore. He charmed her out of her pique so that her comment, delivered as they all left in a fashion that would allow her to claim it was Just a Joke, was that I’d finally found a guy and he was too good for me. I’d barely mentioned Leon to my parents, though I’d talked about the kids a great deal, and my father and mother were astonished and pleased to find me tied in to an Unmarried Professional Jewish Male with a Pleasing Personality.

  “Can I make love to you?” he asked, coming up behind me when they’d left and I was loading the dishwasher for the second time. “To the only Jewish girl in New York who doesn’t tell her parents when she’s got a doctor in hand?”

  “In hand?” I repeated. I think I was suspicious. They’d all been almost too crazy about one another. “What does ‘in hand’ mean? That we’re screwing? I don’t think every girl in the world tells her parents when she’s screwing a doctor.” I was determined to get the dishes out of the way before I went to bed.

  “They do when he gets a divorce.”

  “Your divorce was about feeling free to have your kids know you’re screwing someone.”

  “Oh,” he said. “So that’s what it was about
.”

  I didn’t know what it was about. I was thinking of Gus’s children. They’d had such a good time, been fascinated by everything I did in the kitchen. But I didn’t feel it was the same as it had been with Annie and Ovvy. It was more that they’d seen me as their own private celebrity chef, doing for them a special demonstration of the sort of thing I did on television. Whatever the reason, I probably wouldn’t see them again for a long time, and I was sorry. My relations with Leon’s kids were, as they say on the news, normalized. No highs, no lows. Steady affection varying in degree from child to child. I was still in love with their father, but I wasn’t insanely in love anymore. I could tell that I was sane because I wasn’t happy all the time. When I was worried about something, I could feel the worry, not just know it was there. I was worried now, though I didn’t know why. Maybe it was about Leon. This was about as long as he’d been with Christina; who was to say he wasn’t going to find someone better for him than I was? Maybe he’d meet a woman doctor, an anesthesiologist with regular hours whom his kids liked! Maybe I’d end up in a soup kitchen, cooking Thanksgiving dinner for people who had no place else to go. Not because I was a good person, but because I had no place to go either.

  I eased away from Leon’s embrace.

  “I just want to get the dishes into the dishwasher.”

  “What’s going on?” Leon asked. “Wasn’t I supposed to get along with your parents?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  But I was upset. Apparently the question wasn’t as preposterous as it sounded.

  “I’ll help you with the dishes later, Cara. Just come with me for a while. Here, let’s take the rest of the wine.”

  The eight adults had polished off nine bottles of wine—six good Chiantis, and three, my entire stock, of the lovely Vernaccia di San Gimignano that was one of my favorite whites in the world.

  “Hmm, there’s hardly any in here. We’ll share it.”

  “I think what I really need is some aspirin.”

  He brought me aspirin and a glass of water, suggested we lie down for a while.

  I shook my head vehemently. “Then we’ll be making love, and then Pablo and Livvy’ll come home, and we’ll have to be quiet, and the dishes’11 still be here.”

  He took a deep breath. “Then let’s go upstairs. My kids won’t be there till tomorrow afternoon.”

  I resisted but he urged me, teased me, got me excited so that I followed him upstairs.

  “Maybe I am jealous,” I said as we undressed and lay down on his bed. “I just remembered the first time a boy really was crazy about me. It was only after he came to the apartment. He was a real academic type, and he was entranced by everything in the apartment, my parents’ apartment, all the books, you know, the . . . I decided not to see him anymore, that it wasn’t me he liked. Only my parents and the books.”

  “Mmm,” Leon said, “I rest my case.” He turned me over so that I was on my side, facing away from him. “You know, it’s really your mother’s neck I want to kiss. But since she’s not here . . .” He nuzzled the back of my neck, began to play with my breasts.

  I was excited but not ready to throw it all away yet.

  “I’m always self-conscious downstairs,” I said. “It’s just too close. Whether they can hear us or not.”

  “Maybe,” Leon said, “you can get the landlord to let you make real walls. Or maybe you should just move up to my apartment.”

  “No good,” I said. “You’re forgetting about Livvy. Not to speak of your kids.”

  But I was pleased that he’d said it, and we made love, and it was spectacular, and I fell into a deep and lovely sleep. As we half-awakened in the early morning, we made love again. Then we slept until after eleven, when Annie phoned, lest our idyll be uninterrupted. When we finally got out of bed, we showered together in the nice big stall (my bathroom just had a tub with a showerhead), pushing each other in and out of the spray, scrubbing each other’s backs, singing songs that were comical mostly because we were singing them right then. It was as Leon sang, “I am the captain of the Pinafore,” sponging my buttocks and delivering the line about never being sick at sea, that he bent down to take a mock bite out of one of them and it hit me: I had never put in my diaphragm.

  I sat down on the shower floor.

  Leon laughed. “Did I take your breath away?”

  “My diaphragm.”

  “I took away your diaphragm?”

  “I didn’t put it in last night.”

  “Aha!” He sat down, squinting at me as the hot water bombarded us from above. “So that’s why you were so sexy!”

  “That isn’t funny,” I said. “Or maybe you didn’t mean it to be.”

  He shrugged. “You’re always sexy. But last night . . . I guess we were both on.” He took my hands. “When was your last period?”

  I thought about it. “Two weeks ago.”

  He whistled. “Well, if you’re pregnant—I mean, we have no reason to think you’re pregnant, but if you are, we can take care of it.” Under the spray, he kissed my cheek. “I mean, you came to the right place. Or I came in the right place.”

  “You’re not angry with me?” I asked, but in fact, I was a little angry with him. This man who claimed to love me and then made jokes about how easy it would be to abort my baby!

  “If I’m going to be angry with anyone, it should be myself,” Leon said. “I’m the one who practically dragged you upstairs. And if I think about it, I can tell whether it’s in. I wasn’t thinking about it any more than you were.”

  My anger disappeared, then, in another rush of love. I got on my knees to embrace him and we fooled around, hugging, kissing, soaping each other, and giggling, until finally he turned off the water and we got out of the stall and dried each other off.

  He asked me once when my period was due, and I told him, but as the day neared, I thought a great deal about how lovely it would be to have another baby. Leon’s baby. A tiny, cuddly baby who loved me. Who’d know from the beginning that I slept with her father. And with whom, needless to say, I’d never make the mistakes I’d made with Olivia. Certainly I’d never scream at this baby in the kitchen. I wouldn’t need to. I’d just be cooking for the family, not for forty or fifty hungry strangers. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to me about not wanting more children, but he hadn’t been in love with me when he said that. I smiled to myself: If he complained about my being pregnant, I could promise that the baby would be blonde.

  Then, on Sunday night of the day before my period was due, we were sitting around the coffee table in his living room, playing Scrabble with the kids, and when it was his turn, he put down the word ABORT.

  I stared at him, stunned, remembering the moment years ago when I’d heard Jim Whatney use it in connection with the computer.

  Leon laughed, falsely hearty. “Computer language. You know, Abort, Retry.”

  Rennie giggled. “She looks as though she thinks you mean the other kind, Dad.”

  “Now, we’ll have none of that stuff,” he said.

  “It’d be fun,” Rennie said, “to play a whole game with just words that have two meanings.”

  Ovvy stared at her uncomprehendingly and then blushed; he’d heard of abortions—because of TV they all had—but until that moment, only the computer meaning had occurred to him.

  Suddenly Leon was as uneasy with his little joke as he should have been all along.

  “All right. Whose turn is it?”

  The kids said it was mine, but the only word I could see was IT, using my letter I and the T from ABORT. Then I heard the two words together, ABORT IT, and I couldn’t make myself set it down.

  “I don’t seem to see anything.”

  Rennie asked if she could help me. Nobody minded.

  “You’ve got loads of stuff,” she announced, leaning over. “You must not be concentrating. Here . . .” Happily she used the A from ABORT to make AGAIN and pointed out three or four other possibilities.

  “I th
ink I’m just not in a Scrabble mood,” I said. “Maybe you can take over for me.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Leon said. “What’s the big deal? We don’t have that far to go.”

  We don’t have that far to go.

  Suddenly everything had two meanings.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t feel good.” I stood up.

  “She’s upset about something,” Rennie said as I walked toward the front door.

  “Don’t worry about it,” her father said heartily. “She’ll be fine.”

  This is crazy,” he said to me when he came downstairs.

  I was lying on the bed, still dressed, not reading or doing anything else. “We don’t even know if you’re pregnant and you’re mad at me over . . . When I thought of the word, I wasn’t even thinking about—I just saw the computer screen with Abort and Retry on it. It only occurred to me after.”

  “I hope you’re lying,” I said, “because if you believe yourself, we’re in real trouble.”

  “Oh, shit,” he began angrily, but then, abruptly, he stopped. “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you mean it?” he asked.

  “I accept your apology,” I said, and began to cry.

  He closed the door and lay down beside me on the bed, holding me, kissing me, fondling me while I cried. A while later we got washed and undressed and returned to bed. But he couldn’t make love. It was the first time he’d wanted to and couldn’t get an erection.

  He laughed ruefully. “I’m finally running scared.”

  I didn’t reply. A short time later he was asleep and snoring. I don’t think I’d ever heard him snore until that night. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed. Maybe it was a warning. Like the nasty Scrabble word. Maybe he was telling me that life was going to be somewhat more difficult than it had seemed. Whether or not I was pregnant. Whether or not we married. Whether or not I got to keep my baby.

  On Monday Leon called from the hospital to ask how I was.

  “I’m going crazy,” I said, knowing perfectly well why he was calling. I was normally regular, and I hadn’t gotten my period. “This business of providing visual action for things I just want to talk about. Did you know Uncle Sam was a Hudson Valley meatpacker? The original Uncle Sam, I mean. Sam Wilson. I’d love to do something about how he got to be Uncle Sam, but what’m I supposed to cook while I’m talking? Red, white, and blue hot dogs?”