Olivia

by Judith Rossner

  “You don’t know what’s healthy for her,” Pablo responded angrily. “You’re not—” But then he stopped, confused, I think because he’d been about to say Leon wasn’t a doctor.

  I sat in my chair, frozen between the desire to have Leon continue saying what I wouldn’t say, the desire to make him stop, and astonishment at his quoting Jewish law. Livvy was staring at him. The silence at the table grew nearly unbearable.

  “Do you understand,” I asked Pablo, “that this isn’t about you? Or even about being married, if that’s what you both want? It’s about what’s good for you. Both of you, but especially my daughter.”

  Leon stood up so rapidly that his chair tilted backward and nearly fell. He caught it.

  “I’m going upstairs. You’re copping out and I can’t stand it.”

  I didn’t reply. Or look at him. He’d never yet been in a position where it was cop out or lose your kid. Livvy hadn’t grown up with Jewish law, she’d grown up thinking of herself as Catholic. I couldn’t make her do what she didn’t want to do because the Jews said it was all right; she didn’t even like Jews. I could only lose her if I fought too hard.

  Leon stalked out of the apartment. The door closed behind him. Livvy came to the dining table like one in a trance, sat down.

  “I’m not copping out,” I said to Pablo. “I think she’s too young to be married, definitely too young to have a baby, and I still think she should have the abortion. But whatever she’s going to do, I’ll help her.”

  “I appreciate that.” Clearly there was something else he wanted to say.

  I asked if they needed anything from me now.

  He nodded, still couldn’t look at me or speak.

  “Please tell me,” I said. “If I can’t do it, I’ll say no.”

  “We can’t stay with my mother even after tonight,” he said. He stood and began walking around the table. “Aside from not having much room, this isn’t a marriage as far as she’s concerned. Not until we have a ceremony in a church.”

  My breath caught. I wasn’t sure what he was asking of me, but my brain fastened on the easiest part.

  “You’re welcome to stay here until . . . until . . .”

  “We are?”

  “Sure. Until you find an apartment. Or until she graduates. That’d be the logical time.”

  “You really mean it? That’s—We won’t get in the way. Honest. We’ll try to be helpful.”

  “It won’t be that different from the way it’s been,” I assured him.

  He began clearing the remaining dishes from the table.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Certainly not tonight. How many hours have you been up, for heaven’s sake?”

  “We really appreciate this, Mrs. Ferrante,” he said as though I were some stranger who might have turned them away. “Don’t we, O. Tell your mother.”

  We both turned to Livvy, who, sitting upright in the wooden dining chair, appeared to be asleep.

  In the morning, Pablo left me a note saying he hadn’t been able to awaken her, and she was going to have to miss one more day of school. I tended to various chores and calls, including a few from Sheldon telling me how important it was for Rick to like me, how I had to listen to everything Rick said. I did my shopping and prepared the stock, seasonings, and vegetables for the gumbo. I’d had lunch and I was preparing the syrup for the Chocolate Pecan Pralines, when Livvy awakened, went to the bathroom, then came to the stove, where I was stirring the syrup. It was about two in the afternoon. I explained about dinner for the TV people, told her she and Pablo were welcome to join us. She said she’d love to, Pablo might be working late.

  She sniffed the air.

  “Something smells wonderful.”

  “Syrup for candy,” I explained. “Chocolate Pecan Pralines, to be precise. If I don’t keep stirring, it’ll burn.”

  She didn’t move from the stove.

  “You want to stir for a couple of minutes?” I asked. “There are other things I can do.”

  She nodded. I handed over the pot holder and the wooden spoon, which she took eagerly. I showed her how to make certain she was scraping the syrup that tried to collect on the bottom. Then I let her stir while I added pecan halves and vanilla.

  “Sheldon was pitching the TV people the idea of a mother-daughter show, among others, and he told them you grew up in the kitchen, learning how to cook from me.”

  “But I can learn now, if I want to, can’t I?” she asked, at once eager to talk and attentive to what she was doing.

  “Of course you can,” I said. “I told you, I’d love it. Just do it with me and ask questions. After tonight we can cook whatever you want. Diet stuff. Whatever.” I told her I was going to add some chocolate chips to the top part of the mixture. Her job would be to keep them from reaching the bottom of the pot.

  She nodded. “So they won’t melt.” With her chin she pointed to the counter, where I had Prudhomme standing in a clear vinyl cookbook stand, a Christmas present from Annie. “I was reading.”

  “All right, then.” I began scooping the mixture onto the baking sheet I’d prepared, showed her how I did the top layer by holding the two spoons against each other, one between my thumb and forefinger, the other between fore and middle fingers, which I opened, then closed, around the gooey stuff. After I’d added the second bunch of chips, she took over from me. We labored intently and grinned as we licked our fingers; there was no choice but to lick them, we assured each other. But then suddenly we—I think it happened to me first—became self-conscious, and the giggly abandon was lost. Livvy continued to dip her finger in the pot and lick it, but I wasn’t in the mood anymore. I was more upset than I’d been the first time I thought about it, felt much guiltier. I could remember her first words; the first time, in the dining room of the trattoria, that she’d let go of a chair leg and teetered toward me as I came out of the kitchen; the first time she’d walked up the Spanish Steps without asking me to pick her up; the first morning she’d gone to school; various other moments of excitement, happiness, achievement. What I could not remember were happy moments in the kitchen; there were only those in which, as in the Great Truffle Debacle, something had happened to delay me, disrupt order, mar my control.

  I heated a cup of coffee in the microwave for myself, made Livvy a cup of tea. We sat at the table for a while without speaking. I was disoriented. As though I’d not looked in a mirror for years and then, when I did, had seen someone much uglier than I remembered myself as being. Livvy forced me back to the present.

  She said, “Pablo’s mother doesn’t think we’re married. I mean, they know we did something in Florida, but it wasn’t a wedding because it wasn’t in a church.”

  “Maybe they just need some time.”

  “No, it’s not about time. It’s about a church wedding.”

  A church wedding would be much more difficult to undo if she changed her mind.

  I asked, “What are you telling me?”

  She said, “We want to get married at their church.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Where is their church?” I asked, more to curb my own panic than for any other reason.

  “Fourteenth Street,” she said. “La Guadalupe.”

  I was startled. “Where do they live?”

  “Twenty-fifth Street. Between Eighth and Ninth. In the project.”

  I smiled. “It never occurred to me they were so close.”

  She nodded.

  “I guess we—I—should meet his family.”

  Another nod, a moment of silence, then, “The bride’s parents are supposed to pay for everything.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Mrs. Cruz doesn’t have any money.”

  I nodded. “Where’s Pablo’s father?”

  “He went back to Puerto Rico a long time ago.”

  Funny, that I’d never thought of asking any of those questions. More bias? Or the atmosphere’s not being conducive to fri
endly questions? Or just that you asked kids these questions, and Pablo had seemed like an adult even before I knew his real age.

  “Well, we’ll talk about it. As long as it’s something I can afford. If not, maybe I’ll talk to your father.”

  She didn’t appear to react to either idea. She’d never had the slightest interest in my show, hadn’t ever seen it, to the best of my knowledge. But she’d always been interested in money. Maybe this was the time to tell her about the possibilities, explain what tonight was about. She stood, yawned, and went to the refrigerator, where she found a piece of pepperoni and some cut-up fennel, and proceeded to eat the sausage from one hand, the fennel from the other. If she was really going to try to keep down her weight, she couldn’t afford such indulgences, never mind pralines.

  “Would you like to know why these guys are coming?”

  She nodded, came back to the table.

  “I’m not sure there’s going to be a show next year, or where it’ll be.”

  “No!” She was startled, concerned.

  I smiled. “It won’t be the end of the world, I can always give classes again. But if there’s going to be a show . . . cable or network . . . The guys who’re coming tonight are about network, which pays much more money than cable, which is one of the reasons it would be nice to have a network show. But even for cable, they want me to jazz it up. Do more cooking. I talk more than I cook. I know you haven’t seen it, but—”

  “I see it all the time with Pablo’s mother.”

  Now it was my turn to be startled.

  “You do?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? When we said she could meet you, she was shy, because you’re a TV star.”

  We laughed at the notion.

  I told her about Bob Kupferman and how I’d tried to interest him in the Cucina Casalinga idea, but that I had no idea how this Rick person would react to it. Rick was a writer, an idea man, a Californian. I’d never met him, but Bob thought he was God’s gift to television. A good next sentence escaped me, but it didn’t matter, because something, perhaps the phrase “God’s gift,” had put an end to her amusement.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I think I’ll take a nap. Or maybe I’ll look at some of the tapes from the show.”

  It turned out this was what she really wanted to do. I brought her up to Leon’s. None of the kids was home yet, and I settled her in front of the set with a tape she thought she’d missed.

  Rick Landy was something else, one of those new hetero—if not terribly sexual—men who found that jogging used up more calories than sex and didn’t involve the psychic wear and tear. He wore a jeans jacket and Birkenstocks, which were okay for a New York winter because it never took him more than a minute to get a cab, and he had a tan that looked as though it had been bought at one of the new sun outlets. I’d have been prepared to think he was stupid if I hadn’t been told of his brilliance. Actually, the truth was somewhere between. That is to say, his brilliance, if it could be called that, illuminated a narrow tunnel that passed through prime time and allowed sight of little else.

  Bob was genial; Sheldon, eager to please in a way that made him even more objectionable than usual; Rick, polite but restless. I served them wine and the antipasto that I’d mostly prepared in advance, though I’d saved the panelle, little chickpea fritters that had to be deep-fried a few at a time, for when they were there. Sheldon kept trying to call Rick’s attention to my virtues, to the ease with which I talked as I tossed fritters. (At one point I said, “And I can walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time,” but neither of them appeared to be amused.) Rick tended to ignore Sheldon, which I could have enjoyed if he’d been a little pleasanter about it.

  “Can you just see her doing that with a bunch of kids around her?” Sheldon asked.

  Rick shrugged. “You don’t do stuff with hot fat with kids, it’s dangerous. On the other hand . . .” He turned to Bob. “Maybe it’s not little kids she’s teaching. Maybe it’s, like, See-more.”

  Bob got excited. “That’s wonderful. Like ‘The Odd Couple.’ ”

  Rick grinned. “The Food Couple.”

  Sheldon said, “You’re a genius.”

  Landy looked at the rafters as though he might find a story idea hanging from them, cut off Sheldon’s sycophantic ravings to muse a little further.

  “Or she’s teaching a class. A bunch of single guys, maybe just divorced, and now they wanna learn how to cook. See-more could be one of them.”

  I had begun to understand better Bob’s purpose in bringing Rick Landy. I turned off the light under the oil and left the remaining batter in its bowl because I was suddenly afraid of burning myself. I sat down, poured myself some wine, avoided looking at any of them. But Bob saw that I was upset.

  “You have to understand how hard we’re trying to do something with you, Cara. We love you as much as the viewers do.”

  “That’s why they’re looking for a vehicle for you, sweetheart,” Sheldon put in. “They think you’re wonderful, but they need a vehicle.”

  I smiled sarcastically. “A vehicle with two passengers, apparently. One of them named Seymour.”

  “Seymour came out of your brain,” Rick said.

  “So does a lot of crap I wouldn’t want to come to life in front of my eyes,” I snapped. Then I got nervous. Bob Kupferman hadn’t seen the side of me that snapped. Maybe he’d lose interest in me if I turned out not to be this totally benign person who—Anyway, if they were looking for an actress to play half of a Food Couple, she wasn’t going to be me, however much I would have liked to be on network.

  I started to tell Bob he shouldn’t get the impression that I wasn’t grateful for his attempts to make me interesting enough for network television, but the words weren’t coming out right, and I was relieved when Livvy came from her room, looking older and prettier than I’d ever seen her. She wore the usual black jeans and long black sweater, as well as cute junky-jangly earrings, and she was made up in a lovely fashion, with mascara emphasizing her wonderful eyes, a deep blush that was perfect for her olivey skin, and a bright-red lipstick that showed off her full, well-shaped lips. She blushed happily as I introduced her to all three men and Bob said that we didn’t need a story, we just needed a camera to focus on those wonderful eyes for half an hour every week.

  Livvy giggled adorably.

  “So,” Rick said when he’d allowed me to make him up a little antipasto plate to have with his wine, “tell us what it was like, Olivia, growing up in a restaurant.”

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I guess it was like growing up in an old-fashioned home, only more so. Everything is more. The noise. The heat. The work. There’s always something going on. And it’s not—Our apartment was upstairs, over the restaurant. So even when it was quiet up there, there was always something going on downstairs.”

  “Upstairs, downstairs,” Sheldon said. “Don’t you love it?”

  “Where was your father during all this?” Rick asked.

  “Oh, he was everyplace. He really . . . My mother did the cooking, but my father managed everything. The people, the bar, the money. He was the bartender. I had a little room in back of the bar where I slept and he kept an eye on me. He took care of me when my mother was cooking, which was most of the time.”

  “How old were you when you started cooking with her?” Rick asked.

  “Why don’t you all move to the table,” I suggested. “So I can hear you better while I get dinner ready.”

  Rick wanted to sit next to Livvy. I took the end of the table closest to the stove. Bob, whose attention was on Rick, sat across from them, next to Sheldon. I checked the artichokes and brought more wine to the table just in time to hear Olivia explaining something.

  “I don’t know if my mother’s mentioned this, in Italy we have a lovely expression, la cucina casalinga. It means home cooking. You can see why it came to mean mother-daughter cooking.”

  A nearly word-for-wor
d parroting of what I’d said months before. I looked at Sheldon, smiled. He shrugged. It was okay if it worked.

  “Cucina casalinga,” Rick repeated. “Wonderful. I’ve always wanted to learn Italian. Tell me more about the kitchen in Rome.”

  “Oh,” Livvy said wistfully, “there was always so much going on. I remember, when I could finally climb up onto a chair by myself, there were always big boxes and sacks on them, and my father had to clear them away before I could sit there. Anyway, I usually sat on the table to eat because I couldn’t reach the food from the chairs.”

  I waited for the story about getting screamed at over the truffles, but apparently those memories were in a compartment that wasn’t being opened tonight.

  “There was this huge black stove, with maybe eight or ten burners. It gave off so much heat that on a winter’s night, we’d leave the kitchen door open all day and it would heat up the dining room enough so we didn’t need any other heat.” She smiled. “Remember, Mama?”

  I nodded. What pleasure! She had good memories of me in addition to the ones I’d heard about. And she’d called me Mama!

  Livvy smiled shyly at Rick. “I was there for so long after Mama left us, I’m never sure, you know, what she remembers.”

  Thud.

  “We had a fireplace in the apartment,” she said. “Not in the living room. In the bedroom. My father and mother’s bedroom. That was where I got dressed on winter mornings. If there was no fire going, my father would make one for me.”

  “I love it,” Rick said, pouring more wine for her and for himself. “Go on.” Sheldon, whose glass was also empty, had to reach for the bottle and pour his own and Bob’s.

  I served the artichokes.

  “Jesus,” Rick said, “that smells wonderful. I only wish I knew how to eat it.”

  Livvy said, “Let me show you.” She pulled off an outer leaf, showed him how she dipped it in the sauce that had baked in the center of the artichoke and which contained, among other things, oysters, cheese, and heavy cream, and then set it between her teeth and pulled it through them, scraping off the pulp and sauce.