Onions in the Stew

by Betty Macdonald

  “Do you want a piece of fresh applesauce cake?” Anne asked.

  “Oh, no,” I said coolly, “the mushrooms were very filling.”

  I was drinking my second cup of coffee when suddenly without any warning at all, everything went black. I said, “Oh, my God, the mushrooms!” and tried vainly to remember whether mushroom poisoning is acid or alkali and what the drugstore calendar had said to do in either case. All that I could dredge up was that peat moss is acid—wood ashes are alkali.

  Anne said, calmly, “Stick your finger down your throat.”

  Don said, “Drink olive oil but don’t do anything until I call the doctor.” He rushed to the phone which is ever a futile gesture as the line is always in use, then rushed back to the kitchen and asked anxiously, “How do you feel?”

  “Like somebody is holding a black pillow over my face,” I said. “What about drinking mustard and water?”

  “Stick your finger down your throat,” Joan said.

  “Drink olive oil,” Don said.

  So I drank the olive oil and then stuck my finger down my throat and immediately felt quite well. Don tried to call the doctor again, but the phone was still busy. Three rooted camellia cuttings and one recipe for icebox cookies later, he got the line and the doctor, who told him to bring me up to his office. Once on the way up to the office things got very dark gray and perspiration ran into my eyes.

  The doctor kept me waiting an hour, then looked at my eyes, took my blood pressure and gave me a lecture on the dangers of gathering your own mushrooms. As I went out the door he called out gaily, “If you lose consciousness within the next eight hours, call me, but it will probably be too late.”

  The druggist told me that I should have drunk mineral oil as olive oil is absorbed by the system and mineral oil isn’t.

  An Italian farmer friend of Don’s whom we met in the hardware store said, “Them mushrooms wasn’t poison. Fall mushrooms are never poison. It’s in the spring you gotta watch out. My wife almost die from mushrooms, two, three times but always in the spring. Now before she eats mushrooms she drink big glass of olive oil. Never has any more trouble.”

  In addition to the food which grows naturally on our place, we get occasional bonanzas by beachcombing. The best was that first winter during the war when coffee was the big problem and cigarettes were often unobtainable.

  We had had a fierce storm with high waves, driving winds and lashing rain. The morning after the storm, being Sunday, we all went down to the beach to, as Don always says, “see what God hath wrought.” There, scattered along the tide line, were at least a dozen wooden boxes. We gathered them up and stacked them on the sea wall. When pried open they revealed army rations of several kinds—a sort of hash which tasted just like Pard and made us feel even sorrier for our boys overseas; hard tack which we fed to the ducks and sea gulls; and cans containing a few pieces of hard candy, three cigarettes, some powdered lemon juice, and a little can of powdered coffee. We heard that families farther down the beach got hams and sacks of flour, none the worse for the ducking. We didn’t know whether this was true or just one of those instances where people have to make their story the best.

  We often get rowboats but honesty, the knowledge that ours also occasionally goes adrift, and large printed license numbers on the side, prevent our keeping them. However, there is an unwritten agreement that finders are keepers on pike poles, rafts, shovels, toy boats, buckets, and so on.

  Beachcombing is fun even when your only reward is a pretty piece of driftwood or an agate. Going down to the beach after a storm is the only time in my adult life when I experience that wonderful, joyous, childhood feeling of expectancy. “After all,” I used to tell Anne and Joan (referring only occasionally to the encyclopaedia) “the Pacific Ocean stretches from the Arctic to the Antarctic, covers approximately seventy million square miles, and is as old as the earth. It might bring us anything!”

  Don and I have a strong feeling that residents should, as far as they are able, patronize the island’s industries. For most of us this means the Saturday shopping spree in the village of Vashon, supplemented by the milkman, the laundryman, the telephone shopping service of the big Seattle department stores and occasional jaunts to buy eggs or chickens from a farmer. That first October I made inquiries at the store about a place to buy fresh eggs and was told about a small chicken farm close by. The next Saturday afternoon, Anne and Joan and Don and I walked up there. It was a nice, neat little place with a white picket fence and a small white house. I knocked and the door was opened by a pleasant-looking woman in a clean blue-and-white-checked apron. I said, “We would like to buy some eggs.”

  She said, “Who are you?”

  I said, “We are the MacDonalds.”

  She said, “MacDonalds? Then you must have bought Dr. Morrow’s house.”

  I said, “We did buy Dr. Morrow’s house.”

  She said, “Then you must be the MacDonalds.”

  I said, “We are the MacDonalds.”

  She said, “But the MacDonalds bought Dr. Morrow’s house.”

  I said, “We did. We bought Dr. Morrow’s house. We are the MacDonalds. We live at Dolphin Point.”

  She said, “Well, come right in.”

  I said, “We came to buy eggs. Do you have any?”

  She said, “I only sell to my neighbors.”

  I said, “We are your neighbors. We bought Dr. Morrow’s house on the beach.”

  She said, “But I thought the MacDonalds bought Dr. Morrow’s house.”

  We gave up and bought our eggs from the store.

  For a long time we bought butter from the mother of a friend of Don’s at Boeing. It was dark yellow and tasted like cheese, but she left it in the mailbox which was convenient for Don and sometimes she gave me a quart of sour cream.

  From his Italian farmer friend Don got, for three dollars a gallon, first pressing California olive oil marked, “Extra, extra virgin”; big boxes of red currants, each currant the size of a marble and the color of blood; gooseberries like fat green grapes; and faba, the big flat horse beans which cooked Italian style with olive oil and pepper, taste almost but not exactly like Ivory soap boiled in quinine.

  From a friend of a friend of the man who put new rings in our car, we bought for our freezer what he referred to many many times as “a springer” but which turned out to be old, tough, strong, resentful ram that managed to triumph over stewing in basil and garlic or any marinade. We also bought a local pig which was white, as big as a cow and tasted like human flesh even when smoked. Sometimes in desperation because of unexpected company, I would bring out a package of “humey,” but even in split pea soup it was unmistakable and Anne and Joan said it made them feel as if they should have rings in their noses and be dancing around the stove.

  After a while we bought ten acres on the hill above us and raised our own pigs, lambs, turkeys, geese, cows, chickens, milk, eggs, steers, peaches, cherries and mallard ducks. Our livestock was all beset by strange parasites and impulses which required hundreds of gallons of sulpha and many calls to the veterinary. One cow ate nuts and bolts and baling wire and had to have all four of her stomachs opened up. One of our pigs ate all of her babies. One of our steers breathed in most of a sack of calf meal and exploded. All of our turkeys died every year and the raccoons always ate the baby ducks. And Don bought me a churn. He said, “You always complain so much about Mrs. Evinlips’ butter, I thought you’d like to make your own.”

  “I certainly would,” I told him. “From now on we will have some good butter.”

  The butter making went very rapidly and I made a great deal. But after a day or so it turned dark yellow and tasted like cheese. Secretly, I sent for the government bulletin on making butter. The government bulletin, when it finally came, said, in effect, “Some people make better butter than others.” So I bought a farm magazine with an article on butter making and it said, “Some people make better butter than others.” I made inquiries of neighbors, local farmers
, former farmers, gentlemen farmers and learned that some people make butter out of sweet cream and some people make butter out of sour cream but some people make better butter than others.

  I tried both sweet and sour. I washed my butter so much I almost wore it out. I changed the temperature of the cream about twenty times and I switched churns three times. For a few days after I made it the butter was fine. Then it turned dark yellow and tasted like cheese. Now I buy my butter from my milkman and it is always pale yellow and sweet.

  Either some people do make better butter than others or this is the age of plastics.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE PROBLEM IS TO HOLD IT BACK

  SOMETIME in early November during my lunch half hour, I happened into a ten cent store to buy some pot holders and came across a display of bulbs marked SPECIAL TODAY-80ȼ PER DOZEN. There were bins and bins and bins full. Clipped to the top of each bin was a large lavishly colored picture of what the bulbs would produce. Daffodils with magnificent golden trumpets like Gabriel’s Horn, tulips with stiff Kelly green stems supporting blossoms larger than brandy snifters, hyacinths the size and shape of bridesmaids’ muffs, ranunculus like cabbages.

  Quickly I took out my wallet and counted the grocery money. That night when I came in the door with two shopping bags, the girls said, “Hooray, apples at last!” I said no. They said “Cokes?” I said no. Don said hopefully, “I thought you said you wouldn’t have time to go to the cheese stall in the public market?” I said, “There’s no use guessing. I’ve got something perfectly wonderful for all of us and it’s a surprise but I’m not going to show you until after dinner.”

  After dinner while the girls were argumentatively washing and chipping the dishes, I spread newspapers on the dining room table and dumped out the shopping bags. The bulbs were in small brown paper sacks rather illegibly marked “Hycth-bl—Dfdl-emp—Chndxa,” etc. I called to the family to come and see Mommy’s surprise.

  After carefully balancing a greasy skillet on top of a glass, then adding some soapy silverware and a muffin tin with half of a wet muffin still in it (it was her night to wash), Joan came to the kitchen door, looked at the heaps of little paper bags and said brightly, “Oh, boy, dried apricots?”

  “Guess again,” I said.

  Anne picked up “Chndxa,” spelled it out loud and said accusingly, “You’ve been to that health store again!”

  Don put down Time, picked up “Ran-gnt” and said. “You know I never could read your writing.”

  I said, “I didn’t write that.”

  Rather gingerly he opened the bag and took out what looked like a tiny brown withered hand. With a cry of delight, he said, “Italian mushrooms!”

  I grabbed the bag away from him, studied “Ran-gnt” for a minute or two fruitlessly, then said, “You’re all pigs. All you think about is food. Thank goodness for me, with my love for beauty. These are bulbs! I bought them in the ten cent store this noon. They were on sale for almost nothing. There are hyacinths and daffodils and tulips and all kinds of beautiful things.” I studied “Ran-gnt” again.

  Joan said, “Gosh, I wish you’d ever remember to get some dried apricots.”

  Anne said, “Mommy, look at the way Joan is washing the dishes. The water is ice cold and greasy and the dishes are filthy.”

  Joan said, “Oh, you’re just mad because it’s my week to wash.”

  Anne said, “And she’s got Tudor’s pan and the cat’s dish in with our dishes and she never rinses anything. Look at this muffin pan she expects me to dry. It’s got almost a whole muffin in it.”

  By the time I had given Joan her ten thousandth lesson in correct dishwashing, had explained to Anne for the billionth time why she should study Latin, why I studied Latin, why Don studied Latin, why Joan was going to study Latin, had rinsed out a petticoat, ironed a blouse and put up my hair, it was time for the ten o’clock news. While we listened to the news, I brushed the little bags of bulbs back into the shopping bag. Then Don said, “I think we should plant all those bulbs in the woods and let them naturalize. I don’t like gardens that look planted. I think all flowers should grow naturally.”

  I said, “I like flowers to look natural too, but not so natural that they are all eaten by slugs and killed by nettles and wild cucumber. I plan to put the tulips and daffodils at the top of the rockery in the big patio, the other things in the rockeries, the ranunculuses in that bed by the kitchen and crocuses in the moss between the cedar blocks in the patios.”

  Don said, “You’d better not dig in that moss, you might kill it. I’ll put the crocuses and daffodils in the woods by the spring. They’ll look more natural.”

  I said, “What pleasure would we get out of flowers growing way up by the spring, we never go up there.”

  Don said, “It wouldn’t take much work to widen that trail.”

  I said, “Well you widen the trail and then we’ll see about planting bulbs, only it should be iris because they like water.”

  “Iris,” Don said. “That’s what I was thinking of. Did you get any?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What about bluebells?”

  “You mean scillas?”

  “No, I mean bluebells. My grandmother used to have them in her orchard. They grew under the trees in big masses. They looked so natural.”

  We were in bed reading and smoking one last cigarette when Don suddenly thrust the House Beautiful under my nose and said, “See, that’s what I mean.” He had the magazine folded back to a colored plate of a forty-room stone house surrounded by gigantic oak trees and at least one hundred and fifty acres of lawn. Flowing from oak tree to oak tree and on off into the distance was a golden river of daffodils, about eight billion of them. “Naturalized,” Don said. “That’s the way all bulbs should be planted.”

  Even though we weren’t able to reach a compromise as to where the bulbs should be planted, we decided that we would do something about them that weekend, perhaps divide them equally between us.

  But Friday afternoon Anne’s and Joan’s friends Marilyn and Joanne arrived to stay until Sunday night and Saturday morning early Don and I were awakened by the four little girls standing at the foot of our bed, making gagging noises and holding their noses.

  “Sobethig shells awful!” Joan said.

  “Sobethig has died under the house,” Anne said.

  “We are all gettig sick,” Joan said. “Hurry ad get up, it’s awful.”

  Anne wailed, “Why does sobethig like this always have to happed whed we have company?” (Especially Marilyn whose mother had a green Cadillac and a Filipino houseboy but whose little girl I was pleased to note had a very dirty neck and no buttons on her pajamas.)

  So Don spent all day Saturday and all day Sunday easing himself headfirst over the hot water tank which had been carefully set up in the only entrance to the underneath part of the house, then crawling unenthusiastically around in the dirt, rubble and extra building materials trying to find the rat. I held the flashlight and handed him the poker and helped him move the lumber, while the girls said, “Ugh, it smells awful! Haven’t you found it yet? Haven’t you found it yet?”

  In between times I cooked, tidied up, washed, ironed, made fudge, listened to long recitals of “then I said and she said and he said and the dumb teacher said,” refereed quarrels, gave my opinions on the subjects of Betty Grable, Tyrone Power, Lana Turner, Van Johnson, Frank Sinatra, pink lipstick, purple toenail polish, peignoirs, speed boats, trips to Florida and smoking, and withheld my opinion on the subject of Marilyn’s beautiful mother and her strapless dresses and green Cadillac, about whom we heard far too much.

  The more I heard about Marilyn’s beautiful, luxury-saturated mother the more I noticed how thin—well, really emaciated—Marilyn her only child was; how her little gray petticoat straps were fastened with rusty safety pins; how much tartar she had on her crooked little teeth.

  Finally it was Sunday night. Marilyn and Joanne had been driven to the ferry; Don had located the r
at in the motor of the refrigerator right by the fan; nobody had been able to find Joan’s geography book; I was washing my hair with cake soap because of having such a strong sense of beauty and substituting Anem-St. Brg. for shampoo, Don was helping Anne with a theme on “My Happy Weekend”; the bulbs were still in their little bags.

  “We’ll plant the bulbs next weekend for sure,” I told Don later as he mournfully brushed his teeth with salt and soda because I had spent the money for Psdnt-wht or Chndxa-bl.

  The next weekend we had a terrific storm. The sort of storm where the wind grabbed the cedar tree (diameter of trunk one foot) right outside the kitchen window and bent it over like a croquet wicket, made the great virgin firs back of the house describe such tremendous arcs that Don and I took turns nervously trying to measure them from the living room window, and tossed big branches with cones on them over the countryside like bouquets. The Sound, whipped into muddy waves fifteen feet high, thundered against the shore with so much fury and power the whole island trembled. It was not raining in the conventional drop or pitter-patter sense. Water was just dumped on us like someone emptying a hot water bottle. The eaves, troughs and gutters were completely defeated and water ran from the edges of the roof in shiny isinglass sheets.

  Don and Joan put on oilskins and sou’westers and went down to the sea wall and brought up creosote logs which made such a fierce fire we had to move the furniture to the ends of the living room, and even then there was a strong smell of hot varnish. We had a cozy time though popping corn, reading aloud and making records of the girls singing “Tangerine” in high nervous voices and Don singing “Rock of Ages” confidently off key, but the bulbs stayed in the little bags.

  Then it was February and I had been fired from my job and was staying home and one day the sun came out and it was warm and I began working in the garden and saw small green spikes and humps where there were almost small green spikes and I remembered about the bulbs still in their little sacks marked “Tlps-Ctge-pnk.” Being entirely inexperienced and to date a very unsuccessful gardener, I called Mother and asked her if I could plant the bulbs anyway or did I have to wait until next year.