by Julie Powell
As I’m turning to go to the bathroom, a tiny movement catches my eye. I look down at the counter, where the drip pan had been sitting. The origin of the legion of flies becomes nauseatingly clear.
“Aaaaaauuuuggghhhhheeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!”
“What?! Jesus, what?” Eric, who’s spent the whole morning and into the afternoon cleaning the house, dashes into the kitchen, where he finds me, pale as a ghost, eyes like saucers, the drip pan held out from my body with one hand, pointing with a shaking finger at the counter. “What’s the matt—AUGH!”
So what exactly does one do when faced with a thriving colony of maggots under one’s dish rack? I mean other than shoot up a quick, grateful missive to the heavens for letting you live in a forward-thinking time and place, in which one’s husband cannot lop off one’s breasts and nose for a crime called Depraved Domestic Neglect? Martha Stewart doesn’t touch upon this quandary, so far as I know, the maggot one, I mean, so we had to sort of make it up as we went along. We began by hopping up and down in frantic disgust. Then we lifted the dishes out of the sink and put them on the floor, gingerly swept the floating, squirming white things off the counter into the sink, threw the sponge in after them, and poured a bottle full of Clorox over the whole mess. Then we took the drip pan from under the dish rack into the bathroom, flung it into the tub, and poured Clorox all over it as well.
After that we pretty much went about our business. Awful as it was, this wasn’t quite as traumatic as it might have been for other people because after a year of this, part of you just assumes there’s gotta be some maggots somewhere around. We did break out into occasional spasmodic shudders, and sometimes threw utensils from our hands in sudden panic upon imagining a creeping, burrowing sensation, especially when in the vicinity of the kitchen sink. We had that much humanity left in us, anyway.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Even leaving aside for a moment the insect larvae now bravely facing their hideous fate in a pool of bleach in the sink, the kitchen was absolutely disgusting—dabs of butter stuck to the side of the fridge, various meat juices spattered in violent arcs across the walls, layers of doughy, buttery, dusty, cat-hairy crap on every surface. I would be making the pastry for the Pâté de Canard en Croûte in the food processor, and if Julia didn’t like it, well then, balls to her. In thirty hours’ time this would be over, and she and I could both just go our separate ways.
I threw the flour and salt and sugar into the Cuisinart, plus a half cup of chilled shortening and a cut-up stick of butter, and ran the thing briefly to cut the fat in. Then I added the two eggs and some cold water and combined.
The dough was too dry. It wasn’t sticking together. I added some more water. No change. I dumped it onto my marble pastry board, which didn’t have maggots on it, but might very well have had trace elements of any number of other repulsive/toxic substances. I added cold water, in drops, then tablespoons, then rivers. The dough was going straight from floury heap to melted-butter puddle. I began to burble—in simple confusion at first, then in increasing desperation, and then at last in incoherent existential rage.
Eric was beside me, peering down at the mess. “Is it too hot in here?”
“Too hot?! Too hot?! You idiot!” I threw granules of dry dough about in blind fury. “Goddamn this pastry dough. Fuck it! Three hundred and sixty-four days and I can’t even make pastry dough. This whole thing was fucking POINTLESS!”
Eric said nothing—what was there to say, really? He went back to his vacuuming. As cavernous dry sobs issued from a hopeless hollow in my chest, I threw away the dough and started again. I made it by hand this time. And it was still too goddamned dry. But I squeezed the stuff together until it kind of—really, just barely—stuck together. I twisted it up tight in some plastic wrap.
I had the hiccups. I had to go lie down.
I awoke an hour later. The kitchen—the whole apartment—sparkled. Well, that’s not true. But the difference was remarkable. Eric was on the couch reading the Atlantic, munching a Roquefort turnover. “You feeling better?” he asked, when I came around the corner into the living room, looking pretty wobbly, I imagine.
“Yeeeaaah.” God. Even I hate myself when I use that pathetic whine. “Thank you for the house. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Dispensing with guilt is a multibillion-dollar industry, but I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to have, really. Not if you deserve it. Like if on the second-to-last day of a year of torture imposed on the man you love, you scream and throw things and call him an idiot (which isn’t true at all), and if instead of slamming the front door in your face and seeking out comfort in the arms of Mishal Husain, he cleans the house while you take a nap. This guilt, mingled as it is with gratitude like a pain and a sudden ineffably sweet recognition of your unbelievable good fortune, is not only good for you; it’s also delicious. I straddled him, kissed him, nuzzled down into the crook of his neck, crumpling up his Atlantic as I did.
“I really love you.”
“You love me? Who loves you?!”
We just sat like that together for a little bit. I lifted my head off his shoulder, blew some air noisily through my lips.
“So.” He gave my rump a brisk pat. “What do we do now?”
The answer was unbearably frightening, except it wasn’t, because look who I was sitting on top of. The guy who makes sure none of it is unbearable, not ever. So I took another healthy, strengthening breath, and stood. I said, “Now I will bone the duck.”
“Ah. Well, good luck with that,” Eric replied, before opening up his creased Atlantic and hiding himself behind it.
I returned to my newly deloused kitchen. Eric had wiped down the counter and placed the Book squarely in the center of it. The Book’s poor spine had cracked several times, and I’d performed some inexact triage with packing tape. In the ensuing months it had gotten grimier and grimier, so that beneath the clear tape was preserved evidence of an earlier, brighter phase in the Book’s existence. I riffled through the pages, past check marks and stains and water-rippled pages, others stuck together with who-knows-what, until I got to Pâté de Canard en Croûte—boned stuffed duck baked in a pastry crust.
I’ll leave you to contemplate that for a moment. If you have your own copy of MtAoFC, open it to page 571. Peruse the recipe—all five pages of it. The drawings, particularly—there are eight of them—are enlightening. Terrifying, but enlightening.
Okay, Julie, you can do this.
“Did you say something, honey? You okay?” Poor Eric. Imagine what it must be like, sitting out there, waiting for the inevitable first whimper of distress, knowing where it will go from there.
“Huh? No, nothing—I’m fine.”
The knife drawer slid smoothly on its tracks. I peered in, like a malevolent dentist examining his instruments, before removing the Japanese boning knife I had bought for just this event. It had never before been used; its blade gleamed in the kitchen’s gloom (for the fluorescent light in the kitchen, oh best beloved, had declined to come on for the second-to-last day of the Project), and sounded a tiny snick as I placed it down beside the cutting board. Next I removed the duck from the fridge, unwrapped it, and cleaned it over the sink—after making extra sure that the sink no longer had either dirty dishes or maggots or Clorox in it, of course—setting aside the neck and excess fat, the liver, the gizzard like two hearts and the heart like half a gizzard. I dried the bird with paper towels and set it on the board, breast down. I took the knife up in my left fist before bending my head to the Book.
You may think that boning a fowl is an impossible feat if you have never seen it done or thought of attempting it.
Another good, cleansing breath.
Although the procedure may take 45 minutes the first time because of fright, it can be accomplished in not much more than 20 on your second or third try.
No fear, Julie. No fear.
The important thing to remember is that the cutting edge of your k
nife must always face the bone, never the flesh, thus you cannot pierce the skin.
I twisted a kink out of my neck. “Hon? You sure you’re okay?” Eric’s concerned voice came to me as if from a great distance.
“Hm? Oh—fine, fine.”
The knife hung poised over the duck’s pale, bumpy flesh.
To begin with, cut a deep slit down the back of the bird from the neck to the tail.
I made the first incision, a deep slice down to the backbone. Slowly, slowly, I began to scrape the meat away from the bone, down one side. When I got to the wing and the leg, I separated the bone at the joint, leaving the leg bone and the two outermost joints of the wing attached to the skin, just as Julia instructed. Then back up along the breastbone I scraped. The Japanese boning knife slid through flesh with terrifying precision.
You must be careful here, as the skin is thin and easily slit.
I slowed my breathing as if trying to go into hibernation. I forced myself to move slowly. Once I’d gotten to the ridged breastbone I stopped, and performed the same operation on the duck’s left side.
You will wonder how in the world any sense can be made of it all.
“Did you say something, sweetie?”
“What?” The kitchen was still quite hot. I wiped my damp forehead with the back of my hand before touching the tip of my knife to that fragile juncture of cartilage and skin at the breastbone.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
One more careful slit, and I’m done.
Oh.
That was a breeze.
The day before, I’d made the pâté my duck-suit was to be stuffed with—it was just ground veal and pork mixed with chopped-up pork fat, onions that had been minced and sautéed in butter and Madeira that’d been cooked down in the same pan, some eggs, salt, pepper, allspice, thyme, and a clove of crushed garlic. Hardly worth mentioning at this late stage in the game. This stuff I mounded up into the duck-suit lying splayed across the cutting board. After that it was just a matter of sewing it up.
When I’d gone out to buy my glittering deadly Japanese boning knife, I’d also picked up some “poultry lacers,” which sounded like just the thing for lacing up poultry, don’t you think? They even came with twine included. I was a little bit concerned, though. Because these poultry lacer thingies, rather than ending with eyes at their nonbusiness ends, just curled into a biggish loop, maybe a little more than half a dime in diameter, the tail of which did not quite meet the shaft of the needle. (Actually, they looked exactly like the metal things we’d had scattered around the kitchen for years, which we called “skewers” and lost all the time, because they were so small, and lots of times they’d slip through the bars of our dishwashing rack and fall into the stinking muck that was always building up in the drip pan, and you didn’t really want to use them after that.) How was I supposed to sew up a duck with something like that?
I’ve never crocheted before, but I used to watch my granny do it, and I believe the maneuver I was attempting here bore similarities. I looped twine several times through the “eye” of the skewer, stuck the skewer or poultry lacer or whatever through two layers of duck skin, then pulled it all the way through both layers of skin, easing the skin around the open loop at the end, trying as I did so to worry the twine through the holes in both flaps of duck skin before it slipped off the open end of the loop.
This didn’t work very well. In fact, it led to a renewal of obscenities, sobs, and pounding of hands on tables.
But then my husband, who’s not an idiot at all, had a brilliant notion. For a while he fiddled about with the possibilities of safety pins—Eric’s a big fan of safety pins, he always carries one around in his wallet; he claims it’s great for picking up chicks—before coming upon the most elegantly simple solution of all: a sewing needle. A really, really big sewing needle. I couldn’t imagine how he’d ever found it, or why we had a needle that big in the house in the first place, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. It worked like a charm, too—too easy to even talk about. Which was good, because it meant I would not have to stab my eyes out with a skewer/poultry lacer.
Once the duck was sewn I bound it tightly with lengths of string until it was basically football shaped, then browned it on all sides in a skillet with oil. While it cooled, I took out the pastry dough—and lo! it had miraculously transformed from a crumbly mess into dough! That I could roll out! This day was just getting better and better. But seriously, for once.
In no time I had the browned duck-suit-pâté-football sealed inside two ovals of pastry. It went so easily I was almost embarrassed. I even cut out little rounds from the leftover pastry, made fan shapes on them with the back of a knife, and used them to disguise the pinched edges of the ovals. More rounds formed a floret shape in the middle, around the hole I poked in the crust to let steam escape. I tell you what: rather than me trying to explain all this, go get your copy of MtAoFC, and turn to page 569. See that picture? That is exactly what my Pâté de Canard en Croûte looked like.
“Eric Eric Eric! Look!”
He came in and was duly impressed, because how could he not be? It was goddamned amazing. “And your Julia impression’s definitely improving, by the way,” he said.
“What?”
“When you were burbling away, boning the duck? It was really good. You should take that on the road.”
Huh. I didn’t remember saying a word.
So the ending may be a long time in coming, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a way of sneaking up on you.
Gwen and Sally came over to celebrate our second-to-last day. We stuck a DVD of Julia’s greatest hits on the machine and casually watched it while we waited for the Pâté de Canard en Croûte to cook, eating Roquefort turnovers and drinking sixty-five-dollar champagne—which tasted just like regular champagne, only more expensive. It all felt very celebratory and nice, and if it seemed just a smidge anticlimactic, drinking champagne always serves as a good cure for that.
I really hardly ever pick up the telephone. I thought it was my mom this time. “Julie! Congratulations!”
It wasn’t. “Um, thanks.”
“Finished the Project, have you?”
“No, actually—not until tomorrow —”
“Oops! Well, congratulations in advance, then.”
“Uh—?”
“Oh, I’m sorry! My name’s Nick. I’m a reporter out here in Santa Monica, and I just finished up an interview with Julia for our paper out here.”
I was really going to have to get my phone number unlisted.
“I’d like to get your thoughts on some things. Because I asked her about you, and frankly, she was kind of a pill about it. Is this a bad time?”
“Oh. No. It’s fine.”
When I hung up the phone five minutes later, I felt numb. Eric and Gwen were watching Julia demonstrating how to char the skin of a tomato; I stood for a moment in front of the TV, watching. She looked young, but she must have been at least seventy at the time.
Julia took out a blowtorch and brandished it, and Gwen laughed. The aroma of duck was beginning to seep from the kitchen.
“Who was that on the phone, babe?”
“Julia hates me.”
“I’m sorry?”
I sat on the couch beside Eric. Gwen and Sally were staring at me, the television forgotten. “That was a reporter from California. He just interviewed Julia. He asked her about me. She hates me.” I giggled, like I do in these situations, breathlessly. “She thinks I’m not respectful or not serious or something.”
Sally made an offended noise in her throat. “That’s not fair!”
“Do you think I’m not serious? Not serious?” I laughed again, but this time there was a tickle in my nose and I squinted at the beginning of a burn behind my eyes.
“Oh, please.” Gwen held the bottle of champagne out to me, and I stopped rolling the glass I had between my palms so she could pour. “Screw her.”
Eric put his arm over my shoulder.
“What is she, ninety?”
“Ninety-one.” I sniffled.
“See? She probably doesn’t have the first idea what a blog is.”
“I don’t understand how she could hate this.” Sally sounded nearly as wounded as I felt. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she thinks I’m taking advantage or I’m—I’m not —” I was taken surprise by a sudden rush of tears. “I thought I was—I’m sorry if I —”
And then, abruptly, I was wailing. Everyone was shocked into stillness for a fraction of a second, then Eric was pulling me to his chest, and Gwen and Sally were fluttering down on either side of me in that ruffling-feathers way of best friends. As they clucked over me, I cried open-throated, as if my heart would break, my head back so tears ran into my ears, heaving, taking loud, rasping gulps so I could keep going, until after a while it wasn’t just about what Julia did or didn’t think about me, and it wasn’t about dough that was crumbly or aspic that didn’t set or a job that didn’t make me happy, and then until, eventually, it wasn’t even about being sad.
I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until it turned into a Good Cry—the best cry I’d ever had, in fact, even though this last year I’d had far more than my share. I got snot all over Eric’s shirt, and Sally took away my champagne glass to make sure I didn’t break it, and Gwen held my hand, and it all felt so good that I began to laugh too, sobbing and giggling, all of it very loudly.
The alarm in the kitchen started to beep, which meant that it was time to take out the Pâté de Canard en Croûte. “I’ll get it.” Eric left me to the girls, and got up to go to the kitchen.
“So what did you say to the reporter?” asked Sally, as she handed me back my champagne glass, evidently taking from the tittering amid tears that I could now be trusted with it. I lifted the glass to my lips.