by Ruth Reichl
She said I had an interesting point of view and asked me to elaborate. So I told about Mrs. Cappuzzelli and how she helped me with the tomatoes. When I was done, Miss Dickson asked if my mother knew I’d been “consorting with the enemy.”
That made me so mad that I shouted a little, telling her that the Cappuzzellis are as American as she is. She started to shout back, going on about their “dark skin” and “barbaric” language. She said the government should have rounded them all up and put them in the camps like the Japanese so we wouldn’t have to worry about them sneaking around behind our backs and sending messages home.
I told her that Mrs. Cappuzzelli wasn’t sending messages to anyone, except for maybe her three sons in the army. And that did it. She said she’d heard enough.
She marched me off to the principal’s office and told him that he should give me the paddle. My heart leapt, and I looked at it hanging behind his desk; it’s very big. Principal Jones put his fingers together, as if he were about to do “Here is the church and here is the steeple,” and stared at them for a long time. Then he turned around and picked up the paddle.
I felt as if I was going to cry, but I was determined not do it in front of Miss Dickson. Her mean little mouth smiled, and she told him she thought ten strokes would be the proper penalty for such a grave infraction. I gasped, and even Mr. Jones seemed a bit shocked.
He said we should get it over with, so I stood up. Then he told Miss Dickson that he doesn’t believe in humiliating students by allowing anyone to witness their punishment. She looked so disappointed, but he just stood there, waiting for her to leave.
When she was gone, he told me to sit down. There was the strangest expression on his face, as if he wanted to say something but knew he shouldn’t. We sat there, looking at each other for the longest time. Then he put the paddle down and told me I had to learn to control my temper.
Now I have to stay after school every day this week, cleaning the blackboards in all the classrooms. It’s very inconvenient; sometimes I think I’d rather have had the paddle.
Your friend,
Lulu
I picked up the next letter, and the next, but as I worked my way through the folder, I reluctantly accepted the fact that there were no more letters here from Lulu.
Where would the next batch be? I went back, looking for the secret word. Nothing leapt out at me. I had decided to try “floss,” “civics,” and “patriotic,” when my phone began to vibrate. Probably Aunt Melba, who’d been calling constantly, wanting me to come home for Christmas. She kept telling me how much Dad missed me, how much they both did, and I just wasn’t ready to have that conversation again. But it wasn’t Aunt Melba.
“You find out where Sammy is?” I said to Richard.
“Sorry.” He sounded chagrined. “I forgot. I’ll ask around. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Here? In the mansion?”
“My key still works. I just got the pictures back, and I came to show you. Where the hell are you?”
“In the library.”
“The library?” The way he said the word, I might have said I was on the moon. “I’ve never been in there.”
“You’ll love it. Come on up. I’ll meet you at the door.”
Minutes later Richard stood on the threshold, silently surveying the room. “It’s more beautiful than I’d imagined,” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t really paying much attention. He was focused on the photographs in his portfolio, and he went to the desk and began to carefully lay them out.
He had captured a gorgeous but alien world, both terrifying and seductive in its strangeness. In Richard’s kitchen, the rotten food had become abstract forms, a landscape of destruction both alluring and dangerous. His pictures combined the eerily erotic quality of a Georgia O’Keeffe orchid with the weird ordinariness of a Diane Arbus freak. You wanted to turn away. And at the same time you wanted to jump into the frame and walk around in that mysterious terrain. No wonder this was what he had always wanted to do; I stood staring at Richard’s photographs, amazed by his ability to see all this. “They’re gorgeous. And terrible too.” I stood looking for a long time, mesmerized by his images.
Then I held out my hand and led him to the great wooden card catalog; I wanted to give him something in return. “Open any drawer.”
Richard didn’t ask why. It was one of the things I liked best about him. He just pulled open the nearest drawer, and his long, deft fingers flicked through the cards until he came to one that interested him. “ ‘Bottarga,’ ” he read, “ ‘the dried roe of mullet or tuna, is a southern Mediterranean delicacy that is often called “poor man’s caviar.” Generally neglected by modern cookbooks; letters are your best resource. You will find inspiration in the letters of Elizabeth David (who is especially good after a few glasses of wine) and the great (but often inaccurate) Waverley Root.’ ” Richard returned the turquoise card to the file. “Where are the letters filed?”
As we walked the length of the room, past all the wooden tables, I was very conscious of his hand in mine, conscious of his little lurch of surprise when I rolled the bookcase aside to reveal the tiny door in the wall. Without a word, he doubled over and disappeared inside. I heard a sharp intake of breath.
I squeezed in next to him and turned on the light. Richard reached out and stroked the nearest shelf as if it were a living creature.
“They’re letters? All of them?” He pointed to the folder I’d left lying on the ground. “You were reading that one? What’s it about?”
“Milkweed.” I tried to make my voice indifferent, not quite knowing if I should tell him about Lulu. But it was, of course, too late. He had picked up the folder and was already reading as he slid gracefully to the ground.
I watched him in the deep quiet of the room, listened to the sound of his breathing. Emotions flitted across his face—laughter, outrage, pity. Finally he looked up. “Are there more?”
“I’m hoping to find enough to turn them into an article. It was Sammy’s idea; he thought it might even be a little book.”
“You should!” His voice held a sharp note of anger. “Not many people know what happened to Italian Americans during the war.” I could see a muscle working in his throat. “Did you know that I’m Italian?”
“Phillips? It’s not exactly an Italian name.”
“They changed it at Ellis Island. DiPellicci was too big a mouthful for the immigration people, so they chopped it off. But changing their names wasn’t enough. Everybody talks about the internment of the Japanese—it was terrible—but in some parts of the country, being Italian was just as bad. I don’t think people on the East Coast were affected, but my nonna lived in San Francisco, and she has terrible stories about what happened to them. Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing the military to arrest suspected enemy aliens, and her father was thrown in jail. They wanted to intern Italians, and it seemed like it was going to happen. It didn’t, but my nonna couldn’t go more than five miles from her house, and they couldn’t go out after dark. There was a curfew. It was a crazy time. She had two brothers in the army, but it didn’t matter; one day some men just came and kicked them out of the house.”
“Kicked them out?” I was incredulous.
“They weren’t the only ones.” He didn’t even try to hide his bitterness. “Her whole neighborhood was evacuated. Ten thousand people in California lost their homes.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Nonna says her mother couldn’t believe that the country she loved so much would do that to her.” Richard gazed up at the shelves around us, and I wondered what he was seeing. “You can look it up. Joe DiMaggio was a national hero, but while he was in the army they wouldn’t let his father, who’d been a fisherman all his life, go out on San Francisco Bay. They considered him a security risk.”
“What about your grandmother? What did she do?”
“Nonna’s father was in jail, and her mother didn’t want to leave without him.
But then the mayor of San Francisco—his name was Rossi—was accused of giving a Fascist salute, and she got scared. She borrowed money, came to New York, and moved in with friends here. Nonna still doesn’t like to talk about it—she’s ashamed.”
“What happened to her father?”
Richard gave an angry laugh. “The madness ended before the year was out. Fiorello La Guardia had more guts than Rossi, and he made an enormous fuss. On Columbus Day the attorney general went to Carnegie Hall and announced that Italians would no longer be classified as enemies. But it didn’t do my great-grandfather much good; he was on the West Coast and they kept him in jail until the war in Europe ended.” He took a ragged breath and with obvious effort changed the subject. “How old is Lulu?”
I wanted to ask a million questions, but Richard clearly didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “She would have been thirteen when she wrote this. I’m hoping she kept writing to Beard throughout the war.”
“But you haven’t found his letters? How great would it be if you found his replies! Then you’d really have a book.” He seemed relieved that I’d let the subject of his family drop.
“But why would they be here?”
Richard stretched out, settling his body against the wall. “Why are all these letters here? What was the point of hiding them? Does Sammy have any ideas?”
“I think he was as surprised as I was. But he’s obviously not very interested; he hasn’t been back since the day we found this secret room.”
“What about Maggie? She spent half her life at Delicious! You should ask her.”
“No way! As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing about the magazine closing is that I never, ever have to see Maggie again.”
“She’s not so bad. Let’s take her to The Pig and see what she knows about your three librarians.”
“You call her.” I had no desire to see Maggie. “Count me out.”
“Oh, come on.” There was a challenge in his voice. “I never figured you for a wimp.”
Dancing Horse
BY THE TIME I GOT TO THE PIG, MAGGIE WAS SITTING AT THE BAR with Richard, sipping a Manhattan, and Thursday was setting a plate of deviled eggs in front of them. Thursday was wearing a Madonna-like smile. Was it seeing Richard that made her so happy?
“You look no worse for wear.” Maggie was giving me the once-over. “I thought you might have the half-starved look of so many out-of-work people.”
“You mean like you?” The old enmity had come roaring back, and she was no longer one of my bosses.
She gave a shout of laughter. “Well, you’re right, it’s been a rotten time. I’ve been catering, which is just another way of saying that I’ve been in hell.”
“That bad?” Richard took a bite of an egg.
“Worse.” Maggie upended her glass and took a huge swig of her drink. “Last night I did Christmas cocktails on upper Fifth Avenue, and I was honestly afraid I’d kill the hostess before the evening was over. I had no idea how spoiled I’d gotten at Delicious! She made me go up to her apartment six times in the two weeks before the event to ‘rehearse the hors d’oeuvres.’ If she wasn’t filthy rich I’d swear she just wanted free food.”
“You’re missing the point.” Richard was still nibbling on the edges of the deviled egg, reluctant to commit to it. “It’s not about the money. She wanted to show you who was in charge.”
“You’re right.” Maggie scowled at the memory and downed the better part of an egg in a single bite. “I should never have gone into this business. She demanded changes in all the recipes. Every damn one! And she made them all worse.”
“No.” Richard sounded amused. “She made them hers.”
“In my home”—Maggie made her voice very high, a bad parody of Julia Child—“we serve only prime beef; you will have to show me the butcher’s bill. Are those ordinary apples you’re using? Please! I’ll have nothing but heirlooms in my kitchen. And I always insist that the caterer make the puff pastry right in front of me, where I can see it. Why should I pay all this money to serve frozen products any fool can buy in the supermarket?”
“You put up with this?” I was stunned. “You?”
She looked embarrassed. “I need the money. I’m not sure that my business is going to make it. Still, when she said that the only acceptable caviar was beluga from the Black Sea, I told her to find another caterer. Serving the eggs of the last beluga sturgeon on the planet isn’t something I want on my conscience.”
“Brava!” Richard clapped his hands.
“That”—Maggie put up a hand and halted him in mid-clap—“turned out to be a serious mistake. Because after I’d gone through the sustain-ability rap, her eyes started shining and she said, ‘We simply must redo the menu! Everything we serve will be local and sustainable.’ ”
Maggie being cowed by a Fifth Avenue matron? I loved it.
“So!” She turned on me. “While I’ve been killing myself for the cocktail crowd, it seems you’ve been eating bonbons in bed. You look like you’ve put on weight.”
“I’m glad adversity hasn’t changed you.”
She gave another crack of laughter and pulled the cherry from the bottom of her glass. “I think being out of Jake’s shadow will be very good for you.”
“Won’t it be good for you too?”
“If you’re asking if Jake bankrolled my business, the answer is yes.” She gave a wry smile. “I think he’s still feeling guilty about the restaurant we had back in the eighties; we could have had an empire by now if he hadn’t been such a jerk. But maybe I shouldn’t have taken the money from him.”
“Being nice to people must be quite a strain.” I was surprised by how much I was enjoying myself. I looked at Maggie, wondering if this was how Lulu felt around Miss Dickson.
“It is a strain.” Maggie said it without a hint of embarrassment. “But what are you doing these days?”
“That”—Richard saw an opportunity and rushed in to grab it—“is what we want to talk to you about. Billie’s still at the book, honoring the Guarantee—”
“You’re kidding!” Maggie’s voice was sharp now. “Young Arthur closes Delicious! but keeps you? No wonder Pickwick’s in so much trouble.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
“Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“—and,” Richard continued, as if he had not been interrupted, “she went up to the library. We were wondering what you know about the Delicious! librarians.”
“Sorry.” She drained her Manhattan. “Can’t help you there. The last one was gone by the time I arrived.”
“But you must have heard stuff.” Richard rose as Thursday beckoned us to one of the elegantly rickety antiques that passed for tables at The Pig. “Knew people who knew them? Can you remember anything? Anything at all?”
Maggie furrowed her brow as she settled into her seat. She looked down at the platter of tiny Kumamoto oysters Thursday had set in the middle of the table; she picked one up, tilted her head back, and allowed the sweet cucumber-flavored mollusk to slip down her throat. Thursday stood listening as she opened a bottle of wine. “You know, in Mrs. Van Allen’s day, the magazine was nothing like the place you knew. It was kind of a ladies’ seminary. A few selected males of the Sammy persuasion were permitted to join the staff, but it was mostly us girls. The HR person from Pickwick told me they once sent a hunk of a man over to try out as an assistant, and Mrs. V. called, asking what they were thinking. ‘The girls and I,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t like that at all.’ She made them wear white gloves every day.” Maggie paused to down another oyster. “The white-glove days were ending when I arrived, but a few of the old girls were still there. God, were they high on that library! Whenever they talked about it, their eyes would light up. According to them, when the magazine lost its last librarian, it lost its soul.”
Maggie had eaten most of the oysters, and now she moved on to the salad, one of Thursday’s more inspired creations.
She’d shredded kale into confetti and tossed it with sweet little currants and richly toasted pine nuts. Mixed with lemon juice and oil, and laced with grated Parmesan, it was an incredible concoction. Maggie put a forkful in her mouth and paused to appreciate it.
“So did they tell you anything about the last librarian?” prompted Richard.
“Bertie?” said Maggie. “It was hard to know what was true. They were all in love with the legend of Bertie.”
“What do you mean, legend?”
“Apparently there was nothing Bertie didn’t know about food. Nothing. You could ask any question and instantly get the right answer. If you wanted a recipe for, say, bouillabaisse, you’d learn that in Marseille they always used rascasse, grondin, and conger, but in Bagnolles, just down the road, they didn’t consider it authentic unless it contained lotte. Bertie could give you a recipe without looking it up and could also tell you how the recipes in Waverley Root, Elizabeth David, and Julia Child differed. Every time I went looking for a source, one of the old biddies would roll her eyes and say, ‘Oh, if only Bertie were here. Bertie would know the answer.’ ”
“But you never actually met her?”
“To be honest, I never believed that Bertie was real. I thought it was some phantom they’d dreamed up to make the rest of us feel stupid.”
“Do you have any idea when she left?”
Maggie had powered through her salad, talking with her mouth full. She was eating as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks, and when Thursday arrived with plates of airy gnocchi, her eyes lit up. “Exactly what I wanted!” she cried, scooping one up. “No idea.”
“Come on, Mags!” said Richard. “Try a little harder. When did you get there?”
“Mid-eighties. And I figure Bertie had to have been gone at least ten years by then. It would have taken them that long to create the myth. I haven’t thought about the library in ages, but I remember some fantastic story about Bertie sneaking in late at night to work on a mystery project.”
“What?” Richard and I shouted together, and Maggie put down her fork and opened her eyes very wide. “Wait. What are you two up to? Why do you want to know this stuff?”