Delicious!

by Ruth Reichl

  I stared at her, amazed. “But I haven’t even told you who he is!”

  Sal turned to me. “Are you saying she’s wrong? That it’s not Mr. Complainer?” I shook my head and laughed. “Rosie doesn’t need to be told.” Sal’s voice held pride, love, and admiration. “Somehow, she always knows.”

  “So go.” Rosalie pushed me toward the door. “What I know now is that you’re meeting him for dinner. And I’m guessing that you’re late.”

  Sal handed me a twenty. “Take a cab,” he said.

  Climbing into the taxi, I thought of the first time I’d made the trip between Fontanari’s and The Pig and how Sal had said so contemptuously, “A cab? To go a couple miles?” They’d been the longest two miles of my life.

  Mitch was sitting at the bar when I arrived, and when he turned and saw me, I remembered what Lulu had said about Mr. Beard: “I thought that when people spoke of someone’s face ‘lighting up,’ it was merely a figure of speech.”

  He stood and leaned down to kiss me—when I was not with him, I forgot the sheer solid presence of the man—and I tasted gin. He held up his glass. “Want one?”

  The taste was so seductive. With the first sip, I remembered that I hadn’t eaten anything but a bite of pancake, but it was already too late, and the liquor was rocketing straight to my brain. Why be cautious? I took another sip, and another.

  “The Pig won’t run out of gin.” Mitch took the glass from my hand. “You’re drinking as if you’re afraid this is the last martini on the planet.”

  “It tastes so good.” Feeling reckless, I pulled the olive from the drink and sucked the gin from it.

  “So what time’s our plane?” Mitch moved closer and pressed his leg against mine. He was looking at me curiously in the dim twilight of the bar. “Right now your eyes look almost violet. Does that scare you?”

  “Scare me?”

  “You said your sister had violet eyes.”

  I took my martini back. “She did. But why would that scare me?”

  “Don’t you sometimes worry,” he said softly, almost tentatively, “that you’ll turn out like your sister?”

  I knew the liquor had gone to my head then, because I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Be like Genie? As if. If only. There was no way, not ever, that was possible.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The drugs.”

  “Drugs?” Mitch was speaking a foreign language. I needed subtitles. “When did I say anything about drugs?”

  “You didn’t. Maybe I misunderstood you.” He ran his hands through his hair, the words coming so reluctantly that I knew he wished he hadn’t brought this up. “But what you said …”

  “Are you out of your mind? Genie would never touch drugs!”

  Mitch stroked his beard, and I could see he was being careful as he reconstructed the conversation in his mind. “You said she drove down to Santa Barbara a lot but that you were never sure why.”

  “She did.” I remembered how frightened I’d been when Genie went off to college, how I’d dreaded being left behind. I’d expected to close the bakery, and even when we kept it open, I was always sure she’d get tired of the long drive down from Berkeley. But there she was, every other weekend, almost as if she’d never left. “What does that have to do with drugs?”

  “You said”—he was still speaking with slow deliberation—“that Genie stayed up all night while you were making that wedding cake. You said when you got up in the morning, she was in the kitchen, still making flowers. You said she was always edgy. And that she was the one who needed the money. You said she went to the bathroom a lot. It sounded like you thought she was using cocaine.”

  “Of course I didn’t think that!” I stared at him, incredulous. “Where on earth did you get that idea? Genie never did drugs! She graduated summa cum laude, for Christ’s sake!” The rage and turmoil were making my heart beat very fast.

  “Okay.” He was swiveling uncomfortably on his bar stool. “Then I did misunderstand what you were saying. All I meant about not becoming like your sister was that it must have been quite a strain for her, always having to work at being so perfect.”

  “Genie didn’t have to work at it!” Mitch made little hushing motions with his hands as people turned to look at us, and I realized that I was shouting. I lowered my voice. “It was just how she was. She did everything well. And believe me”—I glared at him—“if she were here, you’d fall in love with her. Like every other man she ever met.”

  Mitch took a drink of his martini. “You don’t know me well enough to be sure of that.” He put the glass down. I could see him trying to control himself. “Are you even aware that you insulted me? I tell you that I love you, and you say I’d really rather have your sister? Can you hear yourself?” The muscles in his face worked, but his voice went very quiet. “I’m sorry, Billie. The truth is, I have no idea if your sister was doing drugs. And, frankly, it’s not my business. Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous, but I think that somewhere, deep down, you’ve got bigger issues with your sister than just missing her because she died too young.”

  In that moment I absolutely hated him. “I do not have issues with my sister! You’re the one who made it up, dredged it out of your own stupid subconscious.”

  “You know best.” He sounded tired. “But I can’t help feeling that you’re competing with a ghost.”

  I pushed my stool away from the bar. “I’ve got a lot to do before I go to Akron. And, no, I don’t want you to come with me.”

  “No surprise there.” He pulled out his wallet and put a couple of bills on the bar. “It’s clearly something you want to do alone. That’s why you’ve picked this ridiculous fight.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Thursday setting a plate of chicken-liver toasts on the bar. She gave it a shove, her aim so accurate that it came skidding to a halt in front of me. I picked one up and took a bite.

  “Hungry?” Mitch had caught me. “I guess you fall out of love pretty easily.”

  I flinched. “You think you know so much about me, Bernard Mitchell.” I was speaking between gritted teeth. “Well, you don’t. But I know something about you. You’re the little ‘M’ boy in a ‘B’ family, and it hurts.” I saw the words register on his face. How had we gotten to bitterness and rage so quickly?

  “You’re half right.” He said it softly. “I am the family misfit. I always will be. And you’re right: It’s a lonely feeling. But the thing is, I deal with it.”

  Mitch had trusted me with his story, and I’d used it against him. I’d betrayed him in the easiest, cheapest way. “I wish I hadn’t said that.” I pushed the plate of toasts away.

  “It’s just as well you did; I’d rather be angry than sad. It’s easier.” He stood up. “Good luck in Akron. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope …”

  He stopped himself, turned, and left.

  Akron

  I TRIED NOT TO OBSESS ABOUT MITCH ON THE FLIGHT. IT HELPED that we flew through stormy skies. The woman next to me grabbed my hand, clutching it so hard her knuckles went white. I tried thinking about Lulu’s father and how the pilots used turbulence to make ice cream, but my mind kept going back to Mitch.

  Why had what he’d said made me so furious? I remembered the rage that had gone shooting through me the instant he’d said Genie was doing drugs. I’d felt as if he’d violated my sister in some horrible way, and I couldn’t forgive him for it. It was as if he’d stolen something from me. And he had: He’d destroyed the image I carried in my head, replaced it with someone I did not recognize. Last night I’d thought I was angry about what he’d done to Genie, but that wasn’t what had made me so mad: It was what he’d done to me.

  He was wrong about Genie, of course, but that had been my fault. I’d told the story wrong, led him down a false path. What else had he said? That I’d insulted him by claiming he would have fallen for her? Maybe he was right; maybe this time was different. Maybe for the first time in my life
I’d met someone who would pick me over Genie. I thought about that long night in his apartment, how perfectly in sync we were, how comfortable we’d been together. Not just our bodies but our minds. It had felt so right.

  The plane dropped suddenly, taking my stomach with it. My neighbor’s hand dug into mine, and when it jerked me into the present, it was a relief.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” my neighbor moaned. I reached for the paper bag in the seat-back pocket, but she shook her head. She had paled to the shade of paper. “Talk to me; please just talk to me.”

  Without realizing quite what I was doing, I channeled Sal and began to talk about Fontanari’s: the customers, the cheeses, the streets of New York. I was still talking when we landed.

  The plane filled with the sound of clapping, hooting, and whistling. It was such a relief to be on the ground. I helped my seatmate weave a wobbly path down the aisle. Outside, she turned to give the plane a last, loathing look. “I’m driving back to New York.”

  It was a cool gray morning, and I threw my suitcase into the rented Camry and followed the signs from the Cleveland Hopkins Airport to Akron. It took only forty-five minutes to reach the city, reminding me that Lulu’s Akron was a pre-highway town, where antique cars and rationed gas had turned small distances into major obstacles.

  I turned off the highway, driving slowly through a city that felt old and exhausted, lacking the energy for change. Elizabeth Park Valley was pretty, the streets winding past neat, tidy houses that looked as if they’d grown organically among the trees, each one individual, distinct. A small square of yard was laid out in front of every house, some enclosed by unfriendly fences, others open, inviting. Lulu’s house no longer had the flagstone pathway the postman had used when he brought his letters from the war department, and the grape arbor was gone, but it was still a charming small-town American place, straight out of a black-and-white TV show. I convinced myself that if I squinted I could almost see Lulu banging the screen door, books in her arms, Tommy at her side, setting off for school.

  I followed them in my mind as I drove to North High. It was a good uphill walk; they would have had plenty of time for talking. But when I reached the school the image faded, and I drove disconsolately around a vast parking lot, staring at the enormous brick buildings that made it look more like a college campus than an urban high school. These buildings were new, and in this large modern complex I couldn’t imagine Lulu. I looked at the leaden sky, feeling the air grow thick around me; it was going to rain.

  I drove slowly back toward Lulu’s house, skirting the freeway as I went up one curving hill and down another. I headed toward North Hill, expecting to find Little Italy, but as I approached Tallmadge Avenue the buildings became drearier and more commercial. I drove past tire stores, thrift shops, and storefront churches. Italian North Hill seemed to be a thing of the past, and I was afraid that the changing demographics would have transformed St. Anthony’s into a Baptist church, a synagogue, or a mosque.

  But the church was still there, the modest building dwarfed by its large, empty parking lot. Mine was the only car, and when I got out I found myself walking up a sloping wheelchair ramp. The door was locked, and I made my way around the building, trying to find another way in.

  One small side door was open, and I crept into the darkened building, inhaling the scent of candle wax and hope. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that the interior was made entirely of inlaid marble, and as I took in the colors—cream, red, yellow—I had a brief moment of wishing Mitch were here to see this. He’d know where each stone had been quarried. I found myself counting the colors, saving the story to tell him later. I’d gotten to thirteen before I stopped. There would be no later.

  I walked toward the altar, trying to recall what Lulu had said about midnight Mass. She’d come with the Cappuzzellis, and I closed my eyes, trying to see them sitting here in a church filled with candles and choir music. It must have been something wonderful. Then I remembered that Mother had been here too—and how surprised Lulu had been that she liked the service. In those days it would have been in Latin. Had Mr. Jones been with them? I thought he had.

  There was a rustling beside me, and I opened my eyes to find a pair of elderly nuns surveying me with kind and curious eyes. When I asked if they remembered a family called Cappuzzelli from the 1940s, they smiled, looked at each other, then shook their heads. “We were not here at the time you’re speaking of,” said the first nun in a whisper. “That was in the time of Fathers Marino and Trivisonno.”

  “None of our sisters were here either,” said the second nun.

  “Emidio would have known,” whispered the first nun. “He opened his pizza parlor back in the fifties, you know. But he is with Our Lord. He was over ninety.”

  “She should go ask at DeVitis.”

  “Yes. You should go ask at DeVitis. It’s not far.”

  Driving to DeVitis & Sons deli, I had fantasies of an old man who would hand me chunks of warm mozzarella and regale me with tales of Cappuzzellis past and present. Instead, there was a fat teenager behind the counter, and when he asked what I wanted, I almost said, “Not you.” I left with a very large sandwich wrapped in white butcher paper.

  I sat in the Camry, devouring every bite of an enormous, garlicky meatball hero drenched in tomato sauce and sprinkled with cheese. It was delicious. Then I licked my fingers, remembered to text Aunt Melba with my itinerary, started the car, and headed for the Akron public library.

  Cappuzzellis began to fade from the Akron phonebook in the fifties, and by the sixties not a single one remained. I wondered where they’d ended up. I imagined Mrs. C. making pasta for a group of grandchildren, then remembered that Massimo, Mauro, and Mario would have grandchildren of their own by now. I moved on, looking up Swans and Strohs, Joneses and Dicksons, writing all the numbers down. Then I left the library; the calls could wait until tomorrow. I’d promised Mrs. Cloverly I’d be there in time for tea.

  MRS. CLOVERLY’S NEIGHBORHOOD was grander than the one Lulu had grown up in and much more urban. Looking for a trailer park, I drove right past the Wade Manor, then circled back and almost passed it a second time. The last thing I’d expected was this stately old hotel; the ornate lobby could have doubled as a set for Brideshead Revisited, and it made me hastily reconsider everything I thought I knew about Mrs. Cloverly. I’d suspected, almost from the start, that the failed recipes were a lonely old lady’s excuse to reach out to the world, but I’d been certain she needed the small checks we sent her way. From the looks of this place, probably not.

  The doorman summoned a uniformed porter. “Please escort Mrs. Cloverly’s guest to her suite,” he said grandly. The porter led me to an elevator even more luxurious than the lobby, all gilded wood, with a velvet sofa for anyone who preferred to ascend in seated splendor. When the elevator creaked to a stop, the porter opened the door and led me down one long, thickly carpeted corridor after another. They were lined with wooden doors that bowed outward, and when I tapped one lightly, it rang like a muted drum. “Those are old.” The porter stopped. “Don’t see them anymore. It’s a double door with shelves inside. See”—as he pulled one open, I thought how much Mitch would have liked this—“it opens from out here so we can slide deliveries in. In the old days it was glass bottles of milk and cream. Nowadays it’s mostly medicine. These may be the last ones in the world.”

  He moved on and tapped respectfully on a door farther down the hall. “In the twenties, this was the finest hotel between New York and Chicago.” He tipped his hat and vanished quietly down the carpeted corridor. I braced myself as the door inched slowly open.

  The woman standing there resembled the Mrs. Cloverly of my imagination as much as the Wade Manor resembled a trailer park. I took in this small poodle of a woman and stepped backward.

  “Billie!” Her platinum hair was all curls, her small face was fully made up, and her perfume was strong. She gave me a limp hug, then pulled away so she could see me. “You’re not at all the
way I imagined you.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.” We both laughed a little nervously. “What did you imagine?” I asked it quickly, before she could ask it of me.

  “I’m embarrassed now.” She gave me a coy look. “But I never thought that you’d be so pretty.” She eyed me up and down, as if trying to replace the Billie in her head with the one who stood before her. “I thought you’d be plump and rather unkempt. I imagined glasses. To be honest, dear, you sounded very nice but rather … hapless. What could I have been thinking? Come in, come in.”

  Mrs. Cloverly led me into an airless living room crowded with a lifetime’s accumulation of goods. The theme was blue and white, and every ornate piece of furniture shouted “quality.” I was beginning to understand that nothing I’d thought about Mrs. Cloverly had been right. There were silver-framed photographs on every surface, and when she went off to make tea, I walked slowly around the room, discovering her at various stages of her life.

  She had been pretty, and in every picture her husband was gazing proudly over at her, seemingly dazzled by his luck. There were no children in any of the pictures, but as the couple aged, the look on his face never varied. Even as an older man, Mr. Cloverly maintained an expression of slightly stunned pride.

  Mrs. Cloverly returned carrying a large silver tray, which she set on a Louis XIV coffee table. When she saw that I was admiring the pictures, she emitted a deep sigh. “Elton passed away fifteen years ago, but I still miss him every minute of every day. Come sit down.”

  She handed me a cup decorated in a fussy flower pattern and passed a plate of madeleines. “Have one.” She smiled proudly. “I made them myself.”

  “Uh, no thanks, Mrs. Cloverly.” I stared at the plate. The little cakes looked nice enough, and they smelled wonderful.

  She laughed. “Call me Babe—all my friends do. And please do try a madeleine.” She thrust the plate in my direction. “You might be surprised.” There was no gracious way to refuse, so I reached for one and took a polite bite. Babe was watching me intently, and I was careful with my face. But the cake was delicate and airy, the flavor rich, buttery, not too sweet. “It’s delicious!” I could not manage to keep my voice neutral.