by Ruth Reichl
He dropped our coins into the box, listening to the satisfying pings, and then skipped toward the back of the bus. I followed, more slowly. When I reached the halfway point a man jumped up. Pointing to the place he had just vacated, he said politely, “Please ma’am, take my seat. You need it more than I do.” Blushing furiously, I kept moving.
“Mommy,” said Nicky loudly, “that man thought you were old.”
I dropped Nicky at school and went on to the office, slipping and sliding through New York’s winter mush in my mother’s oversized shoes. Debris skittered up the street before me, crumpled cups, broken combs, and forlorn papers swirling in the icy air. Times Square seemed tired and sad, and walking these streets in my mother’s clothes made me feel as if I were trespassing on a set for The Twilight Zone.
At the corner of Forty-third and Broadway I stopped to buy a donut. The man inside the cart was the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood; he knew everyone’s order by heart. He did not have to be told that the woman in front of me wanted black coffee and a cruller, and by the time I reached him he was already spooning out extra sugar for the man behind me on the line. Normally he handed me a jelly donut and coffee without a word, but now he looked straight at me and asked, “What can I get you?”
Clutching the brown paper bag, I walked up the block and into the lobby. The guards, Al and Joe, were standing there as they did every morning. They were a study in contrasts: Al was rotund, balding, with a lifetime of meatball heroes spilling out of his uniform, while Joe was small and spare, with an economical face. Most mornings they unleashed a chorus of hellos when I walked in, but now Joe gave me an unfriendly look and pointed to the bank of phones. “Call the person you’ve come to see,” he said mechanically.
“Don’t you recognize me?” I asked.
“Just call upstairs,” he said wearily, as if he had heard this a thousand times. “Even if I did recognize you, I’d need authorization.”
“But I work here,” I said.
“New, huh?” his partner piped up. “We haven’t met. I’m Al. Got your i.d.?”
I pulled the card out of my purse and flashed it at him. Al peered at the picture. “You’re not her,” he said.
“I am,” I insisted.
He looked at me more closely.
“It’s a wig,” I said.
He turned to Joe. “She says she’s the restaurant critic.”
“Nah,” said Joe.
“Yes!” I reiterated.
Al stared hard at me. “Look,” I said, pulling the wig up enough to pull out a lock of my own brown hair.
“I think it is her,” said Al. “Whaddaya know about that!”
Joe was not convinced. “What’s in the bag?” he asked suspiciously.
“You know what’s in the bag,” I said. “It’s what’s always in the bag.” I opened the top and pulled out the donut.
“Jesus,” said Joe. “It is.”
They both gaped at me, shaking their heads. And then, finally, Al said what he said every morning. “You’re the food critic. How can you eat those things?”
The leaden donuts were not only bad, they were bad for my reputation. But I loved the coffee cart guy, loved the New York ritual of stopping on the corner to exchange a few words. It made the paper, not the friend liest of places, feel more like home. The donut was truly terrible, but every morning I tore it in half, ate the jelly out of the middle, and threw the rest away.
If Bryan was there, I altered my routine and dumped the bag in the garbage unopened. I could easily imagine him marching into Warren’s office, asking why the paper had a critic with taste so terrible that she ate fifty-cent donuts from the corner cart.
Bryan was not there, so I strolled self-consciously over to my desk, certain that all eyes were on me, sat down, opened the bag, and extracted the leaden lump of dough. But my entrance had gone unremarked. I took a bite and waited to see what would happen.
The Style section was an odd little enclave. We did not have much contact with the reporters downstairs in the newsroom, and we never saw the columnists who occupied the offices upstairs. And even though we shared quarters with Sports and Fashion, we food folk didn’t see much of them either (although we did get to enjoy the parade of flowers delivered to Fashion on a daily basis).
My colleagues tended to make themselves scarce. Molly O’Neill worked mostly at home, so her pod was almost always empty. Marian Burros spent half her time in Washington, and Florence Fabricant was freelance and prohibited by union rules from having a desk of her own. Eric Asimov had the $25-and-under column to keep him out of the office, and Frank Prial came in so rarely that he and Bryan shared a single computer.
That left Trish Hall, who was too busy editing copy to have noticed my arrival. When I looked up from my donut, I found only four pairs of eyes focused upon me. One pair belonged to Alexandra Palmer, who sat across the aisle. She’d been the secretary in the Living section since the fifties, and she was dressed, as always, in a straight tweed skirt, her substantial bosom encased in a t-shirt, her feet clad in sensible running shoes. She had pulled her auburn hair severely back, but that could not disguise the extraordinary sweetness of her face.
As Alex thoughtfully examined me, I realized that nothing fazed her. I suspected she disliked her boss, but she never said a nasty word about him (or anyone else). She was a single woman with what looked like a miserable job, but she found dignity in everything she did and somehow seemed to enjoy her life more than the rest of us.
I wondered what her secret was and I openly eavesdropped on her conversations, hoping to discover it. It was, I think, selflessness; she lived a few blocks away, in one of New York’s seedier neighborhoods, and appeared to have adopted every young person on her block. She was constantly counseling, cajoling, and commiserating with this odd cast of characters and I suspected she was about to add Miriam to her list of good works.
Elaine Louie was staring at me too. That worried me; I had known Elaine long before coming to the paper, and admired the pieces she wrote on design, fashion, and food. She, I was certain, would see through the disguise, and she would waste no time in unmasking me. I expected her to come up, laughing, at any moment and rip the wig from my head.
Suzanne Richie was worrisome too. The photo editor had a keen eye and would surely see the real Ruth lurking beneath the costume. But she went on talking into the telephone as if some weird white-haired person had not just plunked herself down at a desk.
In the end it was Carol Shaw who got up. Of course, I thought, as she walked toward me, how could I possibly fool Carol? She was a restaurant critic’s dream, an adventurous eater willing to go anywhere and eat anything on a moment’s notice, and she had become one of my eating companions. Unlike the editors, who wanted to be taken to fancy restaurants, Carol actually preferred the little Korean and Mexican joints around the office, and she was always ready to jump onto the Number 7 train and take a ride.
Now she was bearing down on me. I could feel my cheeks getting hot beneath the makeup. Then I noticed Alex hovering protectively behind her, a pair of scissors in her hand.
Carol cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. She was standing right over me now. “You can’t sit here. You will have to move. I don’t know who you are, but this desk belongs to our restaurant critic.”
In the end they made me take off my wig and tell them about Claudia. It was all done with such good humor that I began to feel, for the first time, as if I might actually fit in at the paper. “Come back and tell us how it goes,” Carol called as I left for lunch. “I can’t wait to hear what happens at the Four Seasons.”
Claudia lived on West Fifty-fourth Street, so I picked her up on the way. Yesterday she had come near fainting at the sight of her old friend, but today when she climbed into the taxi she seemed entirely comfortable. If she remembered that Miriam was no longer with us, she gave no sign. Today we were both playing a part.
As we drew up to the restaurant, I turned and said, “Befo
re we go in, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What?” she asked.
“We don’t have a reservation.”
“You failed to make a reservation?” she asked. “May I ask why?”
I gave my mother’s meanest little laugh. “It’s an experiment,” I said. “I want to see how New York’s most elegant restaurant behaves when two old ladies show up at the door.”
“But it will be so embarrassing!” cried Claudia.
“Not to me,” I replied. The little disturbances of life held no terrors for Miriam. “Besides, there are two rooms at the Four Seasons and they will surely have a table in the wrong one.”
“Do you know which one is wrong?’ asked Claudia as I helped her from the taxi.
My mother had not been an avid student of New York society in vain. “At lunch,” I said, standing under the restaurant’s awning, “you want to be in the Grill Room, so you can watch Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters and Vernon Jordan work the power room. But at night you want to be in the Pool Room, because it’s so much more romantic. I’m surprised you don’t know that, dear.”
“I certainly wish you had informed me of this plan,” said Claudia.
“Would you have come?” I asked.
“Certainly not!”
“That’s why I didn’t.”
“This,” she said with a sigh, “feels lamentably familiar.”
Claudia in tow, I traversed the cool lobby of the Seagram building. It looked the same as it had when I was ten, wearing the soft blue velvet dress my mother made me wear when we went out. “They have real Picassos!” she had insisted, “and a Richard Lippold sculpture hanging over the bar. Think of it as a museum. We’ll have a drink, see who’s there, and then go have dinner in a restaurant we can afford.”
Passing the door to the ladies’ room, I remembered my childhood confusion when the attendant held a towel out to me, offering cologne, lipstick, a hairbrush, for a final touch-up. I had wondered then what it was like to spend your life in a bathroom, offering towels to rich people, and I had been embarrassed for the woman, and embarrassed for myself when I took it from her hand. I wondered if there was still a woman standing in there by the sink, and made a note to check before the day was out.
But then I put my foot onto the first step and the attendant faded from my thoughts. I was feeling what my mother would have felt if she had been there, knowing that she was staying through the meal. I felt my mother’s joy as I swept up the stairs, breathing in the affluent air. By the time I arrived at the top I was seeing it as she would, thrilling to the chains rippling seductively across the windows and the deep, private, underwater feel of the room. The Lippold sculpture still hung like bronze icicles above the bar, and my eyes swept across the vast carpeted floor, noting the enormous diamond here, the fabulous pocketbook there, as my ears adjusted to the luxurious murmur of money. With all my mother’s confidence I marched up to the pale, cool man behind the reservation desk.
“We have no reservations,” I said in my mother’s coyest voice, “but we thought you might be able to find a seat in the Pool Room for two old ladies.”
He glanced down at the scribbled names in the book and then he looked me over appraisingly. I gave him one of those flirtatious smiles my mother had perfected late in her life, the one that said, “I have lived a rich life and there are many things I could show you.”
Our eyes held for a moment and then he made up his mind. “Of course,” he said. “If you two young ladies will follow me?” And he led us down the hall, past the huge Picasso tapestry, and into the Promised Land.
It might have had something to do with the recently published Le Cirque review. I may have reminded him of his mother. Perhaps the management of the Four Seasons occasionally amuses itself by lavishing attention on perfect strangers. Or maybe he saw through the disguise. Whatever the reason, this was our day.
The maître d’ led us to one of the tables that edges up against the square expanse of the pool. I put my hand on the white marble ledge, appreciating its cool smoothness as he pulled out my chair. As I folded myself into it he said, “Please allow me to send you some champagne.” The tone of his voice implied that in accepting we would be doing him a great favor.
“Thank you,” I said. The Miriam in me had expected no less. I languidly extracted a croissant from the silver curve of a bowl and perused the menu.
Across the table Claudia produced a deep sigh of contentment. When the champagne was poured, she picked up her flute and took a tentative sip. She smiled and took another.
Our appetizer appeared, a little roulade of silky smoked salmon cleverly wrapped around cream cheese so that it looked like a giant piece of orange taffy. The frilly green salad on the side was small and adorable, like something that belonged on a fancy Easter bonnet.
“Lovely!” said Claudia, as she pushed her empty plate away. “Truly lovely.”
“I have something lovelier for you,” said a man standing by our table with a plate in either hand. His face was all points—sharp chin, long nose, a crescent of hair falling into humorous black eyes that danced with fun. He juggled the plates so that they wiggled suggestively and then set one in front of each of us. “Risotto,” he said, rolling the r so that his Italian accent became pronounced. A waiter hovered attentively next to him, holding a tray. “Since you are here at the height of truffle season,” said the man, selecting a gnarled tuber from the tray, “you must celebrate with us.”
“Truffles,” said Claudia. “Oh, truffles, truffles, truffles.” As the word came rolling from her throat it sounded rich enough to eat. “Truffles,” she said once again in her deep voice. She clasped her hands like a diva at center stage and said dramatically, “The most divine food on earth.”
She watched hungrily as the man began to shave curls of creamy white truffle over the top of her risotto. The aroma was so rich and damp that I was not surprised when Claudia leaned over the plate and inhaled. “Divine!” she said again, performing.
The man was amused. “Which do you prefer,” he asked her, “black truffles or white ones?”
“White, most definitely,” she said. “They have the most elusive fragrance on earth. And a flavor so subtle you can only detect it when you concentrate all your faculties.”
“And you?” he asked, turning to me.
“Black,” I heard myself saying. It wasn’t true; I’ve always considered black truffles overrated. But it’s what my mother would have said. I doubt that she had an opinion on the subject, but she would have liked contradicting Claudia; it made a more interesting story. And so I said, “Black truffles are so much earthier than white ones.”
The man gave a shout of laughter. “Ah yes, earthy, very earthy,” he said seductively. Was he flirting with me?
“I think that was Julian Niccolini,” I whispered to Claudia. “He’s one of the owners.”
“I should hope he is!” she replied with some asperity. “I cannot think that the owners would be very happy to find their staff being so profligate with the truffles. Do you have any idea what they cost?”
“A vague inkling,” I said, smiling. “Don’t worry. If everything I’ve read about this place is correct, we’ll be billed for every morsel. They may be nice, but they’re not that nice!”
After the busboy whisked the plates away, the angular man returned. “You cannot leave the Four Seasons without tasting our foie gras,” he said, motioning to a waiter who held out two small plates. “Tell me how you find the pears as an accompaniment,” he continued as the waiter set a plate in front of each of us.
Claudia seemed to have gone into sensual overdrive. “To think,” she said, taking a bite, “of all the years we did not come here . . .” Her voice was a dirge, a lament for lost meals she might have eaten.
When we were finished, the angular man returned, insisting that we taste the restaurant’s newest dish, peppered loin of bison. “Just one bite,” I said, “to be polite. I really cannot manage more.”
But I was enjoying the moment for my mother, thinking how much pleasure it would have given her. One meal like this would have thrilled her for years. She didn’t care about food, but she craved this feeling of being special, important, well cared for. She would have enjoyed what she was eating because of the way it was served. And so I took another bite and tasted it, really tasted it, with all my mind. The meat was wild, like the steaks of my childhood. It had heft and chew; it tasted like grass and sky and the Wild West, something strong and powerful in my mouth. And suddenly I uttered my mother’s classic phrase, the one she used every time she found some food she really liked. “This,” I said, “is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“Oh my darling,” said Claudia. Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh my darling, how she would have adored being here.”
Much more, I thought, than I ever would. And suddenly it came to me what being Miriam meant: it had allowed me to experience this meal in an entirely new way. My mother could be difficult, but when she was happy she was uniquely capable of abandoning herself to the moment. By becoming her I had shed the critic, abandoned the appraiser who sat at a distance, weighing each bite, measuring each dish.
I had originally put on a disguise as a way of fooling the restaurants, but now I saw that it was also a way of fooling myself. I had been ready, eager even, to know what it felt like to walk in someone else’s shoes. And I had enjoyed it. The previous night I had relished every minute of my obnoxious performance. And now, reveling in the sheer luxury of this lunch, I began to wonder what other disguises were out there waiting for me, and what lessons I would learn from the women I would become.
Moules Marinières
When I think about my mother in the kitchen, I think about the two dishes she did really well. This was one. Most Americans didn’t eat mussels in the fifties, and serving them made Mom feel sophisticated and slightly superior (not a bad trick for such an inexpensive dish).