by Ruth Reichl
How could I possibly refuse?
You were right,” I said a few days later as I climbed into his car. “Those dumplings were great, but they would be better with homemade yogurt.”
“The Middle Eastern place is going to be one of our last stops,” he said. “I want to take you to Carroll Gardens first. But we’re going to make an unscheduled stop before we go to Brooklyn. I want you to meet Jim Leahy at the Sullivan Street Bakery. Okay?” Ed was looking straight at me as he talked. “He’s an amazing guy,” he continued, still looking my way. “When Jim talks about bread it’s like he’s speaking in tongues. Besides, we might as well pick up a little snack to tide us over.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking that if I didn’t argue he might look back at the road.
But Ed, it soon became clear, was a trusting driver who relied on his car to take care of itself when he was otherwise occupied. For long stretches he looked at me, at the itinerary, at the passing scenery. “I haven’t seen that bakery before!” he’d cry, swerving across three lanes to get a closer look, convinced that any cars foolish enough to be in our path would move before we reached them.
I was relieved when we got to Sullivan Street and Ed maneuvered the car into a conveniently vacant loading zone and turned off the engine.
It was warm inside the bakery, and hushed. Flour swirled through the air, so much like snow that when a woman came to throw her arms around Ed the two looked exactly like figures in one of those little pa perweights you shake. “Ed!” she said. “Jim’s going to be so disappointed that he missed you!” The air smelled of yeast and heat, and if you listened carefully you could hear, above the whirr of the ovens, the faint burble of rising dough.
Great mounds of crusty loaves surrounded us like soft mountains, and Ed stroked one fondly, saying, “Jim is obsessed with getting the right textures.” As he moved through this soft white world, flour settled on his jacket and frosted his hair. He stretched a hand to a long swath of pizza bianca stretching across the counter like a languid cat and broke off a corner. “Have some,” he said, handing me a piece. The flatbread was crisp and slightly oily, dotted with rosemary, and so delicious that each bite enticed you into another.
“This is perfect!” said Ed, sounding surprised. He took another bite and shook his head. “When Jim first made pizzas they were cardboardy. Then they got soggy. But now he’s really nailed it. What happened?”
The woman pointed an affectionately accusing finger at Ed. “This guy,” she said, “can really drive you crazy. He won’t accept just any old thing. He keeps nagging at you, nagging at you, nagging at you until you make it better.” She smiled at Ed and added, “Your complaints were heard.”
Ed nodded his head. “I wish everyone was so obedient.” As far as I could tell, there was not a whiff of irony in the statement. “Tell Jim I approve.”
We left and went from one small shop to another, gathering food as we traveled. By the time we walked back to the car we were laden with warm little pear tarts, turnovers, jars of jam, loaves of bread, goat cheese, and zucchini wrapped in flaky dough.
“You see why I love these people?” Ed asked. He looked longingly at the shops we were passing, loath to leave any off the tour. Suddenly he ducked; ahead of us a large man loomed in a doorway and he was pointing a finger at Ed. “You!” he commanded, coming towards us. “You! Come in here right now!”
Ed speeded up. “Sorry,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth, almost running now, “but we have to get away.” To the man he said, “Tomorrow, I’ll come back tomorrow.” And then, in another whisper, “Keep moving. If we stop and go into the store he’ll start feeding us and he won’t stop. He’ll never let us go; we’ll be here all day.”
The shopkeeper was now trotting at Ed’s side, trying to stay with us. “You promise?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, I promise,” said Ed.
“I’ll be waiting.” The shopkeeper, reluctantly, gave up the race. “I have some new eggplant dishes you need to taste.”
“See you tomorrow,” said Ed, diving into the car.
Winded by the race, neither of us said anything for a few minutes. But when we were safely in the tunnel, halfway to Brooklyn, I asked, “Will you really go back?”
Ed stared at me incredulously. “Of course,” he said. “I promised.” He raised his hands to the sky. “I love all these people; they have so much passion. They’re a little bit crazy, but they use their craziness for their business. They live right.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, wishing he would reconnect with the steering wheel. “You’re right. Yes. Passion. Watch that car!”
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, patting my leg as if I were a fussy old lady, “I’ve never had an accident. Really.”
We came out of the tunnel and nosed deep into Carroll Gardens. Ed gestured around and said happily, “Isn’t this neighborhood wonderful?” He parked, setting off a couple of car alarms in the process. They were howling as we walked into Esposito’s Pork Store, but Ed paid them no mind.
It was comfortable in there, rich with spice and personality, a throw-back to a vanishing New York. Housewives with loud nasal voices demanded this piece of veal breast, that slice of bracciole, and a little salami, not too thick, are you listening to me? They examined the heap of softly steaming stuffed peppers, asking when they were made, and wanted to know if this was yesterday’s sausage and where the hell was today’s? Fire-men from the around the corner stood shouldering their axes and arguing over their order, scooping up mountains of chopped meats and cold cuts.
“Isn’t this great?” asked Ed, as if he had personally conjured the scene. “Isn’t this amazing? Doesn’t it make you happy that places like this exist?” His enthusiasm was irresistible. “Meet George,” he said, offering up a handsome man with tattooed arms and a thick gold chain around his neck as if he were Exhibit A. “His grandfather started this place. And you know, they still make all their own dried sausage, even their own pancetta.”
“Dad’s in back now,” said George, “making sausage.”
“See?” said Ed, as if I had doubted him.
In the darkened kitchen an old man stood quietly tying sausages with string. The air was deliciously funky, filled with the scent of pepper seeds and the fine aroma of aging meat. The man pressed a dried sausage with a weathered thumb, rejected it, tried another. He nodded to himself, sliced off a few hunks, and handed them over. The sausage was sharp, spicy, and very fine. “That’s my sopressata,” said Dad, emphasizing the possessive. “It’s good.”
Ed’s next gift was a tiny shop filled with bakers mixing dough, melting chocolate, pulling pastries from industrial ovens. When Ed stepped through the door they all stopped to welcome him, and there was something in the gesture that made me think of those sweet moving figures department stores put in their windows at Christmas. If the bakers had broken into song, I would not have been surprised. “What they make here,” said Ed, grabbing a small pastry from one of the pans, “is the most amazing rugellach I’ve ever found.”
He popped one buttery little morsel into his mouth, and then another. By his eighth he was shaking his head sadly and saying, “It makes you realize how much bad rugellach there is in the world. Oh, okay, I’ll have just one more.”
The car alarms had finally subsided when we climbed back into the car, but as Ed pulled out of the parking space they started up again, sending us off with a flourish we could hear for blocks. The sound faded into the distance as the car plowed through the Brooklyn traffic, heading for Bay Ridge.
“Look,” said Ed, suddenly slowing to a crawl. He pointed out the window, simultaneously lifting his foot from the gas. “Look at that collision of cultures!” As Ed indicated a Mexican grocery store, an Asian emporium, a Scandinavian shop, the car slowly drifted to a standstill. He gazed beatifically out the window as a cacophony of angry honking started up. “Don’t you just love New York?” asked Ed, setting the car back in motion.
The Family Store greeted us
with a virtual onslaught of sensations. A riotous mixture of caraway, cumin, cardamom, and sumac perfumed the air while bins of seeds and spices spilled onto the wooden floors. Behind them a rainbow of olives and pickles created a colorful backdrop. The refrigerated cases were filled with vivid jewels of food: pale spheres of stuffed cabbage, billowing mounds of beige hummus, bright pink muhammara, and deep emerald zucchini fritters.
“We’ve come for your yogurt,” Ed told the smiling man behind the counter.
“Ah, my friend,” he replied, running out to greet Ed, “first you must taste this.” In an instant he was spooning up soft white curds with the consistency of double cream and plopping it into our mouths. It was smooth and tangy, incredibly good. He looked delightedly at our faces. “This,” he cried, “is no ordinary yogurt. This is goat milk yogurt. I have to go to the Amish to get the milk. It is very good for you. So much calcium.” He was a large man, but light on his feet as he danced through the store, insisting we try his homemade cheese (“One customer comes all the way from England in his private jet just to get this”), his pomegranate molasses, his baba gannouj. As he spoke he was taking foods from the cases and feeding us with his fingers. “Wonderful, wonderful” he crooned as we ate.
“Save your appetite if you can,” whispered Ed.
We left, the yogurt cradled in my arms, and I held my breath as Ed banged the car out of the parking space and headed toward Coney Island. We nosed down streets with names like Neptune and Surf toward the looming Cyclone, a great construction of white boards and twisted metal. “There’s Totonno’s,” said Ed in a mournful and reverent voice and the car began to slow of its own volition. “Their pizza is really great.” He stared longingly out the window and then said, “Stop! Oh my God, Gerace’s is gone.” His foot stomped on the brake and he came to a complete halt in the middle of traffic. The honking started up. Ed, filled with lamentation, paid it no mind.
“Oh my God. The sign said ‘For rent,’ did you see that? This drives me crazy. They taught me how to make prosciutto bread. That place had been there forever. Oh my God, this is a tragedy.” He took his foot off the brake and started forward, keeping up a keening wail for Gerace’s as we drove.
Near the crumbling roller-coaster we pulled up at the original Nathan’s hot dog stand, which presided over the litter-strewn sidewalk with the proud air of an ancient relic. We got out, and as we approached Phillip’s, a battered candy shop, a toothless man began begging for money. With the instinctive gesture of the easy touch, Ed reached into his pocket and handed him a dollar.
He was not even aware that he had done it, for he was standing, rapt, in front of the candy shop window. “Look at that!” he said reverently. “Charlotte Russe, a classic Brooklyn confection! You can’t get these anywhere else anymore.” He dug another dollar out of his pocket, plunked it onto the outside counter, and burrowed his face into one of the little white cups. When he looked up his chin was covered with whipped cream and he looked like an overgrown ten-year-old.
“Hey, big guy!” A gray-haired leprechaun of a man emerged from a side door. His face ablaze with a grin, he stared up at Ed as if the sun had just come out and swung the door wide, inviting us in. In the tiny shop lollipops dangled from the ceiling, a wild swirl of colors, their sizes ranging from a few inches to a few feet in diameter. Candy apples marched along the counters, and bags of cotton candy hung from the walls like a soft rainbow. In one corner a huge, battered copper candy kettle filled with bright red sugar syrup balanced precariously atop a hot plate. Next to it apples, sticks raised like so many exuberant tails, waited to be dipped. “John makes everything you see,” said Ed. And then, shaking his head as if this fact were both incredible and undeniable, he reiterated, “I swear he does!”
I reached for the largest lollipop. “How much do you charge for the big ones?” I asked, staggering as the candy fell onto my shoulder. It was as tall as I am and stunningly heavy.
“Ten bucks,” he said.
“That’s all?” I asked, reaching into my pocket for a bill. “I’ve wanted one of these since I was a little kid,” I admitted, slinging the giant confection over my shoulder, “but I thought they cost a fortune.”
“Other places,” said Ed, heading for the door, “they do. John’s the last of the old-time candy men.”
“I don’t know for how long,” said John. “This is a dying way of life. Nobody wants to do this anymore.” And then, as if talking to himself, he added, “Who can blame them? The kettle alone weighs thirty-five pounds, you get burned all the time, and you should see me when I’m finished.” Then, as if shaking off the gloomy burden of his thoughts, he hugged Ed and opened the door, and as we navigated the broken sidewalk, he called out, “Don’t be a stranger!”
“Isn’t he amazing?” asked Ed, unlocking the car door. “People like that just make me glad I’m alive.” As I settled the lollipop in the car I realized that for the first time in months I was feeling the same way. We drove past the sign in Gerace’s window, which caused Ed to retreat once again into the keening wail of loss, heading for Flatbush and what he assured me was the best jerk chicken on the planet.
It was late afternoon as we drove back to Manhattan, accompanied by the ever-present music of the cars. My yogurt was nestled into a bag, waiting to turn into aushak, and all around us were sausages and pastry, lollipops and spices, chicken and cheese. Any world that contained all this, I thought surveying our loot, was a very fine place. I felt reinvigorated, alive, optimistic. The thought of getting back to work suddenly seemed like fun.
“Oh Mommy,” said Nicky when he saw the lollipop, “this must be the most beautiful thing on earth.” He gazed at it, dazzled by the gorgeous object that had just entered his life. “Can I really eat it?”
“Yes,” I said, “but it might take a couple of years.”
He stood back and examined it. “I don’t think I will,” he decided, petting the giant candy. “This isn’t one of those foods that you eat. It’s one of the ones that’s only supposed to make you happy.”
Emily
Do you have a reservation?” The woman’s voice was so cold it sent shivers down my back.
“Yes,” I said.
“And the name is?” Her eyes, above the horn-rimmed glasses, were hostile.
“Newman,” I said. “Toni Newman.”
She peered at the book, pushed her glasses higher up on her nose, and looked again. “Ah!” she said at last, as if she had been searching desperately for clues, “here it is. And your guest?”
“She doesn’t seem to be here yet,” I replied, looking pointedly around the eerily empty room.
She frowned. A handsome woman with a trim body clad entirely in brown tweed, she had an unforgiving face framed by short, glossy silver-streaked black hair. “Over there,” she said, one twiglike finger pointing at a carved wooden chair beside the cold fireplace. “Sit.” As I folded myself into the chair’s uncompromising lines she turned back to the reservation book she had been studying when I entered the Box Tree.
I looked around the small parlor, trying to figure out why this restaurant was voted “most romantic” year after year in the restaurant polls. The Zagat guide had this to say: “exquisite,” “a jewel box,” “ideal for Rodgers and Hart romance.”
It certainly wasn’t the warmth of the welcome. It must be the stained-glass windows, I thought, the profusion of fireplaces, the walls covered with old portraits. The room I was in resembled one of those Ralph Lauren ads, the ones designed to look as if the lord of the manor might come striding in at any moment, dogs capering about his boots as he peels off leather gloves and calls for a beaker of ale. But as the minutes stretched on, the door remained resolutely closed, and when it finally opened it was to admit a tall blonde woman wearing a short black skirt and a black leather jacket. She had three miles of leg, a Polish accent, and a need for a job.
The woman at the desk surveyed her with narrowed eyes. “Are you legal?” she asked.
The blon
de hesitated for a moment, looking uncomfortable. “No,” she finally admitted.
This did not seem to faze the tweed woman. “Leave a resume,” she said, holding out her hand. “We’ll call.” The blonde handed her a sheet of paper and stood, uncertainly shifting her weight from one long leg to the other. Tweed twisted her lips and made a little shooing motion with one hand while reaching for the ringing phone with the other.
“This Saturday?” she said. “Impossible!” She hung up and glared at the blonde standing before her. “Why are you still here?” she asked.
“Ven vill you call?” asked the blonde, the w’s all v’s.
The woman shrugged. “How should I know when we’ll need help?” She reached once again for the phone. “No, nothing for Friday at eight,” she said, “although I might be able to squeeze you in at nine forty-five. Suit yourself.” She slammed the receiver into the cradle and glared at the blonde.
“Go away,” she said sharply. And then she turned to the phone, which was ringing again. The blonde glanced at me, gave a defeated little shrug, and left.
A minute later a waiter appeared, his head poking comically out of a jacket so large the shoulders were at his elbows, the pockets at his knees. Tweed looked at him, her nose twitching as if some horrid odor had wafted into the room. “What do you mean by coming to work looking like that?” she barked.
“It was the damn cleanuhs,” he whined in a pronounced New York accent. “They lost my jacket. I mean they switched it or somethin’. I sent mine and got this back.”
“A Chinese laundry?” she asked.