Aftertaste

by Meredith Mileti

  Fiona and my father spend most evenings together, but fewer nights. Sometimes he calls on his way home and invites Chloe and me to meet the two of them for dinner out, and sometimes they come here for dinner. When my father drives her home, he returns late. Once I saw him coming home early in the morning, just in time to shower, change, and go to work. It’s nice that he seems to want to include us, but most of the time when he calls to invite us out, I decline. I feel guilty having disrupted the only social life I can ever remember my father having.

  And what do I do to fill the hours and days? I cook. I cook until my father’s entire refrigerator and downstairs freezer are stocked with restaurant-quality food. I’ve made several cheesecakes, some sweet, some savory, at least five different kinds of lasagna, and ten different types of soup, enough for a whole chapter in a cookbook. In fact, that’s exactly what I tell my father and Fiona I’m doing—writing a cookbook—and that I need to try out the recipes.

  “Well, then I think we should have a party,” Fiona says when, while helping me clean up after dinner one night, she’s forced to put the leftovers in the bin of the automatic ice maker because there’s no room anywhere in the fridge. “We certainly have enough food!”

  At which point I burst into tears.

  “Mira,” Fiona says, coming around to the table, where I’ve slumped, head in my hands. Teetering on her high-heeled sandals, Fiona bends over me and envelops me in a hug, pressing me so close to her that I can smell her perfume, a sweet, musky scent. This makes me cry even harder as now, on top of everything else, I feel guilty that I don’t like her more.

  “Bunko, next Thursday night,” she whispers into my hair. “It’s my turn to host, and I think you should come. Meet some of the girls. We could make it a dinner party. Put some of this wonderful food to good use. Come on, say you’ll come.” I have no idea what Bunko is, but somehow doubt that it’s my cup of tea.

  And then, pulling away slightly, Fiona prods my scalp with her fingernails. “Hmm, you’ve got a few little, gray nasties you might want to take care of. You’re back on the market now. And you have such pretty hair. I have a great girl up the street on Murray Avenue who can take care of that in no time.”

  In the end, I’m not able to face it, either Bunko or, appealing as it sounded, having my nasties chemically treated. I call Fiona the following Thursday afternoon, pleading a headache, an excuse I know she doesn’t buy. When she comes over to pick up the food for the party, she slips me a piece of paper with a name and a telephone number on it. With a knowing look, she tells me that everyone needs help now and again and that even she on occasion has found it helpful to seek advice and counsel. Notwithstanding the permed hair and surgically altered breasts, she instantly conjures the specter of Mary Ann. Not wanting to risk losing another chance at mental health, I tape the scrap of paper to my bathroom mirror where it remains, the edges curling from the damp and the numbers fading into an inky stream where I manage to splash it nearly every time I brush my teeth.

  For so many years Grappa took up the better part of my life, and I’m now missing it like a severed appendage, the wound still fresh and deep. Often, I lie awake wondering what’s on the menu or remembering how it felt to roll out the pasta dough on the marble surface of the workstation, or how it smelled to open an entire crate of fresh lemons that had been sitting in some warm delivery truck all morning, their skins sweating lemon oil.

  Finally, in desperation, I register Chloe and myself for a mom and baby Gymboree class that meets weekly at the Jewish Community Center on Forbes Avenue. It’s the kind of thing I’d always wished I had time to do when I was working. Maybe I could even make friends with some other mothers. Of course, most of the other mothers are still married to the fathers of their babies, and they all seem to know each other already. In New York, at least I could count on several single parents and a few same-sex couples, which might have made me not feel so different, but this is Pittsburgh, not New York. Chloe enjoys it, though. There are all sorts of slides and swings, things to feel and crawl upon, and I take delight in watching what she can now do. She’s pulling herself up and, last week, reaching for a bubble, she even let go for a couple of seconds before falling.

  The following week when we arrive, I notice an older woman with a Latino child. She probably is the grandmother or, judging from her graying hair and lack of Latino coloring, the nanny. Her charge, a little boy a bit older than Chloe, fusses and strains in her arms. I’m pushing Chloe on the pony swing when they sidle up to us. “How old?” she asks me with an anxious smile.

  “Almost eleven months. And yours?” I ask her.

  “Carlos is about fourteen months. We think, anyway. I found him in a private orphanage in Guatemala. They didn’t keep particularly good records.” She smiles and shrugs. “Obviously, he’s adopted.” She seems nervous. “I’ve only had him for two weeks.” She tries to put him in the swing next to Chloe, but he seems to be glued to her hip, handfuls of her hair clenched in his tiny fists. She gives up quickly, then reaches up and swipes away a wisp of hair that Carlos has pulled loose from her ponytail. She looks exhausted.

  “He doesn’t seem to want to do anything. He clings to me, but I can’t seem to soothe him.” She’s swaying rhythmically to the cheerful music, but Carlos is buying none of it. He reaches beyond her to the large, brightly colored yoga balls behind us on the gym mats and shrieks.

  “Maybe we’ll give those a try,” she says with a sigh.

  At the end of class we all assemble in a circle. Carlos and his mother look around, not really knowing what to do. I catch her eye and pat the gym mat next to us.

  “It’s ‘The Bubble Song,’ I tell her, when she and Carlos settle in beside us. “At the end of the class we all sit in a circle and sing ‘The Bubble Song.’ The leaders make all these bubbles, and the kids try to catch them. It’s cute,” I tell her when she gives me a doubtful look. Carlos, however, is already enchanted and sits quietly on his mother’s lap, eagerly reaching for the bubbles, which he takes great delight in popping.

  “By the way, I’m Mira, and this is Chloe,” I tell her later in the coatroom, as we are attempting to stuff our children into their respective snowsuits.

  “I’m Ruth, and, well, you’ve already met Carlos.” She gives us a fleeting look and a weak smile as she struggles to put Carlos’s kicking feet into his snowsuit. “Jeez, it’s like trying to hit a moving target! We’ll be here all day.” I sit down next to her on the bench and pull out the small jar of bubbles that we picked up on the way out. I start blowing some in Carlos’s direction. Almost immediately he relaxes, concentrating on the bubbles and allowing his mother to maneuver his feet into his snowsuit.

  “Thanks. I’ve got to get some of those.”

  “Here, take these,” I say, handing them to her. “We’ve got plenty more at home. They put them out each week. It’s the least they can do for sixty dollars a month, put out some gym equipment and give us a couple of ounces of soapy water.”

  On the walk to our cars, Ruth and I exchange phone numbers and addresses. As it turns out, they live on Murray Hill Avenue, just a few blocks from us.

  “I would suggest we go somewhere for coffee or something, but Carlos and I don’t have the whole public place thing down quite yet and besides, he has a pediatrician appointment. Maybe next week?” Ruth asks eagerly, and I readily agree.

  That afternoon, while Chloe is napping, I take inventory of the freezer and begin assembling a care package, thinking that Ruth and her husband might need a few frozen meals to help them through the next few weeks. When Chloe wakes up, I throw together a salad and call Ruth’s number. Eventually, a machine picks up, with no personal greeting, just one of those automated voices telling me to leave a message.

  “Ah, I hope this is Ruth. Ruth, this is Mira. We met today at the baby gym class?” I pause. “Listen, I was wondering if you could use a few extra prepared meals.”

  “Hello, hello—I’m here.” The machine shuts off, but I can bar
ely hear Ruth’s voice because Carlos is screaming into the voice piece of the phone. Over the cacophony I manage to ascertain that she hasn’t eaten anything but Lean Cuisine and Cheerios since Carlos’s arrival two weeks ago, so yes, she’d be grateful for anything I had.

  “Great, we’ll be right over.”

  Ruth lives in one of the beautiful and expensive brick townhouses on Murray Hill Avenue. It’s on the edge of the Chatham College campus, and the view out of the front of the house is of the bucolic rolling hills of the south campus.

  Ruth meets me at the door. She’s alone, and the house is quiet. She holds a finger to her lips and whispers, “He’s sleeping, thank God. I think he just wore himself out. Come in, come in.”

  She throws on a coat over her sweatshirt and together we finish unloading the food from the back of Chloe’s stroller. “I hope you have room for it all,” I tell her.

  “Wow! Where did you get all this?”

  “Well, I used to cook for a living, and I guess I’m suffering from withdrawal,” I offer apologetically. “When you run out, let me know. There’s plenty more where this came from.”

  Ruth’s kitchen is small, like most townhouse kitchens, but state-of-the-art. Beautiful cherry cabinets, a six-burner Wolf range with a built-in warming oven, and a small Sub-Zero. “You must like to cook, too,” I tell her, looking around.

  Ruth laughs. “No, not me. The couple who sold it to me liked to cook, though. I’ve barely used this stuff since I bought the place three years ago. My appliance of choice is the microwave,” she says, opening the freezer and gesturing to the stack of Lean Cuisines inside. “As you can see, I’ve got plenty of room.”

  Ruth hasn’t mentioned a husband or a partner, and I find myself looking around for evidence that someone besides Ruth and Carlos lives here, although the Lean Cuisines ought to be a dead giveaway.

  “Can I offer you a drink, a glass of wine or some juice?” she says, giving Chloe a smile. I’ve unzipped Chloe’s snowsuit and taken off her hat, but she is getting antsy. “I mean, unless you, ah, have someone to get home for?” Ruth stammers.

  “No, just my father, but not for a while. It’s Chloe, though; she eats around five.”

  “Say no more; I’m now fully stocked in that department. Please say you’ll stay and have dinner with me. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten anything that doesn’t come in a little, black plastic tray, never mind having an adult conversation while eating. I may just keel over!”

  Ruth pulls Carlos’s high chair over to the kitchen table and opens up her cupboard, where she has jars of Gerber baby food stacked three deep. “Okay, what will it be, chicken, beef, or lamb?”

  Despite the fact that, up until now, all of Chloe’s baby food has been organic and custom prepared, she loves Gerber’s chicken and rice, and I try not to flinch each time she takes a bite. Ruth opens a bottle of wine, a yummy Saintsbury Pinot Noir. She may not know how to cook, but she does know a thing or two about wine. By the time we’ve finished the bottle and Chloe has polished off the last of her vanilla custard (another Gerber success), I’ve learned that Ruth has never been married, that she’s on extended maternity leave from Bayer, where she was a senior financial analyst, and that she’s forty-three years old.

  “The last time I had a serious boyfriend, I was at Yale. From there, I went right on to B-school, and I really never had time for dating,” she says, sipping her wine. “Then, I started working, and it took me a while to get my career going. The only people I met were at work, and most of them were already married. Once I figured out marriage wasn’t in the cards for me, I tried to adopt, but I was traveling a lot and it wasn’t so easy. So, I saved for a few years, got my name in with some private adoption agencies, cashed out some investments, and got out of the market just in time. I can afford to take at least a year off and when I do go back to work, it can be part-time, so I can be more involved in raising Carlos.” She takes another gulp of wine. “The problem is I just didn’t expect it would be this hard. A single parent—what was I thinking!” Ruth looks miserable. “I did research for three years, bought every baby book known to woman, and not one of them prepared me for this.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I guess that even adoptive moms can suffer from postpartum blues, although, in my case it is far more likely to be perimenopause. I’m just too old for this!” She wipes her watery eyes, blows her nose in the used Kleenex she pulls from the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and laughs.

  Encouraged by Ruth’s candor, I launch into my own story. We’ve made a sizeable dent in the lasagna, and Ruth is uncorking the second bottle of wine by the time I get to the part about my arrest and Jake’s early morning arrival and offer of reprieve. Her only response, apart from a gleeful laugh, is to bring out the cheesecake. No plates, two forks. She hands me one and, raising both her glass and her fork, she says, “To single motherhood!”

  chapter 15

  In the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh where my father lives, there are five synagogues within a four-block radius, four Orthodox and one Conservative. When I was growing up, the neighborhood had been almost exclusively Jewish. If the retail landscape of the Murray Avenue shopping district is any indication, it still is. Of the two bagel bakeries and three kosher restaurants I remember from my childhood (two dairy, one fleishig), all remain in business, albeit now peaceably coexisting alongside a French bistro, a Thai noodle bar, and an Indian grocer.

  Growing up, many of our neighbors had been Orthodox Jews. It wasn’t until I moved back home to Pittsburgh that I thought about how interesting it was that my parents decided to live there. We weren’t a religious family; in fact, we hardly ever went to church. My father was a self-proclaimed agnostic, and the only gods I could ever remember my mother worshipping were the great gourmands of the world, people like Pellegrino Artusi, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Auguste Escoffier, and Phileas Gilbert, followed in later years by Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels. (If our neighbors considered us an oddity, perhaps it wasn’t solely due to our lack of religious affiliation.) For the most part, though, we’d been accepted, more or less generously, into their fold and over the years had been invited to our share of dinners in their sukkahs, Yom Kippur break fasts, and Passover seders.

  Few of our old neighbors are left. Mrs. Favish sold her house and moved to a retirement community in Sarasota shortly after I left for culinary school. For years afterward I sent her a card and a box of homemade rugelach at Rosh Hashannah, but about ten years ago, I received a note from her granddaughter, thanking me for my thoughtfulness and informing me that she’d died. Only two of the families—the Friedmans and the Silvermans, both of whom had sons my age—still live in the neighborhood. Young Shlomo Friedman, who would’ve been in my grade except that he’d gone to yeshiva, wore Orthodox tzitzis and had side curls. The other boy, Ronnie Silverman, the brother of the recently widowed Debbie Silverman Levine, had been a year ahead of me in school. Ronnie and I had had a couple of sweaty adolescent encounters back then—several unsatisfying metal-on-metal kisses, along with some furtive groping. He was never without his Star of David, which he wore on a heavy gold chain that invariably got stuck in my long hair when we made out.

  I’ve run into Mrs. Silverman a couple of times since I’ve been back, once while picking up Chinese takeout and then again when we were both unloading groceries. Both times she presented me with a whole wallet’s worth of photos of Debbie and her children and Ronnie and his family, two daughters and a wife, a lovely Jewish girl, and a lawyer to boot. Rona Silverman had never liked me, mostly, I had assumed, because she didn’t like her son being interested in a shiksa, even a fourteen-year-old one. But as I learned one muggy summer’s evening when the Silvermans’ windows were open and Ronnie and I were making out on the Silvermans’ back porch, the real reason she didn’t like me was because she thought my mother was damaged and it was her belief that those kinds of things run in families.

  When she hauled out the photos of R
onnie and his family, she cross-examined me about why I was back home and didn’t seem at all surprised to learn I was divorced. During our brief conversation, I caught her examining me for signs of alcoholism or other sorts of goyish afflictions. She was probably barely inside the front door before placing a call to Ronnie to tell him how lucky he was to have escaped me.

  She also asked me about Grappa. A friend of hers had eaten there on a trip to New York a few weeks ago and had raved about the food. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I’d lost that, too, my only capital, the only stake I had in anything useful, meaningful, or worthwhile. Instead, I smiled and lied, telling her I was taking a sabbatical from the restaurant, but that Chloe and I were headed back there soon. And then I had to hurry into the house before, unable to resist the impulse, I’d wheedle the friend’s phone number from Mrs. Silverman so that I might grill her about the meal she’d eaten, looking for a misstep: a broken sauce, lumps in the polenta, an inadequately braised piece of meat.

  Afraid of running into her again, I’ve taken to scoping out her house from the upstairs window before venturing out, looking for her car in the driveway, or waiting until Saturday morning when she’ll be at services. This particular Saturday morning, I’ve waited until the Silvermans left their house on foot for Shabbat services before setting off to buy some decongestant for Chloe. She’s been sniffling for the last couple of days and woke up last night with a throaty cough.