Aftertaste

by Meredith Mileti

  “Okay. What’s up? Make it quick if you can. I’m rushing to meet a press deadline, which means I have about thirty seconds to talk with you.”

  “Well,” I begin, taking a breath, trying to force some air into my constricted chest. “I got your letter and I, I was wondering if we might be able to meet. I think I have something to offer that you might have overlooked in my—”

  “Look,” she interrupts. “I read the review you enclosed. Your restaurant, what is it called, Limoncello, Vino, something like—”

  “Grappa.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, Grappa sounds like a wonderful restaurant, and Gourmet, I know, did not bestow its praise lightly. Clearly you and your husband are talented chefs, but what makes you think that you could be a restaurant reviewer?”

  Her tone is condescending, and I hate to be condescended to. “Ex-husband. And you want to know why I think I could be a restaurant reviewer? One: I have spent the last twenty years eating great food. Two: I have a well-developed palate. Three: I’ve also run a successful Manhattan restaurant, which is no small thing, as I’m sure you know. I know what it takes to make a restaurant successful,” I tell her.

  “Yes,” she sighs, “but you have to be able to write about it. Look, do you think just because you read Gourmet you can suddenly become Ruth Reichl? How are your writing skills? Do you have a sample to submit?” She sounds just this side of irritated.

  Let’s see. Jake and I had written our own wedding vows that, in a fit of rage after the separation, I had torched with the portable gas flame we used for doing crème brûleé. I’d written a few papers while at the Culinary Institute, but most of them were cost analyses and technical explanations. How to make a brown veal stock. The pros and cons of using a blond versus a brown roux.

  “Well, I have some writing from school. I had to write some papers at the Culinary Institute, but they’re several years old. I guess I—”

  “The CIA? You went to the CIA?” For some reason she sounds impressed.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Suddenly the deafening noise is back, and once again Enid has to shout to make herself heard. “Look, I’ve got to go. Get me a writing sample and we’ll talk.”

  I’m about to hang up when the noise once again stops abruptly and Enid continues, her tone softer and resigned. “This is not New York, Ms. Rinaldi. Do you know how often Gourmet, Bon Appétit, and Food and Wine have featured a Pittsburgh restaurant? Exactly never. Go ahead. Send me a sample, and if I like it, I’ll give you a try, but don’t get your hopes up. You may find that you are the one who is disappointed.”

  “So, do you want the short version or all the gory details?” Ruth asks when I arrive on her doorstep a full hour late to pick up Chloe. I’d tried calling in the interim, but Ruth either had turned off her answering machine or was on the phone and hadn’t picked up. I’d even stopped at the Smallman Street Deli on the way over to pick up Ruth’s favorite corned beef sandwich and a couple of kosher hot dogs for Carlos as a peace offering for being late, but she doesn’t even mention it. Instead, she drops the bag on the counter without even looking inside and ushers me into the family room where Chloe and Carlos are sitting on the floor in front of a video gnawing on frozen bagels. “Sorry,” Ruth says when she catches me looking around at the toy-strewn room and at Carlos’s and Chloe’s glazed and glassy-eyed expressions, clear evidence of TV coma. “You know I don’t usually park them in front of the TV, but we are definitely talking extenuating circumstances here.”

  She hands me a box of tissues, when I was really hoping she’d offer me the other half of her corned beef sandwich. “What are these for?” I ask innocently.

  “Just wait until you hear this. Trust me, you’ll need them. By the way, I hope you can watch the kids a week from Thursday,” Ruth says. I nod, even though she hadn’t really been asking. “Oh,” Ruth continues, “and do you think you could help me make a couple dozen rugelach? It’s very important that they be good and mine; well, suffice it to say I have a problem with anything that involves a rolling pin. And in this instance, props are key.”

  “Props?”

  “Yes, the machine has been put in motion!” Ruth says, leaning toward me, her face pink with excitement. A pool of saliva has begun to accumulate in the corners of her mouth that, coupled with her flushed face, makes her appear vaguely rabid.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, looking at her with alarm.

  Ruth stops short and looks at me with surprise. “Can you really be this dense?” she asks.

  “Apparently so,” I tell her, removing my coat and taking a seat on the sofa.

  “Clearly, you’re going to need the long version,” Ruth says, plopping down on the ottoman next to me.

  I’m barely settled on the sofa before Ruth launches into her story. While the kids were napping, she got a call from Leah Hollander inviting her to join them for their weekly mah-jongg game at Rona Silverman’s house the following Thursday afternoon.

  “Okay, so while we’re on the phone, Leah asks me how long I’ve been divorced, and when I tell her that I’ve never been married and that Carlos is adopted, she says something about what a good mother I must be to take all this on alone.” Ruth looks over at Carlos, whose face is covered in masticated bagel, which he is in the process of smearing onto Ruth’s expensive Persian rug. “Hmm, well, anyway,” Ruth continues, turning back to me. “She then proceeds to tell me all about her poor son, Neil, whom she would love to see settled, particularly with a woman who is so clearly interested in being a mother.”

  “I’m beginning to get the picture,” I tell her.

  “I thought you might,” Ruth says, getting up to retrieve the deli bag from the kitchen counter. On the way back, she grabs two beers from the bar fridge. “You can’t drink wine with corned beef, right?”

  “Definitely not,” I tell her, accepting the Stella Artois she offers me, along with a sheaf of napkins and the other half of her corned beef sandwich.

  “Okay, so then, completely unsolicited, she tells me all about Neil’s wife. How much they wanted kids and how hard they tried to get pregnant, how Neil has wanted to be a father since he was a little boy. Finally, she gets pregnant and midway through the pregnancy discovers a lump on her breast. Obviously they remove it, but she has to choose between getting an abortion and delaying treatment until after the baby is born. She waits until just after Eli is born to start treatment. My God,” Ruth says, popping the lid on her beer and taking a sip, “can you imagine giving birth and then having to go through that kind of treatment when you have a newborn and are probably already feeling sick, hormonal, and depressed?” Ruth grabs a Kleenex from the box and blows her nose. “Anyway, at first it seemed like the treatments were working, but then it turned out it was started too late. When Eli was about six months old they discovered the cancer had metastasized to her pancreas and liver. She died two months later.”

  “What was her name?” I whisper, plucking a Kleenex from the box.

  “Sarah. Her name was Sarah,” Ruth sobs, and both children turn to look at us. Chloe begins to cry. I cross the room, sweep her into my arms, and hold her close. I rub my face into Chloe’s fuzzy head, drink in her smell, revel in the grasp of her small fingers around my neck, all the while thinking about how much Sarah must have wanted this, how brave she must have been, and the wrenching sadness she must have experienced when she realized everything she would miss. Ruth bends to hug Carlos, and we carry the kids to the sofa where we sit, holding them until they begin to squirm. We put the children down and reach for each other’s hands.

  “What a tragedy, huh?” Ruth asks, her voice still husky with tears.

  I nod.

  “That was almost a year ago. Poor Neil. Poor Eli,” Ruth says, squeezing my hand.

  “Poor Sarah,” I say, and Ruth looks stricken.

  “God, what an awful person I am,” Ruth sobs, burying her face in her hands.

  “You’re not awful,” I tell her, while I hold her,
rocking her gently as she weeps heaving sobs into my shoulder. Carlos toddles across the room to lay his head on his mother’s knee. He wraps his arms around her legs, his sweet brow furrowed as he makes his mother’s sadness his own.

  I teach Ruth to make rugelach: cinnamon, walnut, chocolate, and apricot, along with mandel bread and strudel. Afternoons, while the kids nap, we take out one of Mrs. Favish’s recipe cards and dissect the recipes one by one, meticulously wrapping our efforts in foil and plastic wrap and placing them in the freezer in anticipation of Game Day. At first, Ruth is a zealous pupil, ready to follow the rules and even displaying an academic interest in understanding the “whys” of baking—why the eggs needed to be room temperature; what advantage there was in softening the butter in one recipe, while in another it needed to be cold. But soon after our first lesson, she loses interest in the process, marveling that people would spend so much time making something that could be duplicated by someone else and bought for a few bucks.

  “There’s a bakery right down the street that sells artisan bread! What would be the point?” she asks me when I suggest that next time we might try making a loaf of bread. “And besides, my arms hurt from rolling out that dough,” Ruth complains, flexing a bicep.

  “Toned arms are nice, don’t you think?” I ask her, rolling up my sleeve to display my own firm upper arm. Years of toting heavy roasting pans, lifting crates of produce, and rolling out pasta dough have left my upper body toned and muscular, without ever having to set foot in a gym. Ruth gives my arm a poke and shrugs, unimpressed. Pressing a fingertip into my upper arm, I’m surprised to find that it now feels a bit like the bread dough I’ve just suggested we make; maybe it is time to start looking into that gym membership.

  When not overseeing Ruth’s culinary education, I spend the better part of the week searching through boxes and papers for a writing sample to send to Enid Maxwell. I open every box and rifle through reams of old stuff, most of which lies strewn in random piles all over the attic. Finally, I find something stuffed into an old journal, but after reading it, I realize that it’s probably not what Enid had in mind. It wasn’t even what my teacher had in mind—I’d gotten only a B minus.

  No, I need to write something completely new, something designed specifically to impress Enid, not only with my writing skills, but with my discerning palate and capacity for brilliant food analysis. How hard can that be?

  Actually, pretty hard. After wasting an entire Ruth-babysitting afternoon sitting in front of my dad’s computer waiting for inspiration to hit, I chalk it up to writer’s block and give up. Figuring that maybe cooking something new might inspire me, I spend the next couple of hours looking through my cookbook collection. I pick up Tastes of the Caribbean, which reminds me of the review I’d read in the Post-Gazette a couple of weeks ago—the one I thought the reviewer had bungled. After a few minutes on the Post-Gazette Web site, I finally find it: Koko’s Caribbean Bistro.

  It’s an exceptionally daring move—taking on an established reviewer, not to mention a restaurant that’s already been reviewed and found to be lacking. But if I do it right, I just might get Enid’s attention.

  Thinking it might be fun to take the kids out to dinner (the real test of a waiter is how he or she deals with fussy babies), I decide to invite Ruth to come with me. However, one look at her exhausted face when I arrive to pick up Chloe, and I know this will be an uphill battle.

  “Come on. It’s only five thirty. We’ll be back before eight. I promise. My treat?”

  She slumps her shoulders and gives me the “I’m too tired to move” look. She says, “I’m just looking forward to getting Carlos fed and to bed.”

  “The stimulation of a new place, new food, might be good for him. He’ll fall right asleep as soon as you get home.”

  Ruth laughs. “I’m the one who doesn’t need the stimulation. Besides, I thought reviewers were supposed to be low-key, anonymous-like. Believe me, going to a restaurant with Carlos will do nothing to preserve your anonymity. They’ll be talking about you for weeks.”

  On the way home I try Richard. He answers the phone just as the machine picks up and tells me, over the answering machine’s recorded message, that he’s just on his way out the door.

  “Hey, perfect. Glad I caught you. Want to have dinner with two gorgeous women? Chloe and I want to try this new Caribbean bistro, and I’m on assignment, sort of. How about it?”

  Richard doesn’t say anything, but I can hear another voice in the background. “Well,” he finally says, “I’m actually on my way out to dinner. Tonight isn’t going to work. How about I call you later?”

  Richard doesn’t sound like himself. Apart from his lack of effusiveness, he didn’t even pick up the bait when I told him I was on assignment. Obviously, he’s seeing someone and, judging from the sound of his voice, it isn’t going well. I remember his cryptic comment last week about not wanting to ruin the afternoon with talk of his love life, but because Richard is such a private person, at least when it comes to his romantic liaisons, I know it would be fruitless to push.

  The next morning I set off early thinking Chloe and I will do some shopping in the Strip and then have lunch at Koko’s. We stop for coffee and biscotti at Bruno’s and, because it’s still a little too early for lunch, we sit a while. Bruno is here this morning, perched on a stool in the back, hunched over a large ceramic bowl of biscotti dough. His hair is completely white now, his nose and ears bigger and his frame much smaller than I remembered. The knuckles of his hands are ruddy knobs, the fingers bent with arthritis at unnatural angles, and his movements are palsied. His face is expressionless, the practiced countenance of a person used to being in pain.

  When we first came in, I hovered by the counter, hoping that Bruno would look up. Eventually he did, smiling at Chloe and me, but I knew from his filmy gaze that he didn’t remember me and probably wouldn’t even if prodded. His son, or perhaps even his grandson, handles the heavy lifting now. I watch as the young man gently wrests the bowl of dough from Bruno and in one fluid movement turns the heavy bowl onto the counter, scrapes out the contents, and dusts it with flour. He stands there a moment, watching as Bruno sinks his hands into the dough. He’s probably thinking he could do it better or faster. Finally, he smiles and pats Bruno gently on the shoulder, sending a thin cloud of flour into the air.

  Chloe pushes her chubby board book at me and smiles. I take her onto my lap and read to her about sheep in a jeep while she drinks her milk. She follows along, pointing to the pictures, cooing and gurgling, her voice mimicking the rhythm and cadence of my own. We’re so engrossed in the story that at first I don’t notice the man standing at our table. When I finally look up, it takes me a second to recognize Ben Stemple, Fiona’s nephew.

  “Hey,” he says. “I thought that was you. Wasn’t sure though. You look different in clothes. How’s the sink holding up?”

  “Great, thanks,” I stammer, remembering the rapidly dissipating bubbles, my hastily wrapped towel, and the humiliating Pippi Longstocking hairdo. I feel a blush creep up from the collar of my shirt to stain my face.

  Ben is holding a bag of biscotti and a paper cup of coffee. With his foot, he moves Chloe’s wooden highchair over so that there is room to sit. “Do you mind?” he asks, hooking another chair with his foot and dragging it over to the table.

  “No, not at all,” I tell him, not really sure if I mean it. I hand Chloe her board book. He opens the bag of biscotti and holds it out to me. “They’re cornmeal. My favorite. Wouldn’t think a cornmeal cookie would be good, but I love ‘em. Can’t get enough.”

  I take one from the bag, break it in half, and offer Chloe a piece.

  “Do you live around here?” I ask him.

  “No. Bloomfield, not far, but I’m working around the corner,” he says, removing the plastic lid of his coffee and swiping at the foam with the tail end of his biscotti. “I’m a sub in the new loft development on Smallman Street. You know, the pickle factory? Those lofts are going
to be beautiful, but I swear I can still smell vinegar. Must be psychological. All the guys think I’m nuts.”

  Ben reaches into the bag for another biscotti. His hands, I notice, are small and neat with short, trimmed nails. They’re the sort of hands you might expect to see on a musician, or a teacher, someone accustomed to using his hands for more delicate purposes. They seem too fine for the rest of his body and are unusually clean, given the type of work he does.

  I feel as if I should say something about his aunt, who is, after all, the only real connection we have, but what is there to say? Instead, I ask him about the lofts.

  “Do a lot of people live around here?”

  “Some. More than there were six months ago. We did another property last year, further up the street, the Cigar Lofts. They’re all sold.”

  “Did they smell like tobacco?”

  Ben wads up the now empty biscotti bag and tosses it into the wastebasket. He appears to seriously consider my question, looking up at the ceiling as if trying to summon an olfactory memory. He finally shakes his head. “Nope. Can’t say that they did.” He gives me a sideways glance, trying to figure out if I’m making fun of him.

  “I’ve always wanted to live in a loft, but in New York you can’t touch them.” I’m not sure why I’ve told Ben this.

  “If I had some money, I’d buy one, for investment. I think they’re really going to take off. You ought to come and see them. If you have time to come now, I’ll give you a tour.”

  I look at my watch.

  “You have somewhere to be?” he says, the barest trace of a smirk on his face. Now it’s my turn to wonder if he’s making fun of me.

  “Well, no, actually Chloe and I are just having lunch at Koko’s.”

  “The Caribbean place? Is it any good? I pass it every day and think I should go in and give it a try. I’m not totally sure what Caribbean food tastes like, but what the hell, it looks interesting.”