“Excuse me,” Richard grumbles. “I hate to interrupt this cooking lesson, but you were in the middle of cutting my hair, remember?”
“Sorry, Richard,” I tell him, but he has already picked up the scissors and handed them to Fiona. “Fiona can do it. I’m sorry, Mira, but every time you come near me with those scissors all I can think of is Sweeney Todd.” He shudders.
“Come on, Richard. Let’s go into the bathroom where I can do it right over the sink. It’ll take but a minute,” Fiona says, helping him up and handing him his cane. The two of them trail off toward the bathroom.
While they’re gone, I taste Fiona’s sauce and right away diagnose the problem—or one of them anyway. She has used poor quality vinegar, a distilled white vinegar by the taste of it. Checking my mother’s recipe I note she didn’t specify what kind of vinegar to use, so I pull down a bottle of aged apple cider vinegar from France from my pantry shelf. I pop the cork and give it a smell—fruity and intense with a hint of caramel. By the time Fiona comes out of the bathroom I’ve assembled most of the ingredients necessary for a new, and hopefully improved, batch of sauce.
“We can try making it when I get home,” I tell her.
She stops and clasps her hands together. “Thank you, thank you, Mira.” She looks like she is about to cry, and I have a sudden urge to put my arms around her.
“Nonsense,” I tell her. “It will help me out, too. The column is due tomorrow, and I have to make it anyway. Besides, you’re the one doing me the favor. Thanks for watching Chloe tonight.”
“Don’t be silly,” Fiona says. “I’m glad of the company. Your father is interviewing a candidate for visiting professor tonight, so it will be just us girls,” she says, stooping to pick Chloe up from the floor where she is playing. “What do you say, Chloe, how about we have a tea party?”
I watch as Fiona dances Chloe around the kitchen, completely unself-consciously, her bracelets tinkling, and her high-heeled sandals clicking merrily on the wood floor.
My mother, who never once danced with me, who was seldom silly, and whom I can’t remember ever wearing bracelets, had been so different from Fiona. Watching Chloe giggling delightedly in her arms, I’m suddenly so thankful that Chloe has someone like Fiona, someone fun and silly and playful in her life. Fiona dances around the table toward me, and when she swoops Chloe in to kiss me, I envelop them both in a hug. “Thanks, Fiona. Thanks for everything,” I whisper in her ear.
“Why, Mira dear, you’re welcome,” Fiona says. She looks at me, her eyes soft. “In case you haven’t noticed, I love this little girl!”
At the last minute, Richard insists on walking to the car. I hand him his ebony-topped, curly maple walking stick, which he instantly rejects as being “too flashy,” choosing instead the four-pronged, stainless steel cane his physical therapist brought and keeps urging him to use. He’s dressed in a pair of khakis, a blue plaid button-down shirt and a dark windbreaker. He looks like a high school gym teacher. I know he’s taken pains to appear unobtrusive, something that normally doesn’t come easily to him. There’s a code of conduct at AA, one even I remember from my brief stint at Al-Anon twenty-odd years ago: no last names, no flashy possessions, and no snap judgments.
In fact, no judgments at all.
On the way over, Richard is quiet. I suspect I know what he’s thinking—probably the same thing I’m thinking. Twenty-three years ago, when we first met, he was at AA at the urging of his then lover. Although he stopped drinking, the relationship hadn’t lasted. That history appears to have repeated itself is an obvious fact that neither of us mentions.
I pull into a handicapped parking space across the street from Wightman School and turn off the engine. We’re ten minutes early. Richard is staring straight ahead, his lips parted in a half smile. He reaches over and takes my hand in both of his. “Do you remember the first time I saw you? You were standing under that street lamp over there,” Richard says, pointing. “You were smoking a cigarette, and I could tell by the way you were holding it you hadn’t been smoking long. Each puff looked like it hurt, but still you kept at it, sucking on that stupid cigarette, taking one long drag after another. I thought you were the angriest kid I’d ever seen.”
Richard is staring at the streetlight as if he can see me there, his nostrils slightly flared, as if he is expecting to smell the smoke from my purloined Marlboro Light. “You were what, all of fifteen?”
“Barely,” I tell him.
Richard is quiet for a moment, then he continues. “You know, I almost walked right past you. I had enough problems of my own—in those days it was all I could do to get myself to a meeting. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about how different my life might have been if I’d just kept on walking. Who would have thought that angry kid would end up saving my life? But you have, Mira, and I just want you to know how grateful I am.” Richard bends forward and kisses me tenderly on the cheek. “I know it hasn’t been easy coming back here, but if you hadn’t, where would I be?” He grabs my hand and squeezes it tightly.
Richard places his outstretched palm on the car window as if he’s trying to keep the outside at bay a moment longer. And I let him. So we sit and watch the people trickle in, looking for ourselves in the group—the angry girl in the torn jean jacket, in some ways indistinguishable from the woman I’d become, in other ways barely recognizable; the well-dressed man with the haunted look. But the people entering Wightman School do so singly, quietly; it’s only then that I realize how lucky Richard and I have been. To have found someone to help you traverse the rough bits, to tell a joke or hold your hand or whistle in the dark when life throws you a menacing curve. Suddenly, Richard throws open the car door and swings his good leg out. I hurry around to help him.
“Life is a banquet,” he says, grandly sweeping his good arm wide. The gesture knocks him slightly off-balance, and, smiling, I grab his arm to steady him. Richard can keep himself unobtrusive only so long. “But the problem with being a cook, Mira, is you never get to be a guest at your own party. Go back to New York, rebuild Grappa. Find a great apartment and paint it yellow. But don’t forget to pull up a chair and dig right in. You’re ready. We both are.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I hand him his cane, and he takes my arm as we begin our advance upon Wightman School, where, behind heavy oak doors, demons are lurking. This time, though, we’re both hopeful; if we tread carefully, hand in hand, we might just be able to leave them behind.
chapter 32
The meeting drains Richard, although apart from the minimal introductions required, he’d barely said a word.
When we arrive home, Fiona takes one look at him and says she thinks we’d better save our barbeque sauce tutorial for another day. Since my column is due to Enid tomorrow, I tell her I’ll take a shot at the recipe and let her know how it goes. She pats my hand, kisses Richard good night, and is gone. I help him get ready for bed, and then, by the glow of a single tiny lamp so as not to disturb him, I tape my mother’s recipe card to the hood of the stove and begin.
Although my mother was a talented cook, she wasn’t a careful recipe writer; not all good cooks are. There is an art to the written recipe, I’ve only lately begun to discover. Assume your reader only knows so much. Deliver the information clearly and in small doses. Leave just enough ambiguity to allow for interpretation. Each cook needs to find the holes, the tiny gaps that allow her to improvise, to make the dish her own. My mother had left too much to the reader’s imagination, a shortcoming that could be overwhelming to the inexperienced cook; I find that there is much I need to add, but I try to tread lightly.
Whether by chance or design, my mother hadn’t allowed me to really know her, and so I’ve been left to piece her life together from the scraps she left behind. My mother hadn’t taught me to cook any more than she had taught me to be a mother, but I take comfort in the fact that I’ve still managed to learn something from her by looking in the holes.
It’s wel
l after 2 a.m. by the time I’ve cleaned up the kitchen and e-mailed my column to Enid, but I’m not ready to sleep. I make a cup of tea and am about to grab a couple of Bruno’s cookies when I notice a small brown paper sack propped up by the cookie jar, on which Ben has written the following in his neat block script: Have you considered cacao nibs? I bet you haven’t! Ben. Fiona must have forgotten to mention he stopped by.
Inside the bag are a couple dozen hazelnut cookies and a small plastic bag filled with what looks like mouse droppings. I open the package and drop a couple onto my tongue. They taste a little like chocolate, deeply flavored, thick, and somewhat bitter. But the aftertaste is something entirely different, sweeter, fuller, and much more complex, something you couldn’t have predicted from their first gustatory impression. I pop one of Bruno’s cookies in my mouth. Ben just might be on to something.
Enid returns my column to me first thing the next morning, bloodied with red “tracked changes.” But before I can so much as hit “accept changes,” she is on the phone.
“Since when have you become an armchair philosopher?” Enid asks.
“I’m not allowed to be sentimental?”
“How about you stick to cooking?” Enid says, with a sigh.
“But I wrote three recipes.”
“Which look fine, but why tell them to look for the holes? What holes? I don’t get it. It’s too abstruse. Cooking is not supposed to be abstruse,” Enid says.
“Okay, I’ll fix it,” I tell her.
“No, I’ll just fix it,” she snaps. “It’ll be easier.”
“Okay. You fix it.”
“Listen,” Enid says quietly. “We need to meet. Next Monday, one o’clock. Bistro Rive Gauche. Do you know it?”
“Sure,” I tell her, even though I don’t. “Why? What’s up?”
Enid hesitates. “Nothing. Nothing’s up. Just be there, okay?”
I hang up the phone, trying to ignore the heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was something in Enid’s voice, something businesslike and distant, when she is usually friendlier in a brash, newspapery sort of way. I suspect I know what’s coming.
I’m about to be fired.
Which, for some reason, troubles me. I am about to quit anyway, so there really isn’t any reason why it should bother me.
Who am I kidding? I’m no writer. Enid has to rewrite practically everything I send her because I can barely string two sentences together. Most of the time, though, she’s been reasonably pleasant about it, quietly correcting my errors of spelling, punctuation, and parallel construction—whatever the hell that is—like some good-natured grammar fairy.
Maybe it’s the idea of failing at something, or letting someone down—particularly Enid, whom I like. Or maybe it’s the completely unlikely fact that I actually like writing my columns. Until I started doing it, I didn’t really feel like I had much to say. Now, the idea that people might open their paper on a Thursday morning, read one of my recipes, and head out to the grocery store, makes me happy. It’s not the same feeling I get from nailing the missing component in a particularly complex recipe, or constructing a beautiful and perfectly balanced plate, but still it feels good.
I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to write the column from New York, as Michael had suggested, but I realize it will be too hectic, with moving back and getting settled, not to mention the fact that I’ll have to hit the ground running at Grappa. I’ll just beat Enid to the punch and resign. I think of calling her back and doing it over the phone, but it seems like the kind of thing I should do in person.
I’m up to my elbows in cookie dough when the bank calls to tell me I have been approved for my loan to cover the initial AEL investment, which is a relief because the closing is scheduled for now just a week away. I call Jerry Fox, who agrees to have his colleague review the settlement sheet before I sign it. He assures me that I don’t need to attend the closing if the terms are approved and I return the signed and notarized papers in advance of the meeting next Thursday. We’ve just finished running down the last minute checklist of things to do and are about to hang up when Jerry says, “Oh, two boxes of documents showed up this morning from AEL addressed to you and somebody named—hang on”—I can hear Jerry rifling through his messages—“Ruth Bernstein. What’s up with that?”
Marcus’s secretary must have screwed up and sent the backup documentation to Jerry’s office instead of to Ruth. I explain this to Jerry and ask him to forward the boxes to me.
“Mira, it is a lot of stuff. I’m not sure Avi will have the time to go through it before Friday. Not to mention it’s going to be expensive to copy. Are you sure you need them?”
“Don’t worry about the copies,” I tell him. “Just go ahead and FedEx them to me. And no need for Avi to take a look. Ruth can fill him in on anything he needs to know.” Why pay Jerry’s firm five hundred dollars an hour, when Ruth has volunteered to work for food?
“This Ruth knows what she’s doing?”
“She’s got an MBA from Wharton,” I tell him.
“Well, she’s going to have to be fast. The closing is next week.”
My next call is to Ruth. “What are you doing tomorrow night for dinner? How does chilled avocado soup followed by lobster paella sound?”
“Like it’s not on my diet,” Ruth answers.
“Okay, broiled oysters with chili and lime, steamed lobster, and avocado and grapefruit salad.”
“You working on your spa menu?”
“Kind of,” I tell her.
“What’s for dessert?”
“Two boxes of documents.”
Ruth laughs. “You figure out a way to make a sugar-free, fatfree, chocolate cheesecake, and I’m there.”
Of all the marvels of the modern world, there are few things that can rival a well-baked cookie and a cup of tea, served in the part of the afternoon when the spirit begins to flag. Part respite, part distraction, part pure fun, it restores the body and soul and whets the appetite for the evening meal.
I’ve spent the afternoon working on duplicating Bruno’s hazelnut cookie recipe and have finally found a version I like. I serve Richard a few, along with a cup of tea in his favorite antique Wedgwood cup, then pack up a couple of dozen for Fiona and my father. And, because this version owes much to Ben, I put a few in a bag and pour a tall glass of iced tea and go hunting for him on the fifth floor.
It isn’t hard to find him. The double doors on the corner loft are ajar, construction materials litter the entryway, and Bruce Springsteen is wailing from an iPod dock in the kitchen. No one answers when I knock, so I just walk in. Ben is sunning himself on the balcony, his feet up against the railing, reading the newspaper.
“Hard at work, I see,” I tease, handing him the iced tea.
“Ah, the joys of being an hourly employee,” he says, squinting up at me, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun. “Actually, I’m waiting for the plumbing inspector. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago. I thought you might be him. Hey, did you get my note?”
“I did, thanks.”
“I was thinking, the texture’s the key to that cookie. Sure, cacao nibs are ugly-looking, but they have an interesting texture. I had to look pretty hard to find them. Anyway, I thought it might be worth a try, that is if you’re still hung up on recreating the recipe,” he says.
“Here,” I tell him, holding out the paper bag. “They’re nothing like Bruno’s, though.” I smile at him.
Ben takes a cookie from the bag and holds it between his thumb and forefinger, examining it like it’s a rare geologic specimen. “They’re chocolate,” he says, surprised.
“Actually, I flavored them with espresso powder. Like I said, totally different from Bruno’s.”
“But I thought that was the point—to duplicate his recipe,” he says, taking a bite.
“It usually starts out like that, but experiment enough, let the ingredients speak to you, and you can end up with something completely different. Sometimes something
you like even better.”
He chews his cookie slowly, thoughtfully. “Complex, interesting; a cookie like this keeps you on your toes,” he says, holding it aloft and looking at me, one eyebrow raised, his lips twitching as if he’s trying not to smile.
He pats the small expanse of concrete next to him and holds out the bag to me. “Can you stay a minute? Is Chloe okay?”
“Sure, Richard’s watching her for a few minutes,” I tell him, sitting down.
“So, I never asked you, how was New York?”
I rest my head against the balcony’s back wall. The late afternoon sun has warmed the bricks, and I can feel their heat in my hair and through the thin cotton of my shirt.
“It was—complicated,” I tell him.
Ben turns sideways to consider me. “When are you leaving us?” he asks, taking a sip of tea.
“A few weeks, maybe. I’m not exactly sure when.”
Ben nods. “Miss the big city, do you?”
I shrug. “It’s my restaurant. I’ve got a chance to get it back. It’s what I want. What I’ve always wanted,” I tell him.
“Pittsburgh can’t compare to New York, in terms of the dining experience.” Ben winks at me as he raises his iced tea glass to his lips, his pinky outstretched at an exaggerated angle.
“Pittsburgh has its share of great restaurants. It’s no New York, but there’s more to it than meets the eye,” I tell him. “It’s a great town. Look at Bruno’s—one of the truly great bakeries in any city. There’s—”
Aftertaste Page 36