Lorca buzzed right on time and I told myself, Don’t act like an idiot. She’ll want to unfind you if you do.
I let her in without saying so much as Who’s there? into the intercom. I knew what Dottie would have said: that I was asking to be shot point-blank in the head. Any last words? No, thank you. I’ve had two trillion years of listening to my own voice.
Lorca flew up the stairs like there was a fire down below. I heard her before I saw her. I wondered if the hurry had anything to do with me. I hoped. Her feet went pop pop pop.
When she saw me, she put her head down apologetically, as if she’d kept me waiting. She hadn’t. I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t.
“Are you taller?” I asked.
She gave a little laugh, and walked in. “No,” she said. “May-be.”
She didn’t say, bless her heart, that maybe it was me. That I was shrinking, which I was.
It amazed me how her face changed. Today her hair was back. Her face was longer. She wore white. Her face was brighter. She had a Band-Aid along the left side of her jaw and she seemed suddenly young—a child who’d fallen off a slide. During our first lesson, as I was salting the meat, I looked at her, her hands in her lap, chin up. She watched me as if peering into a tub of alligators at the zoo. I could have sworn she wasn’t a day over ten. But when she was leaving, right before she walked out the door, she zipped up her coat and let out a giant, weary puff of air, like she just had a little way to go, just one more push and then, finally, she could rest.
“Have you ever had shakrlama?” I said and my accent came out.
“No,” she said. “But I bet my mother will like it.”
“She will?” I asked.
“What is it?” she said. Bless her. She didn’t want to break my heart.
“Cookies,” I said. “Made with pistachio, rose water, and citrus, and each one stuffed with an almond.”
“She likes sweets,” Lorca said and I sighed out loud. I had no other plan, fool that I was. I was a million miles ahead of myself. The tables have turned, Joseph, I thought. Look who can’t keep up with her emotions now.
I moved into the kitchen, and Lorca followed. She climbed onto her stool in two graceful motions. She crossed her legs. She folded her hands in her lap, as if about to pray. Already, I was acting like this was our routine. I didn’t have the right. I couldn’t help it.
I piled two large lemons and one orange next to the juicer. We’d need at least that. I placed a tablespoon next to the rose water.
“Just one of these,” I said. “It’s possible to overdo it.”
From the cabinet, I took out the sugar, flour, baking powder, and vegetable oil.
“We’ll need flavorings,” I said and then wished I’d thought before opening my mouth. People here don’t call them flavorings but spices.
“Spices,” I said. “Cardamom first,” and I began going through the drawer, taking out one thing after the next. “And nigella. That’s the big secret.”
“It is?” Lorca said, and when she came around the counter asking if she could help find what we needed in the spice drawer, I felt like letting her in on the “secret” had lent an air of seriousness to the search.
I allowed her to take over not because I couldn’t do it myself, but because there was something nice about having someone else in the house moving things that for so long I’d been the only one to touch. After a while, you begin to wonder if your world actually exists. A tree falls in the forest. You smash a light bulb to be sure. I did that once, just to watch a nurse clean it up, and when she noticed me smiling, relieved, she got the wrong idea. “I’m not a cleaning lady,” she said and I apologized until my mouth was dry as burned pita.
“Here,” Lorca said, proud, holding up the canister to the light. “Nigella.”
“Brava,” I said and I plugged in the standing mixer.
“This is fancy,” she said, running her fingers over its shiny red paint.
“It was a gift,” I said. “From my husband. Believe it or not, his first job in America was at a bakery. He was the mixer. When we opened our restaurant, we didn’t have very much money. We skimped on things like gadgets and expensive tools. Anyway, we were so used to doing all that ourselves. Eventually, we got old and he bought me this thing. It’s as big as a car but a miracle worker. I can make anything without my fingers swelling. Pasta, bread, ice cream, sausage, you name it.”
“I know,” Lorca said. “Some days, my mother uses it to make giant batches of mayonnaise just because she likes it so much. Hers is silver.”
“And then all you eat is mayonnaise for a week?” I said, pretending that discussing her mother hadn’t fazed me.
“Sometimes,” she said, laughing. “Or sometimes, she’ll bring it to the restaurant and add in saffron or currants or anchovies.”
“Which restaurant?” I said.
“Her restaurant.”
“Your mother has a restaurant?”
“Sure,” Lorca said, and she started fiddling with the settings on the mixer.
There was silence as I considered how not to ask her why she was here, then. I wanted to, and, of course, I had a particular answer in mind. But it was obvious that she didn’t want to get into it. If she did, she would have. And she didn’t. How dare I leap to conclusions when even on a good day I could hardly put one foot in front of the other? I went through all that in my head to prevent myself from ruining a perfectly nice moment and asking her straight out. But I wondered—I couldn’t help it—if Lorca’s mother was a chef, what did Lorca need me for? Her mother could teach her, couldn’t she? Or perhaps, at the very least, one of her mother’s friends would be up for it? Surely, I thought, her mother could find someone less pathetic than me for this task. Unless.
And yet, my wild and crazy hopes aside, all this thinking was just a way of nipping in the bud the hope that had recently bloomed in me: that it was because of me, specifically, that Lorca was here. For some unique skill that I could pass along or because she liked me or at least enjoyed the lesson. Not just because she couldn’t find anyone better.
Perhaps having children is what makes a person feel needed. And because I’d never been needed by mine, I’d had to find other ways to be needed. First, by the restaurant. Is it terrible to say that I liked nothing more than a call on our day off? “Tell me again,” a waiter would say, “how you fold the napkins.” I’d flush with honor. Next, by Joseph; I found ways of making myself indispensable, keeping from him the secrets of how I made his shirts so soft, his coffee so thick, his immune system so powerful with my little concoction of herbs. There were times when I’d shove his belt to the back of the closet just so that he—having searched and searched to no avail—would kiss me when I unearthed it.
I couldn’t help it. Without Lorca, grandchild or not, I might never be needed again.
“There are some things I know how to cook,” Lorca said. “But all very French.”
I put my hand in front of my face as if to say there was no need to explain, but when she went on, I took my hand down quickly, hoping.
“And I know nothing about Iraqi food. Or Jewish food, even though I’m Jewish. My grandmother believes that takeout is the best invention since whiskey sours.”
“You’re funny,” I said, because I didn’t want to linger on the word grandmother, and I wanted her to know that she was funny, and I had a weak laugh. Joseph’s laugh made everyone feel like the star of a comedy routine.
“Well,” I said. “You’re not learning anything just futzing with that mixer.”
She put her feet together as if standing at attention. As I took some eggs out of the fridge, I nodded to the citrus.
“First,” I said, “we juice.”
As we went along, it became clearer and clearer to me that she was the daughter of a chef—so much so that I wondered how I’d not seen it before. I’d not given her the praise she deserved and wondered if I had let her down. She worked with a kind of conviction, I noticed, that seemed
well beyond her years. Her mother must have sat her down with a paring knife and a bag of lemons at age five, I thought. I stopped myself from asking her if that was the case. I imagined her calling me her grandmother.
Today was a quieter lesson than the first. I filled the air with compliments, not knowing what else to do, and I meant them.
“You’re excellent with that juicer,” I said. “It takes me hours just to turn it on.”
But there was a certain shyness that had come over Lorca, or pensiveness, that I didn’t know how to break through. I wondered if my asking about her mother had something to do with it.
When the cookies were in the oven and the countertop mostly cleaned off, Lorca sighed suddenly, out of nowhere. It was a giant-size sigh and caused her shoulders to heave forward when it passed. I thought perhaps I’d disappointed her, making something as humble as cookies and not having the right things to talk about. It occurred to me that maybe she’d come for a lesson in Iraqi history or a more comprehensive explanation of Jewish cuisine, but I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t trust myself to make the material fascinating enough to engage someone like her.
“Well,” she started. It was the beginning of an excuse. I could sense it. She had to be home, it was late, or she had studying to do. I dreaded her departure, the thick staleness of the apartment when no one was here but me. Everything about Lorca rejuvenated this place: her quick fingers; her happy socks; her voice, hoarse and deep, but as though it was just growing into itself, not as if it was cracking and decaying and old, like dried cement.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, though I wasn’t really asking. Iraqi Jews never really asked. I was already at the fridge.
When she said, “Yes!” I had to turn around and look at her to be sure I hadn’t dreamed it. “Starved!” she said.
I felt like I’d cracked the code.
Lorca sat on the stool again and rested her chin in her hands. I got a potholder from below the sink, embarrassed when I had to put my hand on my back to straighten up. I put up the kettle for tea. The burner panted twice before it lit.
I realized that I was hungry too—and exhausted. I hadn’t been so aware of myself in years. I took the plastic wrap off the bamia, spooned a mound into a bowl, and put it in the microwave. I noticed the perfect, equal shapes of the okra and pointed them out to Lorca.
“No,” she said. “They’re all messed up. I was just noticing that.”
I wanted to tell her otherwise but I wondered if she’d had enough of my bolstering for one night. I folded a napkin, polished a spoon, and refilled the pepper grinder with peppercorns. I turned to the stove, where the kettle had begun to scream.
“My grandmother used to say,” I said, “that a hungry stomach has no ears.”
I poured the boiling water into our glasses and began stirring even before adding honey.
“Is this,” I asked her, “how you make dressing?”
“Yes,” she said. “Emulsifying. But I can’t do it so quickly.”
I slowed down, made myself—for once—a bit less adept.
“Those are juice glasses,” she said. I smiled.
“Right,” I said. “This is how we drank it in Baghdad.”
I put down the steaming glass in front of her and wrapped the oven mitt around the bowl of bamia and brought that too, smelling it on the way.
“Heaven,” I said.
I watched her as she ate until I caught myself.
“I haven’t made this in years,” I said.
Lorca lifted her shoulders, cocked her head, asking why.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I should have. There’s a saying in Arabic: Bukra fil mish mish. ‘Tomorrow, when the apricots bloom.’ Or, in other words, maybe tomorrow. I kept thinking that. I’d do it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.”
I was thinking of Lorca, of cooking again. But I thought of Joseph too. No more tomorrows with him.
Lorca picked up her glass of tea and held it for only a second before wincing and nearly slamming it back down again. Her hands fanned out in front of her in a kind of spasm. It was so hot. Her eyes watered immediately.
“Oh no,” I whispered, taking it from her, pouring the tea into the thick mug, and passing it back.
“Here,” I said. “Don’t hurt yourself. Joseph had sensitive fingers too. But you should have seen him fillet a fish. We called him the maestro.”
We were quiet. Lorca blew into her tea. Finally, carefully, she drank it. I busied myself folding a dishtowel, checking on the cookies, collecting crumbs, checking on the cookies, readying a small tin with a layer of parchment paper, and checking on the cookies. And all the while, Lorca did not flee.
“Almost done,” I said, though they weren’t.
Lorca took a very deep breath. I felt like she wanted to say something. I stopped putzing around and tried to relax my face and in some way make myself easier to talk to.
“My mother ate an Iraqi dish once,” she began. There was a flutter in my stomach. “She loved it. She never loves anything. It was a long time ago.”
“Where?” I said, but I already knew the answer.
“At your restaurant,” Lorca said. More flutter.
“What?” I said.
“Masgouf,” she said. More more flutter.
“Who?” I said, not meaning to interrupt but following some kind of automatic logic when it felt like logic was quickly slipping away.
“My mother?” she said.
I gasped. I hadn’t wanted to leap to conclusions. And yet the conclusion was staring me in the face.
“Your mother,” I repeated. “At our restaurant.”
I was a little bit dizzy. I squeezed my hands into fists. I leaned back on my heels. I tried to slow down my thinking. There were so many people who passed through the restaurant. So very many faces and different ways of chewing—and wasn’t it something that Lorca’s mother had been one of those chewers so long ago, and now here was Lorca in my kitchen? The word that came to mind was relevant. That we—Joseph and I—were still relevant. The second word was baby. My baby.
“She loved it there,” Lorca said. “She went often and with my father, actually. She told me all about it. I wanted to tell you sooner but thought you might think I was a stalker, kind of. And I’m really not. I just know the restaurant meant a lot to her.”
“It did?” I said.
Until then, I realized, all the lives I’d lived felt very, very far away, once entirely tangible but now remote—like rooms of a bulldozed house. My life had become so small, so gathered in this apartment. When the restaurant closed, there were letters. At first. But then they stopped. There were visits from workers. Then they stopped too. Joseph and I went out less and less. We ordered in. Doctors came to us. I didn’t make an effort with friends. I didn’t bother renewing magazine subscriptions. The world didn’t skip a beat as we hibernated between these walls, as I waited for Joseph to get well again. We mattered to each other. It could be said that was the only real measure of our existence. We didn’t leave footprints in any snow. No cars waited for us to cross. Or, at least, very, very few.
“She said that the food was fabulous and the restaurant was really well appointed,” Lorca said, changing her tone to imitate what must have been her mother’s voice and using her words so I’d know exactly what she’d said.
I felt myself blush. The decorating had been my vision entirely. From soup to nuts, as they say.
“And that’s why you’re here,” I said, controlling myself. “Because you knew about me?”
“Not you exactly,” she said. My face must have fallen. “Well, actually, yes, you,” she said. “You and your husband owned the restaurant. You were the hostess and your husband the chef?”
“He was the host sometimes. We switched back and forth,” I told her. “We shared the duties.”
“Right,” Lorca said. “Well, my mother said that. And that’s how I found you.”
“Found me?” I said. “So you looked for me?”
> “Only a little bit,” she said, getting off the stool and taking a small step backward, her whole body recoiling with only the slightest movements. It was too much for her, my excitement. I was letting it get the best of me. Take full inhales, I told myself. Release full exhales.
“Right,” I said. “Just a little bit. Of course.” I acted casual, shaking my shoulders slightly, clasping my hands behind my back.
“I mean, I just looked you up. Or Blot did. He’s my friend, sort of. And then we found the flyers. It happened kind of on its own, I guess.”
“No problem,” I said, like a moron. It was my least favorite phrase and the only thing that came to mind.
“I wanted to know—the reason I’m here—if it would be all right . . .” Lorca said slowly. She shuffled her feet.
“Anything!” I said.
“If I asked you for the recipe? For the masgouf?” she said. Quickly, nervously, she began biting at her bottom lip.
“Oh,” I said. I gasped. “Of course I wouldn’t mind. It would be an honor.”
“It’s for my mother,” she said. “For her birthday.”
“When’s her birthday?” I asked. I must have shouted it. Lorca looked surprised, then embarrassed.
“Well, not for a while. It’s a long story.”
“All right,” I said. I would push no further, and the truth was, a part of me didn’t want to know. I was living on hope. “A story for a rainy day,” I said.
Finally, I could take a deep breath. I felt my feet firmly planted on the ground. I looked out the window to reacquaint myself with the world.
“It’s been so long since I’ve even thought about masgouf,” I said. “But it really was delicious.”
I wrote the recipe in such careful handwriting that my hands shook. I threw it out. I wrote it again. It wasn’t just that my writing had become sloppy and chaotic in my old age, but that it felt like, with every movement of the pen, something deep and visceral was being stirred inside of me. Something that hadn’t been shifted in years. There was an overgrowth, a protective layer, and I was afraid of shifting too quickly, setting something loose that was watery and sour-smelling underneath.
Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots Page 15