Tender at the Bone

by Ruth Reichl

  We did not ask where we were going, or for how long. But when Milton said, “Tuscany is beautiful this time of year,” it occurred to me that we would not be back for dinner. We drove north for a long time and then headed into the mountains, stopping for lunch at a house by the side of the road.

  The dining room was large and square, with bare walls and stone floors that held the cold. We were the only guests. The proprietor rushed in to light a fire in the enormous fireplace and we drew our chairs so close we were sitting almost inside it. Smoke began to fill the room, burning our eyes and attacking our lungs.

  “It will get better,” said Milton optimistically. “The wood is just a little damp.”

  The man came back, wearing an apron this time, carrying a bottle of wine, some glasses, and a wheel of bread. He began hacking slices off the bread and waved the smoke away until he could see the grill in the middle of the fire. He set the sliced bread on top of it and went off again. When he came back he was carrying a clove of garlic, a bottle of olive oil, and a big cracked bowl. He danced into the fire and snatched the bread from the flames, turned the charred side up and left the bread for the count of ten. Then he pulled the slices off the fire, rubbed them with the clove of garlic, brushed them with olive oil, and heaped them with the contents of the bowl.

  He handed us each a slice. “Bruschetta with chicken livers,” said Milton, taking a bite. “Now you will see why I have brought you here.”

  It was extraordinarily good, the livers tasting faintly of anchovy, capers, and lemon, but mostly of themselves. I had a second slice, and then a third. I was feeling warmer and the smoke was starting to clear. A sense of languorous well-being came over me.

  By the time the proprietor came back with bowls of steaming pasta mixed with nothing but garlic, oil, and cheese, the smoke had cleared entirely. The proprietor said something to Milton and left.

  “He says,” Milton translated, “to eat slowly. He has gone to catch the trout and the fish are not biting well.”

  “You mean he’s going to catch our lunch now?” I asked. “It could take hours!”

  “We have time,” said Milton mildly. “We are not expected until dinner.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, taking a bite of the pasta. The strands of spaghetti were vital, almost alive in my mouth, and the olive oil was singing with flavor. It was hard to imagine that four simple ingredients could marry so perfectly.

  “To visit my friend Gillian,” said Milton. “She lives in the mountains, in the most beautiful town I know.”

  I was glad there was a woman.

  When we walked outside it did not feel so cold. We drove up for a few kilometers and then around a deep curve. As the tires squealed I began to see creatures carved into the rocks around us. I rubbed my eyes and wondered if I had had too much wine at lunch. I looked at Milton but his eyes were firmly focused on the road. Was it my imagination?

  Then I looked at Doug and knew that it was not. We both stared, mesmerized, out the window; it was as if some magic force had waved a wand across the countryside, liberating animals from the rocks in which they were trapped.

  Milton drove on, oblivious. The creatures were becoming more fantastic. None of us said anything until we passed a small house. A wiry man was seated on a bench in front, so still he might have been another stone creature. Then I noticed that one hand held a chisel and the other a mallet, and that there was a rock in front of him. The stonecarver did not look up as we drove past but Doug shouted, “Stop!” so loudly that Milton stepped on the brakes and we skidded into the side of the road.

  “What?” he asked.

  Doug just opened the door and got out. Milton and I followed. The stonecarver stood up as we walked toward him; he was small and so weathered it was impossible to tell how old he was. As he greeted us the chisel never stopped moving against the rock. Then he put it down and beckoned. We followed him around the hillside and deep into the woods.

  He led us to a table made out of a living tree, surrounded by carved benches. A handful of walnuts sat on the table and occasionally a squirrel would dart out of the tree, snatch one, and skitter off, to sit above us, chattering.

  It was as if the whole place was enchanted. I looked at the stone rabbits peeking out from underneath the benches and the stone birds frolicking in the trees and knew that I was in the presence of a great artist.

  And then I looked at Milton. He seemed peaceful, as if he had found something he had lost. For the first time since he had laughed at Hilly’s jokes he looked truly happy. I felt a great surge of happiness myself: he had taught me about generosity and we had, finally, given him something of value.

  “Spumante,” cried the sculptor, leaping from the bench and disappearing into a small cave. He returned carrying a thick green glass bottle; it was his own champagne, made from his own grapes.

  “Auguri!” he said as he pulled the wire cage off the cork.

  The cork leaped from the bottle and rocketed into the air, propelled by every drop of liquid. It gushed up into a furious fountain and splashed down, showering us with wine.

  At that precise moment the bells in all the churches on the mountain began to ring madly in the thin winter air. It was Christmas in Italy; it was time to go home. Doug put his arms around me and I looked at Milton, hoping that his loneliness was about to end.

  Milton raised his empty glass and said, “We can drink the music.”

  PARADISE LOFT

  We arrived in New York with ten dollars and the address to the loft we had agreed to share with Pat. She had told us the place was somewhere near Chinatown, so we took the subway from the airport to Canal Street, shouldered our backpacks, and started walking north along the Bowery. It was cold and gray and we didn’t talk much, but as the Chinese shops started to fade away we both became increasingly depressed. Once we had crossed Delancey the only other people on the street were men who staggered out of taverns to pass out in the snow. Each time a tavern door swung open it burped the fetid smell of stale beer and unwashed bodies into the street. It was not encouraging.

  “This is Rivington?” Doug said, turning into the filthiest street we had passed. A man was curled up in the doorway of Number 4, and we had to squeeze around him to ring the bell. Sure enough, Pat’s long blonde hair came swinging out a window as a key wrapped in a glove sailed down five stories.

  We trudged up. Pat had painted the door red and pasted a neighborhood poster on it. DOPE IS FOR DOPES, it said. DON’T BE A DOPE. Underneath it said, WELCOME TO PARADISE LOFT. We were home.

  Bums trolled the sidewalks beneath our fire escape; the one who slept in our doorway had an artificial leg that he removed before he went to sleep each night. Sometimes we’d come down in the morning and find the leg but not the man and then we’d carefully take it inside so no one would steal it. The bodega across the street, which smelled like Lysol and insect spray, blared music night and day. In the summer, when we threw the windows open to try and get a little air, what we got was “Me and Julio Down by the School Yard” playing endlessly, the music weaving through our dreams.

  The most visible people on our block were bums, car thieves, and Puerto Rican grandmothers. The old ladies sat in second-story windows, keeping a careful eye on the children playing stoopball. They ignored the men drinking La Boheme, but they watched as the thieves slowly removed salable parts from the stolen vehicles lining the block. The men kept at it until the cars were reduced to empty carcasses that collected trash, growing larger and riper with each passing week. When there was enough garbage to be annoying someone would torch it, creating a blaze the fire department could not ignore. The trucks arrived with their sirens blaring to tow the burning hulks away. As they disappeared around the corner, everyone on the block came out to stand on the sidewalk and cheer. It was like a party.

  My parents, of course, were horrified by our choice of address. Even Aunt Birdie protested, “But Rivington Street is where my parents lived before they moved to the country, to Ha
rlem. Why would you want to live there?”

  For one thing, it was cheap. For another I was happy to live in a place my mother considered too dangerous to visit. Doug appreciated the proximity to Canal Street, where a sculptor could buy everything he needed, and Pat liked being near all the fabric shops on Orchard Street. But to me the best thing about the neighborhood was the food.

  In 1971 lower Manhattan was a cook’s paradise. The Mafia mothers still inhabited Little Italy and if I climbed down the five flights of stairs and turned right I could cross the Bowery and find beautiful old women standing in little shops strung with salami. If I turned left outside my door I’d find myself in a world of old men speaking Yiddish and choosing live kosher chickens. Due south was Chinatown. Then, as now, it was impenetrable, but that didn’t keep me away.

  Some days I would leave the loft to get a stick of butter or a loaf of bread and be gone for hours, wandering dreamily in and out of grocery stores. The neighborhood was in transition; as the older residents moved out, students and artists moved in. Most did their shopping at the supermarket, leaving the merchants in the aging stores so lonely they would spend half an hour answering a simple question. And if you wanted a recipe all you had to do was ask innocently, “What do you think I should do with this piece of veal?”

  MR. BERGAMINI’S

  SLICED VEAL BREAST

  2 tablespoons butter

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  2 onions, chopped

  4 cloves garlic, chopped

  3½- to 4-pound bone-in breast of veal

  3 or 4 sprigs thyme

  Salt

  Pepper

  1 cup white wine

  Melt butter in olive oil in a large, covered sauté pan. Add onions and sauté about 10 minutes, until translucent. Remove onions with slotted spoon and save.

  Add garlic, and when it starts to sizzle add the meat, skin side down. Cook until very brown, turn and brown the other side. Add thyme, salt, and pepper. Turn again. Add wine and sautéed onions, bring to a boil, cover loosely, and lower heat.

  Cook about 2 hours, turning every half hour. If meat sticks when turning, add a few more tablespoons of wine. Cook until very soft.

  Remove meat from pan and place on a carving board with ribs curving up. With your fingers work the bones out of the meat. Cut the meat, on the diagonal, into thin slices.

  Deglaze pan with a few tablespoons of water, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Pour the sauce over the veal and serve.

  Serves 4.

  NOTE: Bone-in breast of veal is now a fairly rare cut; you may have to ask your butcher to order it for you.

  Walking along Houston Street in the February gloom, I glanced down Allen, one of the dingier streets in the neighborhood. A large flag hung above one of the storefronts, the only spot of color on the block. As I drew closer I realized it was not a flag but a tattered quilt. I peered into the window below, but the glass was so grimy I couldn’t see anything. I pushed at the door and it gave with a groan.

  The room was filled with bolts of cloth, stacked right up to the ceiling; feathers floated everywhere. A small stooped man was sitting in the gloom, munching on a chicken leg. Down circled slowly in the dark air, landing on the man’s chicken, his hair, his stubbled face, his torn pants. He put down the chicken leg, watching indifferently as it settled onto a bolt of cloth and spread a puddle of grease across the surface. “You wanted?” he said.

  “Just looking,” I replied. He got up and picked up a red satin quilt. The work was intricate and he ran his food-stained hands lovingly across the surface. “Doll,” he said, “I make good quilts.”

  I hadn’t even known I wanted a quilt, but suddenly I did, desperately. “How much are they?” I asked. “Ah,” he said sadly, “A good quilt is not cheap. Thirty-five dollars; it’s the best I can do. Unless, of course, you wanted down. The price of down has gone up.”

  He showed me cloth and patterns, occasionally taking a bolt to the door so I could see it in the thin light that crept through the dirty, wired glass. After a while he picked up his chicken leg and began gnawing at it, ignoring the occasional feather. We were just settling on the color when the door burst open and three large Gypsy women came in. They swept into the store, bracelets clinking, looking like an illustration from a children’s book.

  The man kept eating, watching warily as the Gypsies surveyed the cloth. As they moved through the store an occasional bolt broke loose and rolled giddily into the aisle; before long the Gypsies were wading through a river of colored cloth.

  “You wanted?” he asked, his mouth full.

  “A quilt,” said the largest woman disdainfully, going up one narrow aisle and down another, fingering the fabrics. “Last time,” she said, “there was better cloth. Where’d it go to?”

  “Sold,” he said simply. She did not believe him. “Take me downstairs,” she commanded.

  A look of utter panic crossed his face. He glanced over at me. “You Jewish, doll?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer he threw me the keys. “Mind the store?” he said. It wasn’t really a question. He led the Gypsies down the stairs.

  It was a while before they came back, and a while more before the bargain was concluded. When they had gone the man brushed off an over-anxious feather and turned to me. He shrugged. “They bring me feathers, I make them quilts. A fair exchange is no robbery, but …”

  He was still talking about the Gypsies when the bell rang again and the door opened slightly. Feathers leaped into the burst of cool air and a shining yellow head swung into sight. “Is my quilt ready?” it asked hopefully.

  “Next Tuesday, doll, I promise,” said the man.

  “You’ve been saying that for a year,” said the voice.

  “Next Tuesday, doll,” he repeated. The door slammed shut, eloquent with rage and disappointment.

  I was to learn this routine well: Mr. Izzy T made a weekly promise that my quilt would be ready—it had to be ready—next Tuesday. After a year I had given up on ever getting the quilt, but by then my visits to Mr. Izzy T had become so much more than a business transaction that it really didn’t matter.

  I met the Superstar the same week as Mr. Izzy T, but that was no accident. We had friends who had friends who knew Andy Warhol and when they asked if we wanted to come to a party at The Factory we were ecstatic.

  Doug was ready to go at once but Pat and I had to dress. I put on a short, low-cut red dress, green tights, and high heels; if my long dark hair had been green I would have looked exactly like a poppy. Still, I was no competition for Pat, who could turn heads dressed in blue jeans. She was six feet tall, with the strong face and sturdy body of those Greek goddesses on the Acropolis. She was so striking and athletic that people always whispered, “Is that a man or a woman?” when she strode past. She enjoyed wearing exaggerated clothing to confuse them.

  For this night she donned one of her more fantastic outfits; Andy Warhol was her idol. In the espadrilles she had made out of number ten cans she was almost seven feet tall and she was wearing part of the “New York Woman” series she was designing for a show at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. This one, a parody of a model, had mouths where the breasts should have been and bracelets made of $100 bills (they weren’t real). Her earrings were fishing lures and her fake eyelashes stuck out six inches. “You look fabulous!” squeaked the Superstar, who was standing by the door when we walked in. “Who are you?” She swept Pat off to the other end of the room.

  The huge loft was filled with sweet smoke and people we didn’t know. Doug and I stood there self-consciously; it was awkward and not that much fun. But Andy Warhol was an Important Artist and there were a lot of famous people in the room. We were proud of ourselves for being there; it was why we had come to New York.

  I could have stayed all night, but Doug had a limited tolerance for a roomful of strangers. We were getting ready to leave when Pat came up to me looking flushed and happy. “You have to invite Jerry to dinner,” she pleade
d. “She’s a Superstar. And you have to cook something really great. She says Andy is looking for someone to do the costumes for his next movie. And she says she’ll introduce me!”

  Jerry walked into the loft and looked curiously around the space. She examined the kitchen shelves, which did not disguise the fact that they were built from wood scavenged from discarded industrial pallets and the oversized picnic table. She looked at the homemade sofa. She ran her hands across the decals we had plastered onto the refrigerator and most of the surfaces in the kitchen. She peered into the pots I was stirring. “You’re all SO creative,” she moaned, bending her head over the gas until I was afraid her black curls would burst into flames.

  I was making the gougère I had learned from Mrs. Peavey. It emerged from the oven looking fat and puffy and the Superstar took some down to the end of the loft where Pat was sitting at her sewing machine. She looked at Pat’s costumes; “I love them,” she squealed. “I know Andy will too!” And then she headed back to the kitchen for another piece of gougère. On the way she glanced at Doug’s sculpture.

  Abstract forms didn’t interest her, but men did. She looked appreciatively at Doug’s back and asked, “Did he marry you because you cook so good?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I bet you cooked and cooked for him until he finally popped the question,” she prompted. “Men really like women who can cook,” she continued wistfully. “I wish I knew how.”

  She stood watching as I washed lettuce, standing a little too close for comfort. When I moved back, she moved with me. “I bet my boyfriend, Rick, would be impressed if I could cook,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. She didn’t leave. I heard Pat’s sewing machine start up. Doug turned on the band saw. I bent down to remove the pie from the oven. The Superstar examined the high, snowy topping as if it were an alien creature and squealed, “Oooh, what’s that?” so loudly I almost dropped the pie.