Tender at the Bone

by Ruth Reichl

  That night I had a dream. I was a little girl with long blonde curls wearing a white dress with a blue sash. The sun was shining and we were having a lawn party. Where were we? Behind us was a vast mansion and the lawn sloped gently down to a river. A small orchestra dressed entirely in white played beautiful music. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and people kept pulling up in horse-drawn carriages.

  I was cooking in a gazebo, standing on a chair in front of the stove. But I was not alone: Mrs. Peavey and Alice were there too. Alice dipped oysters into a bowl of eggs and gave them to Mrs. Peavey, who dipped them in breadcrumbs and handed them to me. I lowered the oysters into the hot fat, and waited for them to come bobbing to the surface. As they did, I snatched them from the fat and handed them to the waiters lined up behind me with empty trays.

  A woman was hiding behind the stove, staring at my every move. She made me nervous. Then she stood up and I could see that it was Rachel Rubenstein. Or was it my mother? Alice looked at her disdainfully and then, as if she were a troublesome puppy, said, “Scat now. Shoo. Go away.” And the woman simply vanished.

  I reached for the next batch of fried oysters. But they floated away from me and, one by one, lifted themselves out of the oil and into the air. They flew to a man in the distance, who was wearing a tuxedo. The golden puffs circled him once and then settled softly onto the silver tray he was holding with white-gloved hands.

  It was Henry. He turned and handed the tray to the waiter behind him, who was wearing a sadly rumpled tuxedo. “Mr. Izzy T looks ridiculous in black tie,” I thought as Henry came toward us. He bowed solemnly and then, taking Alice on one arm and Mrs. Peavey on the other, led them gently away.

  When I woke up the sun was spilling across my face like a caress. It radiated behind my eyelids, all shiny and gold. I stretched luxuriously as a sense of well-being flooded through me. I splashed cold water on my face, threw on some clothes, and went downstairs.

  The mess in the house seemed to have multiplied while I slept. “She was up all night,” said Dad sadly. “She’s emptied out every closet. Now she’s gone to have the other samovar made into a lamp.” He shook his head morosely.

  “Sit down,” I said. “Don’t worry.” I made coffee and orange juice and put out the rolls for breakfast. “The party will be fine.” I held up my glass and clinked it against his. “Cheerio,” I said. “Have a nice day. I’ll drive you to the station.”

  I came back, did the dishes, and sat down to think about the food. I tried to remember Aunt Birdie’s wedding menu, to think of the dishes she liked best. Fried oysters, of course, to begin. And a salad. And then? There had been salmon with lobster sauce at the wedding, but Mom didn’t have a fish poacher. I had a sudden inspiration and called the fish market. Of course, they said, they’d be happy to poach salmon for me. As many as I liked. I could pick them up just before the party. If I baked the cake ahead of time and made the salad dressing, all I’d have to do on the day of the party was wash lettuce, make a sauce for the salmon, and fry the oysters. It would be fine: Mom could ask a thousand people.

  Feeling entirely calm and collected I turned to the most pressing problems. I called plumbers to fix the dishwasher and gardeners to repair the damage to the lawn. I rented tables and chairs. I ordered champagne. And then I turned to tackle the driveway.

  I was actually enjoying myself. And if Mom didn’t ruin it, we would have a good party.

  Mom disinherited me five times in the next seven days. Most of the time I didn’t care. Fueled by the dream, I worked steadily and methodically, cleaning the house room by room, enjoying pulling order out of all that mess. My mother was furious.

  “You can’t give that away!” she screamed one day, following me out the driveway where I was making a pile for the Goodwill. “That’s my mother’s table.”

  “Fine,” I said, “where would you like to put it?” She stood, speechless, eyeing me warily.

  “You have three choices,” I said. “You can find a place for it in the house. You can give it to the Goodwill. Or you can rent a storage locker for everything you want to keep.”

  “You’re so, so, so …” she sputtered.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “So cold!” she finally managed. “Nothing fazes you. You have no heart. You loved olives when you were little. Did you know that? Lemons too. When you were a baby we’d come into the bedroom and find you in your crib, sucking lemons. If I had known then that you were going to turn into such a sourpuss I would have left.”

  “I’m sure you would have,” I said. “Will you help me polish the silver? I’d like to put it away.”

  “You polish it,” she said. “I have important things to do.” And she flounced off to make telephone calls. “Just wait,” she called over her shoulder, “you’ll see what it’s like. Manic depression is inherited, you know. I wasn’t like this when I was your age. You’ll probably end up just like me.”

  “This is not my real life,” I repeated to myself, over and over like a mantra. “Only four more days. I can take it.” My mother did everything to create chaos, but for the first time in my life I refused to join her. When she called the fish store and canceled the salmon (“What a ridiculous expense!”) I didn’t fight. I simply took a check to the store and paid ahead of time.

  “I thought you were supposed to be such a great cook,” Mom shouted when she found out what I had done. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re ordering the cake too!”

  “It’s cheaper than buying all new baking pans,” I replied. Stupidly. This gave Mom an opportunity to discuss my shockingly profligate behavior in giving everything to the Goodwill. “I’m sure there were cake pans in those boxes,” she said.

  But Mom’s mood was changing. She thrived on chaos and as the house became neater she began to deflate like a balloon, growing more docile with each passing day. Three days before the party she actually asked what she could do to help. We polished silver and washed plates. We planned flower arrangements. I thought we were having a pleasant afternoon, but the next day she refused to get out of bed.

  “You’ve done a lovely job,” said Dad, running his hand across the freshly polished table. “You’re very efficient. But can’t you make your mother feel more a part of it?” Now that I had rescued him he was not entirely pleased; I don’t think he knew how much he enjoyed the tumult Mom created.

  The morning of the party, Mom said she wasn’t feeling well enough to come. She would just be a nuisance. She wandered morosely among the tables on the lawn and looked at the freshly washed salad greens. She reached out to touch the breaded oysters waiting to be fried. When Dad came back from the fish store she noted that the salmon were beautifully decorated. And then she went back to bed. We should enjoy ourselves without her, she said. She pulled the covers over her head and added miserably, “No one will miss me.”

  Between us Dad and I coaxed her out of the covers. When I had zipped her into her pretty purple party dress and Dad had brushed her hair she actually looked lovely. But she just sat at her dressing table saying she wished she were dead.

  Then Aunt Birdie came up the walk and Dad went out and pinned a corsage to her dress. The guests began to arrive and the boys I had hired to tend bar began pouring champagne. I started frying oysters and as the first tray went out to the living room I heard a low murmur of approval. Followed by my mother’s laugh. Relieved that she had pulled herself together, I concentrated on getting each oyster out of the oil at the perfect moment. I tossed the salad and took the salmon out of the refrigerator; things were clicking along.

  When I went out to the living room, Aunt Birdie was in the middle of her favorite story, surrounded by admirers. “And then the bus driver made me get out my identification to prove that I was entitled to the senior citizen fare. And when he looked at it he turned to everyone on the bus and said, ‘Can you believe it? This woman is almost a hundred years old!’ And the whole bus burst into applause.”

  She smiled with the shee
r delight of it all. Then she looked up, saw me, and said, “Those oysters were perfect. Alice would certainly have been proud.”

  As she spoke I had a quick mental image of the three of us—me, Aunt Birdie, and Alice—dancing around her warm, crowded apartment. I remembered how we had stopped, suddenly, and I heard my father’s voice saying, “They certainly didn’t prepare her very well for the real world.”

  And then I heard Alice’s voice saying, “He married two of them,” and I looked at my mother and understood. I went over to Aunt Birdie and bent to kiss her cheek. She smelled like lilacs.

  “Thanks,” I murmured.

  Aunt Birdie looked startled. “For what?” she wanted to know.

  “For everything,” I said. Because I had just realized that, whatever they may have done to Hortense, Alice and Aunt Birdie had done extremely well by me. They had prepared me for my world.

  The next day my parents drove me to the train. “Thanks for coming, Pussycat,” my mother said. “You certainly were a big help. I’m not sure I could have done the party without you.” She smiled happily. And then, as if it had just occurred to her she added, “I think that was almost as good as the engagment party I gave for Bob.”

  KEEP TASTING

  That fall I decided to become a caterer. Fate intervened. When I got back to Berkeley I was offered a new job.

  One of The Swallow’s steady customers had become an editor at a new San Francisco magazine. He called me and asked, “Can you write as well as you can cook?” I said I wasn’t sure, but that I had always liked writing. “Fine,” he said, “how would you like to try out as our restaurant critic?”

  I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I was willing to try. To my surprise I had a lot of help. When I walked into La Colombe Bleu a waiter was standing at a table boning a fish, and without a moment’s warning Marielle materialized at his side, casting a critical eye on his every move. Maurice was right behind her, assessing the decor. Monsieur du Croix appeared with the soup; lifting the spoon to my lips, I heard his voice in my ear. The wait for the entrées was long—too long—and I suddenly remembered that coffee shop in Indiana where Mac and I could not get served. And then I thought of Henry’s restaurant war, and wondered if there was a Rolf in the kitchen who just hated us on principle. My Swallow friends were there too, Antoinette sniffing at the store-bought bread and Judith lamenting the poor quality of the vinegar. Not to mention Nick, who was there in the flesh, casting a jaundiced eye on the prices. With this chorus of voices the review practically wrote itself.

  “You were born to do this,” said the editor when I turned the piece in.

  “No,” I said softly, “but I was very well trained.”

  Suddenly I was making real money, more than I had ever imagined. To celebrate, Doug and I applied for our first credit card. Restaurant criticism, I thought, is going to be fun.

  There was just one shadow over this project: each time I picked up a wine list I felt like a fraud. A restaurant critic ought to be beyond hearty burgundy.

  And then one day, in search of a Chinese restaurant, I stumbled into Kermit Lynch’s shop. I opened the door; it was cool and dark inside, and smelled like spilled wine. Cartons were stacked on the floor, hundreds of them, and way in the back a slight man with curly brown hair and a scruffy beard stood by a makeshift desk, watching me. I could feel his eyes on my back as I went up and down the aisles looking at the wine in the cartons and repeating the names to myself. The words were beautiful. I reached for a bottle, picked it up, and stroked the label.

  “It’s not fruit,” said the man. “You can’t tell anything by squeezing it.”

  I blushed, trying desperately to remember my limited vocabulary of wine. I found myself plucking words out the air, heard myself ask, “What brix were these grapes when they were picked?” I babbled on about legs and noses. Kermit responded gravely to all my questions but I didn’t want to push my luck. I bought a couple of two-dollar bottles and fled.

  At home I discovered that the wine tasted a lot better than the stuff we had been buying. And at these prices even Nick refrained from making snide comments. I went back the next day, and the next.

  Kermit warmed up after a while, steering me toward wines he thought I might like. He didn’t seem to mind that I only bought the cheapest bottles, and he gave me mysterious discounts that I never questioned. He was passionate about wine and wanted others to love it too.

  “How do you decide which wines to buy?” I asked him once.

  “I have my methods,” said Kermit. “I go into small towns in France, sit in bistros, and ask, ‘Who makes good wine around here?’ My French isn’t that great and it’s hard work. Not to mention a lot of driving. But I find good wines that nobody else is importing.”

  I had never met anybody who literally put his money where his mouth was, gambling on his own good taste. I wanted to watch him work. One night I asked him over for dinner, made beef bourguignonne with a bottle of Volnay I had bought at the shop, and asked if I could come on his next trip to France.

  Kermit looked startled. Then he shrugged and said, “Why not?”

  BOEUF À LA BOURGUIGNONNE

  3 cups red burgundy (1 750-ml. bottle)

  2 tablespoons cognac

  2 onions, sliced

  2 carrots, sliced

  Sprig of parsley

  Bay leaf

  1 clove garlic, peeled

  10 black peppercorns

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 pounds beef chuck, cut in 2-inch cubes

  4 tablespoons olive oil

  Salt

  Pepper

  ¼ pound slab bacon, cut in cubes

  2 onions, chopped coarsely

  3 tablespoons flour

  1 cup beef broth

  1 tablespoon tomato paste

  3 cloves garlic, crushed

  ¼ cup butter

  1 pound mushrooms, sliced

  Parsley

  Make a marinade of first 9 ingredients. Add beef, cover, and leave in the refrigerator for 2 days. When ready to prepare, preheat oven to 300°.

  Strain the meat and vegetables from the marinade, reserving marinade. Dry the meat with paper towels.

  Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet and brown beef pieces, a few at a time, removing to a bowl with slotted spoon when browned on all sides. Season with salt and pepper.

  Cook bacon until lightly browned. Remove with slotted spoon and add to reserved beef. Cook onions in bacon fat until lightly browned but not crisp. Remove and add to reserved meat.

  Pour off remaining fat. Add ½ cup marinade to skillet and bring to boil, stirring to remove crisp bits from bottom of pan. Pour back into reserved marinade.

  Heat remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in casserole with a cover and add onion and carrot from marinade, stirring until soft. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until it turns brown. Keep stirring as you add the reserved marinade and the broth. Return meat and vegetables to pan, add tomato paste, crushed garlic, salt, and pepper and bring to a boil. Cover tightly and set in a 300° oven for 3 hours. Stir occasionally, adding water if needed.

  Meanwhile, melt butter in skillet and cook mushrooms until lightly browned.

  When meat is cooked, stir in mushrooms and simmer on top of stove for 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with boiled potatoes.

  Serves 4.

  I changed trains at Dijon, leaving the Paris express for a small ancient rail car with hard wooden seats. As it rolled slowly through the lovely landscape I stared out the window at towns whose names I had seen only in books: Vougeot, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaune.

  I climbed down from the train and had a moment of panic: Kermit was not there. Then I saw a large round man with a big black beard holding a sign with my name printed clumsily across it.

  “C’est moi,” I said, relieved.

  “You speak French!” he said happily. He had a deep voice and a wonderful rolling accent. He led me to a deux-chev
aux as beat up as my Volvo; the seats were torn and the car smelled as if it had been bathed in wine. Bottles rattled around on the floor, clanking each time he touched the accelerator.

  We drove through the narrow streets, bumping across cobblestones and navigating around ancient houses with spanking new Mercedes parked in the driveways. “Regardez-moi ça,” he said, grunting disapprovingly at the offending new cars. He pointed a stubby finger. “Every year the wines double in price. It just can’t go on.” Each time we passed a new car he pointed and looked glum.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “Where’s Kermit?”

  “He is waiting for you with the duc de Magenta. You know, there are only fourteen dukes left in France.”

  “Really?” I asked, impressed. He nodded, examined me carefully, and asked, “Do you know how to eat?”

  I said I thought so.

  “Good,” he replied, “you will have to.”

  The duke was a disappointment, a rumpled figure in a torn turtleneck. His hair stood straight up in a cowlick that made me think of Dennis the Menace. Kermit was with him; they both shook my hand gravely, and then we went down to the dark, damp cellar. It smelled like mildew.

  A short, square man wearing the traditional blue smock of the French peasant was waiting, his feet planted among bottles of wine labeled simply “Puligny ’78” or “Montrachet ’78.” In the dim, golden light he looked as if he had just stepped out of a painting by Breughel. “Give them some Puligny,” said the duke.

  Kermit swirled the wine, sniffed it, then took a sip and gurgled it through his teeth. I did my best to imitate him. “I believe in low-alcohol wines,” said the duke, “so the wine can be felt.” He took an appreciative sip of his own wine and then, one by one, we each went to a different corner to spit on the floor. When we had finished, we poured what was left in our glasses back into the barrel and Monsieur Blanc carefully chased each drop with the bung.

  The duke led us deeper, down into another cave where ancient electric heaters rested on the dirt floor, keeping the red wines comfortable. “In general,” the duke said solemnly, “I think the whites are better vinified than the reds.” I didn’t have the faintest idea what he meant, but I nodded. To me the Chassagne-Montrachets seemed intense and the Auxey-Duresses voluptuous, but what I liked best was a fragrant Volnay that smelled like raspberries.