The Slippery Year

by Melanie Gideon

  I tell him I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that he has just been lecturing me on the proper way to prepare a leg of lamb: cut slits in the meat and insert cloves of garlic; swat with branches of fresh rosemary and thyme; brush with olive oil and marinate in a nice Bordeaux.

  “We have to stop at Lucky’s,” I say once we get in the car.

  “But we just went to Trader Joe’s.”

  “Yes, but I need rice pudding now,” I say. “To recover. From going to Trader Joe’s.”

  “Have some almonds,” says Ben from the backseat.

  “No, I need rice pudding.”

  “What about the éclairs?” says my husband.

  “You can stick a candle in rice pudding,” I tell him.

  “But Mom, you need forty-four candles,” says Ben. “There’s no way you can fit forty-four candles in a container of rice pudding.”

  “Doesn’t that place drive you crazy?” I say. “Does it drive anybody else crazy but me?”

  Ben shrugs.

  My husband says, “You were mad when she came.”

  “Well, could that lady have taken any longer? Did she have to tell us about her son’s shellfish allergy?”

  “I was talking about Julia,” says my husband.

  I hate going to the grocery store because I am not a cook. Most evenings in my house we scrounge and eat standing up around the island. I am embarrassed about this fact, but I can’t seem to do anything about it. When dinnertime rolls around I am uninterested, uninspired and usually a little bit mad.

  “You were mad when she came,” my husband recalls, as we pull out of the Trader Joe’s parking lot. “You seemed really irritated.”

  “Why would I be irritated that Julia came to our house for dinner? People would die to have Julia Child come to their home. They would pay a lot of money for that,” I say. “Like if they won dinner with her. In an auction,” I clarify.

  He frowns. “I don’t know, but you were,” he says.

  A few minutes later I ask him what I served. If Julia Child came to your house for dinner you really should know what you served.

  Some people can recall in detail the wild nettle frittata they ate for dinner one Indian summer night in 1972. I don’t understand these people. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to be one of them, but I just don’t see it happening this late in my life. Food is just not that important to me.

  “I made homemade fettuccine with lobster and scallops,” he says proudly. “And fresh asparagus. With a little lemon. Clarified butter.”

  “Hmm,” I say.

  “She loved it,” he says.

  The evening Julia came for dinner slowly returns to me, but certain things are fuzzy. Did I voluntarily cede the kitchen over to my husband? Or was I pushed out? And, really, does it matter? What would I have made if dinner had been left to me? This was 1995. What were my specialties back then? Well, most likely the same as my specialties now. Lasagna. Egg noodles with butter and Parmesan. Turkey burgers and corn on the cob.

  “Did you forget that she came to our engagement dinner, too?” he asks.

  “Of course not,” I say, but I had forgotten that as well.

  Something is wrong here. I seem to have some sort of food-related amnesia. And the problem is I am hungry. My family is hungry.

  We didn’t win a dinner with Julia Child at an auction. The reason she came to our house was because she had known my husband since he was a boy: my husband’s grandmother was one of Julia’s good friends. When my husband was fifteen he lived on and off at her home in Cambridge. The very house where she filmed her TV show. Once he made fish tacos with her in Santa Barbara and afterward they did tai chi on the beach. And yes, she came to our engagement party, although I have little recollection of that.

  When we get home I throw the bags of almonds into a drawer and plop down on the couch with my tub of rice pudding and a spoon.

  My husband listens to voice mail. “Your sisters and your mother called to wish you Happy Birthday,” he says. “Also Robin. She said put the rice pudding down now.”

  “She did not say that,” I say.

  He hands me the phone. I listen to the messages and weep. I forget every year that my mother and sisters call.

  I call Robin back.

  “How’s the birthday girl?”

  “I think I have a grocery store phobia,” I tell her. “You know, the way some people can’t drive over bridges or highways?”

  “So order online. Have your food delivered.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I don’t cook for my family. We just stand around the island and eat.”

  Robin sighs. “It’s tough living in Aliceland,” she says.

  She’s talking about Alice Waters. The Bay Area is home to Alice Waters’s legendary restaurant, Chez Panisse. You can’t go anywhere in this town and not hear talk of her, the high priestess of organically grown and simply prepared food. I chaperoned Ben on a field trip to the UC Botanical Gardens the other week and there was a whole garden dedicated to Alice.

  “Nasturtiums!” announced the docent (Alice uses them in her salad!).

  “Squash blossoms!” (Alice fries them up in a little salt and organic butter!)

  “Tomatillos! (Alice dices them up and sautés them with caramelized onions!)

  In Aliceland, the children eat organic Ho Hos (if they must eat them at all, and Alice would rather they wouldn’t) and their parents shop at farmers’ markets every day like the French people do.

  Most nights my husband calls around five and gently says, “Have you thought about dinner?”

  This is not a sexist question, nor is it a mean one. He’s simply trying to gather information. Now, there is a big difference between What’s for dinner and Have you thought about dinner and that difference is pressure. My husband always leaves me an escape hatch.

  “No, I haven’t thought about it,” I’ll sigh. “I wish I had, but I haven’t.”

  “That’s all right,” he says. “We’ll scrounge.”

  And because he is a man who once did White Crane Spreads Its Wings on the beach with Julia Child, he has a certain confidence in the kitchen (which, yes, occasionally edges over into smugness, but really, can you blame him?) and he gamely comes home and scrounges for us all. His idea of scrounge is baby greens hand-tossed with an olive oil, garlic and shallot vinaigrette and a perfectly cooked eight-minute egg topped with shavings of Asiago.

  He is happy to do this, but I want something different for us. I know what a pleasure it is to come home to a house redolent with the smell of dinner cooking. I also know that the heady scent of a roasting chicken is about so much more than a roasting chicken.

  “I want to start bringing something besides salad for our potlucks,” I tell Robin.

  “You bring other things,” says Robin. “Remember, you made buttercup squash soup?”

  “I made buttercup squash soup?”

  Besides not remembering that Julia came to our house for a meal, or my buttercup squash soup phase, I’ve forgotten scads of other things. Things one should remember, like how to do long division, the names of my friends’ dogs, and the characters in books I’ve just read. Also I can’t remember what I say or to whom I say it.

  “We have ants,” I say at breakfast. “We have ants,” I say at lunch. “We have ants,” I say again at dinner.

  My long-term memory is even worse. I seem to have forgotten all the firsts. Who was the first boy to tell me he loved me? What did I wear on my first date with my husband? What was my son’s first word?

  Here are some observations I’ve culled about forgetting and remembering: I tend to forget in threes; I forget anything good that has ever happened to me almost immediately after it happens; I have no problem recalling every grudge, every slight and every rejection that has to do with being forgotten, overlooked or left for dead. This may be why there is no room in my brain to remember anything good.

  I planned on sharing my observations with my internist when it was ti
me for my annual physical, during the part where she asks me if I have any concerns and usually I say, no, nothing, I’m feeling great, except for this lump on the inside of my elbow, I’m sure it’s nothing but maybe you should take a look—but I chickened out. I was afraid she’d suggest I had early-onset Alzheimer’s or that I was a woman with too much time on her hands.

  I planned on sharing my observations with my gynecologist, as the symptoms seemed more hormone-related, but I chickened out with her, too. I was afraid she’d suggest I was in early menopause or make me start keeping a gratitude journal.

  I planned on taking my observations to my therapist, but I no longer have a therapist and I can barely remember what I talked about for the three years I was talking about it.

  Luckily there are documents. Archives in the form of file drawers stuffed full of expired warranties, deeds, letters, certificates, invoices, and old paycheck stubs. These are always handy for a little trip down memory lane. By reading them I can put together a snapshot of my life.

  Certificate of Birth: April 30, 1998, 7:09 p.m. Baby boy, Benjamin. 8 lbs., 9 oz. 21 inches long.

  Purchased: November 28, 1998. One light box. $355. Warning: For Seasonal Affective Disorder Only. Do not use for more than two hours a day or mania may occur.

  Purchased: February 12, 1999. One baby swing. $259. Warning: Do not swing baby for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

  Purchased: March 9, 1999. One light box. $355. Warning: For Seasonal Affective Disorder Only. Do not use for more than two hours a day or mania may occur.

  Returned: One Light Box. To Whom It May Concern: Remembered I already bought a light box. Sent back March 20, 1999. Awaiting refund.

  Returned: April 12, 1999. One baby swing. To Whom It May Concern: Enclosed please find the baby swing I purchased February 12, 1999. The quality of your baby swing is very poor. I’ve only had it for a few months and it broke. Please send a refund to this address.

  Dear Melanie Gideon: May 13, 1999. We are sorry to tell you we will not be issuing you a refund as the baby swing clearly broke due to overuse. Enclosed please find a coupon for $10 off your next purchase. P.S. Hope your kid doesn’t have permanent brain damage. (No, they didn’t say that, but I can read between the lines.)

  I forgot Julia Child came to my house for dinner,” I confess to Robin.

  Robin gasps. “Jesus, what did you serve her?”

  “What did we make Julia?” I shout at my husband, who’s mincing garlic.

  “Pasta with shrimp and lobster,” shouts my husband. “I already told you that.”

  “Pasta with shrimp and lobster,” I say.

  “Fra Diablo,” says Robin, sighing. “Perfect.”

  She’s a cook. She’s probably right at this moment whipping up a nice duck confit. When she has people over for dinner she starts preparing days in advance. She goes to four or five different shops: one for cheese, one for wine, one for meat and one for produce. I cannot think of a worse torture. Searching for parking four times, having to choose between this kind of Brie and that kind of Brie (having missed the memo that the new Brie is something called La Tur).

  “I don’t understand why I can’t remember,” I say to Robin. “The meal is a complete blank.”

  “Probably because the food wasn’t what mattered to you, so it didn’t stick,” says Robin.

  “But shouldn’t I remember something?”

  “You will,” she says.

  A week later I get a card in the mail from my mother—a belated birthday present. It’s a gift certificate for Chez Panisse. It’s a beautiful hand-letter-pressed card with an illustration of cabbage—no, collard greens—no, romaine lettuce. Just the sight of it makes me anxious, as if I have to live up to something. I immediately hide it. It’s another call to adventure, but I’ve come to realize a call to adventure really means a call to feel really bad about yourself and all your shortcomings.

  My husband finds the gift certificate.

  “Chez Panisse! Wow! Let’s go tonight,” he says.

  “It’s Saturday. You can’t just walk into Chez Panisse,” I say. “See, it says for information and reservations call this number. It takes months to get in.”

  “Okay. Let’s call and make a reservation for a month from now.”

  “Yes, let’s!” I say, thinking he’ll get a reservation for next summer.

  He gets off the phone and grins at me. “Get your purse. We’re going to Chez Panisse.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. Can you believe it? They had a cancellation.”

  “Yes, I can believe it—it’s four forty-five in the afternoon.”

  “We’ll drive slow,” he says. “It’ll be five by the time we get there.”

  I’ve found that most menus contain secret messages if you are in need of a secret message, and Chez Panisse’s menu does not disappoint: fall vegetable salad and green beans, artichokes and chervil steamed Atlantic cod with wild mushrooms spit-roasted laughing stock farm pork loin with chestnuts, celery root puree and mustard greens meyer lemon meringue tartlet.

  Fall and choke

  Laughingstock

  Retard

  Translation: We’re on to you, you non-recycler, you buyer of Chilean grapes. You don’t belong here; you’ll fall off your chair and choke on a fish bone and you’ll be the laughingstock of the restaurant and you may as well leave now, retard.

  Now, that’s not a nice way to begin a meal, and it only gets worse—at Chez Panisse I can’t taste a damn thing. I sample from everybody’s plate, but to my unsophisticated palate, simple and unadulterated and fresh translates into dull. There is a little dab of something green atop my cod that is the highlight of my meal. Of course, I don’t say this because my son and my husband are groaning with pleasure.

  It seems I forgot how to taste. How did this happen? When did this happen? I wasn’t always this way. I remember when I was eight, eating strawberries right off the vine. It was August and so hot the berries were practically baked, and when I popped them in my mouth they bloomed, spreading across my tongue like petals.

  I go back to the menu again, trying to cipher out another message: fall vegetable salad and green beans, artichokes and chervil steamed Atlantic cod with wild mushrooms spit-roasted laughing stock farm pork loin with chestnuts, celery root puree and mustard greens meyer lemon meringue tartlet.

  Vegetable be art

  Cher steamed

  Spit oot greens

  Wow. Good thing I persevered. This was the message I was meant to get the first time. Translation: Even though Chez Panisse thinks their vegetables are art, their preciousness would make Cher angry (people often remark on my resemblance to Cher), thus I have permission to spit the mustard greens (which are very, very bitter) oot.

  This is a wonderful learning opportunity.

  “Here’s the polite way to get rid of something that doesn’t taste good,” I say to Ben.

  I curl my fingers into a little horn. “Your grandpa taught me this.”

  I spit a mouthful of greens through the hole in my hand. “Like that.”

  “Really?” says Ben. He turns to my husband. “Really? ’Cause that seems kind of disgusting.”

  “Listen,” I say. “You may not need to spit today. Or tomorrow. But one day you’ll get bones. Or marrow. Or a piece of gristle. And you’ll thank me.”

  The waiters bring Caramelized Pear with Vin Santo ice cream and Meyer Lemon Tartlet and Pomegranate Granita. The light is amber and burnished. I feel like everybody in the room is sitting in a painting but me.

  “Do you have a Tums?” I ask my husband.

  “You know,” my husband says, putting down his fork, “Julia and Alice were very different.”

  “Dental floss?”

  “It’s true,” he says. “Julia didn’t do the farm-to-table thing. She probably wondered why Alice didn’t just go to the supermarket like everybody else.”

  He slides his glass of wine in front of me. “Drink up, love.”

&nb
sp; We are driving home when I remember what we served Julia for dessert the night she came to our house.

  “Vanilla ice cream. With Grape-Nuts!” I say.

  “You’re still hungry?” asks my husband.

  “No, that’s what I served Julia for dessert.”

  He thinks about it, his fingers tapping the steering wheel. “No, it was profiteroles.”

  “You’re wrong. I was in charge of dessert and it was Grape-Nuts ice cream. And she loved it.”

  “You may be right,” says my husband. “I think you’re right.”

  “What’s Grape-Nuts?” asks Ben.

  “A wholesome cereal made from wheat and barley,” I say in a deep voice, trying to imitate Euell Gibbons. “Dawn and I used to eat them every day after school. Sprinkled on yogurt.”

  “They still make them, you know,” says my husband.

  “I should get us some.”

  “You should,” says my husband.

  “I’ll go to the supermarket tomorrow.”

  “Well, if you’re going we need orange juice, too. And eggs—not just certified organic but cage-free. And crème fraîche. And cumin—the seeds, not ground,” he says. “And olive oil. But Greek olive oil, not Portuguese.”

  “Mmmm,” I say.

  He pulls into the driveway, turns to me and then sees the expression on my face.

  “Hey, I have an idea. How about you go to the supermarket tomorrow and get us some Grape-Nuts?” he says.

  “Good idea,” I say. “They taste like wild hickory nuts.”

  “When have you had wild hickory nuts?”

  “I haven’t, but Euell Gibbons has. On the commercial. He ate cattails, too.”

  “I can’t believe you remember that,” he says.

  Some of us remember dinner with famous chefs. Others of us remember cereal commercials from the seventies.

  I go to Lucky’s the following day. I find the Grape-Nuts and am immediately transported back in time; the box is exactly the same as it was twenty-five years ago, as is the calorie count: 200 calories for a half cup. Who eats a scant half cup of anything? No wonder I stopped buying them. Oh, what the hell. I throw them in my cart. I can do something with them for our next potluck. I’m sure there’s a recipe for Grape-Nuts-encrusted meat loaf crammed somewhere in my files.