“That’s settled, then. Now tell me . . . uh oh!” From the kitchen came the sounds of pans clattering and voices raised in anger. Something made of glass or ceramic shattered, and more shouting followed. The old man came running through the swinging door, followed by mamma swinging a broom at him.
Sarah, wide-eyed with surprise, watched the scene. “I take it dinner will be late this evening.”
“No,” Julia replied. “This happens every night. They’ve just settled into their act once again. Poppa will take over the dining room, and momma will tend to her cooking. They’ll meet at the swinging door to pass dishes back and forth, but otherwise they will avoid each other until closing time. They’re playing roles and enjoying doing so.” She nodded as poppa came by their table with a bottle of olive oil.
“That woman, she crazy! But she cook good. That’s why I keep her around.”
Sarah gave Julia a questioning look. “You mean that happens often?”
“Every night. I learned the story behind it several years ago when Guido had a health scare and spent two nights in the hospital. I had come in for a late dinner, and Marina sat down and talked to me while my pizza baked. It was quite a story.
“They both grew up in the old country, where children learned the roles they would play by watching their parents. Guido’s father was a famous chef, and he, as the oldest son, expected to follow his father in that role. Marina wanted nothing more in life than to be a wife and mother, as had her mother before her. But things didn’t work out that way. Guido wasn’t a very good cook to begin with. He loved to talk to the customers, so he’d come out to the dining room and leave something to burn in the kitchen. And for Marina, the babies didn’t come. Guido suggested she help in the restaurant, but she didn’t have that easy way of talking to strangers. She just felt like a waitress.
“They were both unhappy, and the business was failing until one night they had a rip-roaring fight over burned tomato gravy. She hit him with a broom and locked him out of the kitchen while she started a new batch of gravy. And he took full advantage of the situation by sharing several glasses of wine with his hungry customers. To their own surprise, they both enjoyed their reversed roles, and so did their customers. They’ve been staging that fight ever since. Life is not what they expected, but they are doing the things they love the most. Marina cooks for every customer as she would for a child, and Guido holds a party in his dining room.”
“But they fight.”
“For Italians, fighting is a way of expressing love. They are always polite to strangers. They don’t fight with anyone except those they love.”
“Is that the formula for a happy relationship?”
“For them, it is. But it’s not the fight itself. It’s knowing that they will still love each other even after the fight.”
“I envy them.”
“As do I, but as I was about to suggest, tell me about this student problem of yours. I don’t think we can solve it the same way. I’m assuming it’s Cassie McGehee.”
“You’ve noticed?”
“Noticed what? I see her usual antics, and it’s not surprising that you are her new target.”
“But she’s always underfoot, waiting for me, lurking as if she has some sixth sense of where I may be going. She knows my car, she knows where I live, where I attend synagogue. It’s unnerving.”
“She’s not trying to eat you alive. It just feels that way.”
“It feels as if she's gaslighting me. She is rude and insulting, says awful things, and then tells me that it's my fault for objecting to her behavior. I don’t know how to get rid of her.”
“I hate to tell you, but you won’t get rid of her. Once she has you in her sights, she’s not likely to let go. The important thing for you to remember is that you are the adult and you hold the power.”
“Easier said than done.”
“I know, but necessary. Every time you let her upset you, you give away some of that power. Step one is to ignore her barbs. Step two is to treat her as a friend whenever you can. The one thing you do not want to do is make an enemy of her. As an enemy, she can hurt you. As a friend, she won’t.”
“I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Look, as your enemy she could attack you, tarnish your reputation, turn in a scathing student evaluation, and make your life miserable. As your friend, she wouldn’t do any of those things. Frightening though she may be, I promise you that she is not out to destroy you. Let’s try an example. What is it she wants from you right now?”
“She is suggesting that I meet her and the rest of the grad school girls in the Grub Hub for breakfast or coffee every morning.”
“And you don’t want to do that because . . .”
“Because it will look bad to my undergraduates. They will feel left out.”
“Too bad for them, then. They need to grow up. I’m not saying you should meet Cassie for breakfast every morning. That would look like favoritism. But there’s nothing wrong with meeting the whole group of women grad students now and then. That’s called mentoring. And while you’re doing that, you can afford to be nice to Cassie and charm the pants off of her—figuratively speaking, that is.”
“So I should be nice to everybody and make sure Cassie feels included. O.K., I guess I can do that, although not for the next few days.”
“Another problem?”
“No, not a problem. Tomorrow is Rosh Hashana, the start of a new year in the Jewish calendar. We’ll celebrate tomorrow, but then we enter ten days of introspection—our High Holy Days with extended morning and evening prayers. We expect every Jew to use that time to assess his or her life, repent and make amends for any wrongdoing, and pray for guidance. Orthodox Jews do not work for the whole ten-day period. Because I am a Conservative Jew, I’ll be at work as usual, but I’ll be at the synagogue every morning at sunrise and again at sunset. I won’t have any free time to spend charming my graduate students at breakfast.
“The last day is Yom Kippur1 when everyone observes a 25-hour fast. It falls on a Thursday this year, so I’m not sure what I will do about my graduate seminar that evening. I won’t be able to eat until an hour after sunset, by which time the seminar will be in full swing and I’ll be ready to eat my shoes.”
“I can help with that,” Julia offered. “That’s the research seminar, isn’t it? I’ve taught it a time or two. Here’s what you do. Schedule a library exercise for the entire class period. Give them enough work to keep them busy for several hours. I’ll make myself available to answer questions, keep them on track, and collect their findings for you at the end of the session.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn't ask; I offered. Besides, it might earn me a check mark on the right side of someone’s list of tenure requirements. You know, the one that says: ‘Is helpful to colleagues and contributes to the smooth operation of the department.’”
“If you’re sure . . .”
Julia had already pulled out her phone and opened her calendar. “That’s October 9, correct? You’re all set. But do one thing. Take a few minutes this week to explain to the students why you will miss class.”
“I worry about doing that. I had an upsetting moment at one of my job interviews. One professor asked me how observant I was of Jewish laws, and things went downhill as the others piled on with their misconceptions. I ended up walking out, but the experience left some deep scars on my psyche.”
“You can make it a teaching moment. Most of our students are fundamentalist Christians, which means they know very little about other religions. Explain the High Holy Days and Yom Kippur and tell them why the observances are important to you. They’ll respect you for it. You can also use that opportunity to let Cassie and the others understand why you can’t join their little breakfast group right now.”
Chapter Ten
A New York Bagel
October 10–18, 2008
The ploy worked well, just as Julia had suggested. During t
he class discussion about Jewish holidays, Sarah had noticed that Cassie’s eyes widened with interest. Cassie treated her announcement with respect, and Sarah felt the tensions melt away. As a result, it was with a different attitude that she looked up from her desk on October 10 and discovered Cassie waiting to pose a question.
“How did the fasting go? Were you starved?”
“That feeling was at its worst yesterday morning, when I was used to having breakfast and lunch. By sunset, I’d moved beyond the knee-jerk hunger to a kind of deprived—or maybe delirious—euphoria. When the twenty-fifth hour passed, I only wanted a few sips of water and a cracker or two. The fast was a powerful experience. But by midnight I was up raiding the fridge.”
Cassie giggled. “Well, it’s good to have you back, and just in time, too. The breakfast crew here needs you next week.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Chef Pete in the Grub Hub has announced that he is adding bagels to the menu. He’s trying to expand our narrow tastes, so he says. Well, we know little about bagels, but we’re guessing that we have an expert in our midst. Will you join us next Wednesday when he unveils his Bagel Bar? Maybe you can give us some pointers on how to eat them.”
“Sounds like an interesting experiment. I’ll be there.”
Sarah’s hopes for the Bagel Bar were not high, so she was not disappointed when the table contained only plain bagels with accompanying spreads of butter, jams, cream cheese, and peanut butter. She gave the girls a quick lesson on how to use the bagel cutter and how to judge the correct shade of toastiness. Then she left them to choose their toppings, noting that most opted for peanut butter and jam, while she settled for a little butter and a schmeer1 of cream cheese.
As the girls settled into their first few bites of bagel, Cassie pushed the question of ethnic origins. “Are bagels a traditional Jewish dish?”
“Like any other food, their origins have disappeared in the traditions of the past. They seem to have emerged as a cheap and popular snack in Poland in the Middle Ages. The story goes that Christians would not let Jews bake any kind of bread because of its association with the holy sacrament. So the Jews developed a street food made of flour but boiled instead of baked. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we know that Jewish immigrants brought the tradition with them to New York in the nineteenth century.”
“What do you think, Doctor Chomsky? How do these measure up to a New York bagel?”
Her grimace told them all they needed to know. “They’re O.K. for people who have never eaten bagels, but the baker has failed to follow the rules for an authentic New York bagel. He didn’t use a high-protein bread flour, and I don’t taste any hint of barley malt flavoring. The bagels are not chewy enough, not dark enough, not crisp enough on the outside, and not sweet and tangy enough.
“There’s nothing very ‘New York’ about peanut butter and jam, either. In my old neighborhood, the bagels would have a thick topping of poppy and sesame seeds, garlic, onion flakes and sea salt. Chef Pete’s cream cheese is authentic enough, but we would also offer lox, chopped chicken livers, and diced red onions. Other than that, they weren’t too bad, but . . .”
“Ew.” Jean was looking doubtful. “I’m not so sure about the liver thing. We always gave our chicken livers to the cat.”
Sarah laughed. "Please don't tell that to my cat. He doesn't get my chicken livers."
“And I do not understand what lox is,” added Ellie.
“Well, lox is a kind of smoked salmon, and the chicken livers go into a fancy paté.”2
“The grad students were all laughing now.
“Remember, Professor Chomsky. Chef Pete’s from Alabama!”
“And it shows.”
“Have you ever made bagels from scratch?” Cassie asked.
“All the time. There’s no other way to get the authentic taste.”
“Could you show us?”
“Sure. Why not? Let’s do it. It’s a two-day process, but I can get the jump on things by starting one batch the night before. How about coming to my apartment this Saturday morning? Around ten?”
“Suits me.” The others nodded.
“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll make up a batch of dough on Friday afternoon, shape the bagels, and proof them overnight in the fridge. They can rest up to two days between that stage and the cooking process. Saturday morning, I’ll start a new batch for you and show you how I mix and knead the dough, let it rise, and shape the rings. Then we’ll put that batch aside to proof and use the prepared batch from Friday to see how to boil them before baking. We can finish baking them and have them for a light lunch.”
As the girls went off to their next class chattering about their plans, Sarah smiled to herself. Julia will be proud of me, she thought. Maybe I’ll invite her to join us. And Beth, too. Might as well make it a party.
The bagel baking class was a great success. Seeing these women in a non-campus setting gave Sarah new insights into their personalities. She had seen them as two different groups—the young graduate students and the faculty members. But on Saturday morning, all of them in jeans, sneakers, and sweat shirts in deference to the fall weather, she realized that they were of a single generation—all of them in their late twenties to mid-thirties. Cassie remained something of an outsider as the youngest, but on this morning, she was just one of the women relaxing from their usual household responsibilities. “I need to think of them—no, think of us—as women,” she told herself in the kitchen. “We are adults and quite different than the girls in my undergraduate classes. We ought to treat ourselves and each other with respect.”
And with that thought in mind, Sarah began to relax. She was just a cook, sharing a recipe with her friends. During one pause in the cooking process while they waited for the dough to rise, Elijah wandered in from the front porch and sniffed his curious way past their shoes and over-stuffed handbags.
“Wow, Professor Chomsky, that’s quite a black cat.”
“His undercoat—that soft, thick layer—is dark gray; it's only the longer guard or surface hairs that make him a black cat.”
Cassie threw her an odd glance. “Are you worried about him with Halloween on the way?”
“What should I worry about?”
“Well, you know—black cats and witches—he may go flying off somewhere.”
Sarah laughed and refused to rise to the bait. “Don’t let her give you any ideas, Elijah,” she warned the cat.
“Elijah? What a curious name for a cat!”
“Well, there’s a long story behind it.”
“Tell!”
“You all remember I’m Jewish, right? Well, on Passover,3 there’s a tradition that the Prophet Elijah walks the earth on that night, seeking shelter and helping heal disagreements among families. During Seder,4 the table always has one empty chair, along with an empty wine glass and place setting in case Elijah comes by. At the end of the usual recitations and prayers, the youngest person at the table goes to the door and opens it to see if Elijah is waiting.
“At our last family Passover, I was the youngest at the table, so I went to the door feeling rather silly at this childish ritual. But I heard a scratching outside. To my surprise when I opened the door, there was this little bedraggled black kitten. As I stared at him, he walked straight into the dining room, jumped up on the empty chair, and surveyed the dishes, his little nose twitching. Someone passed him a scrap of brisket and he scarfed it down without even chewing. Poor little thing was starving. My mother started to tell me to get the cat away from the table, but my father, the rabbi, intervened, saying, ‘Leah, what if that cat’s name is Elijah? In my house we welcome all strangers.’ The name stuck, and he’s been eating well ever since.”
“That’s a great story!”
“And a great cat, too. Look how friendly he is!” Denise picked him up, and he cuddled into her lap as if he had always known her.
“He has never run from strangers, which makes him useless as a watch cat, bu
t he helps me make friends.” Sarah was beaming with pride as she watched the women pass the cat from lap to lap. Elijah purred and enjoyed the cuddles. Only Cassie eyed him with suspicion. Sarah decided she resented not being the center of attention.
The finished bagels were a success. When Toni demurred at the use of an egg wash to help the seeds stick, Sarah handed her the vegetable oil sprayer.
“Here. Use this instead on the one you intend to eat. You’ll recognize it because it will be paler than the others. And you can eat yours with honey rather than cream cheese.” She set out the usual accompaniments, including some smoked salmon and a smooth and delicately flavored schmeer that no one recognized as the hated chicken liver.
“I can’t decide whether to eat mine or take it home and frame it,” Julia confessed. “Imagine me, a little black girl from Mississippi, making a bagel this beautiful.”
“Bagels don’t frame well; the seeds fall off. But I’ll tell you what I can do. That second batch of dough is proofing in my fridge. I’ll bake a batch on Sunday night and bring them in to work. Anyone who craves a second taste can stop by the conference area on the third floor of Bailey Hall instead of patronizing Chef Pete and his ersatz5 bagels.”
The mood the following week was upbeat because the college was due for a short Fall Break. “It’s odd, though,” Sarah remarked to Julia. “Most schools get a whole week off at this point in the semester. Why do we come back for classes on Thursday and Friday?”
“It’s the result of a student referendum held last year. You know, most of our students are local. Many have kids in school and spouses with full-time jobs. Almost none of them have the spare cash to go flitting off to Cabo San Lucas for a week in the Mexican sun. The Student Association suggested that we chop two days off Fall Break and add them to Thanksgiving—the Wednesday before and the Monday after. That allows more time for families to travel ‘over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house,’ so to speak.”
What Grows in Your Garden Page 9