One Last Lunch

by Erica Heller

  “What do you mean, brands?” said Julia.

  “It just means that they’re good at self-promotion,” I replied. “You were pretty good at it yourself.”

  Julia squinted at me in mild annoyance. “I promoted French cuisine and home cooking,” she said brusquely. “I happened to be a good teacher, but it was never about me personally.”

  Abashed, I apologized. “Of course not,” I said.

  But Julia was fired up now. “Speaking of bloggers, whatever happened to that dreadful Julie Powell?” she said. The very idea of Powell’s Julie and Julia blog had pissed her off. How in the world was this stranger allowed to make money off Julia’s name?

  Nothing to do but plow ahead. “A year after you died, Julie Powell gathered her posts into a book, which Nora Ephron turned into a big Hollywood movie starring Meryl Streep as y-o-u,” I said. Personally, I thought it was a very lovable film, but I decided not to say so to Julia. Instead, I mentioned that the movie had goosed sales of Mastering the Art of French Cooking . . . and, more broadly, that it introduced Julia to a new generation of young people who might not otherwise have heard of her. “I remember you telling me that everyone forgets you when you’re no longer on TV,” I said. “You can’t be mad, about Julie and Julia. They put your story on the big screen. Meryl Streep trained herself to talk just like you. You’re no longer alive, but you’re definitely immortal.”

  Julia was not impressed. I decided to double down. “And it’s not just old media, Julia, it’s new media, too,” I said. “On the internet a company called Twitch has made every episode of The French Chef available to the zillions of young nerds who typically visit that website only because it’s where they play their virtual war games. I know it might seem weird, but your old show is acquainting young people who definitely don’t cook for themselves with the joys of cooking.”

  Now Julia seemed at least slightly intrigued. “Well, Americans weren’t cooking when we launched our show in the early sixties either,” she said. “Why bother cooking when there were TV dinners in the freezer?”

  Speaking of TV, the woman who essentially invented food television now wanted to know about the state of the art. Again, I took a deep breath and plunged in. “None of the network execs care about cooking shows,” I said. “If you’re a chef and your mission is to educate—if you want to show the viewer how to make a recipe—you’re gonna do it on public TV or you’re not gonna do it at all.” Julia took a none-too-delicate gulp of her Chardonnay but otherwise held her fire. “Food TV today is all about competition,” I continued. “The model seems to be pro wrestling. Think Bobo Brazil.”

  “Who?” Julia said, clearly annoyed. “Was he a wrestler? The first and last wrestler I ever knew by name was Gorgeous George.”

  “Sorry, Julia,” I said. “I’ve never heard of Gorgeous George. But I’m sure it’s all the same. Food TV today is mostly chest-beating and the spectacle of humiliation. There aren’t any headlocks, but there’re plenty of peacocks.”

  Suddenly Sal—who did indeed know Julia’s preferences—reappeared and landed an overflowing lobster roll in front of each of us. “Wonderful!” Julia said. “Jasper makes the best lobster roll I’ve ever eaten.” She took a hearty bite of the sandwich and chased it down with another sip of wine. “Seen any good movies lately?” she wondered. Same old Julia. As much as she meant to the world of food, she was never a foodie. Her interests were too broad.

  “I don’t get a chance to go very often, but my husband, Bill, went to the theater recently to see Dunkirk,” I said. “He thought it was a good movie, but very old-fashioned. The Brits were self-sacrificing angels; the Nazis were faceless devils. The thing ran for one hour and forty-six minutes and you never saw a woman or a person of color. It seemed to come straight out of the fifties.”

  “I don’t understand,” replied Julia. “The Brits were angels. The Nazis were devils. Believe me, I remember the Battle of Dunkirk. It helped FDR start to persuade Americans that it was time for us to get into the war. By the time Pearl Harbor happened, I was already volunteering for the Red Cross. After Pearl Harbor, I tried to enlist in the WACS, but they told me I was too tall. Luckily, I wasn’t too tall for the OSS, so they gave me a job.” She took another bite of her lobster roll.

  “Lovely,” she said. “But tell me all about Washington. Who’s the president these days?” she said.

  I smiled sweetly and replied, “Oh, I don’t think you want to go there, Julia. Much better for you to rest in peace.” Julia looked at me quizzically but decided not to press the subject. I meant to move on but found myself blurting out: “Planned Parenthood is under attack and hanging by a thread but definitely fighting back!” I couldn’t help it. Planned Parenthood was Julia’s favorite charity.

  “Bravo,” said Julia.

  It was getting late. Sal had cleared our dishes and the restaurant was emptying out. But now, finally, I had a question for Julia: “If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”

  “Paul Child and that sole meunière in Rouen changed my whole life for the better,” she said with her typical firmness. “If I’d ended up back in Pasadena, I probably would have married a Republican and become an alcoholic.” She took a last sip of the Chardonnay. “Piaf had the right attitude—Je ne regrette rien.”

  And with that Julia began getting hazy, vanishing, a piece at a time. Her smile was the last thing to go. I kept looking at her as long as I could, not wanting to lose her, but soon there was nothing to see.

  As ever, I’m going to miss her.

  There was only one Julia Child.

  And this time, she was really gone. For good.

  Sara Moulton hosts the public television show Sara’s Weeknight Meals, now in its eighth season, co-hosts a weekly segment on Milk Street Radio, and is the author of four cookbooks, including, most recently, Home Cooking 101. Sara was the executive chef of Gourmet magazine, food editor of ABC’s Good Morning America, and the host of several well-loved shows on the Food Network during that channel’s first decade.

  — 11 —

  “What do you want me to say?” he asks. “That I love you? That everything will be all right? That you have a Father in Heaven?”

  THE REV. GEORGE PITCHER (ANGLICAN PRIEST) AND JESUS CHRIST

  He’s late. It’s past lunchtime. It’s Friday, and the usual crowds have dwindled. The sun, low now, is shining in on me at my window seat. It’s a place I come when I want to be on my own. They know me here. It’s a good place. A thin place.

  I’ve drunk a little wine as the hours passed. Red, then white. I’m a little heady but not pissed, listening to the rhythms of words, outside in the street and inside me. Like a prayer.

  A waiter comes and stands by my table, between me and the window. He’s in a bright white smock, and I squint up into the light.

  “Why are you waiting?” he asks.

  “I’m waiting for my friend,” I say.

  “I said why, not who,” he says, not unkindly. “How long are you going to wait?”

  “He’ll come.”

  “But why are you waiting here?”

  “I booked this table. Name of Pitcher.”

  “George,” he murmurs. And he slips in to sit opposite me. He’s looking down at his hands on the table. Like suddenly he’s waiting to be served himself.

  “Have you just started working here?” I ask.

  “No, I’ve been working for ages.” Still, he doesn’t look up. And I remember now. I’ve watched him, cleaning tables, bringing food. I just hadn’t looked at him.

  “Thank you for being here, George.” Strangely, it’s a voice that I find I recognize.

  “Rabbi?” I say, and now he looks up.

  “Shalom,” he says with a smile, and I start back from the table edge.

  “Come on. Don’t be afraid.” He takes a bread roll from the basket, breaks it in half, and holds a piece out to me.

  He shrugs. “Shall I say grace?” he asks.

  * * *r />
  Yes, I know you want to know what he looks like. But there’s the thing: Familiar is all I can say. Like someone you’ve always known but, as in a dream, won’t be specified. The light falls and he’s dark, then fair in the setting sun. Younger, then older. Is the hair long or tied back? I can’t remember. Rough, then pretty. Giotto or Caravaggio. You or me? You and me.

  I suppose I should say that when he looks at me, it’s as if he’s always known me, or it’s like he’s looking right through me. That his eyes are like doves. That he’s gentle, like a mother. But none of that works. He’s simply here, present. There’s no impression to be made beyond that. Sorry.

  “I’m thirsty,” he says, and I pour some water from a pitcher. Then more wine.

  “We were meant to have lunch,” I say. “It’ll be time for supper soon.”

  “Call it lunch,” he says. “It’s meant to be lunch, right? We’re in my time.” And he looks out into the fading light. “It’ll soon be Sabbath.”

  “Shabat,” I say.

  “Call it what you will. Tell me what you want.”

  “I wanted to eat with you. At your table.”

  “You do that all the time, George. You’re a priest. Isn’t that what you say? ‘Come to this table.’ But this is your table. Why have you called me to your table?”

  “It’s for a book. We get to have lunch with someone we love who’s dead. They asked me to have lunch with you.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “I don’t know—I’d like to try. I got ordained, so I must a bit. Someone has to feed your lambs.”

  “And do I look dead?”

  “I told them you weren’t dead. You’re the only one in the book who isn’t.”

  “Awkward.”

  “But you were dead once, right? Really dead.”

  He stares at me. “George. Do I look one thousand nine hundred and eighty seven years and eighty-four days old?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then I’m alive. But I’ve been dead. Is that so hard?”

  “Well, yes, actually,” I say. “At any rate, it does put you in rather a different category to the other subjects in the book.”

  “So far. So they asked you to interview me because they think I’m dead? Interesting.”

  “I know,” I say sheepishly. “It’s a category error. One that’s easily made by people who haven’t met you, I guess. The editor said she’s a lapsed Jew. I told her, well, you’re kind of a lapsed Jew, too.”

  He smiles again, like he really is a category error. Then he holds out his hands, white and strangely feminine: “Touch me.”

  I slowly take one hand. It’s warm. I feel for the hole in the palm. It holds mine.

  “I have to ask,” I say. “Do you really need to eat?”

  “I’ll have the fish,” he says.

  * * *

  And we talk. We talk endlessly, as it gets darker. About friends, about what we’ve done, about what we love to do, about joyous stuff and very dark things. It comes easily. Except that I realize afterward that he doesn’t tell me anything about him—it’s all about me. When I ask questions about him, it’s just turned around.

  A line from a musical comes to me.

  “Are you who they said you were?”

  “I am. Are you?”

  “That Mary from Magdala. Tell me about her.”

  “She gives her love to you. What will you give her?”

  “The stories—are they really true?”

  “Someone once asked me what is truth. What do you think is true?”

  I persist: “But were you . . . accurately reported?”

  “You were a journalist before you were a priest. Do you believe everything you read? Or just the truth?”

  And so I do all the talking. Or rather, I do all the telling, while he eats with his hands. I wonder if he’s there or if I’m imagining him. But the other waiters fill his glass. And I notice a woman, who sits on the bench seat at the next table, glance at him and move her bag a little closer to her. I want to shout, “This is the living Christ, for God’s sake! He’s not going to steal your purse!”

  “I might, George. They always thought I was a criminal.”

  “Of course. You knew what I was thinking,” I say. “Why do you want me to tell you about me, if you know it all already?”

  “I want to know if you know it.”

  “But you’d know that, too.” The waiter brings more bread. Had he asked for it? Weird.

  Then, suddenly, he takes the conversational initiative: “Was the lamb good?”

  I hadn’t noticed what I’d been eating.

  “Yes. Very good. Thank you.”

  “It is finished,” he says.

  I look down at my empty plate.

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” I say. “Truly terrible.” And he laughs for the first time, a guttural chuckle, full of life.

  * * *

  “It’s time you got on,” he says eventually. “It’s getting late. And I have people to serve.”

  “You’re going to be a waiter again?”

  “No.”

  “Forgive me,” I say. “Yes, I’d better go. I’ll get the bill.”

  “I’ve already paid,” he says.

  I look at him hard, but he doesn’t recoil. “Will you stop that?” I say.

  “Stop what?” he says.

  “Stop it with the double meanings. . . . The Son of Man isn’t meant to do one-liners, dreadful puns.”

  “You haven’t been listening closely enough. Where do you think you get them from?”

  I’m feeling resentful now. “I thought you’d have something to tell me.”

  “I do.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve already told you. You’re the vicar, remember? You’re the expert on what I have to say.”

  I look at my own hands. “They always say: ‘What would you ask him if you had just one question?’ ”

  “Well?”

  Slowly I say: “My question is—what do you want to tell me?”

  “What do you want me to say?” he asks. “That I love you? That everything will be all right? That you have a Father in Heaven?”

  He’s speaking quickly now. This is what he’s come to say. “Do you want me to make everything all right? Is that it? I can’t take away what you’ve done, all the stuff you’ve brought to this table tonight and haven’t told me, the life you’ve led that you won’t confess even to yourself. I can’t stop people hating you for it. But they hated me before they hated you. Remember that, George. Shit happens.”

  “I didn’t think you’d talk like this.”

  “It’s your voice, George. Language you understand. Quite Pentecostal, no?” A calmer beat. “So, again, what do you want me to say? That I’m really here?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “And why would that be?” Suddenly he’s leaning in, looking for my answer. Like a teacher.

  I pause for a moment, looking into his eyes, before answering: “Because I already know that.”

  “Because you already know that,” he repeats slowly. “Now go and write this up. And try to tell the truth for once.”

  A pause, then barely audible, a voice in my head: “Write it in peace. Write it as a prayer.”

  We sit for a moment more in silence as I try to think of something to say.

  “Thanks for coming,” I say eventually.

  Another pause, and he says softly: “Now you’re doing it, y’see.”

  I stand up and wonder if a hug is in order, but it doesn’t seem necessary.

  “L’chaim,” I say, and he nods.

  “Cheers,” he replies.

  At the door, I see it’s dark outside. I’m not going to turn around, because I’m pretty sure he won’t be there. But I do. And he is, still watching me.

  I raise a hand in salutation and he raises his, the first two fingers together and pointing upward, the next two folded down into his palm, touching the thumb, like in a painting.

 
; George Pitcher has been an award-winning Industrial Editor at the Observer and Religion Editor, a columnist, and leader-writer at the Daily Telegraph. He also co-founded, built, and sold an innovative PR agency, before being ordained a priest in the Church of England. He served his curacy at St. Bride’s, the Journalists’ Church in Fleet Street, and is now rector of a rural parish in East Sussex, having spent a year as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s public affairs adviser. He is today involved in a long-term project with Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, to develop a new model for media ethics in the digital era. He is the author of The Death of Spin, an indictment of our spin culture in business and politics, and A Time to Live: The Case Against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. His first novel, A Dark Nativity, was published by Unbound in 2017.

  — 12 —

  “This life is designed to overthrow you. No one ever masters it.”

  DAVID LAYTON (GODSON) AND LEONARD COHEN

  The harbor, lined with tavernas and fishing boats, was a good place for lunch. The Aegean Sea, cool even in the height of summer, offered a refreshing breeze, and best of all, my sister-in-law and her husband ran the best restaurant on the island of Lesvos.

  About twenty or so outdoor wooden tables sat on marble paving stones. Several were taken by tourists seated under oversize umbrellas that shaded them from the sun but did not block the ruffled sea and the hills shrouded in the milky-white haze of summer heat. The rest were locals still lingering over their morning coffees, one of whom I thought I recognized. He was seated at the far corner, next to the water, and had on a dark suit with an open collar, tailored to fit a European gentleman who’d reached respectable retirement. He wore ruby-tinted sunglasses. Approaching, I noticed a Panama hat seated on the chair next to him. He wasn’t a local; he was my godfather, Leonard Cohen.

  “Leonard?”

  “Hello, my friend,” he said, as if expecting me.

  “What are you doing here? How are you here?”

  “I’m not sure. You tell me.”

  Shocked to see him, I took a seat at his invitation. He looked about the same since I’d last seen him in Los Angeles, which had been a few years earlier, and as I’d done back then, I wondered how such a large presence could fit inside such a small, almost fragile frame.