Aftertaste (16 page)

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Authors: Meredith Mileti

BOOK: Aftertaste
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“Ah, I hope this is Ruth. Ruth, this is Mira. We met today at the baby gym class?” I pause. “Listen, I was wondering if you could use a few extra prepared meals.”
“Hello, hello—I'm here.” The machine shuts off, but I can barely hear Ruth's voice because Carlos is screaming into the voice piece of the phone. Over the cacophony I manage to ascertain that she hasn't eaten anything but Lean Cuisine and Cheerios since Carlos's arrival two weeks ago, so yes, she'd be grateful for anything I had.
“Great, we'll be right over.”
Ruth lives in one of the beautiful and expensive brick townhouses on Murray Hill Avenue. It's on the edge of the Chatham College campus, and the view out of the front of the house is of the bucolic rolling hills of the south campus.
Ruth meets me at the door. She's alone, and the house is quiet. She holds a finger to her lips and whispers, “He's sleeping, thank God. I think he just wore himself out. Come in, come in.”
She throws on a coat over her sweatshirt and together we finish unloading the food from the back of Chloe's stroller. “I hope you have room for it all,” I tell her.
“Wow! Where did you get all this?”
“Well, I used to cook for a living, and I guess I'm suffering from withdrawal,” I offer apologetically. “When you run out, let me know. There's plenty more where this came from.”
Ruth's kitchen is small, like most townhouse kitchens, but state-of-the-art. Beautiful cherry cabinets, a six-burner Wolf range with a built-in warming oven, and a small Sub-Zero. “You must like to cook, too,” I tell her, looking around.
Ruth laughs. “No, not me. The couple who sold it to me liked to cook, though. I've barely used this stuff since I bought the place three years ago. My appliance of choice is the microwave,” she says, opening the freezer and gesturing to the stack of Lean Cuisines inside. “As you can see, I've got plenty of room.”
Ruth hasn't mentioned a husband or a partner, and I find myself looking around for evidence that someone besides Ruth and Carlos lives here, although the Lean Cuisines ought to be a dead giveaway.
“Can I offer you a drink, a glass of wine or some juice?” she says, giving Chloe a smile. I've unzipped Chloe's snowsuit and taken off her hat, but she is getting antsy. “I mean, unless you, ah, have someone to get home for?” Ruth stammers.
“No, just my father, but not for a while. It's Chloe, though; she eats around five.”
“Say no more; I'm now fully stocked in that department. Please say you'll stay and have dinner with me. It's been so long since I've eaten anything that doesn't come in a little, black plastic tray, never mind having an adult conversation while eating. I may just keel over!”
Ruth pulls Carlos's high chair over to the kitchen table and opens up her cupboard, where she has jars of Gerber baby food stacked three deep. “Okay, what will it be, chicken, beef, or lamb?”
Despite the fact that, up until now, all of Chloe's baby food has been organic and custom prepared, she loves Gerber's chicken and rice, and I try not to flinch each time she takes a bite. Ruth opens a bottle of wine, a yummy Saintsbury Pinot Noir. She may not know how to cook, but she does know a thing or two about wine. By the time we've finished the bottle and Chloe has polished off the last of her vanilla custard (another Gerber success), I've learned that Ruth has never been married, that she's on extended maternity leave from Bayer, where she was a senior financial analyst, and that she's forty-three years old.
“The last time I had a serious boyfriend, I was at Yale. From there, I went right on to B-school, and I really never had time for dating,” she says, sipping her wine. “Then, I started working, and it took me a while to get my career going. The only people I met were at work, and most of them were already married. Once I figured out marriage wasn't in the cards for me, I tried to adopt, but I was traveling a lot and it wasn't so easy. So, I saved for a few years, got my name in with some private adoption agencies, cashed out some investments, and got out of the market just in time. I can afford to take at least a year off and when I do go back to work, it can be part-time, so I can be more involved in raising Carlos.” She takes another gulp of wine. “The problem is I just didn't expect it would be this hard. A single parent—what was I thinking!” Ruth looks miserable. “I did research for three years, bought every baby book known to woman, and not one of them prepared me for this.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “I'm sorry, it's just, I guess that even adoptive moms can suffer from postpartum blues, although, in my case it is far more likely to be perimenopause. I'm just too
old
for this!” She wipes her watery eyes, blows her nose in the used Kleenex she pulls from the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and laughs.
Encouraged by Ruth's candor, I launch into my own story. We've made a sizeable dent in the lasagna, and Ruth is uncorking the second bottle of wine by the time I get to the part about my arrest and Jake's early morning arrival and offer of reprieve. Her only response, apart from a gleeful laugh, is to bring out the cheesecake. No plates, two forks. She hands me one and, raising both her glass and her fork, she says, “To single motherhood!”
chapter 15
In the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh where my father lives, there are five synagogues within a four-block radius, four Orthodox and one Conservative. When I was growing up, the neighborhood had been almost exclusively Jewish. If the retail landscape of the Murray Avenue shopping district is any indication, it still is. Of the two bagel bakeries and three kosher restaurants I remember from my childhood (two dairy, one fleishig), all remain in business, albeit now peaceably coexisting alongside a French bistro, a Thai noodle bar, and an Indian grocer.
Growing up, many of our neighbors had been Orthodox Jews. It wasn't until I moved back home to Pittsburgh that I thought about how interesting it was that my parents decided to live there. We weren't a religious family; in fact, we hardly ever went to church. My father was a self-proclaimed agnostic, and the only gods I could ever remember my mother worshipping were the great gourmands of the world, people like Pellegrino Artusi, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Auguste Escoffier, and Phileas Gilbert, followed in later years by Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels. (If our neighbors considered us an oddity, perhaps it wasn't solely due to our lack of religious affiliation.) For the most part, though, we'd been accepted, more or less generously, into their fold and over the years had been invited to our share of dinners in their sukkahs, Yom Kippur break fasts, and Passover seders.
Few of our old neighbors are left. Mrs. Favish sold her house and moved to a retirement community in Sarasota shortly after I left for culinary school. For years afterward I sent her a card and a box of homemade rugelach at Rosh Hashannah, but about ten years ago, I received a note from her granddaughter, thanking me for my thoughtfulness and informing me that she'd died. Only two of the families—the Friedmans and the Silvermans, both of whom had sons my age—still live in the neighborhood. Young Shlomo Friedman, who would've been in my grade except that he'd gone to yeshiva, wore Orthodox tzitzis and had side curls. The other boy, Ronnie Silverman, the brother of the recently widowed Debbie Silverman Levine, had been a year ahead of me in school. Ronnie and I had had a couple of sweaty adolescent encounters back then—several unsatisfying metal-on-metal kisses, along with some furtive groping. He was never without his Star of David, which he wore on a heavy gold chain that invariably got stuck in my long hair when we made out.
I've run into Mrs. Silverman a couple of times since I've been back, once while picking up Chinese takeout and then again when we were both unloading groceries. Both times she presented me with a whole wallet's worth of photos of Debbie and her children and Ronnie and his family, two daughters and a wife, a lovely Jewish girl, and a lawyer to boot. Rona Silverman had never liked me, mostly, I had assumed, because she didn't like her son being interested in a
shiksa
, even a fourteen-year-old one. But as I learned one muggy summer's evening when the Silvermans' windows were open and Ronnie and I were making out on the Silvermans' back porch, the real reason she didn't like me was because she thought my mother was damaged and it was her belief that those kinds of things run in families.
When she hauled out the photos of Ronnie and his family, she cross-examined me about why I was back home and didn't seem at all surprised to learn I was divorced. During our brief conversation, I caught her examining me for signs of alcoholism or other sorts of goyish afflictions. She was probably barely inside the front door before placing a call to Ronnie to tell him how lucky he was to have escaped me.
She also asked me about Grappa. A friend of hers had eaten there on a trip to New York a few weeks ago and had raved about the food. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd lost that, too, my only capital, the only stake I had in anything useful, meaningful, or worthwhile. Instead, I smiled and lied, telling her I was taking a sabbatical from the restaurant, but that Chloe and I were headed back there soon. And then I had to hurry into the house before, unable to resist the impulse, I'd wheedle the friend's phone number from Mrs. Silverman so that I might grill her about the meal she'd eaten, looking for a misstep: a broken sauce, lumps in the polenta, an inadequately braised piece of meat.
Afraid of running into her again, I've taken to scoping out her house from the upstairs window before venturing out, looking for her car in the driveway, or waiting until Saturday morning when she'll be at services. This particular Saturday morning, I've waited until the Silvermans left their house on foot for Shabbat services before setting off to buy some decongestant for Chloe. She's been sniffling for the last couple of days and woke up last night with a throaty cough.
While I'm standing in line at the drugstore, I notice that the Waterpik Dental Care System is a featured special, so at the last minute I throw that into the cart as well, thinking it's been a while since I've had my teeth cleaned. Chloe hasn't been to the pediatrician since before we left Manhattan either, and I'm hoping that these over the counter medicines will nip this cold in the bud because I'm not ready to transfer our medical and dental care to Pittsburgh. That would make it too much like we were living here, rather than just visiting.
When I get home, Chloe is sleeping in the playpen in the living room, and Dad and Fiona are playing Scrabble at the kitchen table. At least I think they are. The board is open in front of them, but Dad's reading a novel and Fiona is poring over the
Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary
. They both look up as I enter.
“How long has Chloe been sleeping?”
“Just a few minutes. She's tired, poor baby,” Fiona says, studying the dictionary.
“She fussed for a bit,” my father says, glancing up at me, “but Fi rocked her until she fell asleep.”
“Don't forget, you read her a story, Grandpa,” Fiona says, looking up from the dictionary as she places her letters on the board. “Here we go.
C-L-A-M,
and this blank is
P.
That will be sixteen points. That makes the score”—she consults the score sheet—“um, two hundred fifty-six to ninety-nine.” She looks over her glasses at me. “Your father is winning. He even lets me use the dictionary, and he still wins.” She sighs.
My father immediately leans over and puts
XI
under the
AM
in
CLAMP
to make
ax, xi,
and
mi
. “The
X
is on a triple letter, counted twice makes forty-eight, so that will be fifty-four points altogether.”
He goes back to his book, a Robert B. Parker mystery.
Fiona lurches toward the dictionary, muttering under her breath.
“Xi is a Greek letter; mi is the third tone in the diatonic scale. And I presume you know what an ax is, Fi,” my father says, giving Fiona a look over his half-moon glasses. Not even a trace of a smile. How could it have escaped my notice for the last thirty-eight years that my father is an insufferable snob?
“Well, I didn't know that, Mr. Smarty Pants. You use these silly two letter words all the time.” She turns to me. “Who ever heard of
E-S
being a word?”
“It is the spelling for the letter
s,
” my father says.
“I mean, really—you want to spell the letter, you just write it!”
They both sigh.
I take advantage of Chloe's being asleep and cart all of our stuff upstairs. I think about hanging the Waterpik on the wall beside the sink, but looking at the directions, I see that it requires anchors and a drill. I tell myself I just don't want to wake up Chloe, although she's sleeping downstairs and I'm on the third floor. I put the Waterpik back in its box, stow the box on the back of the toilet, and lie down on the bed. The mere thought of hanging it has suddenly taxed me to the point of complete exhaustion.
Anchors and a drill imply commitment. I've been a renter long enough to realize that you just don't go making holes in walls of places you won't be staying. We've been here almost six weeks and, outside of registering for Gymboree class, I've done almost nothing else to settle in. I haven't hung a single picture or unpacked a single box, and here I'm quaking at the thought of hanging a Waterpik in the bathroom. What am I waiting for? Some sign that our life here is about to begin?
Later, I make a halfhearted attempt to locate a drill and am surprised to find that someone, probably Fiona, has reorganized my father's tool area in the basement. My father used to throw his motley collection of tools (a rusty hammer, a few loose screws and washers, a bunch of screwdrivers, and a drill with a fraying cord and a partial collection of drill bits that never seem to be the right size for anything you want to drill) into an orange crate by the washer. The rotting orange crate has been replaced by a red Craftsman tool chest filled with a small but impressive arsenal of brand new tools. Now, not only does my father own a drill that can be used without danger of electrocution, but he also has anchors, picture hooks, and two different kinds of wrenches—in short, every implement necessary to hang my Waterpik set. Well then, I think, closing the lid on the tool chest and giving it a small but determined kick, now that I have all of the necessary tools at my disposal, I can do it whenever I want.
The next day I don't get out of bed. It's a chilly February morning, the sky the murky color of dishwater, and it looks as if it might snow. I'd gone to bed early the night before, just after Chloe, and had then awakened in the early hours of the morning to fiddle with the space heater to fight the chill in the room, only having to rouse myself later when the temperature felt too high, not quite understanding it was my own personal thermostat that needed the adjustment. Since then I've hardly slept, tossing and turning in a fitful, uneasy doze.
My father climbs the attic stairs when I'm unable to even drag myself from bed to attend to Chloe's cries. He's already dressed, which means it must be late. He comes in with Chloe, but after taking one look at me, immediately deposits her back into her bed. He returns a minute later with the thermometer, which he puts in my mouth, telling me that I need to keep it under my tongue, like I'm five years old. I can hear him in the next room dressing Chloe. The thermometer beeps, but I don't even have the energy to take it out. Instead, I let it slide out of my mouth, where it makes a little moist spot on the pillow. When I open my eyes, my father is picking up the thermometer, Chloe in his arms.
“Hmm,” is all he says. He brings me a cool glass of water and a couple of Tylenol and tells me I need to rest.
I drift in and out of consciousness for most of the day, losing track of the time. When I next see my father hovering over me, the room is dark. When I ask for Chloe, he tells me that she is already asleep.
It is two days later, Tuesday, when I finally and fully awaken. Fiona has moved in downstairs, ostensibly to take care of Chloe, although I can't help but think she was just waiting for a convenient opportunity to tighten her grip on my father. Now, here she is, balancing a tray on one hand and wearing some sort of frilly apron over a pair of spandex pants.
“Don't be silly. I have a zillion vacation days I haven't used,” Fiona says when I manage to thank her for helping take care of Chloe. “It's fun, kind of like a tag team,” she says, looking at her watch. “Your father should be home in a few minutes to watch the baby, and then I'm off to my exercise class. Don't worry, dear, Chloe's just fine,” she tells me. When I ask to see her, Fiona replies that she's happily playing downstairs in the playpen, and besides, she's worried that I might still be contagious. Then she pulls from her apron pocket the large, rectangular baby monitor, which she plugs in beside the bed. “Here you go. You can listen to her at least.” After the initial burp of static I can hear Chloe's small voice. I resent Fiona's proprietary tone, but the thought of protesting seems infinitely more exhausting, and so I sink back into the pillows, my forehead damp with exertion.
“Look,” she says, depositing a small stack of magazines onto the bed, along with a tray of soup and some ginger ale. “I brought you these, in case you feel like reading.”
Along with
Pittsburgh Magazine,
Fiona has brought me the most recent issue of
Cosmo,
which features an article on the current sex toy craze, and a magazine called
Channel
that has as its lead article an interview with Genghis Khan as told to medium John Edward.
Fiona lays the back of her hand on my forehead. The gesture is at once maternal and self-conscious and speaks of a certain intimacy, the desire for which, at least on Fiona's part, I can only guess at. For some reason, I'm reminded all at once of my mother, who was not in the least the maternal sort. When I look up at Fiona, I see that her eyes are soft and kind and that she has meant the gesture to be comforting and is now looking to me for some sign that it was welcome. Instead, I shut my eyes and turn my face into the pillow, searching for a cool spot on which to rest my aching head.
 
Although my fever has been gone for twenty-four hours, I haven't been able to shake the malaise. A weariness has settled in and taken root, helped along by the gray and frigid weather and the aftermath of a headache, a blousy, bilious feeling, dense as pound cake. I actually planned on taking Chloe to Gymboree today, even went so far as to get myself and Chloe dressed—right down to Chloe's snowsuit—but it was her mittens that finally did me in. Bending low over Chloe, struggling to separate her fingers and coax her tiny thumbs into the pink woolen casings, I'd sunk to my knees, exhausted by the effort. The thought of having to undress her, only to have to redress her again an hour later, made me so tired I wept right there on the kitchen floor.

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