Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) (12 page)

M
y maternal grandmother’s identity is wrapped up in food. She’s been a member of the Mt. Lebanon Presbyterian church for more than sixty years and has worked in the church kitchen there for every single one of them, heading up countless afternoon luncheons, dinners, and other sundry food-focused fundraisers, sometimes staying late and operating the commercial dishwasher by herself long after everyone else has gone home.

Every Christmas, she fills large Macy’s cardboard gift boxes with pizzelle cookies, each flavor—vanilla, chocolate, and anise—getting their own giant box. And these are just for family and friends to snack on throughout the season. For gifts, she packs tins with her lady locks cookies, little croissant-shaped puff pastries stuffed with cream, the dough for which she makes from scratch using butter-flavored Crisco.

She is a woman who has spent her life hosting, who always shows up at your door with something she’s recently cooked or baked, and who has a pot of chicken noodle soup on her stovetop more often than not. As a kid, I must’ve eaten that chicken soup a thousand times. The sweet umami flavor of her homemade broth was so different from the sharp saltiness of the Maruchan ramen noodles our nanny made for my brother
and me. And no matter the day or month, the contents of that chicken noodle soup remained the same: carrot rounds, celery half-moons, shredded white and dark meat chicken, and wide curly egg noodles.

Mom and Bruce, in my mother’s words, “are not run of the mill Christians” (by which she means that they don’t
just
believe in God; they go to church every Sunday, they tithe ten percent, they organize fund-raisers, they take on leadership roles, et cetera). So, while I expect some resistance from them to Matt’s and my engagement, I also expect some level of capitulation, something akin to: “Well, we hope you don’t lose your faith completely, but Matt’s a good guy, so congrats all the same.” (When Matt called my mom before proposing and asked for permission to marry me, she never
really
granted it, responding like a saleswoman who doesn’t actually want to sell, “You know, Amelia’s always been
extremely
difficult to please.”)

But when I speak to her on the phone after the fact, all she can muster is a quiet pout, and when I push for her to congratulate me, to admit that apart from Matt’s Jewishness, he’s a good fit for me, she refuses. She is simply too “sad.” She needs “time.”

“Time?”
I shout. “You’ve known Matt for ten years. You guys worked together to plan my surprise sixteenth birthday party!”

She doesn’t respond, and with every passing silent second, I become more and more worked up. I can’t believe this is the reaction I get from the person who married my father, the guy who notoriously brought his own hoagie to Thanksgiving
dinner at Grandma’s and ate in a separate room watching football and who of course would go on to do much worse things and who, on top of it all, was decidedly
not
a Christian.

After a solid minute of silence, I can’t take it any longer.

“I don’t want to talk to you until you can congratulate me,” I say, and hang up the phone.

The following day, my blood is still boiling. What adds to the frustration is that I can’t even fully vent to Matt, as I’ve told him a watered-down version: that my mom’s less-than-pleased reaction has nothing to do with him, that she is simply worried about me no longer being a Christian—literally, about me going to hell.

And so I turn to Grandma for support. Over the years, I had seen her deal with hot-button issues like homosexuality in the church and my own liberal leanings much more gracefully than Mom ever had.

When she picks up the phone with her sweet and sing-songy, “Good afternoon,” I am expecting her to be on my side.

“Will you tell Mom how ridiculous she’s being?” I say.

“I will
not
,” she says, using a tone I’ve never heard her direct toward me, one that lacks any of her usual grandmotherly kindness.

“What?”

“This is marriage. This is serious. You’re making a mistake.”

One thing I’ve learned about myself by now is that I’m a fighter, and not in the Destiny’s Child I’m-a-survivor sense of the word, but simply in the sense that I don’t avoid conflict. I face it head on with gloves up and a racing heart. And in this case, I’m facing off with my eighty-seven-year-old grandmother. And if honesty is the name of the game, I’m ready to play.

“I know it’s serious. I’m taking it seriously by opting to marry my best friend whom I’ve known since I was fifteen years old. And you know what? If Mom was
so concerned
about
my faith
, then she should have started taking Billy and me to church when we were kids and not for just a few rogue years in high school. But wait, she
couldn’t have
because she married Dad, who is basically the opposite of a Christian and who believes that religion is for the weak!”

“It’s not about religion, Amelia. He’s wrong for you.”

“Oh, OK, then. Why? Why exactly?”

But she changes the subject to my father. “I told your mother I didn’t think she should marry him.”

“Oh, great. So this is what you do? You tell people who are recently engaged that they’re making a mistake?”

“I told her once, and I’ll tell you once.”

“Well, that’s a really solid policy, Grandma.”

Needless to say, I don’t get a
congratulations
from Grandma either.

Five months later, my mom, Grandma, and I are meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, to visit my brother and his girlfriend, Jenny, who recently moved there together. Though Mom never did congratulate me, she and I are still close. We talk on the phone almost daily, and eventually, we make up in the way that only family or very close friends can, by allowing the anger to fade by virtue of missing each other.

Grandma, on the other hand, I cannot forgive. She is still the horrible lady I happen to be related to who has unapologetically proclaimed divorce in my future. As far as I’m concerned, Grandma is the enemy. I’ve studied her forces, I know
where to attack, and I’m not going to make this weekend easy for her.

I think we can all agree that when you’re traveling and you go out to eat, it doesn’t always make sense to take the leftovers to your hotel like it does when you are at home with a proper refrigerator. This idea has apparently never occurred to Grandma. By the time she and Mom, who have driven together from Pittsburgh, pick me up at the Charlotte airport, Grandma has already accumulated a container with half of a sandwich and a few half-eaten convenience-store snack food items, including an open bag of Fritos.

Our first morning together in Asheville, the five of us—Mom, Grandma, me, my brother, and Jenny—go out to breakfast, where Grandma orders the bagel and lox. (Matt and I often joke that Grandma’s taste buds are at least half Jewish, since she also loves corned beef, hot pastrami, and macaroons.) Grandma, being Grandma, eats half of the bagel, barely puts a dent in the pile of lox, and asks the server for a container to pack up the rest. When we get back in the car, I see her add it to her growing collection of foodstuffs in the trunk.

That night at dinner, she strikes again, only this time it’s a tablespoon of guacamole she couldn’t finish. “I need a box,” she announces to the server.

Six months ago, I would’ve found Grandma’s Great-Depression-era habit of leftover-keeping endearing.
Oh, Grandma! How cute that she holds on to parsley stems and half-rotten potatoes
. But given the role she’s assumed of divorce-whisperer, her request is simply annoying and impolite.

“Grandma, it’s one bite of guacamole. Don’t waste the Styrofoam,” I say aloud, and can instantly feel the whole table’s eyes on me.
No she didn’t. Not to Grandma!

“You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry,” Grandma says, trying to shame me.

Only I’m not ashamed. I’m just getting started.

The next day, Mom has offered to make dinner for us and a few of Bill and Jenny’s friends before we all leave to see The National, one of our favorite bands, who is playing that night.

In the late afternoon, Mom is prepping her ingredients when I hear Grandma ask her for the keys to the car; she needs to grab something. I then watch carefully as she returns with her purse, a Styrofoam container, and the announcement that she’s going to make a smoked salmon dip.

I casually follow her into the kitchen and watch as she retrieves a box of cream cheese, a small container of sour cream, the aforementioned Fritos, and a bag of partially melted chocolate-covered potato chips from her purse. “Oh,” she says, pleased. “I’d forgotten.” With great care, she tears open a corner of the bag of the chocolate-covered chips and retrieves one with her thumb and forefinger. “I had never seen these before. Amelia, would you like to try one?”

I look at the chocolate melted up against the side of the clear plastic bag and decline. She moves on to my mother, who is
very
interested in trying a chip. And as the two of them nod in approval of their discovery, I put my hand on the box of cream cheese, which is warmer and softer than cream cheese should be. I peek inside the Styrofoam container and spot the leftover bagel and lox from breakfast thirty-six hours ago.
She wouldn’t.

Slipping out of the kitchen, I gather my brother and Jenny onto the porch, and with the flair and gusto normally reserved for scary campfire stories told with a flashlight shining up at your face, I report what I’ve seen.

We all come to the same conclusion: No one can eat any of Grandma’s dip. It’s simply not safe for human consumption.

Within the hour, Grandma emerges from the kitchen with a pale pink dip in a bowl, which she’s placed on top of a plate layered with Fritos. “Would you like some salmon dip?” she asks, stopping right in front of my spot on the couch.

“No, thanks.”

She shrugs her shoulders, turns a quarter degree, and approaches Jenny. “Try my dip.”

“Oh, is that salmon? I actually can’t. Sorry, Grandma.”

My brother is sitting on the porch reading, and so we watch as she goes outside to find him. “William,” we can hear her say. “I’ve made some dip.”

“Thanks, Grandma, but I just brushed my teeth.”

When my brother’s friends start pouring in, Grandma greets them, shaking their hands and telling them that there is smoked salmon dip on the coffee table.

Perhaps it’s the pinkish color of the dip or the way the Fritos seem to transplant the dish to the 1980s, but we don’t have to tell the guests to steer clear of Grandma’s concoction—the appetizer just sits there, unloved and uneaten all through the cocktail hour.

At one point, I spy Grandma take a Frito to it and carefully try a bite. I can tell she’s trying to figure it out. Everyone always eats her food at church, and at Bible study, and at my mom’s house when she brings over a dish to accompany dinner. So what’s going on?

As angry as I still am, watching Grandma stare at her appetizer with confusion is difficult. It’s almost enough to make me go over there and join her, to scoop a Frito into the stupid, pink, health hazard of a dip and tell her how great it tastes. But
in the end, I can’t quite do it. I tell myself that just because she’s OK with storing smoked salmon in the trunk of the car for an extended period of time doesn’t mean that I have to be. I tell myself that just because she’s older than me doesn’t mean she’s right.

There isn’t a table large enough for us all to sit together, so Mom serves us potluck style, setting her linguine and shrimp, Caesar salad, and garlic bread on the kitchen table. As I make myself a plate, I notice that the Fritos and dip have made their way to the buffet spread as well.

We leave for the concert shortly after dinner, and Mom and Grandma retire to their hotel for the night. But in the morning, when I open the refrigerator to grab the milk for my coffee, there it is—refrigerated at last—wrapped in plastic too, in case any of us want a few bites of dip for breakfast.

B
ack in LA, after I’m let go from the School of Rock, I pick up a job at the Beverly Hills branch of Paper Source, a store that specializes in colorful cardstock, greeting cards, and craft supplies. It pays $11/hour, but you have to pay $4 a day for parking and endure the wrath of the regional manager, who occasionally drops in on the store and scolds me for sitting down while I work. (If I ever find myself the owner and operator of a retail store, there will be stools behind the register and a desk for those tasks that can be done sitting down.)

My spare time is dedicated to my second attempt at getting into graduate school for creative writing. Only this time I’m not taking chances, and I apply to a much wider range of schools. And though Matt and I are engaged, I’m still disenchanted with Los Angeles. So much so that USC is the only school I apply to on the West Coast. So much so, that in between my hours at Paper Source, I design a T-shirt in the style of the iconic
I
♥
NY
that reads instead: “I
LA.”

I buy the domain name IStomachLA.com, get a vendor’s license, and though I know nothing about starting my own business, I convince my mom to
invest
$300 in the new company I’m starting. The cash pays for a first run of shirts and for
some of the fees to apply for a registered trademark. The best-case scenario, as I see it, is to sell the idea to a company like Urban Outfitters. And the worst case? I can sell the T-shirts online when I’m in school.

In April, I find out I’ve gotten into a few different schools, one of which is the University of North Carolina Wilmington—one of my top choices. When I’m not accepted into USC’s program, UNCW becomes my very top choice.

Before we uproot our lives entirely, Matt (who is also very close to being ready to leave Los Angeles) and I figure we should visit Wilmington for the first time. But when we do the math, we realize it doesn’t make sense. We can barely afford one plane ticket, let alone two. So, instead, I go for the free option: watching old episodes of
Dawson’s Creek
, which was shot there. And through the lens of Dawson’s unrequited love for Joey Potter, I become completely sold on Wilmington. I imagine a sleepy little beach town with marshes, seagulls, and seafood restaurants on docks. I imagine a town where not every single person you meet is trying to do the exact same thing you are and where the dream of buying a small house is an attainable one. I send in the paperwork to enroll.

Meanwhile, the regional manager at the paper store yells (really, he yells!) at me yet again for sitting down on the job. I give notice the next day and go back to my original temp agency.

Again, they send me to CAA, the giant talent agency with all the young people in suits and the Lichtenstein on the wall, which has since relocated to an even grander edifice. Since I’m only a temp, they don’t want to bother issuing me a parking card, telling me instead to use the valet parking and get it validated at the front desk each evening. So, every day, I valet my
tiny little car right alongside all the Mercedes and Jaguars. In the lobby one morning, I see Joey Potter (aka Katie Holmes).

For the rest of the day you can find me humming the Dawson’s theme song.
Will it be yes, or will it beeee… sorrrry?

The plan had been for me to move to Wilmington and get situated, and for Matt to follow in six months. However, when one of his and Geordie’s scripts is named a semifinalist in the Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting Competition—the most prestigious script contest in town—and for the first time since the
Esquire
film screenings, talent managers, producers, and agents are asking to meet with them, we decide that he should stay indefinitely.

I arrange to have my car transported from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, where I’ll fly in and spend a few days with Mom and Bruce before picking up my car, a bit of furniture, and an air mattress. And then, with printed-out directions from MapQuest, I navigate my way to what will be my house for the year.

In July, through the university’s LISTSERV for students in the creative writing program, I’d discovered that a daughter of one of the poetry professors was looking for two roommates to fill a three-bedroom house a couple of miles from campus. Rent would be $325. (Matt and I are currently paying $1425.) I’d e-mailed her right away.

It immediately feels strange to be driving in a town with so much empty space and residential roads with 45 mph speed limits. And it feels even stranger when the directions tell me to turn right into what appears to be a very suburban-looking housing development, the kind where there’s a sign announcing
your particular development’s name, e.g.,
Willow Crest
or
Eagle’s Landing
. As a bit of a spoiler of what’s to come, my subdivision has been soberly deemed
Sawgrass
.

The poet’s daughter is already living there, though she lets me know ahead of time that she’s not going to be there when I arrive—she has left a key for me under the mat.

The moment I step out of the car is the strangest yet. The foreign sound of cicadas and the hot, humid night air hit me at the same time. In the photos, the house had appeared clean, plain, and generally inoffensive, but in person, it reveals itself as one of those charmless, white-carpeted, vinyl-sided houses with faux wood doors, bearing absolutely
no
resemblance to Dawson’s family’s cozy coastal split-level. I’m glad my new roommate’s not there to register my disappointment.

But I’m exhausted from the drive. I set up my air mattress, call Matt, and fall asleep listening to the whir of the air-conditioning and beyond it, the sounds of the Southern night.

To ensure I can make it to our family’s annual beach gathering, my mom has rented a house at nearby Topsail Beach, which is a short thirty-minute drive from UNCW’s campus. Matt’s flown in for the week as well, so we split our time between the beach house and my new place, where we’re getting me set up.

And though my life feels unmoored, family vacation is the same as always.

When Matt and I arrive to the house in the late afternoon, Bruce, who “doesn’t like the beach,” has gone to get his car’s oil changed. My brother and Jenny are at the beach. And Mom and Grandma, who have maintained their tradition of bringing coolers full of raw meat from home so as not to pay
beach-grocery-store prices, are at work roasting two chickens for dinner that night.

Jinx, Grandma’s 115-pound Goldendoodle, who looks like an eleven-year-old boy in a dog costume, is also present, currently eating chicken gizzards Grandma has hand-mixed in with his dry dog food, which she calls
gravel
. (I’ve never actually seen Jinx eat the gravel, just the human food she’s put in around it.)

Jinx had been a gift from my uncle to keep Grandma busy after Grandpa died. Of course, no one had thought he’d get so big. Because of his size, Grandma’s never been able to control him, and so he’s gotten away with anything and everything. She was a pretty serious hoarder already, but after Jinx’s arrival, her house has been
destroyed
. Her couches and pillows are torn apart, empty food containers are strewn in the backyard, and shredded newspapers and books with teeth marks cover the floor.

On Grandma’s street, Jinx is notoriously the dog to watch out for, responsible for taking down more pedestrians than the ice-covered sidewalks of Pittsburgh. Grandma herself dislocated her kneecap because he pulled her down one day sprinting for a squirrel. But all of this is of no import to her. She loves that dog and will be damned if he doesn’t share her Wendy’s chicken sandwich and French fries.

Unmarried couples don’t share beds under Bruce and Mom’s not-your-run-of-the-mill-Christian roof, so I’m set to room with Jenny and my brother with Matt. However, since the
kids’
bedrooms are tucked away downstairs, we disregard these rules, having a good laugh at the idea of Bill and Matt, six feet and six feet two respectively, sharing one full-size bed.

My non-relationship with Grandma is the same too. We
haven’t spoken since Asheville four months ago. We don’t hug upon my arrival. In fact, we don’t greet each other at all. There’s no eye contact during dinner, and no one-on-one conversation between us.

After our meal of roasted chicken, Grandma begins boiling the carcasses for what will become chicken soup. Jinx stands by awaiting his inevitable gravel and chicken dinner. We kids grab some beers and suggest a friendly game of Scattergories.

Mom’s in with a disclaimer: “You know I’ll lose, though!”

“Scatta-what?” Bruce says before declining—he’s got some (Bible) studying to do.

The following afternoon, Matt and I come in from our morning session at the beach, sun-soaked and hungry, tired from getting knocked around by the waves. We head straight to the kitchen to make sandwiches with the supplies we purchased the day before at the little co-op grocery store in Wilmington: turkey, tomatoes, organic mayo, pickles, and thick-sliced bread. But in the kitchen, we find Grandma on hostess duty with a ladle and a bowl asking if we’re ready for soup, as if it’s been decided that soup is what we’re all having for lunch. I can see across from the kitchen bar that it’s Grandma’s standard-issue preparation. There are the telltale carrot circles, celery halves, and those wide, wavy egg noodles.

I have to hand it to her. It smells good, but I’m not ready to give Grandma the pleasure. Plus, I honestly want a sandwich, and I want to make it myself. And like a toddler asserting her independence, I tell her so.

One night, later in the week, I watch as Grandma spoon-feeds Jinx one of her gravel and real-food mixtures. But Jinx, much
to everyone’s surprise, is refusing to eat any of it. “You always eat the marinara sauce at home!” Grandma says to him, and then to herself, “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”

I can’t help but think that if Jinx, who is at least twenty pounds overweight (which puts him in the obese range for his breed) could talk, he would say something like: “Grandma! Please. I love you and the food you make, but I’m not a bottomless pit here to absorb your Depression-era food hang-ups. And I get full. I am full! So, just leave me be for a little while!”