Crazy in the Kitchen (24 page)

NO MORE COOKING, NO MORE FOOD

In the final autumn of her life, my mother could not move. Could not move her arms, could not move her hands or her fingers.
Could not move her legs, her feet, her toes, her head. Could not speak, could not say anything. Could not move her jaw, could
not chew, could not swallow. Hence could not cook, could not eat.

A tube inserted in her body was now her only means of sustenance. The tube, inserted against our will, against her desire,
against the instructions that she had given us long before it came to this. For she knew, we all knew, that starving to death
is not a terrible way to die if one has lived a sufficiently long life, if one is not starving to death before one's time,
and that there is a euphoric delirium that precedes the dying, that eases it.

What my mother had said when she was still conscious, when she was having trouble swallowing, when she could no longer move
her arms, when she was having trouble hearing, and seeing, was this: "Don't let them feed me through a tube. If it's my time
to go, it's my time to go. And, please God, let me go quickly."

This, she said matter-of-factly, as if she were saying "Don't forget to take out the garbage; don't forget to unload the dishwasher;
and make sure that someone takes the zucchini in the refrigerator and uses them so they won't go to waste."

The "please God" had astonished me, for my mother hadn't been to church, hadn't taken the sacraments, in a very long time,
and I wondered whether, like so many others, she was turning to religion at the end of her life. But then I recalled that
my mother had said "please God" frequently without intending to invoke any deity, as in "Please God, let these kids stop driving
me crazy," as in "Please God, let Lou come home before this dinner is ruined," as in "Please God, let this old woman leave
me alone."

We knew, and she knew, too, that providing nutrition through a tube prolongs the agony of dying, the final letting go, though
of course we were not ready for that; at least, I was not— for this is not something that one can prepare for, this dying
of the mother, this ceasing to be of the one who gave us life, this departing of the woman whose life is so entangled with
our own, so that to lose her is to lose a part of ourselves that we never acknowledged belonged to her.

My mother, though, was ready. It had seemed to me that my mother had wanted to die ever since my sister killed herself. It
had seemed to me that my mother had invited dying, had welcomed it: one day, a year after my sister killed herself, she told
me that she had almost been hit by a car while crossing the street in front of her house to get to the mailbox to mail a letter
to a friend; she said she didn't realize she was crossing directly in front of an oncoming car, but I wondered. And a little
while before she entered the hospital, she deliberately stopped taking all the pills that were keeping her alive (without
telling us; without telling her doctor, who had told her to stop only one; this we discovered later).

As my mother lay dying, I cleaned my refrigerator in a manner that would have pleased her, which is not something that I had
ever done before. I drew up menu plans, made shopping lists, and spent a long time shopping for food at Fairway, my favorite
food store at the time Now that it was clear that my mother could not nourish me, it became important to learn how to care
for myself. I focused on trying to make good meals, and in my journal I recorded everything I was cooking for my family, everything
that I was eating, as if my cooking could feed her, as if my eating could be her eating, as if my cooking and eating could
keep her alive.

Steak, done rare; and ratatouille, and new potatoes boiled, then turned round

and round and browned with cumin butter, salt, and pepper

Pasta with caramelized garlic and onions, browned pignoli nuts and saffron

and nice golden raisins soaked in vermouth

Roast chicken, potato salad made with yogurt, sauteed pea pods

Italian burgers, pan fried with a vermouth sauce, tiny fresh carrots with lemon

and orange sauce; fresh corn

Scallops, pan seared, with fresh oregano, Parmesan cheese, green beans, a salad,

fresh strawberries with cannoli cream

Broiled lamb chops, lots of salad, fruit

Chicken and vegetable kabobs with brown rice

The last meal I had prepared for my mother at my house before she went into the hospital was nothing special, nothing fancy,
nothing I had spent time planning or preparing. A brunch with store-bought bagels, smoked salmon from a local Jewish deli,
freshly squeezed orange juice. We talked about my love of Paris as we ate, about how much I loved eating simple, perfectly
prepared meals there in bistros where you could sit outside. My mother seemed interested, which was unusual for her, because
very little had interested her since my sister had died, so I suggested that all of us— her, me, my father, my husband— should
go to Paris together for her birthday, in August. She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no either.

But by August, my mother was in the hospital. And on her birthday, which she spent in the hospital, I made a party for her,
because I feared (and I was right) that it would be the last birthday of her life. I bought the Carvel ice cream cake that
she loved (made with extra chocolate-cookie crunchies and extra chocolate syrup), her favorite cream soda, party hats, party
napkins, cups, and plates, party balloons, party noisemakers.

No one else from the family was there. My father, husband, and older son were working and would visit later that evening while
I was teaching; my younger son was away at college. But several nurses (always on the lookout for sweets) wandered in. They
all still believed that my mother would survive, and that we should have a real party when she came home. Somehow, I sensed
that she wouldn't come home. And I was right. So I am glad that I made her that party before she died.

The nurses and I sang for her. And, as I lighted the candles, I sang "Happy Birthday, dear Mommy, Happy Birthday to You,"
although I hadn't called my mother Mommy for a very long time.

My mother seemed pleased with our little celebration. And as she opened my gift of special hand cream in a flowered china
dispenser, we talked about how much she had enjoyed baking, how much she had disliked cooking.

"The first cake I made your father for dessert," she told me, "was a refrigerator cake. I made it with chocolate wafers, chocolate
pudding, and whipped cream. You made it in the morning; and it cooled in the refrigerator all day. It was a refrigerator cake.

"When your father came home from work that day, I was so excited. I told him, 'I baked you a cake for desert,' and showed
him what it was. Instead of saying thank you, he said 'That's no baked cake,' and I cried. You know your father. He could
be a real bastard."

I wanted to say "You don't have to tell me," but chose not to. I knew they loved each other still, for I had seen how my father
dressed specially to visit her in the hospital, had seen her brighten as he entered the room, and so I didn't want, at this
time, to speak of old wounds. Through it all— the depressions, the madness, the hospitalizations, the shock treatments, the
suicide of my sister, my father loved my mother still.

Because she was awake, and still alert after her party, I read to my mother. Stories from Grace Paley's
Enormous Changes at the Last
Minute.
I had chosen Grace's stories because I knew the working-class neighborhood she described would seem familiar to my mother,
and because many of the stories were very short so that reading them to my mother wouldn't overtax her.

Through the next few days I read her "Wants," "Debts," "Gloomy Tune," "Living," "The Burdened Man," "Enormous Changes at the
Last Minute," "The Little Girl," "A Conversation with My Father."

The last story I read my mother before she stopped hearing was "The Immigrant Story." "Isn't it a terrible thing to grow up
in the shadow of another person's sorrow?" one character asks. And I thought
Yes, it
certainly is.

"What if this sorrow is all due to history?" I read. "I thank God every day that I'm not in Europe. I thank God I'm American-born."

"Amen to that," my mother said. "Amen."

After I had finished reading the book, I told my mother I knew Grace Paley.

"Oh?" my mother replied, interested, and I wondered why I had never told her things like this before; why I shared so little
of my life with her; why I hadn't told her before about my trip to Barcelona to a writers' conference, where I had seen Grace
Paley; or about the marvelous sweet shrimp I'd had there, and the spinach with pine nuts, raisins, and Serrano ham. I surely
could not tell her now, for she was having difficulty swallowing, and my telling her would have been unkind, and it seemed
that soon she wouldn't be able to eat at all.

"Yes," I said, "I know Grace Paley," and nothing more. I remembered that I shared so little of my life with her because my
mother disapproved of the life I lead, of the time I took away from my children to do my work.

Even when it was clear that my mother was dying, my father wouldn't believe it. Against doctor's orders and common sense,
he would help her out of bed, and force her to try to walk, and when she collapsed on the floor, he would complain to the
nurses that she wasn't getting enough physical therapy.

Once, I saw him trying to feed her pudding after she had stopped eating because she couldn't swallow. I saw him trying to
force the spoon into her mouth, thinking, perhaps, that if he could get that small mouthful of food into her, he could keep
her alive. My mother's eyes said, "I'm too weak to fight him; I can't resist; but I can't do what he wants."

The pudding dribbled off the spoon, down my mother's chin, onto her nightgown.

"Stop that," I said, rushing to the bed, pulling the spoon out of my father's hand, away from my mother's mouth. "Can't you
see that she couldn't eat even if she wanted to?"

"But," my father said, "if she doesn't eat, she'll die."

Two years after my mother died, my father and Milly came to Paris with my husband and me to celebrate his seventy-eighth birthday.
This was the trip that I had wanted my mother and father to take.

For my father's birthday dinner, we took him to the restaurant Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower.

Morels were in season, and we each ordered them, prepared in a cream and cheese sauce, for an appetizer.

"How your mother would have loved this," my father said.

"Yes, she would have," I responded, although I was sure that my mother never would have come to Paris, never would have dined
in this restaurant, for it was difficult for her to indulge in such sybaritic pleasures. She was always uncomfortable in restaurants,
thought them a waste of money. Aside from eating at roadside stands when we went on vacations, my mother didn't go to a "proper"
restaurant until after I was in college.

If, by some miracle, we had lured my mother to Paris, and to the Jules Verne, she never would have ordered the morels. She
never would have permitted herself to spend so much money on food—$ 60 for an appetizer— even if she was being treated; especially
if she was being treated.

She would have filled up on the bread. She would have studied the menu, rejected the possibility of an appetizer, asked about
the prices of the entrees and picked out the least expensive item on the menu, even if it was something that she didn't like.
She would been delighted at the
amuse-bouche,
for she would have felt that she was getting something free. She would have permitted herself coffee, even dessert— a chocolate
mousse perhaps. But when the little sweets that are presented with coffee in French restaurants arrived, she would have been
upset, realizing that she could have done without dessert and saved money.

She would have taken a box of matches as a memento of the evening. She would have been delighted at the little tongs for picking
up the cubes of Demerara and white sugar served with coffee, and she would have taken several cubes, placed them in her handbag.

Taking sugar from restaurants was one of the many ways that my mother economized. When she and my father went on road trips,
she always took four extra rolls and several packets of sugar from wherever she and my father ate their supper. If they had
eaten at a buffet, she would take, too, some extra meat, some cheese, some fruit for the next day. When she got back to her
table, she would pack it all into a plastic bag that she kept in her purse. Then she would take two tissues from her purse
and shake some salt into one, some pepper into another, and fold the tissues into neat little packets and stow these as well.
She would use the salt and pepper to season the tomatoes my father and she ate on the road.

Though stale, the rolls would form the basis of their breakfast the following morning, which they would eat in their motel
room. They would drink coffee that my father would make in the small automatic coffeemaker that I had gotten them one Christmas.
(The stolen sugar would sweeten my mother's.) For lunch, they would stop somewhere on the side of the road, and picnic on
sandwiches made with the two other stale rolls and whatever my mother might have scavenged from the buffet table. They always
traveled with a capacious Styrofoam hamper, into which they would pack cold cuts, fruit, and ground coffee (Eight O'Clock
Coffee from the A & P) for the road. There would always be a package of Stella D'oro biscuits for my father to have with his
coffee.

At the end of each day, my mother never recorded in her trip diary notes about where she and my father had traveled or notes
about the sights they had seen. For she was uninterested in seeing new places; she went on vacations for my father's sake
and because he insisted upon it. She never climbed to the tops of hills to see views, or mounted stairs to gaze down into
the water of a canal, or clambered into a small boat to see a sight across the water. She lingered behind, and not grudgingly,
while my father had his little adventures.