Eating Heaven (7 page)

I turned to look at my mother, and as I suspected, her face had changed, too, her fixed-on smile barely able to restrain the ache behind it.

As the evening turned to twilight, Mom disappeared inside the house, reemerging with a large sheet cake decorated with flowers and fancy script congratulating the happy couple. She held a flat, rectangular present between her elbow and side.

“I thought you said no gifts,” a mechanic’s nervous wife said. “We didn’t bring anything.”

“Oh, this is just a little something,” Mom said, settling the cake on the table and presenting the gift to Benny. “It’s not really a wedding gift.” The expectation in her face was childlike as he unwrapped it, and she urged him to rip the paper when he tried to neatly remove the tape.

From the white-and-silver wrapping he pulled a framed black-and-white photograph. He stared at it for a long moment without smiling, then looked at my mother with an odd expression. If her smile faltered, I did not see it. “Hold it up for everyone to see, Ben,” she said. Then to everyone, she added, “It’s one of the best photos I’ve ever taken. I printed it myself.”

He turned it around to show us a portrait of himself, taken outdoors somewhere. There were trees in the distance, and he leaned into the picture, wearing an expression not unlike the one he wore now, haunted and vulnerable in a way I wasn’t used to seeing him.

“It was for my depth-of-field assignment,” Mom explained to the party guests, who murmured politely with confused looks on their faces.
It was an odd image for a wedding gift, after all. “Benny and I took a photography class together. That’s how we met, actually.”

Benny nodded and cleared this throat. “Yes, well, thank you, Bebe. Not sure I want to look at this ugly mug all the time, but I’m sure we’ll find a place for it.” He looked at Yolanda and gave her an apologetic smile. “Won’t we, honey?”

She looked back at him for a moment, then turned to Mom. “It’s a lovely photograph. I’ll keep it by my side of the bed.”

“Perfect,” Mom said, eyes filling. Then she picked up the cake knife. “Now, who wants cake?”

In the countless hours I spent at Benny and Yolanda’s house over the years, I never saw that photo again.

The first thing I see when I get home from the hospital after midnight is the glint of the stainless steel oven in the semidarkness of the kitchen. The air smells sweet and eggy. I walk to the oven and pull open the door. Six white ramekins hold six perfect-looking crème caramels, and I wonder if they’re safe to eat. It’s been more than three hours since I turned off the oven. I remember a Swedish chef telling me years ago when I worked as a prep cook that unrefrigerated food will keep for four hours, but he also cleaned his fingernails with the tip of his chef’s knife, so who knows.

I pick up one of the dishes and sniff it. It smells fine. Without taking off my coat, I dig into a drawer for a spoon and eat the crème caramel in five seconds flat. The texture is silky and it tastes sweet and custardy, if not perfect. I pull the rest of the dishes from the oven to put in the fridge, telling myself one was enough. An extra treat at the end of a hard day. I’ve put three ramekins into the refrigerator when I can’t stand it and dig into the second, eating more slowly this time, slipping out of my coat, savoring the custard on my tongue.
Two is definitely enough,
I’m thinking as I lick the inside of the cup,
two is perfect
. I’m picking up the remaining cup to put in the fridge but I turn instead, head for the bedroom with ramekin in hand.
At least wait until you’ve gotten undressed and in bed,
I tell myself,
surely you can wait
. I make it as far as the doorway and I’m digging my spoon into a third crème caramel.
Don’t beat yourself
up,
I think when I’m done,
it’s just fake eggs and skim milk, a little sugar. It’s for
Cooking for Life,
for God’s sake, it can’t be bad for you,
but I feel bad somehow as I finish off the third ramekin.
Okay, I’m satisfied now,
I tell myself,
and I can go to sleep.
I get undressed, pull on my T-shirt and flannel boxers, head for the bathroom to brush my teeth, but suddenly I’m taking a detour to the kitchen, opening the fridge, staring at the three remaining custards. If I eat just one more, there’ll be two left and I can take them to share with Benny tomorrow. That won’t be so bad. I pick up the fourth ramekin, close the fridge, and eat as slowly as I can to truly appreciate the flavor. Restaurant desserts are easily as big as four of these little things. I finish the fourth crème caramel, set the dish in the sink with the others, and go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, wash my face, moisturize my almost-forty-year-old skin.

I look into the mirror and see the droop in my jawline, the skin looser than I remember, there and over my eyes. And then it hits me that Benny might have cancer, Benny might die. My eyes brighten with moisture in the reflection, my cheeks flush pink with heat. What would I do if he disappeared, too?

I could vomit at my selfishness, at the thought of eating four crème caramels in a row, at the thought of him lying in that hospital all alone, but I don’t throw up anymore, not since fifth grade, so I give in and go to the kitchen and eat the remaining two desserts.

“So what’s the big deal about fifth grade?” Suzanne Long asked at our session.

“What do you mean?” I knew already that I was never going to tell her anything important. I don’t know what made me call her in the first place. I was feeling particularly panicked that day, and out of control, and weakened by the sight of thin people eating ice cream at Frozen Moo. I guess I wondered if I could be like them—an ice cream eater and a smaller body size—even though I didn’t want to admit it. Not skinny, just a size less conspicuous and more conducive to dating.

“You keep talking about fifth grade. That was when you decided not to care about your eating or your weight. That was also the last time you threw up. Why was that?”

“I got the flu and puked for four days straight. It was so awful I decided that I’d never throw up again, and I haven’t.”

“What happens when you get the flu now?”

“I feel like I’m going to die, but I don’t throw up,” I told her. “That’s it.”

“That’s amazing self-control,” she said, not looking all that impressed.

“I’m an amazing person,” I said, happy to see that our time was nearly up. I haven’t gone back.

It’s true that I had the flu in fifth grade and threw up for four days. Somewhere around day two or three, I remember languishing in agony in the living room, goose-bumped and sweaty, feeling myself shrink whenever I’d close my eyes, a frightening feeling like I might disappear. I was struggling to lie in a position on our green floral couch that wouldn’t make my head whirl, my stomach lurch. I was trying to watch the images on the television set, the soap opera actors extraordinarily animated about something, but I’d float in and out of their conversations, losing the thread and mixing it up with dream thoughts, with other voices. My mother’s voice from the kitchen, saying, “Of course I’m worried about her, silly.” Wondering if we were on TV, if I was lying on the fancy leather couch in the living room on the show. “Come on, just for a minute.” Mom’s voice, laughing softly. “I can sneak out when she’s sleeping. She won’t die on me, it’s just a stomach bug.” Trying to shout, from down inside my dream, “No, don’t leave me here alone!” The soap opera actors laughing, too, with my mother, telling her that Richmond would be beautiful this time of year, that she should definitely go to the reunion, but she’d better take her husband with her. After all, Genevieve had always wanted to get her clutches on him, and while the cat’s away . . .

“Just five minutes, okay? Meet me in front,” my mother said, and I snapped to life.

“Where?” I called out, a crying sound in my voice. “Where are you going?”

Her cool hand was on my forehead then, her voice soothing. “Only to get you some ginger ale, Ellie, to help you feel better.”

“I don’t want ginger ale. It makes me throw up,” I moaned. “I don’t want you to go to Richmond.”

She laughed, and I hated her for sounding so happy when I felt so miserable, for looking so lovely when I knew I looked half dead. “Honey, you’re having bad dreams because of the fever. I’m only running down to the market, just for a minute. I’ll be right back. Close your eyes and you’ll never even know I’m gone.”

I closed my eyes as she said and the world spun around me. I began to cry because I knew I would have to run to the bathroom soon. “Mom, I’m going to get sick,” I whispered, but I opened my eyes and she was gone. I sat up on the couch, shaky and unsteady, then realized it was far too late to run anywhere. I threw up on the green floral couch, my pajama bottoms, the white shag carpet, my feet. I’d vomited so much by then that it was only yellow bile and the water my mother had forced me to drink, hot and foul all over me, but I knew the smell and the stains would last forever. My mother would hate me.

Even more,
I thought, staring at the television set, where a man wearing a wedding ring was locked in a tortured embrace with a beautiful red-haired woman in a gold lamé dress. He whispered, “Genevieve, my darling,” and I knew something had changed forever.

I wake in my dark room, sweaty and confused, and look at the red digits on the clock: 3:47. Nausea overwhelms me, and I moan, “Those stupid fake eggs.” I lie still, trying to make it go away.

“Most people feel better when they throw up,” I can hear Suzanne Long saying.

“Not me,” I told her. “It just makes everything worse.”

I stand now, grope my way through the dark to the bathroom, leave the light off, sit on the cool tile floor next to the toilet. I hang my head over the rim, the smell of commode water still familiar after all these years. Saliva collects in my mouth and my stomach roils, then stops. After ten minutes I give up, stand at the sink, and splash cold water on my face. It doesn’t matter anymore whether I want to vomit or not. My body has been conditioned.

I’m now wide awake and nauseated, so I walk to my computer on the
table by the window, hit the button, wait for it to boot up while looking out at the snow-covered trees. When the computer whir has stopped, I check my e-mail. Sure enough, there it is, a message from Stefan. The subject line reads:
Article???

Should I open it or go back to bed? Would I be able to sleep now, anyway? I double-click the message and read:

I hit
REPLY
and type:

Then I hit
DELETE
and open the article, type in the crème caramel recipe. Just reading “egg substitute” makes me shudder, but I’m feeling mostly better. I go back through the piece, tweaking it here and there. Maybe I’ll say I sent it and it bounced back; it wasn’t my fault he didn’t get it. He’s never used such a snippy tone with me, although I know he’s capable of it from hearing his stories. He once brought another freelancer to tears, he claims, over the simple issue of paragraphing.

“Professionals shouldn’t need to be told to give me lots of white space,” he said. “I mean, insert an indent every once in a while, for Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t have to hold anyone’s hand. There are plenty of good freelancers out there, like you, Ms. Samuels.”

In the hierarchy of freelancers’ transgressions, I’m pretty certain that missed deadlines are far worse than long paragraphs.

N
ear daylight, I’ve just hit
SEND
when the heart-thudding sound of metal slamming into metal shatters the morning quiet. I jump to look out the window. Down at the corner, the front end of a mammoth SUV is wrapped around the back of a Hyundai on icy Everett Street. A business-suited woman jumps out of the SUV, waving her arms and screaming at the Hyundai driver, who has her hands to her mouth, shoulders quaking with sobs as she looks not at the accordioned back end of her car, but in front of it. She’s hit something or somebody, so I dial 911 on the cordless for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and run down the stairs.

“Nine-one-one, is this an emergency?” a male operator asks as I yank open the glass door and step into the cold. The signal begins to cut out, so I stand, shivering, halfway in and halfway out of the open door.

“There’s been an accident on Northwest Everett and Eighteenth.”

“Are there any injuries?”

Without injuries, a car wreck doesn’t qualify as an emergency? “Anybody hurt?” I yell to the two women.

The crying woman looks over at me and wails, “I think I killed a cat!”

“She thinks she killed a cat,” I report to the operator, then add, “but she looks pretty shaken up herself.”

“We’re following storm-emergency guidelines,” he says. “If there
aren’t any injuries, the drivers can just exchange information and report the accident within twenty-four hours.”

“He’s alive!” the distraught woman yells, and suddenly a gray blur shoots straight down Eighteenth, bounding through snow and slush, past the neighboring apartment building and up the sidewalk. I start to close the door, but it’s all happening too quickly, and he tears past me into my building. “He’s alive,” I tell the operator, who starts to explain that he’s hanging up to handle real emergencies as I click the
OFF
button.

The Hyundai driver chases the cat, plunging headlong through the snow in a knee-length dress and moon boots. When she reaches the building, she pushes me inside and pulls the door closed. The SUV driver is still standing in the street, arms held to the sky, a stunned look on her face.

“We have to catch him,” the Hyundai woman says. “I think he’s hurt.” She is quick and nervous in her flowered corduroy jumper and puffy red coat, and something tells me she’s enjoying the drama. “Did he go up the stairs?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I say. “But I’ll go look.”
And sneak into my apartment,
I’m thinking. This is her problem, not mine.

She busies herself looking under the stairwell as I head up the stairs. I’m opening my door when she yells, “Here he comes!” The same blur I saw before comes barreling straight for me, then veers left through my door.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I mutter, then to her as she crests the stairs, “He’s in here somewhere. And he doesn’t appear to be too terribly hurt. He runs like the Tasmanian Devil.”

“We have to find him,” she says, pushing past me into the apartment.

Downstairs the SUV driver has now come inside and is shouting, “Excuse me? We’re blocking traffic out there, you know! We can’t just leave these cars in the middle of the freaking road!”

“Listen,” I say to the woman. “She’s right. You need to go deal with the accident. I’ll find the cat, and you can take him with you, okay? You’ll come back for him?”

She looks annoyed to leave the searching to me, but she nods and heads back outside.

“Kitty?” I call, looking under the table, around the corner into the kitchen. “Where are you? Don’t be scared.” Right. A car’s just hit you, you have a wild woman on your tail, and you’re not supposed to be afraid. “It’s okay, kitty. You can come out. She’s gone.” I get down on my hands and knees to peer under the couch, the chair, the bookshelves. Nothing. In the bedroom I look under the bed, the dresser, inside the closet. The bathroom is tiny; a quick glance and I know he’s not there, either. I dig through a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, look behind and under everything again.

Minutes later, a worried voice calls through the open front door: “Did you find him?”

“He must have run back out,” I say, walking to the living room. “He’s not in here.” The Hyundai woman now has a man with her. He’s wearing brown coveralls and a baseball cap with E
D
’
S
T
OWING
in Old English block letters on the front. His boots are leaving gray puddles on my floor.

“What am I going to do? They’re towing my car and I have to go with them,” the woman says.

The man affirms this with a nod. “Use your facilities?” he says, and I don’t know how to say no, so I point toward the bathroom and watch as he leaves a trail of dirty slush across the floor.

To the woman I say, “The cat seems to be fine. He probably lives around here somewhere, and he’ll find his way back home, right? I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“You’ll keep an eye out for him? He might still be in the building somewhere. Can I give you my phone number? Will you let me know if you find him?”

Anything to make her go away, so I take the business card she offers me, which reads: A
LICE
D
ESMAY
, C
ARING
H
OME
C
ARE
. She cares a little too much, I’d say, but I assure her I’ll call if the cat turns up. The toilet flushes, and the tow truck driver walks out, zipping up his coveralls.

“Let’s boogie,” he says to Alice, and I imagine the two of them disco-dancing all the way down the steps.

At eight a.m. I call the hospital and ask how Benny’s doing. The nurse on his floor says, “He’s been up for hours. I’ll transfer you.” Then it’s Benny, and he sounds so much like himself that I relax, let myself believe that everything might be okay after all. He says he’s just about to go down for the procedure, and why don’t I come for a visit sometime this afternoon?

“Great,” I say. “I was there last night, but—”

“I know you were, honey,” he says. “My eyesight’s fine. It’s just my guts that are playing tricks on me.”

“You saw me?”

“We sat here and talked about that party your mother’s throwing. Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I do,” I say. The saliva thickens in the back of my throat. “I just wanted to see if you did.”

“Hey, and if you got any more of those oatmeal cookies around, they wouldn’t go astray.”

“You got it. Nuts, no raisins, right?” I say, trying not to sound as panicked as I feel.

When we hang up, I call the nurse back. “He’s not just disoriented,” I tell her. “He’s hallucinating.” She promises to tell the doctor as soon as he makes his rounds.

The nausea comes back full force. Again, I head for the bathroom to sit on the tile floor, but the tow truck driver has left the seat up, and the slush from his boots has melted into a gray puddle. I clean the floor, scrub the toilet. By then I don’t feel queasy anymore, just clammy and exhausted, so I head back to bed and crawl beneath the covers. Something moves beneath my pillow, and I jump up.

Nestled between my headboard and pillow is a comfortable-looking gray-striped cat. Lazily, he opens his pea green eyes to give me a meaningful look, then puts his chin against his paws and goes back to sleep.

“Oh, please,” I say. “What next?” I sigh and think for a moment about what to do. He does look peaceful, and I can’t work up the energy to carry him all the way downstairs to throw him outside. “Okay, just until I get up,” I say, shoving him to the other side of the bed. “And then you’re going back outside so you can find your way home.”

I wake later to find him snuggling up to Pauncho, kneading me like dough with his paws and purring with the gusto of a tiny engine.

The cat rubs against my bare legs as I stand at the bathroom mirror, putting on super-duper antiaging miracle moisturizer that costs thirty-nine dollars per jar, wondering if they price it that way to remind their demographic that forty is just around the corner. “You do realize that as soon as I’m dressed you’re out of here, right?” I say. The cat looks up at me with those mesmerizing green eyes. I swear he winks, and I’m wondering what would be so bad about having a cat around the place.

“It’s supposed to warm up today,” I say to fortify myself. “I’m going to dig my car out to go to the hospital, and you’re going back to your real people. They’re probably worried to death about you.” He jumps from the floor to the toilet, then steps nimbly into the sink and sniffs the faucet. He settles into the smooth round of the porcelain as if it were his special bed and lifts his front leg to lick his decidedly pronounced ribs. I look closer and see he’s not just preening as I am. He’s nursing a three-inch gash that looks fresh and is surrounded by puffy skin. “I killed a cat,” I hear the Hyundai woman say, thinking I should call her. This is her problem, after all. But first this cat needs something to eat, he’s so skinny, so I walk toward the kitchen, saying, “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you some fake cream.” He jumps down and trots behind me as if we’ve been doing this together every day for years.

After rescuing my car and parking it in front of my building, I dial the number on the Hyundai woman’s card and get her machine. “Hellooo,” her syrupy recording says, “you’ve reached Caring Home Care, and this is Alice, your personal home-care provider. I must be out caring for another client. If you’d care to leave a message . . .”

What I’d care to do is give her message a good edit, but I leave a terse reply telling her I’ve found the cat, he’s hurt after all, and I guess I’ll have to take him to the vet since she’s not around.

In the phone book I find a vet just a few blocks away, on the way to the hospital. I pick up the cat, careful not to get too close to his wound,
and he lies placidly in my arms, purring. “Okay, buddy, you better not get used to this,” I tell him as I carry him outside through the melting snow and settle him on the passenger’s seat. After his wild romp this morning, he seems to be the mellowest cat I’ve ever seen, completely comfortable and a perfect gentleman in the car.

At the vet’s office, the neohippie girl behind the counter says, “Poor baby, hit by a car. You wouldn’t believe how many car-accident patients we’ve had since the storm.” She scratches his ears, revving his purr engine to maximum horsepower. “What’s her name?” she asks. The smell of wet dog, antiseptic, and patchouli surrounds us.

“I don’t know. He’s a stray,” I tell her. “I’ve been calling him buddy. I just assumed he was male.”

“Well, let’s take a peek,” she says, and rolls up a hind leg. “I’d say you have a little girl on your hands, but I think Buddy is a sweet name for her.” She writes “Buddy” under “Name of pet,” then looks at me when she gets to “Name of owner.” Her pen hovers over the paper. “And your name?”

“Um, Alice Desmay,” I say. “Listen, I can’t stay for the examination. I’m on my way to the hospital to see someone.”

“Is there a number we can reach you at? A cell?” She’s written “Dismay” on the form, and I start to panic.

Even though I’ve memorized Alice’s number, I give her my cell number. “You may have to leave a message, though, because I have to turn my phone off everywhere but in the waiting room,” I say.

“No problem, Ms. Dismay,” she says, smiling, reaching for the cat. “We’ll take good care of little Buddy for you.”

It makes no sense at all, but I am torn at leaving the cat behind, even though he—she—seems to be happy to be here. She looks at me for a long moment, then winks one of her pea green eyes.

“Sorry to be a pain,” I say, “but could you change the name on the form?”

“Did you think of a better one?” She snuggles the cat to her cheek.

“No, I mean my name. It’s Eleanor Samuels.”

“No problem,” she says like it happens all the time, and sets Buddy on the counter so she can make the correction.

I am amazed at how quickly snow can melt. It’s barely an inch or two deep where not cleared, and the streets are shiny black with runoff. The only evidence of how much damage the storm wrought still lies beneath the snow: frozen spring flowers that will never recover. Whether or not they’ll be back next year is anyone’s guess.

On the drive south to the hospital, I dig my cell phone out of my purse, scroll through the directory, looking down every few seconds until I get to Anne’s home number. I hit
CALL
and prepare to leave a message. It’s still midafternoon in Boston; she’ll be at the office writing torts or whatever it is she does all day.