Garlic and Sapphires (39 page)

A minute later a waiter appeared, his head poking comically out of a jacket so large the shoulders were at his elbows, the pockets at his knees. Tweed looked at him, her nose twitching as if some horrid odor had wafted into the room. “What do you mean by coming to work looking like that?” she barked.

“It was the damn cleanuhs,” he whined in a pronounced New York accent. “They lost my jacket. I mean they switched it or somethin'. I sent mine and got this back.”

“A Chinese laundry?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rising as if she had said something clever. “How'd ya know?”

She did not deign to reply. “They either find your jacket,” she said acidly, “or they replace it. You can work today, but if you show up tomorrow looking like that I'm going to send you home.” With that she walked rapidly out of the room. Shoulders slumped, the waiter followed.

Carol had warned me that she would be coming from the doctor, so I was not worried by her lateness. I looked around the empty room, memorizing the details for the review. Then the shouting started.

“I told you to get ready for a private party tonight!” It was a voice that I did not recognize in the next room. And then another voice, unmistakably Tweed's, started in. “You know we don't use the benches for that. Chairs, chairs, chairs. Do you know what chairs are?” Her harsh voice was followed by the crash of furniture being moved, the grating scrape of wood being dragged across the floor. “Oh,” she moaned dramatically, and the chairs screeched, “don't you understand English? I can't believe how stupid you immigrants are!” The chairs yowled and shrieked as her voice went on and on, berating the men who were, I gathered, Mexican. By the time Carol arrived, my appetite was gone.

“The hostess here,” I said, standing to kiss her, “is a nightmare. Let's go someplace else.” She had lost an alarming amount of weight, and when I hugged her I had the feeling that her bones might break.

“No, please,” she said. Her breathing was ragged. “I'm so sorry, but I need to sit down.”

Feeling like a thoughtless fool, I went off to find the hostess, following the angry sound of her voice.

“This way,” she said, all saccharine smile as she led us out of the parlor. I was relieved that we were moving away from the still-protesting furniture.

The Box Tree was composed of small dining rooms, and every one was empty. The one where Tweed deposited us was chilly, with rose-topped tables waiting hopefully to welcome absent diners and a forlorn fireplace waiting for a match. Tossing us a pair of menus, she departed. “So lively!” said Carol. “So crowded!” Her thin face crumpled into a smile. “What a perfect place for a celebration!”

“You don't find this cheerful?” I asked. “All it needs is one beautiful woman.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Yesterday a waiter elucidated what he called the ‘Cipriani theory.' He said they build their restaurants small so that a single beautiful woman can walk in and make everyone instantly feel they're in the right place. If Julia Roberts came waltzing in here, wouldn't you think this was swell?”

“Not really,” she said, pointing to the waiter, who had entered the room and now stood fidgeting in his oversized jacket, “not with him hovering over me.”

The man must have seen me sitting in the parlor and must have known that I had already heard him speak, but when he opened his mouth he had acquired an English accent. Without a hint of embarrassment he described the bisque aux morilles in rounded English vowels. He went on to talk of “consommé of whole cow,” throwing himself into the description until we could almost see the chef, wreathed in clouds of steam, distilling the soup to its very essence. He went through the entire menu—well, what else did he have to do?—telling us about a two-pound lobster who was, at this very moment, strolling through the refrigerator waiting to become a fabulous fricassée. The chef would steam the beast, remove the meat, and fold it into a freshly made beurre blanc. Truffled liver, he assured us, was a specialty, carved into gossamer slices and seared so quickly it acquired the texture of velvet before being bathed in a sauce fit for angels. And no sane person, he declared, would leave the premises without tasting the raspberry crème brûlée. He pronounced it “raws-berry,” taking the better part of a minute to eject the word from his mouth.

“I promise,” he said, when the ordering was over, “that you will have an entirely memorable meal.” He was so convincing that I forgot the tweed woman, forgot the invented accent and the empty rooms behind us, and decided to believe him. “This is going to be great!” I said to Carol. Then I looked at her more closely and said, “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said.

“Fine?” I asked.

“I'm tired,” she said. “It's only been a couple of days since the last treatment. It takes a while to recover. But the chemo's not so bad. I've gotten to know a lot of people at the clinic. Most of them are much worse off; I'm tolerating this pretty well. The doctors are hopeful. We'll know more in a couple of months, and if it doesn't work I'll do another round. I'm going to be fine. And I'm looking forward to this meal.”

I understood that she was telling me that she didn't want to talk about her illness, that she needed a vacation from the land of the sick. So we talked about the office, falling into the comforting culture of complaint shared by all employees. We told each other stories about all the bosses and their foibles, the things that they were constantly doing wrong. It was familiar. It was soothing.

The waiter came back a little too quickly, but he said “Bisque aux morilles!” with such conviction that when he set the bowl before me, I looked hopefully down into its depths. It was thick and creamy, and it gave off puffs of steam. I dipped my spoon below the surface and raised it to my mouth.

I took a taste. And then another. Still unable to believe it, I took one more. “What?” asked Carol.

It was a bowl of pure hot cream. A drop of cooking sherry might lurk somewhere in its depths, but that was all. There was not even a whisper of mushroom. Not a hint.

“You look like a cat touching a mirror,” said Carol, watching me. “You know the way they look at themselves and then reach out a paw as if they can't believe it's glass and not another cat? That's how you look.” She picked up her spoon and filled it with consommé. A quizzical look crossed her face. She took another taste. “I guess,” she said at last, “that I must look the same.”

With each new course the meal became more comical. The lobster was a scrawny thing, and it had been a long time since he had walked around a refrigerator or anything else. The desiccated meat was drenched in a gritty sauce made of flour and milk, with a bit of dill and a lot of cooking sherry. My liver was tough stuff that tasted like . . . cooking sherry.

“This is the worst food I've ever been served in a restaurant!” said Carol. “If you weren't here, I'd be positive that the chemo had robbed me of the ability to taste. Imagine being someone without a lot of money who's saved up for the most romantic restaurant in town . . .”

Or, I was thinking, imagine another scenario. Imagine being a restaurant critic with a sick friend who can only enjoy food a few days out of every month. You could have taken her to any restaurant in town, but oh no, you had to bring her here.

“You have to do something,” said Carol.

“Don't worry,” I said, “I will.”

 

 

 

 

 

T
he shrieking of the tweed woman's voice kept echoing in my head as I sat at my computer, writing notes about the tasteless food. I tried to imagine what could make someone behave that way. And then, just like that, I made up a life for her. She had married young, and the guy had turned out to be an abusive jerk. She had stuck it out for—how many years—five, six?—and then finally left him. No children. And now she settled for a little life, all alone, living on the edges of other people's happiness, hugging her hatred close to keep her warm.

I gave her a name—Emily—and an address in that sad, shapeless neighborhood around the restaurant. It was shabby respectable, and when people asked where she lived, Emily exaggerated and said, “On the Upper East Side,” with an air she hoped conjured up a Park Avenue duplex. She walked to work. When she took a taxi—which was rare—she tipped ten cents. She ate the same thing every day—what would it be? A four-minute egg, a liverwurst sandwich? At night she went home, made herself a pot of tea, hung her clothes carefully in the closet, and spent the evening watching television. She had trouble sleeping. She worried about her weight. She was anxious about the rest of her life. And given the chance, she entertained herself by humiliating the less fortunate.

How would she like eating in her own restaurant, I wondered. And then I saw that I was going to find out.

 

 

 

 

 

M
ichael was away that week, investigating an underground group that preyed on children. The disturbing story about pedophilia made me want to spend every possible second with Nicky, so on Saturday I took him and two friends to the science museum in New Jersey. As we drove I listened to them talking in the backseat, soothed by their chatter. They were discussing the existence of God and the shape of the universe.

They wanted to go through the tunnel of absolute darkness, but once we were inside, on our knees, groping our way through the pitch black, they grew terrified and clung to me. We inched blindly forward, gasping and laughing, and I just let myself be, enjoying the moment. Afterward we played virtual basketball, which was surprisingly difficult. But to this group of eight-year-olds, the most fascinating exhibit was the physics demonstration, which made science a wonderful game. The explainer blew up a small rubber balloon, squeezed it into a can of liquid nitrogen, and hurled the solid, frozen object toward the boys. They squealed and scrambled as it fell to the floor, shattering into smithereens.

Nicky's friend Matthew picked up one of the icy shards. “Ruth,” he said, “couldn't you cook with that nitrogen stuff?”

“What would you make?” I asked.

“Ice cream!” all three boys shouted simultaneously.

“Interesting idea,” I said. “Let's do a little research when we get home.”

And that is how I came to discover Mrs. Agnes B. Marshall, an English food writer who had suggested using liquid gas to make ice cream in 1901. “Gee,” said Nicky as we read about the contraption that Mrs. Marshall had invented, “cooking can be very interesting.”

“You bet it can,” I said, ruffling his hair. “Why don't we bake a cake?”

“Vanilla cake!” he shouted. “Let's make vanilla cake.”

The boys crowded into the kitchen, where they made a wonderful mess as they creamed the sugar into the butter, pounding fiercely with wooden spoons until they had achieved a perfectly smooth emulsion. They each broke one egg into the bowl, stirring with such vigor I was glad I hadn't given them a bowl made of glass. They measured flour and baking soda with enormous concentration, and buttered the pan so carefully that not a millimeter remained bare. Then they dusted it with clouds of flour. As I surveyed my ruined kitchen, it occurred to me that life really couldn't get any better than this.

When I woke up the next morning, Nicky was nestled at my side, curled around the purring cats. I watched him sleep, taking in the smell of vanilla and burnt sugar that still clung to his hair. When he opened his eyes we stayed there for a while, whispering beneath the quilts, making plans for the day ahead.

“Could we go to the Rainbow Room?” he asked. We had gone there to celebrate Michael's birthday, and Nicky had fallen in love with the place. For months afterward he begged to go back. I had resisted—there's something so obnoxious about little kids in big-deal restaurants—but now I relented. One brunch at the Rainbow Room was not going to turn my child into a miniature food snob.

The elevator door opened at the sixty-fifth floor, spilling us into a hallway lined with glowing black and white lights. Nicky skipped ahead of me into the dining room and came running back, shouting, “Mommy, wait until you see it!” and taking my hand as if he had personally designed the gorgeous Art Deco room at the top of Rockefeller Center. “Look!” he said, swinging his arm wide, “this is the view!”

He led me to a window and we looked out across the island to the Empire State Building and the river beyond it. “I think I can even see the Science Center over in New Jersey,” he said. “Now look at this.” He tugged me over to the buffet, which was set up in the middle of the room. “The food's
moving,
” he said. “If you stand here everything you want will come to you. Isn't that amazing?”