Life From Scratch (21 page)

With each stop, my mouth remembered what my mind had long forgotten; I had visited these curiosities with Mom and Michael more than a decade earlier. When I talked to Mom about these memories, she’d alight on the joyful ones before promptly flitting back to the food in front of us. I could feel an invisible barrier when it came to talking about the past. If I opened my mouth, I was half afraid I’d shatter the spell.

One day I came home from work to find Mom already there. The apartment was perfumed with the sweet aroma of roasted tomatoes. There was something earthy, too—like cinnamon or nutmeg.

“I’m in here!” she called out from the kitchen cheerily. I rounded the corner just in time to see her pull a baking sheet out from the broiler.

“You cooked?” I asked, peering over her shoulder with a curious smile. This was the first time she’d cooked for me since I was little. On the floor beside her was a large cardboard box, half unpacked. Pots, wooden spoons, and two dozen spice jars were piled up pell-mell on the counters.

“Are you moving in?” I asked.

“I think I might,” she grinned, and handed me a toasted square of cinnamon raisin bread topped with tomato sauce and two translucent slices of mozzarella. She swirled thick rivers of olive oil over the top of the cheese until it pooled over onto the plate, finishing it off with a generous dusting of hot paprika. We sat down at the kitchen table.

“Never brown the cheese,” she said, as she slid the plate toward me, “that’s a sign of a careless cook.”

“What exactly is this?” I began, looking down at the curious, steaming concoction that was by now marooned in olive oil.

“Pizza.”

Mom watched intently as I pressed my knife through the cheese into the crispy bread and brought the glistening, oozing morsel to my mouth. The sweet raisins coupled with the cinnamon and hot paprika suddenly and unexpectedly brought me back to the kitchen in Jamaica Plain. There was no other taste in the world like this.

I was six years old again, swinging my feet under the kitchen table. Michael and I ate and chanted in equal measure: “Pizza. Pizza. Pizza.”

“Wow,” I said, and took another, larger bite. I shut my eyes and settled into the memory, a smile tracing vaguely along my lips.

Mom’s Curious Cinnamon
Raisin Pizza

Never one to let lack of ingredients stump creativity, Mom first made this “pizza” when we were out of regular sandwich bread. Whenever I tell someone about it, they inevitably scrunch up their nose. And yet, against all odds, the touch of sweet raisins
and cinnamon delightfully punctuates paprika-topped pizza. The combination reminds me of some Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultures, which include cinnamon and raisins in their savory rice dishes
.

2 slices cinnamon raisin bread

2 generous spoonfuls marinara

2 slices mozzarella or provolone

1 or 2 glugs olive oil

A couple pinches hot paprika

Toast two slices of cinnamon raisin bread under the broiler. Spread on a heaping spoonful of marinara, and top with a slice of mozzarella or provolone. Return to broiler until hot and bubbling. Mom would say not to brown the cheese, but I prefer the deep nuttiness that comes from an extra minute under the broiler. Drizzle with good quality olive oil, and dust with sharp paprika. Enjoy with a fork, a knife, and a triumphant smile.

Enough for 2

As I closed in on the last quarter of the pizza, Mom made an announcement. “Just so you know,” she said, “I got rid of all your bras while you were at work today.”

I froze, mid-bite. “Are you serious? Why would you do that?”

“That room was a mess! I thought I’d get it shipshape. And then I find you’re wearing …” she scrunched her nose. “Push-up bras? You don’t need that junk! Does John make you wear them?”

Though John had bought a few for my birthday, I wasn’t about to admit it. “Mom! I’m not 12 anymore.”

“No. You’re not. But I’m your mother. And I’m trying to figure out who you are.” She screwed up her eyes and looked at me steadily.

I squirmed in my seat, waiting for her to look away, even for a moment. When she didn’t, I stomped up to the loft, yelling over my shoulder, “You’re wasting your time! I’m just going to buy them all over again.”

At $30 a pop, good bras were beyond the reach of my summer-job minimum wages. Outraged, I lay down as far as I could from the railing, arms crossed, listening to the swish and clatter as Mom cleaned the kitchen below.

At least, that’s what I thought she was doing.

In the morning I woke up to find my mother sitting on the side of my bed. “We’re moving back to the old apartment. Get packing, Twinkle-Toes.”

“I thought you were having trouble with your landlord?”

“Oh, that’s all settled,” she waved her hand dismissively. “I just didn’t think you were ready for all those memories.”

I looked at her newly composed face, considering the disarming realization that in all likelihood, there’d never been a disagreement—or if there had been one, it was little more than an excuse to protect me.

Real anger flashed for the first time since I’d contacted her a few months earlier.
Why was everyone so hell-bent on controlling my experience of the past? Why couldn’t I be allowed to decide when I was ready?

“But the box you brought over last night? What was that all about? I thought you were finally moving in?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “A mistake! The kitchen is no good; the stove is too far from the fridge, and there’s no ventilation. It doesn’t work. Plus this place costs an arm and a leg. I don’t know how someone’s supposed to afford the North End anymore. This used to be a place for immigrants—a place of opportunity.”

I followed her downstairs and saw that she’d put everything back in the box and sealed it up with two strips of clear packing tape.

“You can sleep in your old bed,” she added brightly.

“You still have my bed?” I asked, not sure whether to be pleased or horrified.

“Sure. I’ve been using the frame as a plant stand, but that won’t take but a minute to fix.” She paused, digging in her purse. She pulled out her wallet. “But first, let’s go bra shopping. My treat.”

I didn’t really have a choice. Two hours later, I was outfitted with a dozen sensible bras. Though I was loath to admit it, they
were
more comfortable than the push-ups and nowhere near as frumpy as I’d expected.

Walking into our old apartment was like stepping into a whitewashed photograph from another era. The pale walls stretched up to the nine-foot ceiling quietly, without cracks. The very paint, the color of driftwood, looked taut, as though the room might have been holding its breath for the last decade. Though the morning light filtered into the tiny living room, soft and glowing, even the dust bunnies were suspended, seemingly on pause.

Everything but the windows was smaller than I remembered, but the space was also neater than I recalled. From the looks of it, our toys had long since been donated. Michael’s bed was gone, too, a rubber plant in its place. But my bed was propped up just where I’d left it: my old, wooden castle just below the front window under the spider plant.

As Mom gathered her box of kitchen tools from the hall, I stood by my bed, watching her move through this space that was at once so familiar, and yet so foreign.

Those first few nights I tossed and turned, my body too long for the mattress. I awoke several times to find myself staring through the moonlight at the space Michael’s bed had once occupied, watching the shadows dance on the wall and wondering through the clouded veil of fatigue if any of them were his. When the emotional noise became too great, I left Mom a note and escaped to John’s parents’ place on Cape Cod for the weekend, slipping into a blur of salt water and lattes.

When I crept back into the apartment a few days later, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in a thick, chenille robe. The deep burgundy stood out in sharp relief against the white streaks in her hair.

“He’s not your family, you know,” she said, lifting her small chin slightly.

“He took me to find
you!
He was there for me when no one else—”

“Nonsense!” Her sharp tone stopped me in my tracks. “What about Connor, Tim, and Grace? What about me?”

“You think you can just claim to be my family, after all this time?” I hated the words as they came out, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’ve done pretty well without you all these years, you know.”

“That’s nice, Alex—really nice. Is that how you talked to Patricia and Pierre?”

We both knew the answer to that question. Suddenly, I could no longer take her calling me by that.

“Damn it! My name is
Sasha
.”

“The summer’s going to be over before you know it,” she said, pointing her finger at me. “You might never get this opportunity again,
Sasha
.”

The victory felt small. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I gasped. “Is that a threat?”

“No one knows what the future holds. I could drop dead tomorrow.”

Now I was at a boil.

“Speaking of
dead
, why did you send me a picture of Michael in his
coffin
back in Paris?” Old grief stirred my rage.
“That was disgusting.”

She sat back. “All the old Italian families honored their dead with beautiful photos of them laid out in their coffins. My grandmother slept with a photo of her dead mother across from her bed until the day
she
died!”

I grimaced at the thought. “This isn’t the 1800s, Mom. What the hell were you thinking? In case you were wondering, I threw the card out.”

Now it was her turn to grimace. “Wait a minute—that’s my son you’re talking about. I was honoring him. I thought they did a beautiful job. Since you weren’t able to be at the funeral, I thought you’d appreciate the gesture.” Her shoulders shook with anger. “You know what? Forget it. I don’t need this abuse. Not from you.”

She walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a large white teacup to which she added two mint tea bags, a spoonful of honey, and hot water. Then she slid it toward the empty seat across from her.

“Come on. Please. Let’s talk about something else.”

I stared at the greening water, conflicted. I wanted to yell. Or run to John. But if I wanted a mother, it seemed like the only thing to do was to respect her wishes. I sank into the chair and cradled the hot teacup in my hands.