Stir (7 page)

T
he morning of the surgery, I made Eli promise he would leave me. It was the most important thing I could think of to say in those strange few minutes alone before Patty wheeled me down. I mean, what the hell are you supposed to say, anyway? The real message, the only message, of course, is “I love you.” That's all. But the weight of that moment contorts the words, makes them sound too much like “good-bye.”

There was something more pressing I needed Eli to hear.

“After the surgery . . .” I began, the thought of what I was about to say tightening around my throat. “If I . . .”

“Jess, Jess—” Eli tried to cut me off.

“No, listen to me. If I wake up not me, you have to go.”

I was terrified. Not of being dead, though I preferred very much not to be. The thought of death, of missing out on my life and my people, made me sad, not afraid. What I feared was something worse: being trapped in my body, being trapped outside of my own right mind, Eli feeling he must stand by me and ending up trapped as well.

“If I wake up not myself, you cannot stay.”

“It's okay,” he soothed. “Shhh . . .” But I knew he was with me on this. I knew he would be okay. I placed my forearms on his shoulders, locked my fingers behind the back of his neck, and as I pulled his face close, a strange mix of anguish and elation surged through me. “I love you.” I was smiling and crying. “I mean it. I love you, El.” That part was safe. Nothing could touch it.

Eli left the room the way he always does, opening the door just enough to slide out sideways. Patty put her hand on my back.

“You're going to be fine.”

 • • • 

I was still unconscious when Dr. Tranmer told my family that all was well. He and his team had done just as they'd planned, sawing a several-inch hole in my skull above my left eye, locating the aneurysm, and sealing it off with a tiny clothespin of a clip like the one he'd handed me in my room. “A home run,” he called it. There were hugs and high-fives all around.

 • • • 

When you're coming out of general anesthesia, no one takes what you have to say particularly seriously. Credibility is at an all-time low when you've been out cold for ten hours, during which time surgeons have been poking around in your brain. But something was wrong, and no one knew it yet but me.

I had opened my eyes, at least I thought I had, but the world to the left of my nose remained black.
I must be bandaged up,
I thought.
Gauze and tape must be blocking the light.
I reached through the blackness for my left eye and felt the tickle of my lashes against my finger. I blinked. I felt it again. There was no bandage, only darkness.

“I can't see out of my left eye.” I said it as loudly and clearly as I could to no one in particular. A nurse came over, and I said it again. I don't know if she didn't believe me or if she didn't understand me. Either way, she didn't seem terribly concerned. There were other people somewhere in the recovery room; I could hear them. I tried to sit up. “Please. Hello? My left eye. I can't see.”

Patty met me back in my room. “You're okay, Jess,” she said. “This happens sometimes. It can be hard to see when you're first waking up.” She was as calm and kind as ever, and I wanted to trust her, but my vision in that eye wasn't blurry or dim. It was gone.

“No, Patty. Really. Something's wrong. I can't see.” She believed me.

No one knows exactly what happened, whether my skull snapped in an awkward direction when Dr. Tranmer first went in or if, when he sealed me back up and replaced the piece of bone, it sank a little too snugly into position. What we do know is that my left optic nerve was somehow “compressed,” a word that always reminds me of one of those handheld citrus presses. I've seen scans of my compressed optic nerve, and photographs of healthy ones in medical books, but I still have trouble picturing what a three-dimensional optic nerve looks like in actual space. The best I can figure is something like a peeled grape. In my case, a peeled grape now squashed between the nested cups of a citrus press.

Unlike other nerves in the human body, the optic nerve rarely heals. When it does, recovery is far from complete, but surgery to decompress the nerve can increase the chance that at least some vision will return. And so, after only an hour of consciousness, maybe two, I was back on the operating table. It would be impossible to know right away if the decompression surgery had had an effect. Any improvement would happen gradually, over months. At least this time I awoke without panic. Whatever could be done had been done.

My parents were standing over me.

“Levi,” I said, “Levi.” That wasn't right. That wasn't his name.

My father leaned in. “What, honey?”

I hesitated. “Eli.” That was it.

“He was with you when you woke up. You don't remember,” my dad explained. “He's in the waiting room with his parents. I'll get him.”

I breathed in, acutely aware that I could, and when I exhaled, I felt a rush of gladness, as though a dam had broken. My own conscious mind surged out from wherever it had been, filled me to the brim. I could hear my thoughts again. That familiar internal voice, the one that chirps away at each of us, narrating our every move, I could hear it. It was me. I was me. There would be test upon test later on designed to uncover any cognitive or neurological deficits, tests that would confirm what I already knew right then: In all the ways that mattered, I was fine.

“You did great, babe.” Eli was with me now. The anesthesia was wearing off. I could feel the mounting discomfort as the swelling set in and my body began the painful process of knitting itself back together. My father says that for the next twenty-four hours, I whispered only two words, “water” (to drink) and “ice” (for my head). I opened my eyes at one point to find him sitting beside me, on my right side, where people sat now so that I'd be able to see them without turning my head. My dad sat very still, just looking at me. “I've been thinking,” he said. “I wish I'd had you sooner so I could know you for longer.”

The next thing I remember is soup. Eli's aunt Leslie had sent up a cooler of chicken soup with my in-laws, and a few days postsurgery my mother appeared in the doorway of my room with a mugful, warmed in the nurses' microwave down the hall. I was allowed to eat before I could sit up, so a nurse rolled me over onto my right side and stuffed pillows all around to keep me there. The angle of the bed was set at a permanent forty-five degrees to increase drainage and decrease swelling. My mother smoothed a towel between my cheek and the slanted mattress. Then she spooned the first swallow of soup into my mouth. It tasted of salt and dill. Nothing like the sweet, familiar broth of my mother's chicken soup. Leslie's tasted wonderful, but foreign, and I preferred that in this strange, strange place.

Sometime that day, or maybe it was the next, Dr. Tranmer came by between visiting hours, when I was in my room alone. Dr. Tranmer is tall and tidy, a handsome man in his fifties with broad shoulders, twinkly eyes, and a quiet charisma. Warmer and kinder and more in touch with fully conscious humans than surgeons are supposed to be. He is also clearly the boss. “The General,” Eli called him. I was glad he was in charge.

He pulled a chair up to my bed as he always did, scooted in close, propped one foot up on a nearby chair, and leaned back. This was his signature position, how he spoke with me every time. It was a comically casual stance, especially when he was dressed in scrubs. It was like seeing your famous history professor at home in his pajamas. Only instead of weird, it was reassuring.

“I'm very sorry about your eye, Jess,” he said quietly.

I couldn't believe it. I could hardly bear it, actually. This man had just dragged me from a tank of sharks and here he was apologizing for scraping my knee on the way up.

“You saved me.” My voice sounded all stretched out. “Thank you.”

I asked him what it would be like, having only one eye. I wanted to know if I'd be able to read, to type my dissertation.

He brightened. “Oh, yes.” The biggest challenge, he explained, would be impaired depth perception. You need both eyes to perceive depth at close range. I'd already noticed the impairment. When my mother had handed me a napkin to wipe the soup from my chin, I'd reached for it and missed. Beyond several feet, Dr. Tranmer went on, depth perception isn't a binocular phenomenon. Driving, then, was still as safe as ever for me. He said my brain would sort things out with time. “Even if you never regain any sight in your left eye, your vision will improve,” he said. “So much so, that one day you probably won't even notice a deficit.”

With all due respect and deepest gratitude for Aunt Leslie's chicken soup, the soup I make at home is my mother's. There are two defining features of her soup, both oft discussed around my childhood table: sweetness and clarity. The sweetness is thanks to the parsnip. The clarity, well, it depends whom you ask.

My mother begins by washing her chicken under cold water and plucking out visible feathers. She then plunges the chicken, a couple of pieces at a time, into a pot of boiling water to remove any remaining blood. Next, she plucks out more pinfeathers, the little ones that are now sticking up from the heat. “I don't take the time to remove
all
the feathers,” she insists. That would be excessive. (Her mother, she says, removed every last one.) My mother then empties and cleans the pot and . . . starts the soup.

Honestly, my mother's soup is so good that if all these steps were the only way, the effort would be worth it. But I certainly wouldn't make it very often. Fortunately, I've found another, abbreviated route to a soup that's just as clear. (Really. My mom has given it her blessing!)

For a clear, golden soup my way, all you have to do is cook it uncovered, at a very low simmer, and skim, skim, skim. Never let it boil, which would cause the fat and blood remnants to emulsify and cloud the broth.

Growing up, we always ate this soup with fine egg noodles and matzo balls. Today I'm just as likely to spoon in some of whatever cooked grain I have left over in the fridge: rice, farro, barley. They all do the trick.

1 yellow onion, peeled

6 carrots, peeled

2 parsnips, peeled

5 celery stalks

1 3- to 4-pound chicken, cut up into pieces, giblets removed (you may buy a cut-up chicken, if you prefer)

1 tablespoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, plus more for cooking the vegetables

A few extra carrots, parsnips, and celery stalks (3 to 4 of each to serve 8 people)

2–3 cups cooked egg noodles, rice, farro, or barley

Slice a deep X into the top of the onion, but don't cut all the way through. You want the onion to remain whole. Cut the carrots, parsnips, and celery into 1-inch pieces. Put all the vegetables into an 8-quart stock pot, add the chicken pieces, and sprinkle with the tablespoon of salt. Cover with cold water (about 4 quarts), and slowly bring to the barest possible simmer. Do not cover the pot. Do not let boil.

Start skimming the surface of the broth with a spoon as soon as there's something to skim, and keep skimming as foam, fat, and blood rise to the surface. You want to catch what comes up before it has a chance to sink back into the soup and emulsify. For 20 to 30 minutes, you'll be skimming like crazy, then just every so often until the soup is done. Cook at a low, low simmer for 2 hours total, then remove the pot from the heat.

Transfer the chicken from the pot to a plate. Line a fine-meshed sieve with cheesecloth and place it over a large bowl or container. Ladle the soup and its vegetables into the bowl through the cloth-lined sieve. You can skip the sieving if you want and simply remove the vegetables. The broth will still be beautiful and delicious. (Just don't tell my mom.) Discard the vegetables. Cover and refrigerate the broth overnight.

Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bones, shred with your fingers, and store in the fridge separate from the broth. When you're ready to serve the soup, remove the shredded chicken from the fridge and bring a medium-sized saucepan of water to a boil. Add a few pinches of salt to the water. Peel the extra carrots and parsnips, slice them and the celery into 1-inch pieces, and cook in the boiling water for 3 to 5 minutes, until they're soft enough to pierce easily with a fork, but still firm. Meanwhile, remove the broth from the fridge and skim off any fat floating on the surface. Reheat the broth in a pot. Add some shredded chicken, vegetables, and whichever rice, noodle, or grain you prefer to individual soup bowls, ladle in the broth, and serve.

Serves 8.

W
e didn't kiss that night on the steps of Eli's apartment. In fact, we didn't kiss anyplace for ten whole days. I felt terrible enough as it was about these feelings that had unfurled like sails. I tried to explain to Justin what had happened, as though it were something I could explain: how unexpected that conversation with Eli had been, how fishy it looked, I knew, that I'd suggested a break and now this. Justin stared at me serenely. “It's okay,” he said.
It was?
“You're confused.” College was over, I was moving far away, he figured. He thought I was going through a thing. Maybe he was right. But I didn't think so.

It was the end of the semester. We were squeezing in last choir concerts and extra rehearsals for the album we were recording, spending tens of hours each week in the studio. I saw Eli almost every day. We didn't tell our friends that anything had changed, and by all outward appearances, nothing had. In between concerts, rehearsals, and studio sessions, I'd convince myself I had made the whole thing up. I wasn't in love. Then Eli would walk into the room: “Hey, lady.” Oh, right, I was. We were.

One Sunday, our recording session in the studio ran especially long. It was 9:00 p.m. by the time we left after twelve hours of recording. I went straight home to sleep. Eli did, too, but he decided that first he needed to eat. He put up a pot of water to boil, cooked himself some pasta, and went to drain it into a colander in the sink when, exhausted and low on blood sugar, he poured its entire contents over his forearm.

His roommate called an ambulance, and by the time my phone rang after midnight, Eli was home again, all bandaged up. There was a prescription for Tylenol with codeine waiting for him at the pharmacy that his roommate had offered to pick up.

“No, I'll get it,” I said. “I'm coming over.”

Eli was lying on his bed, propped up by a few pillows, when I arrived. I handed him his water bottle and unscrewed the cap on the Tylenol. I sat down on the bed. We talked for a bit; he told me about the medics and how, according to protocol, they'd asked, “Do you remember what happened?” How he nearly laughed out loud when he said, “Yes, I poured boiling hot water on my arm!” I got up to leave as he started to drift off, then turned back and hugged him. His face was red, and very close to mine. I knew what was coming. I hoped I knew.

“I want to give you a kiss,” he said, “but I'm not sure you want me to.”

“I want you to.”

And he did. On the
forehead
. That probably sounds terribly anticlimactic and chaste, but I'm telling you, it was perfect. I felt as though my limbs were about to fly off my body. I had no idea a kiss could even feel that way. A kiss on the forehead, no less.

Eli ran into Rebecca the following week at a party.

“I'm seeing someone new,” he told her.

“Jessica,” she said.

“How did you know?”

She smiled. “It's perfect.”

 • • • 

Eli's mother, Sarah, would no doubt like me to mention here that she knew it all along. She'd prayed for it.

When Eli and I first started directing our choir, we held a group retreat at the Schleifers' house. They made us feel right at home, filling our bellies with chicken soup and roast beef the night we arrived and letting us rehearse for hours in their living room. Sarah likes to remind me that she had a feeling about the girl in the long gray skirt, the one waving her hands and stopping the group midsong to give notes. She never said a word to Eli for years, but when he told her we were together, she screamed and clapped her hands and leaped into the air.

After graduation, before his move to Seattle in early July, Eli lived with his parents. I needed a place near the city to stay as we finished up the album, so I joined him. He slept in “the boys' room” with one of his brothers who was also home that summer, and I bunked with his sister across the hall. Every morning for two weeks, we'd wake up early and meet down at the table for a quick breakfast of cold cereal and orange juice. Eli's father, Steve, had procured an enormous, four-pound box of Grape-Nuts, my favorite. Eli ate Life cereal, and quickly. Once you've poured the milk, he explained, you don't have long before it sogs. It was here where I learned that there would be no breakfast conversation on Life cereal days. “I've poured the milk,” Eli says, to this day, if I utter anything that requires a reply.

After breakfast, Eli's father would drop us at the Route 4 shuttle stop on his way to work. We'd ride across the bridge to the George Washington terminal, Eli's hand resting on my thigh while he read the
New York Times
, and take the train to the studio from there.

On Saturday afternoon I got my first taste of Sarah's weekly cholent. Cholent—pronounced with a
ch
like “cherry”—is a long-simmered stew of meat, barley, potatoes, and beans that's traditionally served for lunch on the Jewish Sabbath, when cooking is prohibited. Cholent works around the restriction by getting its start in the pot on Friday afternoon, before the Sabbath begins, then cooking slowly on its own over low heat all through the night. That way, observant Jews can still eat a hot meal for Sabbath lunch, a religious obligation according to some, and in any case nice to have. The word “cholent” derives from the Latin
calentem
, meaning “that which is hot.” But there's a folk etymology I love: Why is it called “cholent”? Because of its French pronunciation, which sounds like the French words for “warm” and “slow”:
chaud
,
lent
.

Cholent has been around for centuries, and there are variations all over the world. Some go by different names: the Middle Eastern
hamin
made with chicken and rice, the Moroccan
s'hina
with chickpeas and hulled wheat, turmeric, and cumin. Sometimes eggs are buried beneath the stew and left to cook in their shells.

The lineage of Sarah's cholent is eastern European, where meat, potatoes, beans, and barley were the norm, flavored with onion, salt, and pepper. In the Polish town where Sarah's mother grew up, homes had only small, wood-burning ovens that would grow cold over the Sabbath, when it was forbidden to stoke the fire. So on Friday before sundown, someone from each family would carry the cholent pot to the baker's large oven, which, even untended, retained enough heat to cook the entire town's worth of cholents overnight. Once all the pots were inside, the oven would be sealed until after the Sabbath service the following day, when people would pick up their cholents and carry them home for lunch.

Sarah prepares hers as her mother did, with a thick batter of flour, eggs, and onion poured on top of the cholent once it's hot. It steams and cooks through under the lid of the pot to form a savory cake, a “cholent kugel,” that tastes of the beans and meat stewing beneath it. It's Eli's favorite part.

When the cholent came around at that first lunch, Eli urged me to grab some kugel. I said okay, but I must not have been moving quickly enough, because he suddenly dug into the pot, fished out a hunk, and plopped it down on my plate with such energy that it splattered sauce onto the tablecloth. “There,” he said, satisfied, as though he'd just kept the kugel from making its great escape.

My twenty-second birthday fell the next day, on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Eli wanted to help his parents clean out their basement and build wall-to-wall shelving for the remaining stuff before he moved. Looking back, this is not an activity that's exactly celebratory, but I couldn't imagine a better way to spend the day.

We sorted old photos into boxes. Sarah on her wedding day, with straight hair halfway down her back and a center part; an Alaskan malamute named Mookie; a miniature Eli, serious and unsmiling in every shot. There were large canvases filled with his brother's paintings, Eli's childhood mug collection, and a graveyard of suitcases with jammed zippers, broken wheels, and missing straps. I loved every second. I loved digging through the history of the family that I was shyly beginning to think of as mine.

Once we'd cleared enough space along the back wall, we started building the shelves. I'm terrible with a hammer, so Eli had me work the ratchet. I liked the sound it made as the pawl clicked through the gear. Eli noticed and smiled. “Ratch, ratch, ratch,” he whispered. I felt my chest and cheeks go hot.

A month to the day earlier, I'd come up out of the Lincoln Center subway stop to find a building completely demolished. The brick face of the building beside it was now exposed, painted top to bottom with an advertisement for Hunter Baltimore Rye. It was faded in places, but the adjacent building had shielded it from too much damage. The colors were bright, blue and red letters against a taxicab yellow. A man in a red riding coat sat atop a horse, midstrut. He had a handlebar mustache and was tipping his hat. I joined a few others on the sidewalk, staring, before ducking into the lobby of the building next door and asking the older gentleman at the desk about it.

He had all kinds of stories. The building had once been Liberty Warehouse Storage, he said, which had specialized in pianos, furniture, and art. There had been hydraulic elevators inside large enough to fit these things and the horses that transported them. The horses would deliver their goods, then continue on up to the top floor to board.

I e-mailed Eli right away. This long-buried layer of New York, unearthed by the remaking and rebuilding of the city around it: Wasn't it amazing? A building collapsed, and there it was.

Without telling me, Eli had gone down to photograph the site with his brother's Yashica-Mat. My birthday gift that year was a framed fourteen-by-fourteen-inch print of the painted building against a clear blue sky. He inscribed the back in red Sharpie:

“The most beautiful things are all around us. You just need to look.”