Tender at the Bone (36 page)

It was a clear night. The moon was full. Rachel stood proudly in the garden. When I opened the door she put her face right up to it and said, “You can’t run away from me. We are the same person. I am you and you are me.” And then she turned and walked away.

“Scary, man,” said Michael.

“Yeah,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”

Michael looked at me a long time, shifting from foot to foot as if he were arguing with himself. His hands twitched with agitation. He had finally understood that she might be dangerous. And he hated the implication.

“Well,” he said slowly. “Maybe you should just find another job.”

ANOTHER PARTY

In the summer of 1977 the city of New York was plunged into darkness by the worst electrical failure in the country’s history.

Aunt Birdie turned a hundred.

And Doug got his first big break.

He was invited to Artpark, a former waste dump near Buffalo now transformed into an outdoor museum. It was a great honor: each year a handful of artists were asked to create temporary works. To keep the public entertained, there was also a theater, an opera house, and craft workshops in everything from pottery to cooking. I was invited along as an afterthought, a wife; I became chef-in-residence.

While I rummaged through the ill-equipped kitchen, Doug roamed the park, seeking the perfect site for his sculpture. As I washed rusty pots and pans he chose the steep path that wound along the river gorge. I wrote recipes and scoured markets while he constructed a wooden arch bending gracefully toward the Niagara. The piece was beautiful. And sneaky: Doug laced the arc with
strings to capture the wind as it raced to the water, plucking music from the air. You heard the sound before you saw the sculpture and the effect was magical, as if the wind were whispering in your ear, drawing you to the river.

My cooking classes began just as Doug finished constructing the first sculpture and began work on an adjacent piece, a series of pipes stuck jauntily into the ground. When the wind was strong enough I could hear the pipes tootling merrily, even from the kitchen. It was a fine counterpoint to the ethereal sound of the strings, and Doug’s musical path became the most popular spot at Artpark.

SCULPTOR FINDS SONG IN THE WIND
gushed the Buffalo
Courier-Express
. The wind harp was such a hit that gallery owners who wouldn’t look at Doug’s slides before began begging him to come see them in New York.

“And what do
you
do, dear?” the gallery guys would ask politely as they courted my husband. Crafts didn’t count for much in the Artpark pecking order. I began to pout. I hated my behavior, but the more attention Doug received, the grumpier I became. I couldn’t help it. And then one day a reporter from the
Courier-Express
came looking for me.

It must have been a slow news day because they teased the story on the front page.
GYPSY CHEF A BARONESS TO ARTPARK AUDIENCES
read the headline. “She looks like a beautiful exotic Gypsy,” the reporter began, “her long black hair blowing in the wind.” I read it over and over again, hugging the word “beautiful” to myself. I stared into the mirror. But then, the reporter had exaggerated everything. She talked of my “strong arms, used to kneading bread dough” and mentioned that although Doug and I were camping in the van I had been bred to a different sort of life. My “flawless French,” she said, was the result of my father being a diplomat. Well, I understood that; why let the truth ruin a good story?

The reporter said my food was superb and that I baked the best brownies she had ever tasted. People, she said, clamored for my
recipes. She had made that part up too, but now it became true: people poured in to watch my demonstrations. I was in my element: the Superstar had taught me how to teach cooking and now I was having a wonderful time.

Or I would have been, were it not for my parents. But I was on the East Coast, unprotected by the great land mass of the United States. And my mother had decided to celebrate Aunt Birdie’s hundredth birthday.

ARTPARK BROWNIES

⅔ cup butter

5 ounces unsweetened, best-quality French chocolate

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 eggs

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups sugar

1 cup sifted flour

Preheat oven to 400°
.

Butter and flour a 9-inch square baking pan
.

Melt butter and chocolate in double boiler, over boiling water. When melted, add vanilla and set aside
.

Beat eggs and salt in mixer. Add sugar and beat at high speed for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture is quite white
.

Add chocolate and butter mixture and beat at low speed, just until mixed. Add flour and combine quickly, until there are no white streaks
.

Pour batter into baking pan and put in oven. Immediately turn oven down to 350° and bake for 40 minutes. (The normal toothpick test will not work on these brownies, but if you want to try pricking them with a toothpick, it should come out not quite clean.) Do not overbake; these brownies should be fudgy
.

Makes 12 brownies
.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like here,” said my father.

Oh yes I could. I stood in the pay phone at Artpark thinking of the chaos my mother could create. I remembered the way our old house had looked two weeks before Bob’s engagement party, and tried to picture how the new house might be.

“Has she started cleaning out the closets?” I asked.

Dad groaned. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “Your mother has decided to use the garage for the party, so she’s emptied it out. The driveway is filled with debris—broken furniture, old tools, spare tires. It looks terrible, of course, and the neighbors are starting to complain. Then she decided that we need a new lawn, so she hired some men to come in and dig everything up.”

“You do need a new lawn,” I said.

“Maybe so. But the gardeners hit one of the drainpipes and both the bathtubs have backed up. Have I mentioned that the dishwasher is filled with sewage?”

“Has Mom been taking her lithium?” I asked.

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. In his heart my father never truly believed in chemical solutions and he treated my mother’s illness as if it were his cross to bear. “Your mother just keeps saying that everything is fine and I shouldn’t worry. But everything’s not fine. I don’t know what to do! The party’s only twelve days away. Couldn’t you come early?”

“No,” I said. “I have obligations here. I’m giving cooking lessons.”

Dad clucked impatiently. “Cooking lessons …” he said. “This is important. You should see the food your mother’s been collecting.” Knowing my weak spot, Dad cried out to the guardian of the guests. And she fell right into the trap.

“It can’t be Horn & Hardart,” I said, “they’ve gone out of business.”

“She’s found some wholesale food place in Bridgeport,” he said. “She drives up there every day. She’s bought so much food that we’ve had to start stacking the cartons in the driveway along with the junk.”

“I thought this was supposed to be a small party,” I said.

Dad sighed. “It’s been growing.”

“But who could Mom possibly invite? Aunt Birdie’s a hundred. Her friends are all dead.”

“Oh, she’s made new friends. You know Birdie. And then your mother began thinking up people who might like to be her friend.”

“The newspapers?” I asked hesitantly.

“That goes without saying,” said Dad. “A hundred-year-old woman living alone makes a good story.”

“I’ll get there the night before the party,” I promised. “That will give me a whole day to pull things together.”

“It’s not enough time,” said Dad. He sounded desperate.

“It’s just a party,” I said.

“I know,” he replied in a small voice. I pictured him, slightly stooped now, his hair thinner, staring glumly out at the water. I felt mean and guilty, but I wanted to be left alone.

Fat chance. My mother started calling. Frequently. Each time the director’s secretary had to come and find me in the vastness of the park, and with each call she looked more annoyed. “This is the twelfth call in three days,” she said one day as she led me to the small, crowded trailer that housed her office. “It’s not even fun to eavesdrop anymore.”

“Aunt Birdie’s not related to
me,”
my mother began. “She’s your grandmother, and you’d think you would care enough to come and help with her party.”

“Mom,” I said, “the party wasn’t my idea. Aunt Birdie probably doesn’t even want it. I don’t understand why it’s suddenly my responsibility.”

“Because I need you,” said my mother. “I don’t ask you to do very much for me. You’d think you’d be glad to help me out once in a blue moon. I don’t know what I did to raise such a selfish child, a daughter who thinks only of herself. I don’t ask for much!” And Mom slammed down the phone.

“Good riddance,” I said, but I was shaking.

“You know she’ll call back,” said the secretary. “Couldn’t you just stick around so I don’t have to come looking for you when she does?”

“I have work to do,” I said, making my exit.

When she called back it was the director himself who came to find me. He stood listening as I argued with my mother. When I finally put the phone down he said, “You’re doing a wonderful job here and I couldn’t be happier. But if you have to leave a week early, go ahead.” It was kindly meant. “It sounds as if your mother really needs you.”

“She DOESN’T,” I yelled at him. I wished I was back in California.

“Please,” said Dad.

“You owe it to me,” said Mom.

“Your father sounds terrible,” Doug chimed in. “She must be making his life miserable. Maybe you should go.”

“Oh, swell,” I said. But by then I had accepted the inevitable. I threw myself into the final cooking classes, savoring the end of freedom.

The morning I left Artpark I looked in the mirror. In the dim light of the public bathroom I found my first gray hair. “It’s her fault,” I said to myself; Mom was completely gray by the time she was thirty.

I had a year to go.