The Language of Baklava (15 page)

“Neither have I,” she says. She opens her eyes wide; they are cornflower blue, magnified behind cat’s-eye glasses. She closes the recipe book slowly on one hand, as if keeping her place, then slides out the hand. “But I think it’s high time.”

I can’t sleep that night, thinking about the Oriental food. What might it be? The next day, just around the crack of dawn, I slide out of bed and call Bud, waking him. I tell him about the Oriental food plan. “This is a kind of food? From where?” he asks, yawning.

I ponder. “Well. Yeah. I don’t know.”

“Is there a sauce?” (Yawn.) “Is there bread or rice?”

I twine the phone cord around my finger. “It’s
Oriental,
Dad, there must be a sauce.”

“When I first come to this country, I met a man on the boat from As-seeni. When we get to New York, he made a soup with seaweed and jellyfish. It was excellent.”

I frown and curl up my tongue. I have a special aversion to jellyfish, which sometimes speckle the Jersey shore. I ponder this and come up with a satisfactory resolution. “Well, that was different. That was
As-seeni.
This is from . . . Orientals.” Because, of course, As-seeni is Arabic for Chinese.

He whistles, marveling, laughing. “Well, Ibn Battuta,” he says, referring to his favorite ancient Islamic explorer, “you’ll have to tell me what Orientals eat for dinner. I’m going back to bed.”

Gram decides we will make what she calls an “Oriental event” out of the day. She opens the special hall closet where everything is covered in the smell of mothballs and the crackle of dry-cleaning paper. She pulls out two fur coats—the first is an ankle-length, fluffy imitation raccoon duffel. I gasp and immediately want to wear that one, but Gram says, “Let’s just try this first,” and slides my stick arms into the satin lining of a sheared seal imitation with a trapeze shape. The three-quarter sleeves come to my wrists and the body of the coat bells out below my knees, but the fur collar nuzzles my jaw and magically draws out planes I’d never noticed in my face before. I look in the full-length wall mirror and see something shift in my features, suggesting the face that I will grow into.

“I wore that to my high school grand pavilion dance,” she says, stroking the sleeve fondly.

“Who did you go with?” I ask, very curious.

“Oh, I don’t remember,” she says, carefully adjusting the collar. “Some nincompoop.”

I turn this way and that in the mirror, stunned with admiration for myself. From over my shoulder, Gram nods at my reflection. “It might be faux, but it’s still very, very classy.”

Gram wears the big raccoon coat, and we two very classy ladies wait on the curb in front of her building for the bus. Since she doesn’t drive, this is our usual transportation to Manhattan, and these excursions are always marked by the smell of diesel smoke. Later, after I’m grown, the smell of buses will always make me feel keen and expectant. There’s a wet snow tumbling from the sky, so Gram gives me one of her immense supply of plastic rain hats—tiny squares that unfold into a sort of Saran Wrap babushka with ties that knot under your chin. I find these just as intriguing and marvelous as the fur coats, and I wear my hat until we’ve boarded and Gram suggests that it’s safe to remove it.

We sit in my favorite seats—the ones positioned at a right angle to the rest of the seats, directly behind the driver—and I swing my legs, eyeballing the passengers behind us. Two stops later, a distinguished older gentleman with swirling white hair, a powder blue suit, and a maroon ascot climbs on and sits next to me.

I sense Gram straightening her back, a telegraphed message to behave. I try, with limited success, to stop swinging my legs—number seven on a list of “Ten Unladylike Behaviors” enumerated in the little pink book.

The older gentleman nods to Gram over my head, and she says, “Oh, hellew,” in her cultivated voice.

The older gentleman says, “And where are you two ladies off to today?” He smiles and reveals a gigantic set of ivory teeth.

“We’re going to eat Oriental food!” I gasp at the man.

“But first we’re going to see
Madama Butterfly
at the Metro-politan,” Gram says, enunciating syllables and tugging at her ivory-smooth gloves. The pair I’m wearing have little plackets at the wrists held together with polished-bone buttons, and they smell like lavender sachet. I curl the fingers under my nose and inhale.

Gram takes me to these places—Carnegie Hall, the Russian Tea Room, the Guggenheim—stuffing me with culture every chance she gets. Gram attended normal school as a young woman, and she has been a teacher for nearly all her life. I’m her special education project. Nothing intimidates or unsettles Gram. At a Museum of Modern Art exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos—all burnished, naked men—she crossed her arms and said, “Well, that’s interesting. Maybe someone will explain it to me sometime.” Later, when I’m in high school and I ask her how she managed to read all of
Finnegans Wake,
she says, “One word at a time, dear.”

“Well, that’s all delightful,” says the older gentleman, then turns to me and pats my sleeve. “And well, well, aren’t you something? Look at this wonderful ensemble. Is that real seal you’re wearing?”

“Sure!” I say. “It’s faux.”

Gradually, a conversation about the finer things evolves between Gram and the older gentleman, their voices light and bright as pins. All the while, I sense this man’s attention flaring beneath his words, his eyes sharp and avid when he glances in my direction. But this is so unbelievable—that such a very distinguished, very old person would pay any real attention to me—that I simply don’t take it in. Not even when the man comments on the length and delicacy of my neck and the particular shade of green in my eyes, speaking as directly and appraisingly to Gram as if he is judging a vase or a painting.

Eager to bring the conversation back around to my own new, cherished topic, I blurt out, “Have
you
ever eaten any Oriental food?”

He looks taken aback, then says, “Many times,” in the voice of a condemned man. He dabs a scented hankie at his mouth, clears his throat, and adjusts his ascot. “The Oriental people have an unwholesome obsession with the flesh of the young pig.”

They do? I am struck dumb, ruminating on the possible connection between this moment and the time that Gram served Bud the ham. The distinguished gentleman makes eating pig sound like a mortal sin, and even though Mom regularly serves my sisters and me ham-and-Swiss sandwiches with mustard, for a moment I’m worried that I won’t even like Oriental food. What then?

“Well, what else do they eat?” I ask impatiently. “Besides young pig flesh?”

He sprinkles his fingers through the air, as if this is all too much. “Please, that was another lifetime ago.” His fluty voice trembles. “I’ve put all that infernal eating out of my mind. Now I consume only green and orange plants and crackers. If it were up to me, I would take all my nutrition in through the sun and the air.”

“Like a little fern,” Gram says.

“I’ve always had an abhorrence to the entire operation of chewing. So finally, I took matters into my own hands—”

Suddenly, there’s a wet suction sound and the man’s whole mouth seems to jump forward. He curls back his lips, and I can see that his rich pink gums and massive white teeth have separated from a paler, wizened pair of gums still in his head. I gape and move forward on the seat to get a better look, but he shifts his jaw and clacks the teeth back into place. I feel I’ve glimpsed something miraculous, like a unicorn.

“I told my dentist, ‘I’m done! Remove these offending items!’ And he pulled every last tooth. Now I wear my prosthetic only when I’m among the public and might need to make polite conversation. Otherwise I leave my gums at liberty. It’s the most free and wonderful feeling!”

“I’m sure it is,” Gram says.

“Like running around naked,” I offer.

“Do you like to do that?” he asks with a chuckle.

I suck the breath back into my chest and stare.

Throughout our exchange, Gram has been studying the man. He gives off an air of prosperity and sophistication, yet even I realize that he’s taking a bus. Gram clears her throat daintily and touches her sternum and finally asks in her most high-class way why a man such as himself would trouble with public transportation. He sits back and declares with a wide gesture, “I love the bus. The bus is the world! Well, of course I’m quite wealthy and I could take a limousine anywhere I liked, but I meet the world’s most interesting people this way. Why, imagine if I had taken my chauffeur today, what I would have missed!” He lifts my hand on the edge of his fingers, lowering his head as if he will kiss it, then hesitates and simply passes the wedge of my knuckles under his nose, nostrils flaring.

Gram smiles coyly and bends her head to one side. She slinks one arm around my shoulders and pulls me in close so my hand slips out of his. I’m filled with relief.

He blinks at this gesture and then quickly states that he owns “several lucrative and high-class enterprises,” adding that a man in his position is frequently lonely and in search of a friend, someone to coddle and spoil and heap with riches. Then he invites us to come visit him at his main place of business and painstakingly prints instructions on how to take the bus there on the back of a Howard Johnson Motel post-card. Finally he gives Gram a scalloped, gilt-edged business card with his name and the words
Pre-Owned Cars
and, under this,
Associate.

“I do hope you’ll honor me with a visit soon,” he says at the end of the ride, and looks at me once more with such a raw longing that I withdraw a few inches, tucking in my chin and leaning against Gram’s shoulder.

Gram assures him that we most certainly will consider this generous offer. Then, as soon as we walk into Port Authority and lose sight of him, she flips the card in the garbage and says, “There goes another one, walking around all loose and fancy free. Typical!”

“Typical what?”

She looks at me as if it’s scrawled all over the tiled walls of the station. “Typical man!”

THE TENDEREST ANGEL FOOD CAKE

For those who don’t like to chew very much.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Put the egg whites and water in a clean large metal bowl. Sift together the flour and
¹
⁄4 cup of the sugar into a medium bowl.

Using a standing electric mixer, beat the egg whites on medium speed until frothy. Add the vanilla, cream of tartar, and salt. Increase mixing speed to medium-high and beat just until soft peaks begin to form. Gradually beat in the remaining cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl. Increase the speed to high and beat until stiff, glossy peaks form. Sift a third of the flour mixture over the whites. Beat on low speed just until blended. Sift and beat in the remaining flour in two more batches.

Gently pour the batter into an ungreased tube pan and smooth the top. Run a rubber spatula or long knife through the batter to eliminate any large air bubbles.

Bake the cake in the lower third of the oven until the top is golden and a tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and immediately invert the pan over the neck of a bottle. Cool the cake completely, upside down. Turn the pan right side up. Run a long, thin knife around the outer edge of the pan. Remove the outer rim of the pan and run the knife under the bottom of the cake to release. Invert to release the cake from the tube, then invert again onto a serving plate.

All I remember of
Madama Butterfly
are the ornate chandeliers suspended from the ceiling of the opera house, arranged to resemble twinkling constellations in the cobalt black sky. They remain faintly illuminated throughout the performance and hold me enthralled while I speculate on the nature of Oriental food.

After the show, Gram is misty, transported, humming lines of music that I’m sure I’ve never heard before. “Wasn’t it just lovely?” she asks over and over. “Those Orientals are so dainty and refined,” she muses. “Like little porcelain dolls with their little shoes and parasols.”

I fervently agree to everything. I have no idea what she’s talking about. I’m nearly in a panic to get to the Oriental food.

“Did you see?” she asks. “Did you watch what that awful captain did to poor Madame Butterfly? Left her stranded!”