I looked around at all the full carts, then at my little basket. “Maybe I should get more.”
“Do you have to drive far to get here?”
I laughed. “I can walk.”
The cashier laughed, too. She was a pleasant-looking woman, curly brown hair streaked with gray. An open smile. She wore many pins on her smock, mostly jokey ones but also a larger one with a picture of two young children, beneath which was written, GO AHEAD: MAKE MY DAY. ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN.
“This is just the usual mass hysteria,” she said. “People scare people.” She looked at her watch. “Good. Quitting time.” She put her CLOSED sign at the end of my groceries, apologized to the irate customer who was forced to go to another checkout lane. Then, after she rang me up, she untied her apron and said, “Think I’ll go home and snuggle under a blanket with my hubby—watch a movie and eat popcorn for dinner.”
“Sounds great,” I said, and concentrated on the lemons resting at the top of my grocery bag. I didn’t want to look at her face and see how happy she was. I didn’t want to begrudge her her simple pleasure. When I walked home, I thought about the last snowstorm John and I had endured. It was a surprise nor’easter that ended up dumping more than twenty inches of snow on us. The minute I heard the forecast, I called John at work and told him to come home, but he didn’t leave his office until two hours later. By then, the roads were a mess—there’d been accidents on top of accidents. I waited for more than three hours for him to arrive, at first calling his cell phone every twenty minutes or so to make sure he was all right. Finally he told me to stop calling, that he’d see me when he saw me. This enraged me—the traffic reports were so bad, and I thought that somehow my checking in with him would ensure his safety. When he walked in the door, snow like a caul over his head and shoulders from his short walk from the car, I was weak in the knees with relief, but then I coolly ignored him until morning. I’d wanted to punish him for being short with me when my only sin was concern. I should have watched a movie with him. Under a blanket. Eating popcorn for dinner. I should have uncorked the most expensive bottle of champagne we had and flung my arms around him. I hoped we never had to realize all the opportunities we missed in this life.
At home, I rubbed the cavity of the chicken with a paste made of garlic and kosher salt and stuffed it with punctured lemons. I put it into the oven along with quartered red potatoes tossed with olive oil and rosemary and plenty of salt and pepper. I shoveled yet again, and when I came back inside, delicious smells were filling the house. So tired my muscles burned, I carried The New Book of Middle Eastern Food into the living room. One of my favorite things to do was to read about cooking while smelling something cooking. I was grateful to have the pleasure so unambivalently back. I turned on a lamp against the gathering darkness, stretched out on the sofa, and started with the acknowledgments.
“I never knew anyone who actually read cookbooks,” John had once told me. I’d been engrossed in Beat This!, my all-time favorite cookbook, which, in truth, I had already read cover to cover. “Lots of people read cookbooks,” I’d answered testily—I’d been at a good part and didn’t want to be interrupted. “Why?” he’d asked. I’d looked over at his book, something about the North Pole, and said, “Why do you read that?” “For pleasure,” he’d said. “For escape. For edification. For thrills.” I’d held up my cookbook, raised my eyebrows. “Okay,” he’d said.
But it was more than that. It was something harder to articulate. How are poets able to unzip what they see around them, calling forth a truer essence from behind a common fact? Why, reading a verse about a pear, do you see past the fruit in so transcendent a way? There are circumstances under which food is not just food—Jane Hirshfield, in her poem “Pillow,” calls a provolone sandwich just that. But this is always true about food, as it is always true about a thousand aspects of daily life that we do not, cannot, fully appreciate—there is only so much room inside, and we are a busy species. It takes the poets to make for a divine displacement. The poets and death. Before, cookbooks were interesting to me, comforting. Now they served as testimony to my own kind of faith.
The introduction to this cookbook talked about how the author heard the voices of the people who gave her the recipes every time she made them. I understood that. I still heard my grandmother’s tremulous but authoritative voice every time I baked her pistachio cake. I saw her, too, sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, her still wonderfully thick white hair up in a glorious French twist, her light blue eyes direct and intelligent. In these visions, she wore a small-print housedress, safety-pinned at the top for a little extra modesty, though her legs were always spread wide apart. I saw her nylons knotted at the knee, her maroon corduroy slippers with the heels run-down disgracefully—but God forbid you try to replace them!
I turned to the list of recipes. Meatballs with eggplant sauce. Phyllo triangles with spinach-and-cheese filling. Sweet couscous; apricots stuffed with cream. I looked at pictures of blue plates holding red stuffed tomatoes, of brown pottery bowls holding thick yellow egg-and-lemon soup, of a large platter holding a whole fish in hot saffron and ginger-tomato sauce. Just as I was so hungry I was starting to get a headache, the timer went off and I went into the kitchen to fix myself a plate.
It was still snowing. I went closer to the window to watch the flakes falling, lazily now. Such a contrast: their delicate form versus the damage they could do. I saw Benny and two friends out in his backyard hurling snowballs at each other. “DIE!” I heard one of the friends say, and I pulled my cardigan closer about me and moved away.
It took me five minutes to eat dinner. Five minutes. Another minute to wash my dishes. Then I leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, contemplating what to do next. I thought again about calling the man who’d left a message, but I was weary, and talking to a stranger would require something I now felt incapable of. I could go to bed but would probably only have another frightening dream.
I’d try Matthew again. And in addition to hiring him to shovel my walk for the season, I’d ask him to repaint my bedroom walls a soothing shade of blue. Who knew? It might help. This time, when I dialed the number, someone answered immediately.
“Yes.” It was a man’s voice, an impatient edge to it.
“Matthew?”
“No.”
“Well, is he there?”
“Yes, he is here.”
“May I speak with him?” Jesus.
The sound of someone getting up. And then, “Matthew! A call for you!” An accent. Spanish?
A distant response, and then the man said, “I know. But it’s no her, you have on some other woman!” A pause, and then, “How do I’m supposed to know? I’m not your reception.”
“Relax, Jovani,” I heard, and then, “Hello?”
“Hi!” I said. “This is Betta Nolan. The woman from Cuppa Java?”
“Oh! Yeah!”
“I’m sorry if I’m calling at a bad time.”
“No problem. Jovani’s just . . . no problem.”
“I was wondering if you’d be able to do a couple of jobs for me. Snow shoveling? For the season?”
“Sure.”
“And then another job. Painting. Just one room.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You’ve painted before?”
“Sure!”
“All right, so how soon do you think you could get the room painted?”
“Depends on the size. Depends on what shape the walls are in. I’d have to see it, then I could tell you. How soon do you need it done?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Well, where do you live? I’ll come and look tonight if you want, figure out how much paint you need.”
“Tonight?” I looked out the window. Snow was still falling.
“Yeah,” Matthew said. “It would be good if I could come tonight.”
“But are the roads all right?”
“Yeah, the plow’s been by. And anyway, you’re close, are
n’t you?”
I told him my address, and he said, “All right. Fifteen minutes, tops.”
It was a reflex, I supposed, that had me go to the mirror and inspect myself, then smear on some lipstick. I wondered when that reflex would finally go away. Once I passed an old lady waiting for a bus, and she had on so much makeup she literally looked like a clown—eyebrows drawn as severe black carets, rouge in comical circles. I remember saying to John, “If my makeup ever starts looking like that, you have to tell me right away.” “I will,” he’d said.
The phone rang. It was Matthew, saying, “My car won’t start. Piece of junk. But if you want to come and get me . . .”
“Hold on.” I went to look out the front window. Matthew was right; the plow had been by recently. I came back to the phone and said, “Okay, I’ll come. Just tell me how to get there.”
He gave me directions to his house, only a few miles away, and I started to put the chicken, barely touched, in the refrigerator. But then I left it out. He was a kid with money problems. He might like some free food. As natural as the instinct to primp for a man was my urge to feed one. A chicken sandwich, I was thinking, and a nice salad. I’d bought potato chips and Milano cookies at the grocery store.
I laid the table before I left and felt a rush of happiness at the prospect of caring for someone again. I once dropped in on a woman to deliver something, and she’d been preparing lunch for her husband. The table was set, and on her husband’s paper napkin she’d drawn a heart with an arrow through it. When I saw it, she got embarrassed. But I told her I thought it was lovely. And I did. I also thought it was brave. The world was full of cynicism and judgment and what I believed was a knee-jerk recoiling against sentimentality. What had happened to us that we sneered at expressions of love and devoured stories of alienation and rage? Give me the hearts drawn on napkins, the men who walked on the street side of the sidewalk, the woman I met at a party who told me she always turned on Johnny Mathis to clean her bathroom. Give me the nurse who said, “You know, people think I’m such a good person to do what I do. But they don’t understand that I get back far more than I give—it feels really good to take care of someone. It really does lift you up. When I go to work, I’m going to church.”
I used to fantasize a lot about the son John and I could never have. Ma, he’d always be saying, laughing. That’s how I’d always seen us: him as an older teenager, sitting in the kitchen with me, his feet so big. A handsome boy, goofing around with me. Ma! Lightly thwacking me with a dishcloth.
In these fantasies, the sun was always shining. Bright spring sunshine. The sun was shining and we were in the kitchen and the floor was a black-and-white-checked pattern I have never had and the windows were dressed with sheer fabric curtains I would never choose. The kitchen seemed to create itself of its own will, as did my fantasy son: he with his curly blond hair and wide shoulders, wearing gray sweatpants and a T-shirt and unlaced sneakers. He’d had a hoarse laugh and a mole at the side of his mouth. But now I would sit in a kitchen with a flesh-and-blood boy who looked nothing like that and who certainly was not my son. And yet.
I put on my coat and gloves, went out to my car, started it, and rubbed my hands together for warmth. Then, as I put the car into reverse, I noticed that I was almost out of gas. And that suddenly seemed insurmountable. I knew the exhaustion I’d been holding at bay was skewing my perception. But it didn’t help to know why I felt like crying. I sat in the driveway, my hands over my face. And then I heard a small tapping at the window. Benny, a snowball in his hands, exaggeratedly mouthing something. I rolled down the window, forced a smile. “Hi,” I said. “You guys are having fun, huh?” I offered a weak wave to the two other boys behind him. They looked at each other, then waved back.
“Are you okay?” Benny leaned his head in the car and took a quick look around, like a miniature state trooper.
“Yeah. I’m just going somewhere.”
“Because it looked like you were crying.”
“I felt like it for a second. But I’m all right now. I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He stood there, making sure.
“What do you do after school, Benny?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Homework.”
“Why don’t you come over sometime? We’ll make some cookies. Do you like to bake?”
“Well, mostly I only like to eat cookies.”
“Me too. When you come, we’ll bake cookies and then we’ll eat them. What kind do you want?”
“Snickerdoodles, which I am the only one in my house who likes them.”
“Great suggestion. Stand back now; I’m going to pull out.”
“Okay.” He moved back a few feet.
Before I turned the corner, I checked my rearview. Still standing there. For his vigilance and care, his cookies would be made with Vietnamese cinnamon.
“Come in, come in,” Matthew said when I rang the doorbell. “Don’t mind . . . don’t mind anything. We haven’t got the place too fixed up yet.” He was wearing a baggy red sweater and blue jeans, a baseball cap, thick gray socks. Behind him, stretched out on a battered maroon sofa, I saw his roommate, a thin, dark-haired man wearing dress slacks and an untucked white shirt who smiled at me and then returned to watching a blaring television, some kind of game show. In addition to the sofa, the living room held two mismatched kitchen chairs and a board-and-brick bookcase. No rug. No curtains or blinds. A ripped poster of Avril Lavigne on the wall. One floor lamp, no shade.
“I just have to get my boots on,” Matthew said. “You can wait in the living room with Jovani if you’d like.” I looked over at the roommate, who was frowning, concentrating on the television. “Or,” Matthew said, “I can show you the room for rent, see if you’re interested.” Hastily, he added, “Just kidding.”
“I would like to look at it,” I said. Besides, anything would be better than sitting in a room with some mindless television show on. I once heard two women at a restaurant talking about television. One liked it; the other hated it. The one who liked it said she kept it on for background noise; otherwise, it was too quiet. The other one said, “Buy a parakeet.”
The room for rent was actually charming—dormers added character and coziness without making the room too small. There was a dresser and a twin bed, and an old wooden kitchen table to serve as a desk, complete with study lamp. The wallpaper was a clean blue-and-white stripe, and the floors were golden oak—recently refinished, judging by their condition. “Funny you’re having trouble renting this,” I told Matthew. “It’s a really nice room.”
“It’s the time of year,” he said, standing at the doorway and looking in as though he himself were considering renting it. “If it were August or early September, we’d be all set.”
I nodded, thinking of how I’d decorate the place. How I’d move the bed to be between the dormers, how I’d add a chenille bedspread, a vintage flowered rug, a bedside table and lamp. “Want to see my room?” Matthew asked. “It’s awesome.”
Well, it was large, anyway. There was a bare mattress against one wall with a blanket tossed over it. No pillow. There were several plastic crates stacked up and serving as a chest of drawers of sorts, with clothes neatly folded inside them. CDs were piled high next to a portable player. There were a few photographs Scotch-taped to the wall, including one of Matthew and the young woman I saw him with in the coffee shop. I walked over to look at that photograph, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Matthew stiffen. “I’ve got to get rid of that.”
I turned and smiled at him. “No, you don’t.”
“I just forgot about it. I really don’t want it anymore.”
“After a while, you might want it. Put it away somewhere. When you’re an old guy, you can show your grandchildren all the beautiful girlfriends you used to have.”
He laughed, his head down. “They haven’t all been beautiful. One was real ugly. Annie Dupres, she was the one I actually liked best. Cool woman. Marathon runner and a medical student. She
was in the Peace Corps; she went to Africa and taught English. Real dedicated type. And she could cook, oh man, she made such good stuff. I still feel bad about messing that one up.”
“What happened?”
He pointed to the picture. “She did. Melanie.” He said her name like he was spitting out a piece of foil he’d just found in his sandwich. “I met her at a party Annie and I went to. And I just . . . have you ever heard the expression, ‘let the little head do the thinking for the big one’?”
I nodded, felt my face coloring.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That was gross. I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m embarrassed. I’ve heard that expression a million times.” I didn’t want to add that I’d also used it.
He stared at the photo a moment longer, then pulled it off the wall and threw it into one of his crates. “Anyway.” He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at Melanie’s disarming smile. I thought I knew something about the way his stomach felt, missing her so. His tattered heart.
“Shall we go?” I asked gently.
On the way out, he pulled a light jacket from a hall closet jammed with coats, scarves, gloves, athletic equipment, books and papers and backpacks. I had to stop myself from asking if he’d be warm enough. No one wants to mother more vigilantly than a woman who is childless and wishes she wasn’t.
“Cold in here!” Matthew said when he stepped into my bedroom.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it’s haunted.”
I started to unburden myself but quickly decided against it. And was glad, because he walked over to a corner, looked down, and said, “Here’s your problem, right here. You gotta open your vent.” He tugged at a lever. “There you go. Now you’ll be warm.”
I walked over to the small grate I hadn’t seen until now, put my hand down, and felt the rush of warm air. “Well, that was pretty simple. I feel like an idiot.”
“It’s only easy if someone’s told you where to look,” he said. He looked around the room and ran his hands along one wall. “The walls are in good shape. The paper will come down pretty easily, too. I could get a friend to help and do everything in maybe eight hours—that would be with primer and two coats of paint. So it would cost you sixteen hours of labor plus materials.”