Aftertaste (2 page)

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Authors: Meredith Mileti

BOOK: Aftertaste
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On the first floor I stop to buy a Diet Coke at the vending machine. It's now late in the afternoon, and most of the people awaiting trials have gone for the day. I'm spent emotionally and physically by my display in class, and I guzzle the Coke greedily on the way to catch my bus. By the time I get to West Broadway, I've finished the Coke and, as I run for the bus heading to the Village, I toss the empty can into the garbage, only to see the little, white slip of paper that has stuck to the side of the moist can, the piece of paper on which Mary Ann has written my ticket to sanity, disappear into the trash.
chapter 2
You cannot know the type of person you really are, I mean truly, deep down, appreciate the measure of yourself as a person, until you've felt the cold steel of a pair of handcuffs against your wrists. What does it evoke? Pain? Terror? Remorse? After my attack on Nicola, they had restrained me, in order to protect me from myself, the officer told me, her hand atop my head as she gently, and I'd like to think sympathetically, assisted me into the back of the cruiser. She had been kind, allowing me to call Hope, our downstairs neighbor and Chloe's sometime babysitter, and wait for her to trudge the three blocks in her bathrobe to pick up Chloe. She had even graciously removed the cuffs so I could hold her for an instant, allowing me to brush a trembling kiss across her forehead before transferring her into Hope's waiting arms. But the act for which I remain most grateful was her unexpected humanity—she had waited for Hope and Chloe to disappear around the corner before re-cuffing me, apologizing as she snapped the locks into place with a dispiriting
click.
Perhaps because I've spent my life working with my hands, I find it terrifying to have them immobilized. But, sitting in the back of the cruiser, my neck craned uncomfortably to watch the diminishing specters of Jake and Nicola out the cruiser's rear window—Jake's arm wrapped protectively around Nicola, a white tablecloth draped over her heaving shoulders—all I can remember feeling was a strange detachment, as if I were watching a Lifetime Channel movie of the week, waiting patiently for the next commercial break. It wasn't until Jake and Nicola had completely disappeared from view, and I struggled to turn around, the steel of the handcuffs uncomfortably chafing my wrists, that I found a piece of Nicola's long, dark hair had wedged itself firmly in between my two front teeth and was tickling my bottom lip. All I can remember thinking is, “How the hell did that get there?” No remorse, God forbid. No guilt. Just pure incredulity.
Now what does that say about me?
The thing is, you really can't know who you are, what you will do to get what you want, until you've been in trouble. Getting away with something makes it easy to hide behind the stories we tell ourselves, the lies we live with, often small and incremental, in order to secure our hearts' desires. But find yourself fingerprinted and photographed, forced to call a friend—of whom you have depressingly few, apart, of course, from your husband, whose lover you have just attacked and who is probably not, at the moment, inclined to post your bail—and you'll find you have some real explaining to do.
I've never been a person with big plans. Most of what I do, I do spontaneously, or as Mary Ann might say, impulsively. The only fruits of any serious planning in my life, in fact, are Chloe and Grappa. The trouble with planning things in advance, I've learned, is they seldom turn out the way you plan them. When Jake and I opened the restaurant five years ago, we thought we knew what we wanted. We were both tired of working under the direction of restaurant owners, bottom-liners, all too often loud of voice and lacking in vision or culinary understanding. We wanted to shake up the restaurant world, which we felt had grown complacent and mired in certain continental dining traditions. At one point, shortly after our return from Europe, we dreamed of owning a loft in the city. We imagined an expansive, multi-level space where we could live and work. Enough space to accommodate an open kitchen, where we would offer cooking classes and wine tastings during the day and where we could serve a few prix fixe dinners each week. However, when a cozy (real estate code for miniscule) basement space in the West Village became available, we took advantage of the opportunity, adjusted our expectations, and Grappa was born.
In its former incarnation it had been a small, dank pizzeria, or at least what passes for a pizzeria in the States, serving oil-drenched, over-sauced pizza Americans tend to love, which actually bears little relation to real Italian
pizza.
The kitchen was small by restaurant standards, and needed a total overhaul, stretching our budget and our borrowing capacity to their limits.
We picked up cheap stock tables and chairs at warehouse and fire sales, where we tried not to remind ourselves we were buying the remains of someone else's failed enterprise. White cloths and kitschy wax-dripped Chianti bottles dressed the tables in the fall and winter. In the summertime I loaded fresh flowers, which I grew on the roof of our apartment building, into the recycled aluminum San Marzano tomato cans that arrived at our restaurant weekly by the case. Our collection of vintage Italian food and wine posters was on temporary loan from our apartment, and Jake and I agreed they looked great against the exposed brick. The metamorphosis from basement slum to chic urban trattoria had taken only nine months, a surprisingly small amount of time in which to spend not only every dollar we had, but also every penny we could cajole from the First Manhattan Savings and Loan.
Within months of our opening,
Gourmet
did a piece on “Up and Coming” restaurants in New York, and Grappa was featured. It was a lucky accident they chose us, the kind of break that can make or destroy you in this town. The rave review on our food, however, we earned. The day after the magazine hit the stands, we had a line coming out the door at lunchtime. By the weekend, we were booked solid, two weeks in advance. We made money hand over fist, enough that by the end of our first year in business we were able to buy the first floor space above, enhance the kitchen, and expand the restaurant by eleven tables.
During those early years we weathered the storms common to all fledgling restaurants, particularly those in Manhattan. At the same time we engineered and oversaw a second comprehensive renovation. Jake and I lived, ate, and breathed Grappa. We had fully intended to start a family once Grappa had opened successfully, but we had to put those plans on hold, a decision not without a certain element of risk, given the fact I was already thirty-five and Jake was forty. Instead, we made Grappa our baby, its staff our family.
On my thirty-seventh birthday I bullied Jake into agreeing it was time to try for a baby, citing as evidence a now infamous article, published in the Sunday Magazine section and responsible for I don't even want to think about how many ambivalent conceptions, by scores of career women in their thirties, whose biological windows were much narrower than previously believed. Jake, rather reluctantly, agreed. In retrospect, he probably was secretly heartened by the news that perhaps my biological window was already closed.
Of course, I became pregnant almost instantly.
 
Chloe is sleeping when I get home from anger-management class. Hope, the sitter and our downstairs neighbor, tells me Chloe didn't fall asleep until after three, so not to worry if she sleeps a while longer.
I take out Chloe's dinner: veal mousse with shitake puree, creamed spinach, and, in order to balance the colors and textures, souffléed butternut squash. All homemade, frozen in the tiny compartments of blue plastic ice cube trays. Before Chloe was born, Jake and I agreed our child would have a sophisticated palate. No Happy Meals, no macaroni and cheese, and—God forbid—no chicken fingers. I make her food myself, at night sometimes when I can't sleep, as if being able to offer Chloe the pureed version of the best I can cook will somehow make up for what I fear will be all my other shortcomings as a mother.
Already at seven months Chloe has shown herself to be an adventurous eater. There's nothing she doesn't like. Jake, of course, has no idea. In the three months since he moved out, he's hardly seen her. He probably doesn't even know she's eating solid foods. And because he's never asked, I've never told him.
The few conversations we've had in the last three months have been about work: practical aspects of the changing of the guard from lunch to dinner, decisions about the seasonal menu changes at the restaurant, how the last shipment of baby artichokes was uncharacteristically bitter, and which one of us should be responsible for calling the supplier.
Before Chloe was born we agreed Jake would supervise dinner at the restaurant, while I would take lunch a couple days a week, just to keep my hand in, until Chloe was a little older. Since the separation, however, and my forced compliance with the terms of the Order of Protection that prohibits me from coming within two hundred yards of Nicola, I've taken to cooking lunch five days per week, while Jake continues to handle dinner. He has the harder job, dinner being the more important and elaborate meal, and six days instead of five, but I'm busy with the work of raising our child. Jake tells me, mostly in writing through our lawyers, that he'll gladly buy my share of the restaurant so I can stay at home and prepare Michelin-worthy baby meals all day instead of just at night, that it would be better for “the child.”
What he really means is it would be easier for him and Nicola if they didn't have to worry about my intruding into their private lives, lives they've stolen for themselves right from underneath my nose.
And so we try, or rather Jake tries, not to overlap at the restaurant, but sometimes we do. We are civil, and occasionally even pleasant to each other, because there are usually other people around. If nothing else, we are professionals who have a business to run. I try, however, never to look directly at him because then the ache will come and, unable to draw breath into my constricted chest, I will begin to choke. Usually, it's fairly easy to keep from looking at him because there are always several things that need to be done in the restaurant kitchen, always something to occupy one's hands and eyes.
Since Jake wouldn't agree to terminate Nicola's employment (apparently he doesn't see quite enough of her, even though they are now living together at her apartment), she still works the dinner shift as maîtress. If I'm honest with myself, the vision of Nicola presiding over the dining room at Grappa bothers me as much as her having taken my place in Jake's bed. Maybe more.
Chloe sleeps longer than she should, and when I get her up, she fusses and strains in my arms. Once I maneuver her into the high chair, she stubbornly refuses to eat, pounding the tray with her tiny fists and swatting my hand away whenever I offer her a spoonful of food. After I make several unsuccessful attempts, the tray of her high chair (and her hands, face, and hair) is covered in broad brushstrokes of orange, green, and beige, which she smears around the tray, like a manic little Jackson Pollock. Finally, arms straining, she reaches for me and makes little kneading motions with her fists, and I finally understand she wants to nurse. It is the only thing that seems to quiet her, and she sucks greedily, faster than she is able to swallow, the milk pooling in the inside of her cheeks.
Chloe's eyes roll back slightly in her head, and her previously clenched fists are now limp with exhaustion and relief. What hard and frustrating work it must be to be a baby. Being forced to communicate your needs without words to the people in charge of your care, people who mean well and are generally invested in your well-being, if occasionally dense and preoccupied.
I watch the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest, the halting tremble of her lips as they purse and then begin to suck sleepily and lazily at the air. Her movements are at once languid and deliberate, and I'm dizzy with the promise of who she is, this tiny person I have made. And I wonder if she senses I'm her mother and I'm here watching her. Defining myself in gentler terms, as Chloe's mother, seems necessary and, after seven months, almost completely natural. As if by doing so, I can erase all the mistakes I made in being Jake's wife.
Primi
Kissing don't last; cookery do!
—George Meredith
chapter 3
Mercifully, Chloe has always been an excellent sleeper, sleeping through the night when she was less than three weeks old. So it's unusual when she wakes at midnight, crying. She's hot to the touch and fretful. Cursing myself for not having sprung for the quick-read ear thermometer the pediatrician had recommended, I manage to take her temperature rectally. One hundred and four. I give her some Infants' Tylenol drops and a bottle of cool water, which she gulps down impatiently, but within minutes she throws up all over the two of us, mostly water, tinged purple from the grape-flavored Tylenol. We pace the apartment, Chloe's fretful cries becoming increasingly more piercing as I rock her, gently at first, then more urgently. With each lap around the apartment I become more and more nervous because I cannot stop her crying. Finally, when she shows no signs of exhausting herself and I can't take it any more, I pick up the phone and punch the pediatrician's emergency hotline number on the speed dial. I'm startled when, after several rings, I get the sound of Jake's recorded voice mail message. I listen, confused and mesmerized by the sound of his voice, until I realize I must have hit number one (Jake's cell phone) instead of number four (Dr. Troutman) on the speed dial. I hang up, but not before, blinded by worry and fury, I've managed to wail urgently and hysterically into the phone.
Chloe finally stops crying, but her body is listless and heavy, her eyes glassy. I take her temperature again, this time without disturbing her too much. Despite the Tylenol, her fever has climbed another degree. One hundred and five. I check the clock. 1:15 a.m. I hastily throw on sweatpants, socks, and running shoes, grab the quilt from Chloe's crib, and quickly wrap her.
Downstairs, Earl, the night doorman, is sipping his coffee from a paper cup, looking fresh and alert, when Chloe and I come flying out of the elevator. Without my having to utter a word, Earl flags down a cabbie, packs us in, and, leaning into the front window of the cab, shouts something to the driver in Spanish. By the time we reach the hospital, Chloe is in the midst of a convulsion brought about, I'm later told, by the high fever.
When caught in time, fever convulsions are quite manageable, the very young-looking intern tells me, speaking with an authority he could not possibly have earned yet. They bring down her fever with an injection and give her an IV of fluid to help rehydrate her. The needle looks enormous punched into her little arm. By 4:00 a.m. her fever is down to one hundred and three; by 6:00, an acceptable hundred and one. By 7:30 Chloe and I are back in the apartment. Diagnosis: viral infection, source unspecified. I should be relieved, but I'm not. I put her to bed and pace the apartment, picking up where I left off last night, imagining with each lap that I'm sinking lower and lower and that soon I will have worn a hole clean through to Hope's apartment on the floor below. I actually think of calling Hope, who has no children of her own and might not understand or fully appreciate my worries, but at least she'd have coffee. I imagine her expression as I report to her my litany of concerns about Chloe's health, how I've convinced myself that she has suffered permanent brain damage and might never learn to speak, or that she will be deaf. Hadn't Helen Keller gone blind, deaf, and mute from such a virus?
I let out an audible sigh. I'm totally spent, physically and psychologically, and yet, hidden under the thin skin of my exhaustion and worry lurks another raw emotion, one that I haven't had to fully identify until now. I'm angry. Furious, actually, that Jake wasn't there to help me, to help Chloe. And what about the message I'd left him in the middle of the night? Surely he recognized that the person bleating like a wounded animal into the other end of the phone was me. Why didn't he call me back? More evidence of his monumental callousness.
It would be so simple to hate him, but I haven't quite figured out how to, or at least how to sustain it. I'll make a heroic effort at it, like now, or during anger-management class, and then I'll remember something, some silly thing that weakens my resolve to inflict upon him the most grievous punishments, like castration or dismemberment. Now, for instance, as I imagine calling him on the telephone and screaming at him that his daughter almost died, suffering fever convulsions in a filthy Manhattan cab, all I can think about is how he shivers uncontrollably when awakened out of a sound sleep. When it happens he looks pathetic and boyish. It's hard to hate someone when you know the most intimate secrets of his sympathetic nervous system. If I could put half the energy into hating him that I had put into loving him, I'd be well over this man.
How had Jake accomplished it, this reversal of feelings, this decision to stop loving me? When did the little things he knew about me, things he had once cherished, or at least, minimally tolerated, turn into insurmountable annoyances? And how had I failed to notice?
But, regardless of how Jake feels about me, Chloe is still his child, and he should know about his only child's brush with death. Shouldn't he? And because it is my duty as the mother of said child to tell him, I pick up the phone.
Of course,
she
answers, and of course I've woken her. It is, after all, only seven forty-five. Early for them. On nights they close the restaurant, which nowadays is most nights, they don't get home until after two. Nicola's voice is deep and sexy with sleep. I wince, squeezing my eyes tightly shut as if I could block out the picture of them in bed together. Fat chance.
“I need to talk to Jake,” I say with my eyes still clamped shut. Good. To the point, efficient.
I can feel her hesitate. I think there's a good chance that she'll hang up on me. We haven't seen each other, or even spoken, since that night, and I suppose she still harbors some residual bad feelings, to which, in my opinion, she is totally unentitled. I imagine her hanging up, murmuring in response to Jake's sleepy query that it had just been a wrong number, while quietly unplugging the phone, severing Jake's connection to Chloe and me. But she doesn't. Instead, stifling a yawn, she says, “He isn't here, Mira.” Of course, a predictable lie.
“I need to talk to Jake. Could you put him on?” Note: I did not say please.
Again, she hesitates. “He's not here.”
I stop dead. Not there? At seven forty-five in the morning? What did that mean? Was he not living there? Had he left her?
It isn't until I have Jake and me back together in an emotional reunion at Chloe's bedside that I realize Nicola is still speaking.
“. . . left a few minutes ago. He's meeting Eddie.” Eddie is our fish man, who occasionally asks us to meet him at the pier, although usually not this early in the morning.
“He's going in to the restaurant afterward to, ah, take care of some paperwork. You'll probably see him at lunch.” Her voice is neutral. She could have been talking to anyone. The fact that she could treat me so evenly is perhaps the most horrible of all. Clearly, I'm no longer a threat. She's secure enough in Jake's love that she doesn't need to fear me in the least.
I'm silent. It's now my turn to speak, but the part of my brain governing the pragmatic functions of language is not working at the moment.
“Mira?” Her voice sounds strained, all vestiges of sleep now gone.
I don't answer her. Instead, I hang up the phone.
 
Paperwork. Going in early. Something doesn't sound right. First off, Jake doesn't do paperwork. That's my job. Jake and I usually shopped for fruits, vegetables, and fish, taking turns at the markets. Meat orders are phoned or faxed to our suppliers, and we are billed monthly by the various vendors we patronize. Spices, cheeses, olive oil, and condiments are ordered through Renata Brussani. Our bartender/sommelier handles the wine order, faithfully presenting his inventory and monthly statements to me for inspection. I take care of all the bill paying, as Jake considers such details mundane, and therefore beneath his notice. He fancies himself an artist and is perfectly content to leave all the details of running the business to me.
Lately, though, I've sensed Jake looking over my shoulder at the restaurant, trying to figure out what I'm doing. One day last week, I caught him in the office leafing through an inventory of our cookware. And Tuesday he had mentioned to me that we needed to replace the fire extinguishers in the back kitchen, a detail that typically would have totally escaped his notice.
I'll try him at the restaurant. Among other things, he needs to know that I'm not going to make it in for lunch. I don't want to leave Chloe, and I'm exhausted from being up all night. The only other thing I have scheduled today is my meeting with Renata Brussani, the importer who sells us olive oil and cheese. Could it be that Jake wants to be in on my meeting with Renata? Part of his grand plan to take over the restaurant? Luckily, I brought the paperwork home with me, so Jake will have no idea what we need.
I call Grappa and get our sous-chef, Tony. He tells me Jake isn't there yet, but he'll gladly supervise lunch. Tony seems surprised when I tell him that Jake is on his way in this early and promises to have him call me as soon as he gets there.
My next call is to Renata. She begins her days early, meeting with her clients, most of whom are chefs and restaurateurs, during the early part of the day, before they begin lunch or dinner service. I'll just ask her to meet me here, at the apartment, instead of at the restaurant.
For the second time this morning I'm taken aback, when this time a sleepy sounding male voice answers Renata's phone, and then I remember that she got married a few weeks ago. This must be her husband, whose name I have forgotten. They just got married in Vegas and then threw a huge party at Renata's Tribeca loft, after the fact. Although I was invited, I didn't go. I wasn't ready to celebrate the union of two idealistic people, full of the self-congratulatory tones of those who have found love the second time around. Not while I was still licking the wounds of my own failed marriage.
Renata picks up the extension. “
Buon giorno,
Mira, are we still on for ten thirty?” She sounds chipper, all business. She's probably already dressed to the nines and in full makeup, even though it's barely eight o'clock in the morning. Renata isn't really beautiful in a classical sense, although every straight man I know, including Jake, thinks she is. She is sultry and full-figured with a dark, Mediterranean complexion and great, full lips: a young Isabella Rossellini. What most women notice about her is that she dresses impeccably: Italian suits and silk shirts (invariably open to reveal an impressive décolletage), and I can't recall ever seeing her without a scarf and earrings. I look down with disgust at my purpletinted, vomit-stained sweat suit.
“Sure, I'm all ready to go, but the thing is, Chloe's sick and I can't leave her. She was in the emergency room last night, actually. Would you mind coming to the apartment? I've got everything here, at home.”
“Is she okay? Are you sure you don't want to reschedule?” she asks.
“No, no, we're fine. I'd just as soon get the order in. We would have to close our doors if we ran out of Parmigiano-Reggiano. You know, Jake has a liberal hand.”
“Yes, I do, God bless him.”
“Well, I wouldn't go that far.”
She laughs. “Whoops, sorry, I forgot—the bastard.”
Over the years Renata and I have developed a social relationship. She proved herself to be an invaluable advisor on a number of occasions throughout Grappa's early stages, and we've become good friends over the last few years. I nursed her through a couple of bad breakups, including one marriage, and she has been supportive of me during this recent unpleasantness with Jake, at least insofar as someone as self-obsessed as Renata can be. But she's also a shrewd businesswoman, and I suspect that if Jake ever did manage to wrest control of the restaurant from me, Renata would continue to make sure his needs, at least for oil and cheese, were spectacularly met. Nevertheless, it's hard not to like Renata. Among other things, one has to admire her business acumen. She broke into an incredibly tight market in a male-dominated profession through sheer smarts, perseverance, and impeccable food sense. Yet, despite her closet full of Fendi handbags and Ferragamo shoes, Renata comes from a family of simple people who were sheep farmers in the foothills of Abruzzo for centuries. At heart, Renata is a simple girl who, when no one is looking, likes to roll up her sleeves, eat big bowls of pasta with sausage, and spit olive pits out the window of her chic Tribeca loft.
I don't ask her about married life, feeling sure that during our meeting she will treat me to all of the details I can stomach. Renata has a way with men. She was actually the first to warn me about Nicola. At one of our meetings, shortly after I hired Nicola, I introduced Renata to our newest employee. They had greeted each other cordially, each appraising the other in the way that only women who know their own power can do.
“Mira,” Renata had hissed when we were out of earshot, “are you out of your mind? What were you thinking?” I was seven months pregnant at the time and tired. Nicola was barely a whisper in my hormone-clouded head. In retrospect, I wonder if perhaps Renata had seen something in Jake, some evidence of his wandering eye. Attractive women always know when they have the attention of a man. At the time I considered what she said, but then dismissed it, so blind was I to the possibility that Jake could love anyone else.

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