Study in Perfect (13 page)

Salt, fat, and the bread of affliction. A tradition lost on four braided girls in their Monkees pajamas, sitting restlessly at the dining room table. Sunday morning Father rose early and pattered down to the kitchen dressed in his maroon-and-navy madras bathrobe. He laid out a large cast-iron skillet, sometimes butter, a little schmaltz (chicken fat), eggs, milk, and matzo in its bright orange-and-green Passover box. He broke up the hard, flat crackers, dipped them first in milk then egg, set the fat sizzling and laid the matzo down to fry. It softened, he
salted, slid the pieces onto four plastic breakfast plates. Matzo brei was heaven, not hardship, when soaked with Aunt Jemima's syrup.

The expression “falling into the schmaltz pot” refers to plain old blind luck, like being born into a good family. Anyone this lucky is called “a schmaltz.” How lucky we were to have a father, less distant than the standard fifties' and sixties' models, who taught the overhand crawl, bicycle riding, who drank socially but not excessively, who earned a stable living in upper-level U.S. government. For my thirteenth birthday, this MIT- and Stanford-educated “whiz kid” economist gave me a biography of Madame Curie. For my seventeenth it was Edward O. Wilson's
The Insect Societies
, with its glowing yellow cover and enlarged ant. Both gifts flattered my intelligence, implying I might share in his interests. They were books I carried with me everywhere like honorary degrees.

In the mid-1930s, schmaltz developed a pejorative sense, evoking excessive sentimentalism. The alternate usage is no doubt a reference to the fat itself—duck, chicken, or goose—overly rich, sickening. To the serious-minded, schmaltz is the kiss of death and can be applied in thick layers to art, music, literature, film, painting, conversation, interior decoration, and so on.

Most of us are sentimentalists about something; what provokes it can vary from decor to idea, from old-fashioned juke-boxes to
Das Kapital
. We give in to emotion till it clouds what we are actually seeing, hearing, or smelling. The scent of an apple pie (even if it's baked by Kroger) will provoke happy sadness; a tearjerker film will lead us to, well, tears. Everyone is subject. If the conditions are right, even the high-minded will allow a trickle of schmaltz to seep in.

Every night except Sunday, the Imperial Palace at Holiday Manor Mall features China Joe the piano player on a shiny black-lacquered baby grand, which sits at the center of a large dining area. The aquarium is full of carp and viscous water, the rug is sticky, and maroon napkins are annoyingly nonabsorbent. We ask for a balcony table with a bird's-eye view. Drinks appear in little amber glasses, and chopsticks are the cheap kind, fused together, splintery when broken apart. Jeffrey requests the steak and broccoli and I always ask for wonton soup with extra julienned vegetables, though the waiter sometimes defers: “No special orders.” Finally, Joe slinks in, wearing a tuxedo and tossing his glossy black hair. The tip jar is an enormous brandy snifter where two one-dollar bills and a few coins puddle. He begins playing with a shrug.

“Climb Every Mountain” opens with a stiff, instructional tone. Moments later, Joe ascends with flourishes in the right hand. Soon he's leaning forward, full weight thrown against the keys as he reaches the steep rise to the refrain. He arrives with an enormous crescendo, rocking back and forth, full pedal on the big chords, his bangs now falling into his eyes. “Till you find yoooouuuurrr …” he pauses there, face down for a beat, and finally, “dreams” molto, molto tremolo.

Polite applause. “The Wind beneath My Wings” and “People” follow. I've never heard him touch the Golden Age standards—”They Can't Take That Away from Me,” “It's Only a Paper Moon,” “Dancing on the Ceiling,” or “Mood Indigo,” many with a dose of vinegar splashed in with the sugar. His preference? The owner's?

Here's Joe, launching into my favorite:

Tale as old as time      
True as it can be        
Barely even friends     
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly             
Just a little change      
Small to say the least  
Both a little scared     
Neither one prepared 
Beauty and the Beast 

In the air, bottle-green sprites, wisps of periwinkle, gold, and pink swirl above the piano like a whirlpool or gentle tornado. As if on cue, they uncoil and race throughout the restaurant, wrapping about the diners, warming, drawing them away from the particulars of their meal, company, day. There is a fraction of involuntary silence and hands hover in midair above plates and wine glasses, skin tingling, lifted by a thousand hairs. Inside voices hush, withholding the
darling you are deluded
. There will be wedding bells and gold necklaces, castles and longed-after champion horses.

If a song were edible, “Beauty and the Beast” would taste like Pop Rocks, candy rumored to make your stomach explode. China Joe knows exactly what he is doing; his is one of the few professions where sentimentalism might be specified in the job description. But I'm momentarily and deliciously unaware as he winds up the song with right-hand arpeggios, another pause and tossed-back hair. Dramatically, his hands drop off the keyboard to his side. I am the only one to applaud.

My soup arrives in a clever, egg-shaped bowl. Glorified chicken noodle with not nearly enough julienned vegetables.

It's OK. Just.

More sweet than savory. Saccharine tone, sappy movie, sugar-coated proposal, syrupy smiles, treacly get-well cards, and a
mwah
air kiss—all empty calories.

There
are
times when sweet will make you cry. I'm speaking of Bea's “Ho-made” cherry pie in Gills Rock, Door County. The area offers a mixed bag of delicacies. Cherries in all forms—fresh-picked from trees, freeze-dried, canned, frozen, or baked into scones and Danishes. Beer from Milwaukee, cheese curds, bratwurst, and traditional fish boils, where restaurant diners gather round a huge bubbling pot of whitefish, onions, and potatoes. Captain Jack throws gas on the open fire, flames leap, and suddenly, water boils over in a
whoosh
, taking with it any impurities. We line up with partitioned plates for our coleslaw, bread, and big hunk of fish doused with butter.

A slice of Bea's cherry pie is included in the deal. Mind you, this pie will not appear in the pages of
Bon Appétit
. The filling's canned, the crust merely acceptable and slapped on unceremoniously. Bea sprinkles granulated sugar to make it fancy, but the real blessing is ice cream, which blurs the whole thing into soup. Some days I'm willing to drive forty-five minutes down the twisty, evergreen-lined back roads for the pleasure, well worth it to no one but me. This is the pie I inhaled as a kid, pie I remember before slow food and artisan pizza, pie my parents used as prize for good behavior.

Nostalgia, like sentimentalism, suffers from a lack of rigor. Stops short at warm and fun. “Render the world, see it, and report it without loss, without perversion,” said critic Mark Van Doren. Aim for economy, precision, clarity.

In the boutique restaurant, above the open grill, hang three white plaster goats. They are life-size, disconcertingly lifelike, attached by actual nooses tight around their necks. Death has drained them of color but not texture. Their heads tilt to the side; Xs over eyelids. Their bellies bulge. The menu features bison, beef, rabbit, quail. The artist is a member of PETA. Or not. The most obvious suggestion stands: Animals are objects; we kill them for our clothes, experiments, food.
They taste good
.

The sculpture is an experiment; the owners favor art that forces us to “reflect.” They recognize that postmodernism with its sense of contradiction, indeterminism, and lack of sentimentality is hip. The delight we feel as soon as we fork a juicy bite of medium-rare grass-fed buffalo, locally grown; the twinge that follows, looking up from our plates at the goats, ghostly and corporeal. It's a risky way to decorate, particularly in a restaurant. Guilt is not a sentiment conducive to gustatory pleasure. But better this than teddy bears, ducks with bonnets, and fake fireplaces stirring up the good old days.

How do we separate
sentiment
—mere feeling and thus acceptable—and
sentimental
, with its exaggerated, misplaced emotion? “Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road,” wrote Frank Herbert. “Being sentimental is when the same driver, swerving away from
the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.” The driver in the first instance commits no crime. In the second, he demonstrates a grotesque moral hierarchy. Rabbit trumps human. Sentimental reveals its darker side.

David Barbarash and Darren Thurston of ALF (Animal Liberation Front) were charged in Vancouver with sending letters filled with razor blades to twenty-two hunting-trip guides. One executive received a letter saying, “You have been targeted for terrorist attack.” Members of ELF (Earth Liberation Front) burned down a Vail ski resort, including seven separate fires, causing $12 million in damages. In their communiqué, they announced, “putting profits ahead of Colorado's wildlife will not be tolerated…. We will be back if this greedy corporation continues to trespass into wild and unroaded [
sic
] areas.” Ecoterrorists are rough-edged sentimentalists: poor little animals, terrible people! People, who decimate rain forests, slaughter chickens and cows, burn holes in the atmosphere. We'd be better off without them, an earth overrun with innocent furry creatures. And, of course, members of PETA.

I was eleven when I had my first taste of raw beef. Observant Jews will only eat beef killed by a
shochet
, or “ritual slaughterer,” then drained of blood, soaked in water, salted, washed, and cooked. But my Jewish father was not observant. He chopped the tenderloin himself, feeding it into an old-fashioned hand-cranked meat grinder, seasoned it with salt and pepper, stirred in egg yolk, capers, parsley, and minced onion. He singled me out for this delicacy, an unspoken affection.
No sloppy kisses or bear hugs; my father had a fundamental distrust of sentimentality. Instead, I watched while he prepared the beef in our small kitchen, then we snuck out to the backyard and sat on the patio with one plate and two forks. Just the meat itself, no crackers or bread. No siblings crowding in or mother clucking her tongue. Just Sarah and Dad. It was better than a birthday. Sunny and cool. The meat was delicious.