Tender at the Bone (38 page)

“I thought you were supposed to be such a great cook,” Mom shouted when she found out what I had done. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re ordering the cake too!”

“It’s cheaper than buying all new baking pans,” I replied. Stupidly. This gave Mom an opportunity to discuss my shockingly profligate behavior in giving everything to the Goodwill. “I’m sure there were cake pans in those boxes,” she said.

But Mom’s mood was changing. She thrived on chaos and as the house became neater she began to deflate like a balloon, growing
more docile with each passing day. Three days before the party she actually asked what she could do to help. We polished silver and washed plates. We planned flower arrangements. I thought we were having a pleasant afternoon, but the next day she refused to get out of bed.

“You’ve done a lovely job,” said Dad, running his hand across the freshly polished table. “You’re very efficient. But can’t you make your mother feel more a part of it?” Now that I had rescued him he was not entirely pleased; I don’t think he knew how much he enjoyed the tumult Mom created.

The morning of the party, Mom said she wasn’t feeling well enough to come. She would just be a nuisance. She wandered morosely among the tables on the lawn and looked at the freshly washed salad greens. She reached out to touch the breaded oysters waiting to be fried. When Dad came back from the fish store she noted that the salmon were beautifully decorated. And then she went back to bed. We should enjoy ourselves without her, she said. She pulled the covers over her head and added miserably, “No one will miss me.”

Between us Dad and I coaxed her out of the covers. When I had zipped her into her pretty purple party dress and Dad had brushed her hair she actually looked lovely. But she just sat at her dressing table saying she wished she were dead.

Then Aunt Birdie came up the walk and Dad went out and pinned a corsage to her dress. The guests began to arrive and the boys I had hired to tend bar began pouring champagne. I started frying oysters and as the first tray went out to the living room I heard a low murmur of approval. Followed by my mother’s laugh. Relieved that she had pulled herself together, I concentrated on getting each oyster out of the oil at the perfect moment. I tossed the salad and took the salmon out of the refrigerator; things were clicking along.

When I went out to the living room, Aunt Birdie was in the middle of her favorite story, surrounded by admirers. “And then the bus driver made me get out my identification to prove that I was entitled to the senior citizen fare. And when he looked at it he turned to everyone on the bus and said, ‘Can you believe it? This woman is almost a hundred years old!’ And the whole bus burst into applause.”

She smiled with the sheer delight of it all. Then she looked up, saw me, and said, “Those oysters were perfect. Alice would certainly have been proud.”

As she spoke I had a quick mental image of the three of us—me, Aunt Birdie, and Alice—dancing around her warm, crowded apartment. I remembered how we had stopped, suddenly, and I heard my father’s voice saying, “They certainly didn’t prepare her very well for the real world.”

And then I heard Alice’s voice saying, “He married two of them,” and I looked at my mother and understood. I went over to Aunt Birdie and bent to kiss her cheek. She smelled like lilacs.

“Thanks,” I murmured.

Aunt Birdie looked startled. “For what?” she wanted to know.

“For everything,” I said. Because I had just realized that, whatever they may have done to Hortense, Alice and Aunt Birdie had done extremely well by me. They had prepared me for my world.

The next day my parents drove me to the train. “Thanks for coming, Pussycat,” my mother said. “You certainly were a big help. I’m not sure I could have done the party without you.” She smiled happily. And then, as if it had just occurred to her she added, “I think that was almost as good as the engagment party I gave for Bob.”

KEEP TASTING

That fall I decided to become a caterer. Fate intervened. When I got back to Berkeley I was offered a new job.

One of The Swallow’s steady customers had become an editor at a new San Francisco magazine. He called me and asked, “Can you write as well as you can cook?” I said I wasn’t sure, but that I had always liked writing. “Fine,” he said, “how would you like to try out as our restaurant critic?”

I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I was willing to try. To my surprise I had a lot of help. When I walked into La Colombe Bleu a waiter was standing at a table boning a fish, and without a moment’s warning Marielle materialized at his side, casting a critical eye on his every move. Maurice was right behind her, assessing the decor. Monsieur du Croix appeared with the soup; lifting the spoon to my lips, I heard his voice in my ear. The wait for the entrées was long—too long—and I suddenly remembered that coffee shop in Indiana where Mac and I could not get served. And then I thought of Henry’s restaurant war, and wondered if there was a Rolf in the
kitchen who just hated us on principle. My Swallow friends were there too, Antoinette sniffing at the store-bought bread and Judith lamenting the poor quality of the vinegar. Not to mention Nick, who was there in the flesh, casting a jaundiced eye on the prices. With this chorus of voices the review practically wrote itself.

“You were born to do this,” said the editor when I turned the piece in.

“No,” I said softly, “but I was very well trained.”

Suddenly I was making real money, more than I had ever imagined. To celebrate, Doug and I applied for our first credit card. Restaurant criticism, I thought, is going to be fun.

There was just one shadow over this project: each time I picked up a wine list I felt like a fraud. A restaurant critic ought to be beyond hearty burgundy.

And then one day, in search of a Chinese restaurant, I stumbled into Kermit Lynch’s shop. I opened the door; it was cool and dark inside, and smelled like spilled wine. Cartons were stacked on the floor, hundreds of them, and way in the back a slight man with curly brown hair and a scruffy beard stood by a makeshift desk, watching me. I could feel his eyes on my back as I went up and down the aisles looking at the wine in the cartons and repeating the names to myself. The words were beautiful. I reached for a bottle, picked it up, and stroked the label.

“It’s not fruit,” said the man. “You can’t tell anything by squeezing it.”

I blushed, trying desperately to remember my limited vocabulary of wine. I found myself plucking words out the air, heard myself ask, “What brix were these grapes when they were picked?” I babbled on about legs and noses. Kermit responded gravely to all my questions but I didn’t want to push my luck. I bought a couple of two-dollar bottles and fled.

At home I discovered that the wine tasted a lot better than the stuff we had been buying. And at these prices even Nick refrained
from making snide comments. I went back the next day, and the next.

Kermit warmed up after a while, steering me toward wines he thought I might like. He didn’t seem to mind that I only bought the cheapest bottles, and he gave me mysterious discounts that I never questioned. He was passionate about wine and wanted others to love it too.

“How do you decide which wines to buy?” I asked him once.

“I have my methods,” said Kermit. “I go into small towns in France, sit in bistros, and ask, ‘Who makes good wine around here?’ My French isn’t that great and it’s hard work. Not to mention a lot of driving. But I find good wines that nobody else is importing.”

I had never met anybody who literally put his money where his mouth was, gambling on his own good taste. I wanted to watch him work. One night I asked him over for dinner, made beef bourguignonne with a bottle of Volnay I had bought at the shop, and asked if I could come on his next trip to France.

Kermit looked startled. Then he shrugged and said, “Why not?”

BOEUF À LA BOURGUIGNONNE

3 cups red burgundy (1 750-ml. bottle)

2 tablespoons cognac

2 onions, sliced

2 carrots, sliced

Sprig of parsley

Bay leaf

1 clove garlic, peeled

10 black peppercorns

1 teaspoon salt

2 pounds beef chuck, cut in 2-inch cubes

4 tablespoons olive oil

Salt

Pepper

¼ pound slab bacon, cut in cubes

2 onions, chopped coarsely

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup beef broth

1 tablespoon tomato paste

3 cloves garlic, crushed

¼ cup butter

1 pound mushrooms, sliced

Parsley

Make a marinade of first 9 ingredients. Add beef, cover, and leave in the refrigerator for 2 days. When ready to prepare, preheat oven to 300°
.

Strain the meat and vegetables from the marinade, reserving marinade. Dry the meat with paper towels
.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet and brown beef pieces, a few at a time, removing to a bowl with slotted spoon when browned on all sides. Season with salt and pepper
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Cook bacon until lightly browned. Remove with slotted spoon and add to reserved beef. Cook onions in bacon fat until lightly browned but not crisp. Remove and add to reserved meat
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Pour off remaining fat. Add ½ cup marinade to skillet and bring to boil, stirring to remove crisp bits from bottom of pan. Pour back into reserved marinade
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Heat remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in casserole with a cover and add onion and carrot from marinade, stirring until soft. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until it turns brown. Keep stirring as you add the reserved marinade and the broth. Return meat and vegetables to pan, add tomato paste, crushed garlic, salt, and pepper and bring to a boil. Cover tightly and set in a 300° oven for 3 hours. Stir occasionally, adding water if needed
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Meanwhile, melt butter in skillet and cook mushrooms until lightly browned
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When meat is cooked, stir in mushrooms and simmer on top of stove for 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with boiled potatoes
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Serves 4
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I changed trains at Dijon, leaving the Paris express for a small ancient rail car with hard wooden seats. As it rolled slowly through the lovely landscape I stared out the window at towns whose names I had seen only in books: Vougeot, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaune.