Tender at the Bone (7 page)

Amazingly, when I got home, she was there. The air in the apartment was heavy and it crackled as it swirled around my mother and Mrs. Peavey, but I had missed the storm. When I walked into the kitchen Mrs. Peavey lifted the bag of groceries out of my arms and said simply, “What are we going to make for dinner?”

“I’m going out,” my mother called from the hall. Mrs. Peavey did not answer. My mother slammed the door.

“Wiener schnitzel,” I said.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Peavey, “the secret is getting the veal thin and the oil hot. The Viennese are really wonderful cooks.” As she moved around the kitchen she hummed a German children’s song about a horse and rider.

“Where were you?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come back?”

Mrs. Peavey took the big iron skillet out of the cupboard and unwrapped the meat. “Get some waxed paper,” she ordered. She tore off a large piece of the paper and laid it on the counter. She put the meat on it and placed another layer of paper on top. “Now watch,” she commanded.

She lifted the skillet above her head and brought it crashing down on the meat. The sound reverberated throughout the small kitchen. She picked up the skillet and showed me how thin the meat was. “You have to do it a couple of times to get the meat really, really thin,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.” She lifted the skillet again and brought it down on the paper; the meat had become even thinner.

When all the veal had been pounded, she got a platter and three
large soup dishes out of the cupboard. She filled one dish with flour, one with bread crumbs, and broke an egg into the third. Seasoning each dish with salt and pepper, she dredged the cutlets in the flour and then dipped each one in the beaten egg. She handed me the first cutlet and said, “You do the bread crumbs.” I carefully rolled the sticky piece of meat in crumbs and laid it on the platter.

When all the meat had been breaded, Mrs. Peavey put the platter in the refrigerator. “It’s much better if you let the meat rest before you cook it,” she said, rinsing her hands and patting them on her apron. “Don’t forget that. This is your father’s favorite dish and somebody in the house should know how to make it properly. Here, I’ll write the recipe down for you.”

I didn’t like the sound of that and I sat down in one of the rickety metal chairs and watched sadly as she wrote.

When she was done, Mrs. Peavey poured me a glass of cranberry juice, filled her silver goblet with ice and water, and sat down at the kitchen table. “I thought I’d have longer to explain,” she said at last. “But it’s not your mother’s fault.”

“Explain what?” I asked.

“Why I’m here,” she said simply. “Why I’m leaving.”

Something inside me had known that she had not come back for good. “Don’t leave me,” I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. I just looked at her dumbly. “I can’t be a maid,” she said. “I just can’t. It is time for me to make a change.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and looked straight at me. “I am going to do what I should have done when Mr. Peavey died. I am going to be a cook.”

She looked proud and noble as she said it. I believed that she could. “What about Mr. Holly?” I asked.

“He is not part of my plan,” she said softly. “I will have to change other aspects of my life as well.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I pictured Mr. Holly in the permanent midnight of Googie’s. Then I pictured Mrs. Peavey in the big tiled kitchen in Baltimore. They did not go together.

“You mean you won’t be going to Googie’s anymore?” I asked.

“I will not,” she said. She hugged me. “I’ve joined an organization that will help me keep my resolution.” She sat up straight, as if someone had just told her to pay attention to her posture. She folded her hands on the table.

“Now,” she said, “there are three things I want to tell you before I leave. The first is not to let other people tell you how to live your life.”

“You mean,” I asked, “that you should not have pretended that the cook was doing the cooking?”

“Something like that,” she replied. “The second is that you have to look out for yourself.” I thought of her three sons in their big limousine.

“And the third?” I asked.

“Don’t forget the extra pastry when you make beef Wellington.” She reached out and hugged me. The she picked up her silver goblet and clinked it hard against my glass of juice. The sound was pure and lovely.

MARS

In 1960 when you flew to France you stopped first in Gander, Newfoundland, and then in Shannon, Ireland. It was a long trip.

To an almost-thirteen-year-old it seemed even longer. We spent Christmas in France that year—the dollar was strong and my mother had found a bargain rate at the Ritz.

My two most vivid memories of the trip involve haute couture and haute cuisine. The clothing connection came through a woman named Ginette Spanier,
directrice
of Maison Balmain. Mom, in some moods, was the world’s friendliest person; she talked to everyone. One night she sat next to Ginette in the Ritz bar and the next thing I knew we were being whisked off to the rue François-Ier. “They’re having a sale of the dresses the models wore down the runway,” Mom whispered excitedly in the taxi. “They should fit you just perfectly.”

They did. Where my mother expected a thirteen-year-old girl to wear the suit she bought I’ll never know, but she could not resist a bargain. It
was
a beautiful outfit. The rust-colored jacket had
leather buttons and the green plaid blouse was made of soft wool and buttoned up the back. The skirt was rust-colored too, with a band of green plaid running around the hem; I kept looking at it, trying to find the seam, but as far as I could tell it was a single piece of cloth woven in a tube.

My mother was palpably pleased to be inside a house of haute couture. I could already imagine her voice as she said, casually, to her friends, “When Ruthie and I went for the final fitting at Balmain …” I gritted my teeth. The fittings took hours.

When we went for the final fitting Dad looked miserable; I knew he wished he were looking at art. “Ernst, why don’t you just leave,” Mom said irritably. Dad looked at me, helplessly, over her head. I stared back, thinking how much more fun it would be at the museum than in this warm room with women kneeling at my feet. I imagined myself floating down the stairs in front of the Winged Victory like Audrey Hepburn in
Funny Face
. Dad and I looked at each other and then shrugged simultaneously. I was stuck; he wasn’t. Dad left, looking guilty.

The fitting took so long that we had to go straight from Balmain to dinner. Dad was waiting for us at La Belle Aurore with a glass of champagne in his hand; I could see the worry in his eye and the tentative set to his head. He was wondering what price he would pay for pleasing himself. When my mother looked at him flirtatiously and said, “Champagne, what a good idea,” he looked incredibly relieved. He jumped up to pull out her chair.

Disaster was always simmering just below the surface and we cherished every peaceful moment with my mother. By then we were starting to suspect the truth, that my mother was a manic-depressive, but neither of us knew what to do about it. When lithium entered our lives a few years later we were deeply grateful: up to then we both believed, in our secret hearts, that my mother’s moods were our personal responsibility. Mom never knew who she was going to be when she woke up in the morning and Dad and I
danced around, doing our best to avert trouble. When we somehow managed to do it we were so grateful we grew giddy with relief.

In moments like this I often said too much. I did now. “I wish I spoke French the way you and Daddy do,” I babbled. More than anything I was trying to flatter her; her French was fluent from the years she had spent at the Sorbonne but even I could tell that her accent was awful. Something lit up briefly in my mother’s face and I wondered what she was thinking. But she didn’t say anything and I concentrated on the food.

The meal we had ordered was incredibly rich, but I thought it was perfect. We had lobster bisque, filet of sole dugléré and a lemon soufflé that I thought was the most amazing thing I had ever eaten. I liked it so much that Mom asked if the chef could give us the recipe. “Mom!” I said, with that teenage whine. She waved me away.

“You could make this,” she said.

I would have, too. But I never got the chance. Because a few weeks after we came back from Europe my mother sent me to Mars.

LEMON
SOUFFLÉ

6 eggs

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

¾ cup milk

¼ cup lemon juice

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon finely grated lemon rind

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 425°
.

Separate eggs carefully; if there is the tiniest bit of yolk in the whites they will not beat properly, so be sure to separate them thoroughly and to put the whites into an extremely clean, dry bowl. You will need all of the whites but only 4 yolks. Eggs are easiest to separate when cold, but they are easier to beat at room temperature so do this step first to allow the yolks to warm up
.

Butter a 1½-quart soufflé mold very well. Throw in a handful of sugar and shake the soufflé dish until it has a thin coating of sugar. Shake out excess. Set aside
.

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pan. Add the flour and whisk until well blended. Slowly stir in milk. Cook, stirring, until the mixture has almost reached the boiling point and has become thick and smooth
.

Add lemon juice and sugar and cook for 2 minutes more. Remove from heat, add vanilla, and cool slightly
.

Add 4 egg yolks, one at a time, beating to incorporate each one before adding the next. Add lemon rind, then return the pan to the stove and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute more over medium heat. Remove and let cool
.

Add a pinch of salt to the 6 egg whites and beat with a clean beater until they form soft peaks. Stir a quarter of the egg whites into the sauce, then carefully fold in the rest
.

Pour into the soufflé mold and set on the middle rack of the oven. Turn heat down to 400° and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the top is nicely browned and the soufflé has risen about 2 inches over the top of the dish
.

Serve immediately
.

Serves 4 to 6
.

Two weeks after my thirteenth birthday Jeanie and I came giggling out of junior high school surrounded by our friends. It was a Friday, and we had big plans. Hot fudge sundaes and then a slow stroll down Eighth Street, looking in the windows of the beatnik jewelry stores.

But my mother was waiting on the sidewalk. Even though it was late January, she was wearing her big poppy-covered straw hat so I wouldn’t miss her. Nobody could. “We’re going to Montreal for the weekend,” she said. She had a suitcase by her side.