“Then the week after is fine.”
“We should get together anyhow,” Katherine said. “Have a picnic or something. Leave the guys at home.”
“A field trip,” Nina said.
“I’ll be out of town,” Jennifer said again.
“I’m gonna be here,” Suze said.
“And me,” “Me too,” “I’m not going anywhere.”
They were all looking at me.
“How about my place on Lake Lanier,” Therese said. “A social event, not a class, so it doesn’t matter if some people can’t make it. A covered dish.”
EIGHT
WE DRANK CHAMPAGNE. KICK WAS AT THE SIX-BURNER STOVE, STIRRING A HUGE pot with a wooden spoon. “The stew sticks if I don’t watch it,” she said. She was wearing the same striped trousers and white T-shirt, but no sandals. Her feet didn’t look cold. I sat on a hard chair by the counter.
The windows were open but screened. The breeze had died to a sigh and the night that seeped in was soft with moisture, potent with change. In the low atmospheric pressure the voices of moviegoers leaving the theaters on 45th, the sudden metallic judder of engines flaring to life, the music from the Jitterbug restaurant and Murphy’s Pub carried clearly and mixed with earthy blues from her CD player. The city-lit sky swam with clouds, sleek as seals.
The kitchen was big, and open, all cherry and pine—even the ceiling was pine—and continued to the dining room. I carried my champagne over to the dining room windows. Judging by the slight unevenness of the floor and the change in windows, it was an extension built less than ten years ago. It jutted out over a patio. A pear tree rustled against the left-hand window. On the other side, a little farther away, the silhouette of a cherry tree overhung the extension and the garage. Beyond the patio the garden seemed stepped, maybe to a lawn.
The house smelled like Spain in Apriclass="underline" bread and olive oil and simmering beans and lemon juice and garlic. Some kind of unctuous meat roasting. If it were Spain it might be kid, but it was probably lamb. I went back into the kitchen. My mouth watered.
“Ah,” she said, “want something right away?”
I nodded.
She got two small dishes from a cupboard near my head, and turned off the gas under the pot. “Spoons in that drawer in front of you. Napkins in the drawer underneath.” She got busy with a ladle. “Here.” She handed me a bowl without ceremony. “Pond-bottom stew.”
It was a reddish-brown soup. I put it on the counter and handed her a spoon. She refused the napkin and just ate a couple of mouthfuls, leaning back against the stove.
I spread a napkin on my lap and balanced the bowl carefully.
“Spilled stuff cleans up. Just taste it.”
I dipped my spoon into the stew cautiously. “It smells a bit like fasolada. ”
“Same basic principle. Lots of olive oil and celery and garlic, some lemon, but instead of just white beans, I’ve added kidney beans and carrots. Really it’s a fall stew, hearty, warming. But it seemed like something you’d enjoy. When it’s cooked as long as it should, it gets sort of sludgy, like something you’d scrape off the bottom of a pond. Eat.”
I ate.
“Well?”
It tasted as fresh and clean as a shoot bursting free of winter-hard dirt. It filled me with hope that I might enjoy food again. I had the ridiculous urge to burst into tears.
“Do you like it?”
I showed her my empty bowl. She smiled. I eyed the pot on the stove.
“No. No more right now. I’ve made half a dozen things. I thought we’d try a bit of this and bit of that, just graze, see what works.”
Graze. Maybe that roasting smell wasn’t for me. “Is it all vegetarian?”
She smiled. “You don’t strike me as a vegetarian. Let’s move to the table so it doesn’t get messy.”
There was no ceremonial laying of places or careful positioning of silverware. No candles, no shimmering crystal. Just the music, and the champagne, and the food.
We began with salad: greens and sprouts and grated carrots and sunflower seeds. “Try both dressings,” she said. “This one is tofu and basil.” It was astonishing—creamy and smooth and clean. “The vinaigrette’s flaxseed oil and balsamic.” Totally different, warm and aromatic, as subtle and rich as cello music.
I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to. Her cheeks pinked with pleasure.
“Now for the hummus.” It didn’t smell like any hummus I’d ever encountered: toasty, almost sweet, but also tangy, with the familiar sting of lemon and garlic. She slathered it on black bread and handed it to me. “Here.”
I bit into it. It was coarse and hearty, much rougher than any hummus I’d ever had before.
“And here—” She crossed in three light steps to the fridge, brought back a bowl and a jar of mayonnaise, and went back to the cupboard for two dishes. Her hips were round and tight with sheathed muscle.
“Homemade cole slaw,” she said, and mixed up the shredded vegetables with mayonnaise in her dish. “Put it on the hummus.” She heaped it on the bread-and-hummus mixture. “Here. Try it.” I tipped and mixed and heaped. “Just pick it up. It’s messy, but that can’t be helped. At least you’re not wearing that nice dress.”
I bit into the bread and hummus and cole slaw.
“I thought you’d enjoy the different textures.”
I did. I didn’t know how she’d known that I would. The cole slaw fell off, smearing over my hand and plopping onto my plate. I picked it up with my fingers, finished it, made myself another slice.
“How much weight have you lost?” she said.
“I don’t know.” I chewed a few more times, swallowed. I wanted to stuff the world in my mouth.
“You like food.”
“Yes.”
“It must have been hard.”
"Yes.” I hadn’t realized just how hungry I’d been. Still was. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “When you were talking on the set, I thought: It sounds like what happens to people’s tastes when they have chemo. And I know what to do about that. It’s partly a saturated-fat thing. Stick with things like olive oil and flaxseed oil. Avoid your dairy and your eggs and your beef, especially aged beef.”
“And broccoli.”
“Yeah, well, I said partly. The rest… I don’t know. But have you ever noticed that broccoli sometimes smells sort of fishy?”
I nodded, surprised.
“Whatever makes it smell like that is one of the things that your taste buds, or what’s left of them, won’t like. Very, very fresh seafood should taste okay. Oysters, for example.” She grinned. “Hold on.”
She disappeared into the living room. The music stopped and restarted with Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter…. oysters down in Oyster Bay do it.
“The taste buds,” I said, when she returned. “Chemo destroys them?”
“Yep.” She settled back on her chair. “Though I’ve never heard of it happening so fast, or after just one dose.”
“And does it come back, the taste?”
“Most likely. Might take a while, though. Months. Even a year or two.”
A year or two… Let’s do it, let’s…
“Until then, distract them with other tastes, anything aromatic is good. Ginger. Garlic. Lemon. Vinegar. Tomato. Thai, Indian, Greek, northern Italian. And texture. I guessed that you’d like things that contrasted, that were unexpected: cold and crunchy cole slaw with room-temperature tangy hummus, unrefined bread. Also something you could build, literally. You like being in charge.”
“An arrogant toad?”
“Well, no. But you looked like you might be, that first time. And then you came hammering on my door—but you seemed so, I don’t know, reduced. I wanted to make you feel better, but I couldn’t even feed you. Though the crack about how awful I looked made me worry less about that.”