Danny watched the women eat with growing wonder. Where had he seen people eat like that? he was thinking. Surely not at Exeter, where table manners didn’t matter but the food was awful. At Exeter, you picked over your food with the greatest suspicion-and you talked nonstop, if only to distract yourself from what you were eating.
The old women had been talking and whispering (and cackling) together (like a couple of crows); now there wasn’t a word between them, and no eye contact, either. They rested their forearms on the table and bent over their plates, heads down. Their shoulders were hunched, as if to ward off an attack from behind, and Danny imagined that if he were closer to them, he might hear them emit an unconscious moan or growl-a sound so innately associated with eating that the women were unaware of it and had long ceased to hear it themselves.
No one in the North End had ever eaten that way, the writer was remembering. Food was a celebration at Vicino di Napoli, an event that inspired conversation; people were engaged with one another when they ate. At Mao’s, too, you didn’t just talk over a meal-you shouted. And you shared your food-whereas these two old broads appeared to be protecting their pizzas from each other. They wolfed their dinners down like dogs. Danny knew they wouldn’t leave a scrap.
“The Red Sox just aren’t reliable,” Greg was saying, but the cook was concentrating on the surprise squid dish for his son; he’d missed what had happened in the game on the radio.
“Daniel likes a little extra parsley,” he was saying to Loretta, just as Celeste came back into the kitchen.
“The two old broads want to know if there’s a secret ingredient in your pizza dough, Tony,” Celeste said to the cook.
“You bet there is-it’s honey,” Tony Angel told her.
“I would never have guessed that,” Celeste said. “That’s some secret, all right.”
Out in the dining room, it suddenly came to the writer Danny Angel where he’d seen people eat as if they were animals, the way these two old women were eating their pizzas. The woodsmen and the sawmill workers had eaten like that-not only in the cookhouse in Twisted River, but also in those makeshift wanigans, where he and his father had once fed the loggers during a river drive. Those men ate without talking; sometimes even Ketchum hadn’t spoken a word. But these tough-looking broads couldn’t have been loggers, Danny was thinking, when Loretta interrupted his thoughts.
“Surprise!” the waitress said, as she put the squid dish in front of him.
“I was hoping it was going to be the calamari,” Danny told her.
“Ha!” Loretta said. “I’ll tell your dad.”
May had finished her pepperoni pizza first, and anyone seeing the way she eyed the last piece on Dot’s plate might have had reason to warn Dot that she should never entirely trust her old friend. “I guess I liked mine a little better than you’re likin’ yours,” May said.
“I’m likin’ mine just fine,” Dot answered with her mouth full, her thumb and index finger quickly gripping the crust of that precious last slice.
May looked away. “That writer is finally eatin’ somethin’, and it looks pretty appetizin’,” she observed. Dot just grunted, finishing her pizza.
“Would you say it’s almost as good as Cookie’s?” May asked.
“Nope,” Dot said, wiping her mouth. “Nobody’s pizza is as good as Cookie’s.”
“I said almost, Dot.”
“Close, maybe,” Dot told her.
“I hope you ladies left room for dessert,” Celeste said. “It looks like those pizzas hit the spot.”
“What’s the secret ingredient?” May asked the waitress.
“You’ll never guess,” Celeste said.
“I’ll bet it’s honey,” Dot said; both she and May cackled, but they stopped cackling when they saw how the waitress was staring at them. (It didn’t happen often that Celeste was speechless.)
“Wait a minute,” May said. “It is honey, isn’t it?”
“That’s what the cook said-he puts honey in his dough,” Celeste told them.
“Yeah, and the next thing you’re gonna tell us is that the cook limps,” Dot said. That really cracked up the two old broads; Dot and May couldn’t stop cackling over that one, not that they missed the message in Celeste’s amazed expression. (The waitress might as well have told them outright. Yes, indeed, the cook limped. He limped up a storm!)
But Danny had overheard snippets of their conversation before the ladies’ cackling got out of control. He’d heard Celeste say something about his dad putting honey in the pizza dough, and one of the old broads had joked about the cook’s limp. Danny was sensitive about his father’s limp; he’d heard enough jokes on that subject to last a lifetime, most of them from those West Dummer dolts at that piss-poor Paris Manufacturing Company School. And why did Celeste look so stricken suddenly? the writer was wondering.
“Weren’t you ladies interested in the pie and the cobbler?” the waitress asked them.
“Wait a minute,” May said again. “Are you sayin’ your cook’s got a limp?”
“He limps a little,” Celeste hesitated to say, but in effect she’d already said it.
“Are you shittin’ us?” Dot asked the waitress.
Celeste seemed offended, but she also looked afraid; she knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know why or what it was. Neither did Danny, but to anyone seeing him, the writer appeared to be frightened, too.
“Look, our cook’s got a limp, and he puts honey in his pizza dough-it’s no big deal,” Celeste said to them.
“Maybe it’s a big deal to us,” May told the waitress.
“Is he a little fella?” Dot asked.
“Yeah… and what’s his name?” May asked.
“I would say our cook is… slightly built,” Celeste answered carefully. “His name’s Tony.”
“Oh,” Dot said, disappointed.
“Tony,” May repeated, shaking her head.
“You can bring us one apple pie and one blueberry cobbler,” Dot told the waitress.
“We’ll share ’em,” May said.
It might have ended there, if Danny hadn’t spoken; it was his voice that made Dot and May look at him more closely. When they’d first seen him, they must have missed the writer’s physical resemblance to his father as a young man, but it was how well-spoken Danny was that reminded both Dot and May of the cook. In a town like Twisted River, the cook’s enunciation-and his perfect diction-had stood out.
“Might I inquire if you two ladies are from around here?” Danny asked those bad old broads.
“Sweet Jesus, May,” Dot said to her friend. “Don’t that voice kinda take you back?”
“Way back,” May said, looking hard at Danny. “Don’t he look just like Cookie, too?”
The Cookie word was enough to tell Danny where these old ladies were from, and why they might have been badgering Celeste about honey in pizza dough and a little fella of a cook-one who limped.
“Your name was Danny,” Dot said to him. “Have you changed your name, too?”
“No,” the writer told them too quickly.
“I gotta meet this here cook,” May said.
“Why don’tcha tell your dad to come say hello to us, will ya?” Dot asked Danny. “It’s been so long since we seen one another, we got some serious catchin’ up to do.”
Celeste came back with the ladies’ desserts, which Danny knew would be only a temporary distraction.
“Celeste,” Danny said. “Would you please tell Pop that there are two old friends who want to see him? Tell him they’re from Twisted River,” Danny told her.
“Our cook’s name is Tony,” Celeste said a little desperately to the bad old broads. She’d heard enough about Twisted River to make her hope she would never hear anything more about it. (The cook had told her it would be all over on the day Twisted River caught up to him.)