Grace's Table

by Sally Piper

  ‘You know why – he has to help your father.’

  ‘What – read the paper?’

  ‘Don’t start, Grace. This is just what we do. Accept it.’

  Did she only have to accept it for another two years, until she was sixteen like Joe, when she too could fabricate some plausible excuse not to go? Somehow Grace didn’t think it would be that simple.

  Sitting on the hard pew listening to Father Donnelly was enough to make a girl, even a good girl, consider passing the time by scratching her name into the blond timber seat. Most Sundays she would just sit there, flicking a nail across the inside seam of her glove or looking around at the different pudding-topped hats on the women’s heads, wishing it would end, and soon. But the minutes still ticked away too slowly to the sound of Father Donnelly’s voice. The worst Masses were at Lent when the portly priest made his slow pilgrimage round the Stations of the Cross. Grace was guaranteed to nod off then, usually brought round by her mother’s sharp elbow.

  Father Donnelly was a man who tried to instil faith through fear. The slap he’d delivered Grace’s face during her Confirmation ceremony felt more like a punishment from Mother than a welcome to receive the sacrament. Whether he’d got some pleasure out of it or if he really believed his was the hand to pass on God’s message, firmly, Grace couldn’t be sure. What she did know was that he spoke with a city boy’s private school voice – all big words and confident delivery – so she never understood why he needed his lofty altar to speak down to his farming congregation.

  ‘Hard times befall us all,’ he said, ‘but that does not mean – cannot mean – the giving must stop until those hard times are behind us.’

  Grace fidgeted in her seat, shifted from one buttock to the other to relieve the pressure on her tailbone. She felt a firm nudge from her mother’s arm, warning her again to keep still.

  ‘Did Jesus abandon you during the hard times? Care less? Give less?’ He paused here for effect, Grace guessed, more than to give the congregation time to mull over the question. ‘No. No, He did not.’ Father Donnelly looked down and shook his head reverently. Then, looking up again, he startled those who’d not had the benefit of Mother’s elbow with the fervour in his voice. ‘No! He became more resolute. He made more sacrifices. Gave more. Suffered more for His people.’

  Grace thought about how Father Donnelly’s cheeks often went dusky during his sermons. The purple spider veins on his nose stood out all the more too, as did the red lines tracking across the whites of his rheumy eyes.

  ‘And that, my children, is the thought I’d like you to hold as our bearers pass the plates round today. Of those sacrifices Our Lord made for us. Of the suffering He endured in our name. And then ask yourself – can I give a little more? Can I suffer a little too, just as He did for me?’

  There was a general rustling in the congregation as people reached for wallets and purses. Mother passed Grace some coins as she did each week, but this time Grace refused them. She made fists of her gloved hands on the tops of her thighs so that her mother couldn’t force them upon her. She watched the plate pass along her pew from hand to hand, cupped palms passing low across its top to hide what they dropped.

  She couldn’t think about the generosity of Jesus as the plate moved towards her. Not while the clouds remained scarce in the sky and the holes in the soles of the men’s shoes showed cardboard through them when they kneeled to have the wafer put on their tongues.

  ‘I call it my greedy plate,’ Grace said to Susan.

  ‘A good one for Tom, then,’ Susan joked.

  The previous day Grace had cleared much of the clutter in the dining room in preparation for her family coming to lunch. Until then, the room’s prevailing smell had been of dusty doilies and aged timber. And the moss-green velvet drapes had always depressed the sunny look of a day so were now folded up and in the back of a hall cupboard, where they would likely stay. Now a new kind of light entered the room through net curtains.

  Jack had helped Grace with the makeover. She’d felt guilty that he wasn’t going to benefit from his efforts, but then again, they rarely ate in this room, so he would only be missing out on her company, which on this occasion was probably just as well.

  When at Grace’s home, they took their meals together at the kitchen table. They would sit facing one another, chairs placed on the long sides of the rectangular table. Close enough that the small, often subconscious, acts of intimacy could be shared: a hand to a sleeve, fingers laid over fingers.

  Des and Grace had sat facing each other too, but their chairs had always been positioned at the distant narrow ends.

  Jack, a man who couldn’t abide idleness, would cook for Grace in her home. He was a brave cook – adventurous and experimental. He’d often arrive armed with special ingredients, ones that had rarely seen the inside of Grace’s kitchen before – robust-flavoured olives, large as a man’s thumb; delicate orange-bearded scallops with cushions of white meat in a half-shell; once, a whole, pale duck. Some of his adventures and experiments tasted better than others, but it was fun to watch the alchemy of his cooking.

  His specialities – pasta sauces and marinades for meat, poultry and fish – always started with a base of ground garlic and onion – scaffolding, he’d call this pungent paste – and he’d build from there. He’d season generously, and taste regularly with a long-handled teaspoon. Sometimes he’d hold the spoon out to Grace, his other hand cupped under it to prevent drips getting on her shirt.

  But generally he was a messy cook, a dish for every element or stage of the process. Grace would clear the clutter away for him, wash and dry his dishes, either during the cooking chaos or after they’d eaten, and initially with some vexation. But gradually she recognised that accommodating the long-term habits and idiosyncrasies of another requires respectful patience and some concessions. Eventually she simply saw it as her job, while Jack took on the one that she’d laboured at for years, and not always so joyfully.

  It was a novelty to sit down at her kitchen table to a meal that had been prepared by someone else. Jack would look at her, expectantly, as she took her first taste of his rustic puttanesca sauces (no two the same) or the marinade used for the duck (a second never attempted), and she would give him an honest appraisal, as Jack demanded.

  ‘Don’t gloss it up for me, Grace,’ he’d say. ‘You either like it or you don’t. Only rule is you’ve gotta tell me why, so I can work on it.’

  In this way food was often the focal point of their meal-time conversations, their voices vibrating with satisfaction as they ate.

  Kath said, That’s because food replaces sex the older you get.

  To which Grace had replied, Speak for yourself!

  So Grace would tell Jack – respectfully, mindfully – what she thought of the food he served her. And in so doing, it awakened her palate to new and interesting flavours again. Often, all she need say was Delicious!

  At other times, Grace raised her judgements as questions: Maybe duck breast would have been less fatty? or If the sauce was simmered for a little longer, then the flavour of the tomato might be more intense?

  In this way she hoped Jack would know that in tasting his food she noticed all of the stages that went into its creation, and wasn’t just delivering him a blunt response to the final product.

  She’d been served enough yuks and disgustings in her life to know that it often forced those tasked with providing family meals to cater to the lowest common denominator of taste, a state that not only threatened the cook with culinary boredom, but was also a sure-fire way to take those all-important ingredients, love and care, out of the process.

  Through Jack, Grace learnt to show food kindness again.

  She also rediscovered the rich and complex pleasure that food provides. Once again, she stopped to marvel at how the rough, crazed husk of a lychee could give up such a tender, sweet fruit. For the first time in
years she shared the same food from the same plate as another: crispy-skinned whole fish, the unwounded white flesh of a nectarine. And as for the duck, Grace learnt that the best cut was its tender, succulent breast.

  And sometimes after Jack’s meals, she would leave clearing away till the next day.

  Back in the dining room, Susan liked the makeover.

  ‘Oh, that’s much brighter,’ she said when she first entered the room. ‘And smells less grandmotherly.’

  A framed photograph of Grace’s five grandchildren sat on top of an old china display cabinet. It was given to Grace as a gift for Christmas just passed. The shiny chrome frame and colourful clothing the children were wearing brightened the dark mahogany of the cabinet.

  Susan picked up the picture, studied the faces in it, then set it back down on the doily Grace used to protect the timber.

  ‘It’s a great shot,’ Susan said. ‘Look even better without the old doily under it.’

  ‘Then you’ll be pleased to hear I threw a number of them away yesterday.’

  The factory-made ones anyway. Those she’d stitched as a younger woman, and those worked by her mother, she’d put to one side. Grace hadn’t been able to bring herself to throw them out. She knew each stitch had been made with care, an act that was owed respect. Besides, Susan might want them one day, though the clutter-free lines of her daughter’s home didn’t indicate it would be any time soon.

  Susan hadn’t been one to squirrel items away to fill a glory box as a young woman. In fact, Grace didn’t think her daughter had kept much from her past at all. There were no favoured items of childhood clothing or books tucked away in a dusty box. No special teddy bears, toys or dolls to pass on to her own children. Grace had envied those mothers who complained their spare rooms were made unusable by the boxes of treasured items their children kept stored in them. Her spare room had always been disappointingly uncluttered.

  Grace recalled how her daughter would burn her class notes in the incinerator at the end of each school year; did the same with those she’d accumulated from teacher’s college.

  ‘Why don’t you keep some of them?’ Grace had asked. She knew many were marked with As.

  ‘What for?’

  Grace shrugged, not really certain why herself, but knew in burning them Susan lost any opportunity to know why in the future.

  ‘Burning them is so final,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly why I’m doing it. That stage of my life is over. Time to move on and make room for the next one.’

  Grace had flinched each time she saw the plumes of smoke generated by Susan’s need to move on. It reminded her of Des. Too much had been burnt over the years. There were too few boxes.

  After inspecting the dining room, Susan slipped her hands into oven mitts, opened the oven door and removed the baking tray from inside. The lamb erupted in a firework of fat as she lifted it onto the stove top. Once the spitting settled, she started basting the meat. The smell of roasting lamb, garlic and rosemary filled the room.

  ‘Smells good,’ Grace said. ‘Brings my appetite back. It’s been off lately.’ Grace, with mitts of her own, took the tray of roasting vegetables from the oven. She shut the door to keep the heat in before starting to turn them.

  ‘Why’s your appetite off?’

  ‘Maybe because of the strike. It used to get a good workout when I went for my walk.’ Grace hadn’t allowed the garbage strike to break this daily practice. ‘The smell of backyard barbecues, Stern’s bakery at the top of the road. Some days I felt half-starved by the time I got home. Go straight to the biscuit tin when I walked in the door. I’m hardly tempted now.’

  ‘I’m surprised you still bother with the walk.’

  ‘Idle bones make for greater moans.’ Grace had always feared stasis and the new routine it could unwittingly bring.

  Susan returned the lamb to the oven and closed the heavy door with a thud. Grace gripped a potato with the tongs, turned it over, moved on to a piece of parsnip. She leant over the baking tray and inhaled. She was pleased they smelt like vegetables. Des would have complained that today’s roasted potatoes and parsnips were being cooked in vegetable oil and not in with the meat. Where’s the bloody flavour in doing them that way? he’d have asked. She’d always given him the ones that had sat in the deepest puddle of the meat’s juices. They were probably equal parts fat as vegetable by the end of their cooking time, but that was how he liked them.

  ‘Ah, taste,’ Grace said, turning the last potato. ‘That’s the best sense of all to put to the test.’ She slid the tray back in the oven.

  ‘I bought these as a special treat.’ Grace picked up a cellophane bag to show Susan.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Syrian Nuts.’

  ‘Syrian? What’s in them – apart from nuts?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I bought them.’

  She had spotted the cellophane bag at her local deli. It was tied with twine, just as school fête rumballs or coconut ice might be. They had been expensive, but what made them worth the price was the absence of an ingredient list on the packet. There was no use-by date either, no allergy warnings for gluten or lactose, and only a fool would fail to notice they contained more than a trace of nuts. She’d bought them to see if she could guess the flavours of the spices by taste alone.

  Grace cut the twine with a pair of scissors and took a cashew from inside. She ate it while reading the label: Syrian Nuts, 400gms then the name of the deli. Nothing more.

  Syrian, Grace thought. As a child she’d never have known a country called Syria even existed, let alone where it was. Syria was never written on the blackboard of the one-roomed timber building that served as Grace’s first school. And neither was space travel, sperm nor spamming. A girl called Betty or Barb or Bonnie had sat beside Grace; she couldn’t remember her name now, only that it started with a B because of the emphasis the teacher placed on the first letter of the girl’s name. What Grace remembered most about this girl was that she had her knuckles rapped with a ruler by a teacher determined to cure her left-handedness. And the boys, the ones who never saw futures much beyond their father’s farm, had to bend over the teacher’s desk for the cane. Now she supposed most schoolchildren of a certain age knew where Syria was and none of them went off each day fearful of their teacher’s contempt for genetic difference or scholarly disinterest.

  Grace put her glasses on and looked closely at the contents of the packet. She could see in the mix – other than the nuts – rosemary leaves, sesame seeds and something she at first thought were caraway seeds, but soon discovered was the licorice-flavoured anise seed. There were other tiny black seeds that could have been cardamom. She tried a pecan next, covered in a sticky brown coating. She ate it slowly, still unsure of all the flavours. After an almond she decided with some certainty the mix contained cumin and coriander. The macadamia told her there might also be nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. But the sweet aftertaste made her think all these had been combined with icing sugar. She didn’t know if Syria had all these herbs, spices and nuts, but that didn’t seem important. Because in eating them she could imagine she was sharing something of the Middle East.

  ‘What are they like?’ Susan placed a serving bowl she’d been wiping over with a tea towel onto the bench. She picked up the lid, wiped dust from it that Grace knew wasn’t there. She’d cleaned both earlier.

  ‘They’re an unusual combination of spicy curry, savoury herb and sweet spice. Here, try one. Tell me what you think.’ Grace held the packet out to Susan.

  Susan put the lid down and took a macadamia from the bag. She put it into her mouth and chewed, eyes lifted in expectation. Then, shrugging, she said, ‘Tastes like a honey-coated macadamia gone wrong, if you ask me. I prefer them dipped in chocolate.’

  ‘Chocolate’s old hat. This flavour’s more …’ Grace searched for the best word to describe what she�
��d tasted, ‘unexpected.’

  ‘It’s a nut,’ Susan said. ‘Not an event.’

  ‘Eating it can be made an event. Here, have another one and let’s celebrate its difference.’

  Susan reached into the bag and took out an almond. With raised eyebrows she held it up in salute to Grace. ‘To the nut!’ she said.

  If Grace could be sure which nut Susan saluted – her or the almond – then she might have knocked her cashew against Susan’s almond playfully. But there was no telling, so she just slipped the cashew into her mouth and munched.

  Susan’s own search for difference had led her to call her children Jorja and Jaxon; they’d be spelling their names out to others for the rest of their lives. So was novelty a preserve only for the young? Grace wondered. Were parents to maintain a predictable sameness, not testing, or tasting, new things, so that their children might better see their own development? Grace thought with some bitterness that finding your aged mother sharing toast with a strange man one morning, both parties still in their night attire, was obviously not a welcome development.

  But Grace said nothing of this.

  ‘Could you pass me the donkey dish, please? It’s on the bench behind you,’ Grace asked. ‘It’s for the nuts.’

  She knew Susan thought the dish ugly but it was one Grace had always loved. It was a painted figure of a grey donkey with a sway back, drooping ears and a solemn face. The high-sided timber-look cart at the donkey’s back was where the dish served its purpose. It had been a wedding gift from a girl she’d worked with at the hospital, given from girlfriend to girlfriend, not left alongside other gifts on a long wooden trestle table at the wedding. She could still recall the words the girl had written in the card: Don’t become the burro. They’d stopped seeing one another not long after she’d married Des. Grace hadn’t been sure at the time if it was because her friend recognised that Des had never liked her or if she believed that Grace had failed the words in her card. Later she suspected it was a bit of both.