“So. How are you, really?”
I take a sip of the tea, some exotic Russian blend she keeps loose in a battered red tin. I can taste the comforting flavors of vanilla and chocolate and the barest hint of cinnamon. “I’m a little bit adrift. But trying to figure everything out.”
“Leaving the job, I’m going to guess, was less under your control than you would have your parents believe?”
I look sheepishly at my cookie. The official press release said that I had resigned to pursue other opportunities, saving me what little face I had left and saving the restaurant from my filing for unemployment. My parents had assumed that the memories were just too much there and that I needed a clean break. I had not exactly disabused them of that notion. “Something like that.”
“But you’re better now? Coming out of the fog?”
“I’m trying, Bubbles. I’m really trying.”
“Good. That is all you can do. So while you are trying, we will do what we do. After all, the movies never let us down.”
Bubbles and I have one thing that is our deep, shared passion, beyond sweets. Old black-and-white movies from the thirties and forties. Anything with Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn or Myrna Loy or William Powell, or our favorite, Rosalind Russell. Romantic comedies especially. Even the bad ones, we love. The ones that are so dated and absurd in their overall message that it makes them ridiculous. We love the clothes and the homes and the elegance. The bottomless bottles of champagne. The quippy banter. We can watch them over and over.
“That sounds like good medicine to me,” I say, thinking about losing myself in a world long past, where getting left at the altar would be a funny device used to get the heroine into the arms of her true love and not the beginning of the unraveling of her mental health and ability to support herself financially.
“TCM is running a marathon today, all of the Thin Man movies in order. I think it starts in about an hour. We’ll watch all six in a row, and only pause to make martinis and order Chinese food.” This is not an offer or a request; it is a statement of fact, and every bit of it sounds like the perfect thing.
“Well, then I will do a little unpacking, and meet you in the den, and we will hunker down for some serious screen time.”
I finish my tea, grab another piece of mandel bread, and get up from my chair. Bubbles grabs my wrist in a firm grip. “Darling girl, it will all be okay. All of the most successful people with the most exciting lives start over at least once. Your grandfather did it twice. You mark my words, sooner than you think, this will all officially become the best thing that ever happened to you.”
I lean over and kiss the top of her silvery head, breathing in the scent of the Arpège perfume she has always worn. “I’m gonna take your word for that.”
I spend the next hour putting clothes away in the closet that Bubbles emptied out for me and in the small dresser. My wardrobe isn’t exactly expansive, consisting mostly of chef’s gear for work, jeans and sweaters for when I’m not at work, and a couple of go-to dresses for evenings out. And, of course, my wedding dress, freshly cleaned and in its special garment bag. I hang it way in the back of the closet. Ruth and Jean wanted me to have some sort of defacing ceremony, splattering it with paint or burning it in effigy, but I just couldn’t bring myself to ruin it. It wasn’t the dress’s fault. A part of me thinks I should be smart and try to sell it; after all, it’s worth a bloody fortune, only worn once, and there has to be another voluptuous bride who would want it, but I’m not quite ready for that yet.
I manage to clear off the bed and arrange all my boxes so that I know what is in them—mostly cookbooks and cooking equipment. I sold my condo fully furnished; the guy who bought it was a bachelor and a first-year associate at a law firm who was happy not to have to make any decisions and paid a bit extra for me to leave everything behind. None of it had any particular sentimental value, and I was glad to just be out clean. Plus I didn’t want to waste money on a mover or a storage unit.
“Just in time.” Bubbles pats the couch next to her when I get to the den, and I snuggle in. She hands me one of the crocheted throw blankets that she made as a young bride when they were all the rage, and I tuck it around me. The television, a fancy flat-screen we bought her for her eightieth birthday a couple of years ago to replace her ancient tube television, has all the bells and whistles: a Comcast Xfinity X1 DVR, a Blu-ray, a DVD player, Apple TV. I’m in charge of her technology lessons, and she has become very adept at managing Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime, in addition to On Demand programming and all the shows she records and the large DVD collection she has amassed over the years. Snatch succeeds in hauling his lumpy carcass up onto the couch, in a fresh sweater that looks like a tuxedo jacket with a jaunty felt gardenia sewed into the buttonhole, and burrows in next to Bubbles, who scratches his head and makes him wiggle and grunt happily.
Then she takes my hand in hers, and as soon as the MGM lion roars, I can feel my shoulders unclench just a little bit, and my breath is slightly less tight in my chest, and before long, for the first time in I can’t remember when, I’m feeling at ease in the world and thinking that, if nothing else, I’m home.
If You Could Only Cook
(1935)
The worst thing in the world is to get where you close your mind to a new idea. Any man who is up against it and just sits back and does nothing and is afraid to try something new—well, he is better off dead! He is dead! He doesn’t know enough to lie down!
• JEAN ARTHUR AS JOAN HAWTHORNE •
“Sophie . . .” Bubbles calls up to me from the bottom of the stairs.
“Coming!” I check my watch. Nearly eleven thirty. Must be time to organize lunch. One of the things I’ve learned in my few weeks of living here is that daily life with an older person has a certain amount of scheduling attached. Bubbles likes to breakfast promptly at seven thirty, and while she doesn’t expect me to join her, she nevertheless manages to make enough noise organizing her tea and toast and soft-boiled eggs or her oatmeal and coffee that it’s impossible to sleep, no matter how many earplugs I go through. And I go through earplugs like nobody’s business.
I’ve always been a notoriously light sleeper; the smallest bit of unexpected light or noise can rouse me fully. Bubbles gave me a satin sleep mask when I was eight or nine. I loved how the soft fabric felt against my eyelids, and the blissful dark it provided, and have slept with one ever since. In college, a brief fling with a musician left me with a stash of squishy foam earplugs that he had me use when going to see his band play—they were louder than they were talented—and I discovered that the plugs did wonders for my sleeping. Unfortunately, I have weirdly little ears, and I’m something of a sleep flopper, so as I move from side to side, they pop out and get lost in the bedding. I buy them in bulk and keep them in a large silver bowl on my nightstand, and have mastered the art of reaching for them in the dark and replacing the missing plugs, usually without even fully breaking my hold on sleep. My morning routine includes a round of “find the plugs,” which are usually under the pillows or trapped in the folds of a blanket or sheet, or, worse, stuck to parts of me that have nothing to do with my ears. They are so small and so smooshy that they are barely noticeable when they migrate, and I’m always finding them on me in the shower, nestled snugly under a boob, tucked into my hair, stuck in my armpit, and occasionally in more delicate and embarrassing places. Let’s just say that the day my gynecologist discovered one during an exam was not my proudest moment.
I get up from the desk, where I’ve been scanning the job boards for something, anything in my industry that won’t require an extensive reference. The job hunt is going beyond badly. I can’t bring myself to go hat in hand to Georg to ask him to provide references, and since I landed in his kitchen right out of culinary school, without him I’m screwed. I feel a little bit the way convicted felons must feel, just wanting to get a job but having that small background pro
blem that makes every application a gut-wrenching nightmare. Luckily, my overhead is almost nothing while I’m here at Bubbles’s: My car is paid off, and I’m not paying rent or utilities. But even making only the minimum payments on my credit cards, I’ve only got enough in the bank to survive another six months or so if I don’t get some income coming in.
Snatch is waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, wheezing and grunting in his little piglike way, and I lean down and give him a good head scratch, getting right into his neck rolls the way he likes, before heading for the kitchen. Bubbles is up to her elbows in meat and steamed cabbage leaves.
“It seemed like a day for stuffed cabbage rolls,” she says, tilting her head at the window, which shows the kind of day that is quintessential March in Chicago: gray and overcast, the last of the winter ice and snowpack filthy and not melting, depressing and with the kind of damp cold that gets into the bones.
“It does indeed,” I say, smelling the spicy-sweet aroma of the sweet-and-sour tomato sauce simmering on the stove, ready to have the rolls full of seasoned ground beef and rice dropped in to braise slowly.
“Figured it would make the house smell good, and since your folks are coming over for dinner, it will feed us all and still leave some leftovers for the weekend.”
“A good plan. You should have called me; I would have helped.”
“I did call you, and you are going to help. I need you to go to Langer’s.”
“Is that place still there?” Formerly the place for the Chicago Jewish elite to order their holiday sweets trays, and birthday cakes, and especially wedding cakes from the fifties through the early nineties, Langer’s Bakery was once a cornerstone of the little community where Bubbles lives. Shabbat challahs, Passover macaroons, honey cakes to make the New Year sweet, and strangely blandly satisfying butter cookies for any occasion. Langer’s was particularly famous for their simple birthday cakes, decorated with one’s choice of balloons or flowers, and their wedding cakes, towering white columned confections with buttercream swags and fondant flowers that looked perfect on tulle-draped tables. Completely old-school. I haven’t been in there since college and presumed it had gone the way of the dodo in this economy and with the new bakery reality. But maybe old Langer had a kid come in and take over, update the model.
“Of course Langer’s is still there; where would it be?” Bubbles shakes her head like I’ve taken complete leave of my senses. “We’ll want a rye bread to go with the cabbage rolls, and your dad will want onion kuchen, and maybe some cookies or something for dessert.”
“Anything else you want or need while I’m out? Should I pick up something for lunch since you’ve turned the kitchen into a disaster area?”
Bubbles looks at her watch perched delicately on the counter, away from the mess. “Goodness, it’s nearly noon! Yes, you had better pick something up for us. I had no idea the time had gotten away from me.” There’s that schedule again; if lunch doesn’t happen before noon thirty, the earth might spin right off its axis.
“I’ll grab a chicken at Kolmar’s; that way we can have chicken salad for lunch tomorrow.” Kolmar’s is the butcher up the block from Langer’s, and they do a great rotisserie chicken, complete with baby potatoes that cook in the chicken fat and drippings on the bottom of the rotisserie.
“Perfect. My credit card is in my purse on the front table.”
“I’ve got it.”
“No arguing with me, young lady. Take the card.”
“Fine.” Luckily, when I moved in, my dad slipped me a MasterCard and told me that when she insisted on paying for stuff, I should pay on his card and give her the receipt. The numbers are too small for her to see, so she never knows that we do a switcheroo on her. “I’ll take Snatch too; he could use the exercise.”
“Good idea. See you soon.”
I get Snatch leashed up, putting him in one of his sweaters for good measure. You’d think a dog this fat wouldn’t get cold, but he is a delicate flower and shivers in the tiniest breeze. This one is a hand-knitted navy-blue number with an orange Chicago Bears logo on the front. Bubbles has lovingly sewn or knitted his many sweaters, from his velvet smoking jacket to his preppy argyle vest, and one for every Chicago sports team. My granddad was a hopeless fan, and now Bubbles follows all the teams as well. She talks to my granddad during the games, often shaking her finger at the sky when they lose, blaming him for not helping them out enough. “Solly! Stop flirting with dead movie stars and pay attention to your poor Blackhawks!” She fully credits him for the Stanley Cup win and fully blames him for the Super Bowl loss. Always makes me smile.
Snatch and I walk out into the day, which is more brisk than bone-chilling, and head up the block. The little commercial stretch where Langer’s and Kolmar’s reside is only four blocks from the house, and Snatch prances proudly beside me, snuffling at each tree and marking his territory every ten feet or so. The street has barely changed at all, tucked away on the border between what used to be a conservative Eastern European Jewish community and what used to be a Polish Catholic community. The connection between them naturally was food, so the bakery and the butcher and the small grocery were perfectly located to join the two groups. Of course, now there are few holdouts like Bubbles, and the neighborhoods have merged into one amorphous group, initially with a large influx of Koreans and Filipinos, and, more recently, with some hipsters and young families. The classic transitional Chicago neighborhood. Where the grocer used to be is now a small coffeehouse, and the barbershop on the corner, where my grandfather used to go to have Al give him a trim and a shave and a manicure once a week, is now a full-service salon. But there in the center of the block is Langer’s, just as it always was, and I push open the door, which is fogged over on the inside, grateful for these cozy, family-owned neighborhood storefronts where dogs are welcome. I always feel bad when I see pups tied up outside less hospitable places. Snatch has obviously been here before and snorts happily as we head inside.
And walk right into 1990. By way of 1950.
With the heady scent of yeast in the air, it quickly becomes clear that Langer’s hasn’t changed at all. The black-and-white-checked linoleum floor, the tin ceiling, the heavy brass cash register, all still here. The curved-front glass cases with their wood counter, filled with the same offerings: the butter cookies of various shapes and toppings, four kinds of rugelach, mandel bread, black-and-white cookies, and brilliant-yellow smiley face cookies. Cupcakes, chocolate or vanilla, with either chocolate or vanilla frosting piled on thick. Brownies, with or without nuts. Cheesecake squares. Coconut macaroons. Four kinds of Danish. The foil loaf pans of the bread pudding made from the day-old challahs. And on the glass shelves behind the counter, the breads: Challahs, round with raisins and braided either plain or with sesame. Rye, with and without caraway seeds. Onion kuchen, sort of strange almost-pizza-like bread that my dad loves, and the smaller, puffier onion rolls that I prefer. Cloverleaf rolls. Babkas. The wood-topped café tables with their white chairs, still filled with the little gossipy ladies from the neighborhood, who come in for their mandel bread and rugelach, for their Friday challah and Sunday babka, and take a moment to share a Danish or apple dumpling and brag about grandchildren.
On the walls, the faded framed photographs of wedding cakes gone by, elegant and coveted in their day, looking sad and dated and dumpy by today’s standards. Behind the counter, Herman Langer, as round and jolly as I remember him, slightly rounder perhaps, with much less hair on his head and much more in his eyebrows, but still with the powerful arms, well muscled from years of wrangling mountains of dough into submission.
“It can’t be little Sophie?” he says when he sees me.
“Hello, Mr. Langer, how are you?”
“Well, well, well, I’m fine! Just fine!” He reaches into the case and hands me a black-and-white cookie, the way he always used to, knowing that I’m a girl who loves chocolate and vanilla so equally
that I could never choose between them. I suddenly remember that he always teased me about Sophie’s Choice, which cracked Bubbles up. He winks as I take the cookie from him, and grabs a dog biscuit from the jar on the counter.
“Hello, young man,” he says, tossing the treat to Snatch, who accepts it gratefully with a yip, and reduces it to crumbs in an instant. “What can I get you, Sophie who is all grown up?”
“I need a rye bread with seeds, an onion kuchen, and a pound of rugelach.”
“Sounds like family dinner; if you need a kuchen, Robert must be coming.”
“You guessed it.”
He slides a crusty rye bread into a paper bag, the top of the loaf a deep mahogany, the bottom speckled in cornmeal. He carefully chooses the kuchen with the most onion on it and wraps it in parchment paper, twisting the ends deftly. “Chocolate, walnut, poppy seed, or apricot rugelach?”
“Mixed, please.”
“Good choice. You always knew how to order,” he says with a wink.
He fills a white box with at least two pounds of rugelach, and I wonder how on earth he is managing to stay in business. Besides the horribly outdated offerings, nostalgic though they may be, if he’s selling me a pound of rugelach and gifting me an additional pound, the bottom line must be suffering.
“How much?” I ask around a mouthful of black-and-white cookie.
“On the house, little Sophie; it’s good to see you back.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Langer, I insist. Please let me pay. Us bakers have to stick together. I can’t let you give the goods away.”
“I’ll hear none of it. Besides, I have an ulterior motive.”
Wedding Girl Page 4
