“We need to get you something special,” said Edward, as we ate. “I’d like to see you in a nice dress, some heels. We need to go shopping.”
By way of explanation, he launched into a story about how he had once bought an expensive suit for his daughter Laura when he felt that she was feeling down. He had taken her to Saks Fifth Avenue, where the suit Laura chose had been reduced from $1,400 but was still costly.
“Can we afford it?” Paula asked him at the time.
“We can’t afford not to,” Edward replied simply. He also bought Laura an expensive trench coat.
“She looked smashing,” he recalled.
Just then an alarm went off in the kitchen—the timer for the popover that Edward was baking in the oven. He stood up, a little wobbly. I rose to help him remove our plates, but he was having none of it. I knew better than to insist.
I came to understand that dinners with Edward were rituals, imbued with a sense of occasion. When he was feeling well, Edward created feasts of cassoulet or oysters Rockefeller, and sometimes we indulged in a good champagne or port, served in the delicate one-hundred-year-old glasses he inherited from his mother. He always warmed his dinner plates in the oven, even if he was serving only leftovers—although Edward rarely served leftovers. Everything unfolded with the same comforting ceremony: There was always a cocktail before the main course—tonight we’d had martinis—followed by dessert and perhaps Turkish coffee spiked with brandy or Ricard to finish.
“The secret is treating family like guests and guests like family,” he once told me. No matter how terrible I felt in the moments before I knocked on his door, I always left Edward’s apartment with a smile on my face, a sensation that I had just experienced some kind of pure joy.
“I just had dinner with your father!” I told Valerie, calling her in Canada on my walk home after one of those early dinners with Edward. “Thank you! Thank you! I don’t know why, but I feel great!”
Now Edward deposited our dishes in the sink, then busied himself with dessert. He poured apricot jam and cognac into a skillet and lit the mixture, stepping back slightly while flames shot out from the frying pan. When the fire died down, he spooned the flambéed apricot onto the warm popover that he had removed from the oven. Then he dusted everything with confectioners’ sugar.
Maybe it was the sweet, spongy popover or the amount of wine we had consumed that evening. It was not unusual for us to split an entire bottle during a meal together. Whatever it was, I heard myself happily acquiescing to the shopping trip, and then toasting our expedition with the last of our wine.
Yes, I was now Edward’s special project. I had no doubt that fixing my confused middle-aged existence was giving him some kind of purpose in life. Whatever was going on, I had already given in. But I did make him promise one thing: He would not actually buy me anything.
“OK,” he said, his blue-gray eyes twinkling. “We’ll just look.”
5
Chicken Paillard, Sauce aux Champignons
Pommes de Terres Soufflés
Baked Acorn Squash
Almond Cake, Vanilla Ice Cream
Bourbon/Pastis Cocktail, Chardonnay
I watched Edward pour a finger of bourbon into a tumbler he had just removed from the freezer. He added tonic and a splash of pastis, which turned the mixture slightly cloudy. He finished the cocktail off with a squeeze of lime and added a few ice cubes from an old Tupperware container that he uses to store ice in his freezer.
It was never my favorite cocktail; I preferred his perfect martinis, ice-cold, dry and crisp. The drink Edward fashioned for me was a little too sweet for my liking, but I never dreamed of refusing it. Sometimes, when it was available in New York liquor stores, he would substitute absinthe for the bourbon and triumphantly pour me what he liked to call the “green fairy”—aromatic with hints of fennel and anise.
Over time, I grew to enjoy Edward’s concoctions; they became a necessary elixir, like the pink penicillin that my mother forced on me as a bronchitis-plagued child. And I drank it in with the advice that Edward doled out during dinner, which often stretched over three or even four courses.
“The problem with too many women is their lack of self-worth,” he said. “What impressed me about Paula was her sense of self-worth.” She wasn’t about to be pushed around. I needed to learn to be tough, he told me. And I should try to impart that to my daughter, too.
“Did the dress arrive?” he asked as I stood in the kitchen sipping my cocktail and watching as he took frozen chunks of potatoes that he had packed into Ziploc bags and dropped them into hot grape seed oil. He had a peculiar way of making french fries that required the potatoes to be parboiled and then frozen before frying. He used only grape seed oil because it was the only oil you could heat to very high temperatures without risk of smoking or burning. The french fries, or pommes soufflés, comprised one of his more complicated culinary tricks that I have yet to master.
Edward sang along to Ella Fitzgerald and seemed not to care at all that he was completely out of tune: “I’ve got a crush on you, sweetie pie . . .”
Before I could give him an answer on the dress, Edward insisted we sit down and try the french fries while they were still hot, crisp, and perfect. Any delays might result in soggy potatoes, he warned, with such conviction that I dared not argue. As usual, he was right. What a french fry! A slab of soft potato spilling out of a crispy, golden, salty coating. Not surprisingly, the entire meal was sublime —the mushy sweetness of the squash, its pale orange flesh streaked with butter and brown sugar; the delicate paillard covered in a rich mushroom sauce, made from Edward’s demi-glace, wine, and firm, buttery mushrooms.
“The dress hasn’t arrived yet,” I said, spearing another french fry.
Edward stopped eating, a look of concern clouding his face. I assured him that I wasn’t worried, but he told me to make sure that I alerted my doorman that I was expecting a package from Saks. I promised him I would, but promptly forgot, and the dress languished in my building’s package room for days before I thought to check.
After I reassured Edward about the dress, we moved on to dessert: vanilla ice cream and Edward’s almond cake. It was the one he had seen in the vitrine of Payard, when it was still located in its elegant quarters on Lexington Avenue. On a whim, he duplicated the cake perfectly in his kitchen. Edward claimed he never actually tasted the Payard cake; it was enough for him to study the golden, spongy confection.
He made the same cake for my birthday, surprising me at my midtown office. A tall, courtly figure in a black quilted jacket, pressed black corduroys, and a jaunty beret, he charmed the normally humorless woman at front-desk security, who called me down with the breathless, “Edward’s here with a surprise for you!”
Edward had a similar effect on the sales associates at Saks Fifth Avenue, where we had gone shopping the previous week. He insisted it had to be Saks. At the last minute, I had suggested Bloomingdale’s because I wanted to save him the walk. Edward moved with difficulty, with a cane. On days when he was in pain, he walked around his small kitchen by gripping the counters with both hands, like a slow-motion gymnast on parallel bars. I didn’t want him to suffer on the shopping trip and figured that because Bloomingdale’s was around the corner from the Roosevelt Island tram on the Manhattan side, he might prefer to go there instead. But, no, Edward insisted on Saks and seemed not to care that it would be a longer journey, first on the local Roosevelt Island bus to the tram station, and then on another bus to Fifth Avenue.
We met at the bus stop in front of Edward’s building on a bone-chillingly cold afternoon in deep winter. He immediately admonished me for not having put on enough lipstick. I rummaged in my bag for the new Dior lipstick I had bought a few days before with Melissa. Squinting at my reflection in the bus shelter, I tentatively began to reapply Rouge Favori.
When I looked sideways at Edward, he laughed, shaking his head in mock disapproval. He was clearly enjoying his role a
s a stern Henry Higgins to my recalcitrant Eliza Doolittle. “Put more on!” he said, tapping the cold ground with his cane for emphasis. “You’re not using enough!”
Gliding over the East River on the crowded tram, Roosevelt Island disappearing behind us, Edward pointed out all the snow-covered bridges as they came into view: the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and Manhattan Bridges to the south, the Queensboro Bridge directly beside us. As we sped closer to Manhattan, residential buildings towered on both sides of us.
We descended into the chaos of Second Avenue and waited at the bus stop on East Sixtieth. Impatient, I raised a gloved hand to hail a taxi.
“Are you in a hurry?” asked Edward in his matter-of-fact, cheerful tone, which always made me feel foolish.
When we reached our stop, I offered Edward my arm and he shifted his cane to his other hand. We locked arms and walked slowly along Fifth Avenue as snowflakes began to fall. When we reached Saks, Edward knew exactly where to go. He headed up the elevator to the second floor, with its luxurious displays of designer clothes.
A chic sales associate from the Etro boutique gave us the once-over—Edward looking like a French country gentleman with his usual old world air, a cashmere scarf neatly folded around his neck; me, somewhat ill at ease, in my scuffed Italian leather boots, faded jeans, and too-red lips. When Edward explained our mission, the Etro lady insisted on helping me select several dresses to try on. Meanwhile, Edward studied the sale racks and came back with a single dress—an elegant black, hip-hugging number with short sleeves, discreetly embellished with a piece of black lace at the waist. It was by Burberry and cost a small fortune, but Edward had looked at neither the price tag nor the label when he lifted it up to show me.
“I’d like to see how this looks on you, darling,” he said, handing me the dress before taking his place in an easy chair outside the fitting rooms.
Somehow it didn’t really surprise me that of all the dresses I tried on that afternoon, Edward’s choice was the perfect one, even if it was a little tight. He had worked as a tailor at one point in his life, and he understood a good cut, excellent craftsmanship. Resting his chin on the handle of his cane, in deep concentration, Edward asked me to turn around before making his final pronouncement.
“It really shows off your figure,” he said. “I didn’t even know you had a figure. Not a great figure, but a nice figure.” And then, pointing his cane in my direction, he ordered: “Stick your stomach in! Stand up straight!”
I breathed in, stood up straight, but the dress was too tight, especially around my hips, and I could barely do up the zipper in the back. Edward was right about one thing, though—for the first time in a long time I noticed that I did indeed have hips. And legs. And breasts. I was a woman, and as tight as this dress was, it also flattered me in a way that I had ignored for many years. Suddenly, I needed this black dress, even though I had a closet full of black dresses, most of them loose-fitting and shapeless. Edward had selected it, after all, and under the harsh lights of the fitting room I imagined that it would be a talisman, enticement, and armor all wrapped into one. I didn’t even blink at the $525 price tag. It was on sale, after all, and worth every penny.
After checking her computer, the Etro lady found the dress in my size at another store. She assured me that it would arrive at my apartment in less than a week. I handed her a credit card, and our little excursion came to an end. Edward steadied himself with his cane, and rose slowly from the chair outside the fitting room as a gaggle of fashionable sales associates who had been watching us with broad smiles and great interest rushed to help him up, fussing over him, offering him water, coffee, tea.
“Your grandfather is such a wonderful man,” gushed the Etro lady as she handed back my credit card.
“He’s not my grandfather,” I told her, with a mischievous look.
She raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t bother to explain.
Edward and I parted in the middle of the makeup and perfume bazaar on the main floor of Saks. He was off to Citarella to buy squid. He had promised to cook stuffed squid “Lisbon-style” for our next dinner, and he was keen to go early to the market before they sold out of their day’s supply of baby squid. Full-grown squid wouldn’t cut it.
“They’re not tender enough,” he said, winking.
I watched Edward skillfully weave his way through a crush of holiday shoppers and young, beautifully dressed men and women holding up bottles of fragrance. And I found myself smiling. Joy, happiness—it snuck up on me every time I saw Edward. In spite of everything that was going on in my life, I smiled.
At that moment, I was the luckiest woman on earth. I had bought a dress that wasn’t exactly Cinderella’s ball gown but that seemed to transform me nonetheless. Maybe the saleswoman had it partly right—Edward could indeed be my grandfather, but really he was more like a fairy godfather. In any event, he was looking out for me.
And I was now also looking out for him. It didn’t feel like an obligation. I enjoyed calling him, having dinner with him, and in the process I discovered a brave new world. I became obsessed with food and wine—the macarons from Ladurée on Madison Avenue, the French sheep’s milk cheese from an East Village shop, Italian truffle salt, the pink Portuguese vinho verde that Edward loved. Everything I found, I brought to Edward, who more than appreciated my enthusiasm.
I was still smiling when I followed a short distance behind Edward to the door, just to make sure he was OK. Then I watched as he headed up Fifth Avenue and disappeared into the holiday crowds.
6
Stuffed Baby Squid “Lisbon Style”
Salad with Homemade Vinaigrette
Cantaloupe, Coffee Ice Cream
Sauvignon Blanc
Don’t tell Valerie,” said Edward, passing me a steaming plate of squid, bubbling in a delicately spiced tomato sauce and stuffed with rice, celery, thyme, and . . . I couldn’t place the other ingredient.
“Leeks?” I asked, after the first bite.
“No, scallions,” he said.
I complimented him on the squid and told him that my mother was the only other person I knew who had made squid in a similar way. I had assumed that it was an old family recipe, passed down to my mother from my grandmother. But Edward’s execution of the dish, even holding the bulging stuffed squid bodies in place with toothpicks at either end, took me back to my childhood.
Like Edward’s Paula, my mother had recently passed away and I felt her loss keenly. On some days, I made a mental note to call her, only to realize seconds later that she wouldn’t be picking up the phone.
“Where did you get the recipe?” I asked in astonishment.
He brushed off the question. “Oh, Is-a-bel . . .” he smiled. He enunciated each syllable when he wanted to convey something that should have been obvious to me or to suggest that he really had no intention of giving me an answer. In moments such as these, I felt my mother’s presence in an elemental embrace. Maybe it was the intimacy it signaled. On some level, Edward had taken over the parenting that I was now missing.
Focusing on the odd coincidence of the squid, I almost forgot what Edward had said about Valerie. “Don’t tell Valerie” was a phrase he repeated often, especially when he was embarking on what might be considered a foolhardy venture, something he was convinced his younger daughter, my friend, simply wouldn’t understand.
This time he didn’t want Valerie to know about the poetry he submitted to the literary journals. Edward was certain his work would never be published, anyway. But perhaps he held out a faint hope that someday someone besides his family might appreciate the sentiment, the artistry of what he labored over at his little wooden desk and the dining room table on the nights that he desperately ached for Paula. Even though Valerie typed his poems for him, I’m sure she never imagined that he was submitting them for publication.
Usually when he received the typed verses, he couldn’t deal with seeing his words so neatly printed and divided into precise columns on the
page. He told me that the poems, in their conservative font on bright white paper, suddenly looked sterile to him. So he made photocopies of the typed poems, cut out each line, and then reassembled them like a puzzle, gluing them onto a piece of paper, until he was satisfied that the indentations were right, that the spacing was a signal to breathe in the right places.
He wrote his poetry to be read aloud, with just the right pauses and inflection, and he practiced often. Edward confessed that he sometimes fell asleep reciting the poetry, practicing the rhythm, experimenting with intonation. When sleep completely eluded him, though, he got up in the wee hours to write letters to Paula.
He encouraged me to do the same, to write letters to the dead, in my case my mother, telling her how I was really feeling about life without her. One afternoon, when I was particularly upset, I took Edward’s advice and was startled by the result. When I sat down to write to my mother in a notebook, sadness spilled out of me. And once it was out in the open, I could no longer keep it under wraps.
“I never imagined that I would feel your loss so profoundly,” I wrote to my dead mother. “I have never felt so alone.”
My mother died shortly before I moved to New York, while I was spending some time in Brazil researching a book. A week before she died, she had called me and seemed very animated, asking how my research was progressing and delighted that eight-year-old Hannah, whom I had brought along, was picking up some Portuguese. I handed the phone to Hannah so that she could speak to her grandmother. Shortly after she hung up, Hannah broke into hysterical sobs.
“Nana’s going to die,” she said, inconsolable.
“Of course she’s not going to die,” I said, to reassure her. “She was so happy on the phone.”
Dinner with Edward Page 4
