Comfort Me with Apples

by Ruth Reichl

The streets were still filled with people. Women in improbably tight dresses beckoned from doorways; behind them we could see men at tables, throwing dice, drinking beer. Music drifted toward us in the dark.

  We rode through the thick, humid air. Occasionally a breeze caressed our faces. A temple loomed in front of us, and Jacques slowed down. Through the darkness I could just make out the form of the pointed roof and an old woman sitting in the doorway, cross-legged on the ground. Jacques got off the cycle and squatted beside her. He whispered something in Thai and beckoned to me.

  The old lady patted the ground, and I sat down facing her. She held out her right hand; I put mine in hers. She ran her left hand across the top, barely touching it, as if she could read my thoughts through my skin. Then she turned my hand over, picked up a candle, and sat peering at my palm for a long time.

  “Do I ask a question?” I said.

  “That is not necessary,” Jacques replied. “She will speak when she is ready.” The old lady was very still, watching my hand, and then she began to talk.

  “You are strong and successful,” Jacques translated. “She says that you do unusual work and that this supports your family.” The old lady was silent for another moment.

  “She says that you have no child, but that you want one.”

  I nodded.

  “She says,” he continued, “that you are separated from your husband. She says that the question you want to ask is whether you should return to him.”

  The old lady was silent for a few minutes. The wind rustled through the leaves above us. Then she began to speak, slowly, carefully.

  “Yes,” said Jacques. “The answer is yes. There is only one man in your hand. She says your destiny is with him.”

  The woman abruptly dropped my hand. The reading was over. I held out a handful of baht; she took each coin individually, looked at my face, then blew out the candle and faded into the dark.

  “I need a drink,” I said.

  We got back onto the motor scooter and rode very quickly. Suddenly Jacques made an abrupt turn into an alley and came to a stop in front of another tin-roofed shack. “The best place in Bangkok after a long night of drinking,” he said, leading me inside. The room was small and dimly lit. “They are specialists in congee. The rice is good—it absorbs the alcohol. And then you eat these, with a little more whiskey, to get you back to zero.”

  He was pointing at plates covered with small, beautifully translucent crabs, their shells faintly blue against the bright red roe. “Pu dong,” he said. “They are marinated, raw.” I picked one up and put it in my mouth, wondering for just a second if it was smart to eat raw crabs in Thailand. But it was in my mouth, the thought was gone, and I was savoring the sensation of the slippery meat. It was chewy and very hot, but behind the heat was a startling, pleasant sweetness.

  Jacques showed me how to the scrape the roe from the crab and chew on the shells, which were so soft they melted away, leaving only flavor. In my mouth was the cool of the sea, the sunshine in the chili, the taste of rice growing in the paddies. My head was swimming. I had another shot of whiskey. Another crab. And then my eyes were closing.

  I clung to Jacques, barely awake as we dodged traffic. The night air was hot and sticky; you could smell the rain that was still to come. Neon lights flashed, horns blared.

  And then, suddenly, the noise stopped. Trees swayed, cooling the night. Flowers opened to perfume the air. Doors swung silently open on well-oiled hinges. A woman, her long hair braided with orchids, was bowing me in. I tumbled into bed.

  * * *

  That night I did not dream, and when I woke up I was calm, as if a great weight had lifted off my chest; after all this time it was good to know my destiny. I would go home, pack my things, and move in with Doug. If he would have me. The future felt clear. Wrapped in this cocoon of confidence, I meandered through Thailand, focused only on the food.

  The flavors changed, dramatically, as I traveled. Up north, in Chiang Mai, the very air was perfumed with garlic, which was eaten on everything. In the morning, even breakfast arrived sprinkled with preserved garlic.

  “Northern food is much better than what they eat in Bangkok,” said a woman in Chiang Mai. She pointed at the sticky rice that appeared in a basket at each meal, then showed me how to roll it into a ball with three fingers and use it to sop up the sauce.

  I found myself memorizing dishes I liked: the little pumpkins filled with coconut flan; the chopped raw meat, larb; the tiny ears of grilled corn sprinkled with chili powder.

  In Chiang Rai I sat at a roadside stand watching long-horned water buffalo lumbering through flooded rice paddies while children fished with hooped nets and little yellow ducklings paddled around them. The local specialty, kang kee lek, was a spicy, creamy mush made of pork, coconut milk, and acacia seeds that I found absolutely irresistible.

  In Phuket, where the signs along Patong Beach read U.S. NAVY, PATONG OFFERS YOU WINE, WOMEN AND SONG, the people were pickle crazy; on my first visit to the market I tasted pickled pineapple, pickled guava, and sweet-water olives. The sweet olives were so strange I made a face, and the woman standing next to me burst out laughing. “You do not like this?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Also I do not like,” she said. “Where are you from?”

  I told her, and she looked impressed. “American men, we get many,” she said. “American women, none.” I said that I had seen the signs, and that I found the beaches disappointing.

  “Have you been to Karon Beach?” she asked. When I told her I had not, she insisted on meeting the next day so that she could show it to me. We took a bus to the end of the line, where men pulled boats filled with fish onto an expanse of pure white sand. You chose what you wanted and they cooked it right there, over a little fire at the edge of the sea.

  Eating that crisp-skinned fish with a friendly stranger, I thought of Doug, wishing he were there to share it with me. Over the next few weeks I found myself saving up little details I knew he would like. I barely thought of Michael; he was my old life, behind me. I was moving on.

  * * *

  I went back to the sexy stew of Bangkok for my final nights in Thailand. “I’ve missed you and your expense account,” said Jacques when I called. “I’ve found a restaurant you have to try.” He laughed and added, “It’s very expensive.”

  It turned out to be a supermarket with cases filled with every imaginable fish and vegetable lining its sides. In the middle, where the aisles should have been, were tables. Chic people strolled through the space, filling their carts with prawns and celery, porgy and water chestnuts, lobsters and crabs. “You have to invent your own dishes,” said Jacques, piling shrimp as large as his fists and pale, delicate stalks of baby celery into the cart, “and after you have checked out you take the ingredients to the chefs and tell them how to cook what you’ve bought. There is a separate cooking charge.”

  We invented three dishes, and after we had watched the chefs cook them over the leaping flames I said, “Take me back to the fortune teller.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “You want to know when you’ll be coming back.”

  He hadn’t asked a question, so I didn’t have to tell him that it was another question I wanted answered. I wanted to be sure that I was making the right decision.

  * * *

  The old lady was still sitting in front of the temple, as if she had not moved in the month since I’d last seen her. I sat down before her. Once again she took my hand.

  “You are strong and successful,” Jacques translated. “She says that you do unusual work and that this supports your family.” The old lady was silent for another moment.

  “She says that you have no child, but that you want one.”

  I had heard all this before. He continued, “The question you want to ask is whether you should return to your husband.” And then, without a pause he went on: “She says there are two men in your hand, and your destiny lies with the second.”

  I looked u
p and began laughing at myself. I was on a tawdry street in a strange town looking for magic answers. “At least the food was good,” I said, handing the old lady some coins.

  MIANG KAM

  Maybe the old woman knew exactly what she was doing. Because she made me realize the sheer stupidity of my behavior, made me see that I had come too far to turn back. The whole way home I thought of Michael, missed his company and realized how lucky I was to be with a man who was constantly interesting to me.

  And then I got off the plane and saw him standing by the gate, talking to a tall, tawny woman. His hair was very black against his tan skin, his teeth very white. The woman leaned into him for a moment and they were so handsome, so appealing, that every eye turned. I threw myself into his arms, felt the heat rising off his body. “She’s glad to see me!” he said, laughing.

  We went back to his house and I made him this dish, from a recipe given to me by a wonderful Thai chef named Boonchoo Pholatawarna. It’s street food, the sort of thing that is sold in every Thai market. It makes great cocktail-party food, but it’s also a wonderful little snack to feed your lover.

  FOR THE SYRUP

  1/2 cup water

  1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

  2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce

  2 teaspoons finely chopped peeled fresh ginger

  2 tablespoons roasted salted peanuts, finely chopped

  1/4 cup unsweetened (desiccated) shredded coconut, toasted

  FOR THE PACKETS

  1/4 cup small dried shrimp

  1/2 cup unsweetened (desiccated) shredded coconut, toasted

  1/4 cup finely chopped shallot or red onion

  1/4 cup finely chopped peeled fresh ginger

  1/4 cup roasted salted peanuts, chopped

  1/4 cup finely chopped fresh small Asian chilies or serrano chilies, seeded if desired

  1 lime, cut into thin wedges

  1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated

  TO MAKE THE SYRUP

  Whisk together the water and sugar in a heavy small saucepan and boil, stirring occasionally, until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from heat and stir in the fish sauce, ginger, peanuts, and coconut. Transfer to a serving bowl.

  TO ASSEMBLE THE PACKETS

  Arrange all the remaining ingredients in separate mounds on one platter.

  To eat, each diner fills a lettuce leaf with some of each condiment, then squeezes lime juice over it and drizzles it with sauce before folding the leaf over the filling to form a neat little bundle.

  Serves 4 (makes about 16 bundles).

  10

  MIDNIGHT DUCK

  When the gate swung open I caught my breath. All I could see were four stone steps, curving up toward a lawn. Michael took my hand, and we started climbing. With the first step deep green walls came into view, covered with ivy and so old I knew they would be soft when I touched them. The second step revealed a jasmine-covered trellis leading to a cottage. By the third step we could see the cottage itself, small and red, its crooked chimney set at a jaunty angle. But it was only on the final step that the entire scene became visible.

  We were in a sheltered garden, hidden from the world by mossy walls. A carpet of lawn spread beneath our feet, and off in a corner a little frog leapt into a tiny fountain with a quiet splash. Daisies gathered sunlight in front of the cottage, and it seemed to me that every ray in San Francisco must be concentrated here. The quiet was so profound that despite the traffic on the street outside, we could hear the warbling of the robin welcoming us from the top of the wall.

  “It’s hard to believe we’re in San Francisco,” I whispered. “It feels like we’re in a hill town in Tuscany.”

  “You don’t have to whisper,” said Michael. “It’s ours.”

  “How did you find it?” I was still whispering, afraid to break the spell.

  Michael smiled and took my hand. For a moment he was quiet. At last he said, “I knew I had to, so I did.”

  “I guess I should call you Rumpelstiltskin,” I said, for he had accomplished the impossible. After Bangkok, I had told Michael I would live with him when we found a perfect place. It sounded like a decision, but I was still hedging my bets; rental property in the Bay Area was nearly nonexistent, especially for people with very little money.

  But Michael was not like me or Doug; he went after what he wanted, and he knew how to turn no into yes. Now he led me into the house, saying, “Please don’t make me slay another dragon.”

  Inside, the cottage was even better. The living room was spacious, with a big fireplace at one end and a wall of windows overlooking the garden at the other. The kitchen was compact, but it had a wood-burning grill with an electric rotisserie. One bedroom had a little porch, and from the other you could see a small slice of the Bay, peeking between two buildings. I felt as if Michael had waved a wand and conjured a magic cottage from thin air.

  But after ten years on Channing Way, the sheer perfection of the place was hard to take. And compared to the easy camaraderie of the communal life, I found living with just one person extremely stressful. “Now you’ll see how easy it isn’t,” said Doug when he came to visit. There was a note of satisfaction in his voice that made me suspect that he was as frightened as I was. “I still dream about you every night,” he admitted.

  “I dream about you too,” I said, confessing that moving into the cottage had depressed me. I tried to hide these feelings from Michael, but with no crowd to surround me I felt exposed, naked. Living with a lot of people was so much safer.

  And then, to make matters worse, my mother announced that she was planning a Thanksgiving visit. The idea of the three of us in the cottage was almost unbearable. Michael was even less enthusiastic than I was.

  “Can’t your mother come ruin Christmas or something?” he cried. “Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I was looking forward to celebrating our first one together, just the two of us in our own house. Besides, you know she’s going to hate me. She’s going to spend the entire visit telling you how much better off you were with Doug.”

  “If that’s all that happens we’ll be lucky,” I muttered.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I replied hastily. “I’ll see if I can’t get her to come for Christmas instead.”

  My mother was not pleased. “Let me see if I understand what you are saying,” she said icily when I suggested the switch. “You don’t want me to come for Thanksgiving.”

  “I just thought it might be better if you came for Christmas,” I said carefully. “You know, you’re not a food person and you don’t care all that much for turkey. But Christmas on your own can get really depressing.”

  “If that’s all you’re worried about . . .” said Mom, her voice melting, “you don’t have to worry. It’s very sweet of you, but I’m spending Christmas in India. I’ve already bought the tickets. And I’ve bought the tickets to San Francisco too.”

  “You might have asked first,” I demurred.

  “Ask my own daughter for permission to visit her?” she demanded. The chill was back. “When she’s living with a man I haven’t even met? When she’s ruined her life by leaving the most wonderful husband a girl could ever have?”

  “Maybe you’d like to stay with Doug?” I suggested. I couldn’t help myself.

  “My psychiatrist,” she said suddenly, “says that I’m jealous of you. You have a glamorous life, a man who loves you, interesting work. You’re young. I suppose he’s right, but I never thought mothers could feel that way about their kids.”

  “I didn’t either,” I said, accepting defeat. “Give me your flight number. I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

  * * *

  My mother was hard to miss. She came swinging into the terminal dressed in every color of the rainbow. A huge straw hat was perched on her head, its bright red poppies vibrating with each step. “PussyCat!” she cried, bending to kiss me. She stood up and began waving, crying, “Good-bye, good-bye, I’
ll phone,” as she blew kisses to her new friends. Perfect strangers were watching me with knowing eyes. What had she told them?

  “Such nice people on the plane!” she gushed as we drove home, launching into the intimate details of the lives of people she would never see again.

  “I’ll have to work while you’re here,” I warned when she’d wound down. “I’m doing a story about this guy who thinks you can tell everything about a person just by asking one simple question.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “What does your family eat for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Ridiculous!” she said.

  “He’s pretty impressive,” I replied.

  “So what did he say about you?” she asked.

  “Oh, I was easy. It took him about a minute to say that at least one of my parents was not born in America. I asked how he could tell, and he said that the biggest clue was that you sometimes forgot to make gravy.”

  “I never forgot to make gravy!”

  “Yes, Mom, you did. A few times. Once you forgot to make dinner altogether!”

  “But I was sick!” she said. “I was depressed. That doesn’t count.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t the gravy that got his attention. It was the ‘sometimes’ part. For real Americans this is a tradition, and nothing is supposed to be ‘sometimes.’ He said that our family had not learned the interior semiology of the symbols.”

  “What was the other clue?” she asked.

  “No mincemeat pie. For some reason, and he doesn’t know why, Jews never serve it.”

  “It’s interesting,” she conceded. “More interesting than most of the stuff you write.”

  “Oh,” I replied, “it gets even better. He told one friend of mine that he could tell her mother regretted having married beneath her because of some cranberry ice she always made.”

  “How could he possibly know that?” Mom asked.

  “Elise told him that nobody ever ate it, and he said that it didn’t fit with the rest of the meal. It’s all in the details. She said he was absolutely right; they all resented that ice, which belonged to their mother’s fancy background. They didn’t eat it, but she insisted on serving it anyway and it just sat there, melting.”