Comfort Me with Apples

by Ruth Reichl

  “Let’s stay home,” he said. “I hate these stuffy places.”

  “You promised,” I moaned, “and you can’t let me down now. I’ll never find someone to come to dinner on the spur of the moment.”

  Michael sighed and put on a jacket.

  * * *

  The restaurant was dark and intimate. The tails on the maître d’hôtel’s tuxedo bobbed as he led us to our table. He pulled out my chair with mellifluous murmurings about cocktails and wine. He shook out my napkin and spread it on my lap. When he had finally taken himself off, Michael looked up at the chandelier and said wistfully, “I wish I were home watching the football game.”

  In that moment the Reluctant Gourmet was born. “Given the choice between a dressy dinner and a Dodger dog,” I wrote when I got home, “the Reluctant Gourmet will choose the dog every time.”

  The Reluctant Gourmet began insinuating himself into my reviews, puncturing pretension, questioning authority, taking a skeptical view of the high price of eating out. He preferred beer to wine. He liked the fights and steadfastly refused any invitation that interfered with Monday Night Football. He was smart, irreverent, and funny, and he could say all the things a restaurant critic could not. Los Angeles was instantly enchanted with him; before long the R.G. was getting more mail than me.

  “I like the Reluctant Gourmet,” said Danny. “Is that your boyfriend? Why don’t you marry him?”

  “He keeps asking me the same question,” I replied.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” And then he added, “Go ahead and do it. I’ll come to your wedding.” He seemed to think that this would clinch the deal.

  * * *

  The success of the R.G. emboldened me to start taking more chances with my column. When somebody revived the moribund Perino’s, an old Hollywood warhorse, I invited the glamorous ghost of Gloria Swanson to join me for dinner. She swooped through the ornately decorated rooms, fingering tablecloths, sneering at modern service, lamenting the way things had changed. “In my day,” she drawled, holding up her cigarette lighter, “people knew how to dress for dinner.” She admired the cheese toast, laughed at the captain’s effort to flambé steak Diane, and noted that the soufflés of yore were decidedly higher. I was extremely pleased with the resulting review, and when Bob called me into the office I waited for him to tell me how brilliant it was.

  But he was frowning. He looked into my eyes, cleared his throat, and said, “Ruth, this is a newspaper.”

  “I know that,” I replied, irritated. “So what?”

  “You can’t make things up!” he blurted out. “The Reluctant Gourmet is one thing. I’ve met Michael. I know you exaggerate him a bit, but at least he’s real. Gloria Swanson, on the other hand, is dead. She wasn’t with you at the restaurant.”

  “But I can’t spend the rest of my life writing about too much salt and the busboy clearing from the wrong side!” I said.

  “Why not?” he wanted to know. “You know more about food than anyone I’ve ever met. Just write about that.”

  I shook my head. “Haven’t you noticed that food all by itself is really boring to read about?” I asked. “It’s everything around the food that makes it interesting. The sociology. The politics. The history.”

  “Well,” he said, handing Gloria Swanson back to me, “choose one of those. Because this won’t do. In journalism you have to tell the truth. I’m sorry.”

  I went back to my computer and stared at the screen. I had twenty-four hours to dump Gloria Swanson and find something real to write about. “A table at Perino’s,” I wrote, “used to mean something.” Nah, too boring. I tried again.

  “In the thirties, when Gloria Swanson swept through Perino’s . . .” No, that wouldn’t do either.

  “The lamb at Perino’s . . .”

  I was stuck. I packed up my things, picked up my keys, and headed to the parking lot. I planned to go back to the restaurant and pray for inspiration.

  Driving through Hancock Park I looked at its once-proud mansions. These stately homes had formed the first Beverly Hills, and long ago, in Perino’s heyday, the lawns had been manicured, the garages filled with fleets of Bentleys. I tried to imagine what the neighborhood had been like back then, listened for the echoes of Carole Lombard and Errol Flynn. Then I shook myself; the stars had packed up and moved west, the houses were decrepit, and it was the present that mattered, not the past.

  I pulled into the restaurant’s large, dark parking lot and handed my car keys to the valet. A maître d’hôtel stood at the restaurant’s door. “Welcome back,” he said softly, and for a moment he was Erich von Stroheim. Did I detect an accent? He led me past mirrors and crystal chandeliers and around massive bouquets of flowers to a curved pink banquette. He handed me an enormous menu and bowed. I would have sworn he clicked his heels. . . . No! This would not do!

  I peered over the menu, studying my fellow diners in hope of finding something remarkable to write about. Seeing nothing of interest, I strained to overhear fascinating tidbits of conversation. To my despair, the people to my right were analyzing real estate and the men to my left were deep into Dodger discussions. Nothing useful there.

  The captain, as he had before, recommended the shrimp cocktail, the scallops, the pommes soufflées. I had tasted them all and found them perfectly acceptable. Desperate, I tried a classic restaurant critic trick: In a pinch you can always make fun of the food. All you have to do is order the menu’s most outrageous item. This works beautifully when a chef is creatively moved to invent truffled salmon in banana sauce, asparagus-raisin ice cream, or guacamole with raw clams. But Perino’s radicchio ravioli in cream cheese sauce wasn’t all that absurd, and unfortunately it wasn’t bad.

  And then, as I took a bite of broiled salmon (overcooked), the moment I had been waiting for arrived. I heard a commotion at the front of the room and turned to see a fleet of policemen trooping through the restaurant. “What’s happened?” I asked the captain.

  He leaned over confidentially and whispered in a voice rich with excitement, “A man was just held up in the parking lot!” He seemed thrilled to have a tale to tell. “At gunpoint,” he continued.

  I had my story!

  Without wasting time on dessert I asked for my check. I raced home and went right to my desk. “Eating at Perino’s,” I began, “can be a lot more exciting than it used to be.” This was far better than Gloria Swanson: The piece now read like a detective story. It had a plot; it was a thriller.

  “I’ve never read a restaurant review quite like this,” said Bob when I turned it in. “I knew you could do it. Good work!”

  “Don’t expect me to come up with a holdup every time I review a restaurant,” I warned him.

  “I’m not worried,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He smiled.

  No mockingbirds sang as I climbed into bed. “You were right about moving,” I admitted to Michael. “I’m glad we came. When Bob read my review he said I was going to breathe new life into the Calendar section of the paper. And I can’t wait to see this one in print.”

  Michael yawned. “I knew you’d eventually be happy that we moved down here. But that holdup was a piece of luck.” Turning over he said sleepily, “You got a police report, didn’t you?”

  “Police report?” I asked. Alarm bells went off in my head. “How do you get a police report?” Michael didn’t answer; he was fast asleep. But I was sitting bolt upright with waves of adrenaline shooting through my veins.

  It had never even crossed my mind to check the waiter’s story. I had simply written down what he’d said and now, too late, I realized it might not have been entirely true. I suddenly remembered the waiter’s avid face; he had been so excited. Perhaps there had been no holdup in the parking lot. The policemen could have been there for other reasons. Maybe a customer had been unable to pay his bill. Maybe they had simply come to question someone about something that had nothing to do with Perino’s. Or . . . the possibilities were endless.
/>   Was it slander or libel when you printed something that was untrue? I didn’t even know. What were the penalties? I was ignorant of that as well. I’d lose my job, of course, but could I get sued? Could I go to jail?

  And then I had a moment of crazy hope. Maybe I hadn’t actually said that a holdup had occurred. Perhaps I had simply quoted the captain talking about the robbery. That was bad, but it was better than a bald statement of fact.

  I sprang out of bed and went into my workroom to read the review. The mockingbird hooted loudly. As I turned on the light a coyote slipped out of the yard and slunk up the road. I picked up the review.

  “A diner, waiting for the valet to fetch his car, was relieved of his wallet at gunpoint,” I read, with a sinking heart. It was worse than I remembered; I had definitely reported a holdup at Perino’s. I heard Bob saying, “Good work,” and wondered what he’d say when he found out what an idiot he’d hired. Danny Kaye would never talk to me again. What had ever made me think I was a reporter?

  It was two A.M. I was awake, turning in circles, wringing my hands. I was so restless inside my own skin that I didn’t know what to do. I felt nauseous, and my head was light. My feet itched. I couldn’t sleep. If only it was a few hours earlier and we could stop the presses. Did they still stop presses? I didn’t even know that.

  Should I call the police now and ask for a police report? No; if it turned out that there was none it wouldn’t look good when I had to go to court. My only excuse was my extreme naïveté and utter stupidity.

  By three A.M. I was convinced that I had imagined the entire episode. There had never been any policemen in the restaurant at all. “You have employed a seriously deranged woman to write reviews for your newspaper,” the owners would write as they demanded millions in damages.

  By four A.M. I was beginning to doubt that I had even been to the restaurant. Did Perino’s even exist? I lay there, my imagination spinning out of control, watching the hands move around the clock, swearing that I would never write another restaurant review.

  “You look pale,” said Michael in the morning.

  “I didn’t have a good night,” I replied.

  “Too excited to sleep?” he asked, snapping open the paper. And there, in black and white, was my article.

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling wanly.

  Driving downtown I thought about the misery I was about to face, about the way my life was going to be altered. When had this job become so precious to me? I was surprised to discover that I liked L.A. and didn’t want anything to change. Even my horrible house suddenly seemed less bad.

  I parked in the lot and dragged myself into the office, flashing my soon-to-be-surrendered ID card at the guard. Who did I think I was, Ruth Reichl? All of a sudden I wanted to be her. After all these months, the thought of moving back to Berkeley was no longer appealing.

  The telephone on my desk was ringing. I picked it up. A deep voice said, “Ms. Reichl? This is Evelle Younger. I am the former attorney general of the State of California.” I dropped the phone as the blood went rushing from my head. My life was over. I bent down and retrieved the receiver. When I put it back to my ear he was saying, “. . . I was in the restaurant the night of the holdup, and I respect the honesty of your reporting . . .”

  “Thank you so much for calling, Mr. Attorney General,” I managed to squeak. “You’ll never know how much it’s meant to me.” And then I went home and slept for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  “It would have been bad,” Michael said, “but not as bad as you imagined. It would have been embarrassing; the paper would have had to print a correction. You probably would have been fired. But in a suit the restaurant would have had to prove malice, and there wasn’t any. Still, promise you’ll do me a favor. You’re a wonderful writer, but next time you decide to play reporter, let me take a look before it goes into print. I deal with hard news every day, and I could have saved you from all this.”

  “I know,” I said. “I was stupid.”

  And then, without knowing that I was going to do it, I leaned over, kissed him, and said, “I’ve been stupid about a lot of things. Will you marry me?”

  DANNY’S LEMON PASTA

  I never asked Danny Kaye for the recipe for his lemon pasta—or for any of the other dishes that he cooked for me. But I loved the pasta so much that one day I simply tried to make it myself.

  It took me a long time to perfect the recipe. It isn’t as good as Danny’s—nothing could be—but it’s the closest I’ve been able to come.

  1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

  1 cup heavy cream

  3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

  1 pound fresh egg fettuccine

  2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest

  salt

  freshly ground black pepper

  freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  Melt the butter in a deep, heavy 12-inch skillet and stir in the cream and lemon juice. Remove the skillet from the heat and keep it warm and covered.

  Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente, 2 to 3 minutes. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking liquid and drain the pasta in a colander. Add the pasta to the skillet with the lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of the pasta cooking liquid and toss well. (Add more pasta cooking liquid 1 tablespoon at a time, if necessary, to thin the sauce.)

  Season the pasta with salt and pepper and serve with Parmesan cheese.

  Serves 4.

  13

  MASHED BANANAS

  We got married in our new house, which was old and gracious, set high up in the hills, with large rooms and expansive views of the San Bernardino Mountains. It was a sunny day; Bruce Cost came down from San Francisco to cook, and the food was so good that Danny said that, at least for the day, our house was the best restaurant in L.A.

  Nancy Silverton baked the cake, and Alice cut it, along with Marion Cunningham and Cecilia Chiang. Watching them pass the slices I had a moment of total happiness. Nick and Jules were there, dressed up in the same clothes they had bought when I’d first become a restaurant critic and we’d started going to fancy restaurants. Colman was there with his wife, standing in the corner talking to Wolfgang and Barbara. My mother was swanning around, looking proud and beautiful, and for a moment I missed my father so much that it was a sharp, physical pain. I found myself looking for Doug, but of course he wasn’t there. I had almost asked him to come, and I suspect that he would have. Just as I would have gone to his wedding a few months later if he had invited me. It was comforting to know that we were still family to each other, and that we always would be.

  After the wedding, life calmed down. I liked working at the newspaper, Michael loved his job, and we both enjoyed living in Los Angeles. We had only one problem: Three years went by and I did not become pregnant.

  * * *

  “You’re old,” said the fertility doctor we finally consulted. “Why did you wait so long? We’ll have to start with a few tests.”

  “Will they hurt?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” he said. And then he conceded, “It’s possible that a couple of them might be a little uncomfortable.” His tone of voice suggested that anyone with a real commitment to having children would gladly endure a bit of discomfort. Especially when she was thirty-nine years old.

  I remembered that tone when the technician said, “You might experience a bit of cramping now,” and began to stick mysterious probes into my body. An electric pain went through me like lightning. I gritted my teeth.

  When nothing remarkable came of those tests we advanced to phase two. This involved expensive drugs and daily six A.M. appointments in a room full of hopeful women. We sat in the clinic, newspapers rustling, watching the clock tick inexorably forward. By nine A.M. the air in the waiting room had become a thick cloud of rage. We were all late for work. “Men would never put up with this,” we muttered, looking up resentfully each time the nurse came to call another name.

  “I told you, drink more wa
ter,” the nurse said every morning as she stared at the mass of bruises on my arms. “You don’t have good veins.” She jabbed at my arm, stabbing in first one place and then another, attempting to take blood. Afterward she brought me down the hall to take pictures of my ovaries, ramming the probe viciously into my vagina. “You can get dressed now,” she said each day when she had done. “See you tomorrow.”

  I was so accustomed to the seeming senselessness of the routine that I was startled to hear something new emerge from her mouth one morning. “They’re blooming,” she said in a lugubrious voice.

  “It’s bad,” I said.

  “No,” she said mournfully, “it means there are eggs. We might be able to do the operation. You’ll have to come back tonight and give more blood.” She looked at my bruised arms and said, her tone canceling her words, “I hope we’ll be able to find a vein.”

  The operations were called “procedures.” They were expensive, painless . . . and unsuccessful.

  “You might want to start thinking about adoption,” said the doctor after the third procedure. “If you wait until you’re forty you’ll be at a disadvantage.” I understood this to mean that he considered me hopelessly infertile. I was, in any case, ready to say good-bye, so I took the piece of paper that he offered. It contained the name of a lawyer specializing in private adoptions. “He’s the best,” said the doctor. “He’s never had one go wrong.”

  “Call me Joshua,” said the lawyer, holding out his hand. He was a sleek, handsome man to whom adoption had clearly been very good. His huge Beverly Hills office was filled with modern art and big leather chairs that swiveled to face expansive windows with fabulous views of the city. He chatted about restaurants for a while, then lowered his voice to a mellower range as he riffled papers on a large, well-polished ebony desk.

  “The point is to sound rich and friendly,” he declared, as he outlined his method. He handed us a list of small newspapers from the South and showed us a sample ad. Our targets were pregnant southern women who lacked either the means or the desire to raise their babies. “You have to emphasize what a wonderful life the baby will have. Remember, you are selling a dream.”