by Ruth Reichl
Her next inspiration was a magazine called Lends You. Mom was baffled when that went nowhere. “You’d think,” she said, bemused, “that people would be entranced by the idea of having Leonard Bernstein lend you his conducting skills and Diana Vreeland lend you her fashion sense. I just don’t understand why they aren’t!”
Next she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, giving slide lectures to various groups around the city. Her specialty was the private lives of artists in the museum’s special exhibitions. This was her own clever idea, but it ended her career.
“I was only telling the truth,” she protested, when informed that her services were no longer needed. Nevertheless, her risqué lecture on Picasso was too much for the administration and Mom decided to use her considerable energies trying to enhance our lives. She entertained, she decorated, she arranged culturally enriching trips. These efforts were not always appreciated.
“What now?” my father asked, when he arrived home one day to find a tree being hauled up the side of our apartment building. He knew right away that it was destined for the eleventh floor. Sure enough, my mother greeted him with the news that she had just purchased a dead birch tree to brighten up our home. “Isn’t it wonderful!” she asked breathlessly, showing off an object that was at least twice as big as the available space. “We can cut it down to size and hang seasonal decorations on it.”
“Wonderful,” he agreed with the appropriate mixture of pride and skepticism.
“And such a bargain!” she added.
Dad wisely refrained from asking how much.
They were always bargains, these things my mother dragged home from her peregrinations around New York City. Or curiosities: whenever my mother came upon some new food she had never seen before, she bought it.
This meant that I was the first person in my class to taste mussels, cactus fruit, sea urchins, and lychee nuts. Mom was also a master of thinking up new uses for familiar foods. Once when I was driving back to college she handed me a can of white asparagus saying, “Take these for the road. You won’t have to stop as often: they’re very thirst-quenching.”
Fortunately we were only sporadically dependent upon my mother for sustenance. The cooking usually fell to me and whichever maid we happened to have. There was a parade of them; most didn’t last more than a few months. And then we met Mrs. Peavey, who came to live with us when I was eight.
She was the world’s most improbable maid, a large woman in her sixties with white-blue hair and a patrician manner. She spoke three languages fluently and would occasionally drop startling little tidbits like “When we stayed with the Rockefellers, tea was always served promptly at four.”
My mother and Mrs. Peavey argued constantly about the proper way to set a table for a party. Mrs. Peavey usually won; she had so much more experience. She proved her mettle the day she tripped coming through the kitchen door, dropping the beef Wellington two feet from where my mother stood waiting to serve it. “I’ll just go and get the other one, Mrs. Reichl,” she said as she scooped up the ruined food and made an exit. My mother nodded miserably.
One minute later Mrs. Peavey reappeared, bearing a new beef Wellington. My mother was dumbfounded. Where had it come from? I watched from behind the kitchen door, holding my breath as my mother dished out the new food. I hoped she would be smart enough not to serve the uncooked pastry Mrs. Peavey had used to patch the broken places.
“Always make extra pastry,” Mrs. Peavey said, patting the new pastry over the bare spots and hiding them with some little ornamental doodads. “You never know what surprises life is going to serve up.”
And it was Mrs. Peavey who taught me how to make my father’s favorite dish. Every time I make wiener schnitzel Mrs. Peavey is by my side, reminding me to pound the veal until it’s thin.
WIENER SCHNITZEL
1½ pounds veal cutlets
½ cup flour
1 egg, beaten
1 cup finely ground bread crumbs
Salt and pepper
6 tablespoons butter
1 lemon
Pound each cutlet thin between two pieces of waxed paper.
Place flour in a flat dish or plate large enough to hold cutlet. Place beaten egg in another dish, bread crumbs in a third. Season each with salt and pepper.
Dredge cutlets in flour. Dip into beaten egg. Dip into bread crumbs until thinly but thoroughly coated. Place on waxed-paper-covered platter and place in refrigerator for about an hour.
Melt 4 tablespoons butter in large skillet. When sizzling, brown cutlets quickly on each side until golden. Remove to platter.
Melt remaining two tablespoons butter in the same pan. Squeeze lemon juice into butter, stir, and pour over cutlets.
Serves 4.
Mrs. Peavey went downstairs every night carrying a huge silver goblet of ice water. The moisture pearled and beaded on the outside of the sterling, which she set on the tile floor next to her bed. My mother, in one of her Ozzie and Harriet moments, had put red and green ticktacktoe linoleum on the basement floor of our summer house; after that she insisted on calling it the rec room. When Mrs. Peavey came to live with us, the rec room became her bedroom, and she always set the goblet right in the middle of the center square.
Unlike Louvinia or Winnie, who preceded her as the family maid, Mrs. Peavey was never called by her first name. And unlike them, my mother did not refer to her as “the girl.”
My mother loved telling Mrs. Peavey stories, even the ones that showed her off to disadvantage. Like the time she asked Mrs. Peavey to make a sweet-potato casserole topped with marshmallows for Thanksgiving dinner and Mrs. Peavey replied that she wouldn’t dream of it. “A horrid middle-class concoction,” she said firmly.
Once Mrs. Peavey insisted on ironing the sheets when my grandmother came to visit. “But we don’t iron our sheets!” my mother protested. “Just because we live like animals,” Mrs. Peavey replied, implacably moving the iron across the smooth white cotton, “is no reason for us to impose our habits on others. A guest is a guest!”
And of course my mother loved complaining about Mrs. Peavey’s habit of turning her day off into a week. Mom’s voice always went down to a whisper when she talked about that. She’d glance in my direction and put a finger to her lips; I understood that whatever Mrs. Peavey did, it was terrible. I couldn’t imagine what it might be. The next time my mother’s voice became audible she was always saying, “And of course that’s why she’s reduced to being a maid.” And then she’d laugh a little bitterly and add, “And my maid at that. Who else would put up with it?”
But the most famous story didn’t involve my mother at all; it was about the time Mrs. Peavey’s three sons came to visit in a chauffeured limousine. It was summer and we were in the country when the long black car came gliding up our driveway. “She knew right away who it was!” my mother always told her rapt audience. “And she asked Ruthie to go out and tell them to go away!”
I saw my reflection in the shiny window of the car, a serious eight-year-old with brown eyes, dirt on both cheeks, clutching a scrawny orange kitten. There was a big square patch on one knee where I had scraped it falling off my bike, and my curly hair was wild. I could see my pot belly sticking out beneath my torn “Singing Oaks” T-shirt and I sucked in my breath as the window silently disappeared.
I peered into the cool darkness where the glass had been. “We promise to only keep her for a minute,” said a voice inside the car. It had come from the man nearest the window. His long sad face looked very old to me, and as he raked his bony fingers through receding gray hair I retreated. “I’ll tell her,” I said, turning so fast that the gravel scrunching beneath my feet flew up and hit the shiny silver hubcaps. I hugged Marmalade as I walked across the driveway and up the flagstone path. Banging the screen door behind me, I went into the narrow pine-paneled kitchen, where Mrs. Peavey was pulling a blackberry pie out of the ancient oven.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.”
I went back
to tell them. The sons were still sitting morosely in the limousine but this time a different one spoke. He had a solid, self-satisfied face and shining silvery hair. Handing a silver dollar out the window he said, “I’ll give you five more if you can get her to just come out here.”
When I showed Mrs. Peavey the money she looked down at her swollen ankles puffing out of her sensible shoes, looked at me, and said, “I see Palmer hasn’t changed.” Her face puckered as if she had eaten a lemon. “If I were you, I wouldn’t take his money. Tell him that he should be ashamed of himself. Tell him I wouldn’t come out for all the tea in China.”
I gave him the message, but I couldn’t bring myself to give him the dollar back. I squeezed the coin hard, pressing it against the inside of my palm. Then the third son gave it a try. The best-looking of the three, he had rosy cheeks, black hair, and deep blue eyes that he fixed on me. “Is she in the kitchen?” he asked. I nodded solemnly. “Does she still make the world’s best brownies?” I nodded again. “I used to be her best helper,” he went on. “I bet you’re her best helper now.” He smiled, showing all his teeth, and said pleadingly, “Don’t you think a mother ought to talk to her children? Tell my mother I miss her. Give her a kiss for me.”
Mrs. Peavey looked sad when I planted the kiss on her papery white cheek. I threw my arms around her solid body and inhaled her powdery scent. “Tell Potter I miss him too,” she said. “Tell him I love him. And tell him I certainly won’t see any of them!” Then she untied her apron, threw it on the counter, and went down to the basement.
The three sons murmured, “What do we do now?” when they heard her final message. Then the window rose, silently and majestically cutting off my view. The chauffeur turned the large black car around. I stood watching for a long time as it disappeared into the trees that edged our narrow, twisting driveway.
The next morning Mrs. Peavey left for her day off. Our house was less than fifty miles from New York but Mrs. Peavey always insisted on going “back to civilization,” making her disdain for our shabby summer house in the Connecticut woods very clear. My mother drove Mrs. Peavey to the station and watched with a worried look as she laboriously hauled herself up the steps of the New York Central train.
“I hope she’s coming back,” my mother said quietly as we climbed back into our old Ford station wagon.
“Did you have a fight?” I asked.
“No,” said Mom.
“Then why are you worried?” I asked. My mother refused to say.
Mrs. Peavey didn’t come back the next day, or the next, or the day after that. My mother banged around the kitchen, serving bloody roast beef, hard potatoes, and peas that were still frozen in the middle. As she vacuumed she murmured imprecations, swearing that this was absolutely it. But when a taxi pulled into the driveway my mother watched silently as Mrs. Peavey came through the living room and walked down the stairs to the rec room. When she came back up wearing her white uniform, Mrs. Peavey polished the candlesticks, made cold poached salmon with dill sauce for my mother and a Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte for my father. Then she read me four stories in French about Bécassine, the foolish peasant. And nobody said anything about anyone being fired.
Summer ended and we went back to New York. I liked it better there. Mrs. Peavey and I shared a bedroom, our twin beds placed toe to toe. Some nights after the lights were out and the cars eleven stories below us were sending shadows racing across the pink ceiling Mrs. Peavey told me stories about her childhood in Baltimore. As I listened I imagined a miniature Mrs. Peavey with long golden ringlets visiting the stables and going to sea in her father’s yacht. I could smell the entrance to the pillared house with its waxed wooden floors and bowls of roses. I could see the blue satin sash on Mrs. Peavey’s pale dress as she danced around a candle-covered Christmas tree. And I could hear the string quartet that came every Sunday to play in the music room.
But I especially loved it when she talked about her wedding.
Mrs. Peavey wore a dress of pale white silk and a veil of lace made by silent French nuns. Her satin train was eight feet long, her carriage was drawn to church by six snow-white horses, and ten men with silver trumpets played as she walked down the aisle. Afterward the guests dined in pink tents on a green lawn and danced in a pavilion at the edge of the bay. “And then,” said Mrs. Peavey, “we cruised off to visit England, France, and Germany.”
Before that summer all the stories ended with the sun setting over a European sea, but in the fall Mrs. Peavey began including Carter, Palmer, and Potter Peavey in her stories. I liked Potter best: he was the one who snuck into the kitchen to help Mrs. Peavey kick out the cook. “Mr. Peavey thought it was slightly eccentric when I started taking cooking lessons,” said Mrs. Peavey. “But he wouldn’t hear of my actually cooking. It just wasn’t done. So Potter and I devised other methods.”
I could see the two of them hustling the cook out the door and dancing around the huge tiled kitchen. “It was such fun!” said Mrs. Peavey. “Before long I became known for having the best cook in Baltimore, and people clamored for invitations.”
When she talked about her kitchen escapades, Mrs. Peavey’s voice always grew younger. “Once the British ambassador came from Washington to dinner,” she said dreamily. “We were only twelve at dinner that night so we decided to honor him by cooking dishes from Queen Victoria’s wedding dinner.”
I watched jealously as she and Potter constructed complicated dishes. I loved the words: galantine, forcemeat, aspic, florentine … I saw them building the iced sweet pudding that was the dessert for the evening, holding my breath as the cherry- and almond-filled creation came tumbling precariously out of its old-fashioned mold. “I was so worried that the cook would spoil it,” Mrs. Peavey admitted, “that I asked the governess to feed the children in the kitchen. I knew Potter could fix anything that went wrong.”
“The cook,” she added darkly, “was always the problem. But the night of the British ambassador went very smoothly. The truth is, she wasn’t much of a cook. She even asked me to teach her French cuisine. I tried,” said Mrs. Peavey, sadly shaking her head, “but she just didn’t have much imagination.”
Watching Mrs. Peavey making gougère in the kitchen, I wondered what imagination had to do with it. Cooking, it seemed to me, was mostly a matter of organization. “Ah,” she said, “it is only because you have imagination that you say that.”
She stirred eggs and cheese into the batter and bent to light the oven. “Be careful!” I called, remembering the time my mother set her hair on fire. Mrs. Peavey straightened up and looked directly at me. “I am not your mother,” she said succinctly. “I do not turn on the gas and then go into the living room looking for matches. Normal people do not set themselves on fire.”
And then, as she leaned into the oven to put the gougère on the rack, she added, “And normal people do not allow eight-year-olds to baby-sit for themselves.”
Mrs. Peavey did not approve of the way my mother had solved her baby-sitter problem. “I just pay Ruthie to take care of herself on the maid’s nights off,” my mother bragged to her friends. “She’s so grown-up.”
I certainly didn’t want to disappoint my mother. So I never said a word as I watched my mother and father dressing for dinner, just held my breath and listened to their usual going-out-to-dinner ritual, wishing that just this once Mom would win.
The ritual went like this. As she looked at the black dress hanging in the closet, Mom would say, “You know, dear, I don’t really feel very well. Why don’t you go without me?”
And Dad would look concerned and tell her how dreary the evening would be without her. “It won’t be any fun without you, darling,” he’d say, urging her to come, for him. I would hang on every word, willing them not to leave. But in the end, no matter how hard I hoped, my mother always allowed herself to be persuaded.
“Don’t go to bed too late, Pussycat,” she’d say gaily, walking out the door in a cloud of perfume. As soon as they were gone I would b
egin running frantically around the house, much too scared to go to sleep, looking nervously in all the closets and underneath the beds.
One night the doorbell rang as I was doing this and I jumped as if someone had snuck up and touched my shoulder. Who could it be? Walking stealthily to the door, I shouted, “Who’s there?” in a very deep voice; I didn’t want the person on the other side to think I was a kid.
“It’s me, Ruthie,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Who’s me?” I asked, wondering how to handle this. It would be embarrassing to turn the person away, frightening to let her in.
“Mrs. Peavey!” she replied in a buoyant tone.
I wasn’t tall enough to reach the peephole so I opened the door a crack. Sure enough, it was Mrs. Peavey, with a tall gaunt man dressed entirely in black who was “My friend Mr. Holly.”
I was relieved to see a familiar grown-up. Mrs. Peavey and Mr. Holly settled themselves in the living room. Mr. Holly admired my mother’s tree and peered at the fading fall leaves my mother had wired to its branches. I listened to them making small talk, happy to have their company and too young to wonder what they were doing there. But even I could tell that Mrs. Peavey was not quite herself. Her pale skin was flushed and she was talking more animatedly than usual. Then she asked if I would like to come out with them for a little while.
I instantly understood that my parents were not to know about this excursion. It was a school night. More than that, I knew that wherever we were going was not a place my parents would approve of. As we were walking to the door Mrs. Peavey stopped and asked, as if it were an afterthought, “Do you have any money in your piggy bank?”
I checked; there was $7.27 in dimes, pennies, and quarters, and the silver dollar I had gotten from Palmer.
