by Ruth Reichl
“Bring it along,” said Mrs. Peavey gaily. As I handed her the money she said, “I’ll pay you back next week.” She smelled like peppermint LifeSavers.
It was a dark, chilly night. We walked west on Tenth Street to Sixth Avenue and made a left. Just across from the Women’s House of Detention was a sign that said GOOGIE’S beneath a huge pair of red neon spectacles.
“We’re going to a bar?” I asked.
“Why not?” asked Mrs. Peavey. I could have offered any number of reasons, but decided not to. We went in and Mr. Holly lifted me up to one of the tall, Naugahyde-covered barstools. He ordered Perfect Manhattans for them and a Shirley Temple for me.
The air was cool, smoky, and dusty blue. Mrs. Peavey was so jolly it seemed as if she had put on a new personality. When she excused herself to go to the bathroom she went down the length of the bar with a word and a smile for everybody along the way. Watching her, Mr. Holly leaned over and said, “What a wonderful woman!”
I could smell the sweet liquor on his breath, mingled faintly with aftershave and cigarettes. I nodded. “I tell her that I’m not good enough for her,” he said mournfully, looking more skeletal than ever, “but she says that she has had enough of being rich to last her a lifetime.”
I kept very still, thinking that perhaps if I didn’t say anything he might keep talking.
“Imagine that husband of hers leaving all the money to the boys!” mused Mr. Holly, almost to himself. “He was going to be so smart, avoiding the taxes. And then those little pricks thought they could tell her how to live! Why—”
He stopped abruptly as Mrs. Peavey returned. “One more drink,” she said cheerfully, “and then I think it’s time to take Ruthie home. She has school tomorrow.”
The bartender draped half a dozen cherries around the rim of my Shirley Temple and I sipped it slowly, wishing Mrs. Peavey would go back to the bathroom. It had never occurred to me to ask if Mr. Peavey was still alive, or wonder how he had died. But I got no more information that evening.
Mrs. Peavey did not come back the next day. Or the next. For almost a week I came home from school every day, put my key into the lock, and wondered what I would find on the other side of the door. I’d stick my nose in first and sniff hopefully, wishing for the smell of cooking. Instead it was just my increasingly irritable mother with a long list of errands for me to do and lamb chops, again, for dinner.
On the third day I ran to Mrs. Peavey’s closet to make sure her dresses were still there. I put my face against the sagging cotton shapes with their pale tiny flowers and inhaled the reassuring smell. Then I went into the bedroom, where my mother was polishing her short nails with blue-red polish, and asked if I could make dinner.
“You?” she asked, waving her hands in the air so her fingernails would dry. “What will you make?”
“Wiener schnitzel,” I said boldly. “And green salad. And brownies for dessert.”
My mother looked amused. “Why not?” she said. I held my hand out for the money and she nodded toward her nails and told me to take what I needed from her wallet.
I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and walked up the street to the Daitch Supermarket on University Place. As I walked through the store I experienced a delicious moment of freedom. I felt very grown-up as I wandered the aisles. I strolled past the meat counter and found some pale, pearly scallops of veal. I bought bread crumbs and a lemon; I was going to impress my father by making his favorite dish.
But walking home, the bag of groceries banging against my leg, I panicked. I had forgotten to ask the butcher to pound the meat, and I didn’t know how to do it myself. And how was I going to make the bread crumbs stick? My mother would be no help. I needed Mrs. Peavey.
Amazingly, when I got home, she was there. The air in the apartment was heavy and it crackled as it swirled around my mother and Mrs. Peavey, but I had missed the storm. When I walked into the kitchen Mrs. Peavey lifted the bag of groceries out of my arms and said simply, “What are we going to make for dinner?”
“I’m going out,” my mother called from the hall. Mrs. Peavey did not answer. My mother slammed the door.
“Wiener schnitzel,” I said.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Peavey, “the secret is getting the veal thin and the oil hot. The Viennese are really wonderful cooks.” As she moved around the kitchen she hummed a German children’s song about a horse and rider.
“Where were you?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come back?”
Mrs. Peavey took the big iron skillet out of the cupboard and unwrapped the meat. “Get some waxed paper,” she ordered. She tore off a large piece of the paper and laid it on the counter. She put the meat on it and placed another layer of paper on top. “Now watch,” she commanded.
She lifted the skillet above her head and brought it crashing down on the meat. The sound reverberated throughout the small kitchen. She picked up the skillet and showed me how thin the meat was. “You have to do it a couple of times to get the meat really, really thin,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.” She lifted the skillet again and brought it down on the paper; the meat had become even thinner.
When all the veal had been pounded, she got a platter and three large soup dishes out of the cupboard. She filled one dish with flour, one with bread crumbs, and broke an egg into the third. Seasoning each dish with salt and pepper, she dredged the cutlets in the flour and then dipped each one in the beaten egg. She handed me the first cutlet and said, “You do the bread crumbs.” I carefully rolled the sticky piece of meat in crumbs and laid it on the platter.
When all the meat had been breaded, Mrs. Peavey put the platter in the refrigerator. “It’s much better if you let the meat rest before you cook it,” she said, rinsing her hands and patting them on her apron. “Don’t forget that. This is your father’s favorite dish and somebody in the house should know how to make it properly. Here, I’ll write the recipe down for you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that and I sat down in one of the rickety metal chairs and watched sadly as she wrote.
When she was done, Mrs. Peavey poured me a glass of cranberry juice, filled her silver goblet with ice and water, and sat down at the kitchen table. “I thought I’d have longer to explain,” she said at last. “But it’s not your mother’s fault.”
“Explain what?” I asked.
“Why I’m here,” she said simply. “Why I’m leaving.”
Something inside me had known that she had not come back for good. “Don’t leave me,” I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. I just looked at her dumbly. “I can’t be a maid,” she said. “I just can’t. It is time for me to make a change.”
“What will you do?” I asked.
She took a deep breath and looked straight at me. “I am going to do what I should have done when Mr. Peavey died. I am going to be a cook.”
She looked proud and noble as she said it. I believed that she could. “What about Mr. Holly?” I asked.
“He is not part of my plan,” she said softly. “I will have to change other aspects of my life as well.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I pictured Mr. Holly in the permanent midnight of Googie’s. Then I pictured Mrs. Peavey in the big tiled kitchen in Baltimore. They did not go together.
“You mean you won’t be going to Googie’s anymore?” I asked.
“I will not,” she said. She hugged me. “I’ve joined an organization that will help me keep my resolution.” She sat up straight, as if someone had just told her to pay attention to her posture. She folded her hands on the table.
“Now,” she said, “there are three things I want to tell you before I leave. The first is not to let other people tell you how to live your life.”
“You mean,” I asked, “that you should not have pretended that the cook was doing the cooking?”
“Something like that,” she replied. “The second is that you have to look out for yourself.” I thought of her three sons in their big limousine.
“And t
he third?” I asked.
“Don’t forget the extra pastry when you make beef Wellington.” She reached out and hugged me. The she picked up her silver goblet and clinked it hard against my glass of juice. The sound was pure and lovely.
MARS
In 1960 when you flew to France you stopped first in Gander, Newfoundland, and then in Shannon, Ireland. It was a long trip.
To an almost-thirteen-year-old it seemed even longer. We spent Christmas in France that year—the dollar was strong and my mother had found a bargain rate at the Ritz.
My two most vivid memories of the trip involve haute couture and haute cuisine. The clothing connection came through a woman named Ginette Spanier, directrice of Maison Balmain. Mom, in some moods, was the world’s friendliest person; she talked to everyone. One night she sat next to Ginette in the Ritz bar and the next thing I knew we were being whisked off to the rue François-Ier. “They’re having a sale of the dresses the models wore down the runway,” Mom whispered excitedly in the taxi. “They should fit you just perfectly.”
They did. Where my mother expected a thirteen-year-old girl to wear the suit she bought I’ll never know, but she could not resist a bargain. It was a beautiful outfit. The rust-colored jacket had leather buttons and the green plaid blouse was made of soft wool and buttoned up the back. The skirt was rust-colored too, with a band of green plaid running around the hem; I kept looking at it, trying to find the seam, but as far as I could tell it was a single piece of cloth woven in a tube.
My mother was palpably pleased to be inside a house of haute couture. I could already imagine her voice as she said, casually, to her friends, “When Ruthie and I went for the final fitting at Balmain …” I gritted my teeth. The fittings took hours.
When we went for the final fitting Dad looked miserable; I knew he wished he were looking at art. “Ernst, why don’t you just leave,” Mom said irritably. Dad looked at me, helplessly, over her head. I stared back, thinking how much more fun it would be at the museum than in this warm room with women kneeling at my feet. I imagined myself floating down the stairs in front of the Winged Victory like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. Dad and I looked at each other and then shrugged simultaneously. I was stuck; he wasn’t. Dad left, looking guilty.
The fitting took so long that we had to go straight from Balmain to dinner. Dad was waiting for us at La Belle Aurore with a glass of champagne in his hand; I could see the worry in his eye and the tentative set to his head. He was wondering what price he would pay for pleasing himself. When my mother looked at him flirtatiously and said, “Champagne, what a good idea,” he looked incredibly relieved. He jumped up to pull out her chair.
Disaster was always simmering just below the surface and we cherished every peaceful moment with my mother. By then we were starting to suspect the truth, that my mother was a manic-depressive, but neither of us knew what to do about it. When lithium entered our lives a few years later we were deeply grateful: up to then we both believed, in our secret hearts, that my mother’s moods were our personal responsibility. Mom never knew who she was going to be when she woke up in the morning and Dad and I danced around, doing our best to avert trouble. When we somehow managed to do it we were so grateful we grew giddy with relief.
In moments like this I often said too much. I did now. “I wish I spoke French the way you and Daddy do,” I babbled. More than anything I was trying to flatter her; her French was fluent from the years she had spent at the Sorbonne but even I could tell that her accent was awful. Something lit up briefly in my mother’s face and I wondered what she was thinking. But she didn’t say anything and I concentrated on the food.
The meal we had ordered was incredibly rich, but I thought it was perfect. We had lobster bisque, filet of sole dugléré and a lemon soufflé that I thought was the most amazing thing I had ever eaten. I liked it so much that Mom asked if the chef could give us the recipe. “Mom!” I said, with that teenage whine. She waved me away.
“You could make this,” she said.
I would have, too. But I never got the chance. Because a few weeks after we came back from Europe my mother sent me to Mars.
LEMON
SOUFFLÉ
6 eggs
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
¾ cup milk
¼ cup lemon juice
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon rind
Pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 425°.
Separate eggs carefully; if there is the tiniest bit of yolk in the whites they will not beat properly, so be sure to separate them thoroughly and to put the whites into an extremely clean, dry bowl. You will need all of the whites but only 4 yolks. Eggs are easiest to separate when cold, but they are easier to beat at room temperature so do this step first to allow the yolks to warm up.
Butter a 1½-quart soufflé mold very well. Throw in a handful of sugar and shake the soufflé dish until it has a thin coating of sugar. Shake out excess. Set aside.
Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pan. Add the flour and whisk until well blended. Slowly stir in milk. Cook, stirring, until the mixture has almost reached the boiling point and has become thick and smooth.
Add lemon juice and sugar and cook for 2 minutes more. Remove from heat, add vanilla, and cool slightly.
Add 4 egg yolks, one at a time, beating to incorporate each one before adding the next. Add lemon rind, then return the pan to the stove and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute more over medium heat. Remove and let cool.
Add a pinch of salt to the 6 egg whites and beat with a clean beater until they form soft peaks. Stir a quarter of the egg whites into the sauce, then carefully fold in the rest.
Pour into the soufflé mold and set on the middle rack of the oven. Turn heat down to 400° and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the top is nicely browned and the soufflé has risen about 2 inches over the top of the dish.
Serve immediately.
Serves 4 to 6.
Two weeks after my thirteenth birthday Jeanie and I came giggling out of junior high school surrounded by our friends. It was a Friday, and we had big plans. Hot fudge sundaes and then a slow stroll down Eighth Street, looking in the windows of the beatnik jewelry stores.
But my mother was waiting on the sidewalk. Even though it was late January, she was wearing her big poppy-covered straw hat so I wouldn’t miss her. Nobody could. “We’re going to Montreal for the weekend,” she said. She had a suitcase by her side.
“Wow,” said Jeanie, wistfully, “lucky you.” Then she smiled bravely and said, “Have fun,” in a little voice that made me realize that her weekend was ruined and she envied me going off on a great adventure. I wasn’t so sure.
We took the train, riding through fields that got whiter and bleaker as we sped north. By the time we crossed the border it was snowing hard and the immigration inspectors got on the train stamping their feet and blowing on their hands, the tips of their ears red above their earmuffs. My mother flirted with them a little as she showed our papers. I pulled my coat over me and went to sleep.
When I woke up, the train was pulling into the station in the gray early morning light and Mom was putting on lipstick, using the window for a mirror. She took a little on her finger, daubing it across her cheeks like rouge. “I look so tired,” she explained. I wondered, sleepily, who she was dolling herself up for. “Aren’t we going to a hotel?” I asked.
“Later,” she said, climbing into a cab.
We pulled up in front of a three-story brick building on a broad avenue. Across the street people streamed up the steps of a huge domed cathedral, but the sidewalk on our side was deserted and there were no signs to indicate what it was. Then my mother opened the taxi door and the chant of children’s voices came sweeping out from behind the building. I fell back onto the seat, away from the door. I wanted the taxi to turn around and go straight back to the station.
But Mom
pulled me after her, out of the cab, through a gate and to a door. She rang the bell. A tall, hawk-faced woman, her hair chopped off just below the ears, peered suspiciously out at us. “Oui?” she inquired, wadding up a white handkerchief and stuffing it up the sleeve of her blue cardigan. The sour smell of disinfectant came rushing toward me; behind the woman I could see a line of girls in blue filing silently up a staircase. It looked like something from the Charles Dickens books we had been reading in Mrs. Perrin’s class. I shivered. The only French I knew was from the books that Mrs. Peavey had read to me, so I could not understand the negotiations between my mother and the hawk-faced woman. But it was pretty clear that this was a school, and clearer that my mother meant me to attend it.
Outside, the taxi was waiting. It had started to snow again and we twisted through pretty streets muffled in white. The taxi pulled up in front of a hotel that shimmered and gleamed as if it had been carved out of sugar. My mother adjusted her hat as a bellhop led us through the high-ceilinged lobby and down long halls carpeted in red.
“Why?” I asked my mother. “Why do I have to go there?”
“You said in Paris that you wanted to learn French,” she said.
“I didn’t mean …” I said hesitantly. And then, “Does Daddy know about this?”
“You were the one who said you wanted to learn French,” said Mom. “And Daddy agrees that it will be useful in the future if you speak a foreign language.” She turned, as if there were no more to be said. “Just look at this glorious tub!” She began opening all the jars and potions in the sumptuous marble bathroom and then we went off to spend the afternoon shopping for school uniforms. They were loathsome navy jumpers with three big pleats in the front and I hated them on sight.
Mom spent the weekend trying to cheer me up. She took me out to dinner. She took me to see My Fair Lady. But Sunday night, after pickles, potatoes, and big, bloody steaks at a famous Montreal restaurant named Moishe’s, I went back to the hawk-faced woman and my mother went back to New York.
