L'America

by Martha McPhee

  At the Persian grocery (which James had found) she selected (and Hunter paid for) pomegranates and barberries and rose water and saffron and a spice known as advieh and candied orange peels and cartons of rice noodle sorbet. She practiced Persian cooking, making feasts for Hunter, turning her interest in Persian cuisine into a passion. (She had already mastered Indian and Italian.) And sitting in her small apartment with the candles flickering and some Mozart playing quietly (chosen by Hunter), Hunter spoke to Beth about her father, remarking on his ambitions and how he was a grand, if mysterious man, and Hunter praised Jackson for saving him simply by allowing him to be nothing, a blank slate that Hunter alone had the authority to color in. (Hunter, for a long time to come, would serve as an investor for Claire, offering financial advice.) Beth loved it when people admired her father. But somewhere, deep inside, she wished he could be for her what he seemed to be for all these other people.

  "What was it like to be his daughter?" Hunter asked. The question startled Beth for an instant. It was an intimate question, in a way. She looked at Hunter. He was a good five years older than she was, heavier than Cesare—a man who had spent too much time drinking beer and at a desk. She could see he had a hairy chest; hair pushed up at his collarbone through the neck of his T-shirt. She could imagine Bea saying, in her charming accent, each word carefully enunciated, "I do not like hairy chests." The mess of their dinner littered the table. She had always thought of Hunter as a privileged, confident man, but looking at him now he seemed vulnerable, and that vulnerability took away from his confidence. At the same time it made her feel she could say anything to him.

  "It sucked," she said, surprising even herself because it had not sucked. It didn't start sucking until Cesare described her family as crazy, until she saw her father's weird experiment through Cesare's eyes and felt branded as its primary guinea pig. "Oh, I don't mean that. It's ambivalence, is all." She paused for a moment. "The ambivalence of age." She was thinking of Cesare, wondering if he would still love her if she had come from an ordinary family.

  "All your age," Hunter joked. "Your very ancient age." He placed his hand on hers. Little pangs of desire shot through her, but she quickly swatted the feelings away. She was in love with someone else. She did not want to feel this; she was not capable of allowing herself to feel anything for another man. James had proved that to her.

  "Everything is on his terms. For god's sake, he's my only parent, and he won't ever come to visit me, see me in my world. Blah, blah, blah. My mother, my father, my mother, my father... I could spend my life on a couch. No thank you. I love him. He's my father." And with that she put to rest, for now, the ambivalence she had just allowed herself to feel.

  On weekends sometimes Hunter would drive Beth to Claire for a visit. During the long drive home they would continue the conversation, compare the freedom of her childhood to the structure of his. Hunter was always curious about her. He asked her so many questions, took such an interest. She grew used to having him nearby.

  "You left," Beth said, meaning Claire. "Does that mean your parents won in the end?"

  "Won?" Hunter asked.

  "They wanted you to leave." Beth had met his parents on a few occasions. Her impression was cursory—enthusiastic people who loved adventure as long as it remained in its place. For example, they would have loved Claire if it did not involve their son, if they had known Jackson as a friend who remained safely at Claire, someone to tell stories to their friends about, to enliven dinner-table conversations. They had tons of money and did not work hard, the mother not at all. She didn't even do charity work. As far as Beth could tell, she slept all day and in the evenings organized dinner parties to entertain herself. Indeed, the father prided himself on earning an enormous salary and working very little—he was in something to do with finance, which, like hedge funds, Beth didn't pay enough attention to to fully comprehend. Hunter's father spent his days collecting things. He collected original maps from the eighteenth century and even earlier, maps drawn by Guillaume de l'lsle, say, or Samuel de Champlain or Nicholas de Fer—names Beth had never heard, but Hunter's father spoke with such authority and enthusiasm about them you seemed fairly to be missing out on life's great pleasures if you did not own a few yourself. "Maps freeze time, history," he said. "And owning the map you get to ponder that frozen moment, daily." The maps were indeed beautiful, etchings and engravings and lithographs, watercolor and gouache, pen and ink and aquatint, satin and parchment. Hunter's father, Palmer, was a short man and handsome like his son with a boyish face and a deep-dimpled smile. He prided himself on his vast knowledge and could speak with authority on almost any subject. At Claire he went around admiring the antiques bought by Short, familiar with their origins and market values. He lifted pillows, upturned mattresses, poked his head under tables—just the way Hunter had done when he first admired Claire's antiques. Watching Palmer, Beth suddenly understood Hunter, understood that his great need to know was sparked by competition with his father—to be wiser, know more, so that his father would never doubt his intelligence.

  Hunter's mother had had a little too much work done on her face and the result was not a good one. She, like the maps, looked frozen, but instead of perpetual youth, her face revealed a certain fatigue, that of a sixty-year-old woman tired by life and by having borne five children. She appropriated her husband's interests in maps and in collecting as a goal and as a principle. "We can leave a mark if we leave behind a significant collection," she was fond of saying. (As it happened, she was also fond of talking about friends of theirs who had become terminally ill.) Hunter's parents assumed everyone collected something and wanted to know, upon meeting Jackson and Beth, what it was they collected. "People," Beth said. "We collect people."

  "And food," Jackson added. "My daughter collects food." Beth looked at her father with warmth, felt a flush of love for him with his long sideburns, his bright eyes. It always surprised her that he understood her interests because the two of them so rarely discussed them. But he knew just when she was devoted to pizzas or pastas or Persian food or Indian. She loved that he watched her so carefully even if from afar. This knowledge added to the complexity of her feelings for him, making her feel that the distance between them was not as great as she often imagined—as did meeting Hunter's parents, who made her realize that there are people out there crazier than her own family. She wondered what Cesare would make of them.

  "They wanted me to get back on my feet, thought I was afraid after the Boesky fiasco," Hunter said. The drive along I-80 took them through rolling farmland and then vast stretches of pine, as they rose into the Poconos and slipped down to the Delaware Water Gap. "I certainly didn't leave because I suddenly became unafraid."

  "So you were afraid?"

  "I fell really hard. You make a lot and then you have nothing and everyone thinks you're a scoundrel when they used to love you. It's hard on the ego."

  "Why did you ever leave Claire then? Why did you ever go back to Wall Street?"

  "Because I wanted to be near you," he said. She shivered, the truth so blatantly acknowledged.

  "Near me?" she said. But I'm in love with Cesare, she thought, though she said nothing.

  "I know," he said, reading her mind. And she looked at him, sweet blond man with all that hair pushing out of his shirt and his ferocious need to know all about everything to surpass his father who knew maps deeply and everything else quite well. Somewhere, however, she wanted to know what it was about her that he wanted to be near. "Simple you're not afraid," he would have answered.

  In New York, he dropped her off at her apartment, seeing her into the building. Surrounded by the strong scent of cat piss and garbage in the vestibule, she gave him a quick kiss and then disappeared, fast, up the stairs, frightened by what seduced her.

  American Express gave her a credit card, which made her feel instantly rich and unwise. She promptly used the card at her favorite store, a French boutique on Madison, to buy far more clothes than she could p
ossibly afford. The clothes made her feel like a doll. She bought little cashmere suits and flared pants with matching jackets with enormous buttons in white, sheer shirts she would only wear a lacey bra beneath so that you could just see it shimmering against her chest. She threw out all her old clothes. She didn't care if she went into debt. New York could do this to you. She got a Visa card and transferred the balance from the American Express because it had to be paid off every month whereas the Visa did not. After the breakup of Ma Bell in 1984 telephone companies vying for customers were paying people to switch carriers and Beth quickly learned to profit from it. Before long she was switching between companies on a monthly basis in order to take advantage of the offers—fifty dollars from one, one hundred dollars from another—feeling quite proud of all she was saving, making even. Finally, she got rid of her street furniture, replacing it with castoffs from her grandmother and from Claire. She wanted her world to look beautiful. Always, she bought flowers from her Korean grocer on the corner. The saleswoman there had come to know Beth, loved her smile, and gave her little extras—apples, dried mangoes, bananas. The credit freed Beth and she accepted no more presents from Hunter. She told him that she loved him like a brother and asked him to be just her friend.

  "So it was the money you were after," he said, teasing her. He scooped her up and kissed her on the cheek. "Like a good brother," he explained, adding: "If you don't want the money, I'll quit my job."

  "No, no. Don't quit your job. You're going to have to get me out of debt someday." He laughed and she laughed and their relationship was resolved and she felt happy to know that he was there (as a brother).

  "Wait until he finds a girlfriend," Sylvia said to Beth over the phone all the way from California (a free call, thanks to Beth's schemes).

  "That would be a relief. When are you visiting?"

  "When I sell my novel. And you?"

  "Once I open a restaurant and it gets a great review."

  "Trapped by the poverty of youth."

  "I miss you."

  "He loves you."

  She started having dinner parties with friends from work, with friends from college who had returned to New York after having had their post-graduation flings with other cities, with friends of Hunter's though she always (mistakenly) believed she would have nothing to say to the investment bankers, would have no idea how to talk their language. She made elaborate meals, Persian, of course. She learned the names of the dishes: kashk-o bademjan and borani-e esfenaj, kukuye sabzi, run-e bareh. She wanted her apartment to be like a culinary salon. She became extravagant, hunting down Persian caviar, beluga and sevruga, serving it with vodka and champagne (Dom Perignon supplied by Hunter, of course). For atmosphere, she would put on some Persian music and place all the food in the center of the table along with platters of fresh herbs and rose petals scattered here and there.

  Indian feasts were another of her specialties. Wanting people to know the pleasures that lay beyond the familiar pilafs and curries and vindaloos, she introduced them to more authentic, exotic dishes like idli upma and bhel puri, kararee bhindi, Malabar salmon and Gobi lahsuni (she loved the names), to chutneys with sour pears and tomatoes and coconut. She was eager, if asked, to explain the subtle science of their spices, of cilantro and tamarind and mustard seed and cumin and coriander. Her apartment always smelled exotic. Regularly she would make nine-curry meals and ask everyone to use their fingers, explaining why. Beth relied on lessons picked up from Preveena and Nasim, supplemented by urgent calls to them at Claire. Beth and her friends would have long conversations by candlelight late into the night, talking about books and politics and local restaurant gossip: who had been reviewed, what young stars were shooting up, who was writing a cookbook, what advance she had been paid, what new food store was opening. The food people—friends from Lago primarily, kitchen help like Beth, all of whom took food seriously and wanted someday to be the chef—rarely tried to hide their jealousy of the latest young chef who was rocketing toward the culinary stratosphere and they were endlessly critical of any new restaurants even if they hadn't tried them.

  "Zoo is a zoo and what a name."

  "I'm more talented than that guy. I can tell you that, even at my worst."

  "It's because of who he is."

  "Who is he?"

  "Jake McFundy's son."

  "He's male. It's because he's male." Out for the evening, away from the restaurant and Cosella and silent Leo, they would all feel a certain freedom as if they owned themselves again, as if their futures really were their own. Inevitably though they'd start talking about Cosella and the latest insult she had thrown at one of them. Old stories and new stories, Beth's story of the trust fund, would come bubbling up; even off work, they weren't free of Lago.

  Someone would change the subject. A relief. They'd argue about French cuisine and the techniques—clarifying butter, beating egg whites in ice, beating egg yolks in a bath of warm water—using Julia Child to support themselves or dismissing her entirely as elitist. "I don't agree with her, but elite she is not." And then she'd be described by someone who had met her, even if briefly, perhaps even just a handshake. (Secretly Beth had decided she wanted to become the Julia Child of Italian cuisine.)

  They talked until there was nothing left to say and they felt glutted and a little dirty and futile. Hunter would pour glasses of Armagnac and change the subject to the theater and the ballet and the opera and the latest exhibit at the Guggenheim, none of which the foodies could afford or had much time for, but they would be relieved to no longer be fixated on the successes of others, and they would listen to the bankers talking about the arts and making comments (not mean) about the size of Beth's studio, enjoying the intimacy, the idea of slumming it.

  After the meals Beth would give each of them a finger bowl and drip rose water into their palms. She loved entertaining: loved the days of thought and preparation; loved choosing what to wear, making the meal, setting the table with all the silver and all the candles, hanging (ironed) linen towels in the bathroom, lighting dozens of votive candles, placing them here and there; loved especially the appreciation afterward. "I want to marry Beth," someone would always declare. She would not let the size of her apartment stop her from what she wanted to do most. Most of all, she loved the romance of food, especially of Persian and Indian cuisine, the deep history, the sensuous quality of the flavors and of using your hand and a piece of nan or a branch of fresh dill in lieu of a fork. But Italian was always her strength.

  Through Hunter she heard of another illegal sublet on the Upper West Side. With two bedrooms, a living room and a dining room, this one had four times the space of the studio, and, best of all, it cost only five hundred dollars per month. Beth had grown wise to the ways of the city: with a roommate to pay the rent, she could live rent-free and not need to worry about finding another waitressing job. So she did just that and more. Instead of giving up the apartment on York Avenue she sub-sublet it, illegally, of course, for double what she paid to Georgia Lazar, and thus she was not only not paying rent, she was making enough money each month to be able to live on her Lago salary. Promptly she went to her French boutique on Madison and bought another outfit, a pleated black skirt covered with the finest white polka dots and a matching shirt. She bought a black leather jacket and a pair of shoes. She went back to the salon with the borzois and had her hair bobbed to just above her chin. She looked French. In her new apartment she hosted a Persian dinner for ten. She loved New York.

  A year later she lost this apartment because the building belonged to Columbia University and she was renting it from professors who had long since left Columbia. The school had finally caught up with them. Hunter set Beth up with a realtor who adored her the instant she met her simply because of Beth's determination to attain the unrealistic: "I want to find something big and beautiful and cheap," Beth declared.

  "I have just the thing but you'll never be able to afford it," the realtor responded. "Unless, of course, you can get that c
ute man who's in love with you to pay for it." The realtor was a large woman with thin reddish hair and a slight smile that seemed almost a smirk. She had had three husbands consecutively and from each husband she had a son. The husbands were Turkish, Israeli, and Spanish respectively. "I'm making my way west," she explained. "The next husband will be American." What she really wanted was to be a painter.

  "Tell me about it?" Beth asked referring to the apartment.

  The apartment was several blocks south of where she lived now, three times again as large, with windows facing south, views of the Empire State Building, views to the west of the Hudson, three bedrooms, a formal dining room, and a large living room. The rent was not much, but still beyond her budget. She calculated in her head, as she wandered from room to room, lingering at the windows to admire the view, that simply by getting two roommates and by having them pay the rent she could live rent-free again in grander style still.

  "I want it," she said.

  "Fifteen thousand cash in a paper bag," the realtor replied, with that knowing smirk of hers. The real estate deal involved placing all those thousands in the paper bag and handing it off to a man in a long dark leather coat on the corner of 103rd and Broadway near the one line. He, in turn, handed Beth a large envelope in which, she hoped, she would find the lease (rent stabilized) in her name and the keys. He had the longest, most delicate fingers she had ever seen on a man. His fingernails were manicured. Only reluctantly did he let go of the envelope. Then he vanished down the stairs into the subway station and she never saw him again. She had borrowed the money from Hunter (he did not advise this transaction), agreeing to pay him back each month with the money she earned off of her York Avenue apartment and from her tenants. (Eventually Hunter referred to the various tenants as "Beth's mules.") The night she got the keys she invited him over. The apartment was still empty, the late sun poured through the windows (it was summer). She plugged in a boom box, slipped in a cassette of Chopin, put on her shimmering black-tasseled thrift-store gown and waltzed from room to room until Hunter arrived with champagne. He opened all the windows and a gentle breeze rushed in from downtown. She kissed him that night. One small kiss, that was all. One small kiss that did not make her feel shocks and stabs and jabs, that did not leave her hungry. Rather the kiss, small as it was, seemed to wrap around her like water, like that gigantic Colorado sky draping the earth. "I'm sorry," she said, pushing back from him.