Last Bender

8.4

We unloaded the car and she supervised the provisioning of the kitchen. “Those go over here, these go over there,” pointing at cabinets and the pantry. On the counter, next to the stove, was a giant leg of lamb lying in blood on an open piece of brown butcher paper. Next to it was a capon sitting on a roasting rack.

“Joseph, take all the bags up to the rooms. Alex and Sally can have the attic; you will have to sleep in the study. I hadn’t expected Lydia and her friend. Will it be all right if you share a room?” she asked.

“Ma, I think we might even share the bed like we do at home.”

“Of course. It may be a bit tight.”

“Not in a long time,” Lydia mumbled, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

“So,” Cynthia continued, “All the linens are done, they’re in the big closet on the second floor. And the towels are in the small closet by the bathroom. There’s toilet paper and soap in there too.”

“Whuddya want us to do?” Lydia asked.

“I don’t know. Go talk to your father. Alex, will you help me with the roasts while Sally does the haroseth?”

I agreed readily. Sally and I went up to the attic, which was more or less finished: freezing in winter and a kiln in the summer. There was a space heater and a heap of blankets. The pitch of the ceiling was steep and the rafters were open but clean. There was a futon on a tatami matt and a low bamboo table with a clock radio on it. There was track lighting and dimmers and two skylights. Joseph handed us our linens and we made up the bed and went down to the kitchen to make dinner. The dining room table was covered with china, serving bowls and platters, and silverware laid out on felt. There was a yellowed rag and a can of polish. At the other end were tablecloths and candlesticks and Haggadas. On the sideboard were wine and water glasses. A bar was set up in the living room with plastic cups, gin, vodka, vermouth and scotch. There were plastic cups with cut limes and lemons, Spanish olives and even pearl onions. There was a martini pitcher.

The cobalt cover of The New York Times Cookbook was open on the dark red, acrylic countertop.  “How many minutes per pound for lamb?” she asked. “I know it’s in here somewhere.” She flipped the pages, and said, “Well, this is how I always cook lamb, how I learned growing up. You brown it in a hot oven, 475, 500, then finish at 325. You have to let it rest 20 minutes; a half hour is better, if it’s big like this. But don’t go too long, the fat congeals. Here’s all the stuff to put on it.” She handed me a tray with lemons, garlic and rosemary. “Use the olive oil by the stove and cut off some of the fat. I’ll show you how to do the garlic.”

“OK.”

“Did you wash your hands?”

I washed them and lifted it off of the butcher paper and put it in a roasting pan. I wadded up the bloody paper and threw it away and examined the meat.

“Before we put that in the oven, I have to roast some shanks. Tell me when you’re done with it and we can work on the capon. There’s also a side of salmon, but I’m going to poach that in white wine.” She got out her shanks, seasoned them and put them in the wall oven, which was set to 500. “Thank god for the wall oven,” she said. Smoke started to pour out the top. She set up a fan and put on the hood vent over the stove and propped open the door to the mudroom. She went back to trimming leeks. “How’s the haroseth coming?”

“Fine,” Sally said.

I used the chef’s knife to trim the fat. The roast was cold and a little sticky. The fat was hard and thick, a dull white rind that softened some as I trimmed it. I was still slow in the kitchen and a little repulsed by things in their whole state. I had cleaned fish and jointed chickens and cut boneless roasts into cubes. But I had no feel for it; it was all done with the eyes and words. I didn’t feel the musculature of the leg, I saw a big bloody animal stripped of its hide. The knife sliced through the fat. I used a paring knife to make slits and started to peel and slice the garlic.

I watched Cynthia work. She didn’t seem to pay much attention to what she was doing but what she was doing she did very fast, and everything looked great. She said, “When you’re done with it Sally, put it in the bowl we always put it in, it’s out there on the table, I saw it earlier; and start on the horseradish. Use the Cuisinart that’s over there in the cabinet by the door, behind the mixer.”

“I hate grating horseradish. It always makes me cry.”

“You’re thinking of the onion for latkes.”

“No I’m not.”

“So where was Lydia? Where is she now?” Cynthia asked.

“You sent her out to dad.”

“Where was she?”

“I think she wants to tell you herself.”

“It always has to be this way with her. Putting on a show. I’m weary of it. It’s been nonstop since she was two.”

“You don’t know what she’s going to say!” Sally said.

“Don’t I? But if it’s something different…is she OK? In trouble with the law? She wasn’t attacked or hurt was she?”

“She’s fine,” I said. I was massaging the cold meat pretty vigorously.

“Relax with the meat, Alex,” she said. “No need to pound.”

“Right. I think I’m done.” My hands were covered in olive oil and black pepper and slivers of garlic and rosemary.

She pulled the shanks out of the oven and closed it. The meat hissed in burning fat. She took them out with tongs and piled them on a plate and tossed the metal roasting pan into the sink, which was half-filled with clean soapy water and erupted with steam. “Put that aside Alex and do the capon. Squeeze lemons all over it, inside and out, and make sure the lemon juice gets in everywhere. Make it like you’re giving it a sponge bath with lemon halves. Then rub it inside and out with salt and we’ll let it sit breast side down in that for a few hours.”

I had never handled a capon before. It looked almost like a small turkey, except it had the shape and color of a chicken. Are the capons the schemers of the flock, the cronies and the choirs, the flunkies of Chanticleer? “This castrati was a friar,” I said.

They groaned. The vapour of shredded horseradish and the whine of the machine filled the air. I started to tear up. There was a crunching sound in the driveway. Cynthia shook the water off of the leeks and tossed them in a large steel bowl with olive oil and salt and put them around the leg of lamb. “I’m going to go low heat and put these leeks in around it, it’ll be easier that way.”

“Knock knock,” came a voice.

“Simone? It’s Simone. Come in.”

A tall woman with blond hair and a flamboyant fuchsia hat and a face very like Cynthia’s entered clutching two shopping bags in each hand. “I brought wine, and nuts.”

“Put them down on the floor not too close to the door. So are they coming in? You didn’t bring them?”

“No-uh. He insisted on driving. He said, ‘I didn’t rent a car so it could sit in a driveway in Fort Lee.’ He’s a menace. He was bad when he was younger and he’s worse now. But you can’t take a license away from the elderly it seems.”

“Well, we’ll be there soon enough,” Cynthia said. “When did they leave?”

“I don’t know, but he can’t drive home in the dark. I told him that. I hope you have room.”

“I–” she sighed. “I did have room but now that Lydia and that girlfriend of hers, Maureen, are staying the night I don’t know where to put them. I don’t know who’s more irritating, dad or Lydia. I’ll call the Tradewind and see if they have a room. I’m sure that they do. It’s just.”

“I know. He won’t go. I have to have a cigarette.” They looked at each other. “I’ll go out to the driveway. Hi Sally. And are you the Alex I’ve heard so much about?”

“Quite possibly.”

“I’m Cynthia’s sister Simone.” She reached out her hand and I shook it. “They probably haven’t told you about me. I’m the boring one. Be right back.”

“The rooms are done,” Joseph said.

Cynthia washed her hands and patted them on her apron. “OK. Polish the rest of the silver then and we’ll have to put the leaves in the table, and lay out the pads.”

“I can do that,” he said.

“It’s the breakage.” She was barely audible.

Joseph laughed. “Argh! I’m going to break the plates one by one.”

“Fine, do it, just be careful.”

“First I’m going to smoke with boring old Auntsie Moan.”

“Simone!” Cynthia said. “Smoking with children. You are so bad. Are you hungry Alex? You didn’t eat lunch. Did you have breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry. I’ve been picking.”

“I hope you haven’t been picking lamb fat.”

“Bread actually. I’ve been tearing off the back of a loaf.”

She laughed. “Will you boil two dozen eggs then please?”

“But there are only 14 of us I thought?” Sally said.

“Oh, but I just love hard boiled eggs don’t you? And I only make them for Passover.”

“I’ll bet you’re coloring them on the sly,” Lydia said coming in from the driveway with Joseph and Simone. “It’s like a smokers’ club out there. You should install an ashtray.”

“I’ll put you in charge of that, Lydia,” said Cynthia.

“I can help polish the silver. I promise not to steal it, or inhale.”

Cynthia relaxed her shoulders and smiled. “Yes, of course, go help Joseph polish the silver.”

“Yeah, we Jews love to polish our silver,” Sally yelled.

“Look, I got ten, if you got ten that makes twenty,” I said.

“That is tasteless,” Simone said. “And colourless and odourless too.”

“All right, if you’re not cooking, out!” thundered Cynthia.

“I’m ready for a little sacrilegious wine,” Simone said. “Polish your shekels in the living room and I’ll sit with you.”

Cynthia had the side of salmon out on the counter and frowned. “They didn’t scale it very well.” With Stoic efficiency and control of her choler she scaled it, and washed it in the sink. The enormous fillet when draped over her hand still hung a foot down on either side. She laid it out on a platter and said, “Lemons and dill,” and smiled. Then she set about making the court bouillon in a giant fish poacher. “Peel and quarter two onions Alex, and get four carrots, and four stalks of celery. Cut them into pieces like this,” she held her fingers apart 3 or 4 inches. She opened a bottle of white wine and glugged it into the poacher, then another. She threw in some peppercorns, a pinch of sea salt, a bay leaf and a bouquet garni that came hog-tied in thread, something she had brought home from Provence, along with some moutard. “It would be good to have some wild Sicilian finocchio.”

Sally washed parsley and we made matzo balls. We cooked together as we drove together, a nervous but sustainable collaboration. We took turns reading the recipe.

“How many eggs?” I asked.

“It says six.”

“Is that a six then?”

“Yes, it says six.”

“You say that as if the fact that it is said by the book somehow makes it suspect. Sure, that’s what the book says, if you can believe the book.”

“Do you want to read the recipes while I do the dirty work?” she asked.

“Yes, that would be fine.” She handed me the book across the island and I walked over to assume her position and she assumed mine. “So crack six eggs into the matzo meal…. Then we have to let it set in the fridge. We can boil the stock.”

“She’s got that in the basement freezer. Come on.”

The basement had a worn cement floor, with cracks and dips. There were bundles of newspapers, paint cans, and an old furnace. It smelled like fuel oil and mildew. But it was clean. Near the foot of the stairs, under a naked bulb, was a standing freezer, an ancient, yellowed thing. She yanked the door open and handed me three plastic containers, and took three herself. “I hope this is enough.”

“Was there more?”

“You didn’t see? They’re all lined up. You’d be proud. They’re categorized and clearly labeled.”

“None of my things are that.”

“But you’re going to be a librarian. Isn’t that what librarians do, label things? Pick where books are going to go and show you how to find them?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you no, they do far more than that.”

“Well you don’t have to get mad.”

“I’m not mad, it’s just I tell you things and then you don’t remember. I feel like I’m talking to myself when I talk to you.”

“That’s just because we’re comfortable together. We know mostly what we are going to say before we say it.”

“I cannot predict what will come out of your mouth, though I can predict how I will feel.”

“That’s not what I mean. God. Let’s make the soup.”

We emptied the frozen stock into a stockpot and set it on the stove. When it finally boiled we started to roll matzo balls at the dining room table, which they had partially cleared. There was commotion at the door, cars in the driveway. Doors opening and people talking. We washed our hands and stood waiting to greet them. Raph came in smiling and nodding his head, trying to act convivial. One by one they entered the kitchen, four elderly and one very elderly man, a little guy bent over almost all the way, shuffling an inch at a time forward on a walker. When he made it into the kitchen he pushed himself upright (more or less), and surveyed the faces of the room one at a time. He nodded and leaned back down with a long gasp. The other four were quite hale and were busy excitedly engaging each other over what eventually we came to find out was their near simultaneous arrival, and how neither suspected the other was in the other car.

“Unbelievable, great minds think alike,” one man said to the other.

“Isaiah. Yes, how are you this year?”

Then Sally and Lydia and Joseph mingled among them, hugging and kissing their way through the four.

“Hey, hey,” Raph said. “Everybody, introductions here. Maureen, Alex, this is my father Lea, and my stepmother Bea. It’s Beatrice and Leonard so you can see how that might happen.” We all shook hands. “Maureen, Alex, Cynthier’s parents, Isaiah and Bubbe. We all call her that. You might as well too.”

“They can call me Rose if they like,” Bubbe said.

“If it’s all the same I’d rather be Isaiah than Pop,” Isaiah said. He took my hand and said, “Alex,” and nodded and smiled and turned a little red.

Cynthia, who had been hanging back came in and kissed everyone. “Let’s put your things in the hallway closet and then go into the living room.” She turned to Sally and said, “I’ve got to finish up here. Go in with Alex and steer him clear of the turd story.”