A New England Story, Part IX

“Can you believe all this stuff mom had?”

            We were facing Ann, and I was, as my wont, demonstrating an enthusiasm that was directly, yet inversely proportional to my interest. In other words, I couldn’t care less. So I amused myself with fleeting observations. Watching her. We were standing in the living room, with its view of Manchester Bay. The sunlight glinting of the water and the snow, blinding at times.

            Ann’s body was angled away from us, in a defensive posture. She kept scanning the living room, as if seeking refuge from what she clearly felt was a threat: our honesty. She never looked at either of us directly, which I thought was infinitely curious:

            “It’s so much work! I just keep finding things to shove into garbage bags, especially in the other bathroom.”

            “Oh, really?” I began to pay attention more to her words. “Some of that stuff under the sink is ours.”

            “Oh.”

            That was it. Nothing like an apology, let alone concern.

            “Yeah, so maybe you shouldn’t throw anything else out until I look at it.”

            Ann’s eyes began to scan furiously for something, anything else to look at.

            “We also found a lot of creams and facial cleansers by Dr. Perricone and some other brands like La Mer.”

            Suddenly, Ann’s attention focused. She turned her eyes straight at me. “Really? Hmm, maybe I should take a look at some of those things while you’re going through the other trash.”

“Oh, yes, you might find it interesting. You would not believe the collection of unguents, decoctions, creams and vitamins. Your mom was determined to work from both the outside in and inside out.”

Lance couldn’t repress a snort. “Tch. I can’t believe all the money she spent on herself. And all that she wasted. There are so many jars and bottles that are half-used. It’s such a waste of money.”

“Well, it made her feel good, didn’t it?”

I couldn’t resist a scoff of my own. “Doubtful, or else she wouldn’t have kept buying more and more.”

“Nurse! Nurse! Can you get me that cream please?”

            “Where is it?”

            “In the drawer here. I can’t reach.”

            The nurse, a normal, overworked woman who knew more than the doctors but got paid less than half, began rummaging in the nightstand next to the bed. “Is this it?”

            “Yes, thank goodness you found it.”

            Before she handed it to Paige, however, she took a look at the prescription. “Wait, was this prescribed to you in the hospital?”

            “No.” Paige looked annoyed

            “Well, you can’t use this. You can’t use any medications or creams that haven’t been prescribed here in the hospital. What is it for?”

            “It’s for my eyelids. So they don’t sag.”

            “Definitely not. I’ll give this back to you when you are released.” With that, the nurse left.

            “Nurse Ratchett,” Paige muttered. Then she turned to me. “Lane, can you bring me the Renova from home? It’s in my bathroom, in the medicine cabinet.”

            I looked at the now empty doorway.
            “Oh, I won’t tell her.”

            “Well, okay.” There was no point, clearly, in protestations.

            “I know I’m going to burn off half my skin, but I don’t care,” she laughed. “I’ve got to get rid of these wrinkles.”

            “Let’s have a tag sale,” I suggested.

            “What a fabulous idea! I think it would be great!” enthused my husband.

            Ann, however, was less than amenable to the idea. She had seen the labels on her mother’s clothing, an homage to both of their desires to be “Brahmin’s”: Dana Buchman, Max Mara, Ferragamo shoes, and a smattering of lesser labels such as the luxe line at Banana Republic.

            Indeed, Paige was infinitely generous with herself. Many of the clothing items even had their tags attached. This was, of course, quite convenient when it was necessary to give Ann, her only daughter, a gift because rather than go shopping at a store, she would simply go “shopping” in her closet. Which process conveniently justified another trip to either Lord and Taylor or Neiman Marcus, to replace said “gifts.”

            Paige’s thrift-ness knew no bounds.

            Neither, it turns out, did Ann’s.

            “Just think of the money we can generate to pay that enormous Visa bill,” I said.

            It was a calculated comment. Strike Ann at her pocketbook because she was cheap and didn’t want that money to come out of her inheritance.

            “Hmm,” she wavered. “Maybe it could be good after all. Yeah, I think it will work, so here’s what we’ll do.”

            As Ann proceeded to attempt to claim ownership of the project, it became clear that she had absolutely no idea what to do nor how to do it.

            Instead, she offered to assist in weeding out all the items which were not saleable, to wit: cosmetics.

Said she, “I wouldn’t want it all to go to waste. I’ll clean it up.”

            An hour and a half later, Ann had cleaned up the entire bathroom by emptying it into a box which she intended to ship to herself care of her attorney employers in Honolulu.

            I looked on in silence.

            All is vanity.

A New England Story, Part VIII

Food, in truth, seems to be an obsession for almost everyone we met in Cape Ann, including Lance’s mother. Perhaps because there is such a dearth of it there. One particular restaurant on Summer Street boasted an enormous serving of macaroni and cheese for the reasonably-priced $5.00.

            When it was served, it resembled a very large brick. And given the density, could have stood in for one especially in the cold weather when it would be frozen.

            But how did it taste, you ask?

            Like nothing. Nothing at all. I would like to be clever. Draw some artful and amusing analogy between it and various household inedibles but that would actually be unfair. Because it tasted like absolutely nothing. There was texture, the aforementioned dense one, uninterrupted by cheese since there was hardly any.

            I couldn’t understand it. This place was always packed. And it wasn’t just because of the view since most of the patrons were clearly locals.

            Hence my observation regarding the dearth of well-prepared, good-tasting restaurant food. I’m not discussing fine-dining. I just want good food. But even the local fine-dining space had turned over several times, at least once a year. It’s mystifying since Manchester makes Beverly Hills look like a pauper’s town.

This time, it had another complete “makeover” with the floorplans, lighting, and orange-ish paint. But the menu renders me inexplicable. People had finally discovered that the best burger on the block is made by Father’s Office in Santa Monica, with his aged beef, arugula, blue cheese and English-style relish, on a long roll. Well, that is, except for mine, which I have now perfected, a juicy, delicious spicy burger with just a few grilled onions and some aioli atop my homemade brioche buns. You should come over and try one. But I digress. This recipe first created by Father’s Office had finally traveled to the East Coast. And so I thought I’d give their version a taste. Remember what I said about burgers—theoretically, you can’t go wrong.

            Wrong again!

            First, more is not necessarily better. Wayyy to much meat, and far too dense. If you’re not going to age the beef (I don’t) try adding a little water to the mix, literally. It will make the burger nice and juicy and not to dense. And don’t overwork the meat.

            Then the blue cheese. Wow, talk about overpowering. It’s the peppery arugula that balances the pungent sharpness of the blue cheese—romaine will literally wilt alongside that sort of cheese.

            So, I did what I normally do, slathered it with condiments, thousand island being my choice this time since a mild mayonnaise was simply not going to do.

            Well, after a while, you just have to give up. So you go for the fried side: the French fries. Except I hate those over-sized ones. Far too dry. What is good about a French fry is that there should be an ideal combination of crisp outside and soft inside. Too much of one or the other just ruins them. That’s why frites are so popular. Gets it just right.

            And then there was this thing called “pulled pork.” Now, correct me if I am wrong but that is the sort of menu item that one expects at Jeb’s Barbecue Shack around the corner (not that they would have one of those anyway in Cape Ann). Why is that on a fine-dining restaurant’s menu, and at $25 a plate? When it’s a sandwich?

            You’re thinking, yeah, but hey, that’s the point, take something ordinary and make it extraordinary.

            You would be incorrect (I’m tired of using that other word). I know because while I was certainly not feeling so adventuresome, Lance was. If you are wondering how it was, I will offer another observation: that I did not have to worry about my French fries going to waste since his sandwich was accompanied with a salad (??!) and a few freshly fried potato chips.

A New England Story, Part VII

The season held a magical note of escape so that I felt long-suppressed joy as I shuffled amongst the fallen leaves skittering along the ground in my boot-encased feet. The biting wind shelters me and envelops me. I nestle my face snugly into my scarf and think, “Let it come! I am safe!”

            Being wrapped in numerous layers of clothing against the cold, from head to foot, makes me feel safe. It is a mobile cocoon against the wind and snow.

Nothing like the bitterest winter I have ever experienced at its height in Beijing. It’s latitude is farther north, and the wind jolts your senses to how vulnerable you are. Mucous freezes in your nose and the wind whips you in four simultaneous directions. A 650-fill long down coat over five layers may as well be a t-shirt because nothing protects. Nothing saves you.

            So I was feeling smug, certain I could not get sick.

            Oh, arrogance.

            I had forgotten the psychogenic component of illness. Especially for me, of the stomach variety. Nausea that could put me in the emergency room—and did. For ten long and extremely dull hours. No wonder old people, people like Page, dreaded the hospital. Hard surroundings filled with steel implements and paper goods with rough edges. The distance between the idea of a hospital as a place of healing and warmth and its reality of indifference and detachment is an insurmountable chasm.  

            It wasn’t hysteria, do not mistake this for a hysterical episode. I really was sick. It’s merely that there were some psychogenic factors, I was more prone, if you will, to becoming sick given the stress of constant pretense.

            Pretense towards what? Towards whiteness, something I shall never be but was expected of me in that small town on the coast of Cape Ann, and especially by Page’s little world of bigots: her brother, Marshall and his wife, Doreenie. Her third ex-husband, Jere, and of course, her daughter by her first marriage under the gun and just out of high school, Ann.

            Fortunately I, like all colored Americans, have been well-trained in mimicking whiteness. In mannerisms, speech patterns, dress, and even in food likes and dislikes (well, sometimes with that last category). I can pretend whiteness, which in colored people means to be a non-threatening “model minority” so as to mitigate their discomfort regarding my glaring colored skin.

            I am, after all, a shade of brown. Light, but nevertheless brown. I have absolutely no idea why people call Asians yellow. We aren’t, and that is clearly a case of white people with too much power to define and too much color-blindness.

A New England Story, Part VI

Food provides shelter. While it isn’t the great equalizer, it does equalize. Everyone chews. Manners, on the whole, can be mimicked to satisfy even the most critical doyenne.

            Or so I thought.

            It always seems to be like this. You assume—let’s forget about what that spells—that people will demonstrate a modicum of decorum, a certain level of human politeness required when dealing with death and the dying.

            Instead, what you should wait for is the other shoe to drop.

            The three of us, Ann, Lance and myself, went to an established (read: old and dilapidated) eatery on Gloucester’s Main Street. It was a tavern, really, with a few booths encircling a very old and rather sticky bar. No view, just a few tattered prints adorning otherwise faux-paneled walls.

            We three slid, well, sort of since the naugahyde was a tad sticky, too, across the curved bench. I sat in the middle while Ann and Lance were directly opposite each other in a not-accidental stance of antagonism. That is actually one of the first lessons one learns as a graduate student in Psychology: that in group therapy, those whom you sit next to feel most comfortable with you and those who sit opposite? They feel threatened. Pretty simple, really. Try it next time at Thanksgiving dinner and you’ll discover how accurate this small insight is.

            So while they were poised for fight, I was trapped and thus prevented from flight. We examined the menu and I immediately decided upon a burger. My reasoning is that with a disc of hamburger meat encased in a pair of buns, it’s hard to go too wrong.

            Did you hear that other shoe drop?

            Yes, I was wrong. Really wrong.

            Because it turns out that you can get a hamburger really wrong. You can dry it out, use extremely cheap, possibly even a combination of mystery, meats on top of hamburger buns that should have been consigned to the “bird food” pile weeks before. I am not a big fan of ketchup on a hamburger. I like a nice, brown, English-style chutney with some blue cheese and arugula on my burger, but I’ll settle for mayonnaise and grilled onions. Or just mayonnaise and cheese. This facsimile of a hamburger, however, was not accompanied by such amenities, so I settled for ketchup, mayonnaise, and American cheese.

            Nothing, however, could help this sandwich. Absolutely nothing. The French fries were also a dismal imitation: crinkle cuts—I really dislike those—that had been clearly refried more than once. Oh, In-N-Out Burger, where art thou? For at that moment, I felt positively desperate and even medieval, in my desire for a bit of red meat.

            Ann, however, was eyeing the rice pudding. After, that is, doing her imitation of “Sally Albright.”

            “I’d like water, but don’t put ice in it.” Don’t even think they had bottled water because they didn’t. “And then could you bring me another glass with water, and a third with ice. And some lemon.”

            An annoyed look appeared on the older waitress’s face, “Okay, so let me get this straight. You want two glasses of water, one glass of ice, and then some slices of lemon?”

            The question hung in the air: Why can’t you just have a single glass of ice water with a slice of lemon?

            And it was asked as soon as the waitress left.

            “So, why so many glasses?”

            Ann giggled. At 57, she was still convinced that giggling and flicking her hair would compensate for the sagging breasts and the broken front tooth which incidentally gave her the appearance of being buck-toothed. Her mother had never bothered to have her children’s teeth straightened.

            “Well, I don’t want to contaminate the water with the ice, and the other glass of water is to rinse off the lemon. You know that they don’t rinse off the outside of lemons before they put them in drinks, don’t you?”

            “And the ice?”

            “Well, I can rinse that off, too.”

            “Won’t that be contaminated too?”

            “Not if I rinse it off.”

            “So, why all the bother?”

            “Welll,” she giggled again, “I think there’s something in the water that makes the people crazy. Have you noticed Mom and Marshall and Doreenie?”

            If that is not the calling the kettle black, I really don’t know what is. That, and crazy much?

            Because there was not much left to say on the subject—who am I kidding? There was nothing left to say short of, “You, my dear, are certifiable,” Lance and I decided to move onto other things.

            Like dessert.

            “So that was about the most unsatisfying lunch I have had in quite some time. How about dessert?”

            “Ooo! Look! They have rice pudding!”

            “Rice pudding,” I said. “Hmm.” Of course, my idea of a good dessert, one that I can make by the way, often involves multiple moving parts and lots of rich ingredients. A butter-and-cream-rich caramel sauce and a few judiciously sprinkled raisins in an apple pie, for example. Or a sugar cage basket holding the accompanying blueberries for a zabaglione parfait set on a sugar plate. That sort of thing. Rice pudding? What I could think of was along the lines of Bread pudding: jazz it up with some caramel sauce and perhaps a ribbon of streusel in the middle, a little more streusel on the top and Voila! A dessert fit for a queen.

            “No! That’s not right! You can’t do that!”

            “Huh?” In my defense, I do believe that this is a completely appropriate response to the rude rejoinder Ann offered me.

            “You have to taste it first.”

            “Really?” I attempted, futilely, to keep doubt out of my voice.

            “Yes! Of course!”

            The disproportionate anger made me, annoyingly, become even more conciliatory.

            “Okay, if you say so.”

            Alright, perhaps I was a tad condescending, too,  but can you blame me?

            Appropriately, the rice pudding was served, to prove my point.

            The dish served resembled the remains of a toddler's glue project.

            I waited for a minute as she tasted a spoonful.

            “So,” I asked, “how is it?

            For an answer, she offered some to my husband. “Here, try some,” she urged with a smile that looked rather tentative and tight.

            Lance reached gingerly over to the small bowl with his spoon. “Eww. Yuck. Tastes like over-cooked rice and sugar.”

            Ann refused to look at me. “It’s alright. This is the way it should be.”

            “Well, if that’s the way it should be, I think I’ll try Lane’s           any day.”

            I forebore any further observations. Unlike Ann, I know how to check my own churlish impulses.

A New England Story, Part V

     Dream analysis. Almost no one gets this right, in terms of writing about it. Unless they are professionals. Like, say, a Clinical Psychologist. But then none of them seem that inclined towards creative writing. Perhaps they are too busy actually helping people with real tragedies to bother with fiction.
     But it seems to me that what is missing in fiction writing on dreams is that people don't really understand the symbolism of dreams. How they work and how they are read. So they end up making up some silly trite, pseudo-surreal narrative that sounds totally fake.
     I hate that.
     Because my dreams, while they are eventually easy for me to understand, are never that clean.
     The night Page told my husband, "You two have to leave!" after we had put our lives on hold for her, and entered into a unique type of poverty available only to graduate student couples, was the first night of a series of terrible stress-mares. While I slept through the night, it was never restful. Far from. Every two hours, I would awaken with a pounding heartbeat and rushing in my ears. An hour of tossing and turning would institute another episode.
     What was the first one? I was trying to escape her. That simple.
     She was no Hydra, she was merely scary. Her hair wasn't streaming. Nothing out of the ordinary. She was merely herself. 

A New England Story, Part IV

   

             Food provides shelter. While it isn’t the great equalizer, it does equalize. Everyone chews. Manners, on the whole, can be mimicked to satisfy even the most critical doyenne.

            The season, too, held a magical note of escape so that I felt long-suppressed joy merely walking amongst the fallen leaves skittering along the ground. The wind, biting though it was, sheltered me, as well. I would nestle my face snugly into scarf and think, “Let it come! I am safe!”

A New England Story, Part II

           Page Elwel did not like her son. It was the irritation of responsibility. Being a sociopath meant she didn’t actually feel guilt for abandoning her son. Instead, she experienced constant annoyance that her son required her for certain basic needs: emotional nurturance, food, clothing, shelter.

            But he was not merely an irritation. She saw him as a burden. Something to rid herself of as soon as possible.

            Which is what she did. Once, she had almost achieved this with little effort. It had been at her mother’s house, on the water in Gloucester. Antony had been walking along the edge of the pool. He was 4. She hadn’t warned him not to. Just watched coolly as she sipped her afternoon aperitif.

            He slipped and fell. Swallowing water, flailing frantically.

            Suddenly, a hand reached him and grabbed him by the scruff. Antony was spewing water, crying, choking.
            It was his mother's boyfriend who had saved him.

            Page had not moved. She was laughing.

            “Don’t laugh! Why are you laughing,” he cried.

            “Oh, shush,” she scolded. "Besides, it's funny." And returned to her drink.

A New England Story

            “Lane! Lane! Can you help me please!” Her impatience rang out in clipped tones.

            Lane rushed to the bedroom.    That’s odd. Why is she lying face down on the carpet? Towards the bathroom?

            “I need to go to the bathroom,” Page  croaked.

            Ahh.

            “I took some laxatives.”

            Some? Some?

            “How many?”

            “Three.”

            Lane took just a moment for herself to reflect again on the stupidity of people in general and this woman in particular. “Okay, here, let me help you up.”

            Unfortunately, Page  was dead weight. Half again as much as Lane.

            Still can’t figure out why everybody calls her skinny, Lane thought as she struggled to tug Page  towards the bathroom.

            “Can you put your arms around my shoulders?”

            Page ’s response? A guttural, “Uhhh.”

            Hmm. Guess not. Lane tried to maneuver under Page , to prop her up on her own shoulders. Which resulted in her being pinned down by a red-faced, sweaty, and increasingly angry mother-in-law.