Heartburn Page 11

  Juanita looked up from Sam when I came in and burst into tears.

  “Juanita,” I said, “I’m not up for this. Whatever it is, I’m not up for it.”

  “Oh, Missee Felman, I feel so bad for ju,” said Juanita. Even Juanita knew about it! The day after I’d left for New York she’d turned up to discover Mark and Thelma having a heart-to-heart talk on the living room couch.

  “I know that lady,” said Juanita. “She no good.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I know,” said Juanita. “I work for her ten years ago.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” I said.

  “She very messy,” said Juanita.

  Juanita gave me a big hug, which was awkward since she was only about four feet six inches tall, and a hug from her felt like the Heimlich maneuver. Then she pulled back and managed a huge smile that was meant to cheer me up—but instead revealed her mouthful of gold teeth, which only served to remind me of the time I had spent two days on the telephone with her dentist, negotiating a long-term payment for Hernando’s root canal work.

  “Everything be okay,” she said. “You see.”

  I went up to the little room on the third floor that I used for an office. In the typewriter was an article I’d been writing about potatoes. I took it out of the typewriter and put in a fresh sheet of paper. I must write all this down, I thought. Someday I may write something that’s not a cookbook, and this will all be grist for it. But I couldn’t. To write it down was to give it permanence, to admit that something real had happened. I walked around the room trying to pretend that nothing had happened. I thought about potatoes. The first time I made dinner for Mark I made potatoes. The first time I made dinner for just about anyone I ever cared for I made potatoes. Very very crisp potatoes. I must make some potatoes tonight, I thought; mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. I could hear Mark’s typewriter from the office over the garage; I kept hoping he would leave, go out for more socks, so I could dash into his sanctuary and go through the phone bills and the American Express receipts, but he was still there, tapping away. Maybe he’s making notes for a novel, I thought. Worse, maybe he’s making notes for a column. That would really do it. There would be my entire marital disaster, reduced to an 850-word column in 109 newspapers. I knew just how he’d write it, too. He’d write it in that dumb Hemingway style he always reserved for his slice-of-life columns. The old man had told him it would happen. The old man had said to him, Sasha, it will happen someday. You will be on the river. You will be going downstream. You will hit a log.

  The phone rang.

  I picked it up.

  “Rachel, it’s Betty.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know, I know,” said Betty.

  “You know?” I said.

  “It must have been awful,” said Betty.

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “It’s in the paper,” said Betty.

  “In the paper?” I said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Vanessa Melhado was in your group?” said Betty.

  “The robbery’s in the paper?” I said.

  “In the Style section,” said Betty.

  “We’re not allowed to tell anyone who’s in the group,” I said.

  “What’s she like?”

  “We’re not allowed to tell that either,” I said. “Listen, I feel terrible about missing your party.”

  “I understand,” said Betty. “I knew something awful must have happened to you if you weren’t there, and now I see that it did.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was awful.”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” said Betty, “because I found out who Thelma Rice is having the affair with.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “You’re not going to like it,” said Betty.

  “Who is it?” I said.

  “Arthur,” said Betty.

  “Arthur Siegel?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Betty. “They were having drinks in the Washington Hilton yesterday afternoon. Nobody has drinks in the Washington Hilton unless something secret’s going on.”

  “Arthur isn’t having an affair with Thelma Rice,” I said. “Nobody is having an affair with Thelma Rice.”

  “How do you know?” said Betty.

  “I just know,” I said.

  “Tell me,” said Betty.

  “Okay,” I said, “but you can’t tell this to anyone.”

  “I promise,” said Betty.

  “I saw Thelma at the gynecologist’s, and that’s when I found out.

  “What?” said Betty.

  “She has this horrible infection,” I said. “You don’t even want to know about it.”

  “Oh, God,” said Betty.

  “She made me promise not to tell anyone,” I said, “but she almost didn’t have to because it’s so disgusting I almost couldn’t. I’m only telling you because I want you to know it’s not true about her and Arthur.”

  “Then why was she having a drink with him?” said Betty.

  “That’s part of it,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” said Betty.

  “She wanted some legal advice,” I said. “She got the infection in a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia, and she wants to sue them.”

  “She got it from something she ate, or from the toilet seat?” said Betty.

  “The toilet seat, I guess,” I said, “although I’m not sure. Maybe from the spring rolls.”

  “Oh, God,” said Betty. “Poor Thelma.”

  “Poor Thelma?” I said.

  “I feel so sorry for her,” said Betty.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for her,” I said. “It’s curable. Eventually.”

  “Maybe I should have her and Jonathan to dinner,” said Betty.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Why not?” said Betty. “It’s not catching, is it?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s just that she’s so depressed, she’s no fun to be around.”

  “I think we should have a dance,” said Betty.

  “What?” I said.

  “The three of us. You, me and Thelma.”

  “I hate dances,” I said.

  “It’ll be fun, Rachel,” said Betty.

  “I can’t dance,” I said.

  “Come on,” said Betty. “Where do you think we should do it?”

  “The White House,” I said.

  “That’s a great idea,” said Betty. “They’re always talking about opening it up to the public. I’ll call the social secretary.”

  “Betty—”

  “And let’s have lunch, the three of us, next week. Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday I have to be in New York to do a cooking demonstration.”

  “Rachel, you really are impossible,” said Betty. “Thelma and I will have lunch on Tuesday. We will plan the dance. It will make Thelma feel better about her infection, and you’ll have something to take your mind off the robbery—”

  “My mind isn’t on the robbery,” I said.

  “Good,” said Betty. “Start making your guest list.”

  “Thelma’s going to want to invite the Kissingers,” I said. “Is that the kind of dance you want to have?”

  “Goodbye,” said Betty, and hung up.

  POTATOES AND LOVE: SOME REFLECTIONS

  The beginning

  I have friends who begin with pasta, and friends who begin with rice, but whenever I fall in love, I begin with potatoes. Sometimes meat and potatoes and sometimes fish and potatoes, but always potatoes. I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.

  Not just any potato will do when it comes to love. There are people who go on about the virtues of plain potatoes—plain boiled new potatoes with a little parsley or dill, or plain baked potatoes with crackling skins—but my own feeling is that a taste for plain potatoes coincides with cultural antecedents I do not p
ossess, and that in any case, the time for plain potatoes—if there is ever a time for plain potatoes—is never at the beginning of something. It is also, I should add, never at the end of something. Perhaps you can get away with plain potatoes in the middle, although I have never been able to.

  All right, then: I am talking about crisp potatoes. Crisp potatoes require an immense amount of labor. It’s not just the peeling, which is one of the few kitchen chores no electric device has been invented to alleviate; it’s also that the potatoes, once peeled, must be cut into whatever shape you intend them to be, put into water to be systematically prevented from turning a loathsome shade of bluish-brownish-black, and then meticulously dried to ensure that they crisp properly. All this takes time, and time, as any fool can tell you, is what true romance is about. In fact, one of the main reasons why you must make crisp potatoes in the beginning is that if you don’t make them in the beginning, you never will. I’m sorry to be so cynical about this, but that’s the truth.

  There are two kinds of crisp potatoes that I prefer above all others. The first are called Swiss potatoes, and they’re essentially a large potato pancake of perfect hash browns; the flipping of the pancake is so wildly dramatic that the potatoes themselves are almost beside the point. The second are called potatoes Anna; they are thin circles of potato cooked in a shallow pan in the oven and then turned onto a plate in a darling mound of crunchy brownness. Potatoes Anna is a classic French recipe, but there is something so homely and old-fashioned about them that they can usually be passed off as either an ancient family recipe or something you just made up.

  For Swiss potatoes: Peel 3 large (or 4 small) russet potatoes (or all-purpose if you can’t get russets) and put them in cold water to cover. Start 4 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon cooking oil melting in a nice heavy large frying pan. Working quickly, dry the potatoes and grate them on the grating disk of the Cuisinart. Put them into a colander and squeeze out as much water as you can. Then dry them again on paper towels. You will need more paper towels to do this than you ever thought possible. Dump the potatoes into the frying pan, patting them down with a spatula, and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the bottom of the pancake is brown. Then, while someone is watching, loosen the pancake and, with one incredibly deft motion, flip it over. Salt it generously. Cook 5 minutes more. Serves two.

  For potatoes Anna: Peel 3 large (or 4 small) russet potatoes (or Idahos if you can’t get russets) and put them in water. Working quickly, dry each potato and slice into 1/16-inch rounds. Dry them with paper towels, round by round. Put 1 tablespoon clarified butter into a cast-iron skillet and line the skillet with overlapping potatoes. Dribble clarified butter and salt and pepper over them. Repeat twice. Put into a 425° oven for 45 minutes, pressing the potatoes down now and then. Then turn up the oven to 500° and cook 10 more minutes. Flip onto a round platter. Serves two.

  The middle (I)

  One day the inevitable happens. I go to the potato drawer to make potatoes and discover that the little brown buggers I bought in a large sack a few weeks earlier have gotten soft and mushy and are sprouting long and quite uninteresting vines. In addition, one of them seems to have developed an odd brown leak, and the odd brown leak appears to be the cause of a terrible odor that in only a few seconds has permeated the entire kitchen. I throw out the potatoes and look in the cupboard for a box of pasta. This is the moment when the beginning ends and the middle begins.

  The middle (II)

  Sometimes, when a loved one announces that he has decided to go on a low-carbohydrate, low-fat, low-salt diet (thus ruling out the possibility of potatoes, should you have been so inclined), he is signaling that the middle is ending and the end is beginning.

  The end

  In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it’s almost always at the wrong time.

  (You can, of course, train children to mash potatoes, but you should know that Richard Nixon spent most of his childhood making mashed potatoes for his mother and was extremely methodical about getting the lumps out. A few lumps make mashed potatoes more authentic, if you ask me, but that’s not the point. The point is that perhaps children should not be trained to mash potatoes.)

  For mashed potatoes: Put 1 large (or 2 small) potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for at least 20 minutes, until tender. Drain and place the potatoes back in the pot and shake over low heat to eliminate excess moisture. Peel. Put through a potato ricer and immediately add 1 tablespoon heavy cream and as much melted butter and salt and pepper as you feel like. Eat immediately. Serves one.

  ten

  I don’t want to string this part out. You don’t really need to hear a blow-by-blow account, because it isn’t all that interesting. The first night back I made shrimp curry. (The recipe’s in Uncle Seymour’s Beef Borscht if you want it.) The next night chicken stuffed with lemons. (Marcella Hazan.) The next night, takeout from Scott’s Bar-B-Q. Mark and I sat at dinner and made conversation. The word desultory applies. We talked about everything except what had happened. I tried not to cry. I tried hard not to ask where he went in the afternoon. I tried hard not to go into his office and turn it upside down looking for more evidence, but finally I decided what the hell, go take a look, how much worse can it get, and it turned out Mark had locked his office door and I couldn’t get in. At one point over the weekend Mark asked me how I made my vinaigrette, but I wouldn’t tell him. I figured my vinaigrette was the only thing I had that Thelma didn’t (besides a pregnancy), and I could just see him learning it from me and then rushing over to her house with a jar of Grey Poupon mustard (the essential ingredient) and teaching her the wrist movement and dancing off into a sunset of arugola salads. I must seem to be putting too much emphasis on this vinaigrette of mine, but war is war.

  Perhaps you are wondering whether we had sex. Normally I don’t like to get into this area, because it embarrasses me, but since it’s probably crossed your mind I’d better deal with it. We had sex. We always had sex. That’s one of the most perplexing parts of the story; that’s one of the reasons why Mark’s relationship with Thelma had come as such a surprise to me. Now that I look back on it, we hadn’t been doing anything particularly inventive in that department of late, but I have never been big on invention in that department. Why kid around? Every so often I browse through books full of tasteful line drawings of supplementary positions—how to do it standing and in the swimming pool and on the floor—and I’m always mystified. On the floor! Why would anyone want to do it on the floor when a bed was available? I’ll tell you the truth: even sex on a beach seems to me to be going too far.

  On Tuesday morning I took the shuttle to New York for my food demonstration in the Macy’s housewares department. I do food demonstrations from time to time, although I do more talking than actual demonstrating. Occasionally, serious food people come to observe, and I can see them sneer as they watch my hopelessly sloppy chopping. Serious food people do not take me seriously, and they’re right not to. I more or less backed into the food writing business, and before anyone in the food establishment could decide what to do with me, there I was, writing articles and doing demonstrations and appearing on television and essentially taking money from their pockets.

  What they say about me is I have no real training as a cook, I’m basically a performer, I clip recipes from other people’s cook
books and pass them off as my own, I don’t have an original point of view, and I am a sellout. (This last accusation always makes me cross, because I would love to be a sellout if only someone would ask.) They used to say that I was wrong about nouvelle cuisine, but I turned out to be right about it, so they don’t say that anymore. My position on nouvelle cuisine is that it’s silly.

  What I say about them is they use too many adjectives. I hate adjectives. I also hate similes and metaphors, just can’t do them, never have been able to. Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from similes and metaphors, because if you’re not careful, expressions like “light as a feather” make their way into your sentences, and then where are you? The problem, though, is how to do without adjectives. If you write about food, you can’t really do without them; but if you do with them, you run the risk of writing sentences like “The fish was juicy but the sauce was lumpy,” or “The sauce was creamy but the veal was stringy,” or, to sum up, “The noun was (complimentary adjective) but the other noun was (uncomplimentary adjective).” This is a particular danger for food writers who review restaurants, which I have never done and never will. You have to draw the line somewhere.