Blue Plate Special (32 page)

In 1994, I was making a lot of money at a full-time corporate job, working on the fiftieth floor of the World Trade Center as the secretary for the legal department of DKB Financial Products, the swaps-and-derivatives subsidiary of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank. I was finally paying off my debts, and I spent my downtime at my job working on the second draft of
In the Drink
at my desk, looking out over New York Harbor, high up in the air.

I had also, at long last, broken up with James. In our last conversation, shortly after we’d broken up, he told me that reading
In the Drink
was “like having a sharp stick shoved up my sphincter.” I knew enough by then, had gained enough confidence, never to speak to him again after that.

For $450 a month, I lived alone in Greenpoint, in a huge, high-ceilinged, beautiful place on North Henry Street just off Norman Avenue, way up near McGolrick Park and the sewage treatment plant. Finally, I could afford to buy furniture and dishes for my apartment, clothes and food for myself. Finally, I was taking proper care of myself; I even had health benefits now, which I hadn’t had since I’d worked at William Morrow five years earlier.

My favorite postwork supper in those days was an icy, dry vodka martini with olives, along with two cut-up raw red peppers, cold, dipped in Paul Newman’s hot salsa. I sat at the table
in my dining room with music on and candles lit and slowly, happily ate the red pepper and salsa and drank the martini. While I ate, I wrote in my journal and occasionally sighed with contentment. I loved this apartment, loved living alone.

On my long hike home from the L train after work, I passed the Busy Bee supermarket, a Polish grocery. I did much of my shopping there. The shelves were full of beer, hot mustard, pickled beets, herring in jars, canned meats, and sauerkraut. Behind the cash register were heaps of uncut loaves of fresh Polish rye bread. The register was next to a deli case piled high with cured meats, blocks of cheese, kielbasa, and cold salads. The cashier and the deli guy were one and the same person; the entire line had to wait while he sliced each customer’s bread, meat, and cheese. The inefficiency of this system drove me a little batty with impatience, but it also afforded me a certain amount of entertainment. It was easy to tell who was from the neighborhood and who wasn’t by the degree of irritation versus resignation they exhibited.

I
had a new boyfriend, a musician and painter who lived down in Williamsburg in a huge industrial loft on Metropolitan and Wythe. I’d met him through our mutual friend Dan. I sang backup and played viola in Dan’s band, and Jon had gone to high school with him. Jon came to all our gigs and often tried to talk to me afterward. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend, so I didn’t pay much attention to him, but he persisted. Then he broke up with his girlfriend and asked me on a date, with Dan as chaperone, since I was still technically with James, even though he’d been gone for months and we were in the throes of prebreakup doldrums. The three of us went to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone, then to Brighton Beach to eat Russian food and drink vodka on the boardwalk. I was extremely attracted to Jon, who was strong, handsome, tough,
straightforward, and sweet. I also felt totally comfortable with him, and I trusted him completely, right from the start.

Unlike me, Jon understood that restaurants were democratic, open to anyone who could fork over the money it cost to eat there. It was the mid-nineties, a golden time, financially speaking. He was raking it in as a building contractor, renovating Upper East Side apartments, building shoe stores and designers’ showrooms. We met on weeknights after work and took turns treating each other to dinner—one night, he paid; the next night, I paid. We were equally generous and free with money, equally happy to buy presents for each other, to pay for things. There was never one moment’s tension with him about money, partly because we both usually had enough, and partly because we shared a happy insouciance about it. We chose to live as if we would always have enough.

Jon taught me to eat in restaurants, how to enjoy food without guilt or remorse or puritanism. He took me to fantastic, wonderful places, the kind I used to stand outside and look at with longing. He ordered for both of us: steak frites, artichokes, frisée salads with lardons and a poached egg, steak tartare, raw oysters, asparagus. He took me to Coney Island for raw clams at Ruby’s, then over to Brighton Beach for lamb soup, pelmeni with sour cream, applesauce, and sautéed onions, and blini with caviar. We went to the Savoy for roast chicken, to La Lunchonette for beef bourguignon, to a tiny Italian place on Jane Street where the owner made his own wine and came out to pour it for us; we ordered his excellent venison and fresh pastas. We ate at a homey old Italian place in Williamsburg called Milo’s whose owners, an ancient Italian couple, tottered around serving two-dollar beers and rustic red wine along with mounded plates of cheap, homemade spaghetti with meatballs; we always dared each other to order the half goat’s head, but we never did. I inhaled all this food; I would have rolled around in it if such a thing had been possible.

One day after work when I had just arrived at home, Jon called me and told me he had put a chicken in the oven and asked if I wanted to come over. I stuck whatever supper I’d been making into the fridge for the next night and walked the mile or so down to his loft. When I showed up, “A Love Supreme” was playing and his floor was freshly mopped and he’d opened a bottle of red wine. We sat at his table and ate the chicken, which was juicy inside and crisp outside—he was a far, far better cook than I was in those days—with roasted rosemary red potatoes and steamed asparagus dipped in lemon mayonnaise. That night, as we lay in his bed together, our arms wrapped around each other, breathing quietly, on the verge of sleep, I felt completely safe with him. He felt so familiar to me, as if we had known each other since we were kids, as if we’d grown up next door to each other.

I thought, out of nowhere, “I must never betray this trust.” Then I felt a little chill, a premonition of sorts.

Jon came from a big Jewish family, almost all of whom lived in Pittsburgh. His views on family, which he got from his father’s parents, were that you never estranged yourself from anyone you were related to no matter what; you stayed close and helped them in any way you could and did your duty, whatever that was—showing up at bar mitzvahs and weddings and funerals, giving them money if they needed it, and offering advice and moral support. When I told him I wasn’t speaking to anyone in mine, he immediately said, worried, “You have to get back in touch with them. You need them, and they need you.”

Shortly after this conversation, my sister Susan left a message on my answering machine, telling me that our mother had just been diagnosed with uterine cancer. Instantly, I called my mother, then Susan; hearing their voices again brought back all the complicated, unresolved things I still felt about them, but the fact that my mother had a potentially fatal disease made it all fall away. None of it mattered. They were my family.

My mother told me that my sister Emily had recently left Claus after a decade on the farm with him. She was now in Australia, living with a religious community in Sydney, and she had recently contacted our mother after a long period of silence. She was back now, too.

After I hung up, I sat alone in my apartment, weeping.

MINESTRONE

Back when I lived alone in the East Village, I would throw this quick, cheap, easy soup together on cold nights after I got home from my temp job. There was generally enough for three nights, and every night after I made it, it tasted even better. I have never been a fan of pasta in soup because it tends to get slimy and fall apart; this recipe contains none, therefore, but feel free to add a handful of macaroni if you like
.

In plenty of olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat, sauté as many chopped cloves of garlic as you want, plus an onion, 2 carrots, and 1 rib of celery, all diced. Throw in some chopped sausage if you like; a mixture of sweet and spicy Italian sausage is best. Season with basil, oregano, black pepper, and salt. When everything is soft and fragrant, add a can of diced tomatoes and a good glug of red wine. Stir well, add a quart or more of good chicken broth, and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, dice any vegetables you happen to have around the house, and add enough of those to make a thick, chunky soup: any combination of green beans, zucchini, peas, spinach, yellow squash, chard, kale, cabbage, broccoli. Rinse a can or two of beans and add those—garbanzo, kidney, and cannellini all work well, but I’ve also used black beans without any untoward consequences. Taste the broth, add whatever seasoning it needs. Let the soup simmer until everything is cooked. Serve with hot red pepper flakes and grated Parmesan.

BACON-CHEDDAR BISCUITS

I made these for breakfast one morning at the beginning of my courtship with Jon when his loft was full of musician friends from Philly who were crashing there while they all made a record together. I packed a sack of them for Jon to take to south Brooklyn and share with everyone at the studio. The sound engineer, a burly white guy from Kentucky, took one bite and said to Jon, “Your girlfriend cooks like a black woman. Is she black?” This might be the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten for my cooking
.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Separate 1½ pounds of thick, fatty bacon onto a cookie sheet and bake at 450 degrees until crisp and brown, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, to 2 cups of all-purpose flour, add 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon sugar. Mix these dry ingredients well with a whisk. Cut a stick of butter into the dry ingredients and, with your bare hands, quickly massage the butter into the flour until the flour is yellowed and grainy and uniform, but no longer. Make a well in the flour-butter mixture and pour in about 1 cup of milk or buttermilk, then add ½ cup of shredded sharp cheddar. Mix the dough quickly and lightly with bare, floured hands into a firm, sticky ball. Turn out onto a floured board and roll it or press it with your hands into a 1-inch-thick layer. Take a 2-inch-diameter water glass and cut rounds until only scraps are left. Mold the scraps into a 1-inch-thick layer and cut biscuits. Repeat till all the dough is used. Bake on a cookie sheet for 15–20 minutes, until tall and golden.

Cut each biscuit in half and make a bacon sandwich with as much bacon as you want.