Loose Diamonds (9 page)

Twelve

Egg Cups

“I
s she
okay?” I hear them whisper in the corner,
their
heads huddled together as if they think I cannot hear
them.

“I’ve never seen her do this
before.”

“What’s going on?”

“Mom, are you sure you want to
do that . . . ?”

Soft-boiled eggs were served in egg cups. Mommy’s
saccharine was stored on the lazy Susan in a slim silver Tiffany’s box on which
her initials were engraved. The milk and sugar for her coffee were similarly
decanted into a pitcher and a bowl (as were the jam, the syrup, and the honey).
This practice carried over to dinner, and anything that came in a jar was
required to be displayed in an appropriate bowl or dish including ketchup,
mustard, mayonnaise, and pickles.

It wasn’t a disorder, it was Mommy’s sense of
elegance and style. I don’t know where she learned it, whether from the pages of
Edith Wharton or
Gourmet
, but certainly not from my
grandmother, who played canasta much of the day with her next-door neighbor,
wore what we politely called “a housedress,” and served spaghetti that had been
cooked for 20 minutes with a sauce made from Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup. My
grandma was so convinced that Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup was a miracle
invention and a guaranteed staple in all of America’s kitchens that she bought
stock in the company.

We had Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup at our
house, too, but it was served as a first course (not over spaghetti) in Wedgwood
soup bowls with silver soup spoons. Even breakfast had courses—juice or half a
grapefruit to begin with, served with Mommy’s cup of coffee and the trades. She
worked full-time and didn’t apologize for the fact that she had full-time help,
a wonderful black woman named Evelyn Hall, who was, also, an extraordinary cook.
Evelyn had grown up on a farm that her family owned in Louisiana and, as she
reminded me (every time she caught me doing something wrong), she was “one-sixth
Cherokee” (which I took to mean she had eyes in the back of her head
or
she could see me even when I wasn’t in the room).
Evelyn also had a “musician’s ear” for the kitchen and could make anything even
if she’d tasted it only once.

My mother directed the events in the kitchen at
arm’s length. Cookbooks were bedside reading. “Look at this,” she would say to
me as I lay under the purple satin quilt that she kept as a throw in her
bedroom. She would point to a lemon soufflé in
The Gourmet
Cookbook
and say, “I think we should try it.” And somehow the
ingredients for it would find their way to the kitchen, and the soufflé would
find its way to the table a few days later. She would write out menus for dinner
for the week and elaborate lists for the fruit and vegetable man who came every
Wednesday, the milkman who came twice a week, and my father who went to the
supermarket on Saturday mornings with one of us in tow. Mommy was proud of the
fact that she worked for a living and that she could hire people to help her
with her domestic needs (this included us, by the way). But she was also proud
that she paid unemployment and social security benefits for everyone who worked
for her long before it was required or fashionable.

She made guest appearances in the kitchen.
Scrambled eggs on Christmas morning that were cooked for so long and at such a
low temperature, still soft and a perfect pale yellow, I’m certain they wouldn’t
pass a salmonella test. She made blanched almonds (she was big on TV snacks),
which involved parboiling raw almonds with their skins on, enlisting any of us
who were around to squeeze the almonds out of their skin, a grueling,
time-consuming task up there with prepping string beans that somehow seemed fun
at the time, sitting around the red Formica table in the kitchen as Mommy melted
unsalted butter and then strained it through cheesecloth to clarify it. She
spread the poached almonds on a cookie sheet, drizzled them with butter,
sprinkled them with salt and baked them in a 350˚ oven until they were golden
brown. They were delicious, by the way.

My mother also made guacamole. Its key ingredients
were avocados, diced onion, sour cream, and Worcestershire sauce (at least it
didn’t have mayonnaise like her famous cottage cheese dip, which also had
Worcestershire sauce), but it wasn’t really like the guacamole that we make or
serve today.

It was fabulous, though, because it was elegant—at
least, we thought it was fabulous then.

It was smooth. Absolutely mashed to a pulp with a
fork and blended with sour cream so that it was almost pistachio green. She
served it in a special bowl that rested on a black ridged plate that was filled
with ruffled potato chips at parties and on TV nights, when she ate it lying
down on the built-in Chinese sofa in the bar as she sipped Dewar’s and soda,
usually with a lit Kent cigarette in the ashtray, as she watched
College Bowl
or Julia Child or
To
Tell the Truth
and later,
Upstairs
Downstairs
, which is the first time I remember being totally addicted
to a TV show and feeling smart and grown-up because I was watching
Upstairs, Downstairs
and eating guacamole with my mom.
It’s a memory that I treasure, a rare spot of peace and contentment, moments
that are always fleeting, with no subtext or drama except what was on the TV
screen.

•••

M
y
daughter is in the dining room with a friend, setting the table for dinner.
We’re having hamburgers, medium rare with sliced onions and tomatoes, fresh
hamburger buns that I bought at the bakery, and almost any kind of condiment you
want, mustard, relish, ketchup, pickles. I hear my daughter say, with some alarm
in her voice, “Oh, no! You can’t do that.” Even though I cannot see them, I can
guess what happened—her friend has inadvertently set a naked bottle of ketchup,
mustard, or relish directly on the table. I smile, certain that in a moment,
they will come into the kitchen, as they do, searching for an appropriate bowl
or dish and a small knife or spoon to accompany it. I can imagine Maia or Anna
saying to their children, “It wasn’t a disorder . . .” as they
reach for an appropriate bowl or dish in which to place whatever condiment
they’re serving. There are some things that are passed on to you by your
mother.

Until last September when it was my daughter’s
birthday and we’d been too ambitious—too many flower arrangements, too many
sides. Alan insisted on making brownies as well as ginger cake. I kept
augmenting the flower arrangements with tropicals from the backyard. Oh, wait,
what about the amazing ginger flowers that just bloomed . . .
What about the vegans? I guess we’d better make zucchini
without
cheese, too. Twenty people instead of fourteen, Sunday
night, and there was no help in sight. We’d hung Japanese lanterns on the
rafters of the deck. I’d put on makeup and dressed for the occasion, white,
since it was officially the last night of summer. And, as the hamburgers were
coming off the grill and the chili was bubbling over and there were 20 buns
warming in the oven, I opened the refrigerator, thought about it for a second
and put the ketchup and the relish, still in their store-bought containers,
directly on the table.

“Is she okay?” I hear them
whisper in the corner, their heads huddled together as if they think I
cannot hear them.

“I’ve never seen her do this
before.”

“What’s going on?”

“Mom, are you sure you want to
do that?” I shrug and, as a concession, open the cabinet and take out two
small plates that I place underneath the ketchup bottle and the jar of
relish on the table.

They still look puzzled,
perplexed, certain that something’s wrong.

I nod my head just to let them
know that I’m okay. “I’m sure.”

And I think to myself, just
this one time, my mother wouldn’t mind.

Thirteen

My
Filofax

F
our people
asked me what I wanted for my birthday last week and I gave each of them the
same answer, “A new Filofax.”

All four of them said the same thing. “No, you
don’t. Nobody wants a Filofax anymore. It’s so old-fashioned. Don’t be
ridiculous. iPhone.” My daughter Maia was the harshest. She simply said, “Oh,
Mom! iPhone.” It made me feel something I rarely feel, old-fashioned and
distinctly unhip and, since it was my birthday we were discussing, it made me
feel old.

For the record, I have an iPhone. It doesn’t work
very well, but I have one. Sometimes it’s cranky about email, I can’t read
attachments, and it’s impossible to surf the web. I can, however, tweet from it
(I’m not really that old-fashioned.) Don’t tell me to get a new iPhone, it’s my
fourth one, and despite the fact that two assistants and two of my children over
the last three years have religiously promised to transfer all my names and
phone numbers into my iPhone (and my computer), it hasn’t happened yet and I
never seem to have the time.

I like my Filofax (even though it does sort of look
like a truck ran over it.) It feels like a friend. I like that it has my
friends’ and acquaintances’ names, addresses, and phone numbers hand-printed
into it. Arguably, a few of them are dead, but I’ve learned not to notice. And I
can’t quite bring myself to cross the names out. That would seem too final. (If
I had a new Filofax, I wouldn’t feel disloyal if I didn’t transfer those
names.)

I like it that I have my Filofax with me in my
purse or on the passenger seat of my car, so that if I need to reach someone, I
know how. It makes me feel rooted somehow.

I once left my Filofax on the roof of my car and
drove off. It was gone and I felt lost. I wondered if I’d done it on
purpose—someone I’d been dating hadn’t called me in days and I didn’t want to
call him and his number was unlisted. Someone told me they’d seen him out with
someone else and I wondered if some sort of self-protective device kicked in and
I wanted to save myself the embarrassment of not having my phone call returned
or, if it was, of having a conversation I didn’t want to have. He did call a few
weeks later and I did manage to be terribly sweet about the fact that we
wouldn’t be speaking again.

I realized when I lost my Filofax that I hadn’t
printed my contact information onto the front page (that would be too revealing
somehow) as if someone would find my “black book” and discover secrets about me,
and by not inputting my info, I was somehow spared, anonymous, so that even if
someone read it, sort of like reading your diary, they wouldn’t know that it was
me. So there was no chance that I was going to get it back. It was gone forever.
Nonetheless, my present Filofax has the same quirk.

Losing the first one was a wake-up call—had I
really turned into a person who could leave their Filofax on the roof of their
car and drive off? Was it a precursor of what was to come? I immediately bought
a new Filofax. This was before computer databases, and I re-created the
phone-book pages from my cell-phone records, not an easy task, and an old
invitation list. Carefully copying the names and addresses and phone numbers
into a new Filofax (the one that’s so old now I think I need to replace it).

I have a friend who once got so frustrated on a
phone call that he threw his cell phone out the window onto Sunset Boulevard and
had to send everyone an email asking for their number. This was before
BlackBerrys, when a cell phone was just a cell phone and there wasn’t that magic
synch feature from a phone to a computer. I also know a young woman who changes
her phone number every time she has a breakup—just to make the point to whoever
she’s breaking up with that “it really is final.” That seems like a lot of work
somehow, but it seems to work for her. There was a time when I had an entire
page in my Filofax devoted to her phone numbers but I, finally, replaced the
page.

Sometimes, I use my Filofax in meetings to take
notes, or I’ll have a thought in the car, come up with a random sentence for
something I’m working on, and pull over to jot it down. Sometimes I take it to
the beach where the sand isn’t friendly to a computer and write in it by hand.
There are a few haiku that will probably never be printed anywhere else. I can
gauge from them how sad I was on a given day. (Haiku are often sad. The more
comedic ones have found their way into my computer.) Some of them aren’t even
properly haiku, they’re just short poems. I guess I could print a couple of them
now:

When people talk about
past lives,

I realize, if it’s
true,

that my soul must have
amnesia.

Or, my personal favorite:

the best
dancers

fall down
sometimes

(Like I said, they will probably never be printed
anywhere else except this page and my Filofax.)

I like it that my Filofax has a calendar (a week on
two pages) that I sometimes remember to write things on with a name, a time, and
an address with a phone number scribbled under it. Sometimes I even remember to
look at the calendar to see if I have an appointment. I want to redo the address
pages (because of those dead people and a few others who I don’t speak to
anymore and the ones I’ve neglected to input).

However, some of the scribbled names have me
baffled. I have no idea who Josh Milbauer is or why I have his number. I’m not
at all certain who Alix is and why I have his (or her) number. I do know who
Eric Perrodin is: the mayor of Compton and a D.A. in Los Angeles and I do
remember why I have his number, something do with those loose diamonds and
losing my computer when we were burglarized. But I’m not quite sure where Mabel
Mae’s Gourmet Food Room is or why I felt compelled to write it down (no number),
or what entranced me about Frontier Soups, which apparently come in three
varieties: fisherman’s stew, corn chowder, holiday cranberry soup. Maybe it has
something to do with Mabel Mae’s Gourmet Food Room. I’m not sure. They’re not on
the same page. It’s not just the outside of my Filofax that could use some
cleaning up, the inside needs some work, too.

There are those dead people, some of whom died of
natural causes at what seemed like it might have been a natural end. But then
there are those other ones. My friend Joan who found our house for us, whose
face I still see smiling at me and who I want to call every time we have a cause
for celebration or a new disaster. My friend Lisa whose death, from a rare form
of cancer, came on so quickly that none of us could catch our breath. All she
wanted was a wig, which I had made for her with lightning speed. She never had a
chance to wear it. I don’t know how to take Lisa out of my Filofax, that would
make it too final, somehow. As if she were really gone. Maybe I didn’t want a
new Filofax, after all. Maybe I want the memories it holds, like an
old-fashioned journal. But the cover was getting a little funky.

I solved it myself. I went to the old-fashioned
stationery store in Brentwood on San Vicente, practically the last of its breed.
I’m a little worried about them. It’s always empty. The woman who owns it spends
a lot of time on an ancient computer playing solitaire, just in case you didn’t
notice that there wasn’t a lot going on. The young woman they recently hired
made crooked Xerox copies for me the other day (I went to Staples to remake them
because I didn’t want to make a scene). They did have a huge selection of
Filofaxes and I bought a new one. And, while I was at it, a calendar for next
year (quite unlike myself, two months in advance), and clean note paper for when
I want to make notes, and new address pages. Now, I just have to talk my
daughter Maia, who has perfect printing because I bought her (at this very same
stationery store), a calligraphy book when she was five, into re-inputting the
edited names and addresses by hand. Or else I’ll just take all the old pages,
like changing out a loose-leaf binder, and carefully reinsert them into the new
Filofax and life will seem a little newer but the same.

I am sad to report that the Brentwood Stationers closed their
doors in the summer of 2010. They told me that one of the factors was that
the landlord wanted to raise their rent. Four months later, it is vacant and
there is a “For Lease” sign in the window.