Milk (24 page)

“What?”

“Christ,” I say, hanging up. It's supposed to reach 105°F today. Perspiration drips from my underarms to the waistband of my front-paneled shorts; I have to pee again. I slurp from my super sipper.

Outside, Maggie pulls up.

“Those who Think Call Pink,” she says once she sees me, the desperation on my face. “Hey, I'd buy you a margarita if I thought you could drink it.”

“Tell me what to do!” I plead. Presumably Maggie knows since she went through her mother's belongings not so long ago.

“It's simple,” she says. “Go out there and look at the stuff, and decide whether or not you want it.”

Meanwhile the guys from Pinks are unboxing more furniture—headboards, lamps, mirrors. I pass by a grouping of chairs that once lined the hallway in our house; according to the Pinks schedule I hold in my hand, they're made of mahogany, their backs carved in the shapes of swan's necks. Worth a lot of money.

“Those are nice,” Maggie says.

“Want 'em?”

“Don't you?”

“Yeah, I guess. Sure. What the hell.”

Displayed now on our old kitchen table is my sewing basket, my first typewriter, and a huge, plush, God-awful, rug-upholstered pillow from college. I bend over to sniff its blue mandalacovered front and wonder whatever happened to my old hookah; this pillow still smells faintly of pot and incense, right down to the fringe.

“Why did Dad save all this stuff? This pillow can go in the trash,” I announce to no one in particular.

A Pinks man approaches, handing me different colored stick-on tags. “So we know what you want to do with things. Red is for the dump, green for removal from the premises, yellow for re-storage.”

“Corb,” I whisper, “I hate your yuppie Brooks Brothers guts.”

Maggie sticks a red tag on the pillow. “Start tagging,” she says. “Or we'll be here all day.”

The men from Pinks are opening still more cartons, about a dozen of them. “Oh God,” I say, remembering all the stuff that must be here. The Japanese flower-arranging equipment belonging to my mother and all her wedding presents—silver, china, crystal, linens. Persian rugs, assorted antiques, junk. My old diaries and stuffed animals. Pots and pans, kitchen utensils, moth-eaten blankets, hot water bottles, combs, brushes, the contents of drawers dumped into boxes. I gaze at my swelling, aching feet and try to calculate how much it would cost for another day of this.

I end up with a garage full of stuff,
i.e
., our garage in Arcadia until Gregg and I can move into our own place. Pinks will deliver the big items; Gregg brings over a carload of stuff that night on his way to work, some of the smaller, more delicate or awkward items which I'll store in the poolhouse itself—my old dollhouse, a box of Umari china, yet another box of my mother's linens that I nearly forgot, a floor lamp because, I realized, the pool house is too dark. In the passenger seat of the Chevy Cavalier, I placed my mother's recipe box, having a sudden yen for cold fruit soup; if anyone had a recipe for this, she would. Also, I thought I would like to have something so intimately hers, all the recipes she typed up herself, notations in pen and pencil.

As soon as I get home I fall instantly to sleep, stretched out on the futon, on my side, waking up later with a start. I hear a TV. I get up and look out across the dark yard, into Maggie's living room, thinking it's hers. But no, her lights are off. It's 10:30 already. I consider calling Gregg, then remember he's working tonight. For a split second I consider calling Jackson, to see how he's doing now that the job has started and he's moved into his new place in Newport Beach, so his latest note said. I think of calling him, no doubt, because I'm lonely and can no longer call my father late at night (not at the Grove, not after nine), a ritual we'd fallen into of late. He came to appreciate my calls, I think, though I always needed an excuse—financial advice or the name of a good car mechanic. He began to ask about my pregnancy, how was I feeling, did I think it was a girl or a boy, it'd be nice to have a girl in the family, and every so often he'd tell me something. Such as the fact that my mother had never experienced morning sickness with Corb, me, or Charlotte; or that I looked like Bela Lugosi as a baby, all that hair, which soon fell out. Normal things such as a normal father might tell his daughter, but I was hearing them for the first time, many years too late. And he told me other things, not so normal. That my mother played bridge in the hospital, that he and a couple of orderlies would join her for a game around an everyday card table as if they were somewhere else, at home, and my mother would wear a gray woolen skirt and her loafers and a pale yellow sweater, her glasses on a chain around her neck, and if it weren't for having such a lousy bridge partner—my father—she would've beat the pants off everyone. She was brilliant at bridge, and competitive; the shock treatments might have made her forget the names of her children, but had left untouched her ability at bridge. Such memories slipped out of my father's mouth, almost as an afterthought, but if I asked him directly, he'd say he couldn't remember. Like Corb can't remember and I can't remember: the family amnesia.

I look at the items Gregg brought over from Pink's, still by the door—the tall gawky lamp, the box of linens, my old dollhouse, and next to them, my mother's recipe box, humble and plain. I bring it back to my futon and lie down again, turning the cards idly.

Her recipe box is a mess now. It didn't start out that way, back when it was strictly my mother's, each category alphabetized and typed up by her on dividers. Sandwiches, Preserves, Pastry-Pie, Cake, Bread, Fruits, Poultry, Meats, Casseroles, Soups, Sauces, Salads, Menu Ideas—long fallen out of alphabetical order once my mother died, once Evan got her hands on this box.

Here and there is a recipe I recognize. Corned Beef Hash (disgusting), Parsnips (ugh), Tongue (need I say more?).

There is a hesitation, a lack of confidence, in some of the recipes. Shish Kebab, for instance—why would you need to write the recipe down at all?
Steak
—
cut in 1” squares and marinate in barbecue sauce; Tomatoes
—
cut in good-sized wedges, do not skin
.…

Maybe this was from the beginning of her marriage, when she was first learning to cook. Yes, this 3 × 5 card is older, more yellowed. Similar to my own adolescent recipes, added to this box later on—in that this, my mother's recipe, contains the most simplistic directions. Instructions to shred the carrots for carrot raisin salad, for instance.

I can picture her as a young bride, flipping through her recipe box on a long hot afternoon, making notes here and there—her whole identity tied up in the success of a recipe.

On another card is a list of sandwich fillings:

Date & cream cheese

Pineapple, chicken & cream cheese

Cottage cheese, chopped celery & chives

Egg, celery & watercress (moisten w/ sour cream)

One thing Corb has said about our mother, when I've pressed him for memories: “She didn't know how to cook for kids.”

Yes, I can see that. Steamed Persimmon Pudding. Rabbit Cacciatore. Potato Balls. No recipe for cold fruit soup, so far.

I remember, suddenly, those dinners of lamb croquettes and tongue, parsnips, twice-baked potatoes—of my sitting and sitting at our dining room table, refusing to eat. The bowl of split pea soup I was offered for two days running once, breakfast, lunch, and dinner; of Corb gliding by on his way outside to play while I sat stubbornly before plates of vegetables cooked God-knows-how, of Corb whispering, “Pretend it's candy.”

I come to some newer recipes in the box: from Evan's era. Normal foods like fried chicken, tacos, meatloaf, cookies. Although my mother had numerous recipes for cookies and desserts, they were for company; we didn't have desserts, she didn't bake cookies. Too fattening. Our family was among the first to drink skim milk. She served it to us in liqueur glasses, so we could sample it—thin, greenish, icebox cold, tasteless. From then on we drank it nonetheless, and when she wasn't around, I ransacked the cabinets for honey, sugar—something sweet. I drank vanilla extract, bit into squares of baking chocolate, gagged into the sink, and from then on contented myself with smelling, imagining sweetness.

Then came Evan, who baked cookies. We baked cookies with her, a first. While our mother was resting, I suppose, or during her stays at the hospital. What must she have thought? Her domestic power usurped, though for some reason I imagine she was not angry, but relieved, glad to hand the reins over to Evan. A little laughter in the house, some fun for the children, might be a good thing after all.

Once my mother died, the recipe box became Evan's, who added recipes haphazardly, not necessarily in alphabetical order, then dumped more recipes on top. Those torn out of magazines in doctors' waiting rooms, the jotted down notes for someone's chocolate cake she'd admired, recipes scribbled on scratch paper or on the back of a birthday card.

Evan didn't use my mother's recipes but cooked simple meals, and taught me to do the same. Meatloaf with frozen vegetables. Iceberg lettuce salads, the dressing out of a bottle. Broiled pork chops, fried chicken, pot roast. Jello. Pineapple upside-down cake. Corb and I were delighted—food we could eat, food like our friends ate. Evan's specialty, however, was Mexican food: I can still smell her enchiladas, how I used to flip the tortillas over in a frying pan of hot oil, with tongs, before smoothing on the red sauce; the oil was the secret, Evan claimed. Kept the enchiladas from drying out.

I loved her cooking. I loved her. Corb loved her too, although the stiff and proper man he became would never admit to it. She was our housekeeper, that was all. She used to chase him around the house with one of his sneakers as a joke and threaten to paddle him with it; he would let her catch him on purpose, a teenager, just so she would hug him, so somebody on this earth would touch him, since his father wouldn't and his mother was dead. This became for him merely a fond memory.

The last time I saw Evan, I was twenty-four years old and living in Boston with a guy with whom marriage had been discussed, a Boston native whose accent I couldn't understand any more than his values, which could only be described as blue collar, working class. Whenever he found me sleepless at night, sitting in the dark in the living room, what he said was, “You'll be tired for work.” Never,
What's the matter, what's wrong?
I wrote ad copy for an upscale women's clothing company, was restless at work and at home, unhappy in this relationship as well as on the East Coast in general.

In the middle of this, I sent Evan a plane ticket for Mother's Day. A whim. A folly. I hadn't talked to her in years, not since we'd had lunch at Woody and Eddy's, where Evan had regaled me with one story after another about my mother's exploits—her drinking, her driving all over town, doctor to doctor until she would find one willing to write a prescription. How she slashed her wrists once, blood
everywhere
and Evan cleaning it up in the nick of time, just as Corb and I walked in the door from school.

In Evan's stories my mother seemed a cardboard character, present but somehow not there, similar to the memories I had. I remember her pushing the shopping cart I sat in, or taking me to the playground. That is, I remember myself sitting in the cart, nudging her stomach with my feet, or being perched on the slide at the playground, about to go down—but while I know my mother is there, I can't see her, she's just out of view, even when she's right in front of me.

So I sent Evan a plane ticket and a month later she came, brassy, full of advice for me and my boyfriend; red patent leather purse; pant suit; hair in a bouffant, which she still wrapped in toilet paper at night. “So I says to her, if you don't get that operation you're gonna die. I'm a nurse, I
know.”
Tales of abscessed legs and livers, the raving, incontinent old people she'd cared for over the years, how they didn't want her to leave, not for even an hour. “‘But Mrs. Sparks,' I says, ‘I got to go out. If I don't go out, we don't eat. We have nothing in the refrigerator, Mrs. Sparks,' I says. ‘You can go with me, Mrs. Sparks,' I says. ‘You can go with me, get some fresh air. It'd be good for you, Mrs. Sparks,' I says. But she says, ‘Evan, no.
No!
I'm too afraid!'”

She stayed two weeks, the longest two weeks of my life. Every day she took the trolley with me to work, talking all the way. “Did you
see
that person over there?” A fat person, a thin person, a black person, a sick person. “That person has gall bladder problems”—or a thyroid problem, or diabetes. “I've seen these things, I know.” While I worked, Evan went sightseeing or sat in Boston Common talking to people—often drunks, the only people who seemed to line the benches there during the day. On the way home on the trolley she'd tell me what this or that person had said, what she had said. At first she told them she was here in Boston visiting a close friend, well, the daughter of a family she'd worked for many years ago; well, you see, the girl's mother was sick and.… Then after a few days the story became this: though the daughter wasn't her own, she thought of her as such, and the girl thought of her, Evan, as her own mother; why, she'd even sent her a plane ticket for Mother's Day. Then she began telling them I
was
her daughter. She was visiting her daughter here in Boston. Her daughter had sent her a plane ticket for Mother's Day!

Once, when I met her in Boston Common after getting off work, she introduced me to her latest companion, Mabel, a woman in a dirty blouse and skirt. “This is Theo,” she said, “my daughter.”

Mabel adjusted her cockeyed glasses. “Why, a plane ticket for Mother's Day! Your mother was just telling me what a wonderful girl you are, how fine you turned out, and now you're going to be
married
!” Her magnified eyes swept up and down my figure.