Off the Menu Read online

  My father is raking leaves in the postage-stamp-size front yard, wearing a thick wool sweater my mom knitted for him. The sleeves are too short, but the torso is three sizes too big, dwarfing his ever-diminishing frame. Papa used to be five nine, is now closer to five seven, and retains his wiry strength even at the age of seventy. He was a cabinetmaker and union carpenter, particularly good with intricate work, and made his living mostly on custom built-ins and special-order original commissions through designers, taking general-contractor work when things were slow. His hands are gnarled with arthritis and still callused from decades of hard work, but he would never let me hire someone to help out with things like yard work.

  “My leettle baba romovaya.” He grins widely and opens his arms to me, letting the rake fall where it may, and calling me by the endearment of my childhood, a reference to a yeasty cake soaked in cherry juice and plum brandy and covered in a creamy sauce—round and plump and pink and sweet, which is how he saw me. “Come give Papa a kisseleh.”

  I put my arms around him, and kiss his cheek, smooth-shaven and smelling of bay rum. “Hello, Papa.”

  “How you are doing, eh? No work meedle of day?” He shakes his hand up and down. “So fancy!”

  “Got done early, thought I’d come make pelmeni with Mama.”

  He smiles even wider, closes his eyes and inhales deeply, as if he can already smell the little meat dumplings, swimming in butter and onions and dunked in rich, thick sour cream. “Then I not keep you. Thees is important work, for you and Mama. Not for hens to laugh at.”

  I laugh. Russian idioms never translate particularly well. “Yes, Papa. Very serious work.”

  He kisses my forehead and smacks my ample bottom. “Go. Make pelmeni. I do leaves.”

  He turns away in his voluminous sweater, wrists exposed and somehow dear, picks up the discarded rake from the ground, and returns to meticulously and laboriously making piles of fall foliage. I know my dad; he will not come in for dinner until every leaf is gone from the yard; he is passionate and proud about keeping his home immaculate. We moved in here when I was a baby, and he and Mom paid it off by the time I was in high school. It might be small, but it’s in perfect condition, everything kept in good working order by Dad, and impeccably clean by Mom.

  I open the door, and call out. “Mama! It’s Alana.”

  My mom’s head pops around the corner from the kitchen. She is wearing her usual pale blue cotton kerchief over her gray curls, which are as unruly as my brown ones. Over her housedress she is wearing a crazy hand-painted WURLD’S BEST GRANDMMA apron that Sasha’s boys made her for her birthday last year. It leaves a little sprinkling of silver glitter behind her when she walks, like she is the Wurld’s Oldest Strippur, but she loves it and wears it religiously. Whenever I bring Dumpling over it takes me a week to get the sparkle out of his paws.

  I head for the kitchen and kiss her cheek, wordlessly handing off the package of ground meat as she reaches out for it, like a delicious drug drop.

  She squeezes the package, and sniffs it appreciatively. “Pelmeni or cevapcici?” she asks seriously—dumplings or Serbian sausages—one recipe from her Russian paternal grandmother, one from her Romanian maternal grandmother.

  “Pelmeni, please.”

  “Goot. Come. Tea first, then cook.” My mother turns to the stove and puts a flame under a kettle. She reaches above her head for two thick glasses from the cupboard. She takes the jar of syrupy sour-cherry jam from the counter, and puts a healthy dose into one glass, knowing how I love the old traditional tea sweetened with the preserves. I get much of my economy of motion in the kitchen from her, every gesture practiced and simple. Coasters and squat, heavy glasses from the bottom shelf of the middle cabinet. Tea leaves from the old tin delivered in a fat pinch into the battered white china teapot, painted in an intricate netting of cobalt blue, its gold accents chipping off. She catches the water just as it starts to steam, but before it hits a full boil, tells me, “Boil makes bitter,” for the gazillionth time in my life. She brings glasses and spoons to the oilcloth-covered table, along with the teapot. I stir the thick, purple-black jam until my tea is clouded and little pieces of cherry float and spin. My mother takes a dense sugar cube from the bowl on the kitchen table, and places it delicately between her teeth, sucking the hot tea into her mouth through the cube, a sweetening method I have never been able to master without eating about seven sugar cubes per cup of tea.

  We don’t talk while we drink our tea, but my mom reaches over and pets my hand while we drink. I love this about her. She always gives you room to breathe and be, without needing noise all the time. I think after the barely controlled chaos of my siblings and me growing up in that house, she, like me, loves the quiet. She knows we will talk while we cook, but for now we can just drink tea and hold hands. It is enough. Our sips are measured, and we finish within seconds of each other, my mom crunching the last morsel of sugar in her teeth while I shake the final cherry morsel from my glass. She smiles.

  “Pelmeni.” It is a statement, not a question. She gets up and I put our tea things in the sink while she gets the big bowls out. “I make dough, you do meat, nu?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She dumps flour into her bowl, adding eggs and salt and milk, mixing by hand until she has smooth, plastic dough. I put the ground-meat mixture into mine, seasoning with salt, black pepper, and ground caraway seeds, an unusual and delicious family addition to the traditional recipe. She begins to roll thin rounds with a small wooden dowel, flours them and stacks them on the table between us so that I can fill them. She’ll finish the dough well before I finish pinching the fat dumplings closed, her hands a blur.

  “Zho. Why you no bring my Dumpling to make dumplings, eh?” She loves Dumpling like another grandchild, and adores dressing him up and taking pictures when I leave him with them when I travel. She especially loves theme pictures for holidays, and while I would never in a million years dream of dressing him up myself, I secretly love the photos she takes with the ridiculous outfits and props. My favorite so far is the Dumpling Lama, draped in an orange scarf like a monk’s robes, in honor of Chinese New Year.

  “Dumpling is working today.”

  “Ah, zho busy, zho hard to be dog een America, have to have job. Pull up by paw straps.” Her eyes twinkle as she teases. She once ran into Barry and Dumpling while she was visiting a sick friend in the hospital, and got to see them in action. She was very proud.

  “Everyone has to contribute,” I joke back. “How are you guys doing?”

  “Goot, goot. Sasha and Alexei brink all boys over Sunday to watch Bears.” She sighs deeply, shaking her head in disappointment, remembering the spanking our beloved team got. “Like throwing peas against the vall.” She throws her hands up and sucks her front teeth disparagingly. “Tsssk. Monday we go recital for ballet for Natalia’s girls. Lia, she is goot, graceful like Natalia. But leetle Racheleh. Not so goot. Not maybe supposed to do the ballet. The dancing, ees like small elephant putting out fire in own shoes. Like you, remember?”

  Of course I remembered. I took ballet for one session when I was six. I spent four months clomping around, spinning the wrong way, endlessly pulling my leotard wedgies out of my little butt, stepping on the teacher’s feet, accidentally kicking the girl in front or back of me, knocking over the portable barres, and, on one memorable occasion, pirouetting with as much force as I could muster and clocking the lithe little princess next to me right in the face. I had never seen a nose expel that much blood in that short a time. They politely said to Mama that they did not think there was a place for me in the next session, and that was the end of my dance career and the beginning of flute lessons. There is no bloodletting with the flute. Mama continues listing her week of activities. “Tuesday mah-jongg, I win. Today, pelmeni with you. Plehnty busy.”

  “Good for you.” I roll small balls of the meat mixture, and cover them with the thin dough, pinching carefully to seal, making sure there are no air bubbles. The fir
st time I made pelmeni with Mom, I was about nine. I was careless with the dough, and when we boiled them, the air pockets I left made the dumplings explode, ejecting their fillings with little muffled pops, like edamame squeezing out of their pods. Mama strained out the mess, winked at me, dumped some tomato sauce over it and called it pasta kerchiefs and meatballs. Ever since that day, I have been very diligent about air bubbles.

  “And Patreek? You bring him pelmeni, nu?” My mom is not immune to the charms of Patrick. My dad is more leery, especially since he believes that Patrick is in love with me. Of course, my dad believes that every man I ever meet is in love with me, including Barry. But Mama, she thinks Patrick hung the moon, especially since he praises her rustic cooking and always takes leftovers home when he comes to family events. It should be noted that after the first time I brought Patrick, at his own insistence, to a family Shabbat dinner, which we try to do once every other month with the whole gang, my mother began inviting him directly to most other family occasions. I think my parents are hilariously split in their views on the whole Patrick thing. My mom would like me to marry Patrick, so she invites him to every birthday and Chanukah party, sure that spending time together away from work will push our relationship to the next level. And my dad, who is positive that Patrick is after me romantically, is scared that I will cease to resist the endless advances he imagines I fend off every day. So when Patrick is at a gathering, my dad works very hard to keep him busy, showing off his tool collection, talking sports, inviting him outside for one of his rank greenish cigars, which take forever to smoke and smell like an ashtray full of manure.

  “Yes, Mama. I will bring him pelmeni.” And I will. Because if I don’t, when my mother calls him and asks if he liked them, they will both kick my ass. “He is out of town for the weekend, but we will freeze some and I will give it to him on Monday, I promise.”

  Mom, finished with the wrappers, nudges me aside with her hip and we shift, I roll the meat mixture into little balls and hand them off and she swiftly covers them with dough, pinching them perfectly closed, setting them aside on trays.

  “You veel come next week, nu? Shabbat dinner?”

  “Of course. What should I bring?” It is only in the last few years that my mother has allowed me to bring food to the family dinners. It both thrills and saddens me. I’m delighted that she finally trusts me to make some of the family recipes, and that she genuinely seems to enjoy when I tweak them slightly to make them new while still honoring the flavors we are all used to. But sad, because I know that, in part, her acquiescence means that she gets too worn-out by taking on the whole menu herself. My aunt Rivka, Mom’s younger sister who lives up the block, is a terrible cook, so she is not allowed to make anything. She buys the challah from the bakery near the Russian community center where she volunteers, and brings the wine. But the food is on my mother’s shoulders, and they are beginning to stoop slightly with age. I hate seeing my parents show the signs of getting older.

  “Tssk.” My mom sucks her teeth, a habit she has when she is thinking, or annoyed, or very pleased. “Borscht maybe? And carrot salad?” And then a pause. “And Patreeck, of course.” A little smile plays around the corners of her mouth.

  I ignore the last bit, and decide to take a major risk. “How about I do a brisket? Patrick just got a gift shipment from a local farm, and gave me a huge one. It is taking up so much space in my freezer; I would love to cook it so I can make some room.” Mom will never let me do the main dish unless she thinks it is somehow helping me out of a jam.

  She tilts her head at me and squints, trying to see if I am implying that she is no longer capable of making the family meat. I keep my face impassive, and a little imploring, and she buys it.

  “Well, yes, eef freezer is too much full it no work well. Things go bad, get freezer brunt. You brink brisket. I make kugel.”

  Whew. “Thank you, Mama, it will be a huge help.”

  “Pish. Is somsink the cats cried out.”

  I smile. “Well, it is a big deal to me.” I lean over and kiss her. She grabs my nose between her knuckles and gives a gentle twist.

  And we set back to making pelmeni.

  By the time we’re finished, my mom asks me to invite Barry to bring Dumpling here for dinner instead of dropping him off at my house. He is thrilled, and promises to bring wine, knowing that as delicious as almost everything is at my folks’ house, they drink wine so awful that it is impossible to choke down. They buy it in large unlabeled gallon jugs. I believe it is Polish in origin, those famous wine-making people, and the grape varietal seems to be a blend of concord and petrol. It is simultaneously horrifically sweet and yet has an astringency that sucks all the saliva out of your mouth. He arrives with an excited Dumpling, a bottle of Bordeaux, and an endless series of charming stories about his recent stay in Philadelphia.

  “So the young man playing Bosie, Oscar’s lover, comes onstage dressed in Victorian underwear and in the back of the house one of the women in the audience says, ‘Damn, baby!’ as loud as anything.”

  My mother laughs, and my dad slips pieces of meat filling from his pelmeni to Dumpling, who rests at his feet under the table.

  “Right out loud?” my dad says. “So rute.”

  “It was pretty funny actually. And better than the night before.” Barry is in his element, telling funny stories to people who think his life is endlessly glamorous.

  “Vat happent night before?” my mom asks, rapt.

  “Well, there is a very quiet scene when Oscar knows that he is going to jail. Very poignant, very sad. And a gentleman in the front row, well, he just …” Barry looks at me for approval to continue, having already shared the event with me the evening it occurred. I nod.

  Barry pauses dramatically. “He passed wind. Very loudly. Twice.”

  Both of my parents convulse in laughter, wiping tears. Fart jokes transcend all cultural differences and language barriers. But Barry is not done.

  “And a minute later, up on stage, we could smell it. And it was awful. You could practically taste it. And you could just see everyone onstage as the smell would get to them, I mean it was so obvious, they would start to walk away, like it was chasing them, and then we all started trying not to laugh.”

  My dad is smacking the table with his hand, and my mother is wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. Barry is leaning back in his chair, puffed and proud. Dumpling wanders over to lick my ankle, and I think that whatever else goes on in this crazy life of mine, it is a good life. A very good life indeed.

  5

  Dear Alana—

  So let’s get the excuses out of the way in terms of my waiting so long to answer your questions—consumed by work, lost track of time, loathe to actually subscribe, inside knowledge of the freebie-weekends schedule, fill in the blank. What’s wrong with being a remora on the great white EDestiny shark, I ask you? By the way, nothing like having someone who is obviously a very good writer compliment one’s writing to brighten the day. Considering that I was born and educated in Tennessee, I exponentially thank you. Oscar Wilde, gougères, and Burgundy—what are the odds? Obviously you are some sort of goddess … or siren. Once you work through that Bears problem, you might want to sell shares in you. Let’s not overlook that, being from the South, I know a little bit about hoops and piecrust. I think I just wrote a Nashville hit. And you had me at pamplemousse. What do you say we consider being grown-ups and cut the EDestiny apron strings? You can reach me at [email protected].

  Hope to hear from you again soon.

  RJ

  I’m glad he acknowledged the near month that had passed between my reaching out and his reaching back, and even gladder to know that he too was not paying EDestiny any money. And he continues to be witty and smart. Baffling. Now I am quite certain that he must be covered in warts and smell of old cabbages. Or is entrenched in a marriage he will never be free of. Probably both.

  But that doesn’t prevent me from replying.

  RJ—
>
  I too tend to only pay attention to the freebie weekends at ED, and have been pretty busy myself, so your radio silence is understandable. And I’m a fan of being grown-up enough to guide my own communications.

  I’ve actually never been to Tennessee, but I hear it is beautiful. And that the pie and hoops are always worth the visit. I have met a few people in the country music business and they rave about Nashville. Keep meaning to go check out the barbecue.

  Other than buckets of work, and projects around the apartment, and the demands of one small dog, I’ve mostly been trying to hang out with friends and family, testing new recipes with a couple new ingredients I am playing with, and helping one of my best pals prepare to host her first Thanksgiving.

  What’s been fascinating in your world?

  Alana

  I shoot this off trying not to think too hard or edit too much. I’ve finally gotten to an age when it is tiring enough to just be me; trying to be some super-duper-special uber-desirable version of me to attract a guy is just a game I don’t have the energy for anymore. This is who and what I am, and if you are the guy, you will get that and be fine with it. So I don’t try to be any wittier than I actually am, and instead make a conscious decision to just be completely myself and let the chips fall where they may. I mean, I do spell-check and reread a couple times to be sure I don’t sound like some mouth-breathing idiot. But I don’t overthink or overedit content.