Eating Heaven (16 page)

“Hi!” I call back over the traffic, ducking under the awning at the front door.

“You are moving?” She cups her free hand around her mouth like a megaphone.

“No, just going to help my uncle out for a while,” I yell. “I’ll be back.”

“Yes! Good!” She smiles, leaning down to stroke Tatiana’s glossy white-blond hair. “You will have to come visit. Tati is starting to walk!”

She looks so excited to be reporting this that I nod vigorously and yell, “Wow! That’s great!” We smile and wave before each turning back to the business at hand.

Even though I promised myself I wouldn’t, I drive past PanAsia on my way back to Benny’s. My rear windows are blocked by the trappings of my life, piled high all around me. Buddy has found her bed on top of my suitcase in the front passenger’s seat. If Henry saw me now he’d think I was a Clampett. What the hell am I doing? It’s a quarter till three; I should be hightailing it down the highway. I turn right at the next street, wanting now only to get out of this neighborhood as quickly as I can. Another right and I’ll be on my way toward Burnside and the highway.

Just ahead, it seems yet another trendy coffee shop has opened in one of the rehabbed brick warehouses that fill this neighborhood. It has a colorful sign that reads
KAFÉ KIZMET
, and, despite the rain, black-clad people sit under a metal-and-glass awning at outdoor tables. One person stands out from the hipsters, and I recognize Henry Bouche immediately: mustard yellow T-shirt, disobedient hair. He is sitting with a woman, and all I can tell at twenty-five miles per hour is that she has stick-straight dark hair and is incredibly petite. I’m almost safely past when Henry looks up, and a flash of recognition crosses his
face before I turn my head the other way. Like if I don’t look at him, he won’t see me.

I don’t breathe until I reach Burnside, and then I yell “Shit!” so loudly that Buddy jerks as if she’s been electrocuted.

My cell phone rings.

“No,” I say, fumbling for it in my purse. “It can’t be.” The plastic rectangle is tangled in debris at the bottom of my bag. I manage to free it and stay on the road, after the third ring. Why did I never upgrade to a new phone with Caller ID? It could be Ruthann. It’s close to three and she’s probably worried I won’t make it on time.

“Hallo?” I say, affecting a throaty, low voice with a trace of a Russian accent, just in case.

“Geez, Eleanor Samuels, you sound horrible. You have a cold or something? Was that you that just drove past?”

I could keep up the charade, say, “I’m sorry, dahlink, you must have zee wrong number.” I could make static noises, hang up. I could gun the car straight up the Burnside Bridge and over it, finding merciful release at the bottom of the Willamette River.

“Oh, was that you?” I say. “I thought it might be, but I wasn’t sure. I’m just moving a few things.”

“You’re moving? Why didn’t you say so? I can fit a lot of stuff in my Jeep.”

“No, no,” I laugh, and it sounds stilted. “I’m not moving. Just helping out a friend.”

“Must be a pretty good friend.”

“Yeah, yeah. He is.”

“Oh,” he says, lilt leaving his voice.

“He’s my uncle,” I say quickly. “Kind of.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “Just kind of.”

“It’s a long story. Can I call you later this afternoon? I really need to finish your profile, but I’ve got some other things to take care of first.”

“Sure,” he says. “You know where to find me.”

Having coffee with someone far younger and thinner than I am, I don’t say.

“You know, I was thinking about stopping,” I lie, “but I saw you were busy.” Two can play this fishing game.

“Ah, yes. Actually, you should have stopped. I could have introduced you to my wi—”

A noise erupts from my throat, a hissing, whooshing crackle that sounds just like static.

“Hello?” Henry says. “Can you hear me?”

I push the
OFF
button and toss the phone in back. It clangs against something metal and drops to the floor.

“Loud and clear,” I say.

A
week passes, then two, three, and suddenly it’s May. With my computer set up on the old sewing machine table (sewing machine conspicuously absent), I can gaze out the window at the lace whites and cotton-candy pinks of the dogwood and cherry trees, bursting with blossoms like there will never be another spring. The gray days are tempered by partly cloudy ones, sun threading in and out of streams of clouds from the coast, and the evenings grow longer, revealing hazy yellow-mauve sunsets when it’s clear.

I’ve never felt so focused on my work. Somehow, I have fewer distractions at Benny’s, an incongruity that’s hard to fathom, considering why I’m here. Benny doesn’t require that much from me at the moment other than cooking and keeping the place in order, rides to his appointments, making sure he takes his complicated routine of pills, and that he doesn’t fall over and break something. And companionship. Sometimes I think that’s the most important reason for me to be here; Benny won’t have to face anything alone.

He’s back to puttering around the yard, albeit slowly, and playing solitaire at the kitchen table, yakking on the phone with his cronies. Ruthann comes three times a week to check his vitals, listen to his gut with her stethoscope, grill him about what he’s eating, how he’s sleeping, how he’s feeling. They almost always fit in a game of gin rummy and a snack, usually something I’ve made for an article and stuffed into the
refrigerator after a quick taste. Benny’s appetite is mostly back, but mine is just gone. It’s a miracle. I’ve lost eleven pounds, and earlier this week I had to go back to the apartment for my formerly too-tight jeans.

The articles on fish, root vegetables, and chicken soup are finished, along with the family favorites piece, which covers meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and my mother’s lime Jell-O salad.

The profile of Henry Bouche took a bit more effort. I did not return his calls. I went online for more details on Tibetan food, and found biographical data from Mr. Bouche’s time in San Francisco. (I did note that he was unmarried at the time but had a live-in “partner,” which in San Francisco-ese could mean anything. The man is more complicated than a ten thousand–piece jigsaw puzzle, and I have never enjoyed wasting time trying to fit strange little bits of things together.) In the end, I wrote a perfunctorily nice article about a chef and the food he cooks, with none of the personal journey crap I thought would be so important. Sandra loved it.

Benny still falls asleep in front of the TV every night. I wake him, he gets that wild, frightened look, but he manages to get himself up and to bed without too much trouble. Sometimes I hear him roaming the house late at night, but when I ask him about it the next day, he says he was just up to use the john. He tells Ruthann he sleeps fine. Since the day in the car, we’ve talked about nothing more important than finding a neighbor kid to mow and trying to take his pills on a full stomach. He thinks I can’t hear him throwing up because he turns the bathroom faucet on full blast.

We’ve agreed that I don’t need to be here around the clock, but I don’t know where I would go. My apartment feels stripped, devoid of its old coziness, although I miss my stove. Buddy loves it here at Benny’s, sitting at the sliding glass door and mewing at every living thing that passes by: spider, bird, neighbor cat. I suppose I could let her out, but I won’t. Who knows why her former owners lost her. Benny’s warming up to her. He thinks I don’t see him sneaking her table scraps.

Stefan e-mailed a week ago, saying how sorry he was that I hadn’t been able to work on the regional foods piece. He hinted that he might have a few things to send my way in the future, but mentioned nothing
specific. His warm, funny tone was mostly back, but I kept my reply brief and businesslike.

Seeing Henry with his wife opened my eyes to a lot of things. To my chronic naïveté when it comes to men. To my willingness to throw myself into absurdly inappropriate relationships. To the nature of the male species, the biological imperative to entice any female into mating position, then stand up, brush themselves off, and trot off to find more prey.

And what of me, my biological imperative? To foster, to nurture, to please. To stay put and raise the brood, which for me consists of one dying old man with a corny sense of humor and a chubby feline with wanderlust. This, for now, is my family. No doting, long-term mate, no hormone-addled junior high school kids.

I don’t even ask myself anymore how all this happened.

I’m shutting down my computer for the day when Benny shuffles behind me in the hallway.

“You doing okay?” I turn. He’s been making more trips to the bathroom.

“Yup,” he says, and the bathroom door shuts, the lock turns, the faucet blasts. I can’t stand to hear what comes next, so I walk through the living room, out the sliding glass door onto the back patio, and close my eyes, inhale the nostalgic, sweet scent of lilacs. I wrap my arms around my ribs, hold tight. Is this really how it happens? We act like everything’s normal until it’s not?

I open my eyes. The tulips are almost finished for the year, and in their stead come long green shoots of iris. It’s warm this afternoon, mild and muggy. I kick off my clogs and walk through the long, moist grass, trying not to think about how badly it needs to be mowed. I helped Benny plant these tulips one fall when I was nine or ten, or their ancestors, anyway. Benny was reading a lot of poetry at the time. Anne and Christine and I would tease him when he’d insert a particularly florid phrase into his everyday patter, like “The leaves of autumn have no mercy,” where before he might have said, “Those goddamn leaves keep piling up.”

As I punched deep divots in the summer-hardened earth and carefully
inserted bulbs, sprout side up, I asked Benny what exactly we were doing. “Winter’s coming. I thought you were supposed to plant flowers in the spring.”

“Spring bulbs need a long sleep,” he said, grunting as he leaned heavily onto his trowel. “For now we’re just sowing the anticipation of beauty.”

It struck me as so sad and lovely that I didn’t snicker or reply. I just kept digging holes until the burlap bag of bulbs was empty.

At the scratchy slide of the screen door behind me now, I turn to look at Benny. He stands in the opening, arms spread wide as he hangs on to each side.

“Can I pick these tulips to bring inside?” I ask. “They’re almost done, anyway.”

He nods slowly, his face the color of spoiled turnips.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I take a step toward him.

“They said to expect a little nausea, Ellie. I’m fine.” He draws a heavy breath, then lets it out. “Why don’t we just let those little stragglers be, on second thought,” he says. “They’ve made it this far.” He turns back to the living room and makes his way to lie on the couch.

Later, I’m scrubbing yellow Finn potatoes to boil and mash for dinner when the phone rings.

“It’s me,” Ruthann says. “How is he?” She calls every evening on her own time. I wonder if she does this with all of her patients.

“I’m not sure,” I say, snugging the receiver between my chin and shoulder to dry my hands. “He seems to be throwing up a lot.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “How much is a lot?”

“A couple, few times a day? I’m not really sure. Isn’t it normal to be sick from chemo?”

“Not with what he’s on. The point is to help him not feel sick.” She sounds worried.

“Who is it?” Benny calls from the living room. He can’t hear over the TV.

“It’s Ruthann,” I call back. “Just a sec, I’ll bring you the phone.” To
Ruthann I say, “You talk to him. He always acts like everything’s okay with me.”

“He’s protecting you,” she says, and I swallow.

Benny calls from the other room, “Are you two gonna talk about me behind my back, or do I get to say something?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I say, walking across Yolanda’s prized beige carpet to hand him the cordless. “You don’t have to get your Jockeys in a twist.”

He snorts an appreciative laugh at that and takes the phone, but doesn’t raise it to his ear until I turn to walk away. Only when I turn the water back on do I hear the low murmur of his voice.

At dinner, I have one bite of mashed potatoes to make sure they taste good, and I can tell they do, in an academic way. Creamy but still a few lumps, just the right mix of butter and salt. “What did you tell Ruthann about being sick?” I ask.

“That I’ve been sick.” He scoops a mound of potatoes onto his fork, then dredges them through the peppercorn sauce I’ve made for the roast. “This here is one hell of a meal, Ellie. I don’t believe I’ve ever had so much good food in my life.” He picks up a long, thin green bean and eats it like a french fry, twirling it in the sauce before popping it into his mouth. It’s amazing that he can still eat. I wonder if any of this food stays in him long enough to provide nourishment. I wonder if it’s the food that’s making him ill.

“You told her how sick? How often?” I take a tiny bite of meat, roll it in my mouth. The protein is necessary, I know, but I have trouble swallowing it. I’ll save the rest for Buddy.

“Yes, ma’am. Don’t you worry. It’s taken care of.”

“She’s going to do something about it? Talk to Krall about your chemo?”

He gives me a look and plunks a huge wedge of roast beef in his mouth so that he can’t talk. He smiles a goofy smile, his mouth struggling to stay closed around the meat.

I laugh and try to relax, take a sip of the locally brewed ale I picked
up at Freddy’s. Theoretically, Benny’s not supposed to have any, but Ruthann shrugged when I asked, like,
what’s it going to hurt?
When I asked about rich or heavy foods, she did the same thing. “Does he enjoy it?” she asked. I nodded, and she said, “There you go.”

Her blend of medical expertise and common sense make me appreciate this whole hospice thing. Benny need never step foot in another hospital if he doesn’t want to. I asked Ruthann if there was anything I was supposed to be looking out for (thinking, of course, that he might die on me overnight when I could have done something to prevent it, like . . . what? Call an ambulance? Give him CPR? It’s not easy to reconcile that the point is not to try to save him).

She said, “I can tell you all the nitty-gritty now, or we can take this one step at a time. For some reason, you strike me as a one-step-at-a-time person.” I had to agree I was, and I was thrilled to hear that Yolanda is handling all of Benny’s legal and financial matters. You’d think I’d have heard them talking on the phone, which they apparently do, but I haven’t. How he manages to keep so many secrets in such a small house is a mystery.

When Benny’s wiped his plate clean with a piece of white bread spread frosting thick with butter, I push my plate aside, lean my elbows onto the table.

“So, Uncle Benny. Tell me this.”

He rolls his eyes with a pained
what now?
expression.

“I was just going to ask, if you could have anything in the whole world to eat for dinner tomorrow night, what would it be?”

He looks off into the distance, thinking. “Fried pork chops and pan gravy, the way my mother used to make it.”

“Did she have a special recipe or something? A secret ingredient?”

“Same as all country women,” he says. His eyes have a wicked glint. “Good old-fashioned pork drippings.”

“You mean bacon grease?”

“Fat rendered from the hog. Mother’d cook it down and separate the lard from the cracklings. She’d use the good, pure fat for baking, but the stuff with the cracklings? That’s some of the best eating anywhere. You fry up your eggs, your meat, your potatoes in it, or you just sop it up with
some good homemade bread. Mm, mm.” He’s on cloud nine just thinking about it.

“Can do,” I say, and stand to clear the table.

The next day, I’ve called every butcher in a fifty-mile radius, and not a one carries pork cracklings. The closest approximation of Benny’s prized drippings will probably be a combination of lard and bacon fat, supplies easily procured from Fred’s. I’m not entirely surprised to find that the Fred Meyer store closest to Benny’s, however, has no lard in stock. “Try Roseway, maybe, or Concordia—someplace in Northeast,” says Britney, the prepubescent assistant manager, referring to poorer neighborhoods, immigrant neighborhoods. Just another reminder that I am now ensconced in the Southwest, the most vanilla of Portland’s four distinctive quadrants.