Home by Another Way (13 page)

I am not really a lime bar kind of person.

Some of that, I like to think, has to do with a kind of innate sense of dignity, which, if you met me, you would discern right away. Okay, maybe it is a dignity I
hope to have and I think I have from time to time. It could just be shyness and a lack of solid conversational skills.

The other reason I am not a local-hangout person is that when I was young, I was one of those people who got picked on, and I have made it a habit over the years to stay away from places that look as though the people might be rough in any way.

Also, I like my meals to be served on white tablecloths, and I like my fellow diners to be well dressed, and I like to be in places where people talk in hushed tones even when they are laughing and telling stories.

In my life in the States, there are only two exceptions.

One is the little neighborhood restaurant about eight blocks from our house. It is by no means a hangout sort of place—they make things with truffles sometimes, and they have wine tastings, and the staff is always dressed in black—but we know so many people there that making any appearance requires what is sometimes an overwhelming amount of conversation for a shy person.

The restaurant opened about the same time we moved into the neighborhood, and it has become the place where we meet our friends and neighbors most often. When we have to travel, we find ourselves going there the night before we leave and the night we return. Our world is a small one in some ways, and we have to check on it and make sure everyone is doing okay. We also have to hear someone say they will miss us before we go, and someone say they are glad we are back when we return. Both are guaranteed at the Mirror.

The other exception is Brown’s Diner, a small place about fifteen or twenty blocks away from our house, where I often have lunch. Brown’s has the best baseball talk I have ever heard and the best cheeseburgers on the planet, and if I do not have a certain amount of both each week, my well-being and my metabolism are affected in a negative way.

When I get to Brown’s, Terry says hello to me from behind the counter as I come in. He places my order without my saying anything more than hello in return. I even have a semi-assigned seat at the counter. The
four guys on my left sit together every day, and so seat number five, if you count from left to right, is the one I am supposed to sit in. Number six belongs to Harold. Or Kathryn. Whichever one gets there first. Someone will ask me to move if I sit too far to the left or right, and lately they have been moving other folks
—tourists
is the name for those who come in less frequently than once a week—out of my seat when I come in. Every once in a while, it occurs to me that I could actually be liming, which is kind of astonishing for a person as shy as I am.

It took a lot of trips to Brown’s before I got my assigned seat. But after about four or five trips to the Heptagon, I noticed that the regulars were moving around so Sara and I could have a seat at the counter.

What’s not to love about a place like that?

Sometimes when we are planning the day’s food events, we want island food.

We can wander into a snackette anywhere on the island to find saltfish and johnnycakes, a meal that holds the same place in the local cuisine as fish and chips do in Great Britain and a cheeseburger and fries do in the States. On Fridays there is goat water, a stew served nearly everywhere on the last workday of the week. The Water Department even throws a weekly Friday-evening goat-water party in town, a civilized public service if I ever heard of one. Although, I confess, I am not sure what goat water actually is and have been too shy to ask.

Barbecue pits are going in St. Cecilia almost around the clock—chicken and lamb and spare ribs. Seafood is to be found in plenty, of course, steamed or grilled, fresh off the boat as one would expect. And all manner of curries and salads and, my personal favorite, rice and peas. We know where to go to find these things if we want them.

Lately, though, when we want island food, we just call Mrs. Louvin.

A friend on the island told us about her. What she
said was that if we wanted local cuisine without going out, we should just call Mrs. Louvin, and for a reasonable amount of money, she would cook what we wanted and bring it to our house.

So Sara called her one day, and they talked on the telephone for a while, figuring what we were going to have for dinner the next night and what time we were going to have it. When everything was settled, Sara hung up the telephone, and we went back to whatever we were doing.

In an hour or so, there was a knock at the door, and I went to the door, and a woman was there who said her name was Mrs. Louvin. I invited her in and called for Sara, and before I could stop it, conversation broke out all around me.

Mrs. Louvin had stopped by on her way home from work to meet the people she was going to cook for as well as to be sure that we had been properly welcomed into her village. Then she was going home to cook for her family. Tomorrow night she would cook for them and for us.

So she stayed for an hour, and she and Sara talked about all manner of things. The next night she came back with our dinner, all gathered up in the best china and serving things that she had, and she sat for a while and chatted before she left.

Mrs. Louvin made dinner for us twice that week. She also dropped by the day before we were to leave, and she and Sara talked for a while and then said good-bye to each other. They put their arms around each other, and there were tears in their eyes, and there were promises made about when we would all see each other again. Sara called her the next day on our way off the island and had tears in her eyes while she did so.

I suspect there are plenty of places no matter where you are that will deliver food. There are not many places that can deliver a food event.

From time to time on St. Cecilia, we decide we are in need of comfort food. Not that life there is so uncomfortable,
of course, but we are southerners, after all, and our love for Italian cuisine and seafood and other interesting things notwithstanding, sometimes we need meat and potatoes. “Roast beast,” as Sara calls it, with potatoes and carrots and gravy. Or a good steak and maybe some french fries and a wedge of lettuce and blue cheese dressing and homemade ice cream for dessert. Somewhere on this island you can probably get good sweet tea, the house wine of the South, but we have not found it yet. (Our research will continue, of course.)

But we have found the place for the comfort meal. We always know it is time for such a meal when, during the food-event meeting, a committee member says, “Let’s go see David tonight.” When we go to see David, we know we are in for comfort food and for comfortable conversation to go with it.

Over the years we have learned that the best place to sit and eat in most restaurants, especially small
neighborhood ones, is not at one of their best tables. It is at the counter or the bar or the little table closest to the kitchen door. That is where you find the regulars. If you sit at one of the “good” tables where the “guests” are seated, then the conversation is limited to whoever is at your table. Which can be a good thing, depending on what sort of event you had in mind to go with your food.

If you know where to sit, you are automatically included in every conversation within hearing distance. If you want to be private, you can get a table or stay at home. If you want to make friends, sit where the regulars sit.

Which is how we met David and why we go to see him.

David is in charge of where the regulars sit at the Galley Door on St. Cecilia. His bailiwick is a big open-air, circular bar attached to a house. The house is where the kitchen is, and the porch that connects the two is where the tables are. Over by David is where the regulars are. The whole business is only about twenty yards
from the beach, looking over a sheltered cove that faces the sunset. The place has all manner of things nautical hanging from the rafters. It is the authentic version of the décor that a Red Lobster tries to do while being in a strip mall instead of being in the West Indies.

When we go to see David, we talk about mystery novels and sixties rock’n’roll music. We talk about how people live on St. Cecilia, and we get tips on where to find stuff that we are having trouble locating, like fresh lobster to cook at our house or the good coffee that comes from Puerto Rico or fresh coconut for the sunset-round snack tomorrow afternoon.

Sometimes David will introduce us to people who come in. Later he fills us in on who they are and what they do. Which is how we met Andrew, who is the chef at the Galley Door and who also runs the sailboat race that we had watched a few days before from the porch at Seastone.

We will ask David about another restaurant, and he will tell us whether or not the chef is good or bad or on vacation. It is where we found out the reason that
Cassandra’s Café has been closed. It is where we found out which two hills to look between to see if the clouds off to the east are the kind that just pass over on the way to Mexico or are the ones that will bring rain in the next hour or so.

It is also where we go when we want someone to say that they are glad we are back. There is more to comfort food than just food.

One of the major food events whenever we are on St. Cecilia in the fall is a really fine dinner to celebrate our anniversary.

The first time, we called for a taxi and arranged for someone to take us way up into the mountain to an old plantation inn for the anniversary food event. We called for a taxi because we did not trust ourselves to find Sugar Rock Plantation up in the mountains in the dark. We knew better than to trust ourselves because we had already tried to find the place in the daylight and had
no luck at all. A couple of times we thought we could see it across the way, but we could not pick out the right little lane to get to it. I believe the reason there are not many road signs on St. Cecilia is that the taxi drivers have taken them all down as part of their ongoing marketing strategy.

The anniversary dinner was everything we had hoped for. Starting with hors d’oeuvres served on silver trays in the great room while the soft music played and the fans whirled overhead as we waited for the seven-o’clock seating. The chef himself came out to talk with us about the menu and help us make our choices before it was time for dinner. There was linen and lace and silk and pearls and jackets and ties. There were white tablecloths and fresh flowers and sparkling candlelight and a view down the hill into the bay below. At first we could see the faint light of the setting sun way off on the horizon and then later the moon coming up.