Bake at 350°
The summer before my senior year in high school I made the mistake of working for my mother and my cousin Margot’s catering business, the address of which happened to be our kitchen. It was the most scorching summer ever recorded in New York State. Elderly people were being warned not to venture outside; there wasn’t a single air conditioner or fan to be bought at Sears or any of the hardware stores up on the turnpike, not at any price. No rain had fallen for ten weeks, and the air had turned crackly with dry heat. Whenever you snapped your fingers little white sparks skidded off your skin. When birds took flight they singed their feathers and in no time fell to the ground.
But the heat couldn’t stop weddings and bar mitzvahs and christenings, not in our town, and Margot and my mother were doing so well they decided to give their business a name and have cards printed up. They called their company Two Widows, a big joke since both their husbands were not only alive and well but married to younger women. Margot, especially, cooked with such passion you’d have thought it was the heart of her ex she was sautéing instead of mushrooms for a strudel. Margot was ten years younger than my mother and fifteen years older than me, and she’d been through a lot. She’d married in her senior year of high school—like a dope, she always said. But the truth was, when she spoke of Tony, her ex, her face was so vulnerable I couldn’t stand to look.
“Hey, I’ll get over it,” she insisted, but neither my mother nor I were convinced. Margot still telephoned Tony for reasons even she couldn’t explain. If he answered she’d simply hang up, then lock herself in the bathroom and cry. But if it was the new wife, she’d become oddly invigorated; she’d let go of a string of curses you wouldn’t believe.
“Where’d you learn that stuff?” I asked her. Some of the curses weren’t even in English, but you could easily get their drift. That new wife’s skin was probably crawling whenever the phone rang; she probably checked the windows and double-locked the doors after Margot called.
“That’s for me to know and for you to never find out,” Margot said. “Just be careful when you pick a husband. Remember what happened to me and your mother.”
We were making noodle kugel that week for the Grossmans’ engagement party and the oven was always turned on high. It was so hot that I’d lost six pounds without even trying. If I kept drinking quarts of water and sweating, I’d reach my ideal weight by September. Maybe then, my life would start. Something would finally happen to me. I’d fall in love. I’d move a thousand miles away. I’d wake every day and know there was a reason to get out of bed.
Lately, I’d been thinking a lot about love and marriage. My friend Jill had gotten married in the spring, and her baby was due in August. Jill hadn’t bothered to finish eleventh grade and now she and Eddie LoPacca were living in the basement of her parents’ house. Was this love? That’s what I wanted to know. Was this destiny? Whenever I went to visit, Eddie was out with his friends and Jill was reading magazines with a glazed look in her eyes. Sometimes, she didn’t even bother to glance up when I spoke. Whatever world she had entered, it was definitely a scary place.
The last few times I’d gone over, I’d sat upstairs in the kitchen with Jill’s mother, who was often folding laundry and crying. Jill’s mother was fanatically neat, and her new son-in-law redefined the concept of slobbery. You could smell his dirty socks from two rooms away; it didn’t matter how great-looking he was, all Jill’s mother could see were the rims of permanent grease under his fingernails and the chewed-up toothpicks he left on her newly sponged countertops.
“Is this what she wanted?” Jill’s mother asked the last time I sat with her in the kitchen.
In all honesty, the answer was yes. Jill had wanted a baby forever, though I’d never been certain why, and I guess Eddie was part of that bargain. Or maybe she loved him, who was I to say? I, who knew nothing, was the last to sit in judgment of another’s happiness and joy, even if it did include Eddie and a lot of morning sickness. I was only beginning to figure things out, and I obviously needed a great deal of help.
“How do you know the difference between a good kisser and a bad kisser?” I asked my cousin Margot, always my personal expert on love. We had pulled all the noodle kugels out of the oven. They were supposed to be cooling on the linoleum countertop, but it was so hot in the kitchen they still appeared to be baking; each pan bubbled and sizzled like a swarm of bees.
“Oh, my God, that’s so easy.” Margot took off her apron and pursed her mouth, considering how to best explain. “If he closes his eyes, he’s good. And the bigger his tongue, the better. Sizewise, it will let you know how big his equipment is.” Margot lit a Salem and fanned the smoke into the heavy, brutal air. “You know what I’m talking about, right?”
“Of course I do,” I said haughtily, although I wasn’t completely clear.
“Some people don’t believe in the tongue measurement system. They think the size of a man’s doo-dah relates to the size of his heart, but you can’t prove that by me. It certainly wasn’t true in Tony’s case. He didn’t even have a heart.”
I could tell by the wistful look on Margot’s face that she wouldn’t notice if I took one of her Salems, so I did. The kitchen smelled of sugar and raisins and smoke. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be prepared for what I was to face, hopefully, in September, when boys who never took notice of me before fell madly in love after just one look.
“Well, what if you’re already in love with someone and then you find out they’re a terrible kisser?”
“You’ll dump him,” Margot assured me. “And if you’re too shy to do it, I’ll call him and dump him for you.”
“Don’t talk to Margot about love,” my mother said when she came into the room.
But of course, my mother was a romantic, in spite of all she’d been through. She smiled when she saw couples kissing out by the creek; her skin flushed whenever she glimpsed a newborn baby in its carriage.
That day, in the kitchen, my mother grabbed the Salem from my hand and put it out in the sink. “Love is real,” she told me. “Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s like a plate or a cup or a night table. That’s how real it is.”
“Yeah, right.” Margot laughed out loud. “It’s as real as the lasagna we have to fix for the Dorrios’ wedding. His second,” she whispered to me. “And no one knows what happened to wife number one.”
“She’s a travel agent in Lynbrook,” my mother told Margot. “For your information.”
“Well, goody for her.” Margot had never wanted to do weddings in the first place. It was my mother who had always insisted. “I’ll bet the way her feet hurt at the end of a day is a whole lot realer to her than love ever was.”
Margot could talk as tough as she wanted, but I knew she was looking for love. Just the week before, we’d done a fiftieth-anniversary party at the Franconia Steak House, providing the petits fours and the sheet cakes, and Margot had chatted up all the good-looking waiters. Every time we went to Jones Beach, she’d check her lipstick in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car, just in case. No matter how she protested, she hadn’t even begun to give up on men.
“So is Eddie a really good kisser?” I asked Jill later that day, when the purple dusk was sifting between the poplar trees and the temperature was still past ninety.
“Compared to what?” Jill said.
We were out in her parents’ backyard, sitting in a wading pool we had dragged out of the garage and filled with cold water from the hose. With Jill’s belly so big, we filled up the whole pool, and had to take turns stretching out our legs.
“Okay, tell me this.” I was smoking a Salem I’d stolen from Margot, and I held the cigarette between my thumb and forefinger, the way Margot always did when she wanted to make a point. “What do you think about when he kisses you?”
“Are you doing a survey?” Jill had gained nearly fifty pounds, but the weird thing was, she was just as beautiful as ever, so pale in the dusky light that she almost glowed. “All right. The truth? When he kisses me my mind goes completely blank.”
We both laughed then, hard enough so that streams of water began to slosh over the sides of the pool.
“Maybe that’s why I married him. Maybe I didn’t want to think.”
We mulled that over as fireflies appeared on the lawn.
“I wish I was ten years old,” Jill said.
“Me too,” I agreed. But that was a lie. I couldn’t wait till September when I’d be a senior and my entire world would change.
Jill wrinkled her beautiful nose. “The whole neighborhood smells like tomato sauce.”
“We’re doing lasagna. There’s a wedding at the Knights of Columbus Hall tonight.”
We heard Eddie pull into the driveway. He had a Camaro that drove Jill’s mother crazy, and to be honest it did sound more like a jet than a Chevrolet. Eddie worked down at the Food Star with my brother and I couldn’t bring myself to tell Jill that employees of the deli department spent their lunch hour smoking pot in the parking lot. She thought Eddie was working so hard, slicing bologna or whatever it was they did in the deli, and who was I to destroy that dream? I was fairly certain that given time, she’d be disappointed enough in Eddie without my reports.
“Two beautiful girls, that’s what I need,” Eddie said.
He was a liar, but he was a good one. He’d brought home a six-pack of beer, which he dumped into the wading pool; then he sat down on the grass and eased off his boots. I could understand Jill’s mother’s complaint about the aroma of his socks, which he quickly pulled off so he could stick his feet in the pool.
“Your brother’s quite the pisser,” Eddie said to me as he got himself a beer.
My brother lately seemed to concentrate all his attention on alcohol and illegal drugs.
“He managed to get an entire delivery of beer into the trunk of his car and he was brought up to be a good sharer.”
It was my mother’s car actually, an ancient monster which was always in need of resuscitation.
“Thank you, Jason.” Eddie raised his beer can to the sky.
“Gretel was just asking me about the way you kissed,” Jill said.
She was that way sometimes, embarrassing you to death.
“Jill!” I was pretty much mortified, but I had cultivated a snooty look to ease myself out of embarrassing moments such as this.
Eddie liked this information; he thought quite highly of himself.
“Oh, yeah?” he said.
I realized that he was sitting too close to me, and now he leaned closer still.
“Want to find out?” he said.
Jill let out a snort.
“I mean it,” Eddie said, although whether he was addressing me or Jill I couldn’t tell. Before I could figure it out, Eddie had started to kiss me. It was getting even darker by then, and from the corner of my eye I could see Jill’s hair, which looked silvery against the sky. Eddie kissed me and went on kissing me until I couldn’t breathe, and then he backed away and laughed. I must have had a stupid expression on my face, because Eddie took one look and said, “I guess I’m even better than I thought I was.”
Jill was patting my leg. “Gretel?” Her voice was concerned, but I was the one who wasn’t listening now. I got out of that pool fast, threw my T-shirt and shorts on over my wet bathing suit, and went to the gate. I didn’t bother to retrieve my shoes, although the concrete was still burning-hot, even now, in the dark. I was late for the Dorrios’ wedding, and my mother and Margot had already loaded up Margot’s car and driven to the Knights of Columbus Hall. As I ran there, I thought that human beings really didn’t have a chance. I kept feeling Eddie’s kiss, as if it were happening over and over as I ran across lawns and headed for the turnpike. I understood why Jill looked so dumbstruck and glazed; how could she not be puzzled that a kiss had taken her so far? No wonder people did such stupid things for love. No wonder they wound up ruining their lives, or at least setting them on a strange and unknown course.
I was completely out of breath when I got to the Knights of Columbus Hall. The parking lot was full and the moon was climbing past the asphalt-shingled roof. The heat seemed to be rising, and in the back room, where my mother and Margot had set up a makeshift kitchen, the temperature must have been well over a hundred.
“Finally,” my mother said when she saw me, shoeless, in damp clothes. “I was worried.”
“I forgot the time.” I grabbed an apron. Margot had had the Two Widows logo printed on the blue cloth.
“It’s wild out there,” Margot said, coming in from the function room with an empty tray. She’d been serving hors d’oeuvres, but she looked as though she’d been doing battle. “They’re drinking whiskey sours like they were water.”
I could tell from Margot’s breath that she’d had one herself. I helped her load up another tray of hors d’oeuvres—little hot dogs wrapped in phylo dough and mini knishes—while my mother got the main course ready. If I wasn’t mistaken, Margot seemed a little flushed, and when I followed her into the wedding party I saw the reason why. There was a man who was searching the room, and when he saw Margot he waved.
“Hey, baby,” he called.
Margot turned to me and for an instant I saw the hope in her eyes. I saw that she’d be willing to try again; she’d do anything for love, the real sort, the sort that would last.
“Wish me luck,” she whispered.
I was standing beside the bar, which specialized in whiskey sours and rum punch, and I could see her all the way across the room. I couldn’t help but wonder what this man’s history was; if he’d been married, or if he was married still. For all we knew, he could be Dorrio himself, today’s bridegroom. Not that it mattered. There he was, on the other side of the room. There she was, headed straight for him. And there I stood, barefoot, in the Knights of Columbus Hall, during the hottest summer of our lives.