Appetites

THE BLUE JAY IS HANGING AROUND again. I haven’t seen him for months, and now here he is in the front yard, shrieking as he clings to the twigs on the outside of the birdfeeder, his crest catching on its roof as he pokes his spiky beak inside to get at the platform. Finally he gives up, flies the few feet to the ground. Pecks at the peanuts that lie scattered among the sunflower seeds in the meagre grass at the foot of the cherry tree.

There were years when I couldn’t abide the smell of peanuts, years I wondered if I’d ever go back to eating them, if I’d ever make peanut and chocolate tart for the dessert menu or peanut butter and honey sandwiches for my kid’s school lunch. Course, that was before the big allergy lookout — peanuts are verboten now at Jared’s school. But it’s not the peanuts I want. It’s my appetite. The enthusiasm that blue jay brought to his precarious roost on the edge of the feeder. The alacrity that sent him scuttling through the grass to eat. That’s what I miss on these colourless days. That, and my sense of taste. Everything I put into my mouth tastes like scorched beans or burnt nuts. My nose recognizes just a few aromas, the most pungent ones — garlic, sweat, caramelized sugar that’s gone past amber to the edge of bitterness.

My MD was sanguine. “A small anomaly, maybe stress,” she told me three months ago as I perched on the edge of the examining table in her spartan office. Easy for her to say, to suspect that the flu and a nasal infection had simultaneously fried my sensory input channel. As if I’m a damn computer or a video game. That I’ll regain my palate. Eventually. That’s no consolation. I’m a cook. My life revolves around having a highly developed sense of taste, a nose that can tell the difference between caramelized and burnt. What if it doesn’t come back? I cook from memory now. I haven’t told my boss.

Lance comes into the kitchen at work as I dust a steaming pot of clam and leek chowder with smoked paprika.

“Hi, Chef,” I say.

He nods absently, heading for his paperwork. “Sandy’s replacement starts today. Guy named Maurice, friend of Philip’s.”

I think of leprechauns when the new waiter follows Philip into the kitchen. There’s no Irish accent, but he’s spry and merry, soft voice and bright eyes, his nose and cheeks too puckish to be considered handsome. When lunch service ends, I pull out the box grater and start on the beets while I ask him where he’s from.

“I’ve lived in lots of places,” Maurice says. Is he trying to be coy? Shy? He doesn’t seem shy.

“He’s been to Europe six times. Worked on a cruise line in the Mediterranean, he’s just the most terrible flirt,” Philip interjects as he unloads dishes at the dish pit. A wine glass falls and shatters at Maurice’s feet. “Damn! Sweep that up, will ya?” Maurice folds himself forward, one hand on the broom, watching me and not the glass shards in the dustpan.

I’m ladling the chowder into containers for the walk-in when Lance walks past. He backtracks, picks up a clean spoon. Dips it into the pot and tastes. Makes a face. The spoon clatters into the sink.

“Flat, Stacy.” I wince as he adds a handful of kosher salt and squeezes a lemon into the pot. He tastes the soup again, his long horse cheeks flat and incurious. “Another bad day?”

“Yeah.” When I look at the clock, my heart lurches. So much yet to get done. “Gotta go early, Chef, Jared has a basketball game.”

But I can’t distract him. “You know, yesterday’s lentil salad was salty. And so was last week’s sweet potato soufflé. S’up?”

I shrug. Let him think I’m tired or preoccupied. Working in a small restaurant will give anyone wrinkles. The long hours make me tear out my hair, and I can’t count how many of Jared’s games I’ve missed. Whatever let me think I could do this alone?

A couple hours later, when I step outside to the bus stop, winter is in every breath of wind. A battered grey Corvette pulls up, starfishing cracks in every window, Maurice at the wheel. “Give you a ride?”

“I’m going to the north side,” I say. He nods and I climb in. “How was your first shift?”

“Oh fine, you know, same old.”

“Up here.” I wave at the boulevard. Maurice swings his car around the corner as if he was parking a yacht. Ten minutes pass in silence before I catch sight of Jared, hurtling toward us through the school’s gate, ambushing the car door to lean through the window.

“Hey, Mom! Cool car! Can I go for a ride?”

“Honey, we’ve got to get home. Maybe Maurice can take you for a spin another day. Thanks, Maurice, see you at work.”

“Hang on half a sec,” Maurice says. “I may as well run you home, I’ve come this far.” The growling car makes short work of the trip. Jared, fiddling with the power windows, is all smiles when Maurice promises another ride. “Next time, bud. See ya, Stacy.”

Today’s special is rogan josh, my favourite lamb curry, rich with garam masala and ginger. I’ve made it dozens of times. It’s typical of what I most love about cooking, that transformation as raw ingredients soften and blend with each other, their edges melting into something new, opening, like lovers tangled in a bed. I know, and to the milligram, exactly how much lemon juice those hot peppers need as flame tamers, how much salt reins in the sharp edge of the spices, when I mix in the yoghurt. Before lunch service, Lance’s spoon dips, pauses. He nods. Why doesn’t he comment on it? Why just mention the dishes that need help?

Seems I’m messing up everything. After twelve years of marriage, Matthew left me. No hint he was unhappy. He just left one evening after dinner. He still loved me, he said, but he needed to be himself. I’ve never hindered you, I said, why can’t you be yourself with us? What about Jared? Mushrooms on linguini. I can’t imagine the smell of mushrooms and sherry without hearing the door slowly creak and click into silence. Took a suitcase, left everything behind in the apartment for Jared and me. Sleeping alone in our king-size bed after years of sheltering within the curve of Matthew’s body, I feel stripped to the bone. Jared still doesn’t believe it. Thinks his daddy’s coming back every night to tuck him in. I want to believe that too. But the divorce papers changed that when they dropped through the mail slot last fall. If he ever comes home, I’d throw things at him. And then hug him.

Lance is a good boss. He puts up with me without ever getting past so much as a simmer. I’ve been working the lunch and prep shift here since Jared started school, five years now, a lifetime in the restaurant world, where cooks and chefs come and go like yesterday’s menus. Lance tolerates my occasional short-notice absences with good grace when Jared is sick and can’t go to school. My kid is too old for day care, too young to leave home alone. Still young enough to fling his arms around me when I come home with the pungency of onions and garlic clinging to my skin

“Taste everything,” Lance said when he hired me. I was a good cook then, but green, no experience in a professional kitchen. He looked up at me from his cluttered desk in the corner of the kitchen, his face serious. He’s not a laughing kind of guy. “Build benchmarks of flavour and balance, an internal reference library. Write things down and keep mental notes too. Eventually you won’t need a cookbook.” I’ve mastered pastry and desserts in the time I’ve been here at the Blue Heron. That peanut and chocolate tart is our most popular dessert, a real challenge. Its flavours revolve around a burnt orange caramel sauce infused with rosemary. If I can’t balance it, if I sprinkle too many salt crystals on top of the chocolate as it sets, all those expensive ingredients, all my effort and time, it’s all wasted. You can’t undo things. He’s taught me how to build nuanced layers of flavour as elegant as a debutante’s ball gown. But if my palate doesn’t come back, I’m sunk. We change the menu on Tuesdays, so every week begins fresh, a new collection of dishes to try. No map. Just my appetite.

When I get home, the message light on the kitchen desk phone is blinking. Jared. Game cancelled, gone to Omar’s for supper and a sleepover, tomorrow is Saturday, Mom, okay? His voice like toffee. I eat mechanically, standing at the fridge door, leftover cold chicken and Shanghai noodles, then lie down for a few minutes on Jared’s bed. The reeky boy-scent that clings to his duvet and sheets gets through, and I close my eyes. Just for a minute.

I wake to the shriek of the phone.

“Stacy. You coming in?”

Damn. I slept through the night on my son’s bed. My eyes are grit and glass in the slanted sunlight, long angular rays like faded hopes, a wan puddle on the kitchen counter. This time two years ago, Matthew was buying me orchids to keep the dark at bay. My skin smells like yesterday’s food. Hate that stale air hanging on my clothes. Matthew always said he didn’t mind the odour, but I do. The past, reluctant to let go.

The bus stop is two blocks away, air biting as I wait, long teeth like javelins. Weekday mornings, Jared rides with me to school, one arm around my neck, standing on the floor beside my seat, eye to eye, level grey, like the sea in a storm. “Maybe he’ll be back today, Mom.” He says the same thing every day. Every morning, I kiss my son and watch him walk up the path into the school. Then I go to work, cooking food that tastes like dust and ashes.

Lance is at the counter when I arrive, a boning knife in his hand. “Sorry, sorry,” I say, button my whites and pick up my knives from the toolbox under his desk.

“Yeah yeah. Be gentle with that pastry,” he admonishes as I grab my favourite rolling pin. Half an hour later, the pastry is cooling on the rack and the chocolate ganache is setting in a smooth brown pool as I bend close to the counter, sprinkling salt flakes. The caramel is bubbling on the stove behind me, slowly turning amber.

“Stacy! Get on with it!” Lance, at my elbow, shakes his head in frustration. “Get a grip, woman. We have the rest of the ducks to take apart for confit and brunch prep to start.”

I turn back to the tart, keep my cringe invisible. Philip, going past with cutlery to polish, brings me a cappo on his next trip. My good friend.

On Monday, as I strain the chicken stock, I tease Maurice, sleek in narrow black shirt and fitted brocade vest. “Snazzy duds. That the Mediterranean influence?”

He grins. “A man learns things in Europe. Ever been to Ireland? The roads are a foot wide, the cars are tiny, it rains, sheep everywhere, everyone drives like they’re in a rally. On the wrong side of the road. Like Italians, only crazier. Harrr-der to on-derrr-stand.”

I laugh. The chicken carcasses jut out of the sieve, angular as runway models, all bone and tendon, flopping to their broken knees as I toss them into the garbage bag. “If that’s the worst thing you did in Europe, it can’t be too bad.”

“No. But I don’t miss Europe.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh all year, Stacy,” Lance comments from the doorway. “Somebody buy this guy a coffee.”

“Here, let me help you.” Maurice says, grabs the bag of chicken bones and heaves it into the trash. “I can run you home later, no prob. Jared might want another ride in my jalopy before it snows. Separated, eh? A year?”

When I turn my head away, my eyes are swimming. He leans forward, pats my shoulder.

Maurice adopts the habit of driving me home each afternoon before doubling back to Philip’s apartment in Hillhurst. I’m glad of the company. Relieved too, that he doesn’t hit on me. Friendship, I can bear. He cracks bad jokes and talks non-stop, tells off-colour stories about his cruise ship adventures and European nightclubs. Some days, Jared’s bus arrives in front of the apartment just as we pull up, and Jared leaps into the Corvette and insists we go around the block, black gravel spitting like curses behind the car’s rear tires. Even though it’s months until spring, he’s begging for ice cream. I sigh and shrug. Maurice spins us around the corner and insists on buying. Eating ice cream is an act of hope. Maybe this time it will taste like caramel on coffee. But no. My espresso ripple is dull, flat black. Bitter-sweet grapefruit sorbet for Maurice. Jared is still caught in his infatuation for blue bubblegum. When we get home, azure is smeared across his cheeks like a badge of honour.

Winter arrives. Snow heralds the cold, and I braise Indian lamb shanks and Moroccan goat, simmer chickpea and lentil stews loaded with roasted garlic and leeks, get home from work in the dark, my skin stained orange from turmeric, my mouth still tasting only bitterness, most days arriving to find Jared home ahead of me. He has his own key, my latchkey lad, locks the door right behind himself. I have taken to cooking from books, following instructions to the letter, no longer adventuring, trust gone. Lance says nothing, just raises his eyebrows as he dips his tasting spoons into my pans. But one day I overhear Philip above the hiss of steam from the cappuccino machine.

“ … used to make the most amazing soup of feta and cinnamon and eggplant, but she stopped. Nothing she makes is as good as it was. I feel sorry for her. And that pinched-off kid of hers — ” Maurice says something I can’t make out, a low-pitched interruption. “No, she never mentions him. He never comes around.”

I drop my sauté pan on the countertop with a clatter. Philip’s voice abruptly halts. I poke my head around the end of the cappo machine. “For Chrissake,” I mutter.

“What? I was just raving about your cooking, you poor doll. And telling Maurice how that cad hubby of yours just up and left you both high and dry.”

Maurice interjects. “Never mind, sweetie. I’ll take your kid for ice cream. That’ll cheer you both up. And maybe a whisky float for me, I could use a little coddling.”

“It’s too cold for ice cream, you idiot.” But I am laughing, and Maurice is as good as his word.

After school, Jared clamours for ice cream when I mention Maurice. I demur and stay home, drinking herb tea, and shake my head as they enter the apartment, Jared stumbling over the doormat like a clumsy colt, Maurice neat-footed and efficient, cones clenched in their hands.

“We brought you a tub of coconut, Mom, look, it’s pee-yellow,” Jared giggles.

“Put it in the freezer, you goof. I’ll have some after supper.”

Another Sunday. My day off. Maurice shows up, raises his thin eyebrows and Jared’s jacket is on before they are out the door. I barely look up from my book. I’m reading food science, tomes by Harold McGee and Diane Ackerman, hunting clues on scent and taste.

Half an hour passes before Jared comes back in alone and goes straight to his room.

“Hey, kiddo. Where’s my ice cream?” No answer from down the hall. Oh well. There’s still sorbet in the freezer. I turn back to the pages of the science book.

Jared’s in a funk by supper. I coax and crack bad jokes, but he’s morose, insists his dad is sure to drop by, complains about my lentil soup — why don’t I ever make dishes that his dad likes?

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I ask, but he kicks the table-leg, fidgets, pulls away from hugs and slices of chocolate tart.

I finally snap at him when he sulks for the fifth morning in a row. He’s still sullen when I arrive home in Maurice’s Corvette, and it takes effort to convince him say bye when Maurice leaves.

A week later, Maurice blows off his lunch shift. Just before service starts, Philip walks into Lance’s office, white and shaking, and emerges a few minutes later with Lance’s hand on his shoulder. Philip looks directly at me. “Stacy — ” His eyes slide away.

“Not now, Philip.” Lance’s voice is curt. “Get on the phone, will you, and see if Ian has classes today. Maybe he can work a shift.”

I try to catch Philip’s eye, but he ducks out to the dining room, then leaves in a flurry of gloves and scarf when lunch is done, so I drag a sack of onions across the tile floor to the counter and start slicing. The rhythm of my knife biting through each orb sends me into a trance that is undisturbed until Lance scrapes his chair across the floor to sit beside my workspace.

My mouth is thick. Finally. This must be it. My cooking has not improved. My mouth still cannot distinguish between spices and sensations, bitterness trumping, but this feeling of fear, this is unmistakable. He is going to fire me.

“Stacy.” I ignore him, walk to the back door and pull on my jacket. “Wait! Stacy, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, Lance. I’ve done my best.” My voice is flat.

“Stacy! This is not about you. Well, not directly. It’s about Maurice. Sit down.”

“Maurice? He didn’t come to work. So?”

“Philip says he’s been arrested.”

“Why? What’s wrong? What’s he done?”

“The Irish police are starting extradition proceedings. He’s been charged with sexual assault.” Lance raises his head, looks me straight in the face. “Well, child molestation, actually. A boy. About your Jared’s age.”

Lance is still speaking but I don’t register the words as I fly out the door, cell phone in hand.

Ordinary people look ordinary. So do the less ordinary, with their unusual, un-ordinary hungers. I was naïve, maybe arrogant, but I always assumed that I would be able to identify cruelty. Just by looking. But that sense failed me, too. What did happen is a mother’s nightmare, that my blithe unseeing faith in my own radar put my son at risk.

Jared insists that nothing unusual happened between him and Maurice. “Ice cream,” he says when the cops ask straight out, repeating it when I ask more hesitantly. “We ate ice cream. That was all.” But I watch closely and see how my son holds himself within his body differently, tentatively, as if he is collecting and controlling his memories. Or his hurt. I can’t tell which. My prodding and prying might do more harm than good. How can I ever know how much salt to add, when enough is enough?

The blue jay is haunting the feeder as usual this morning. Jared is asleep. He’s sleeping later, since Maurice.

When I went back to work after the cops were done talking with my kid, Lance asked me what else was going on. “With your cooking, I mean,” he added. He was trying to be gentle, but under my whites my back started to sweat. So I told him. Simple as that. Now Lance is reading his own copies of McGee and Ackerman, and he stands behind me, tasting spoons ready. No recriminations. I wonder if the result would have been the same if it weren’t for Maurice. I’d hate to feel anything like gratitude for that man.

The espresso pot’s on the stove. Maybe this time my coffee will taste black as night, sweet as sin, bitter as love.