Dear Diary,
There are a lot of things I wonder about food in books. What does ratafia taste like? Or blancmange? How about mutton, which I imagine being a little like corned beef? As for “white soup,” is there any way it isn’t gross? Because it sounds like a pot of flour and water to me.
Of course, if you try to discuss any of these things at the dinner table, Jasper just yells “spotted dick!” and cackles hysterically. Granted, that is a pretty unfortunate name for a dessert.
M.P.M.
through the still-open dining room windows. Mom must have sensed the incipient change in weather because she’d spent the afternoon butchering butternut squash. There would be leftovers for days, but tonight it felt like an occasion: the first squash soup of the fall, served with a loaf of seeded bread from the hippie bakery downtown and slices of sharp cheddar and Granny Smith apple.
I waited until everyone had filled their bowls and Dad was finished fulsomely complimenting the soup’s velvety texture before broaching the subject uppermost in my mind. Despite Arden’s assurances that a date for the dance needn’t be a soulmate, I was anxious not to repeat the Mall Guy debacle.
“So how do you know if someone is right for you?” I asked, stirring a dollop of Greek yogurt into my soup. “A good match.”
“Are we talking chess? Tennis? Swapping kidneys?” Jasper asked around a mouthful of bread.
“More like in a personal sense.”
There was a brief silence as my family looked back at me with varying degrees of consternation. “Does someone have an admirer?” Van asked archly. She turned to Addie, as if to share the joke. “I did not see this coming. Did you?”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” her twin replied without looking up.
“But is there any way to tell from the beginning?” I persisted, before everyone could start quoting Hamlet. “Whether it’s going to work out.”
“Some sort of test, you mean?” Dad said.
“They do those quizzes in Cosmo,” Jasper suggested.
Addie dipped a piece of bread in her soup. “Send them on a quest. To test their devotion.”
“No, she should disguise herself as a boy.” Van’s face took on a faraway look, and I knew she was envisioning Shakespearean hijinks: mistaken identity, moonlit revels, a song or two. Apparently she’d forgotten that Millville High was a whimsy-free zone. “See if they like you for you, or just because your physical attributes fit some accepted gender norm.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “For the record, this isn’t about me. I’m asking for a friend.”
Jasper snorted.
“Does this friend have a loom?” my father inquired, brushing crumbs from the stubble on his chin. As a rule, he forwent shaving on days he didn’t teach, as well as the days he was supposed to teach but forgot until the department secretary called.
“Brilliant.” Mom beamed at Dad. “The faithful Penelope, weaving by day, only to unravel the cloth at night.”
“Odysseus’s wife,” Addie explained for Jasper’s benefit. He grunted, meaning either even I know that or who cares?
“When he didn’t come home from the war she told all the guys who wanted to marry her that she had to weave a burial shroud for her father-in-law first,” Van added, not to be outdone. “Only every night she undid all her work, so it was never finished.”
I felt my original question slipping further away, soon to be lost forever in the sands of my family’s rambling. “I’m not sure the burial shroud excuse will carry the same weight in this century.”
“Your friend should show strength and independence. That would scare anyone off.” Cam scowled as though the observation gave her no pleasure.
“If you want my opinion, that ship has sailed.” Mom leaned back in her chair. “If he hasn’t succumbed to her wiles by now, he never will.”
I paused with a glass halfway to my mouth. “Who’s not falling for which wiles?”
“Anjuli and Pittaya, of course.”
My mother could be alarmingly astute, often when you least expected her to be paying attention. I wondered how long she’d known about Anjuli’s interest in Pittaya, so recently revealed to me.
“Speaking more generally.” I cleared my throat. “How important is the . . . physical side of things?”
“Oh, sweet.” Jasper’s spoon clattered as he dropped it into his bowl. “Is this where you explain the birds and the bees to Mary?”
I sent him a withering look. “I’m talking about chemistry.” It pained me to quote Alex Ritter, but I couldn’t think how else to describe it. “Whether there’s a spark or not.”
“Well,” my father began, clearly struggling to keep his voice even, an effort belied by the beads of sweat that had broken out at his hairline, “there are certainly cases wherein the ‘spark,’ as you call it, fails to manifest.”
“Either it’s there or it isn’t.” Van bit into a slice of apple. “Sometimes it takes you by surprise.” She looked like she was gearing up to say more, but Addie cut in first.
“You shouldn’t base a relationship solely on physical attraction, though. There needs to be a degree of like-mindedness. You wouldn’t want to be with someone who wasn’t your intellectual equal.”
Van looked at her sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We don’t have to be at the mercy of our passions,” Cam burst out, startling all of us.
The screen door screeched, followed by Yarb yowling to announce his arrival. The patter of paws was accompanied by hurried human steps. “Sorry I’m late,” said Bo, strolling into the dining room with an apologetic smile.
“Pull up a chair, Boas.” My mother extended a welcoming arm. “There’s plenty of soup.”
Bo sniffed the air. “Is that your signature squash bisque?” he asked, as though he hadn’t been hanging around the house all afternoon, listening to the chopping and sizzling.
“Autumn’s first harvest.” My father beamed at their shared good fortune. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”
Once Bo was seated with a bowl of his own, he turned to the rest of us. “What’s the latest on Planet Porter-Malcolm?”
“Mary’s learning about her changing body,” Jasper said, making both me and Bo choke.
“We’re discussing the nature of love,” Mom corrected.
“Two-second recap. Do you have to be attracted to someone or can you just have the hots for their brain, blah blah blah, stuff about books,” my brother summarized.
“That’s not—” I stopped myself midprotest. That was pretty much it, in a nutshell. What did it mean when you had someone like Mall Guy, who looked every inch the romantic hero, from the solemn expression to the tasteful shoes, yet turned out to be the farthest thing from swoonworthy?
“Maybe it takes some people longer to discover that kind of connection,” I ventured.
“Absolutely,” Bo said at once. “Or one person could be powerfully in touch with their feelings and just patiently waiting for the other person to notice.”
“I pursued your mother for more than a year before she relented,” Dad volunteered.
“I’d planned to devote myself to the life of the mind.” Mom smiled nostalgically, as if we’d never heard this story, or the related anecdote about the love letter our father had written her, listing all the happy families in Virginia Woolf’s fiction. “It seems I wasn’t cut out for celibacy.”
“And I’m out.” Jasper shoved his chair back from the table with both hands.
“Then I guess you won’t be needing this.” Van’s arm snaked out to grab his plate.
They slapped at each other’s hands a few times, until Jasper licked his palm and pressed it on top of his half-eaten slice of bread. Van wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Mary.”
I looked up at the sound of my mother’s voice.
“What do I always say?” she prompted.
“Um, turn off the lights when you leave the room? Don’t stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open? Put away your laundry? Did anyone feed the cat?” I could have gone on but paused to see whether any of those had been the right answer.
Her lips pursed. “I was thinking along less mundane lines. When you’re on the horns of a metaphysical dilemma, the best course of action is to—” She peered at me over the rim of her glasses.
“Do your research.”
“And what’s the first step in a successful campaign of study?”
“Consult the experts.” I was on the point of complaining that I didn’t know any experts in this particular field when a light bulb went off. There was someone I could ask—an undisputed authority in the area of romance.