Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [130]
I click on the picture and peer at the screen, needing to see the pits in the front door that became more visible when I painted it with a glossy paint by mistake, and the brass kick plate I installed myself because Jake has always been hopeless with a screwdriver. I hadn’t remembered those things until I looked at this photograph, and suddenly I’m afraid that I will forget them. I hadn’t taken enough pictures of Grappa, and I feel grateful to have stumbled upon the gift of this outdated photo lingering in cyberspace, almost as precious as any baby picture of Chloe’s.
Next, I Google Jake. There’s a picture of him, a recent one. His hair is longer and swept away from his face. Underneath his bio are links to both Grappa and Il Vinaio. I click on the Il Vinaio link and find a picture of Jake and Nicola standing in an unfamiliar dining room. It looks like any of a hundred restaurants I’ve been to in my life, but despite the fact that I have no real connection to the space, I still feel a pang, a catch in my chest at the sight of Jake smiling into the camera, his arm resting across Nicola’s shoulders. Nicola’s face looks softer, rounder than I’d remembered it.
Once I start, I cannot seem to stop, Googling everyone I can think of: Richard, smiling in a yellow shirt and paisley ascot on his Web page; Dr. D-P, who, I learn, is president of her synagogue and a squash player. Even my father has a bio listing two of his most recent publications alongside a picture that looks like it could be from his high school graduation; he’s still got hair and is wearing heavy black-framed glasses.
No one bothers to update a Web page with bad news. You don’t fill in “I got fired” in between your job as chef de cuisine of the French Laundry and your next position as president of the Culinary Institute of America. You wait for the next best thing to happen to you before you update your Internet bio, each of us stopping at our last, best time. Ruth, Enid, Neil—all can be Googled. The only person I can think of who can’t be Googled is Ben. Even Fiona, in a fuchsia sweater and matching lipstick, is smiling from the CMU Chemistry Department staff page. I try Ben, Benjamin, even the name of his plumbing company, Stemple Plumbing, but there’s nothing. No record of his last, best time, and for that I envy him. He can fall asleep each night thinking maybe it hasn’t happened yet.
Contorni
Now by cookery I swear,
Which doth make us whole again,
Cooks surpass all other men!
—Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
chapter 28
So far, I haven’t written a column that Enid hasn’t edited the hell out of. I always get the food stuff right; in fact, I know much more about food than Enid does, but I’m no writer. As a result, Enid requires that I e-mail her each column several days before the actual deadline. However, because I often feel the need to challenge authority, I’ve taken to sending them in later and later with each passing week. I intended to e-mail it to her before I went to bed, but by the time I finished Googling everyone I could think of it was well after midnight, and within minutes I fell asleep on the couch, my laptop resting on my knees. So, when I awake to the ringing phone the following morning, a line of drool as fine as dental floss escaping from my open mouth, I know, without even having to check the caller ID, that it’s Enid calling to reprimand me.
“Okay, okay, I’m hitting ‘send’ right now,” I offer in lieu of a greeting.