Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [65]
“By the way, I’m Mira, and this is Chloe,” I tell her later in the coatroom, as we are attempting to stuff our children into their respective snowsuits.
“I’m Ruth, and, well, you’ve already met Carlos.” She gives us a fleeting look and a weak smile as she struggles to put Carlos’s kicking feet into his snowsuit. “Jeez, it’s like trying to hit a moving target! We’ll be here all day.” I sit down next to her on the bench and pull out the small jar of bubbles that we picked up on the way out. I start blowing some in Carlos’s direction. Almost immediately he relaxes, concentrating on the bubbles and allowing his mother to maneuver his feet into his snowsuit.
“Thanks. I’ve got to get some of those.”
“Here, take these,” I say, handing them to her. “We’ve got plenty more at home. They put them out each week. It’s the least they can do for sixty dollars a month, put out some gym equipment and give us a couple of ounces of soapy water.”
On the walk to our cars, Ruth and I exchange phone numbers and addresses. As it turns out, they live on Murray Hill Avenue, just a few blocks from us.
“I would suggest we go somewhere for coffee or something, but Carlos and I don’t have the whole public place thing down quite yet and besides, he has a pediatrician appointment. Maybe next week?” Ruth asks eagerly, and I readily agree.
That afternoon, while Chloe is napping, I take inventory of the freezer and begin assembling a care package, thinking that Ruth and her husband might need a few frozen meals to help them through the next few weeks. When Chloe wakes up, I throw together a salad and call Ruth’s number. Eventually, a machine picks up, with no personal greeting, just one of those automated voices telling me to leave a message.
“Ah, I hope this is Ruth. Ruth, this is Mira. We met today at the baby gym class?” I pause. “Listen, I was wondering if you could use a few extra prepared meals.”
“Hello, hello—I’m here.” The machine shuts off, but I can barely hear Ruth’s voice because Carlos is screaming into the voice piece of the phone. Over the cacophony I manage to ascertain that she hasn’t eaten anything but Lean Cuisine and Cheerios since Carlos’s arrival two weeks ago, so yes, she’d be grateful for anything I had.
“Great, we’ll be right over.”
Ruth lives in one of the beautiful and expensive brick townhouses on Murray Hill Avenue. It’s on the edge of the Chatham College campus, and the view out of the front of the house is of the bucolic rolling hills of the south campus.
Ruth meets me at the door. She’s alone, and the house is quiet. She holds a finger to her lips and whispers, “He’s sleeping, thank God. I think he just wore himself out. Come in, come in.”
She throws on a coat over her sweatshirt and together we finish unloading the food from the back of Chloe’s stroller. “I hope you have room for it all,” I tell her.
“Wow! Where did you get all this?”
“Well, I used to cook for a living, and I guess I’m suffering from withdrawal,” I offer apologetically. “When you run out, let me know. There’s plenty more where this came from.”
Ruth’s kitchen is small, like most townhouse kitchens, but state-of-the-art. Beautiful cherry cabinets, a six-burner Wolf range with a built-in warming oven, and a small Sub-Zero. “You must like to cook, too,” I tell her, looking around.
Ruth laughs. “No, not me. The couple who sold it to me liked to cook, though. I’ve barely used this stuff since I bought the place three years ago. My appliance of choice is the microwave,” she says, opening the freezer and gesturing to the stack of Lean Cuisines inside. “As you can see, I’ve got plenty of room.”
Ruth hasn’t mentioned a husband or a partner, and I find myself looking around for