Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [92]
“What was her name?” I whisper, plucking a Kleenex from the box.
“Sarah. Her name was Sarah,” Ruth sobs, and both children turn to look at us. Chloe begins to cry. I cross the room, sweep her into my arms, and hold her close. I rub my face into Chloe’s fuzzy head, drink in her smell, revel in the grasp of her small fingers around my neck, all the while thinking about how much Sarah must have wanted this, how brave she must have been, and the wrenching sadness she must have experienced when she realized everything she would miss. Ruth bends to hug Carlos, and we carry the kids to the sofa where we sit, holding them until they begin to squirm. We put the children down and reach for each other’s hands.
“What a tragedy, huh?” Ruth asks, her voice still husky with tears.
I nod.
“That was almost a year ago. Poor Neil. Poor Eli,” Ruth says, squeezing my hand.
“Poor Sarah,” I say, and Ruth looks stricken.
“God, what an awful person I am,” Ruth sobs, burying her face in her hands.
“You’re not awful,” I tell her, while I hold her, rocking her gently as she weeps heaving sobs into my shoulder. Carlos toddles across the room to lay his head on his mother’s knee. He wraps his arms around her legs, his sweet brow furrowed as he makes his mother’s sadness his own.
I teach Ruth to make rugelach: cinnamon, walnut, chocolate, and apricot, along with mandel bread and strudel. Afternoons, while the kids nap, we take out one of Mrs. Favish’s recipe cards and dissect the recipes one by one, meticulously wrapping our efforts in foil and plastic wrap and placing them in the freezer in anticipation of Game Day. At first, Ruth is a zealous pupil, ready to follow the rules and even displaying an academic interest in understanding the “whys” of baking—why the eggs needed to be room temperature; what advantage there was in softening the butter in one recipe, while in another it needed to be cold. But soon after our first lesson, she loses interest in the process, marveling that people would spend so much time making something that could be duplicated by someone else and bought for a few bucks.
“There’s a bakery right down the street that sells artisan bread! What would be the point?” she asks me when I suggest that next time we might try making a loaf of bread. “And besides, my arms hurt from rolling out that dough,” Ruth complains, flexing a bicep.
“Toned arms are nice, don’t you think?” I ask her, rolling up my sleeve to display my own firm upper arm. Years of toting heavy roasting pans, lifting crates of produce, and rolling out pasta dough have left my upper body toned and muscular, without ever having to set foot in a gym. Ruth gives my arm a poke and shrugs, unimpressed. Pressing a fingertip into my upper arm, I’m surprised to find that it now feels a bit like the bread dough I’ve just suggested we make; maybe it is time to start looking into that gym membership.
When not overseeing Ruth’s culinary education, I spend the better part of the week searching through boxes and papers for a writing sample to send to Enid Maxwell. I open every box and rifle through reams of old stuff, most of which lies strewn in random piles all over the attic. Finally, I find something stuffed into an old journal, but after reading it, I realize that it’s probably not what Enid had in mind. It wasn’t even what my teacher had in mind—I’d gotten only a B minus.
No, I need to write something completely new, something designed specifically to impress Enid, not only with my writing skills, but with my discerning palate and capacity for brilliant food analysis. How hard can that be?
Actually, pretty hard. After wasting an entire Ruth-babysitting afternoon sitting in front of my dad’s computer waiting for inspiration to hit, I chalk it up to writer’s block and give up. Figuring that maybe cooking something new might inspire me, I spend the next