The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [72]
Winter rained itself into spring. Those plays I was in finally ran out of audiences and the theater closed down. Now that Jim and I were seen around more and more in public, it became obvious to the Hard Core that we were “going together.” They approved. Not that they were ever, of course, so crude as to betray it by word or gesture; but they approved. They approved of both of us; and they approved of people whom they approved of choosing their lovers from other people they approved of within the circle. White of ’em.
As a stamp of their approval, other young couples began having us to dinner. It was just at the time (and it may still be, for all I know), when the Aubergine, or Fried Egg-Plant school of cooking was getting such a grip on beginners’ cuisines, and I remember very few dinners without that harmless but insipid vegetable staring up at me from the main dish, often quite unadorned except for a sliver of melted cheese on top.
Still, I might not be so testy about those meals today if I could have just got around to eating them. But the amount of jumping up and down required on the part of both hosts and guests to get the meal assembled and in eating order kept my stomach in a constant turmoil. It had rather the same effect on the conversation, which settled down only after the last dish had been cleared away and we women were busy at the sink washing up. For the female guest, the washing up was then followed by a sort of Homage to the Household Gods, rites which involved unqualified and highly vocal admiration of everything in sight. After that we were allowed to listen to the menfolk for a while and after that it was bedtime.
Jim always enjoyed these dinners immensely. He loved arguing Art Theory, and never more so than with Ray de Wald, the Popcorn King Abstractionist, who was something of a nut.
“We must have the de Walds to dinner here next time,” said
Jim to me one afternoon after we’d spent a week end in their windswept hut just off the coast of Brittany.
“Why can’t we take them out?”
“It’s not the same.”
“What about the cooking?”
“What do you mean what about the cooking?”
“I mean I can’t cook.”
“You can’t cook … why, good Lord, Sally Jay, I thought every girl knew how to cook.” He looked at me, his little Floradora Girl, and gave me a wry sort of some-women-are-made-for-only-one-thing smile. Then he shook his head hopelessly.
“Marion de Wald cooks,” he said grimly. “She does all the cooking and looks after two kids as well.”
I tried to remember one minute that whole week end when Marion and I weren’t either feeding people, or clearing up from doing it, or preparing to do it again. And presumably she never stopped doing it. But I couldn’t quite see why just because she did, I should. I mean, here was I practically fresh out of the egg, everything was so new to me, and here was everybody telling me to stop driftingy and start living in this world; telling me to start cooking, and sewing, and cleaning, and I don’t know what. Taking care of my grandchildren.
I sat in the studio lost in thought, watching the evening get darker and darker and colder and colder, unable to move. Finally I roused myself and went to look for Jim. I found him wandering aimlessly around the kitchen, peering every now and again into one of the empty cupboards, hoping as if by some miracle to find that particular one filled.
“What is it, Jim?” He looked so forlorn.
“I’ve … I’ve already invited them to dinner on Thursday.”
I took a deep breath.
“O.K.” I said. “Which is the stove and how do you light it?”
Shopping for food in Paris, as I soon discovered—but not soon enough—called into play words I’d never even heard before, much less used; a dish towel, a bottle opener, a can of anything, a pound of anything—all