Cleaving (22 page)

"Did you see
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
?"

Bull's-eye
.

"Oh, I love that one. Kris when he was young.... That's Scorsese?"

And he's got her. Later he'll tell me that with one glance at her, and at my grizzled, tall, deeply Texan father, he instantly
knew she would be a Kristofferson fan
.

As it turns out, I will never mention D's name to her again; once he and I start sleeping together I won't be able to trust
myself to. But at this moment I can see he plays her as effortlessly as he plays me. My mother and I recognize that he's both
dangerous and silly, self-congratulatory and slightly irritating, but somehow, mysteriously, irresistible. Furtively, I'm
happy--as if my mother is giving me her approval for what I've halfway decided to do. A year later I'll find myself thrilled
all over again when, after briefly meeting D's mother, he says to me, "My mother loves you. 'I really like that girl,' she
said." It irks me that I, a thirty-three-year-old woman, still need a parental permission slip to go on my emotional field
trips
.

So Christmas Day is better, because we can get back to our usual routines of being family together--cooking, sitting in corners
reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, and sipping celebratory daytime alcohol. We open our presents in the morning after re-erecting
the tree that blew down again in the night. Mom and Dad have laid out the stockings for Eric, my brother, and me along with
the presents "Santa brought"--i.e., the ones they didn't want to wrap--just as they have every year since I was born. By noon
we're hitting the eggnog again, and the boys are bowed over the puzzle while Mom and I season the roast and start to put together
the side dishes.

"Isn't it pretty? I made this!" I say of my beautiful crown roast, like a kindergartener presenting a prized tempera paint
masterpiece. I make a joke of being childishly proud to cover up being childishly proud.

"It's gorgeous, Julie. I'm amazed you did that."

"Oh, it's not that hard." Of course I am immensely pleased.

The roast involves nothing more than several hours of cooking, some prodding with the meat thermometer I remembered to borrow
from the shop, and a bit of anxiety. I'm worried about overcooking my beautiful creation, and I'm worried about undercooking
it. I try to resist getting snippy, but when I go to the bathroom I make the mistake, the terrible, masochistic, impulsive,
habitual mistake, of texting D. I wish him a merry Christmas, cinch myself tight into the cozy fantasy of his answering, of
his thanking me for the beautiful scarf he will wear though he knows he shouldn't because it is beautiful and his mother loves
it and it goes so well with his favorite crimson winter cap. And then, though the pork smells fantastic, I can't decide when
it's done. The bones are darkening and unctuous fat is pooling below the rack and the temperature seems right, but aren't
those juices running awfully pink? and Eric is looking at me with suspicion, picking up my strange vibrations, and I'm feeling
my lungs being crushed, I'm panicking because I have this responsibility to everyone, to be happy and good and make a great
crown roast and I really don't know what call I should make on the damned thing, I'm going to ruin it, and suddenly there
are tears, and my wrist cramps in a wrenching spasm and the meat thermometer slips, clattering, from my fingers.

"Julie, what is wrong with you?" My mother, like everyone else, recognizes these tantrums, though she is mystified as to their
cause.

"I... I don't know what to do about... about the... about all of it. I'm ruining Christmas dinner. I am a thirty-three-year-old
butcher who can't read a fucking meat thermometer."

Everyone has his own technique for dealing with these fits of mine.

Mom snaps at me until I go from angry to teary and contrite, then strokes my hands and peers into my eyes soulfully. "I don't
know why you do this to yourself, but you always have."

Eric takes me by the shoulders, gazes at me with something very close to terror, and speaks with quiet intensity. "Julie.
Calm down. Please. Calm. Down."

My brother rolls his eyes and walks away.

But I like my dad's way best. He grabs me in a headlock and rubs my hair with his big knuckles, the male version of my own.
"Oh, Jules," he says, giggling, "you're so crazy."

That cheers me, somehow loosens the binds, and for a while I can breathe again, not worry about having to take care of everything
and everyone, every secret thought and perceived vibration.

I overcooked the roast. But my family doesn't seem to notice, or at least they are very kind in their praise; sensitive to
my feelings, no doubt, after my recent breakdown. And it is still delicious, even if the texture is off; while Fleisher's
pork is good enough that you don't need to cook it so much, it is also, with its loads of lovely fat, better able to cope
with overcooking than your standard supermarket variety. We eat far more than we need to, and then Mom slices up the pie we
decided to go ahead and make and doles it out. Dad leans back in his chair and puts his napkin on his head, which is just
something he does after big dinners; we don't even think about it anymore. "Well, dears, this was all wonderful. I'm going
to have to go vomit now."

"Yeah, sweetie, it was really good," says Eric, squeezing my hand and leaning over to kiss me. I smile, and feel a sort of
pang, think for a moment about my BlackBerry that has not buzzed all night, will never buzz again, not for the reasons I want
it to. Why is it that Eric's compliments, his approval and love, constantly offered, don't seem so real to me as a single
word, any small acknowledgment of my existence, from D? It's unfair and cruel, and I kiss Eric more tenderly than I have in
months, in private apology.

That night, as I lie in bed gripping my wrist, I remember something I haven't thought of in years. When I was a girl, I went
to the same camp every summer for seven years. In all that time, it was my mother who wrote me letters, two or more a week,
faithfully, sending along little care packages, books and games and cassette tapes. With one exception. On August 8, 1988,
my father wrote the only letter he would send me in seven years. In the body of the letter he said he just couldn't help himself,
because of the date, 8/8/88.

I treasure that, the random, occasional ways that my father has always shown his affection. He hardly ever tells me that he
loves me; he doesn't need to. I know it. He doesn't have to tell me of his love for anything precious inside me. Instead he
proves I'm precious by every now and then bequeathing to me something he delights in. An observation, a favorite book, a movie,
a bird sighting at the feeder outside his window. It fills me with warmth. I don't want any more. I wouldn't know what to
do with more. I like my expressions of love meted out. Earned.

My eyes widen in the darkness, and my breath catches. I turn my head to look at my BlackBerry, sitting by the side of the
bed like a stone. I stare at it, feeling the dull throb in my wrist and waiting, until somewhere in the early hours I at last
am asleep.

E
VERY STEER THAT
comes into the shop arrives broken into eight pieces, called "primals." The best way to picture these primals is to use your
own body as a sort of guide. First, hang yourself by a hook upside down, gut yourself, take off your head, and cut yourself
in half vertically. The next cut you'll make--just at the wide fan of the shoulder blade--will take off one of your chuck shoulder
primals. An arm, a shoulder, and half of your neck and chest. Next to come off are your rib sections--all but the very top
of your rib cage. Then cut off your loin sections, making the cut right at your tailbone. What you've got left hanging is
your two legs and buttocks. These are what are called "rounds." Butchery-wise, I've pretty much got breaking down rounds,
well, down.

Chuck shoulders, though, are a whole other problem. This is the biggest primal on the animal, and full of funkily shaped bones,
knobby vertebrae, which, unlike the loin and rib sections, have to be removed to get to the meat. And then there's the blade
bone, an epic battle just in itself. Someday, maybe, I hope, I will be able to break down a shoulder in fifteen minutes, and
that is when I'll know I'm a real butcher. For now it takes me, I shit you not, close to an hour and a half.

"Hey, I'm sorry, Aaron, can you walk me through some of this? I should have this down, I know..."

"You do one, and I'll do one. Just look over when you get lost."

So I stand next to him with two chucks laid out side by side on the table, watching for a moment or two before I get started.
Aaron, like me, is left-handed, which makes this easier. I've grown accustomed over the years to having to mentally flip around
any physical activity I am being taught to do, watching with my eyes sort of halfway crossed as I picture how to make it work
in the opposite way. But when I watch Aaron, I don't have to do that.

"How many people here at the shop are left-handed?"

"Well, there's Colin. And Tom, I think.... Hailey," he calls, without lifting his gaze from the shoulder, "are you a lefty?"

"No."

"Aww. That's too bad. You seem like you might be part of the team."

Hailey screws up her face at him in mock annoyance. At least I think it's mock.

"Jules, can you name all seven left-handed U.S. presidents?" Aaron in one of his quiz modes.

"Um, hmm." Pulling my chuck shoulder toward me, inside of the chest cavity facing up, the top of the neck pointing away. I
start with the easy part, cutting out the rope, a cylinder of meat nestled into the spine, rising up into the neck. It's just
like taking out the tenderloin, except less stressful because the meat is more or less worthless, going straight into grind
or perhaps set aside by one of the cutters to take home; we all love cheap meat that also happens to be tasty, and the rope
makes excellent stew meat. "Let's see. Clinton, I know. And Bush--"

"Which Bush?"

"The elder, of course. C'mon. Like that moron could be a lefty? Reagan."

"You got three."

"Ford... Truman?" Having tossed the rope aside, I've put down my knife and picked up the butcher's saw. I cut through the rib
bones on either end, both right up close to the spine, where the rope used to be, and right up against the breastbone, which
(if you want to picture this on yourself again) is where the two sides of your rib cage came together in front in a wedge
of cartilage when you were still whole. On the other side of that cartilage is a big hunk of yellowed fat where breasts would
be if steer had the same kind of breasts we do. The sawing is the slightest bit tricky. Because the arm and shoulder are tucked
up under there, the whole piece doesn't lie flat, but tips toward you, with the far, top end of the rack of ribs higher than
the bottom part. This angle is not ideal, since you don't want to saw deeply into the flesh below the ribs. You have to sort
of squat and come at the ribs from below so that by the time you get through the bottom rib you haven't delved deep into the
muscle at the top end.

"That's right."

"That's all I've got."

Aaron straightens up and, still gripping his knife, sticks out first his thumb and then his index finger. "Hoover, Garfield."

"Not a universally stellar lot, it must be said." I've taken knife back in hand, in a pistol grip, and am cutting down right
over the upper edge of the top rib until I hit a thick white layer of fat. Down the slices I've made on either side of the
ribs, I rake my knife to find that same obvious line of fat. "Did you know Barack Obama is left-handed?"

"What is the deal with you people?" Jesse pipes up. It's a slow February day, he's lackadaisically wiping down the counters
just for something to do. "As if a shared demographic of deadly accidents and heightened suicide rates is something to be
proud of."

"Heeey," says Aaron. "We're brilliant! We're creative! We're tortured!"

I don't say anything, but I'm smiling down into my meat.

"Heeey. I thought you were left-handed."

I'm sitting across from D at a diner on the Upper East Side. He's got a forkful of omelet halfway to his mouth, in his right
hand. But can that be? I distinctly remember the moment, a couple of weeks back, when I'd noticed he was a fellow traveler.
I was tied up at the time, as it were, and had my mind on other things, so I didn't mention it, but I'd certainly filed it
under the category of Fun Facts to Know and Tell
.

He understands immediately where I've gotten the idea, and gives me one of his little half leers. "No, I only do one thing
with my left hand."

And now comes the fun part. This is actually one of my favorite things to do--not even just in butchery terms, but in general.
I mean, I can think of a few things that top it. But in much the same way as knowing a trick in a computer game, where the
power nugget is hidden or where you have to jump with triple speed at just the right moment to escape the ravening what-have-you,
taking off this section of ribs feels like engaging in a privileged, secret shortcut. Take the meat hook in your right hand
(if you're a lefty) and thrust it down through the meat over and under the top rib, so that the hooked end comes up between
it and the second rib down. Then just pull. The seam separating the ribs from the fat below is thick and lusty, and comes
apart with a gratifyingly sticky noise, no knife required, except maybe at the very end. Set the ribs aside. You can slice
these with the band saw into short ribs, if you like; sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. We generally have more short
ribs than we can sell, and the ones made from this end are not quite so meaty as the ones that come from lower down, in the
rib section. But I'll probably set a few aside to bring home with me when I head back to the city tonight. I like taking meat
that isn't costing Josh much money.