Crazy in the Kitchen (21 page)

When, later, Ernie asks me what has happened, I tell him only that they seem to have had great difficulty understanding each
other. They don't seem to speak the same language.

I don't say how ashamed I am for what we have done. I don't say I believe that, in our ignorance, we have done something harmful.
I don't say that, during that hour, I am sure that my grandmother and Ernie's grandfather felt more alone than either of them
felt before.

RESPECT

They were standing there, the two of them, the father and the son, the father, about my father's age (eighty-five or so),
the son, about my age (late fifties), in front of a bin of cantaloupes on sale for a good price at the farmers' market in
Hackensack where I shop sometimes. It was late autumn, not the season for cantaloupes. But I thought I could pick one for
a salad I could make for my lunch with the prosciutto I had at home, and peperoncino, lemon, and olive oil. But the old man
was looking for a cantaloupe, and their cart was blocking the way, and so I moved on.

I had gone to the market for vegetables for yet another recipe for minestrone, in my search for the quintessential minestrone.
As if there were such a thing, the perfect minestrone, although at the time I thought there might be. I didn't yet realize—
this would come later, at about the fiftieth minestrone— that each minestrone is different from every other minestrone, even
if you use the same recipe, the same combination of vegetables, because the same vegetables taste different all the time,
depending upon the weather, the soil, the season. That the pleasure in minestrone making, minestrone eating, comes from the
appreciation of this particular minestrone before you, which never was before, which never will be again. And when I arrived
at this insight, which I believed to be an important truth, I felt a remarkable sense of peace, for I knew that the searching
could cease. That I could enjoy what is rather than searching for what might be.

I had been picking out the kale, the cabbage, the curly endive that I needed for my current minestrone with far less care
than usual because I thought that I should be hurrying back to my house, back to my desk, back to my writing. Work that I
sometimes believed was far more important than picking out vegetables (though I sometimes believe that there is nothing more
important than picking out vegetables). The shopping trip on this day was a break from the day's work rather than an excursion
in and of itself. And I was not taking my time; I was not "in the moment." I was preoccupied. I was rushing. I was in a hurry.

So. I was annoyed at not being able to get past them, the father and the son, who were standing in front of the bin of cantaloupes,
blocking the way with their cart, but I was not annoyed at them. I had encountered them before, near the carrots (which I
needed). And made up a little story about them, formed a very favorable opinion of them, and because of this, couldn't be
mad at them even though they weren't moving, even though there was no way to get past them, even though they were blocking
my way.

Near the carrots, I had observed that only the father was shopping, and surmised that the son (I knew he was the son, for
they looked very much alike, large-nosed, flared-nostriled, full-lipped, and both dressed in lumberjack coats) had taken time
out from his workday to help his father shop. And thought that this was a good thing, this taking care of the father, this
taking of the father to the farmers' market to shop.

As I passed them, the son glanced at me, met my eyes, averted them (out of respect, I imagined, for to hold the gaze of a
woman my age would have been discourteous), looked at my purchases, nodded slightly, as if he seemed to know from what I was
buying— the cabbage, the kale, the curly endive, the carrots— that I would be cooking a vegetable soup, and to know, thereby,
what kind of woman I was. Not a fancy woman who shunned work. But an ordinary woman who put a good meal on the table every
evening. And he approved of me. Though I am not sure he would have approved of me if he knew I was a writer, a breaker of
the silences, not a keeper of the secrets.

And I liked having his approval, though it was only imaginary, for during a writer's day, there is never a moment's approval,
only a chronic, gnawing sense that this word, this sentence, this paragraph, this book, is not good enough, will never be
good enough; that the puzzles will never work themselves out; that the problems will never be solved; and that if they are,
the book will never be read anyway; and so the whole goddamned thing should be abandoned once and for all.

Abandoned. For what? To shop for vegetables, without the demon in the brain making up sentences, revising sentences, imagining
situations, lopping the ends off paragraphs, writing nifty little segues, planning the next book, and the one after that,
and the one after that. Even as the demon in the brain is making up stories about the people it sees while shopping— these
two men, for example. One old; one, older.

But, of course, without the book, without a book, the demon in the brain wouldn't be quiet.
Why no book?
it would say.
When is there going
to be another book?
it would harangue.
You need to be making up sentences. Without making up sentences, you don't know what to do. And unless you
start making up sentences, I'm going to annoy the shit out of you. Ym not going
to leave you alone.
And then the demon would begin its infernal list.
Why not a book on biscotti; you like to bake biscotti. Maybe one on minestrone,
you've cooked thirty or forty of the suckers by now; what a fucking waste of time
all that cooking is unless you get a book out of it. How about one about June
Miller, Henry Miller's ex; you read all those books; there's all that sex, now
that would be fun for a change. I know: how about a book about finding your
inner something-or-other; those books sell, they make money, they make a lot of
sense. You're wasting your time. You're not getting any younger. You should
be writing. You should be writing. You should be writing.

So whether you're writing or not writing, it's all the same. The demon won't leave you alone. Even if you say
Shut the fuck up.
So you may as well go home, may as well work, may as well write. And what you wish for is the day that the demon understands
that there are moments when the writer would like to be the woman who simply shops for vegetables.

Anyway.

Because the son approved of my vegetables, and because of their looks, I thought these men had to be Italian, Southern Italian.
The old man reminded me of my grandfather, so long dead. And in looking at this old man, I resurrected my grandfather, saw
what he might have looked like at close to ninety, and he came back to me, embodied in this old man, and I thought that I
might want to write about him, about my grandfather. Thought, too, that I might want to write about this old man and how he
reminded me of my grandfather.

Then, the guilt: I was studying this old man to get material; I was turning him into a subject. I was using him, the way I
use everything, for my work. I was feeding on human flesh.

Later, by the celery (which I also needed, having discovered that the celery I thought I could use had rotted unnoticed in
the bottom bin of my refrigerator where, when I am writing, everything rots unnoticed), I heard the old man speak. Could the
son
get
him another plastic bag?

He spoke in dialect that sounded like my grandfather's, and that's when I knew that they were Southern Italian. And I realized
why I wanted them to be Southern Italian. Because they were normal people doing what normal people do, what I was doing. Buying
fruits and vegetables. Being polite and civilized. Respecting each other. Being people worthy of respect.

The night before, while waiting for my husband to join me to watch a video, I was cruising through the channels, and I caught
a few moments of an episode of
The Sopranos.

When I first heard about the show, a few years before— that it was called
The Sopranos
and that it was about Italian Americans, I became excited. I thought it was going to be a TV series celebrating important
Italian American women vocalists.
How nice,
I thought.
A celebration of our accomplishments.

But when I heard what it was going to be about— the same old Mafia story, but, according to the publicity, with some dramatic
new twists— I knew I wouldn't watch it. When I was small, my mother had inoculated me against having anything to do with anything
that concerned the Mafia.

"If you hear the word 'Mafia,'" she said, "if you hear anyone talking about the subject, walk away, leave the room. Hearing
anyone talk about those thugs is dangerous. Talking about those thugs is dangerous. Hearing stories about them will pollute
your mind. We're not that kind of people. Always remember, there are a few of us who are like that, but this is not who we
are."

Although my mother tried to control much about my life, she never censored anything I wanted to see or anything I wanted to
read. She even checked The Kinsey Report out of the local library for me when I was a teenager because the librarian wouldn't
let me do it. So it wasn't censorship that motivated her telling me not to listen to stories about the Mafia.

When I was older, I learned that my mother's attitude was shaped by the stories she heard at family gatherings about relatives
of relatives who were, as they say, connected. And what she knew— about how the mob destroyed poor neighborhoods by selling
drugs; how mobsters threatened and intimidated legitimate small businessmen into paying protection money; how they corrupted
politicians; how they got young kids in poor neighborhoods to act as drug runners; how they turned young kids into thugs,
got them to think there was more money in crime than in getting an education; how she knew what the underworld had done to
the poor in the old country, how they controlled the water, how they helped landowners squelch rebellions for better working
conditions— made her sick. My mother was the most moral person I ever knew. She believed in justice; hated inequity; despised
violence. Though she also believed that guilty people should be punished one way or another.

One time, my mother heard that the daughter of one of these thugs had become addicted to heroin, was in rehab, and my mother
said, "They got what they deserved. What did they think? That they could sell drugs in poor neighborhoods, black neighborhoods,
build fancy houses for their families from the profits, and not pay for it?"

The daughter died of an overdose; left a few kids behind that the thug's wife had to raise. All my mother said was "Good riddance
to bad rubbish."

I watched
The Sopranos
for a few moments, thinking I probably had some obligation to popular culture to take a look, to make a judgment, rather
than dismissing it without ever watching it. I saw a man murdered. Decapitated. The bloodletting nauseated me. My mother's
words came back to me.
This is not who we are. Hearing
stories about them will pollute your mind.

I started thinking about the hired thugs in Puglia who had ravaged my people. Who had protected the landowner's interests.
Who had instituted a reign of terror where my ancestors came from.

The landowners in the South wouldn't even sit in the same room with farmworkers to listen to what they wanted: shelters for
sleeping in the field; a living wage; transportation to their distant worksites. The landowners wouldn't sit in the same room
with the farmworkers because they considered them animals. They believed they had the right to control their lives. And to
hire criminals to destroy anyone who challenged them, to rule through fear.

And I thought that, yes, this is what criminal outlaw groups always are. Terrorists. And that's what the Mafia is: a terrorist
organization. My mother used to say, "The only good thug is a dead thug, and, beyond that, the less said, the better."

So here they were, this old man and this older man, and the son was wearing a plaid jacket, the kind that workmen wear in
the winter when they pour concrete, climb telephone poles, break up pavements with pneumatic drills— a jacket that will keep
out the cold, but that won't make you uncomfortably warm while you're working. And the son also had on a tweed peaked cap,
worn slightly off center, like the one my grandfather wore, like the one my father wears, like the one so many men from the
South of Italy wore as they disembarked in New York from their ocean voyage, carrying a single suitcase or a bundle containing
everything they owned in the world except their dreams.

And the son's hands were like my grandfather's hands, like my father's hands— big, muscled, reddened, callused, and always
grimy from the work. The father was stooped, though not frail, and he wore a jacket like his son's, although the colors of
his were more somber. And he wore a cap like his son's. And the father's hands were like the son's hands, too— big, muscled,
reddened, callused, scarred, although the dirt in the creases of the knuckles had been worn away by time because he was no
longer working, not even in his garden, if he had one.

His son pushed the cart around, following his father wherever he went, saying little, offering no opinions, and this was what
I liked about him, that he was silent, that he made no suggestions, that he let the old man take the lead, that he let the
old man go about his business in the way that he chose.

I stood, watching them, conjecturing, as they blocked my way. And I decided that, instead of asking them to move, I wouldn't
disturb them, that I would go back down the aisle and around to the other side.

It took me a few minutes to accomplish this detour. (I got sidetracked by some very beautiful Sicilian eggplants that I could
grill for dinner and garnish with garlic, mint, and olive oil.) But by the time I returned to the melons, they were still
standing in the same place, the father and the son, and the old man was still taking his time, still choosing his melon. And
his son was still silent, still waiting. (I imagined myself in the same situation, eager to move on, urging the old man to
make a choice, selecting a melon for him.)

The old man picked up a melon, shook it, sniffed it, pressed the place where the melon had been attached to the vine to determine
its ripeness, passed his hand over the skin to gauge its tautness, made a face, rejected it. This was not the kind of market
where you could automatically be sure that what you were buying would be tasty. So he took another, shook it, sniffed it,
pressed the place where it had been attached to the vine, felt it, made a face, rejected it. Took another, went through the
whole process again, repeated it a few more times, and finally, was satisfied.