Delicious! (17 page)
Authors: Ruth Reichl
“Would you?” I knew I was being a pest, but it was only a couple of phone calls.
Feeling slightly better, I went back to Lulu’s letters. I was still thinking about Sammy, still thinking how much more fun it would be if I were sharing this with him.
A
PRIL
8, 1943
Dear Mr. Beard
,
Thank you for telling me about Chef Boiardi and his efforts for the war. When I told Mother that Chef Boyardee was not only a real Italian from Piacenza, Italy, but that his factory’s in Cleveland and it’s making spaghetti for our soldiers, she felt ashamed about thinking of spaghetti as “enemy food.” Someday I’ll find the courage to tell Miss Dickson (not that I think it will make much difference)
.
Today our class went into the woods to observe the migration of the thrushes. We’ve been tracking their flight path, making maps as they return from South America. Looking up at the sky, I thought I’d like to be a bird: They have no checkpoints, no passports, no boundaries. No war. “Free as a bird” makes a lot more sense to me now
.
It’s been a wet spring, and the morels were everywhere. I showed Tommy the secret spots where Father and I always used to collect them, and before we knew it we had a huge pile. That’s when Miss Dickson found us
.
She began shrieking at us to put them down, saying they could be poison
.
I know how to tell a false morel from a real one, but of course she didn’t believe me. “If your father were here, it would be a different matter,” she said, which wasn’t very kind. She knows Father is
missing. She made us dump out all the morels, which seemed like a shocking waste. But at the last minute she relented and said I could keep mine since I was such an expert. I think she was hoping I’d eat them and die
.
Tonight I’m going to make creamed morels for dinner. That will be a nice treat for Mother. But I’m planning to dry the rest and put them by. May I send you some? They’d be much more useful than a silly pot holder
.
Your friend
,
Lulu
P.S. While we were foraging for morels, we found a large crop of young milkweed shoots and they looked delicious. Can you eat milkweed?
I picked up the next letter, and the next, and then went through the entire file, but the “Civil War” file held no more letters from Lulu. I combed Lulu’s words, looking for clues to the next letter. “Spaghetti” seemed like a good prospect. Or maybe “morels”? Then my eye caught the postscript, and I wrote that down too. “Can you eat milkweed?” Not a clue, perhaps, but I was curious. I decided to check with the library ladies.
They turned out to have a lot to say on the subject, but the pay dirt was on a blue card. “Milkweed,” the librarian had written, “played an important part in World War II. There are some illuminating letters on the subject in the ‘Foraging’ file of 1943.”
It seemed too good to be true: another direct instruction. I went back to the secret room, thinking it couldn’t possibly be this easy. But there was, indeed, a fat file marked “Foraging,” and when I opened it up, the illuminating letters were right on top.
S
EPTEMBER
18, 1943
Dear Mr. Beard
,
School has started, and it’s a terrible trial. I have Miss Dickson again, and I don’t foresee any good coming of it. If only she’d decide that it’s her patriotic duty to go work at the airplane factory! Teenagers all over Akron would rejoice
.
Her latest project is what Tommy calls USS Dickson. Since we can’t get kapok from Japan anymore, we’ve been collecting milkweed to make life jackets. A pound of milkweed floss will keep a sailor afloat for ten hours, and Miss Dickson wants us to collect enough to make life jackets for an entire battleship!
Today I opened one of the pods and looked inside. I liked the recipes you sent me for milkweed shoots last spring—they taste just like asparagus—but now I’m wondering about the floss. Can you cook with it? Have you ever? Is it good?
Your friend
,
Lulu
S
EPTEMBER
28, 1943
Dear Mr. Beard
,
I’ve been called a liar twice today. And it’s all your fault
.
We’re still collecting milkweed pods, but today I did what you said and put the immature ones into a separate bag to take home. I should have known Miss Dickson was keeping her eye on me, because when the bag was almost full, she pounced. She said I was a selfish, unpatriotic girl who was trying to sabotage her milkweed project. I told her that the immature pods are useless for life jackets and that I was keeping them to cook, but she didn’t believe me. She called me a little liar and sent me to the principal’s office
.
I guess Principal Jones agreed, because he said nobody eats milkweed. Then he said he had the perfect punishment: I was going to have to prove what I said by cooking the floss and eating it. He took me down to the kitchen and handed me a pot. It’s a good thing that I trust you
.
At first I was afraid to take a bite, but Principal Jones was watching, so I shut my eyes and took a spoonful. You were right! It’s so pleasant and chewy. I ate a second spoonful, and there must have been something about the look on my face, because Principal Jones picked up a spoon and tasted it too. “Miss Dickson owes you an apology,” he said, as we sat down to share the rest. I told him you said that it tasted just like cheese when it’s mixed with other foods, and he said that someday he would like to try that
.
I took the rest of the pods home and cooked the floss with rice. It looked so much like cheese that Mother refused to believe me when I said that there was no cheese in the pot. “I don’t know why you’re lying, Lulu,” she said, and made me go to my room. Sometimes I feel as if the war has kidnapped my mother; she’s so different than she used to be. I want the old one back
.
Milkweed is delicious, but I’m through with it
.
Your friend
,
Lulu
I folded up the letter, wishing that Sammy were here; he’d love the story of Lulu and the milkweed floss.
O
CTOBER
10, 1943
Dear Mr. Beard
,
I’m sorry to keep sharing all my problems with you, but Mother always believes the teachers, no matter how wrong they are. And I just have to tell someone
.
Today Miss Dickson sent me to the principal’s office. Again. She said the reason was rudeness and insubordination, but really she just can’t stand it when somebody has an opinion that’s different from hers! We were having a class on civics, talking about what makes America a great country. I said I thought one important reason is that we’ve all come from different places in the world and that we learn from one another
.
She said I had an interesting point of view and asked me to elaborate. So I told about Mrs. Cappuzzelli and how she helped me with the tomatoes. When I was done, Miss Dickson asked if my mother knew I’d been “consorting with the enemy.”
That made me so mad that I shouted a little, telling her that the Cappuzzellis are as American as she is. She started to shout back, going on about their “dark skin” and “barbaric” language. She said the government should have rounded them all up and put them in the camps like the Japanese so we wouldn’t have to worry about them sneaking around behind our backs and sending messages home
.
I told her that Mrs. Cappuzzelli wasn’t sending messages to anyone, except for maybe her three sons in the army. And that did it. She said she’d heard enough
.
She marched me off to the principal’s office and told him that he should give me the paddle. My heart leapt, and I looked at it hanging behind his desk; it’s very big. Principal Jones put his fingers together, as if he were about to do “Here is the church and here is the steeple,” and stared at them for a long time. Then he turned around and picked up the paddle
.
I felt as if I was going to cry, but I was determined not do it in front of Miss Dickson. Her mean little mouth smiled, and she told him she thought ten strokes would be the proper penalty for such a grave infraction. I gasped, and even Mr. Jones seemed a bit shocked
.
He said we should get it over with, so I stood up. Then he told Miss Dickson that he doesn’t believe in humiliating students by
allowing anyone to witness their punishment. She looked so disappointed, but he just stood there, waiting for her to leave
.
When she was gone, he told me to sit down. There was the strangest expression on his face, as if he wanted to say something but knew he shouldn’t. We sat there, looking at each other for the longest time. Then he put the paddle down and told me I had to learn to control my temper
.
Now I have to stay after school every day this week, cleaning the blackboards in all the classrooms. It’s very inconvenient; sometimes I think I’d rather have had the paddle
.
Your friend
,
Lulu
I picked up the next letter, and the next, but as I worked my way through the folder, I reluctantly accepted the fact that there were no more letters here from Lulu.
Where would the next batch be? I went back, looking for the secret word. Nothing leapt out at me. I had decided to try “floss,” “civics,” and “patriotic,” when my phone began to vibrate. Probably Aunt Melba, who’d been calling constantly, wanting me to come home for Christmas. She kept telling me how much Dad missed me, how much they both did, and I just wasn’t ready to have that conversation again. But it wasn’t Aunt Melba.
“You find out where Sammy is?” I said to Richard.
“Sorry.” He sounded chagrined. “I forgot. I’ll ask around. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Here? In the mansion?”
“My key still works. I just got the pictures back, and I came to show you. Where the hell are you?”
“In the library.”
“The library?” The way he said the word, I might have said I was on the moon. “I’ve never been in there.”
“You’ll love it. Come on up. I’ll meet you at the door.”
Minutes later Richard stood on the threshold, silently surveying the room. “It’s more beautiful than I’d imagined,” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t really paying much attention. He was focused on the photographs in his portfolio, and he went to the desk and began to carefully lay them out.
He had captured a gorgeous but alien world, both terrifying and seductive in its strangeness. In Richard’s kitchen, the rotten food had become abstract forms, a landscape of destruction both alluring and dangerous. His pictures combined the eerily erotic quality of a Georgia O’Keeffe orchid with the weird ordinariness of a Diane Arbus freak. You wanted to turn away. And at the same time you wanted to jump into the frame and walk around in that mysterious terrain. No wonder this was what he had always wanted to do; I stood staring at Richard’s photographs, amazed by his ability to see all this. “They’re gorgeous. And terrible too.” I stood looking for a long time, mesmerized by his images.
Then I held out my hand and led him to the great wooden card catalog; I wanted to give him something in return. “Open any drawer.”
Richard didn’t ask why. It was one of the things I liked best about him. He just pulled open the nearest drawer, and his long, deft fingers flicked through the cards until he came to one that interested him. “ ‘Bottarga,’ ” he read, “ ‘the dried roe of mullet or tuna, is a southern Mediterranean delicacy that is often called “poor man’s caviar.” Generally neglected by modern cookbooks; letters are your best resource. You will find inspiration in the letters of Elizabeth David (who is especially good after a few glasses of wine) and the great (but often inaccurate) Waverley Root.’ ” Richard returned the turquoise card to the file. “Where are the letters filed?”
As we walked the length of the room, past all the wooden tables, I was very conscious of his hand in mine, conscious of his little lurch of surprise when I rolled the bookcase aside to reveal the tiny door in the wall. Without a word, he doubled over and disappeared inside. I heard a sharp intake of breath.
I squeezed in next to him and turned on the light. Richard reached out and stroked the nearest shelf as if it were a living creature.
“They’re letters? All of them?” He pointed to the folder I’d left lying on the ground. “You were reading that one? What’s it about?”
“Milkweed.” I tried to make my voice indifferent, not quite knowing if I should tell him about Lulu. But it was, of course, too late. He had picked up the folder and was already reading as he slid gracefully to the ground.
I watched him in the deep quiet of the room, listened to the sound of his breathing. Emotions flitted across his face—laughter, outrage, pity. Finally he looked up. “Are there more?”
“I’m hoping to find enough to turn them into an article. It was Sammy’s idea; he thought it might even be a little book.”
“You should!” His voice held a sharp note of anger. “Not many people know what happened to Italian Americans during the war.” I could see a muscle working in his throat. “Did you know that I’m Italian?”
“Phillips? It’s not exactly an Italian name.”
“They changed it at Ellis Island. DiPellicci was too big a mouthful for the immigration people, so they chopped it off. But changing their names wasn’t enough. Everybody talks about the internment of the Japanese—it was terrible—but in some parts of the country, being Italian was just as bad. I don’t think people on the East Coast were affected, but my nonna lived in San Francisco, and she has terrible stories about what happened to them. Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing the military to arrest suspected enemy aliens, and her father was thrown in jail. They wanted to intern Italians, and it seemed like it was going to happen. It didn’t, but my nonna couldn’t go more than five miles from her house, and they couldn’t go out after dark. There was a curfew. It was a crazy time. She had two brothers in the army, but it didn’t matter; one day some men just came and kicked them out of the house.”