Garlic and Sapphires (13 page)

“But you can't let them get away with treating you shabbily,” I said. “If you don't insist on good service in restaurants, you have only yourself to blame.”

Claudia said nothing. But when I decided that the fudge on my sundae was not sufficiently hot, I understood the look that crossed her face. She wanted to put the poor waiter out of his misery, if only to end her own.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he moment we were out the door, I pulled the wig from my head and released my hair from the nylon net. I ran my fingers through my curls, over and over, shaking myself out. “Free at last,” I said.

Claudia looked at me. “Tell me,” she asked, “did you actually believe any of those things you said in there?”

“No,” I said, happy to hear that my own voice was back. “That was all Mom. She made a scene at every restaurant we ever ate in, and it always made me miserable. I'll eat almost anything rather than endure the trauma of sending it back.”

“Your father felt the same way,” said Claudia. “He once told me how uncomfortable he became when she started in.”

“Lots of people feel that way,” I said. “Last week I had lunch with the paper's wine critic, Frank Prial. When he tasted the wine he hesitated, and then rejected it with obvious reluctance. It was clearly corked, but when the sommelier went off for a replacement, Frank told me that even if the next bottle was off he planned to accept it. And then he said something that made great sense: ‘What's the point in taking people out only to make them wish they weren't there?' ”

“If only you had kept that in mind during dinner,” lamented Claudia. “I would have preferred to be almost anywhere else on this earth.” She closed her mouth and looked at me, and then her shoulders began to shake. I watched the laughter move into her face and then slowly begin to escape. Soon great peals of mirth were rolling down the dark street and I was laughing with her, although I wasn't quite sure why.

“It was rich,” gasped Claudia when she had finally stopped long enough to breathe. She held her stomach and said, “Tonight we scored one for every old lady in New York.” Then she gave in, once again, to the laughter. When it was over she grabbed my arms and looked squarely into my face. “If I were being entirely truthful, I would have to admit that I would not have missed that for the world.”

“I'm glad you feel that way,” I replied, “because tomorrow we're going to tackle a more difficult target.”

“We are?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Tomorrow we lunch at the Four Seasons!”

 

 

 

 

 

I
woke up the next morning with a sense of anticipation. Groping through the sleepiness, I tried to remember my plans for the day. And then it hit me: I was going to dress up like my mother. The notion pleased me just a little too much, and I realized that sometime in the near future I was going to have to think about why this disguise was such fun. But first I had to practice putting on Mom's makeup. I didn't want Nicky to wake up and discover that his mother had been replaced by a stranger—it would probably terrify him. But if I worked fast I could get the makeup on, and off, before he was out of bed. I went into the bathroom, taped the diagram Denise had given me to the mirror, spread the pots and brushes across the sink, and started in.

It was awkward work. Covering my face and eyebrows with the foundation was more difficult than I'd expected, and the more I began to look like my mother, the clumsier I became. I had been working for almost an hour when I realized that it was time to wake Nicky up. I reached for the tissues and the cold cream and then my heart stopped: the bathroom door had swung open and my son was standing there, watching me.

I caught his eye and he came padding into the bathroom in his electric blue Superman pajamas, red cape flying out behind him. He stared for a moment at the person I had become. And then he said simply, “Mommy, you look very silly,” and left the room.

So much for terror. I turned back to the mirror and went on with the makeup. My colleagues had been begging me to show them one of my costumes, and today might be a good time to do it. I put on the blue dress, squirmed into the wig, and went to make breakfast. Nicky wrinkled up his nose at the strong smell of Joy. “What's your name?” he asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see your mother dressed up in someone else's clothes.

“Miriam, Miriam, Miriam,” he chanted when I told him. He was still chanting when we left the apartment. As the elevator door opened he turned to Gene, our large Irish elevator man, and said, “This is my friend Miriam.”

Gene tipped his hat. He looked at me. “Morning ma'am,” he said. “You must have arrived very early, before I started my shift.”

“Yes,” I said, “very early indeed.”

Nicky stifled a giggle.

 

 

 

 

 

T
here is no place colder than a Number 5 bus stop in the middle of winter. The wind howls off the Hudson, sneaking down your collar and whistling up your sleeves. We jumped up and down; we rubbed our hands; we prayed the bus would show up. And here it came, slowly and majestically sailing down Riverside Drive, taking its time to kneel for the old people who lived in the neighborhood.

“Mommy, there are icicles in my hair!” Nicky cried, tears in his eyes from the stinging wind. “I'm so cold. Can't we go back to L.A.?”

“Look,” I said, pointing down the street. I wrapped myself around him to provide a little warmth. “The bus is only two blocks away. It will be here soon. And there aren't really icicles in your hair.”

“It feels like there are,” he said reproachfully. “And if we were in Los Angeles, it wouldn't.”

“If we were in L.A. I wouldn't be wearing this wig,” I muttered as the door opened and an enormous woman lumbered slowly down the steps while we stood, shivering and helpless, watching her progress. She took her time. When she finally reached the ground and cleared the doorway, we rushed toward the bus, Nicky dancing up the steps, happy to reach the steamy warmth of the interior.

He dropped our coins into the box, listening to the satisfying pings, and then skipped toward the back of the bus. I followed, more slowly. When I reached the halfway point a man jumped up. Pointing to the place he had just vacated, he said politely, “Please ma'am, take my seat. You need it more than I do.” Blushing furiously, I kept moving.

“Mommy,” said Nicky loudly, “that man thought you were
old.
”

 

 

 

 

 

I
dropped Nicky at school and went on to the office, slipping and sliding through New York's winter mush in my mother's oversized shoes. Debris skittered up the street before me, crumpled cups, broken combs, and forlorn papers swirling in the icy air. Times Square seemed tired and sad, and walking these streets in my mother's clothes made me feel as if I were trespassing on a set for
The Twilight Zone.

At the corner of Forty-third and Broadway I stopped to buy a donut. The man inside the cart was the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood; he knew everyone's order by heart. He did not have to be told that the woman in front of me wanted black coffee and a cruller, and by the time I reached him he was already spooning out extra sugar for the man behind me on the line. Normally he handed me a jelly donut and coffee without a word, but now he looked straight at me and asked, “What can I get you?”

Clutching the brown paper bag, I walked up the block and into the lobby. The guards, Al and Joe, were standing there as they did every morning. They were a study in contrasts: Al was rotund, balding, with a lifetime of meatball heroes spilling out of his uniform, while Joe was small and spare, with an economical face. Most mornings they unleashed a chorus of hellos when I walked in, but now Joe gave me an unfriendly look and pointed to the bank of phones. “Call the person you've come to see,” he said mechanically.

“Don't you recognize me?” I asked.

“Just call upstairs,” he said wearily, as if he had heard this a thousand times. “Even if I did recognize you, I'd need authorization.”

“But I work here,” I said.

“New, huh?” his partner piped up. “We haven't met. I'm Al. Got your i.d.?”

I pulled the card out of my purse and flashed it at him. Al peered at the picture. “You're not her,” he said.

“I am,” I insisted.

He looked at me more closely.

“It's a wig,” I said.

He turned to Joe. “She says she's the restaurant critic.”

“Nah,” said Joe.

“Yes!” I reiterated.

Al stared hard at me. “Look,” I said, pulling the wig up enough to pull out a lock of my own brown hair.

“I think it
is
her,” said Al. “Whaddaya know about that!”

Joe was not convinced. “What's in the bag?” he asked suspiciously.

“You know what's in the bag,” I said. “It's what's always in the bag.” I opened the top and pulled out the donut.

“Jesus,” said Joe. “It
is.
”

They both gaped at me, shaking their heads. And then, finally, Al said what he said every morning. “You're the food critic. How can you eat those things?”

The leaden donuts were not only bad, they were bad for my reputation. But I loved the coffee cart guy, loved the New York ritual of stopping on the corner to exchange a few words. It made the paper, not the friend liest of places, feel more like home. The donut was truly terrible, but every morning I tore it in half, ate the jelly out of the middle, and threw the rest away.

If Bryan was there, I altered my routine and dumped the bag in the garbage unopened. I could easily imagine him marching into Warren's office, asking why the paper had a critic with taste so terrible that she ate fifty-cent donuts from the corner cart.

Bryan was not there, so I strolled self-consciously over to my desk, certain that all eyes were on me, sat down, opened the bag, and extracted the leaden lump of dough. But my entrance had gone unremarked. I took a bite and waited to see what would happen.

The Style section was an odd little enclave. We did not have much contact with the reporters downstairs in the newsroom, and we never saw the columnists who occupied the offices upstairs. And even though we shared quarters with Sports and Fashion, we food folk didn't see much of them either (although we did get to enjoy the parade of flowers delivered to Fashion on a daily basis).

My colleagues tended to make themselves scarce. Molly O'Neill worked mostly at home, so her pod was almost always empty. Marian Burros spent half her time in Washington, and Florence Fabricant was freelance and prohibited by union rules from having a desk of her own. Eric Asimov had the $25-and-under column to keep him out of the office, and Frank Prial came in so rarely that he and Bryan shared a single computer.

That left Trish Hall, who was too busy editing copy to have noticed my arrival. When I looked up from my donut, I found only four pairs of eyes focused upon me. One pair belonged to Alexandra Palmer, who sat across the aisle. She'd been the secretary in the Living section since the fifties, and she was dressed, as always, in a straight tweed skirt, her substantial bosom encased in a t-shirt, her feet clad in sensible running shoes. She had pulled her auburn hair severely back, but that could not disguise the extraordinary sweetness of her face.

As Alex thoughtfully examined me, I realized that nothing fazed her. I suspected she disliked her boss, but she never said a nasty word about him (or anyone else). She was a single woman with what looked like a miserable job, but she found dignity in everything she did and somehow seemed to enjoy her life more than the rest of us.

I wondered what her secret was and I openly eavesdropped on her conversations, hoping to discover it. It was, I think, selflessness; she lived a few blocks away, in one of New York's seedier neighborhoods, and appeared to have adopted every young person on her block. She was constantly counseling, cajoling, and commiserating with this odd cast of characters and I suspected she was about to add Miriam to her list of good works.

Elaine Louie was staring at me too. That worried me; I had known Elaine long before coming to the paper, and admired the pieces she wrote on design, fashion, and food. She, I was certain, would see through the disguise, and she would waste no time in unmasking me. I expected her to come up, laughing, at any moment and rip the wig from my head.

Suzanne Richie was worrisome too. The photo editor had a keen eye and would surely see the real Ruth lurking beneath the costume. But she went on talking into the telephone as if some weird white-haired person had not just plunked herself down at a desk.

In the end it was Carol Shaw who got up. Of course, I thought, as she walked toward me, how could I possibly fool Carol? She was a restaurant critic's dream, an adventurous eater willing to go anywhere and eat anything on a moment's notice, and she had become one of my eating companions. Unlike the editors, who wanted to be taken to fancy restaurants, Carol actually preferred the little Korean and Mexican joints around the office, and she was always ready to jump onto the Number 7 train and take a ride.

Now she was bearing down on me. I could feel my cheeks getting hot beneath the makeup. Then I noticed Alex hovering protectively behind her, a pair of scissors in her hand.

Carol cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. She was standing right over me now. “You can't sit here. You will have to move. I don't know who you are, but this desk belongs to our restaurant critic.”