Garlic and Sapphires (43 page)

“Tell me I didn't dream that meal,” Carol said in the fall. “It seems to have happened in another lifetime.” It was true: that smoldering summer had been a turning point for both of us.

The restaurants that were opening that season all seemed to be downtown, and each time I traveled to Bond Street, Bop, or Blue Ribbon Bakery, I found myself passing my parents' old apartment, looking up at their window and wondering what they would make of my present life. They were so much with me that one night at Montrachet my mother marched right up to the table to remind me that she had been with me the first time I visited the restaurant. “That was ten years ago,” she said caustically, “and here you are,
still
reviewing restaurants. Do you intend to spend your entire life practicing this ridiculous profession?”

“But Mom,” I protested, “I thought you were proud of me now!” Did I say it out loud? I'm not sure; by then she had disappeared, floating right through the wall.

But Babbo was the one that really got to me. It was just a few blocks from my parents' place, and although no ghosts came to haunt my table, each time I visited the restaurant the air began to vibrate. The food was strange, too; no matter what I ate—ethereal ravioli filled with brains, spicy squid stew, cured anchovies with bagna cauda—I tasted black bean soup.

“I think the food was fabulous,” I wrote after the first visit, “but it was hard to tell. What a weird experience! I wonder what is going on?”

On my second visit, when the air once more became electric, I looked around and suddenly understood. How had I missed this? Babbo occupied the small brick building that once had been the Coach House. It had been my parents' favorite restaurant, the place where we celebrated big birthdays, special events, and major anniversaries. Thirty years had passed since my last visit, and the new owners had gutted the room, but now the gracious contours of the long-gone restaurant began to shape themselves around me. No wonder I was tasting black bean soup! The Coach House had been famous for it.

Now when I went to Babbo I tried hard to concentrate on the present, but the past was there, igniting sparks all around me in the air. I had joyfully rediscovered the Dubonnet, but things had changed since then, and now the weight of my own history was sitting heavily on my shoulders. I tried different disguises, thinking they might help, but I had gone beyond them and each time I opened my closet my mother's blue silk dress rustled disapprovingly. “Move on, move on,” it murmured as the hangers slid along the pole.

I threw up my arms and on my final visit to Babbo went as myself. That turned out to be danger of a different sort: when I was recognized the kitchen sent out so much food that I thought I might explode before escaping out the door.

“The food was great, but let's not do that again,” said Michael as we staggered onto the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

M
y own little drama, however, was insignificant compared to what Carol was enduring. Late that summer the doctors performed yet another of their horrible procedures, rewiring her as if she were a car to circumvent her digestive system. Carol began living on liquids, vehemently insisting that it was a temporary measure, a minor inconvenience that would soon be behind her. But when the leaves changed color Carol was still drinking liquids, and before our eyes she began to shrink in on herself, growing smaller and thinner every day.

During the first year Carol had been fiercely concentrated on her illness, convinced that sheer vigilance would make her better. In that phase we heard about every test, every twist, every nuance of the terrible disease that she was going to beat. We all mastered the language of cancer. But as victory began to slip away, Carol stopped talking about CA 125 levels. Then she stopped talking about sickness altogether, as if she could appease the cancer by keeping silent. She seemed reluctant to divulge her pain, afraid that admitting it would make it worse.

From what I could tell, the doctors were torturing her. One morning when I called, she told me that she had been to the hospital during the night for an emergency procedure that involved sticking tubes down her nose, and doing unspeakable things to her body. She said it casually, the way another woman might have mentioned that she had gone to see a play.

“But they released me,” she said. “Why don't you come over?”

I was surprised. Carol and I didn't visit each other's homes; our friendship was conducted entirely in public places. This seemed somehow portentous.

She lived in a narrow Chelsea townhouse, purchased when the neighborhood was still unfashionable and painstakingly restored. When I opened the gate, her little dog came barking frantically to the door, sniffed me anxiously, and followed close on my heels as I climbed the stairs to the snug room at the top.

Carol was wrapped in blankets, looking drawn and drained. I wondered what horrors they had put her through at the hospital, wondered why she continued to fight so fiercely.

“I intend to live,” she said, although I had not asked the question. Her voice was cracked and raw from whatever they had done, and I wanted to tell her not to talk—it sounded like such an effort. But she moved quickly onward, not giving me the chance. “Thanks for coming. Last night I realized that there was something that we needed to discuss.”

“What?” I asked.

“You,” she said, looking out into the garden she had created down below.

“Me?”

“Yeah. I know you're thinking about giving up your job. What are you going to do next?”

I was taken aback by her directness. I had been dancing around the subject, afraid to actually utter the words. But faced with her frankness, I said the first thing that came into my head: “I'm going to get out of the dining room and go back to the kitchen.” And then I put my hand to my mouth, because what I had said seemed right and true, although I hadn't expected it.

“How?” asked Carol.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe I'll write another cookbook. Maybe I'll open another restaurant. Or I could always go back to being a food editor.”

“Listen to me,” said Carol. She put her thin hand on my arm and her voice grew very serious. “If you're thinking of taking over the Dining section, don't.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Do you think I don't know about your deal with the paper? Do you think I don't know that they want you to go back to editing when you get tired of being the restaurant critic?”

It was true, but I wondered how she could possibly know that. But then, not much happened on the fourth floor that Carol was not in on.

“Don't,” she said. “You won't be happy.”

“I can't believe you're thinking about that at a time like this,” I said. “You have better things to worry about.”

“Like what?” she asked. And then we both burst out laughing because the question was so absurd. “I had to tell you this,” she said when it died down, “because no one else will. But please believe me; you're not cut out to be an editor at the
New York Times.
They're hell on editors. They'll second-guess your every move. You'll have to go to a million morning-after meetings about what you should have done, or what you shouldn't have. You'll hate it. I know you liked being an editor at the
Los Angeles Times,
but this
Times
is different. Believe me, it's not for you.”

“You got any alternative suggestions?”

“Find something else. Write a book, become a consultant, get a job on the radio. But remember what happened to Bryan. Don't wait. Make your deal
before
you quit the job.”

“I know,” I said. “The power's the paper's, not mine.”

“Exactly,” she said. “As soon as you give up the job, nobody will give a damn what you think.”

“Where do I start looking?” I asked.

“Don't ask me,” she said. “See a job counselor or a psychologist or an astrologer. Do
something.
I just had to tell you before it was too late.”

At the time I thought she meant before I ended my career. Later I understood that the ending Carol had in mind was her own.

 

 

 

 

 

I
t always gets cold in New York just before Thanksgiving, a mean, icy bitterness that serves as a terrible warning of the frozen months ahead. A wind comes sweeping through the city and the leaves, which have been clinging tenaciously to the trees, fall off in a single day, leaving nothing but bare shivering limbs in its wake. The sidewalks grow so cold that the chill seeps through the soles of your shoes and up into your bones. Your skin goes dry, your fingers crack open, your lips begin to peel. It is the most depressing time of the year.

But 1998 was the bleakest fall I can remember. All anybody was interested in was Monica Lewinsky, and Michael went around moaning about the way real news was being ignored. One night Michael came home jubilant; he'd been offered an interview with a man called Osama bin Laden and he was making plans to go to the Mideast. “He operates a shadowy network called Al Qaeda,” he said, “and the F.B.I. has put him on their watch list. I think we're all going to be hearing a great deal about him.”

But the more I heard about the group, the more frightened I became. It didn't sound safe over there, and I began to be afraid that Michael would fly off into the wilderness and never return. When he came home, deeply depressed because the trip was off, I was secretly relieved.

“My bosses just don't get it,” he said bitterly. “They've killed the interview.” For weeks he was so angry and upset that I began to think it would have been better worrying about his safety than enduring his pain.

But by then I had other worries. Carol was going into the hospital more and more frequently. Tests at first, when the things they were doing seemed increasingly horrid although she refused to tell us what they were. Then her room in the Klingenstein Pavilion began looking too lived in, filled with all the plants and books and little knickknacks hospital rooms acquire when they are no longer temporary. She knew the nurses too well. Soon I began to understand that although Carol was happy to see me each time I showed up, she was also waiting for me to leave so she could return to what had become her real life. Carol had entered the realm of the terminally ill.

 

 

 

 

 

W
hen a person has lived generously and fought fiercely, she deserves more than sadness at the end. Carol's memorial was stubbornly joyful. Looking around at the people gathered to celebrate her life, I felt that each of us was thinking about what she had given us before she died, each vowing to do something to honor her wishes.

First I sent a check to Mother's Voices, the charity she had supported so passionately after her daughter died of AIDS. And then, because I didn't know what else to do, I dug out the little scrap of paper Marion had given me and dialed the number.

“I've been wondering whether you'd call,” the astrologer said when I identified myself.

“It's been a while,” I replied, a little embarrassed.

“It's okay,” he said. “I know that you're reluctant.” His voice was old and deep, which helped some. “Don't be uncomfortable,” he continued. “You need not be a believer; for many people this is no more than a way to focus thought.”

He asked me when I was born, and where. “What time?” he wanted to know.

“Two-fifteen,” I said.

“Fine,” he replied, giving me his address. It was in Greenwich Village. I wondered if that was significant.

I'd been expecting crystal balls and candles, perhaps a black cat or a bat or two. His apartment, it turned out, was quite ordinary. Small, bright, and cluttered with art and books, it lacked the slightest whiff of mysticism. We chatted for a bit, talking about food and painting and what a wonderful woman Marion was. After a while it occurred to me that the conversation was going on just a little too long, and I asked if something was the matter.

“Yes,” he said with a sheepish look. “I've read your columns, and it just seemed to me that your horoscope was off. I was trying to draw you out to see if I was mistaken.”

“Are you?”

“No. I've never come upon something like this. Your horoscope doesn't fit. It seems inaccurate—the horoscope of an entirely different person. I don't understand it. Are you sure you were born on January sixteenth?”

“Yes,” I said.

“In Manhattan?”

“Yes.”

“At two-fifteen in the afternoon?”

“No,” I said, “two-fifteen in the morning. I mean the middle of the night.”

The clouds rolled right off his face. “That's a relief!” he said. “This changes everything.” He began recasting charts, humming happily to himself. After a few minutes he looked at me and said, “Would you mind going away for a while? I'm going to have to redo everything.”

 

 

 

 

 

I
went outside and wandered down the street, back in the Village I had grown up in. I passed Ottomanelli's, where my mother used to buy whole suckling pigs, and the Lafayette Bakery, where she bought the French bread my father loved. I went down Tenth Street and looked at the garden where the Women's House of Detention used to stand. And then, on an impulse, I crossed the street and walked to Jones Street, looking for my father's butcher shop, wishing that Jimmy would still be there.