Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (8 page)

Molly: “You got the list?”

Ellen: “No, you put it in your purse.”

M: “No, I handed it to you because I had to lock the door/let the dog out/let the dog in/pee/answer the phone/find my wallet.”

E: “No, I'm telling you, I don't have it. You must have put it down somewhere.”

M: “Would you please just look in your goddamn purse and see if it's there?”

E (producing the list): “Oh.”

M (shaking her head): “Jesus Christ.”

With luck running right, this conversation occurred in the driveway or just a few blocks from the house. For whatever reason, the longer the list, the more likely it was to be left. Even more probable was the likelihood of returning
without some singularly crucial ingredient—usually the one that had triggered the need to shop in the first place. Take, for example, the time we decided to do a menu that concluded with a Key lime pie. Back from one of those extended shopping excursions that had been undertaken primarily to buy Key limes, there followed a brief conversation along the lines of:

E: “Where are the limes?”

M: “They must be in that bag.”

E: “They're not here. It's gonna be problematic, making a Key lime pie with no Key limes.”

M: “Sheesh. They were on your part of the list.”

E: “Nope. You had produce, protein, and wine. I had canned goods, spices, nuts, and chips. I remember.”

M: “Shit.”

This consistently favored exclamation applied to minor irritations. Strong expletives were assigned to the major stuff, usually reactionary Republicans, most Fox “news” commentators, or knuckleheads in the state legislature.

Molly and I loved supermarkets, especially the inner aisles. Any seasoned shopper will tell you this is such a bad idea, especially for those given to impulse buying. She liked to see what was new on the shelves. Never mind whether it was on the list, belonged on the list, or was even on the menu. Molly and me shopping for food was like what shopping for shoes must have been for Imelda Marcos.

We once counted how many different brands of Dijon mustard occupied a shelf. Another time we set out to do a meal of grilled asparagus, chicken, and ribs, with potato salad, but ended up buying hot dogs, bratwurst, hot links, relish, pickles, buns, and sauerkraut because there were so many mustards that we decided to try as many of them as we deemed worthy. Dijon dominated. Next came Jack Daniel's horseradish. How wrong can you go with anything from Black Jack?

I once gave Molly a gift pack of mustards from the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum just because she called me a liar when I told her there really was such a thing. She still had some of the jars left a few months later. So out came the green peppercorn-, garlic-, vodka-, champagne- and beer-flavored mustards. The Walla Walla onion mustard with bacon was all gone, as was the Stonewall Kitchen version with blue cheese and herbs, which she said was great with celery and carrot sticks.

How I'd love for her to see today's mustard invasion: honey-balsamic, brown sugar and pecan, horseradish and maple, Merlot and chocolate, orange-espresso, wasabi-sake. This is not to mention such concoctions as Dijon with black truffle, Tulocay's Tomato Vodka Mustard with Celery Seed, or root beer mustard. I am not making these up. If you don't believe me, Google the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum and see for yourself. It's in Wisconsin. And it's okay to doubt. Remember—she did too until she got her gift pack.

We also had great fun in the fresh meat section, although Molly demurred, especially after the Case of the Uncontrollable Giggles.

We were in the oversized Whole Foods Market on Sixth Street. I couldn't find smoked andouille, a Cajun sausage critical to gumbo. (Yes, you can use other smoked sausages, but they really aren't the same and probably don't have the same ingredients, but you probably don't want to know anyway. Really.) I made the mistake of telling a “store associate” that I wanted the real deal, the kind of andouille that comes out of Louisiana, a garlicky, spicy, smoked pork sausage. (Whole Foods doesn't have stackers or sales clerks; it has “associates.”) I was willing to temporarily sacrifice health to maintain the integrity of this Louisiana classic.

Lordy, what was I thinking, here in the shrine to all things natural, organic, and frighteningly expensive, that there should be a smoked sausage, loaded with nitrates, nitrites, and heaven only knows what else? I wanted to defend myself against this heartfelt homily, to let him know it was only this one time, truly, and that I absolutely didn't—did
not
—make a habit of ingesting processed foods with additives like nitrites and nitrates. Truly. By the time he completed his tutorial on why I wouldn't find
smoked
andouille sausage polluting this temple of food purity, I felt giggles welling up from that part of me that is still ten years old. He was so sincere, so earnest, so, so, right.

As any Cajun worth his boudin (a popular Cajun sausage) can tell you, there are times when calories, cholesterol, and nitrate calculations can just go to hell; andouille is andouille, and it's not like it's gonna be a three-times-a-day staple in my diet and, and, and suddenly I was feeling a little too defensive.

As anyone who has ever succumbed to giggles can attest, once they start, they cascade. Ask any high school sophomore—it's called sophomoric behavior for a reason. Regaining marginal control, I thanked him, made for the meat counter, and bought the made-on-the-premises, boring-assed
unsmoked
andouille. Meanwhile, Molly had vanished into another aisle and was beyond view, presumably so I would embarrass only myself.

From then on, when I shopped for gumbo ingredients, which was easily every third Austin visit, I went to Central Market, partly because I knew exactly where to find
smoked
andouille and partly because I wanted to give the young man at Whole Foods a chance to forget me.

Both the upscale Central Market—the haute cuisine echelon of the Texas-based, family-owned H-E-B grocery chain—and the Austin-based Whole Foods engage in a kind of guerrilla food warfare, each determined to lure the lion's share of the well-heeled, the health-conscious, the semi-conscious, locavores, food snobs, vegans, food freaks, carnivores, and vegetarian shoppers.

Whenever we'd hit Central Market, people almost always recognized Molly and smiled or nodded. Sometimes they'd nudge a companion as they smiled and nodded not always subtly in her direction. You didn't have to be a skilled lip reader to discern the nature of their query.

Shopper A: “Isn't that Molly Ivins?”

Shopper B: “Looks like her.”

Hello? Looks like her? There was no missing or mistaking Molly's six-foot presence, especially when she had that head of burnt-orange hair found nowhere in nature—a dye job some publicist talked her into and one that, thank goodness, didn't last long.

But the stubby black woman with her? Who's she? The cook?

Well, come to think of it, yes.

Every now and again someone made a point of speaking to her. Molly never put on airs about her ever-ascending popularity in the People's Republic of Austin. It was my job as a friend to stand patiently aside, maybe even saunter into an aisle of my own while she responded to admirers. Thereby I could avoid the temptation to engage in impatient shifting from one foot to the other; no rolling eyes upward when flattery spilled over the top; no smirks or flippant responses to comments not directed to me in the first place.

And for damned sure, no giggles.

One woman really pushed the envelope. We were standing amid bins of shallots and red, white, and Texas 1015 onions, picking through the garlic heads, looking for perfect ones with big cloves. A woman nudged me and asked if the tall person standing nearby was actually Molly Ivins. She wanted to know if I cooked for her. With a perfectly straight face, and, with a conspiratorial lean-in, as though sharing a secret, I confessed that, well, yes. I told her we were shopping for a dinner party that would feature a member of the state legislature; a civil rights lawyer and his partner, Stan; a reporter from the
Dallas Morning News
; and a Cuban refugee and her partner. I leaned closer and intoned, “I hear the Cuban is a communist.”

She loved it. How was this poor woman to know that Stan, partner to civil rights attorney Malcolm Greenstein, was a woman whose real name is Kirsten; I was the reporter; and the Cuban was artist Mercedes Peña, who was no more a communist than I was, or that her partner, Ed Wendler, was a man, not another woman?

Clearly afflicted by an advanced case of arrested development, I was unable to restrain myself. All was accomplished with a straight face. Molly made earnest eye contact with her admirer while I looked away. She later swore it was the last time she would allow me in the store without a muzzle.

The experience triggered a flashback. It was conversation fodder for Molly at several dinner party discussions about race and class in America. Specifically, race and class in Texas. Okay, race and class in Dallas, where I was a reporter for twelve years—plus two years at Neiman Marcus, where my fashion sense left a lot to be desired. A lot.

Anyway, at the
DMN
, I was assigned to cover writer John Berendt's visit to Dallas. His novel
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
was flying off bookshelves at a rate that stunned him and delighted his publishers. In 1994, the Wellesley Club of Dallas invited John to participate in its thirtieth annual book and author luncheon. My job was to shadow him morning to night, from his first talk show to the evening cocktail party honoring him at a chichi Highland Park home. I was to do a feature story on John and “The Book,” as it came to be known.

Not wanting to embarrass my subject or my employer with my lack of fashion sense, I detoured home, showered, spritzed, donned a smart black dress, polished almost-new sensible shoes, arrived at my appointed destination, and walked briskly up the perfectly landscaped stone walk to the front door.

As I approached, our hostess opened the inner door. I announced that I was there for the reception for John Berendt, and she responded by pointing through the storm door that separated us—to a walkway that led to the side of the house. “They're in the kitchen,” she said. “You can go around the back.” In a nanosecond, arrested development once again snapped into play, moving me to do as instructed, knowing that I would be waiting in the kitchen when John and the photographer arrived. How interesting it would be, I thought, to see how this weirdness would play out.

The caterer, whom I knew, was pleasantly surprised to see me. I knew her food to be really good, so I nibbled. I didn't want the catering crew to be uncomfortable, so I just said I was hanging out until the hostess was ready to receive guests.

An increased decibel level signaled the punctual arrival of guests, and I was able to recognize John's resonant voice when he said to the hostess, “That's strange; I've been with her all day, and she said she would be here early. Let's ask the photographer.”

This was before everyone had cell phones, so once it was determined that the photographer hadn't heard from me either, the hostess suggested the photographer use the kitchen's wall phone in an effort to determine my whereabouts.

As she entered through the swinging door that led from dining room to kitchen, there I sat under the wall phone the photographer was already reaching for.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked. “Hanging out with the catering crew,” I replied with a smile. He looked at me quizzically. Our hostess's face was by now the hue of a vine-ripened Brandywine tomato. The rest of the evening was uneventful unless you want to count the guy who asked me for a martini refill. What he said was, “Excuse me, I need another martini.” To which I replied, “God, so do I—vodka, up, three olives. Thank you
so
much.”

I left him holding two glasses, as discombobulated as our hostess had been earlier. Neither the dress, the nicely polished shoes, makeup, notebook, nor the pen suggested I could be anything other than the Help. Molly dined out on this story for a while too, usually as a lead-in to some rant on the sorry state of race relations in Dallas/Texas/America/the world in the 1990s.

Once, when my brother Fred, then a photographer with the
Los Angeles Times
, was interviewing with the
New York Times
for a job as a photo editor, some newsroom muckety-muck took him to one of those high-dollar restaurants where editors take prospective employees they want to woo. Brother Fred was tricked out in a black cashmere turtleneck with a polished pair of my father's cuff links, a dark charcoal heather tweed jacket, and wool slacks. Italian loafers completed the look, tassels and all.

While Fred was waiting for a cab after dinner, a Jaguar pulled up. As the occupants emerged, the driver pressed the keys into Fred's hand and said, “Keep it safe and there's a big tip in it for you.” Fred smiled and replied, “I'll keep them right here in my pocket.” And he did, until the next day, when he returned the
keys, by courier, to the restaurant. He can't remember the name of the restaurant, or the name of the editor who took him out, but he remembers the magical moment when he realized he had the potential to be a felon.

My reverie dissipated as I realized we were still surrounded by onions and garlic and the woman was still talking.

That was Molly, always willing to stop, listen, smile, thank you for speaking to her, ask your name and thank you again, this time addressing you personally. And she meant it. She refused to see herself as a celebrity. She certainly never behaved like one, and God knows she never dressed like one until she reluctantly yielded to a personal shopper. As often happened on these supermarket junkets, despite the fact that we'd take different carts, our paths would overlap.

On one such occasion, I saw from a distance that Molly was in deep attentive mode, looking into the speaker's face, nodding but not really smiling—engaged, but not in a good way.