With me?
I vow to only wear sweaters my mom has made. That’s my vow. Oh, and another thing. I vow to do nothing in excess.
She smiled at me.
I suppose it depends what your limits are, I said.
I suppose you would be right.
Perhaps sitting near her that day—three months after my wife passed—made me feel less alone. I don’t know. Perhaps it was the fact that she had suffered some loss of her own which made me feel as if she might understand me. Understand what I was going through. Or perhaps it was that lovely sweater. But after a bit, I asked her if she wanted to get some lunch with me.
How ‘bout getting a bite to eat, Rita?
I hope you’re not picking me up.
Certainly not. Why, are you available?
My mom just died. I want you to know that before I agree to go to lunch with you.
I’m only offering lunch.
All right then, let’s go.
?
It was the meal after the funeral—the meal to conquer grief—that I most looked forward to on that terrible day we buried my wife.
This is the one thing I want to remember. The meal after I buried my wife.
I had been ravenously hungry, though I don’t remember being hungry. It wasn’t until I had started to eat that I realized just how hungry I was. I was ravenous. Gluttonous. I felt like a vampire feasting on the blood of a thousand virgins.
When I couldn’t eat any more, I continued to eat. I ate myself into a catatonic torpor and passed out in the corner while the other mourners around me caught up with each other. I was surrounded by the funeral crowd: the part of the family that only gets together at funerals. They were catching up on each other’s lives since the last funeral. I couldn’t take it. I thought I would scream. Instead, I sat somberly in the corner eating my meal. My nose down at my plate trying to consume myself into oblivion.
?
Go ahead, honey. Have seconds.
Those were Adeleine’s words. That was her mantra: Have seconds, eat more. Adeleine was hugely appetitive. She loved to cook. She wasn’t one of those who was afraid of food. She ate. What’s more, she loved to watch me eat.
How about seconds, Art?
My weight.
I don’t care about your weight; I married you for your appetite. It’s your appetite I’m here to serve.
Those were Adeleine’s words. It’s your appetite I’m here to serve.
Without Adeleine, how was I ever going to eat again?
She was that rare cook who cooked equally well from a cookbook or from her own imagination. I loved everything she made.
What’s for dinner tonight? I would say, coming home from work.
Beef Stroganoff in a vodka cream sauce, Caesar salad with anchovies, cold borscht, mushroom barley soup, pickled herring, sardines, liverwurst, stuffed green peppers, fat pickles and rye bread and chocolate cake with cookies. I’ve two bottles of wine open and that bottle of chilled vodka to wash it down.
Her Beef Stroganoff—to die for—was from an ancient family recipe. Her grandmother brought it back from Leningrad, Russia. She never passed her cooking down to our daughter, Meg. Meg is a stick. She has never liked eating. She was always fussy; she never showed an interest. As a result, the recipe for the Beef Stroganoff went with Adeleine to the grave, and I haven’t had the likes of it since. I don’t expect to.
?
Rita and I went to a quiet Sicilian restaurant, Giovanna’s, just down the road a block or two from the cemetery. We ordered family style: bread, sausage, hand-rolled rotini in a mushroom sauce with speck, gnocchi, veal cutlets sautéed in wine sauce, braised chicken in a lemon sauce with capers, a cheese plate, marinated peppers and a bottle of Chianti.
We talked about this and that.
What’s your zodiac?
You’re not trying to pick me up?
No. Why would I do that?
I don’t know. My mom just died.
How about some more gnocchi?
Yes. I love gnocchi.
The gnocchi here is good.
It is better at Leo’s down the street.
Yes, their gnocchi is very good.
I like the pesto better here.
The Chianti’s good.
Here, have more.
Thank you.
Bread.
Sure.
Butter.
Yeah.
Olive oil.
Please.
More wine.
Pour it on.
I filled her glass.
To the dead.
Here here, she said approvingly. May they rest in peace. She promptly made the sign of the cross and I looked on solemnly.
The waiter stopped by.
Thanks for coming. I was dying of thirst.
Can I get you anything?
Another bottle of wine.
More bread.
I’m famished.
Me too.
Something about grief makes me eat.
What do you do, Art?
All sorts of things. What about you?
I wait tables. I work part-time at a nail salon.
I like your nails.
I did them myself.
I raised my glass again. Here’s to the living.
The living, she said.
Clink, clink.
The afternoon light began to wane and we were laughing over something or another and then apropos nothing at all, she said:
Where do you want to go now?
Let’s go downtown. My office is across the street from a lovely hotel.
Lets, she said. Why not.
And so our relationship was born.
?
I pull up behind the students who have gathered at the graveside of the world’s latest victim.
Who died? I ask someone—a pimple-faced student standing next to me. He’s wearing a pink housecoat and slippers.
A guy named Albert Volares. A football player. He died in a head-on-head tackle.
How old?
Fifteen.
Jesus.
I didn’t know him.
Oh?
I’m just here to get out of school.
The priest stands reading psalms. Valley of evil, etc.
The mother weeps uncontrollably. The father holds her with both arms and tries to comfort her. Apparently it was her only child.
We wait to die. Why else were we put on this earth but to learn truths? Terrible truths.
Are you talking to me? the kid asks.
I suppose I am talking.
Did you know him?
Who?
Albert.
No.
Then why are you here?
Same reason as you. To get out of school.
The boy looks at me like I’m crazy.
The priest says something about the dead boy and then a picture of the boy with a little biography of the boy is circulated through the crowd.
ALBERT VOLARES
He is survived by
His parents
Albert and Mona Volares
He loved Pokémon, Battlefield, Minecraft, pizza and football.
He wanted to be an FBI agent.
He was loved by everyone who knew him.
He will be missed.
He was a person full of promise.
The picture is of an astonishingly handsome young man with the cheekbones and hooked nose of an Aztec warrior.
A line forms behind a pile of dirt and one by one people grab the shovel, a silver spade, and toss a clod of dirt on his casket.