Food Fiction
About this page: an open file drawer for food-related (however tenuously) poetry and prose. Additional entries coming soon! Please enjoy.
Yours, Ate-to-the-Bar
__________
The Aftermath of Reception
Redolent
Remains of
Half-eaten
Finger
Sandwiches
Lipstick-rimmed
Crystalline
Corpses
of Uncorked
Spirits
Laughter
and
Longing
Lingering
in the Eaves
__________
Salumiere
The Calligan brothers had not left Eton’s Mill for over forty-nine years, since that last time their mother and father had loaded up the horse and wagon and trundled John, Daniel and Edward over to the 1929 Derby Fair one Sunday in late September. “Now,” John thought to himself as the priest intoned the Catholic funeral mass, “Eddie will never leave.” Five people attended the funeral: John, Daniel, the priest, and two of the congregation’s widows, who attended all the funerals.
Returning home, John settled Daniel in the easy chair to watch television. Sitting down heavily next to his brother, John stared numbly around the room at the detritus of almost five decades. Eddie’s liver disease had left the already bereft farmstead even more so. Over the years, John had heavily mortgaged the farm to pay for medicine and hospitalizations—the farm that had been in his family since the early 1800s, that even the Great Depression, and the great personal violence that just preceded it, had not quite wrested from them. He’d barely been able to keep it together since then. A foreclosure notice had come only last week. Taking a deep breath, John suddenly felt relieved, a fleeting feeling followed immediately by guilt and sadness. He hoped Eddie was finally at peace.
Pushing himself up from the chair, John squeezed Daniel’s shoulder, saying, “I’ve got to go to work, Danny. Just stay here and watch TV, okay?” Not expecting a response, John simply left. Daniel likely would be in the same place when he returned.
Back in 1929, Eton’s Mill was still very much a mill town. John, who was only five at the time, wasn’t old enough to be aware of the rapid changes that would crash the stock market on October 24, shut down the mills, and cut the town’s population by more than half. Ultimately, these things wouldn’t matter to him because his life shattered on a much more personal Black Thursday.
On the afternoon of October 3, 1929, John was playing quietly in the room he shared with his brothers when the policemen burst in. His aunt trailed them, exclaiming “Oh, thank God!” when she saw John. He remembered being bewildered by the noise and fuss, wondering where his brothers were, his parents. He began crying, calling for his mama. She never came. Nor did his father. And, when he saw his brothers again, they were so changed he almost didn’t recognize them. Daniel never spoke after that day except, sometimes, while sleeping, he cried out. And Eddie became withdrawn and unreachable, unable to hold a job. Soon, he left home only to buy alcohol.
In 1929, adults didn’t take much time to explain things to five year olds, but John soon heard the whispers. Even so, it was a long time before he pieced together what had happened that day. How Eddie had been in the hayloft, pitching hay for the pigs’ bedding and had seen everything. His mother. His father. The gun. Then Daniel, following them into the barn, seeing the aftermath.
Their aunt did what she could, caring for the brothers until John was sixteen. John was old enough by then to understand that she could no longer muster the strength to address wounds that would never heal, no longer withstand the loneliness of a stigma the family couldn’t shake.
Since it was all he’d known since he was five, and motivated by guilt borne of having been the “lucky” one, John became the caretaker, quitting school and supporting himself and his brothers by raising pigs and taking odd jobs around town. He became an awkward, quiet man, but diligent in his undertakings. Other townspeople treated him courteously, but always kept their distance, fearful that his history might rub off. He had no friends, never dated.
When Alfredo Bartoletti, the town butcher, agreed to hire John, John knew it was because Al felt sorry for him, but he needed the job and knew something about meats from years operating the family piggery. John determined not to make Al regret his decision. In the subsequent eighteen years, John missed work only three times—all to take care of Eddie, for which Al never faulted him.
If it was not quite friendship, Al and John came to respect each other. Al had taken over Bartoletti’s Meats from his father, who had opened the shop in 1941. His father had emigrated from Italy in the 1930s and brought with him a wealth of Old World knowledge of butchery and the curing of meats, which he passed on to his son. Al’s father had often insisted that they had stayed in business for the subsequent decades because of their particular method of curing salami. Even today, Al assured his customers that there was no better to be found outside Italy, though he, himself, had never been there. Al patiently taught John the business. And Al, voluble and extroverted like his father, made up for John’s shyness with customers.
Six days a week, John got up at 6:30 a.m. to tend the pigs, made breakfast and lunches for himself and his brothers, then sat with them until he had to leave for the butcher shop, which opened at 10:00. He worked until the shop closed at 5:00 p.m. then returned home, made dinner, cared for the pigs, did other chores as needed, and went to bed by 10:00 p.m. On Sundays, he did the same, except from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. he would either sit indoors or wander the sixty-three acres that made up the Calligan homestead.
One Sunday, several weeks after Eddie’s passing, while wandering down the hard-pack path back to the ramshackle mess the house had become over the years, John had a vision. Hearing a noise, he lifted his eyes from their usual downward cast and peered down the path, which was darkened with the shadows of the trees that had grown up on either side and all around the house. He saw an extraordinary sight–a child skipping up the path toward him from the road, hair ablaze. He stared. It took some moments for his eyes to focus properly, for him to realize the child’s hair was not really aflame but merely backlit by the light from the direction of the road. Still, it was a strange sight—a child where children had not trodden in decades. He averted his eyes downward and quickly turned toward the house. This was not part of his routine.
“Hi,” the child said, as naturally as if she’d known him all her life. “Have you seen Jasper?”
John grunted something incomprehensible and sped up, thinking he’d be safe if only he could reach the house.
“Hey, where are you going? I’m just looking for my cat. Have you seen him?”
“No,” mumbled John, still looking away, willing himself inside.
“Oh. Well, maybe he’s chasing mice again. He likes mice. What’s your name?”
John didn’t answer.
“My name’s Lumiere, Lumi for short,” she said, helpfully.
John laughed nervously.
“Why are you laughing?” she said, sounding hurt. Horrified at the thought that he’d upset her, John quickly uttered, “Sounds like ‘salumi;’ you know—like ‘salami’? I’m a butcher.” He was breathless with the unaccustomed effort of speaking.
Unperturbed by the strange explanation, the girl said, with unmistakable pride, “My mommy says it means ‘light.’ We just moved in down the street.” She paused to look at him for a minute, her head cocked to one side. When John didn’t respond, she said, “Well, I gotta go now,” and skipped back down the pathway yelling, “Nice to meet you, whatever your name is!” and calling for the cat as she went. John stood there looking down the pathway for a while before turning to go inside. “John,” he whispered as he turned. “My name’s John.”
The next day at work, and every day that week, John had a strange sensation every time the shop door jangled open. He caught himself looking up eagerly, only to feel disappointed again when it was only Mr. Patrowski or Mrs. O’Brien. As he was about to lock up on the following Saturday, he paused, then returned to the meat counter. Purchasing a small salami—the very best in the shop—he gently wrapped it in butcher paper and took it home.
On Sunday, John slid the salami into a bag. Instead of walking away from the road and into the far reaches of his family property as usual, he walked instead to the roadway. Looking first right, then left, up and down the road, he took a deep breath, hunched his shoulders, tightened his grip on the bag, and began to walk in the direction he had seen the little girl turn the week before. He walked the quarter mile to the neighboring Bukowsi property, then to the next driveway another half mile beyond. A realtor’s sign next to the mailbox boasted “Sold!” He stood at the driveway’s end, looking up the drive towards the trailer, shaking. Losing his resolve, he turned back towards home and promptly stumbled over something at his feet. A small marmalade cat dashed out from under him and halfway up the drive, where it sat, coyly looking back at him and licking its right front paw. He heard a giggle.
“Jasper likes you,” the little girl said, running down the drive to scoop up the cat in her arms. John hadn’t seen her sitting on a bench next to the trailer.
“He likes good people.”
Lumi started walking with the cat back towards the trailer. “Want to see where he likes to hide?” Lumi motioned to John, who moved tentatively up the driveway.
A voice inside the trailer called out, “Lumi? Who are you talking to?” The trailer’s screen door squeaked open and a woman peered out around it.
“Oh. Hello!” she said, descending the steps. “May I help you?”
John blushed, looking down at his feet. “No. I…I mean…well, I brought you something.” Feeling foolish, and without looking up, John extended the bag towards her.
“What is it, mommy?” Lumi inquired eagerly.
The woman took the bag and opened it, taking out the salami and looking at it quizzically…and somewhat skeptically.
“It’s a salami,” John explained quickly. “I work at Bartoletti’s—the butcher in town. I…we sell it. You’re new here…. I thought….”
“Salumi!” Lumi shouted, then burst into joyous peals of laughter. She began to dance around the two adults, shouting, “Salumi! Salumi! Salumiere!” Her mother began to laugh with her, and John felt the unfamiliar tug of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He still felt a little silly, but strangely happy.
“So, you’re the one she’s been talking about all week!” John looked up, startled that anyone would give him that much thought. The woman smiled at him. Her eyes were kind, but tinged with a sadness John thought he recognized.
“We’ve moved around a lot since her daddy died. It’s hard on a child, moving so much. I finally saved enough to buy this place.” She stopped, her eyes distant, lost in thoughts of a husband, a father, taken years before by a war she never understood.
Shaking her head to clear it, she said to John, “Thank you. It’s very kind of you. Would you like to stay for lunch? We could have this on sandwiches.” She raised the salami. They both laughed this time.
“I think I’d like that,” John said, shyly.
“What’s your name?” Lumi’s mother asked, as she turned back towards the trailer. “I’m Rosemary. And you’ve already met Lumi.” She opened the trailer door, looking back at him, waiting for a response.
John hesitated for a moment, looking up into her sad eyes and the open door.
“John,” he said quietly, and then, with more certainty, “ My name’s John.”
“Well, John, you just wait right there. I’ll be right back with a picnic.”
Every Sunday for the following five months, they picnicked together. Lumi and Jasper would meet John at the end of the driveway and accompany him to the trailer, Lumi pestering him on the way about what he’d brought to eat that day. He found himself making the weekly choice very carefully, trying to vary it as much as he could. Lumi squealed with glee at each new selection.
Some days, Rosemary and Lumi would come into the shop for their own groceries and John would fumble around, trying to serve them, winded with anxiety. Al would rib him gently when they left. John found that smiling came more and more easily.
One evening, John returned home to find the house still. He knew immediately what it meant. Though Daniel had not spoken for the better part of five decades, his silence had been alive with an anguish that filled the house. This silence was peaceful, calm. John found Daniel slumped in his usual chair, finally released.
Lumi and Rosemary attended the funeral, standing on either side of John as if to hold him up. If not for them, the attendance at Daniel’s funeral would have been even more meager than Eddie’s. Danny had stopped living at a younger age than Eddie. No one had a chance to know him. “Not even me,” thought John as he stood stoically listening to the priest begin the service.
When Rosemary took John’s hand just after the mass began, he started at the unfamiliar sensation. Not knowing what to do, he stood there, rigid, but she left it there all the same. When she gently squeezed his hand at the end of the service, he turned to look at her. She gazed at him wide-eyed. The sorrow that always glimmered in the deeps of her eyes had risen to the surface. Her look of concern was more than he could bear, more than anyone had ever offered to him before. He looked down at their clasped hands. And began to sob. He sobbed not so much for the loss of Daniel and Eddie, but for what they had lost, what all of them had lost. He’d never realized before the extent of it.
For the next several days, John found himself alternately sad and angry. When he found yet another foreclosure notice in the mailbox, he sighed. It was only a matter of time.
Rosemary and Lumi now came to visit him, bringing him food daily “just ‘til you feel better,” said Lumi. “Then you have to come back over to our house.” Rosemary hushed her gently, but John smiled. “I will,” he promised and, the very next Sunday, he did, glad for a distraction. They settled again into their routine, sharing lunches every Sunday.
One Sunday morning, a car sputtered its way up to the Calligan house. It was Rosemary’s beat up Volkswagon Bug. When John stepped out onto the threshold to see what was going on, Lumi, rolling down her window, laughed and said “Come on! Let’s go!”
“Go where?” said John, anxiety tingeing his voice.
“It’s a secret!” said Lumi, covering her mouth with her hands and giggling. John looked to Rosemary and found her smiling. She nodded encouragement. He locked the house and got in after Lumi crawled to the back seat.
“Where are we going?” asked John again.
“You’ll see,” said Lumi with excitement. Rosemary said nothing as she drove out of the driveway.
When they passed the town-line sign, John breathed in sharply. How many years had it been? Lumi began to bounce up and down on the back seat, laughing.
When Rosemary finally pulled the car under the huge “Derby Fair Grounds” sign and into the parking lot, John sat unmoving, stunned by the coincidence. How odd that he should end up here. For a moment, he could not move, his thoughts locked in the past, overcome by the last memories he had of his mother and father, of the outside world. The sign still looked just as it had in 1929.
“John?” Rosemary inquired, holding the car door open for him. A look of concern passed over her face. Jarred back to the present, John shook his head, cleared his throat and extracted himself from the small vehicle. Lumi rushed out behind, clapping her hands, jumping up and down, and bombarding them with a cascade of questions.
“Can we see the baby cows? Do you think they like cotton candy? Can we get cotton candy? Then I can see if they like it!…”
Rosemary shushed her daughter, saying, “We’ll see.” As they made their way to the admission gates, she took John’s hand. This time, he clasped hers back. Lumi grabbed his other hand and tugged them both along for the rest of the golden-hued fall day. When Rosemary kissed him as Lumi spun around and around on one of the rides, it felt so natural John forgot to be surprised.
As John crawled into bed that night, he smiled to himself. The day had been so simple. Who knew it could be so simple?
When the foreclosure finally came, John didn’t fight it. A strange determination had come over him since that day at the fair.
On the day he was scheduled to leave the property, he packed a few things and threw them in the old station wagon. As he drove up the driveway to Rosemary’s trailer, Lumi bounded down the driveway to meet him.
“Where are you going?” she said.
He had not told Lumi and Rosemary about the foreclosure. But he had told Al.
“I’m moving,” he said.
“Moving? Where?” Lumi said, worriedly.
“Get your mom. You’ll see.”
When he pulled up to Bartoletti’s Meats, Lumi exclaimed, “You’re moving here?!”
Rosemary looked at him questioningly. He began to explain quickly, breathlessly, telling her about the foreclosure; about how Al’s kids didn’t want the business; about how he had been surprised to find there had still been a small amount of equity left in the debt-ridden farmstead; about how he had asked Al if he could buy in, hoping later to take over; about Al’s offer of the apartment above the store, with rent going—along with the equity money—to buying the business and the building.
The more he talked, the less he could do to stop the words rolling off his tongue, almost fifty years of words. He told her about his parents, about his brothers, about his aunt, about not having left Eton’s Mill for decades, about how broken he always felt, about how he had forgotten happiness until Lumi and Rosemary had arrived, and about how he hoped that, maybe—if he did okay in this new venture—Rosemary and Lumi might consider becoming his new family. With this last, he stopped, shocked that he had blurted out such a thing, that he had spoken so much at all. He couldn’t look at her. When neither she nor Lumi said anything, he silently berated himself, certain that he had gone too far. He began to backtrack, carefully looking only at his hands. “I mean…. Well, it’s okay if you don’t want….”
Rosemary gently reached for his hands. Raising them to her face, which was wet with tears, she tenderly kissed each one. Lumi was holding her breath, staring at them both in wide-eyed silence from the back seat.
Just then, the door to the store opened and a man walked out. Seeing him, John extricated himself from the car.
“Hello,” said the man, extending his hand. “I’m from the bank. You’re the one buying the business?” John nodded. “Good. I have some paperwork for you inside. Just gotta get something from my car.” The man walked to a black sedan parked to the side of the store. John turned back to the station wagon. Rosemary had gotten out, telling Lumi to stay inside. She walked up to John.
“You know,” she said huskily, clearing her throat, “if we’re going to be a family, Lumi’s going to expect you to bring prosciutto and salami more often than once a week.”
John looked at her, understanding seeping in slowly. She looked back intently, her eyes holding his, the sorrow in them almost unnoticeable.
As the man from the bank made his way back to the store, he spoke again to John. “Let’s see if we can get this paperwork finished, why don’t we? Forgive me, but I’m blanking. Remind me of your name?”
John glanced at Rosemary then at Lumi’s face peering out the car window. He smiled.
“John,” he said with conviction. “My name’s John.”