Einstein, Say It's So

The outdoor rotunda, Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Railway Station

The Broadway Limited left from Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Railway Station around 1:06 a.m., the hour late enough to make my mother cranky about having to drive me downtown. We'd park under the great rotunda, never looking up at the circular patterns of terracotta-colored stones topped by centered slices of glass. Later I'd think about the lovers who parted from or joined to each other under this shelter all because of these tracks, the cumulative comings and goings, the damp jackets where faces had buried themselves in angst or relief. Then, though, I thought only about getting to my destination, maybe trying to sleep a bit through the night's journey, nodding off but shaking myself awake as every station was called, each clackety-clack of the rails taking me closer to him.

Imagine if I'd only looked up!

After the saying goodbye (I'm going, I'm going, I'm going!) and the thrilling sound of "ALL ABOARD!," if I was lucky enough, no one would sit next to me. Twice I remember not being lucky at all, sitting once next to a girl who was actively determined to save my apparently sorry soul before the train pulled into Trenton. Another time, I spent the entire trip turned fully toward the window in an effort ward off my seatmate, who was trying his best to "accidentally" touch the curve of my breast.

The Broadway Limited rounding Horseshoe Bend in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

When the conductor called "NEXT STATION STOP, ALTOONA!" ..."HORSESHOE CURVE COMING UP!" I never failed to rub my eyes, turning sleepily toward the window, to watch the train nearly meeting itself as it rounded the great bend.  Altoona was midpoint, or a little over, in my trip. From this point on, I was fully awake, anxious to be free of the train, to be jumping down the three iron steps, to be scanning the crowd for his face, to be kissing and falling and spinning and losing myself in the suddently very solid fact of us.

While Gary's strengths don't always include being on time (When we got married, I told him the ceremony was at 1:30--when it was scheduled for 2), he never was late to meet the Broadway Limited. We rode back to campus in his roommate's taped-together green Dodge Dart, feeling ourselves becoming invisible to the world. For the next 72 hours, there would be only two.

One of the many Princeton arches. Imagine your back curving against its stone, face rising to the one bending to you.

"Princeton was a great place to be in love," I tell my husband from the back seat of our rented SUV. Our oldest son rides shotgun because of his long legs, and three of us sit hip to hip behind them. We are making a lunch stop in Princeton, having left Philadelphia on route to Fairfield, Connecticut as we follow Rachel's college lacrosse team that's come East for Spring Break.

Gary drives down Nassau Street slowly, ostensibly looking for a parking spot, but I can sense he's searching for something else . He eases into a parking garage that wasn't there the last time we visited, and we spill out into a crossroad where our past looks haughtily at our present.

"We may not have lived up to your expectations," I whisper.

I can feel us here, still here, and while I'm glad for all that is, I want to weep for all that's lost. Would I sell a little bit of my soul to be young again, my long hair swishing mid back, the skin around my eyes smooth and taut, our married life yet to be, hanging before us like a glossy ripe plum? If our youth is fossilized anywhere, it is here.

And, if Einstein was right about the fabric of time, our past, present, and future exist simultaneously. Might an 80-year-old Jill be tapping her way down the street? Today, I'd be happier to find the 20-year-old Jill, who could be walking across campus after a Cat Steven's concert, the fingers of her left hand looped in Gary's belt, his arm slung proprietarily across her shoulders. Dorm windows open to the May air, a mash-up of "Morning Has Broken" and "It's a Wild World" floats above us.

If it were late enough, we might hear our young selves calling "HOT DOG MAN!", desperately in search of the vendor peddling steamed dogs and buns at 2 a.m. Sometimes we ate at The Grotto, a tiny storefront decorated with white fencing and plastic flowers, where candles dripped down the sides of rope-wrapped pot-bellied wine bottles. At The Grotto, we ordered either eight-inch club sandwiches or featherweight gnocchi (I've judged every dish of gnocchi by The Grotto's standards since then). We often tripped down dark stairs to a basement bar called The Annex where we'd drink Sicilian Kisses (Southen Comfort and Amaretto) until I spoke only in Spanish. Then we'd order the 99 cent ham and cheese special to bring back my English. Once we lunched at The Nassau Inn, our tureens of clam chowder served on a table carved deeply with initials of long gone boys and men. I believed the silver pitcher of cream served with the soup prophesised our future.

The Peacock Inn



If there is a place in which our younger selves could manifest, it would certainly be the Peacock Inn. Set back from the bustle of Nassau Street on Bayard, the Peacock seemed to be a spun-sugar house, lit from within. Was it our future selves climbing the steps,already transitioning into our next, more formal stage? We dressed up for those dinners, ordering wine, holding hands across the crisply-clothed table set along a curved wall of windows in this glorious old house.The details of what we ate have faded, but my fingers remember the silver's heavy curves. We walked in tandem, slowly, me crying a little at the end of our Peacock nights.The next day I'd again board the Broadway Limited, this time moving too quickly backwards, clack-clackety.

Nothing like a good old cup of Joe to bring us back to reality.

Today, our present selves are meeting old college friends, Bryan and Audrey, at P.J.'s Pancake House, one of the few eateries that hasn't changed much since Gary and Bryan graduated in the seventies. We sat in the corner nook, our younger selves crowding the booth, all of us catching up over P.J.'s best.

The corner table at PJ's, where we rubbed elbows with the past.

Rachel may have had the best plate: Eggs Benedict...

 

...with a side of strawberry pancakes!

Peach Melba

My parents first took me to Las Vegas when I was 14. We were an interesting trio set loose on Sin City, the land of champagne fountains, pasties, and the Rat Pack. My mother was in the habit of wearing a wig then, a strawberry blonde 60's bouffant.(After that initial trip, we stopped at the Grand Canyon [an educational sidebar to cleanse my Vegasized brain?]. Posing under the tree for a photo, Fritzie caught the puff of hair on a branch, lifting it just enough so that everyone on the tour bus could have snapped a shot of her stockinged head.) My dad, 18 years older than my mom, grey-haired and spectacled, wore a black-and-white checkered sports coat and favored whiskey, neat. Their youngest child, fourteen years old, I spent hours in front of the mirror lining my eyes in black and checking out how my legs looked in those white hot pants (yes, the pants were HOT, but this phrase now becomes a test of how old you are...if you know what hot pants are, then you are riding the soul train, honey!)

I learned a lot on that first visit:

1. Even a 14-year-old can get into the Playboy Club if a proper tip is given to the maitre 'd. According to my dad, you can fold a fiver so that it appears to be a twenty.
2. It's possible to sneak past security to Dean Martin's room in the Riviera Hotel, where you can steal a glass from his room-service tray. (When your mother dies, forty years later, you'll find that glass in her china closet.) It is also possible to give money to a bellman in exchange for information about where Dean Martin parks his car. You can wait there, with your mother--because of your mother, to take pictures of a startled Martin and his golf partner.
3. Mascara melts when the thermostat rises above 103.
4. My mother shouldn't drink more than two Singapore Slings.
5. Women still throw panties at the fat Elvis, and apparently no one has told this Elvis to lose the white stretchy jumpsuits.
6. When you are 14, a pretty nice world exists in a paperback copy of The Godfather, an ice-cold Tab, the cool well of  a pool, and a brown and white polka dot bikini. (Did my parents KNOW what I was reading?)   

A couple of nights into our trip, after hearing Rodney Dangerfield "get no respect," we discovered the Riviera Coffee Shop, Open 24 Hours. Imagine this at 2 a.m.: a threesome of small burgers served with crispy shoestring fries (before sliders were "invented"!), a towering turkey club layered with classic blt ingredients, a quivering slice of lemon meringue pie served with steaming Joe in mugs stamped with gold curlicue Rs. Dinner food at the shows wasn't memorable, although the list of offerings printed on creamy paper and orders taken by tuxedoed waiters who called me "Miss," left with me a lust for white-tableclothed "fancy" restaurants.

Probably because I was 14 and could wear hot pants, I ordered dessert every night. One night, I discovered Peach Melba: a short dish of vanilla ice cream, the slightest coating of bean-speckled white rising up the glass, cradled by a promiscuous peach half seemingly floating in a puddle of sugared raspberry puree. I was a goner.  

 

 

The way the story goes is that in 1892 Auguste Escoffier, the legendary French chef at the London Savoy, whipped up Peach Melba in honor of La Nellie Melba, a celebrated Australian opera singer. Escoffier, ever the lover of women, created this dish for her (according to his biographers, he honored many women in this way--much to the consternation of his wife), thinking Peche Melba to be as lovely as Nellie's voice. Escoffier served the dish to Nellie in a swan carved from ice, but I can testify that it is just as enchanting without the swan. If I ever have to order a last meal, I know what dessert will be.

 

A few years back, Gary and I found ourselves in Paris, blinking in surprise at our good fortune. We fell down the proverbial rabbit hole (or should I say lapin?) one night while drinking martinis in a little Southside bar. Celebrating a turn of good luck, after a year or so lost in the desert, we let the cold gin numb our tongues and create frosty rivers down the backs of our throats. We were stunned to find ourselves suddenly nearly alone in the bar, crowds gathering on the street. Joining them, we followed their gazes upward to a double rainbow, shimmering in watery lines.

 

"I have to go to France," Gary said, taking my hand. "You're coming with me."

 

With the pressure of his hand on mine, all of my excuses lost themselves.

It's true that there are no fat women in Paris. Books have even been written on the subject, making claims that lithe limbs are the result of small plates, but I've seen these women at the cafes, their heart-shaped posteriors planted in wicker chairs facing the promenade, ice cream and slices of chocolate spooned into their pretty mouths. Here's a news flash...French women eat dessert. Every day.

Just like a craving for ice cream, Paris gets into your head--Hemingway's moveable feast and all. Sometimes, when the city fades a little in my mind, and I can't smell or taste its flavors, I read about it, and je peux parler français again. If you find yourself needing a little Paris, pick up Elizabeth Bard's Lunch in Paris.

 

 

Or visit her blog Lunch in Paris for updates about her continuing love story with her French husband,  young son, and all things French.

 

Recently, Bard and Gwendel opened Scaramouche Artisan Glacier (English subtitle: Adventures in Ice Cream) where they craft sinful confections together in Provence. Here they seem to have conjured Escoffier and Nellie.

 

 

 

Want a bite?

 

Window Gazing

My step was lighter then.

After school, after I'd dropped my briefcase on my bedroom floor and laced up my tennis shoes, after some sort of dinner (often for one), I was out the door and up the long curved driveway that emptied onto Bower Hill Road. At the top of the hill, my walk turned into a jog, then a run, and I focused on the repetitive sidewalk squares as I pounded past the synagogue, the Catholic grade school, and the entrance to the community pool. About 30 minutes later, I’d turn back, this time at a slower pace, letting my muscles cool down. I walked leisurely past the single-family homes whose lawns butted up against the sidewalk. I took note of these homes every night, chronicling and charting changes and additions: the newly-cut grass, the half-cleared picnic table, the colorful whirligig spinning in the small garden. The homes nearest the crosswalk were simple brick ranches, mostly pale yellow brick, now and then interrupted by the roughness of deep red, three steps leading to their concrete porches, overhung by patterned aluminum awnings. As I got closer to my complex, the houses grew, expanding into two-story stone constructions. Poppies and purple puffs on long stems waved in flower gardens, and redwood planters barely contained tumbling blooms. A cool darkness was just starting to fall, and sugary yellow lights clicked on up and down the street.

 Oh, how I loved to look into the windows, drawn by the emanating light like an insect. I don’t remember the sum of what I saw, save for some white lace curtains, an abandoned game on a dining room table, and a set of rich maroon velvet chairs.  I longed to curl my back into the dark plush, to roll the dice and count off spaces, to own the view from inside the lace-trimmed windows, to be part of the circle within. The soft light cutting into the near darkness comforted me, beckoning. I usually stopped at the last house nearest my own crosswalk, a rambling Cape Cod sided in white with red trim, the entrance just off kilter a bit to the right of the sidewalk. The door was a red beacon, and I had to stop myself from touching the elaborate floral wreath encircling the engraved knocker. 

Now, so many years later, I still window gaze when I pass through a neighborhood at night, the windows again backlit with promise, though more elusive. Then, I could outrun life to grasp a little of the light in my palms, to roll it and form it into something of my own. I knew just a little about loss, but nothing at all about the deep wistfulness that would follow.

 

When Gary and I looked at each other across the sticky table at Cain's Saloon and decided to get married, I told him "our daughter will have your eyes."  He foretold the future (some of which has come true, but, boy-oh-boy, he shouldn't give up his day job). His sweet "we will" list included taking me to New England, to visit the homes of Twain and Hawthorne and Thoreau. (It's probably an English major thing, this desire to stand where they stood, to breathe whatever molecules remain, to collect their discarded words, to fold up their shadows in my notebook.)

Well, we went a lot of places, but New England wasn't at the top of the list. Hold on: I'm hitting the fast forward button.

We're driving from one rink to another for the Hockey Night in Boston tourney, our turquoise Astro van bumping over roads crossing through Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

"Stop!" I yell.

Whenever anyone says anything unexpected (let's make that just plain says anything) in our family, all six of us jump into the conversation with loose lips: 

"Are you sick?"
"I'm going to be late!"
"Quiet, kids, I can't hear your mother!"
"What's going on?"
"Why won't anyone tell me what's going on!"

"Gary! Pull over right now! It's Robert Frost's farm!"

And so it was. Quietly unassuming, with no gate or box office, Robert Frost's farm rose like a mirage in its white-boarded simplicity.

 

 

But we had promises to keep, so I stood rooted in the gravel at the side of the road and breathed him in. My children had spilled from the van, looked at the nondescript farm house, and then at me through skeptical eyes.

My own eyes were fixed on the upper window. the one whose wavy glass framed the room where Frost retreated every day to write.

"It's a house, Mom."

Apparently my children haven't inherited my window gazing gene.

The next year, we made it to Mark Twain's Hartford house, a curved, spinning kind of house tucked into trees (his neighbor was Harriet Beecher Stowe!),

 

where I wanted to slip a book off of his library shelves and make myself comfortable at his table with a cup of tea. Maybe he'd join me in spirit, if I did.

 

 

The docent looked a little nervous, so we retraced our steps to the visitor's center, where we had tea at the Murasaki Cafe.

 

Last year, Gary and I flew to Boston to watch our daughter, a senior at U.C. Davis, play lacrosse. "Well, I made a mistake," he said, "but I think it might be a good thing." It turns out that a miscalculation in dates gave us an extra day, which we spent in Concord, visiting the homes of Hawthorne, Alcott, and Thoreau.

 

 

 

"See, I keep my promises!"

Before we walked the Concord sidewalk leading to Orchard House, where Bronson Alcott trimmed bed legs to match the slope of a crooked floor, to Hawthorne's pink house, that he exited through the back door and climbed the hill so he wouldn't run into Bronson, to Emerson's white square home across the street, where the Transcendentalists gathered, we ate a fine and hearty lunch at the Colonial Inn (which was Hawthorne's grandaddy's home).

 

We sat by a window and feasted on puffy omelets and chicken pot pie.

 

I like to think that the rustic chicken pot pie (such tender chunks of chicken in thick cream sauce--the crust kneaded and stretched over the dish--bright green peas, carrot coins, and ridged slices of celery coating every spoonful) was also a comfort to Hawthorne's family who might have eaten here,
 

 

and that someone might be gazing wistfully into this window as she made her way home, after first running hard, then slowing to take in the sights.

 

 

 

The Sunday Table

I am standing at the stove, my mother's apron wrapped twice around my waist, the ruffled hem floating an inch or two above my sneakers. Cubes of potatoes and fat chunks of green peppers and onion crackle in my grandmother's cast iron skillet. This skillet (once used to conk my drunken grandfather on the head one after he struggled up two flights of stairs with a bottle in one hand and a toy train in the other) will accompany me to every kitchen of my life.

Scuttling sideways, standing on my toes, I peer through the kitchen window at the alley behind our house. "Did he say he was coming for sure, Daddy?"

My father looks up from the crossword puzzle in The Pittsburgh Press, nodding and licking his pencil with the tip of his tongue.

I don't remember his name now, some neighborhood friend coming to help my dad with work around the house. Fifty-two when I was born, my father slipped and fell one night on the ice, no one finding him until the morning. His artificial hip, the first of its kind in Pittsburgh, was made of titanium, but his hip always ached like a "son of a bitch." Between that wounded joint, arthritis, and emphesema, his home-repair abilities were limited. One summer, this neighbor visited almost daily, and I cooked breakfast, taking such pride in sliding shimmering sunny-side ups onto a plate.

Admittedly, I was a strange child, cooking breakfast for the workman, dreams of bacon and omelets and french toast running through my head as I drifted off to sleep. If I wasn't reading, I was cooking. My sister still delights in telling stories about me holding prayer services for our family on certain nights, me assigning seats to my atheist father, my Presbyterian mother, and my siblings whose faith emerged from that difficult match. A fleeting memory shoots across my mind: me stomping my foot and pointing while I stood behind the couch, which served as an altar.

I stopped holding mandatory prayer meetings, but I haven't stopped cooking...or reading about cooking or watching television programs about cooking.When my children were babies and their father played on two softball teams, the five of us spent Sunday afternoons watching food shows on the local PBS channel, me rocking at least one baby, the recipes offering a salve for my frazzled nerves. To this day, my grown children can be lulled into contentment by watching The Barefoot Contessa, Everyday Italian, Chopped, three of them sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch, the other often at my feet.

You know what they say, baby...food is love. I certainly know the way to people's stomachs.When my daughter's friend Ben visited us this summer on his way from playing baseball out East to his family's almond farm in California, I blended tri-berry smoothies, folded tender goat cheese omelets, and topped grape tomatoes with balsamic glaze. This is what I do: dish up bowls of wine-laced boeuf bourguignon, spoon cornbread into my grandmother's skillet, mix lemon vinagrette with a light hand.

Sitting at the Sunday table is a good thing; we laugh a lot; we share stories, weaving ourselves back together once again. But just as we know that a skillet can conk someone on the head as easily as crisp homefries, sometimes our table witnesses tears, misunderstandings and recriminations.Why don't you join us? I can't promise what you'll find...a mom with her head in her hands or a table crowded round with extra chairs.

Last week, our Sunday table moved to Meat and Potatoes in Pittsburgh. Andy, son number two, invited us to brunch, where no one conked anyone on the head. Take a look:

Every brunch should start with monkey bread. I decided to buy an extra large muffin tin after these over-sized cupcakes arrived at our table. Think of the possibilities!

 

Two Sundays ate chicken and waffles (the cheddar/jalapeno variety) with bacon-and-bourbon- infused syrup. My southern-born mother made the silkiest skillet gravy to accompany her version of chicken-fried steak. My tastebuds want to pair chicken and waffles with my mama's "milk gravy" as she used to call it.

 

 

Papa Sunday chose Irish Benedict (corned beef/ swiss/ poached egg/ and Thousand Island hollandaise. One egg was so full of yolk that it burst when pricked with a fork, spraying his dark green sweater. I only mention this because I'm usually the one spotted with brunch.

 

 

Our adopted Sunday girl loved the short rib hash, contentedly boxing half of it up for another day at another table.