In the Kitchen with Susan

 

For me, cooking is what I imagine a drug trip might be like. I daydream, I write. I listen to music. And quite often I forget about what’s in the oven until it smokes up the kitchen enough for the fire alarm to startle me out of my revery. I nibble on sugar as I cook, sip a little hot cocoa. Frequently, I hallucinate, imagining myself an Intellectual with Something to Say. Epiphanies abound. Pronouncements tumble from my lips and onto the page, leaving little grease marks in the margins. 

Just look at this latest kitchen masterpiece:

The chicken is sizzling in the skillet now, the kitchen heavy with the smell of garlic and onions roasting in the oven. I hear French music on the computer, which leads me to think of seventh grade French class. My teacher was the real thing: a tiny madame from France who never smiled, probably because she spent most of her days in a dilapidated junior high with dusty linoleum floors and walls the color of a sick person on the verge of vomiting.

In my memory, I always picture Madame at the front of the room, the hard line of her thin lips creased in a frown, screaming, “No elbows on zee desk!” I remember her wearing a wool dress that looked scratchy and stiff (although for all I know that might have been a memory from watching Tippi Hedren movies).

Madame taught us how to make the French “r” sound. She said something to the effect of “Zis is not Spanish!” There might have been a slam of a ruler here as she grew increasingly agitated by the thought of unkempt Spanish R’s rolling will-nilly through the room. “In France zee ‘r’ is gutteral,” she said, demonstrating by parting her red lips and making a choking sound deep in the back of her throat, as if working up to a growl or performing a ventriliquist act. 

Back in the kitchen, the oil spatters and sizzles.  I turn to the clock and realize there’s only 30 minutes left until I have to pick up Three because he has his cello today. Once when I forgot him, Three dragged the cello all the way home. When he finally made it to our front door, he fell down at my feet, his chest heaving. Extending one arm in my direction he gasped, “Help me!”  So I really must go, which is a pity, considering the sauce isn’t done yet and the chicken smells a little raw. No matter. The children won’t notice. Much. 

Alas, now as I read over my words, it appears my thoughts flounder at the shallow end of the pool rather than the deep. Perhaps this is why most of what I cook gets ruined. Though I’ve never experienced it, I wonder if this is what the day after a drug trip looks like. Not a gastronomic or literary masterpiece as I once thought, just a pink slice of dead bird smothered in over-salted sauce and a blinking computer screen spattered with olive oil. This is, I think, what you might call "crashing."  If not for the suitcase on the floor and the epiphanies floating lifeless in the backyard pool, I might have thought I never left home.  

Comments

[MaryB]

I didn't know J. was playing the cello! Watch out--he carries that thing home too many times and he'll want to play the flute! That's how it happens, you know!
Your recollections of the French teacher are spot on--I never had her class but I always saw her in the hallway! Gives me shivers just thinking about it!