Early Autumn

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CHAPTER 9

On the weekend Paul improved his TV viewing average. Patty Giacomin had departed to self-actualize in New York. I had the living room and Paul stuck to his bedroom except to make a periodic trip to the kitchen to stare, often for minutes, into the refrigerator. He rarely ate anything. Looking into the refrigerator seemed merely something to do.

I had to stick with him, so I couldn’t run or build some cabinets in Susan’s house like I’d promised I would. I read most of the day about Enguerrand de Coucy and life in the fourteenth century. Saturday afternoon I watched a ball game on the tube. About six o’clock Saturday afternoon I yelled up the stairs to him.

“You want some supper?”

He didn’t answer. I yelled again. He came to his bedroom door and said, “What?”

I said, “Do you want some supper?”

He said, “I don’t care.”

I said, “Well, I’ll make some, I’m hungry. If you want some, let me know,”

He went back into his room. I could hear the sounds of an old movie playing.

I went to the kitchen and investigated. There were some pork chops. I looked into the cupboard. There was rice. I found some pignolia nuts and some canned pineapple, and some garlic and a can of mandarin oranges. I checked the refrigerator again. There was some all-purpose cream. Heavy would have been better, but one makes do. There were also twelve cans of Schlitz that Patty Giacomin had laid in before she left. She hadn’t asked. If she’d asked, I’d have ordered Beck’s. But one makes do. I opened a can. I drank some. Perky with a nice finish, no trace of tannin.

I cut the eyes out of the pork chops and trimmed them. I threw the rest away. Patty Giacomin appeared not to have a mallet, so I pounded the pork medallions with the back of a butcher knife. I put a little oil into the skillet and heated it and put the pork in to brown. I drank the rest of my Schlitz and opened another can. When the meat was browned, I added a garlic clove. When that had softened, I added some juice from the pineapple and covered the pan. I made rice with chicken broth and pignolia nuts, thyme, parsley, and a bay leaf and cooked it in the oven. After about five minutes I took the top off the frying pan, let the pineapple juice cook down, added some cream, and let that cook down a little. Then I put in some pineapple chunks and a few mandarin orange segments, shut off the heat, and covered the pan to keep it warm. Then I set the kitchen table for two. I was on my fourth Schlitz when the rice was finished. I made a salad out of half a head of Bibb lettuce I found in the refrigerator and a dressing of oil and vinegar with mustard added and two doves of garlic chopped up.

I put out two plates, served the pork and rice on each of them, poured a glass of milk for Paul, and carrying my beer can, went to the foot of the stairs.

I yelled, “Dinner,” loud. Then I went back and sat down to eat.

I was halfway through dinner when Paul appeared. He didn’t say anything. He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down at the place I’d set.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Pork, sauce, rice, salad,” I said. I took a bite of meat and washed it down with a sip of beer. “And milk.”

Paul nudged at the pork medallion with his fork. I ate some rice. He picked up a lettuce leaf from the salad bowl with his fingers and ate it.

I said, “What were you watching?”

He said, “Television.”

I nodded. He nudged at the pork medallion again. Then he took a small forkful of rice and ate it.

I said, “What were you watching on the television?”

“Movie.” He cut a piece off the pork and ate it.

I said, “What movie?”

“Charlie Chan in Panama.”

“Warner Oland or Sidney Toler?” I said.

“Sidney Toler.” He reached into the salad bowl and took a forkful of salad and stuffed it into his mouth. I didn’t say anything. He ate some pork and rice.

“You cook this?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How’d you know how to do that?”

“I taught myself.”

“Where’d you get the recipe?”

“I made it up.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Well, I sort of made it up. I’ve eaten an awful lot of meals and some of them were in places where they serve food with sauces. I sort of figured out about sauces and things from that.”

“You have this at a restaurant?”

“No. I made this up.”

“I don’t know how you can do that,” he said.

“It’s easy once you know that sauces are made in only a few different ways. One way is to reduce a liquid till it’s syrupy and then add the cream. What you get is essentially pineapple-flavored cream, or wine-flavored cream, or beer-flavored cream, or whatever. Hell, you could do it with Coke, but who’d want to.”

“My father never cooked,” Paul said.

“Mine did,” I said.

“He said girls cook.”

“He was half right,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Girls cook, so do boys. So do women, so do men. You know. He was only half right.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What did you do for supper when your mother wasn’t home?”

“The lady who took care of me cooked it.”

“Your father ever take care of you?”

“No.”

We were through eating. I cleared the table and put the dishes into the dishwasher. I’d already cleaned up the preparation dishes.

“Any dessert?” Paul said.

“No. You want to go out and get ice cream or something?”

“Okay.”

“Where should we go,” I said.

“Baskin-Robbins,” he said. “It’s downtown. Near where we ate that time.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Paul had a large cone of Pralines ’n Cream. I had nothing.

On the ride home Paul said, “How come you didn’t have any ice cream?”

“It’s a trade-off I make,” I said. “If I drink beer I don’t eat dessert.”

“Don’t you ever do both?”

“No.”

“Never?”

I deepened my voice and swelled up my chest as I drove. I said, “Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, boy.”

It was dark, and I couldn’t see well. I thought he almost smiled.