Part 1 (2/2)

Outside the windows, the sky was darkening. Already cars were turning on their headlights, as the light filtered gray-blue through the clouds. Inside the kitchen, the hanging lamps shone, their light reflecting off the bits of chrome, sinking quietly into the wooden countertops and floor. Lillian's mother sat down in a red-painted chair next to the kitchen table, her book open.

”I remember,” Lillian's mother read aloud, Lillian's mother read aloud, ”the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little see-saw of the right throbs and the wrong....” ”the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little see-saw of the right throbs and the wrong....”

Lillian, listening with half an ear, bent down and took out a small pot from the cabinet. She put it on the stove and poured in milk, a third of the way up its straight sides. When she turned the dial on the stove, the flame leaped up to touch the sides of the pan.

”There had been a moment when I believe I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself starting as at the pa.s.sage, before my door, of light footsteps....”

The water in the big blue pot boiled gently, the potatoes s.h.i.+fting about in gentle resignation like pa.s.sengers on a crowded bus. The kitchen filled with the warmth of evaporated water and the smell of warming milk, while the last light came in pink through the windows. Lillian turned on the light over the stove and checked the potatoes once with the sharp end of her knife. Done. She pulled the pot from the stove and emptied the potatoes into a colander.

”Stop cooking,” she said under her breath, as she ran cold water over their steaming surfaces. ”Stop cooking now.”

She shook the last of the water from the potatoes. The skins came off easily, like a shawl sliding off a woman's shoulders. Lillian dropped one hunk after another into the big metal bowl, then turned on the mixer and watched the chunks change from shapes to texture, mounds to lumpy clouds to cotton. Slices of b.u.t.ter melted in long, s.h.i.+ning trails of yellow through the moving swirl of white. She picked up the smaller pan and slowly poured the milk into the potatoes. Then salt. Just enough.

Almost as an afterthought, she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a hard piece of Parmesan cheese. She grated some onto the cutting board, then picked up the feathery bits with her fingers and dropped them in a fine mist into the revolving bowl, where they disappeared into the mixture. She turned off the mixer, then ran her finger across the top and tasted.

”There,” she said. She reached up into the cabinet and took down two pasta bowls, wide and flat, with just enough rim to hold an intricate design of blue and yellow, and placed them on the counter. Using the large wooden spoon, she scooped into the potatoes and dropped a small mountain of white in the exact center of each bowl. At the last minute, she made a small dip in the middle of each mountain, and then carefully put in an extra portion of b.u.t.ter.

”Mom,” she said, as she carefully set the bowl and fork in front of her mother, ”dinner.” Lillian's mother s.h.i.+fted position in her chair toward the table, the book rotating in front of her body like a compa.s.s needle.

Lillian's mother's hand reached for the fork, and deftly navigated its way around the Collected Works Collected Works and into the middle of the potatoes. She lifted the fork into the air. and into the middle of the potatoes. She lifted the fork into the air.

”It was the first time, in a manner, that I had known s.p.a.ce and air and freedom, all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was consideration-and consideration was sweet....”

The fork finished the journey to Lillian's mother's mouth, where it entered, then exited, clean.

”Hmmmm...” she said. And then all was quiet.

”I'VE GOT HER,” Lillian told Elizabeth as they sat eating toast with warm peanut b.u.t.ter at Elizabeth's house after school.

”Because you got her to stop stop talking?” Elizabeth looked skeptical. talking?” Elizabeth looked skeptical.

”You'll see,” said Lillian.

Although Lillian's mother did seem calmer in the following days, the major difference was one that Lillian had not antic.i.p.ated. Her mother continued to read, but now she was absolutely silent. And while Lillian, who had long ceased to see her mother's reading aloud as any attempt at communication, was not sorry to no longer be the catch-pan of treasured phrases, this was not the effect she had been hoping for. She had been certain the potatoes would be magic.

ON HER WAY home from school, Lillian took a shortcut down a narrow side street that led from the main arterial to the more rural road to her house. Halfway down the block was a small grocery store that Lillian had found when she was seven years old, on a summer afternoon when she had let go of her mother's hand in frustration and set off in a previously untraveled direction, wondering if her mother would notice her absence. home from school, Lillian took a shortcut down a narrow side street that led from the main arterial to the more rural road to her house. Halfway down the block was a small grocery store that Lillian had found when she was seven years old, on a summer afternoon when she had let go of her mother's hand in frustration and set off in a previously untraveled direction, wondering if her mother would notice her absence.

On that day years before, she had smelled the store before she saw it, hot and dusty scents tingling her nose and pulling her down the narrow street. The shop itself was tiny, perhaps the size of an apartment living room, its shelves filled with cans written in languages she didn't recognize and tall candles enclosed in gla.s.s, painted with pictures of people with halos and sad faces. A gla.s.s display case next to the cash register was filled with pans of food in bright colors-yellows and reds and greens, their smells deep and smoky, sometimes sharp.

The woman behind the counter saw Lillian standing close to the gla.s.s case, staring.

”Would you like to try?” she asked.

Not where is your mother, not how old are you, but would you like to try. Lillian looked up and smiled.

The woman reached into the case and pulled out an oblong yellow shape.

”Tamale,” she said, and handed it on a small paper plate to Lillian.

The outside was soft and slightly crunchy, the inside a festival of meat, onions, tomatoes, and something that seemed vaguely like cinnamon.

”You understand food,” the woman commented, nodding, as she watched Lillian eat.

Lillian looked up again, and felt herself folded into the woman's smile.

”The children call me Abuelita,” she said. ”I think I hear your mother coming.”

Lillian listened, and heard the sound of her mother's reading voice winding its way down the alley. She cast her eyes around the store once more, and noticed an odd wooden object hanging from a hook on one of the shelves.

”What is that?” she asked, pointing.

”What do you think?” Abuelita took it down and handed it to Lillian, who looked at its irregular shape-a six-inch-long stick with a rounded bulb on one end with ridges carved into it like furrows in a field.

”I think it is a magic wand,” Lillian responded.

”Perhaps,” said Abuelita. ”Perhaps you should keep it, just in case.”

Lillian took the wand and slid it into her coat pocket like a spy palming a secret missive.

”Come back anytime, little cook,” Abuelita said.

Lillian had returned to the store often over the years. Abuelita had taught her about spices and foods she never encountered in Elizabeth's or Margaret's houses. There was avocado, wrinkled and grumpy on the outside, green spring within, creamy as ice cream when smashed into guacamole. There were the smoky flavors of chipotle peppers and the sharp-sweet crunch of cilantro, which Lillian loved so much Abuelita would always give her a sprig to eat as she walked home. Abuelita didn't talk a lot, but when she did, it was conversation.

SO WHEN L LILLIAN walked into the store, a week after making mashed potatoes for her mother, Abuelita looked at her closely for a moment. walked into the store, a week after making mashed potatoes for her mother, Abuelita looked at her closely for a moment.

”You are missing something,” she noted after a moment.

”It didn't work,” Lillian replied, despairingly. ”I thought I had her, but it didn't work.”

”Tell me,” said Abuelita simply, and Lillian did, about cookies and spices and Henry James and mashed potatoes and her feeling that perhaps, in the end, food would not be the magic that would wake her mother from her long, literary sleep, that perhaps in the end, sleep was all there was for her mother.

After Lillian ended her story, Abuelita was quiet for a while. ”It's not that what you did was wrong; it's just that you aren't finished.”

”What else am I supposed to do?”

”Lillian, each person's heart breaks in its own way. Every cure will be different-but there are some things we all need. Before anything else, we need to feel safe. You did that for her.”

”So why is she still gone?”

”Because to be a part of this world, we need more than safety. Your mother needs to remember what she lost and want it again.

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