Theory XIII: Notty
Bundled up in her fur-lined maxi coat and tam she braved the dark streets, cakebox in hand. The long block stretched before her, and she held off the unkind wind with the cardboard offering firmly dug into her breast. Night trips were so difficult in the winter and her grandmother was on the other end of town. For a fleeting moment she wondered what life would be like with a car.
It was possible to live one’s entire life in Toronto and never own one. For Sara the idea of driving was so frightening she sold her mother’s aged Citroen even before the will had been read because its very presence in the garage was akin to a kernel of popcorn lodged in her back tooth.
Wimp. Who had said that? Her mother or Chip. Certainly not her father, who had taken the subway to work good weather and foul, his fedora abandoned only in the heat of summer, along with the boxy merino overcoat (in grey) and half-rubbers (unless raining). She had a picture of him trudging down Collins, beaten and tired in the last stretch of a day that had begun the same way in pre-dawn. He got out of the house as early was decent, ostensibly to beat the rush-hour crush on the Public but really it was to escape the burnt toast and pithy orange juice served up by Delys in the breakfast room. It wasn’t until years later, when she was old enough to accompany him to the office that daughter learned from father that he spent a good hour in the steamy confines of Yonge Street breakfast diner with a cup of coffee, cinnamon Danish and the newspaper.
Sara and her brother hadn’t been so lucky. Their mother, though well-intentioned (although perhaps not upon reflection) had the delicacy of a jackhammer when it came to the culinary arts, and she cared not a whiff if the milk was lukewarm, the peanut butter hardened to the consistency of cement, or the tuna salad studded with bits of left-over spine. The daily chore of providing sustenance to her family was steamed, beaten, boiled, and fried to an unpleasant death, then slid without ceremony onto plates.
Delys’ penchant for ruining everything except the Christmas feast and the occasional roast beef dinner on Sundays, was a mystery to her husband and children because her own mother was so good at it, if a bit peculiar. Delys’ mother, a warm and kindly spit of a woman who had been in her youth what she referred to as "the theatricals", cooked everything on a two-burner hotplate in the tiny walk-up flat she'd lived in since her only daughter had left home to marry. Notty was an expert at making things in one pot, a skill she claimed to have learned while accompanying her tap-dancing husband on the Vaudeville circuit. She could make an entire meal including biscuits and dessert with a collection of nesting pots she hung in descending order above the apron sink in the nook that passed for a kitchen. Everything she made, absolutely everything, tasted wonderful. Light and airy if it was to be so, dark and rich if it was to be so.
It was Notty who had taught her only granddaughter how to make a cake from scratch, among other things in her odd collection of road-recipes. Because Sara wanted to remember and preserve the memories of afternoons spent in conversation across the table from her with a pot of tea and some delicious confection all crumbly and sugary she was a very good student indeed. And soon she became the official baker for every family occasion. Her cakes were as whimsical as she was reserved, some sported plastic animals parading under paper umbrellas, some were towering with multi-colored layers ascending into the heavens until they listed at a crazy angle like the Cat in the Hat’s hat. She learned to make fairy cakes, iced finger squares with tiny flowers sprouting new buds and delicate stamens made from spun sugar. Once she’d even created a Greek temple with a hollowed-out center filled with tiny marzipan people which you could count if you were brave enough to peer through the tiny windows.
As it happened, Notty was made of stronger stuff than her daughter, and at 85, divorced from the tap-dancer for more than half of those years, she was still going strong. Still walking up and down two flights of stairs, still shopping one item at a time along six blocks of specialty shops with her wheeled carrier filled to the brim. Still handicapping the trotters in front of her ancient television console, apron folded between her knees, pencil in one hand, paper in the other. Still cooking on her hotplate and sharing the proceeds with everyone, including the homeless guy who had staked out her doorway decades ago and never left.
It was thus Sara found her, two streetcars and a subway ride later, above the fish-and-chips shop in Cabbagetown, stirring something in the kitchenette, talking to herself.
She jumped.
“Lordy! Why on earth did I ever give you a key?” The confection in the pot burbled.
Sara put the cake box down on the Formica table. The grey marbled surface was worn through to white it had been scrubbed so many times. Her coat came off around her and flowed in waves of fur around the chair. She had taken off her boots by the door.
Notty was all she had left.
Her grandmother stirred the pot with singular concentration until something about the sound of the mixture or the aroma rising above it satisfied her and she took it off and put it on the ceramic drainboard next to her sink to cool. There was no talking yet. Sara was content to sit quietly and be still within the light and the warmth, to put her back to the framed square of darkness outside. There was a flap of something white on the line off her back porch. The one she'd fallen from so many years ago.
Ganma, ganma, she falled off the roof....
“Notty….”
The older woman turned.
The pot cooled.
“Where is Tom? Where is my brother?”
It was possible to live one’s entire life in Toronto and never own one. For Sara the idea of driving was so frightening she sold her mother’s aged Citroen even before the will had been read because its very presence in the garage was akin to a kernel of popcorn lodged in her back tooth.
Wimp. Who had said that? Her mother or Chip. Certainly not her father, who had taken the subway to work good weather and foul, his fedora abandoned only in the heat of summer, along with the boxy merino overcoat (in grey) and half-rubbers (unless raining). She had a picture of him trudging down Collins, beaten and tired in the last stretch of a day that had begun the same way in pre-dawn. He got out of the house as early was decent, ostensibly to beat the rush-hour crush on the Public but really it was to escape the burnt toast and pithy orange juice served up by Delys in the breakfast room. It wasn’t until years later, when she was old enough to accompany him to the office that daughter learned from father that he spent a good hour in the steamy confines of Yonge Street breakfast diner with a cup of coffee, cinnamon Danish and the newspaper.
Sara and her brother hadn’t been so lucky. Their mother, though well-intentioned (although perhaps not upon reflection) had the delicacy of a jackhammer when it came to the culinary arts, and she cared not a whiff if the milk was lukewarm, the peanut butter hardened to the consistency of cement, or the tuna salad studded with bits of left-over spine. The daily chore of providing sustenance to her family was steamed, beaten, boiled, and fried to an unpleasant death, then slid without ceremony onto plates.
Delys’ penchant for ruining everything except the Christmas feast and the occasional roast beef dinner on Sundays, was a mystery to her husband and children because her own mother was so good at it, if a bit peculiar. Delys’ mother, a warm and kindly spit of a woman who had been in her youth what she referred to as "the theatricals", cooked everything on a two-burner hotplate in the tiny walk-up flat she'd lived in since her only daughter had left home to marry. Notty was an expert at making things in one pot, a skill she claimed to have learned while accompanying her tap-dancing husband on the Vaudeville circuit. She could make an entire meal including biscuits and dessert with a collection of nesting pots she hung in descending order above the apron sink in the nook that passed for a kitchen. Everything she made, absolutely everything, tasted wonderful. Light and airy if it was to be so, dark and rich if it was to be so.
It was Notty who had taught her only granddaughter how to make a cake from scratch, among other things in her odd collection of road-recipes. Because Sara wanted to remember and preserve the memories of afternoons spent in conversation across the table from her with a pot of tea and some delicious confection all crumbly and sugary she was a very good student indeed. And soon she became the official baker for every family occasion. Her cakes were as whimsical as she was reserved, some sported plastic animals parading under paper umbrellas, some were towering with multi-colored layers ascending into the heavens until they listed at a crazy angle like the Cat in the Hat’s hat. She learned to make fairy cakes, iced finger squares with tiny flowers sprouting new buds and delicate stamens made from spun sugar. Once she’d even created a Greek temple with a hollowed-out center filled with tiny marzipan people which you could count if you were brave enough to peer through the tiny windows.
As it happened, Notty was made of stronger stuff than her daughter, and at 85, divorced from the tap-dancer for more than half of those years, she was still going strong. Still walking up and down two flights of stairs, still shopping one item at a time along six blocks of specialty shops with her wheeled carrier filled to the brim. Still handicapping the trotters in front of her ancient television console, apron folded between her knees, pencil in one hand, paper in the other. Still cooking on her hotplate and sharing the proceeds with everyone, including the homeless guy who had staked out her doorway decades ago and never left.
It was thus Sara found her, two streetcars and a subway ride later, above the fish-and-chips shop in Cabbagetown, stirring something in the kitchenette, talking to herself.
She jumped.
“Lordy! Why on earth did I ever give you a key?” The confection in the pot burbled.
Sara put the cake box down on the Formica table. The grey marbled surface was worn through to white it had been scrubbed so many times. Her coat came off around her and flowed in waves of fur around the chair. She had taken off her boots by the door.
Notty was all she had left.
Her grandmother stirred the pot with singular concentration until something about the sound of the mixture or the aroma rising above it satisfied her and she took it off and put it on the ceramic drainboard next to her sink to cool. There was no talking yet. Sara was content to sit quietly and be still within the light and the warmth, to put her back to the framed square of darkness outside. There was a flap of something white on the line off her back porch. The one she'd fallen from so many years ago.
Ganma, ganma, she falled off the roof....
“Notty….”
The older woman turned.
The pot cooled.
“Where is Tom? Where is my brother?”
posted by vallie at 4:23 PM
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