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Harvest Kitchen

by Grace Cavalieri

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Frances moved the dish roughly across the table. “You’ve been coming here, for ten years, for lunch.”

Margaret turned the plate so that the yellow rose faced her. “Yes. But I missed that time you went to Florida.” She unrolled the fork and spoon from the petal pink napkin.

Frances nodded, yes sometimes she missed.

Margaret went on, “And the hurricane . . . the creek was high, I didn’t come.”

That wasn’t the point and Margaret knew it. Fran unrolled her utensils smartly.

“Well what is the point then. I want the record straight,” Marg pouted.

“What I’m trying to say is” (deep breath) “you never once so much as said you liked the cake.”

Margaret looked down at the yellow rose. What could Fran be saying. This was soup they were eating. But if it was necessary, she’d give her what she wanted. “Ok. If you like. This is good cake.”

“Soup,” Fran snarled.

“What’s in a name. Appreciation is what you want . . . It’s what you’ll get.”

Fran stood and threw the spoon right across the table. “That’s another thing. You never say to me ‘Frances, you did a good job.’ You always say ‘This is a good job.’ Like you just said, ‘This is good cake’.”

“Soup.”

Fran rubbed her long fingers on her hips, drew in a deep shaky breath, and sat squarely down. “Yes.” She leaned across to get the spoon.

Margaret tilted her chin to one side like she always did when she listened to classical music or tried to understand a lecture at the Smithsonian. She purred, “Maybe I think it’s a good job in spite of you doing it.”

Fran thought that’s what it sounded like but she stared at the noodle and said nothing.

“Or maybe I don’t like it and don’t want to make you feel responsible so I lie and say it’s a good job or A GOOD MEAL.”

Fran shook her head slowly. “No.”

“No?”

“It doesn’t work out. No.”

“How come, Mrs.-Freud-Herself.”

“I am not appreciated!”

“Prove it.”

Fran felt dizzy and thought she was losing her vision. Deep breath. Steady. She cleared her throat and squashed the noodle with her spoon. “When I wear a dress you say ‘That’s a nice dress.’ You never once said ‘You look nice’.” Margaret wanted to speak but Fran was gaining momentum. “And when I got a haircut, you said ‘He gave you a good haircut’.”

Margaret felt her cheeks go pink. “You think you could do better yourself? Including the back of the hair where you can’t see?” She felt rage coloring her large chest.

Fran allowed as how that was not to the point and went on to explain that Margaret, her longtime friend, couldn’t say anything nice about her, her dear Frances. Fran continued to complain that she felt invisible “Like I’m not even here.” A single purple finch looked in the large bay window and flew on.

Margaret was aghast. “How could you? We got soup here to prove you’re here. How could you feel invisible?”

This was it. The moment Frances had rehearsed in front of her three-way mirror this morning, and more Tuesday mornings than she could count. “I want you to know something.”

Margaret could not believe more was coming. She pushed the bowl back away.

Fran mopped up the spillage with her napkin, and looking down, “I want you to know I will not be home on next Tuesday. Not on Tuesday next week.”

Silence. Then, “Where will I go?”

Fran did not answer.

“I always go here on Tuesday,” Margaret dimpled, “I wouldn’t know what else to do with a Tuesday.”

That was the last straw. Fran stood again. The room swayed. “So you come here because you have nothing whatsoever to do with your Tuesdays. Is that what you’re saying to me?”

“Not especially,” Margaret added quickly, soup dribbling on her chin, “if I was used to Thursday, that’d be the feeling I have about not coming on next Thursday.”

Fran was ready. She has not worn her new blouse for nothing. “This will hurt. But. If you visited every Thursday, I wouldn’t be home next Thursday. So there. Get the message from me to you?”

The bowl was finally empty;. Margaret looked at the yellow rose. Cheap yellow bowl. She always knew Frances bought cheap bowls with cheap flowers. “All this fuss,” she said sweetly, tilting her soft chin.

All this fuss indeed, Frances snatched the dishes to carry them away.

Margaret continued, “Just because I didn’t compliment this rotten food,” she rolled her words like melted butter, “Made from leftovers, I’m sure of it.” Now with beatific warmth, “And hard to eat next to this plant of yours the cat visits occasionally.”

Fran stifled a gasp, “Are you going to bring poor Peter into this conversation about us? Isn’t that a nice smoke screen though!”

Margaret’s throat felt tight and her voice sounded very high through the pulsing in her ears, yet she smiled, “Forget the animal. He’s scroungy looking, to boot.” She then launched into an aria revealing how Frances overrated the leftovers by calling them ‘lunch’, and (still smiling) accused Frances of dropping a piece of meat on the floor, once, and dusting it off to serve.

Frances wondered why Margaret hadn’t spoken her mind then. Why did she wait ten years to insult her. But Marg wasn’t done, “I got back. Fed it to Peter, I did—right in front of you, pretending I was patting his head.”

The finches gathered at the feeder nervously, popping up once. Suddenly gone. Frances knew Margaret was vengeful and she said this proved it.

Sometimes fat people can look very dainty. Margaret lifted her hand as if it were tiny and turned her palm upward as if to catch her own words. Revenge is the only way of getting back if you’re a guest. What could a guest do? Make a fuss?”

Fran stuck her dirty napkin in that fat pink palm with a graceful gesture, “Oh, aren’t you the mannerly one, now.”

Margaret acted as if she didn’t notice how she’d been visited, and put the soiled napkin neatly down. “This doesn’t solve the problem of next Tuesday—this name calling.” She was fairly beaming with love.

Fran shouted from the kitchen that it was Margaret’s problem because she, Frances, wouldn’t be home and added, “You’ll have nowhere to go.”

In the silence the birds assembled. With Fran’s return, the window emptied.

Margaret managed a little tremble of the voice, “Where will you be?”

“I’ll find somewhere to be.”

“So you have a little problem yourself, don’t you?”

Frances laid down the meatloaf nestled on a mound of spaghetti. Her bones ached. It felt like rain. A bird called somewhere in the back wood. She was thinking furiously that she’d find somewhere to go on Tuesday and Margaret could just make a bet on that.

Margaret whispered that Fran hated to go out midweek.

“Tuesday,” Fran said with new strength, “is not midweek. It’s toward the front.” Even though Margaret seemed sympathetic, saying it’d be hard for Fran, and all that, Fran wasn’t fooled for a moment, and said authoritatively, with a mouth full of loaf, that she’d manage. The meat was overcooked and went down hard.

“All this trouble because I don’t flatter you to death. There was never inconvenience to you when I came. I did my own cup and saucer. You had nothing to wash. God knows you didn’t change my sheets if I chanced to stay weeks on end.”

Well, in it this far, Fran might as well say it all. “Another thing—”

“Why not read your list?”

“No list. No. When you had to go to Dr. Gregory for your knee, you know, the arthritis . . .”

“I know, I know, it’s my knee, after all . . .”

Fran was launched to power and still flying, “You would soak in my tub an hour, take my aspirin . . . I’d wait on you hand and foot, and you’d be proclaiming him your lord and master . . . forgetting where you got the most benefits,” her voice filled the whole outdoors, then softly, looking down, “If I must say so.”

Margaret’s shoulders were shaking now, like two rounds of angel food cake. She couldn’t believe Fran was being so mean today. She wondered how shoulders should move if one were weeping inwardly.

But there was no stopping Fran, even the sight of the bobbing flesh across the table couldn’t move her, “The worst of it—I get to resenting Dr. Gregory. He takes your money, gets all the credit and you’re laid up resting in my bed. That’s where you get well. The worst of it is you make me feel mad toward Dr. Gregory and so that’s why I won’t be seeing you on Tuesday next week.”

Margaret knew Fran understood less than nothing about the female leg muscles and bones, and yet wanted full credit for her recovery. Margaret sniffed and tapped her large foot to keep control.

Fran looked at her squarely, “You never said THANK YOU to me!”

Margaret admitted that she had said something like that though. She had said she missed coming here when Fran went to Florida that time. This she remembered. Maybe she should tell her how lousy the meatloaf tasted.

Fran pointed a bony finger, “The more I do, the more you say you need.”

Now it was Margaret’s hour. She’d had enough. turning her back, she threw words delicately upward. “Are you forgetting the time you TOOK your payment . . . when you escorted me to Doctor Gregory?”

Fran wanted to remind Margaret that she couldn’t walk that day, and that’s the only reason Fran went along with her, but she never got a chance. Margaret could talk like singers sing, sustaining each vowel, “And you seized the opportunity to tear open your blouse showing him the pimple by your navel, asking if it was a boil!? I was never so embarrassed. Free aid is what you wanted.”

“He owed me! You both do!”

“He didn’t say much. You didn’t get much. He said he couldn’t tell from a distance, if I remember correctly. You were across the examination room. How could he even see. Serves you right for wanting free aid.” She wheeled her large hips around like a dancer.

Fran’s face felt pinched and dry, “All this fighting between us, if I didn’t cook you lunch on Tuesday, no relationship at all. No bond. It’s a pity. Two people like us, alone in the world, each of us.”

But Margaret was in the pink and not to be stopped, “Once you came to the door in your underwear to make me feel odd and unwelcome here.”

The young male finch sometimes looks fawn as a grown female. Fran caught the wing go out of sight. “It’s time for your pills.”

Margaret’s shining hour. She tossed her thick hair. “Don’t fuss over me. Next Tuesday I’ll have to watch my own clock.”

Fran sniffed. That she will, she thought, standing firm.

Margaret sat and fiddled with the salt shaker. What did she have to loose? She narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t like your passing the spaghetti sauce as your own. The can was still in sight.”

“OK. OK. Everything out. Everything OUT. When we went to Stauffer’s for tea you didn’t even reach for your pocketbook once. I had tea. You had the cake. It cost me two dollars for a cup of tea. Why do I have to treat you. You’ve been coming here every Tuesday for ten years.”

“I like to see you.”

Now the moisture in Margaret’s dark eyes was real. She’d miss Frances, and here Frances was saying how she wasn’t her damn mother, cooking and caring for her. A large tear rolled down Margaret’s large face. It was like a drop of glycerine on lemon meringue pie. “If you won’t be home next Tuesday, I’ll change my appointment with Doctor Gregory and make it for Wednesday. Will you be home on Wednesday?”

Fran brushed the crumbs from the pink petals on the table cloth and murmured that she’d have to check. Margaret wondered what she had to check but realized she meant her calendar or schedule book. Fran was at the breakfront now, making a lot of rustling, looking for her calendar. Fran was saying that she had things planned too, you know, and where was her damned calendar. There it was.

“It’s free next Wednesday.”

“What time of day will suit you?” Margaret was remembering the time Fran disguised her voice to pretend she had somebody else in here.

Fran stood in the afternoon sun. “The strange thing about you is you could be dying on the street and you wouldn’t go into a restaurant and buy a fish sandwich. You’ll wait till you get here. I know you. So come for lunch.”

“Fine. Lunch it is. Wednesday.”

Fran plumped the pillow on her antique chair. “It’ll be something simple.”

Margaret didn’t care as long as it was salt free. She said she didn’t care.

Fran wished, just once, she’d come with a dessert, a sherbert, maybe, or donuts. Why did she always have to come empty handed. Fran blurted it right out.

Marg reached for her sweater. She offered to buy something, if it’d make Fran happy.

“No. No. Who would want a dessert you had to tell someone to bring. Not me. I’d choke on it.”

“Ok then, until Wednesday.”

“Good-bye until Wednesday then.”

“Good-bye.” Margaret buttoned her sweaterfront as she walked out on to the porch.

“Good-bye.” Fran stood at the door, her knees still weak.

Margaret looked back, blowing Fran a big kiss. “Take care.”

The sound of birds filled the afternoon’s last light air.