Feeding the Hungry Ghost (30 page)

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

As most American Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and Seventh-Day Adventists can tell you, Christmas in this country can make you feel like you’re not in the club, like you’re the Little Match Girl left out in the cold, pressing your nose to the window while everyone else is inside at a party where the food and wine are abundant, the home is warm and lovely, and everyone likes each other. That snow-frosted Christmas myth is so pervasive, we even try to pull it off in Miami, where it loses something in translation. Santas aren’t supposed to sweat.

I was thrilled to marry into Benjamin’s Lutheran family, thinking, ah, at last, I’ll learn the secret Christmas handshake. What can I say? You were not there to warn me or say, “As if.”

The Scots call the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve the Daft Days. The practice dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was created as a few days when you had license to be
merry, cut loose, have a good time. We’re still daft. But not always in a merry way. We reel from party to family gathering to command performance, half-mad from forced gifting and gaiety, fueled by guilt and an overabundance of the wrong sorts of things to eat and drink. All this merriness seems engineered to bring on a case of the low-downs in anyone less saintly than Tiny Tim.

One year, because Benjamin and I felt there weren’t enough parties, not enough stress and togetherness and gift giving, we did the extradaft thing. We got married.

Often we celebrate our anniversary — and escape the rest of the daftness — by running away. If the airports are crowded, the timing is otherwise brilliant. No one works that week. Oh, they may show up at the office, but they’re busy picking through what’s left of the gift baskets and frantically placing gift orders online for people they’d forgotten about. You can go far during the Daft Days and will not much be missed.

When we can, we prefer out-of-the-country travel. Other cultures serve to remind us that not everyone associates Christmas with big, inflatable Santas, relentless piped-in carols, and maxed-out credit cards. It’s our way of centering, our own reboot, a few days to set aside the daily distractions and focus on why we were daft enough to fall in love in the first place.

According to song and rumor, April in Paris is magical. I’ve only seen it in December. It’s not half-bad then, either. If you’re going to do the whole midnight-mass thing, Notre-Dame is the place to do it. High Gothic arches, booming organ, taking part with thousands of others in a rite dating back to the twelfth century — it all made me shiver with awe. I also shivered from the cold seeping up through the punishing stone floor. I kept shivering long afterward, as we walked back to our inn, in the cold and the
pouring rain (Paris taxis stop running at midnight). So what? It was all part of the whole authentic experience.

This was followed by a few more authentic gray, rainy days and nights. Finally, the sun broke out — on our anniversary. The angels escaped from heaven, and the sky blossomed the rich shade known as French blue.

I stopped shivering and unbuttoned my coat as we walked through the bright streets of the Marais, slowed at a corner
fleu-riste
to admire a profusion of tulips, turned to smile at Benjamin. He was gone.

I found him half a block back, leaning outside the door of a patisserie in a beam of sunlight. He had a blissed-out look on his face, a white paper sack in his hand — and something in his mouth. He kissed me with sugar-frosted lips.

“Éclair!” he announced, then licked his fingers.

This is one of the many things I love about Benjamin — his capacity for delight, his ability to treat himself right because he deserves it, his unswerving belief that you deserve it, too. He would have made a terrible Puritan, but if it’s joy you’re after, he’s your man.

He led me to a restaurant at the Place des Vosges, and after a week of marvelous, memorable meals, I was in love before we’d even been seated. An array of towering white and butter-colored lilies welcomed us at the entrance, fresh, woodsy, with their slight scent of decay. Farther inside lay the proprietress’s elderly dachshund, curled up in her basket on the floor. She raised her bearded muzzle as we walked by. She didn’t wag her tail — how gauche, how American. But she regarded me through rheumy eyes with
a certain
tendresse,
a sense of recognition, of ahh, I see you have come at last.

We were seated at a white-clothed table by the window. Sunlight spilled in and suffused us with gold.

Since it was a restaurant, there was also food, and if ever you had doubts as to what seasonal wonders winter offers, just remember truffles. The day’s specials included salade aux truffes.

Well. Nine times out of ten, I’ll take the cheap road. On the other hand, I’m not stupid. When great fortune kisses you on the lips and offers you black Périgord truffles, you don’t smack it in the face. I ordered the priciest salad I have ever had in my life.

The softest of greens cupped a profusion of mushrooms
— champignons
in French, the word sounding tantalizingly like
champagne.
The salad was set off with thinly shaved radishes and roasted hazelnuts, dressed with the lightest sparkle of a genius French herb-lemon vinaigrette, and garnished with a generous shaving of Périgord truffles. They melted on the tongue, tasting of sun-filtered forest and something a little fuggy and naughty.

It was warm, wild, tender, chewy, gnarly, silky all at once. My heart raced. I scooped some salad onto a fork, aimed it at Benjamin’s mouth. “You must taste this.”

He took a bite, and the look of pleasure on his face doubled my own. Here I was in this wonderful place, with profligate flowers and proper dog, a gentle, smiling proprietress, in Paris, on a sunny day with my favorite person in the world. And truffles. I took a moment to do what Benjamin is much better at — I celebrated the moment. I gasped at my luck and grinned. If I looked like an idiot, just at that moment I did not care. Euphoria came off me like Chanel No. 5.

“We’ll Always Have Paris” Wild Mushroom Salad

Perhaps you have to be French to master a perfectly balanced herb-and-lemon vinaigrette, but I hope this comes close. This salad aims to be like the one that inspired it, providing an exciting combination — warm, chewy, crispy mushrooms; cool, whisper-soft greens; round, hard nuts; crunchy disks of radish. Textures, temperatures, and flavors that all come together. In a Parisian sort of way.

Wild is wonderful, and winter is the season for rich, wild mushrooms. But, yes, you can throw a few tame white button mushrooms into the salad; all will be well.

Serves 2

¼ cup hazelnuts

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

8 ounces assorted seasonal wild mushrooms, such as oyster mushrooms, cèpes, morels, hen-of-the-woods, wiped clean and sliced

3 big handfuls arugula, watercress, and/or tender lettuce leaves, like butter or red leaf lettuce

4 tablespoons hazelnut or walnut oil

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

4 to 6 radishes, such as watermelon radishes or French Breakfast radishes, thinly sliced

A shaving of truffles, if you’ve got ‘em

Truffle, hazelnut, or walnut oil for drizzling (optional)

Heat a large dry skillet over medium-high heat. Pour in the hazelnuts. Toast the nuts for about 7 minutes, shaking the skillet or chasing the hazelnuts around with a wooden spoon. They’ll roll around in the skillet like marbles. When they begin to darken and smell unbelievably buttery and fragrant, pour the hazelnuts off into a small bowl and let cool.

No need to wipe out the skillet. Use it to heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic. Cook, stirring often, until the garlic softens and turns golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms, in batches, if necessary. Allow enough space in the pan. We don’t like to be crowded, neither do mushrooms — it will make them soggy.

Raise the heat to high. Cook, prodding mushrooms with a spatula. Keep them moving until they darken and smell rich and earthy, 4 to 5 minutes. Give the mushrooms a flip and continue cooking on the other side, for 4 to 5 minutes more. The secret to this dish is the texture — the mushrooms should be tender but with a crispy outside.

In the meantime, mound the arugula on two salad plates or a single serving platter.

In a small bowl, whisk together the hazelnut oil, lemon juice, tarragon, a pinch of sea salt, and a good grind of pepper.

Scatter the crisped mushroom slices over the arugula, fling the radishes around on top, and strew with hazelnuts.

Pour the dressing over all. Taste and season with salt and pepper, if desired.

Lovely.

If you want to be decadent like the Parisians, top with truffle shavings and drizzle with truffle oil.

The couple at the table beside us inclined their heads toward me and smiled, then turned back to enjoying their meal, a bottle of
wine, and each other. Their voices were low, their laughter generous. Her gunmetal-gray dress fell in fabulous folds around her; he wore a black sweater with a subtle gloss, as though woven by silkworms who adored him.

The man turned back to us, gestured to the wine, and gave us a radiant smile. “We aren’t going to drink all this,” he said in impeccable, unaccented English. “Would you perhaps share some with us?”

In Miami, strangers don’t offer you wine. Or if they do, I fear they’ve spiked it with drugs. But on this day in Paris, it seemed like one more bit of magic we were being granted. We thanked them, and the waiter brought two more glasses. The wine was, in memory at least, a buttery Sauternes, warm and welcoming as the sun, perfectly chilled so as not to shock the system or sensibilities. It was a revelation. The first notes were musty, yeasty, flinty, followed by the lovely pucker of dried apricots and fresh lemon. Each sip told its own story.

The chic couple had a story, too. They were not from Paris or even France, it turns out, but from Chicago. They came every year. On their anniversary. Today was their thirtieth. Thirty years? I recalculated their age. Maybe they were childhood sweethearts. Even so, they were at least a decade older than I’d figured, just in their early fifties, but I’m telling you, hot early fifties. Wow — you could be older and still astonishingly sexy. This was as exhilarating as the wine.

“What’s your secret for a happy marriage?” I asked.

She smiled. “We believe in celebration.”

It was clear to me we had to spend every minute with this couple before we left Paris. And maybe move to Chicago when we got home. Right next door to them.

I don’t know why I’m wired this way, but I am. If I meet you
and I like you, you’re screwed because I’m going to want us to be best friends forever and to know everything about you
right now,
from what you ate for breakfast to who your favorite Karamazov brother is. Sometimes I think my avidity, the way I fall in love with a place or a person or a pet or a plant, is charming. The rest of the time, I just want to muzzle myself.

Lacking any ability to filter, I said something to the effect of, “So what are you guys planning for tonight, and can we come, too?”

The woman smiled again, a warm, open gift of a smile, as though I wasn’t being a stalker weirdo at all. She didn’t say, “Back off, bitch,” or slap me with a restraining order. She said, “This has been such a beautiful lunch. Let’s just enjoy it now.”

It was true; now had a lot going for it. But I wanted more. I always do. I prefer not to think of myself as needy — just someone who has not yet mastered the Buddhist concept of detachment.

Attachment is one of Buddhism’s big soul poisons, which once caused me to believe, despite their otherwise loving and mellow ways, Buddhists were just being hard-assed. Detachment? What’s the point? We must love each other as fiercely as we can, not be “cool,”
as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it,
“for it will all be one a hundred years hence.”