Aglio e Olio

Anthony had forgotten to take off his block shoes when he entered the apartment, and now he hadn’t observed the track of brown sludge he had brought in with the raging storm outside. He dropped his wet, soaking leather briefcase on the brown sofa and something about the way he did it meant that he wasn’t used to doing it. His office attire still stuck to him like an external skin; except he had taken off the jacket and hung it on the double door refrigerator and had immediately got to preparing to cook.

The apartment was on the lower east end of Mumbai, a mostly sunny but suddenly vindictively stormy area that he had shifted to about two years ago, in between an optimistic portion of his life.

Anthony cautiously turned the kitchen lights on with his wet slippery fingers, and while the pans were let to heat up, he set his phone to charge, struggling with the pin, his hands shivering.

“Okay...” He whispered to himself, his curly hair wet but shabbily dried with the coat, and his eyes with a sparkling excitement, he video-called his mother.

“Mom, it’s heating now, what do I do next?” His hands frizzy with eagerness, he put all the vegetables on the island counter and even rearranged them in order of size, color, and citrus capacity.

The counters were grey marble with curved corners which were done when his daughter was about to be born.

“Anthony… do you want to?” She asked empathetically.

“It’s okay, it’ll get my mind off things.” He said, placing his hands on the counter while his feet shuffled in nervousness. But she couldn’t see that, he didn’t want her too. His Adam’s Apple taking periscopic journeys up and down his throat, at the expense of his fluttering chest.

“Yes, I am aware of that, I meant do you want to have a bad dinner on such a night?” She asked flippantly, and he smirked, knowing she had the same reaction.

“Okay, now that you’re done with that, why don’t we get to business. Do I…”

“You dry your hair and shirt off first. Your son is fifteen, at least calm down before you ruin my special recipe. And turn off the heat on the pan before you go!”

“How did you know…”

“And second of all, you don’t need all that. Why would you bring out blood oranges for spaghetti?” She looked at the table, incredulous.

“Hey… take it easy.”, he said as he followed her sage instructions.

He sighed and let the phone down. Charlie would be home any minute. And Charlie hadn’t forgotten as well as he had. He still had the bitterness in the deep recesses of his memory, pinching and clawing as he tried to swim up above an endless dark void.

Charlie is fifteen, he shouldn’t be swimming with him for a chance to live.

At the moment, his house was empty. Empty of promise and excitement that was supposed to be there with a new child. No coloring books lay on the floor and the walls were not scribbled to the bathroom. The house was decrepit of care and intention to survive. It was as if one had put on a wet glove when one entered through the plush wooden doors.

But In all truthfulness, he knew the recipe by heart, and at the back of his hand, he had been practicing and reading in his office time on the suggestions of employees who felt an insulting amount of sympathy for him. But after what happened, he felt as if it were always like this. As if his wife wouldn’t lecture him if he wore shoes in the kitchen, or if he roamed around the house like a wet penguin. Did that mean he was healing well?

How does one measure the rate of recuperation? Does he notice in the actions that change and the calculations that become after a cold-hearted evaluation of a new reality? Following the rules of a new reality where an optimistic promise of life is present?

The tomatoes were sticky and they were a week old. Maria wouldn’t have let that happen.

He heard his stomach gurgle. Hunger waits for no one.

“So, how long do I have to soak the spaghetti for?”

“A minute, and set the olive oil on simmer.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He blurted out.

Following. Maybe that is the answer. If he only stopped making decisions and followed a set of rules, and was told by somebody leave the outcast atmosphere of his reality, he could do it. Since everything and every decision he made was emblematic of a failed life, and botched outcomes, he deserved to be told what to do.

He picked the phone up and set it on the counter, wiping it off with the checkered napkin on his shoulder like a bartender.

“Okay, so tell me what your day was like.” He asked her, now his elbows on the clean table, face close to the camera, trying to get the attention off of himself so he would have to think about someone else’s life for a chance.

“Oh, you know, I talked stuff about you all afternoon with my friends. About how you once and then again you had tried to convince me that you were taking a dip in the ocean in the middle of the winter when you had peed your pants.”

“Ma, did you tell them how old I was?”

“Why would that be important?”

“Well for starters, I can make my spaghetti.” He said, smiling and genuinely pleased with himself for the first time in months.

“Can you though? Check the oil again, I’ll be back in a while. I have to update my friends on the status of your growing up.”

“Mom…” He said, longingly.

“Yeah?” She sat back down, folding her beautiful pink dress as she sat back on her cushioned chair, concerned, almost as a muscle reflex after all the trauma. He noticed her immediate reaction too as if her worries were always there bubbling inside of her.

He paused.

“Don’t go.” He suggested, his head down and his scalp facing his sympathetic mother. She folded her dress back again and the weight of responsibility landed lightly on her shoulder, and she yearningly looked for her son’s face amidst his crisis. He wasn’t himself. His lower chin had downturned itself, his facial muscles taking over control of him.

He was never shy, or brooding, or quiet. This was a new Anthony.

“Anthony…”

He looked back up, his eyes reddened as he desperately began controlling his tear ducts, wiping them as soon as they come, thinking about how his son might come at any second.

“What... What’s next?”

“You go and wash your face. I’m right here and I’ll be there when you feed this meal to my grandson.” She said informatively and looked at him along with the olive oil in the pan as he washed his face in the sink and turned back to her a reddened pale boy, she raised never to accept defeat in the worst odds.

They used to cook a lot of stuff together when stuck at home, his father away at his job. They were new in the city and they would walk out the apartment, her hands militantly grabbing his tight and with the other closing half a dozen locks before they went out to supermarkets and explored on food and produce and oils, sauces, regional stuff they had never known in their youth in Delhi.

He added the sliced garlic and chili pepper flakes, waiting for the spaghetti to be Al Dente. To himself, Anthony thought about Maria again, his face downwards, about how her red apron would be flowing about the kitchen on a windy day like this and she would make pancakes or hot cocoa just so that the mood is right for her to bring the main course to the table.

No one was allowed to interfere the cooking process, her elbows bent and spoon in hand, kitchen pencil in her hair holding it in a bun she shook her elbows as a deft gourmet chef, and he would come in from the side from work and watched her basked in the warm yellow lights in front of her, the red tomatoes and green chilies in her hand.

The moment reminded him of a post-renaissance painting, with her soft features and the slight jump in her step when she knew that he was around the corner watching.

“…Add the pasta now…” His mother recited from the back, her face in a magazine with an old man with a walking stick on it. She was concerned about him but didn’t want to show it, she empathized with his problems but acknowledging them would drag her into the mess again, and now one needed to be strong for the hurting.

“And then pour the starchy spaghetti water in the entire thing.

Don’t forget to simmer the gas now.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

She smiled generously and kept on reading her magazine, flipping through pages while her sensory actions all aimed towards the pathos at her son’s horizon.

He turned the exhaust on above the cooking space and let the

garlic sauté over the pasta, the sugars, and the proteins caramelizing in union with the crimson chili flakes, and with the lights on he watched the little bubbles under the spaghetti strings spreading the flavor over the entire pan. He gently rolled over the entire stack, and with it, the crisp green basil, smelling of the flower nursery you passed by as a child going to school. And it worked, the color and the flavor in its effervescence made him give his mother a giant smile of appreciation.

When his son arrived, he had the towels and the fresh pajamas ready and set the plates over at the table across the television, and they both watched cricket while the garlic and the basil and the cheese in the pasta traveled in its smell in the house, as the sea calmed down outside.