Right. Kitchen. Breakfast. I’d made Joe breakfast before, in Germany, and I could do the same here. Bread and jam and coffee, and I had all of them.
We’d gone to the supermarket yesterday, a terrifyingly large and shiny space with shelf after shelf of products, far more than I’d ever seen in my life, most of them in packets and tins. We’d limited our purchases to bread and milk and margarine and something Joe called “iceberg lettuce” that looked like cabbage, because he’d said he had jam and marmalade in the refrigerator and coffee in the cupboard. Said it so casually, too, as he’d picked up a dozen eggs—a dozen!—packaged in a clever cardboard carton that provided a little nest for every egg, and put it into a rolling cart that one could push ahead instead of tiring one’s arms. Really, the Americans were very clever. No wonder they’d won the war.
We’d bought oranges, too, because I couldn’t resist them, and had ridden home. Yes, ridden, for this was Joe’s biggest surprise: he’d bought me a bicycle!
“It took me a while to find the right one,” he’d said. “Most American girls are bigger than you, but some shrimpy senior was selling hers, and I snagged it.” I wasn’t sure what “shrimpy” meant—that one was like a shrimp? Pink and curly? The bicycle was blue and very pretty, though, as shiny as if it were brand-new, and had a woven basket fastened to the handlebars, “so you can carry your shopping home,” Joe had said.
He had a bicycle, too, a black one, that he rode to the university, which was practical, and it had a basket, too. “So I can help you haul things,” he’d explained. “I use my Army backpack around school, though. Very handy for all those books. You can tell us vets that way; well, that and the fact that we look a few years older, feel aboutfortyyears older, andtend to jump at loud noises.” He’d smiled, though, so that was clearly a joke.
Now, I pulled everything out from its spot, memorizing the locations, for order was important. A can of coffee granules, bread in a plastic bag patterned with cheerful colored dots, a jar of orange marmalade—because Joe had said he liked marmalade better than jam, and California was the place of oranges—and the margarine, and began my work.
Wait. First, I must make Joe’s lunch. He’d said, “Just make me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich tomorrow, and a cheese sandwich with lettuce and mayo, and maybe toss an orange in there. That’s what I’ve been doing. If you want to get more creative later on, I won’t say no.” I didn’t know what “creative” meant, but I’d memorized what he wanted and resolved to ask him later what else he’d like. I’d have time to learn, because he’d said I shouldn’t try to get a job yet. “We’re good for now,” he’d told me. “Give yourself a chance to settle in.” What a relief not to have to depend solely on myself!
Right. Lunch. A sandwich, I now knew, because we’d eaten them last night at the deli—with so much meat in them!—was two slices of bread with things in between. I looked around for a place to spread out the bread slices and other items. The kitchen table, I supposed. It had an oilcloth over it, but when I touched it, it felt a bit grimy. I wiped it well with a wet, soapy cloth and felt rather proud of myself. Cleaning my cooking area was something Ididknow how to do, from my time as a baker.
When the oilcloth was clean and dry, I set down the four slices of bread in a neat square. Very good; very orderly. The bread was odd: pure white in color and airy in texture. Spongy, in fact, not the substantial loaf I was accustomed to. Well, I couldn’t expect everything to be the same.
The margarine, when I opened the box, was a blob of white fat like lard in a plastic bag, but it came with a capsulethat the package told me to place in the bag and knead with my hands. Joe had told me yesterday that margarine was less than a third of the cost of butter, and taxed at much lower rates. The dairymen, however, objected to it looking like butter, so it could only be sold undyed. What a lot of opinions people had here, and all of them attended to!
It was an odd feeling, but rather pleasant, to knead the squashy stuff, and fascinating to press the capsule with a thumb to burst it and watch the dye within came out in ribbons of gold. I kneaded and kneaded, putting the bag on the table so I could work my hands into it better, until it looked like butter. It was still a blob in a bag, but a much prettier blob, and I felt a surge of satisfaction and thought,Can one bake bread here, too? Is it possible to get yeast? I must find out.
I hadn’t seen a bakery anywhere yesterday, yet Palo Alto seemed a rather wealthy place, full of large wooden houses, green lawns, and trees. Perhaps Americans didn’t enjoy marketing? Oddly, though, despite the variety and quantity of food here, I missed my German bread. It had been breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I’d always been glad of it, and it wasn’t monotonous, for one could bake Pumpernickel, dark and sweet and dense, and rye, like we’d had last night—though it had been a bit dry—and potato bread, and oh, so many other varieties!
Right. Sandwiches. The peanut butter came in a jar and was a dense, sticky sort of paste. Clearly, one would have to spread it on the bread with a knife as one would do withQuark,the thick sour cheese we’d enjoyed in the before-times, when one could get milk. I’d put marmalade on top of the peanut butter, and the second slice of bread on top. Easy.
Except that it wasn’t. As soon as I attempted to spread the peanut butter, the bread simply ripped. It tore into two ragged pieces, in fact, and became a bit smashed, too.
Right. Try again.With my second attempt, I tore one of thehalves in half again. After that, I held the other half down at the crusts—if one could call them that; the bread was so soft that there was really no crust to hold—and dabbed a small amount of peanut butter onto a small part of the bread. Success! Now to do that with the rest of the slice.
When I finished, I had five pieces of bread dotted with peanut butter. They looked ragged and squashed and very unappetizing, like a dinner for dogs, but perhaps they were meant to look like that? I tried spreading the marmalade on top of the pieces, and that was a bit easier. The peanut butter was still sticky, but if I dabbed the marmalade rather than spreading it, it worked. After that, I arranged the pieces sticky-side-down onto the undestroyed bread slice, like doing a jigsaw puzzle, and stood back to survey my work.
Well, I’d do better next time.
The footsteps walked around overhead again. Two pairs, I thought. One pair broke into some kind of rhythmic step—dancing, maybe?—and I heard faint laughter. A woman’s, and probably a young one; I didn’t think older people danced and laughed early in the morning. One of our neighbors was a cheerful person. That was good.
I also heard the creak of bedsprings from around the corner. Joe was awake already? I’d better fix coffee. I filled an odd kettle that sat on the stove—it was heavy, and taller and narrower than normal, and had a basket at the top; perhaps for tea? Which was clever, but how would you get the boiling water onto the tea leaves? Did you take the basket out and set it into a teapot? That seemed very inefficient.
I abandoned the thought, lit the stove with a match—at least I knew how to do that!—then put a spoonful of granules into each of two cups, so I could pour the coffee when Joe came into the kitchen like a proper housewife. At least what I supposed a proper housewife would do; I really knew very little about it, except that one was meant to cook meals andkeep the house clean and take clothes to the laundry. And buy food at the supermarket each day, for just as there was no bakery, there was also no butcher shop, no fishmonger, no fruit and vegetable shop, and noKonditorei,where children pressed their noses against the glass in more prosperous times, longing for the elaborate tortes, theBerlinerdonuts filled with jam, theSchneckenwith their spirals bursting with butter and sugar and cinnamon. Having everything in one place would make shopping more efficient, though, I supposed, despite the lack of strolling and chatting. And it wasn’t just food they sold, either. I’d seen soap at the supermarket yesterday, and toilet paper, too, and a great many other things.
Back to the sandwiches. Cheese and lettuce and mayo, Joe had said. Lettuce was the cabbage-like thing. I sliced it as I’d seen Frau Heffinger, our cook, slice a head of cabbage, so it fell magically into tiny ribbons, and felt rather proud of myself for knowing how. Now, cheese. Joe had said he had cheese in the refrigerator, but I hadn’t seen any. I opened it again. There were acres of empty space in there, for it was astonishingly large for two people and was divided into many clever compartments to hold different things, but there wasn’t much food.
I searched and searched, growing more and more puzzled. No cheese. Except …
There was a yellow box sitting alone on a shelf. Could cheese come in a box? I pulled it out and read the package.
VELVEETA, the box said, in cheerful red letters. Perhaps an American variety? Below that, it said, “Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread.” That didn’t sound exactly like cheese, but …
The cheese was a perfectly even cube, if a cube can be long. I sliced off a piece, then another one, because the single slice looked very thin and lonely on the white bread, and looked at it doubtfully. I cut another tiny sliver. Perhapsit was very sharp and flavorful, so a small amount would do?
It was gummy. That was the only word for it. It didn’t taste quite like cheese, either, being very bland. Did Joe really want this in his sandwich? Gummy cheese, oddly light bread, and shreds of white lettuce that tasted of nothing?
Oh. He’d said “mayo.” That would be relish, probably, of pickles and onions, perhaps. Or lingonberries, maybe? They would add some flavor. I searched in the refrigerator again and found a jar of something called “mayonnaise.” That would be the “mayo.” An abbreviation. I opened the jar and sniffed it. Not a relish, but a thick sauce, perhaps? The texture was a bit like a thicker Hollandaise, but it was white instead of yellow, and when I dipped a spoon into it and tasted, it didn’t taste like Hollandaise, either. A bit like vinegar, maybe, and possibly egg, but mostly, it tasted of nothing much. It was a sauce, though, and you poured sauces over things. Except that it was too thick for that.
Oh. You spread it over the bread, like the peanut butter, which meant there would befourtasteless elements to the sandwich. I would buy mustard and pickles today, I resolved. They would help.
I spread the mayonnaise onto one slice of bread. Then I added the two cheese slices, and since the other slice of bread was naked, and surely that was wrong, I spread a generous amount of the mayonnaise on that, too, and put the two pieces together.
I’d forgotten the lettuce. I peeled the top slice away from the cheese with some difficulty. A piece of cheese clung to it, then dropped to the floor, and I made an annoyed sound and rinsed it in the sink, then patted it dry with a dish towel. Then I pressed the shreds of lettuce—they were nearly white, and tasted of nothing so much as water—on top, and pressed down the top slice of bread again. It pressed very easily, as ifall the structure inside were collapsing. How did one make bread come out like that? Was it more delicious than real bread? Was that the reason? It didn’tlookmore delicious, or smell like it, either.
