Bacigalupo. But running down blame is a lot like tracing your roots, and I was able to get to the next level of blame genealogy. Had Choo Choo not fallen in love with Vera Tyndall, he never would have talked me into the cooking class gig as a way of—his—performing some community service. I narrowed my eyes. In a strange way, then, the fact that Landon and I were whispering in the storeroom next to a dead body was Vera Tyndall’s fault.
So shouldn’t Georgia Removal be Vera’s problem? It was tempting.
No, even I could tell that wasn’t fair. I didn’t need Joe Beck smelling delectable and wringing his ringless hands and explaining annoying things like laws to me. Poor Georgia was my problem. I should have had her go for a physical as a condition of employment.
Suddenly I heard the inevitable outside the confines of our hidey-hole storeroom: Maria Pia emerging from the back office, calling my name, and other voices heading through the dining room. Landon and I gave each other a quick look, and I loped to the door. “Coming, Nonna,” I called. Over my shoulder I caught a glimpse of Landon leaningover poor sprawled Georgia, where he moved her legs closer together over the semolina flour sacks and gently lifted the necklace by the tourmaline pendant and gazed inscrutably at the silver birdcage that enclosed it. As I slithered through the door, the last thing I noticed was Landon sinking quietly onto the sacks, where he folded his hands in his lap and stared without comment at our dead sous chef.
6
To understand how we lost track of Georgia, you have to know something about the path of that violent little weather system known as a derecho . It’s a fast-moving windstorm that topples towering trees like bowling pins and that’s only slightly friendlier than a landfall hurricane. This also describes Chef Maria Pia Angelotta in a kitchen. She whirls, dashes, races, mystically creating a swath of culinary havoc in at least four separate locations all at once. I think there are even moments when her feet leave the floor.
Whenever I happened to be her sous chef, before she retired, and my pals would call from Manhattan, I’d have to get off the phone, telling them, “I’m putting out fires.” Most people mean it as a kind of expression—the copy machine is jammedand the boss forgot to take her Xanax. Not me. If I wasn’t actually putting out real fires, I was at least turning them down when Nonna’s back was turned. If you close your eyes, all the bubbling and sizzling in a kitchen run by Maria Pia is like the soundtrack of Hell.
Still, one of her greatest gifts as a chef is that she’s a wonderful tactician. She sets all the mini-tornadoes in motion and never loses sight of the big picture. Once I realized she was a force of nature in a commercial kitchen, I relaxed about helping her, chopping and grinding my way into a Zen state that let the culinary chaos swirl around me. I had to trust her. I had to trust that what was terrifying primordial chaos to me was just a fine welter of magical morsels to her. All the rest of us cooking Angelottas had cauldrons in the kitchen. For Maria Pia, though, the kitchen itself was the cauldron. She’s just that great.
So, after Landon and I left Georgia Payne lifeless in the storeroom (which we locked and hoped no one much noticed), the derecho began. Maria Pia appeared in the center of the Miracolo kitchen, wearing the loose boxy top and pants from the Mao era in the color I call Congestive Heart Failure Gray. I think when she invokes the gustatory gods she likes to appear before them as a blank slate—a blank slate with no taste of any kind. In clothes,food, home décor, or men. It clears her mind. It frees her of prejudices. She becomes one with the glorious universe, in which the firmament was created pretty early on just as a place to stick a stove.
And then it began. She marshaled the troops—Landon, Choo Choo, and me—and we knew she was getting in the Zone
So shouldn’t Georgia Removal be Vera’s problem? It was tempting.
No, even I could tell that wasn’t fair. I didn’t need Joe Beck smelling delectable and wringing his ringless hands and explaining annoying things like laws to me. Poor Georgia was my problem. I should have had her go for a physical as a condition of employment.
Suddenly I heard the inevitable outside the confines of our hidey-hole storeroom: Maria Pia emerging from the back office, calling my name, and other voices heading through the dining room. Landon and I gave each other a quick look, and I loped to the door. “Coming, Nonna,” I called. Over my shoulder I caught a glimpse of Landon leaningover poor sprawled Georgia, where he moved her legs closer together over the semolina flour sacks and gently lifted the necklace by the tourmaline pendant and gazed inscrutably at the silver birdcage that enclosed it. As I slithered through the door, the last thing I noticed was Landon sinking quietly onto the sacks, where he folded his hands in his lap and stared without comment at our dead sous chef.
6
To understand how we lost track of Georgia, you have to know something about the path of that violent little weather system known as a derecho . It’s a fast-moving windstorm that topples towering trees like bowling pins and that’s only slightly friendlier than a landfall hurricane. This also describes Chef Maria Pia Angelotta in a kitchen. She whirls, dashes, races, mystically creating a swath of culinary havoc in at least four separate locations all at once. I think there are even moments when her feet leave the floor.
Whenever I happened to be her sous chef, before she retired, and my pals would call from Manhattan, I’d have to get off the phone, telling them, “I’m putting out fires.” Most people mean it as a kind of expression—the copy machine is jammedand the boss forgot to take her Xanax. Not me. If I wasn’t actually putting out real fires, I was at least turning them down when Nonna’s back was turned. If you close your eyes, all the bubbling and sizzling in a kitchen run by Maria Pia is like the soundtrack of Hell.
Still, one of her greatest gifts as a chef is that she’s a wonderful tactician. She sets all the mini-tornadoes in motion and never loses sight of the big picture. Once I realized she was a force of nature in a commercial kitchen, I relaxed about helping her, chopping and grinding my way into a Zen state that let the culinary chaos swirl around me. I had to trust her. I had to trust that what was terrifying primordial chaos to me was just a fine welter of magical morsels to her. All the rest of us cooking Angelottas had cauldrons in the kitchen. For Maria Pia, though, the kitchen itself was the cauldron. She’s just that great.
So, after Landon and I left Georgia Payne lifeless in the storeroom (which we locked and hoped no one much noticed), the derecho began. Maria Pia appeared in the center of the Miracolo kitchen, wearing the loose boxy top and pants from the Mao era in the color I call Congestive Heart Failure Gray. I think when she invokes the gustatory gods she likes to appear before them as a blank slate—a blank slate with no taste of any kind. In clothes,food, home décor, or men. It clears her mind. It frees her of prejudices. She becomes one with the glorious universe, in which the firmament was created pretty early on just as a place to stick a stove.
And then it began. She marshaled the troops—Landon, Choo Choo, and me—and we knew she was getting in the Zone
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