slices of cold cuts, large wedges of cheese, hard-boiled eggs, huge chunks of meat or fish, containers of yogurt or milk-rich puddings, whole-grain breads—John’s food tray would have made a cardiologist blanch. Consumption of this food was no chore for John; he was ravenous at each mealtime and ate with gusto, from the slabs of liverwurst on thick brown bread to the mounds of herring in sour cream. The granulation of new flesh in his wound was gobbling up the calories and proteins faster than even John could keep pace with, pulling extra protein wherever it could find it. No matter how much he ate, it wasn’t enough. John’s hair turned brittle in the coming weeks and thinned out dramatically, as the healing wound pulled proteins from even the hair on his head.
He was not the only one with an appetite. I had always had a fast metabolism, and the adrenaline rush from the shock of the shooting and all that followed had only made it faster. Every morning I would go down to the hotel’s breakfast buffet and eat dinner-sized portions of scrambled eggs, tiny, herb-flavored sausages known as Nürnberger Würstchen, a mound of German-style home fries, crunchy breakfast rolls, yogurt, and bowls of out-of-season berries flown in from someplace south of the equator. Only after I had eaten like this every morning and downed a large pot of tea did I feel physically and mentally ready to return to the hospital.
At lunchtime I would return to the hotel café and eat the daily special—soup, main course, salad, dessert—before I could even think about heading back to the hospital. I would stay with John till after his supper, then eat yet another large meal before falling asleep. No matter how much I ate during those weeks in Munich, my clothes let me know that I was losing weight. My entire body felt stuck in overdrive. Each night I would fall asleep exhausted, but would often awaken with a start just a couple of hours later. I would be breathing hard and in a sweat, as if I had been chased by demons during my sleep. In Munich I never remembered my dreams, but I awoke knowing they had been bad.
John’s appetite and protein-rich diet worked as the doctors had hoped, and by the end of January, they were ready to try a pair of operations to finally close up his back. Both went nearly according to plan. The hospital’s top cosmetic surgeon basically butterflied John’s buttocks, cutting flaps that he could then open out over the wound to patch what remained of the trench. Two weeks later, when I finally saw the wound for the second time, it looked as if a very neat, careful madman had carved his way around it. But to me it was beautiful: the gaping trench and open view of John’s spine miraculously gone, replaced by a couple of feet of delicately traced seams. No Frankenstein cross-stitches, just a subcutaneous blind stitch that left neat, clean lines. My nightmares paused.
8
Birthday Cake
U ntil I went away to college, my parents, my brother, and I ate virtually every Sunday lunch of my life with a dozen or more of my mother’s relatives in my grandparents’ tiny apartment. Except for those first moments of silence when everyone dug into the steaming plates before them, Comparato, Romano, Tozzi, Delia, Fucci, and Gabriel never stopped talking, kidding, joking, telling stories, swapping news, or listening to the latest tales of wacky customers at Gabriel’s Meat Market. We ate a ritual menu: Jennie’s pasta al ragù , and then meatballs, sausage, chicken, pork, and braciole, thin slices of herbed, rolled beef, all of which had flavored her thick Neapolitan sauce. A mixed salad, “good for the digestion,” always followed the meat.
The only variable dish was dessert, usually one of Jennie’s homemade American specialties: fresh blueberry, apple, cherry, or pumpkin pie, depending on the season; Boston cream or lemon meringue pies on occasion; pineapple crush cake (made with zwieback, eggs, condensed milk, pineapple, and
He was not the only one with an appetite. I had always had a fast metabolism, and the adrenaline rush from the shock of the shooting and all that followed had only made it faster. Every morning I would go down to the hotel’s breakfast buffet and eat dinner-sized portions of scrambled eggs, tiny, herb-flavored sausages known as Nürnberger Würstchen, a mound of German-style home fries, crunchy breakfast rolls, yogurt, and bowls of out-of-season berries flown in from someplace south of the equator. Only after I had eaten like this every morning and downed a large pot of tea did I feel physically and mentally ready to return to the hospital.
At lunchtime I would return to the hotel café and eat the daily special—soup, main course, salad, dessert—before I could even think about heading back to the hospital. I would stay with John till after his supper, then eat yet another large meal before falling asleep. No matter how much I ate during those weeks in Munich, my clothes let me know that I was losing weight. My entire body felt stuck in overdrive. Each night I would fall asleep exhausted, but would often awaken with a start just a couple of hours later. I would be breathing hard and in a sweat, as if I had been chased by demons during my sleep. In Munich I never remembered my dreams, but I awoke knowing they had been bad.
John’s appetite and protein-rich diet worked as the doctors had hoped, and by the end of January, they were ready to try a pair of operations to finally close up his back. Both went nearly according to plan. The hospital’s top cosmetic surgeon basically butterflied John’s buttocks, cutting flaps that he could then open out over the wound to patch what remained of the trench. Two weeks later, when I finally saw the wound for the second time, it looked as if a very neat, careful madman had carved his way around it. But to me it was beautiful: the gaping trench and open view of John’s spine miraculously gone, replaced by a couple of feet of delicately traced seams. No Frankenstein cross-stitches, just a subcutaneous blind stitch that left neat, clean lines. My nightmares paused.
8
Birthday Cake
U ntil I went away to college, my parents, my brother, and I ate virtually every Sunday lunch of my life with a dozen or more of my mother’s relatives in my grandparents’ tiny apartment. Except for those first moments of silence when everyone dug into the steaming plates before them, Comparato, Romano, Tozzi, Delia, Fucci, and Gabriel never stopped talking, kidding, joking, telling stories, swapping news, or listening to the latest tales of wacky customers at Gabriel’s Meat Market. We ate a ritual menu: Jennie’s pasta al ragù , and then meatballs, sausage, chicken, pork, and braciole, thin slices of herbed, rolled beef, all of which had flavored her thick Neapolitan sauce. A mixed salad, “good for the digestion,” always followed the meat.
The only variable dish was dessert, usually one of Jennie’s homemade American specialties: fresh blueberry, apple, cherry, or pumpkin pie, depending on the season; Boston cream or lemon meringue pies on occasion; pineapple crush cake (made with zwieback, eggs, condensed milk, pineapple, and
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