Heirlooms, page 11
“Let’s do it this week,” Eunhee said. “I do not want to wait. I am very excited to come screaming down the street!”
Helen laughed at the reference they’d heard on American Bandstand. “Excellent. We’ll go to the beauty salon, too, and get glam. I told Mr. Christophe all about you and he’s excited to have a new client. He’s from Paris by way of Seattle! Then, with my new cookbook, I’ll make the best meal ever for us. You’ll see.”
Eunhee pursed her lips, holding back a smile, but said nothing. If Helen were to guess what was going through her mind, she’d have guessed egg balls.
That night, Helen harvested her first baby lettuces and shook up a blend of olive oil, French mustard, red wine vinegar, and salt and pepper. She set the dish before Eunhee. “Well?”
“Delicious!” Eunhee exclaimed. “I’ve never had better. A cookbook is still a good idea, though. It will give us many ideas.”
“Men like meat, dear.” A saleswoman came alongside Helen as she flipped through the salads and salad dressings section of the red- and white-checkered Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book.
“Beet Relish Cups, Chili-Cheese Gelatine Cups, Kris Kringle Salad,” Helen mused aloud. “These don’t sound good? They sound delicious to me.”
The woman, who looked about Helen’s mother’s age, glanced at Helen’s bare left finger and said, “It’s this section you’ll want.” She turned to the meats, poultry, and fish section.
“Cubes in Sour Cream? Spareribs and Kraut?” The book was a veritable treasure trove of deliciousness, and she couldn’t wait to begin.
“Better.” The woman tapped the top of the printed pink page divider. At the top, a pleasant man wearing a tie held knife and fork in hand. A young boy licked his lips, and a girl looked at her mother with anticipation. Mother was pretty in a pixie cut with a broad white apron cinched around her, delivering what looked like a crosscut ham. Full aprons were much more useful, though.
“Ham?” Helen said.
“Yes. And pot roast. Pork chops. Hearty fare.”
Helen nodded. She would master the meals a man would love—starting that very evening. The gelatine salads looked terrific, as did the party loaf. She snapped the book shut. Plenty of time to make all of them.
“You can glue in newspaper clippings and recipe cards from friends,” the saleswoman continued. “And write yours in your hand, for future generations. A daughter would surely treasure this.”
Helen stroked the cover. Lauri? “Yes,” she said. “I’ll take it.”
The woman smiled her agreement. “You won’t regret it.”
Helen also picked up a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens, Garden Book that the woman at the farmers’ co-op had recommended and then wandered to the aisle where the pots and pans rested and found a sculpted Bundt pan. Could she? Would she be able to make a Bundt cake? She’d seen advertisements for them in her ladies’ magazines. She selected a pan and a scalloped copper gelatine mold and went to find Eunhee, who was, of course, in the sewing aisle.
“Find anything?”
Eunhee held up a few maternity patterns for her final months and then some darling pattern packets with baby gowns and dresses with ruffles on the edge. One package had a pink baby’s jacket on the front of it, with a knit cap and mittens to match.
“Gorgeous. Do you want to buy some boy things, too?” Helen asked.
Eunhee shook her head. “I do not think I am wrong, but if I am, then I will quickly sew some boy’s clothing! I want to get started so I have all the clothes ready, in many sizes, to take back to Korea. That way, I will not have to worry about her having enough clothing.”
They walked together to the diaper section, and she took a small package and a set of pins.
“Surely you’ll want more than that!” Helen said.
Eunhee said matter-of-factly, “I can wash these every day.”
Helen showed her the cookbook and opened it to the pages she’d been reviewing. “What do you think? I want to start with pork chops with gravy and snow pudding with custard sauce.”
“Gravy is ambitious.” Eunhee glanced over the recipes. She looked up with reserve at Helen, who held her breath. “But you can do it!”
“I can!” Helen exhaled. “Starting tonight! We will stop at the grocery store after we have our hair done.”
“Do not forget: you promised my first driving lesson.”
Helen nodded. She expected that her face held about as much hesitation at the prospect as Eunhee’s had held when Helen had mentioned pork chops and gravy. They paid for their purchases, placed their shopping bags in the trunk of the car, and then continued their day out.
On the way to Mr. Christophe’s, they stopped at the bank.
Eunhee approached the wire clerk. “I am wiring money to Korea again. Are you certain that my other wire transfers have gone through?”
The clerk looked at her over his thick glasses’ frames. “Yes, ma’am. I have no indication at all that the money has not been received. You sure you want to send more—that is, if you’re concerned?”
Eunhee showed her bank passbook to him. “No, please send the usual amount.”
As they walked out of the bank, Eunhee said, “I hope Umma and Appa are well. It is not like her to go so long between letters.”
Helen said nothing but recalled that Eunhee’s mother had allowed a gap in their letters the last time she was forestalling a difficult discussion. At least her mother had responded.
A little bell chimed as they pushed open the door to Mr. Christophe’s salon.
“Madame!” Mr. Christophe himself, wearing a crisp tuxedo and black bow tie, greeted them. He kissed both of Helen’s cheeks in his oh-so-French fashion. “It has been very, very long since I have seen you. Maybe you don’t like Mr. Christophe any longer? You are cheating on me with another hairstylist instead?”
Helen laughed. “It has been one week since my last washout, and you know very well there is no one else on the island who can do my hair. Please meet my friend, Mrs. Choi Eunhee.”
Eunhee bowed and he bowed back. “How is it that I am so lucky that two beautiful women walk into my salon at once? I must have the—” he looked around the salon, seeming to count the clients—“eight most beautiful women on Whidbey Island in here right now. Do you want to be extra fashionable today?”
“Yes,” Eunhee answered. “It has been a long time since I have had my hair done.”
“Very well, then.” He indicated that she should sit in one of the chrome and black styling chairs. “Voilà! For madame and her friend, I introduce hair flashes.” He motioned for the woman who, Helen knew, was the senior stylist to come over. She wheeled a cart toward them, and Mr. Christophe opened the drawer to reveal swatches of brightly colored hair.
“Oh!” Helen said. “I saw those in a ladies’ magazine.”
“After your wash, dry, and set, I will personally affix the flash to your hair with a little glue, n’est-ce pas? It will last until next week’s session. So beautiful. It will drive all the men mad.”
“Whatever men that may be,” Eunhee whispered to Helen. “But even so—I will take red.”
“And I, teal,” Helen said.
“Bon!” Mr. Christophe said. “Evelyn will do your hair,” he said to Helen, “and Maxine, yours.”
He left them. Fifteen minutes later, they sat side by side in comfortable chairs. Their hairdressers lowered huge, heavy metal hair dryers over their heads.
“The UFOs have been found,” Helen said drily.
“Mr. Christophe, he does not look like an alien.”
“Don’t let him fool you.” Helen winked and opened her magazine.
After they were dry, Evelyn teased, back-combed, and styled Helen’s hair into her usual bouffant, but Maxine twirled Eunhee’s long black hair into a shiny French twist. When Mr. Christophe glued the red swirl through it, every woman in the shop stared—in envy, Helen knew. Mr. Christophe clapped, and soon those envious looks turned to ones of support as one by one the women applauded.
Eunhee blushed. “Thank you.” She bowed slightly, as was her custom, to each of them. The applause didn’t die down.
Mr. Christophe took a picture of them with Helen’s camera, which she had tucked into her oversize handbag.
They stopped by the grocery store, and then, on the way home, Helen pulled over on a country road, stopped the car, turned it off, and got out.
“Here we go. Your turn,” she said as she came around to the passenger side.
“Really?” Eunhee’s voice rose with excitement and she got out of the car, too.
“Really.”
Eunhee settled herself into the driver’s side, sweat beading on her forehead by her new red hair flash. Helen showed her how to put the key into the ignition, walked her through the brake and accelerator basics, and showed her how to shift into gear.
“Remember, I’ll be right beside you,” she promised. “The whole time.”
Eunhee nodded, pale. She turned the car on and looked at Helen triumphantly. “I turned it on!”
“You did it!”
Eunhee shifted the car into reverse and slowly started backing up without looking in the rearview mirror. “Why are we going backward? More pedal?”
She pressed into the accelerator, and Helen had a passing fear of her backing them right into the irrigation ditch from which they would need to be towed. “No, no, take your foot off the pedal!”
Eunhee did, and the car slowed down.
“D for drive, to go forward.”
“I see.” She shifted confidently into drive and then pressed the pedal again, navigating onto the country road at about ten miles per hour.
“Look ahead most of the time, and only occasionally glance into the rearview and side-view mirrors,” Helen said.
“Good advice,” Eunhee said. “And not just for driving.”
“Ha!” Helen agreed. “You’re so wise!” They practiced on that road for about ten minutes, with varying results. Sometimes Eunhee did well. Sometimes she jerked the wheel so hard Helen feared for the cattle to either side or that she, not the car, might scream down the street as they rolled on.
“We’d better get the groceries home but will practice every day until you are ready to take your driver’s license test.”
“Do you think I should?” Eunhee asked.
“Definitely.”
Eunhee looked doubtful. “I do not think I can pass.”
Once home and the groceries put away, Helen cinched her apron around her waist, just like the woman in the cookbook, and set to work.
About an hour later, the pork chops looked done. Well, more than done. Done to death and perhaps into the great beyond. Helen might have dredged them a little too much and let the oil get maybe too hot. The chops’ exterior had gone from brown and crispy to hard as peanut brittle in a flash. Still, that was what gravy was for, was it not?
Helen put the pork chops into the oven to keep warm and started the gravy. She left the drippings in the pan, as instructed, with the crusty bits. No shortage of crusty bits, that was for sure. She poured in the stock and some water. A little milk. When it was good and hot, she measured in the flour.
What? What was happening? The flour wasn’t spreading out as it should, thickening the sauce into a gravy. Instead, it clumped into pebbles and marbles.
She stirred them further, with a fork, and then mashed them. Still, there were dozens of pebbles—too many to mash.
“Dinnertime?” Eunhee came into the kitchen.
Helen shrugged. “At least my hair looks good.” She pulled the chops out of the oven.
“It’s okay. We have knives,” Eunhee said as she looked at the meat, which had, if possible, grown even firmer in the warm oven.
Helen then lifted the lid on the gravy. Eunhee’s eyebrows rose and stayed there.
“I know,” Helen said. “Gravy balls.”
Laugh. Cry. Laugh. Cry. Which was going to win?
Eunhee laughed. “It’s okay. You need to put the flour in cold water first and then add that to the warm liquid. Then—no balls. You will make this every night—with me at your elbow—until it’s perfect.”
Helen joined the laughter. “I do not think I can pass the test.” She jotted a note next to the recipes. Add the flour to the cold water first and then add to the warm liquid.
Eunhee left the room, heading toward the living room. “I am calling Johanna.”
Helen followed her, taking off her apron as she walked.
“Hello, may I please speak with Johanna? Thank you. . . . Yes, hello, Johanna. This is Eunhee. Helen and I would like to invite you and your family for dinner. Would sometime in early July work for you? Yes? We’ll call soon to settle the time. I will pick your family up, and Helen will make dinner. We will see you then.”
As her friend set the phone down, Helen smiled. “No turning back for either of us. Either you’ll kill them in the car, I’ll kill them in the dining room, or it will be a smashing success.”
CHAPTER NINE
Helen surveilled her garden. Yes, her garden! The beautiful peonies were spent, but she’d see them next year. Perhaps they would become the emblem for her daughter—if she ever had one. Meanwhile, the white-petaled daisies and their cousins, fainting gerberas, competed in the midsummer beauty pageant for the nearby bachelor’s buttons’ affections. The finches flittered anxiously around the burgeoning sunflowers like a handful of tossed golden glitter. Greedy little fellows. It wasn’t as though she didn’t provide seed for them while they waited.
She cut some of each of the ready flowers, making a bouquet for Johanna. Although she knew Johanna loved her sons, she had once shared that she’d longed for a daughter, too, to bring the softer touches to her life. This day was to be a perfect celebration of friendship and mothers and their children.
The lettuces in their boxes still thrived, even though they’d been planted months earlier, due to crop rotation. Red was represented with a few ripe cherry tomatoes, caged for support. Helen twisted some off of their branches and plopped them into her white colander, closed her eyes, and breathed in the smell of their greens. Then she popped one in her mouth, and when she bit down, a firecracker of flavor exploded in her mouth. It tasted like no other tomato she’d ever eaten.
The taste of my hands!
Somehow the greens smelled like the ripe tomatoes she hoped for. Her gardening book said that if she watered them less, she’d force them to mature quickly, so she’d given them only the briefest drink. What good was a batch of green tomatoes? The heat was good for them too. She’d dragged the barrels in which they grew to a sunny spot against a concrete wall. Backs against the wall, they’d have no choice but to ripen. She’d tuck away some seeds in those brown paper envelopes tied with twine, for next year and the next. She’d have some for her daughter as Eunhee had taken those seeds from her mother.
She passed the barn and found Eunhee sitting in the car. “Praying?” she asked with a smile.
“Yes,” Eunhee said. “This is the first time I will drive other people, except you.”
“So my life is disposable,” Helen teased.
“You know that is not true,” Eunhee said. “It’s just that I am most comfortable with you. Come with me. I want to show you something before you begin making dinner.”
Helen followed her into the house and took a seat on the couch. It had a new slipcover, thanks to Eunhee.
Eunhee went into her bedroom, and when she emerged, she had something wrapped in tissue paper.
“You know I have been sewing so much,” she said. “Embroidering, too.”
Helen looked up at the new drapes in the living room. “My house is so much prettier for it. Your maternity dresses are gorgeous, too.”
“Thank you,” Eunhee said. “I am also making things for the baby.”
“From the patterns?”
“Yes, but that is not the most important thing.” She sat next to Helen. “The most important thing is the baby’s hanbok for her Baek-il, the celebration to be held when she is one hundred days old.”
“Like a birthday?” Helen asked.
“Kind of,” Eunhee said. “More like a life day. Korea can be a difficult place to live sometimes. The winters are unbearably cold, and the summers sweaty. We have had years of prosperity, but many more of hard times when there was no money for a doctor or even a doctor nearby if you could pay one. A mother would not be certain that her baby would live, not until the baby reached one hundred days old. When the baby was one hundred days old, she could exhale and relax a little, because she knew her baby was likely to have a long and hopefully meaningful life.” She began to unwrap the layers of tissue paper. “We celebrate with seaweed soup.”
“Ah, now I understand why you dried so much seaweed!”
Eunhee nodded. “I could not risk you collecting more.”
Helen grinned.
“Also, we serve special rice cakes. If you share those rice cakes with one hundred people, the baby will have a long and successful life. Anyone who eats a rice cake will bring a gift of thread in return. If the thread is long, then the baby will have a long life.”
Eunhee opened the last layer of tissue and pulled out a beautiful gown of silk. The skirt was pink and so stiff it looked starched. The bodice was white, and so were the arms. All down the front and to the sides, Eunhee had embroidered mugunghwa, roses of Sharon. Butterflies fluttered around the blossoms, and a pretty tassel sat high above the waist.
“See here?” She pointed at an open spot on the sleeve. “I will embroider her name once I decide what it is to be.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Helen said. “Kind of like a baptismal gown. Is this a Christian tradition?”
Eunhee shook her head. “No. I am indeed a Christian, and so is my family. But we have been Korean much longer than we have been Christians. Do you understand? I am coming to love America, but the fibers of my heart are still Korean.”
