Stuffed (5 page)

SPAETZLE

Aunt Lil went through life thinking she got the small half. If you gave her flowers, she thought they were wilted. When you brought soup, she found a hair. The butcher shortchanged her. Empty cabs passed her by. She was a self-made outcast, and sooner or later everybody failed her.

You never knew if Uncle Al was going to be at my grandmother’s Thursday dinners, and if he did come, whether he’d be there with Aunt Lil. Sometimes Uncle Al came alone. Aunt Lil wasn’t blood. She’d married into the family. The room went quiet when she walked in. The sisters rolled their eyes at her baroque fingernails. Further proof of Aunt Lil’s not fitting in was her astonishing challah hair—braided, wound, and woven. The sisters wore their hair short and black with a blond streak in the front. Unlike the sisters, who favored plastic pearlized harlequins, Aunt Lil wore pince-nez. Like the sisters, she dressed only in black, but instead of new jewelry, she favored dangling garnet earrings, brooches on skewers, watches on pins. Aunt Lil’s jewelry was not purchased from the family jeweler, David of Dagil in the diamond district, who specialized in new, shiny, and big. Aunt Lil preferred old gold that came with a story: who it belonged to, where she got it, how much she paid, what the auction was like, what she was sorry she didn’t get at the auction, how the waste from a garnet was ground to dust, then used to make emery boards. She struck me as a freethinker. Is that what bothered the sisters?

Lillian Berger Lieban made a needlepoint pillow for her couch that read, I’VE NEVER FORGOTTEN A ROTTEN THING ANYONE HAS DONE TO ME.

If you told Aunt Lil you liked something, she unclasped it and gave it to you.

“What a pretty ring, Aunt Lil!”

“It’s a peridot, darling. Here.”

She’d slip it on my finger.

“Aunt Lil, I’ve never seen a bracelet like that!”

“Alexandrites, darling.” She’d pinch the catch closed on my wrist. “Swear to me you’ll use the chain guard.”

Uncle Al slept with Aunt Lil for eleven years, then refused to marry her because she wasn’t a virgin. She sent out wedding invitations anyway, and his mother, my great-grandmother Jenny Geiger Lieban, told him, “Al, you either go through with it, or you never see her again,” so he did both. He went through with it, and he stopped seeing her. After the ceremony, Uncle Al rented an apartment at the Normandie on Riverside Drive, and Aunt Lil moved upstate to Wappingers Falls. They never had children. They had joint custody of the Shagzies, Airedales Aunt Lil tweezed instead of cut. There was a series of Shagzies—Shagzy the First . . . Shagzy the Second. . . . They all looked the same, and as each Shagzy died, he was replaced by a new Shagzy, like the Lassies on TV. Uncle Al would add the newly dead Shagzy’s ashes to the urn shelf in his closet. When he got dressed, there were the urns. Even with the Shagzies dead, Uncle Al spent more time with them than with Aunt Lil.

I felt sorry for Aunt Lil. Although Uncle Al was unfaithful to her, no one in the family chastised him. What was ours was wonderful. Aunt Lil wasn’t ours. The first time I heard the sisters light into Aunt Lil, I had no preparation for duality. I was struck by how they pretended to like her when she was around, but out of earshot, they pounced. The gripes were first and foremost that Aunt Lil was a lousy housekeeper. “So help me”—the sisters would raise a right hand as if they were in court—“I wouldn’t eat there if my
life
depended on it!” Aunt Lil was also accused of not making Uncle Al happy. She spent his money on antiques. She didn’t take care of him. Her biggest sin? Dirt under her fingernails. This was particularly chilling because I had the same problem. Did people talk about me when I left the room? On Sundays my father would inspect us: “Let me see your hands.” I’d hold them out as if they were for sale. He’d study my fingernails, each one capped by a curved black parenthesis, and shake his head. “Are you in the real estate business?” he’d say.

I tried to keep my nails clean. I kept them as short as a hair. But even if I cleaned them with a damp orange stick (a nailspecific beauty aid from the five-and-ten with a pointy end for cleaning and a chiseled end for cuticle pushing), even if I cleaned them right before going to bed, they were black when I woke up. I took to wondering if Aunt Lil and I gave off some electromagnetic charge that attracted nail dirt.

Once a year Aunt Lil came to the city, and we’d take Shagzy to the dog show at the old Madison Square Garden. She’d wear a black hat and dress and laced black pumps that had an orthopedic authority. I was proud of her. She looked professional. Every year I was sure Shagzy would win. Aunt Lil had solid faith too. But always the Shagzies screwed up, breaking into a trot when they were told to walk or folding up when the other dogs hung turns. Shagzy and Aunt Lil would be fine in the grooming area. Aunt Lil, doing some last-minute fur fluffing, proudly pinning her number on, flushed as if she were going to a dance. Shagzy, thrilled to be out of his travel crate, sniffing poodles sculpted like cauliflowers, high-stepping past King Charles spaniels and perky chows, dog busy. But when it was time to go into the ring, Shagzy would sense something was up. His stubby tail would clamp down. He’d dig his forepaws in. The leash would get taut, and Aunt Lil would plead. Eventually she’d gather up the current Shagzy and carry him to his position in the ring. She’d repeat the commands as the judges barked them. “Heel!” she’d squeal in her cheese-grater voice. “Heel, Shagzy-boy! Heel! Heel!
Heel!
” But the Shagzy would bolt, skid on his rear, or flash his sharky teeth. Hairs burst from Aunt Lil’s braid. Sweat grooved her powder.

Shagzy and Aunt Lil got disqualified in the first round every year. But Aunt Lil never reproached the Shagzy. She consoled him, loved him up, loved him to bits, maybe even loved him more for being so imperfect, so human. She told the Shagzy not to worry, that he was marvelous, that she adored him anyway. Would he like a cube of Muenster? How about a Liv-A-Snap? What a good boy he was! Yes! What a good puppy-lup! Such a lovebug! Yes! Oh, yes! That’s my Shagzy-wagzy! That’s mama’s Shagzy-boy!

Shagzy wagged his tail stump. Aunt Lil raised her chin for a lick.

Aunt Lil’s adult shoe size was three and a half. This enabled her to buy her shoes where I did, at Indian Walk on Broadway or a couple of blocks south at Rappoport’s on Eighty-third, where your feet got fluoroscoped to make sure the shoes really fit. You’d stand on the machine and look through the eyepiece and see if there was breathing room for your toes. You’d see your white bones and gray skin and the dark leather curve of the toe box.

Aunt Lil liked Mary Janes, same as I did, same buckled strap, same grosgrain bow. Her feet were a matter of enormous pride. She favored white stockings to set off the shiny black patent. She liked to pull the skirt of her dress at the hips, then point and flex. Her hair was remarkable for its length and the intricacy of its braid, but no other grown-up had feet like that. Aunt Lil was just over five feet. She was heavy. Microfeet in little-girl shoes had the potential of giving her an air of instability. She could have looked unbalanced, like a ham on top of a pea. But standing still, Aunt Lil looked planted. There was nothing fragile about her except her wounded look.

When Uncle Al asked her for a divorce, she told him if he ever tried to leave her, she would throw acid in his face. This was around the time the investigative journalist Victor Riesel had acid thrown in his face by a teamster. From that day on, Victor Riesel was blind.

The Normandie was only three blocks from our apartment, so when Aunt Lil came to town, I’d visit. She’d give me milk and graham crackers and paint pens she saved only for me—the artist in the family—a set of clear plastic tubes with sponges at the tips. You filled the tubes with paint powder, added water, and shook them. The paint soaked down into the sponge, and then you pressed it into the paper and painted. Tinting power was minimal, and no matter how much pigment you used, the colors looked faded. I would offer Aunt Lil a wet picture before I left.

“Who’s getting
that
one?” She’d point.

“My mother.”

“That’s the one
I
wanted,” she’d say.

Finally, Aunt Lil made the whole family permanently turn on her. Since she was living up in Wappingers Falls, after Uncle Al’s funeral my grandmother held the shivah. Aunt Lil rang the doorbell, took one look at the cakes, the turkeys, the chafing dishes. The petits fours, dried fruits, and capons. The herring, smoked salmon, and bagels. The cheeses, the cookie platters, the Everest of chopped liver. She took it all in, turned to my grandmother, and said her last words to our family, “My husband dies, and you throw a party?”

Eight years after her excommunication, I sent her a note: “Dear Aunt Lilly,” it said. “I just got married, and I’d love to introduce you to my husband. May we come sometime and visit?”

It was a modest house, smaller than I remembered, filled with wending cats, empty jars, and piles of old newspapers she said she was “saving for the Boy Scouts.” The papers were nervous-making. They leaned against the walls of her porch, buckling the screens. Near the bottom, they were dark as coffee. Higher up, they got creamy. Newspaper flakes littered the floor. Cat hair swirled in the air. There was a gray tabby in a Budweiser carton with newspaper crumbs in his fur and a calico on a sweater under the rocker. The smell was old damp paper and cat. Aunt Lil had shrunk. Her center part was pink. When I asked if she still had a Shagzy, she threw her head back. “Oh, I’m too old to have a dog.” She laughed.

Because Aunt Lil’s parents were from Hungary, she made something no one else in our family made. Spaetzle looked like dry scrambled eggs, but it was chewy like gnocchi. Even though she kept her house dark, light bounced off the melted butter. She cooked chicken paprikash to go with the spaetzle. The sour cream was so thick, the chicken beneath the sauce had the soft curve of foothills.

I watched Aunt Lil make the spaetzle. She reached into a bowl with her long, curved fingernails and curled the raw dough into her fist. Then she pumped her fist, working dough out the small hole at the pinkie end. She’d squeeze her hand, and a yellow worm would emerge. Then she’d clip it off with the thumbnail of her other hand and let it fall into a pot of boiling water. She had a rhythm: Dip. Squeeze, clip, squeeze, clip, squeeze, clip. Dip. When all the spaetzle rose to the top of the salted water, Aunt Lil drained the pot. I’ve seen only one other person turn their fist into a cooking utensil. My father uses his left hand like a pastry tube to drizzle icing into “Happy Birthday.”

The spaetzle was good. Styrofoam would have been good with all that butter and sour cream. One of the cats jumped onto the table and ate out of the serving bowl. “Such a naughty boy!” Aunt Lil strummed behind his ears.

After lunch we sat in her living room on a carved oak bench with a high back and velvet cushions that had tassels the size of cantaloupes. It looked like something out of
King Lear.
We talked.

“Why do you keep calling me Aunt
Lilly
?” she interrupted, peeved. “I’ve never been a Lilly,” and I realized I was confusing Aunt Lil with my grandmother’s Jamaican housekeeper.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been such a long time. I guess I was mixing you up with Lilly Brebner!”

Aunt Lil shook her head. It was the wrong thing to say. I’d confused her with a housekeeper, and I’d referenced her arch-enemy, my grandmother. I didn’t believe in inheriting family feuds, but felt disloyal anyway. My grandmother would not have liked that I was visiting Aunt Lil.

The sun went down. Aunt Lil asked us to stay over. I helped her make up a cannonball bed. I was fastidious about the hospital corners, not wanting to give her any reason to complain about me, even though there was no one left to complain to. We smoothed the sheets. Reaching for the satin quilt that all the women in the family bought from Mr. Oswald, the linen man who made house calls, I spoke. “Aunt Lil,” I asked her, “how come you stayed married to Uncle Al when he treated you so badly?”

“Humans value what is hardest to attain, dear.”

“How come you never had children?”

“Your Uncle Al never wanted children.”

“Then how come you never worked?”

“He wouldn’t hear of it.”

Was Aunt Lil happy only when she wasn’t happy?

Despite protests, when we left the next day, she gave us twenty-four gilt-edged oyster plates. She wrapped them in a HIN-DENBERG EXPLODES! newspaper and sent us on our way.

The next year she made us stuffed cabbage with rice and almonds. The newspaper collection had grown. So had the flaky cats in corrugated beer cartons and sweater nests.

“Aunt Lil,” I asked her, “what was it with you and Aunt Ruthie?”

“She knew I knew how old she really was.”

“And you and Aunt Gertie?”

“There is no evil. There are only human beings.”

Then she went upstairs and came down with a tazza. It was crystal, engraved in diamond point, with a trumpet-shaped foot. My husband and I were crammed into a studio apartment. The tazza bore no relation to our way of life.