the word for spoon

Maybe it will surprise you to know that I used to hate crème brûlée. It should surprise you: a person might as well hate trench coats, or baby squirrels, or sex. But a bad crème brûlée borders on tragic, apologizing, pale and rubbery, the crust not shattering against your spoon but rather sagging wearily into itself with an exhausted squeak. My dad also used to set things on fire. He had an oversize blow torch, back when he still made things with his hands - real things, not seared tuna or saffron risotto - and my memories of crème brûlée are of charred dishtowels, my dad swearing, my mom opening windows, and the whole thing was so 1996, the crème brûlée, the fucking crème brûlée, the raspberry coulis, so chic, so impossible to recreate. 

But it was the only dessert in the dark bistro in Brussels, which I remember as having heavy wooden tables lit by candles, and a menu written on a chalk board on the back wall that was almost impossible to see. There was horse on the menu - cheval, which made us pause and mouth the word, confirm to each other that it meant what we all thought it did - and then, scrawled at the bottom, the crème brûlée. 

I don't remember what else I ate that night. I don't remember much of the trip at all, honestly. Tom had left only days before and my parents flew me to Europe because that's what parents do when they live thousands of miles away and get woken up by hysterical phone calls from their only daughter. They buy a plane ticket and then I was on the floor in the Heathrow airport and then in a hotel room in Brussels, sucking cough drops with Flemish labels, writing long, desperate emails to my boyfriend of eight years who had suddenly, maddeningly decided to destroy himself.

I trailed my parents for days around the city, and then around Luxembourg and into France, barely registering where I was, as my mom lifted my arms and pointed them at churches, graffiti, monuments, murmuring look, look. There was a museum with headphones that tuned into the radio waves of various musical instruments in glass cases when you walked closer to them. It was orbital: forward into a glockenspiel, turn left into Zimbabwean drums, in and out of these auditory worlds and the strange, still seconds of silence between them. Look, look, Meghan. Look. And what she was really saying: Wake up, Meghan.

It started with the waiter, who was cute in that rare European way - not vaguely wet or oil-slick, not overly feminine. And then none of us could remember the word for spoon, kept repeating couteau, fourchette, couteau, fourchette, until the waiter came over and I stopped fucking crying long enough to look up at him and say, "We can't remember the word for spoon." He came back with a whole handful of spoons, laying them out in front of us, "Cuillere, cuillere, cuillere, cuillere," smiling at me as he did so, and I laughed and realized I was flirting and had a flash, nothing more, that said - This will be your life now.

And the crème brûlée, when it came, had a crust that crackled when we broke it with our three spoons, and a delicate vanilla custard that was only barely sweet, spicy and silky, the shards of burnt sugar catching against the roof of my mouth like thin sheets of ice. And it was a bit like waking up. 




Last night, for the first time in weeks, I made myself dinner. I cancelled a date with the skinny guy from the elevator. I put on Dan Mangan's new album. And then I sliced a zucchini and a summer squash into thin rounds. I filled a pot with bulgar wheat. I sauteed the vegetables in olive oil and threw in the crisp of a fennel bulb and some snap peas. I stirred in pesto and chickpeas and squeezed over half a lemon, catching the seeds in my palm the way my dad taught me. I tore parsley leaves with sea salt. I ate slowly, on my couch. I tried to wake up.