Mary Lou Sanelli
My friend Elaine and I ate dinner together at Heyday Farm. It was probably over a month ago now, but I remember the evening clearly. There was something about the whole place that just lulled me.
Restaurants can sometimes have the opposite effect on me—bad acoustics, so-so food, all those other people. But when they know which details to focus on, it’s as if you know with all the sureness you know anything that this is something the owners know how to do. The single most cheerful server I’ve ever met took our order.
When I invited Elaine, I was overextended, which means more time alone at my desk. I love being alone, but I also know when I’m ready for good company, good conversation, good food and wine. It’s amazing the effect this combination has.
I don’t even know what to call the feeling I have after a long-overdue evening like this, when I’m driving home with the windows open and the music on, but I know that it’s the best medicine and therapy rolled into one, even without the extra eggplant the chef gave me because I complimented its taste. Watching him sauté made me think of another cook who lived in the neighborhood when I was a kid. Her name was Mary.
Mary would make me something to eat when I babysat her two boys, before she’d drive off in her wood paneled station wagon to get her hair “done.” I loved to watch her chop and stir. She had a girlish demeanor, sort of a cross between Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H and Sally Field—Gidget, not the flying nun. I thought she was the most approachable grown-up I’d ever met. In her kitchen, I felt like I was exactly where I belonged. She always told me I could be whatever I wanted. Which meant everything. If Mary could believe my future could be my choice, I could believe it.
By the time I was in high school, I started to think more about the fact that there was always a bottle of vodka on the counter when Mary cooked—Smirnoff with a fancy crown on its label, “like the queen I am,” she’d joke. Between stirrings, she’d pour splashes from the bottle over ice, rattle the glass for a sec, and this explained a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me at then. Like the way her words started to sound sloshy, as if they had to find their way through a great deal of muck before they could break free, which is probably the best metaphor I can think of for her life at the time.
I began to see how she probably didn’t want to talk to her babysitter so much as she longed for conversation. She held a master’s degree in political science, but her husband refused to let her work once the first baby came, something she would remind me of as the vegetables softened, drumming her nails harder on the counter, as if she’d like to rake those nails over someone’s cheek. But we lived in a modern suburb which, of course, meant it was built to be more conventional, and I believe all that conformity started to stifle Mary’s desires, one of which was to be a chef.
In another age, I think Mary would have opened her own restaurant and people from all over the county — not just me with my teenage curiosity — would have flocked to her tables. She would have served Crêpes Suzette and butter bean soup in a bread bowl.
By nature, I have always been inquisitive. I want to know the why of things. For instance, I wanted to know, but was afraid to ask, why Mary’s husband would talk to her the way he did, and why she, the smartest woman I knew, let him, all but cowering in his presence. I guess it was naïve of me to think that she could have stood up to such a bully simply because I wanted her to.
But, oh, I wanted her to.
My mother, no great fan of her husband either, also shrank in my dad’s presence, with maybe a little more verbal push-back than Mary, but never the victor. I grew more and more weary of bullies, but I still had no idea how many of them would grow up to feel entitled to run everything from households to countries . . . not that I want to bring up another bully, absolutely not—one that, I admit, I’ve imagined falling ill or off a cliff or out of an emergency exit door of a Boeing airplane—but he does remind me why Mary may have needed all that vodka.
Elaine and I talked about a lot that night, no small talk for us.
There was something whimsical in the air as I walked back to my car. The entire restaurant, which is housed inside of a remodeled farm house off Old Mill Road on Bainbridge Island, was lit up while the yard was buried in nightfall. Even the arbor over the patio is inspired, so that when the moonlight hits it, it glows.
Some years ago, I met Elaine. That we’d shared our first meal together that night, just the two of us, felt like part of the magic. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see an owl fly by for good measure.
Which might have been too much magic for one night, but I’d never dream of not wanting it.
Mary Lou Sanelli’s latest title is “In So Many Words.” She works as a writer, speaker, and master dance teacher. For more information visit www.marylousanelli.com.