We cried on each other’s shoulders about lost loves, bad marriages, mistakes we had made. We relished our meals in Paris, as well as a good sex life without tensions and complications.
Shortly after I returned to the States, I moved to New York City and a new job and new roommates. I cooked a few days a week at Neil’s, simple suppers we both enjoyed, and on occasion cooked for his mother Corrine and stepfather Sol. One day Neil asked me to cook a birthday dinner for Corrine. I dearly loved her, with her perfectly made-up plump face, long acrylic painted nails (the first I’d ever seen), and tastefully chic clothes. Like my mother, she was a Christian Scientist, in large part responsible for my return to Christian Science at that time. We went to church together every Wednesday and Saturday, so we were very close. It was easier to accept her love than Neil’s.
His mother had a favorite dish she hadn’t been able to get in New York—mountain oysters. As I told Neil, I had a real appreciation for oysters and other seafood, and presumed that mountain oysters were, like mountain trout, a fresh-water variant of some sort. There were a lot of foods I’d never eaten. After all, I had just had my first fresh omelet and first loose leaf lettuce in France the previous summer. Neil picked me up the morning of Corrine’s birthday and said we were heading downtown, I assumed to the fish market. But no, we wound up in the slaughterhouse district. That’s when I found out we were—I was—cooking not oysters at all, but an oddly oyster-shaped meat, also called lamb fries, which was—were—testicles. I was a bit stunned, but game. I was also a bit stunned to find out that so many animals had testicles. How could I forget the blue balls of my youth, I wondered, where the boys ran around the outside of the car so I could protect and preserve my virtue? Well, I mean I knew all mammals had testicles, I suppose, or something like testicles, but who knew that ducks had them? And veal? And pigs, large and small? And who knew they were so cheap? They were about twenty-five cents a pair, no matter the size. We figured a pair per person would do, but we couldn’t figure out what kind Corrine liked, or which were the best, or even what size. I also felt that we needed some for me to practice on.
The butchers, who found it humorous, no doubt, to tell me how to cook them, told me I could slice them in half and sauté them like scaloppini, or batter and deep fry, or roll in crumbs and pan fry, and on and on. They could hardly contain themselves with the debates—whether to peel them or not to peel them, and which kind were best. I soaked it all in and wound up thoroughly confused. We left with nearly thirty dollars’ worth of testicles, each carrying two bags full.
Walking down the street, we passed a Chinese man selling snails. They were in tin cans that were about two cups in size. Their price? One dollar. Having previously spent up to ten dollars for the kind that came in the tiny can with the shells piled in a plastic sleeve on top, I was thrilled! What a bargain! We got them wholesale. We purchased two cans and happily set off for Neil’s high-rise on East Eighty-Sixth Street.
Neil dropped me, the snails, and the mountain oysters off. I read one of the cookbooks I had brought with me—which one I cannot remember—and it said to soak the snails in a barrel of water sprinkled with oatmeal, the barrel covered with a cement block. I was on the eighteenth floor of an apartment on East Eighty-Sixth Street, and there was no barrel and no cement block. I put the snails, still in their shells, in the sink with the oatmeal and water.
Neil’s apartment was a typical New York one-bedroom apartment. The dining room table was immediately inside the entrance, to be pulled out during dining. The kitchen was adjacent. The living room formed an L with a balcony just outside the sliding glass doors. I covered the table with newspapers and then plates to hold the various types and sizes of mountain oysters. Neil’s large butcher’s knife in hand, I practiced on the mountain oysters. I peeled some. I cut some in half. I fried some. I marinated some. Testicles piled high on the table, divided by size, I went to the balcony with the cookbooks, sat in the sun and mulled over the dinner.
I dozed, perhaps, in the warm sun. As I stood and walked back to the kitchen, I thought I heard a sound. A little clicking. Standing at the kitchen door, I realized it was the snails, clicking around the kitchen as they hauled their shells.
These were very tiny snails, not French snails at all. They were no bigger than my fingernail. And there were hundreds of them, roaming around Neil’s immaculate kitchen, having been rejuvenated by their snack of oatmeal and water, and eager to explore their surroundings. They were between the stove and the refrigerator. On the walls. On the ceilings. On the floor. On the cabinets. And they were alive. All of them. Leaving a trail of snail residue behind them.
I suppose it had been self-evident that they were alive when I put them to soak in the water. But it wasn’t, not to me. Now I realized that they were alive, I became squeamish at the idea of picking them up.
I ran next door. There were two men living there together. I hadn’t really met them, but I had seen them when I came and went to Neil’s. I knocked frantically on the door, and when they came to the door I was too speechless to articulate the problem. They came rushing back into the apartment
