“Aren’t you at least interested in finding out what it might be worth to me to get you to stay?”
“Porky,” she said, “it’s not money. And it isn’t that I don’t like working here. I mean, sure, it’s embarrassing sometimes, but that’s not it. It’s just that I don’t want to—I’d rather not—keep doing this. I just want to try something else, because—” As soon as she had said it, she asked herself why she had stuck that “because” on the end, why she hadn’t just left it at wanting to try something else, reason enough, if any reason had been required at all.
“Hey, that’s all right,” said Porky. “Never mind. I’m out of arguments. My persuasive powers are exhausted. You don’t have to tell me why you’re going. I wouldn’t want you to stay if you’re not happy.”
She burst into tears.
“Hey, hey, hey,” said Porky. He got up out of the booth and put his arm around her, clumsily. “Listen, I wish you luck there at the motel,” he said.
“Resort,” said Ariane, still crying.
“Okay, resort. But remember what I said about ironic detachment, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“And do me one favor?”
“Sure.”
“The clam chowder?” he said, as if he were making a plea.
“The clam chowder?” she asked.
“Yeah. Would you leave me the recipe?”
One night early in Ariane’s tenure, the cook hadn’t shown up, and Ariane and Porky ran the kitchen themselves. Porky made a mess with the deep fryers, and Ariane made clam chowder. Ariane’s chowder was so much better than any Porky had eaten before that Ariane became the chowder cook. She hadn’t even thought of this as one of her duties. It was just something she did when she arrived at work, along with all the other bustling around. Making chowder was the only homely skill her mother had taught her, but she had taught her everything about it, the art and craft and philosophy of it. She called her chowder pot “the cauldron,” and as she cooked she talked. The time that Ariane spent with her in the kitchen was the only time when nothing stood between them.
“It was just—the way my mother made it,” she said, since the whole of it was beyond explaining in a minute or two, to Porky, tonight.
“But can you leave me the recipe?”
“There isn’t any recipe. It’s just—the way she did it, and I don’t think she ever did it the same way twice. It depended on what was available. If she was out of something, she’d make a substitution. If she had a lot of something, she’d put in extra so there wouldn’t be any wasted.”
“Write down whatever you remember, okay?”
“Okay.” She sat down, took off her hat, and shook her hair out, and she felt, suddenly, the mournful nostalgia that Porky had predicted. She picked up the pencil, and as she did she noticed the hat lying there, looking at her. Before she started to write, she said, “But you’ve got to let me keep the hat.”
“Deal,” said Porky.
They sat in silence while Ariane tried to codify what had always been an improvisation, and when she had done it as well as she could she left.
[to be continued]
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