Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

Derived from the Japanese adjective umai ( ), meaning “delicious” or “palatable,” umami can be described as being meaty, brothy, or savory, and is especially prevalent in aged or fermented foods, like cheese and soy sauce. While some food scientists believe umami overlaps in some way with one or more of the four basic tastes, others are quick to dismiss it further and speak of it in derision, often by linking it to “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” that condition, marked by dizziness, headaches, and chest pains, that troubles some people after eating food enriched by the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate, which itself was first commercially produced as a direct result of Dr. Ikeda’s pioneering work and then later brought to the United States after U.S. soldiers in Occupied Japan had fallen upon the abandoned field rations of the vanquished Imperial Army and learned why Hirohito’s troops had found their food so delicious.

I LEFT WORK EARLY THAT DAY, intending to buy a money order for the Albanians, but the line at the post office snaked so far out the door — and was comprised of people who looked so limp and defeated — that I immediately turned back for my car, trying to convince myself that Priscilla might no longer even want Sweetness #9—What Is to Be Done? Teenagers are a famously fickle bunch, after all. One minute it’s The New Kids on the Block, the next The Backstreet Boys. Priscilla was no different, I knew, and so by the time she realized she didn’t have the Albanian report, she might be on to something else. Save the whales! She still might get upset to learn I’d never ordered the report, but at that point I could always appease her by making a donation to Greenpeace or agreeing to buy dolphin-safe tuna from now on.

I was still sitting in the parking lot — key in the ignition, a satisfied look on my face — when my cell phone rang. It was Betty, asking about dinner.

“Are there any left-overs?” she said.

For much of the last year, we’d been coming home with cartons of Chinese or bags full of Indian; that, or been calling the pizzeria we both kept on speed dial. But while there might have been a few breaded nuggets of sweet and sour chicken rolling around in a Tupperware dish at the back of the fridge, or perhaps a couple of slices of pepperoni hidden away in a pouch of aluminum foil, I didn’t think we’d be able to find enough food to feed a family of four. This prompted Betty to suggest we look to the Deep-freeze, but of late I’d started to find something unsatisfying about this, too. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the flavor of frozen food; I did, of course I did; it was only that I didn’t like to eat it in the company of anyone else. Timing was the problem. If Ernest used the microwave first, he’d finish his meal before I could get mine fully cooked, and then when at last I was done, Betty would be poking her finger into the ice-cold center of her entrée and saying it could use another minute. It seemed we either needed to get rid of the microwave entirely or buy three more.

I started the car, asking Betty if she was up for McDonald’s. She said she was, though only if we ate there.

“I don’t want the smell to linger and remind me of what I’ve done,” she said.

Betty’s offices were located just across the river from FlavAmerica, in Battle Station’s now fashionably redeveloped downtown. There, in a storied structure of vaulted brick and paned glass that had once housed the factory that produced the woolen blankets used by the U.S. Army during the two world wars, she was employed as a sort of interior designer writ large, an Albert Speer for the new age. Whenever a city, county, state, or region developed an interest in becoming more tourist-friendly, they contacted New Horizons, LLC, which in turn sent Betty out to drive around, get lost, look for something to eat, and take pictures of everything there was to compliment or complain about. A few weeks later she’d be back to give a PowerPoint presentation to a city council or board of chosen freeholders. “Do we really need these ‘Under New Management’ signs?” she might say, while stopping on a photo of a roadside café. “Because what do they really tell us? ‘Keep going. Don’t trust the soup. There’s been trouble here.’”

After agreeing to carpool in to work the following morning, I crossed the Stupfer Bridge to pick up my wife, then called our daughter, even though I knew where she’d be: Sarin’s house. Or not house but loft. Her father, a freelance photographer, was renting a cavernous space in an industrial district of South Battle Station, where life looked as grim and graffitied as downtown had been in the seventies. I didn’t like my daughter spending so much time there, but the more I insisted she stay away, the more she insisted on going.

Priscilla was waiting for us outside when I pulled up, leaning back against the brick wall of the four-story modernist building that her friend called home. She didn’t hurry to get into the car. She pushed off from the wall and walked over slowly, lowering her head to the window as her mother opened it.

“Where are we going?” she said.

“Get in.” I glanced into my rear-view mirror, as if expecting to see flashing lights. “You keep talking to us like that and some policeman’s bound to stop me on suspicion of solicitation.”

“McDonald’s,” Betty said.

“You’re kidding, right?” Priscilla’s face was as firm and unforgiving as the side of a battleship.

“What? It’s too hot to cook at home.”

“Now come on,” I told her. “We’re losing the air conditioning.”

She finally opened the passenger door and fell down into her seat, saying something I couldn’t quite make out. This had been happening more and more of late. For at least a year now, Priscilla had spoken a language closer to German than English. Her words had a tendency to run together into a sort of linguistic gruel, forcing you to rely on the many shrugs and eye rolls and audible gasps with which she otherwise communicated.

I made a quick U-turn, asking my daughter to repeat herself. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

“I said I’m a vee- gan. You are familiar with the term, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I found her in the rear-view mirror. “The people vegetarians call crazy. Is this Sarin’s influence?”

Priscilla looked out her window.

Betty patted me on the thigh. “Let’s just go. We’ve got to get E, remember.”

Ernest had spent much of his summer with a boy named after one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Jeremiah lived in a vast eighties-era apartment complex off Highway 1, a little more than a mile downhill from our house. I parked a few spaces over from the stairs that led up to his unit, then hurried out through the heat and humidity to his door.

A teenaged girl I’d never seen before answered my knock, but this was in no way a surprise. Jeremiah was one of a handful of foster children living here, all under the watchful eye of a woman in her forties who had agreed to let our son stay with her for a few hours each day after soccer camp if only we’d reciprocate by buying her foster children memberships to the Boys & Girls Club down the road.

This evening Jeremiah’s mother, a plump, permed woman whom Betty called “The Saint,” moved into the doorway behind the teenaged girl and said something I couldn’t hear over the hum of her window air conditioning unit. She moved out beside me and closed the door behind her, asking if she could ask me a question.

I dislike no other question more. “Of course,” I said.

“Your son,” she said, “he doesn’t use verbs, does he?”