Then he had asked his mother to make “something proper and homemade, like you used to,” for the anniversary. Store-bought meals and constant food on the run were beginning to hurt his stomach and liver, he had said.
So Eleanor had tried.
She had risen at six that morning. She had prepared yeast dough for pastries filled with eggs and green onions, made eggplant rolls with walnuts, seasoned the fish, and baked it beneath a golden cheese crust.
But in this family, her help had long since stopped being viewed as kindness. It was treated as an obligation.
When Daniel and Claire needed money for the down payment on the car, Martha had been the loudest person insisting that parents were supposed to help their children get established. Yet she had not contributed a single dollar. Eleanor, meanwhile, had withdrawn nearly all her savings and handed them to her son.
When the couple needed someone to take their little boy for three weeks while the other grandparents vacationed by the sea, Eleanor had rescued them again. She watched the child, tended the garden, cooked homemade meals every day, and prepared fresh fruit drinks.
She was rarely thanked.
Afterward, Martha complained that the boy looked too pale. Eleanor’s strawberry jam, in her opinion, had turned out too runny. And, as she had declared on another occasion, the apartment always smelled of old books.
Even so, Eleanor made one more attempt to steer the conversation toward something peaceful.
“Let me serve you some fish, Martha,” she offered, reaching for the broad serving spatula. “It’s fresh pollock. I cooked it slowly with carrots and onions. It turned out very tender.”
“Pollock?”
Martha threw up both hands. She laughed loudly, as though Eleanor had delivered an especially brilliant joke, then turned toward her daughter.
“Claire, did you hear that? They served us pollock for an anniversary! Good heavens, that is food for stray cats. We ate so much of that fish when we were younger that I still hate the memory of it. Imagine inviting people over for a celebration and putting frozen pollock on the table!”
George, who had remained silent until then, cautiously reached for one of the pastries.
“It’s perfectly good fish, Martha. You’re being unfair.”
She swung toward him at once.
“Oh, be quiet. Now we have an expert. You only care about filling your stomach. What’s on the plate doesn’t matter to you.”
Then she turned back to Eleanor.
“Don’t take offense, dear. I’m a straightforward person. I don’t lie or flatter anyone. But this is not a festive table. It’s practically an insult to your guests.”
An oppressive silence settled over the room.
A car passed outside with a soft rush of tires. The cuckoo clock on the wall marked the seconds with steady, measured sounds.
At last, Daniel lifted his head from his phone and shifted uneasily on the sofa. Even then, he made no effort to defend his mother.
Instead, he said irritably, “Mom, honestly, you could have ordered prepared food. Every place offers celebration packages now. Why did you spend two days killing yourself at the stove if you were only going to sit here and listen to complaints? We were expecting something more modern.”
Eleanor turned slowly and looked directly at him.
“Delivery costs money, Daniel,” she said, her voice calm and almost emotionless. “On Tuesday, you sat right here and told me that after the car payment you hardly had enough left for gas. Everything you see on this table was bought with my laboratory salary and my pension. Every last penny.”
Martha exhaled loudly, rolled her eyes, and pushed her fork away with theatrical disgust.
“Oh, here we go. Now we’ll have to hear how much every cucumber cost and how many pennies went into the salad. We came to visit family, and instead we’re being given an accounting report about the food. If I’d known what a poverty-stricken table this would be, George and I would have gone straight to a restaurant. At least we could have eaten properly. Now we’re expected to choke down all this out of politeness!”
Eleanor placed both hands in her lap.
And suddenly, something inside her became completely still.
The pressure in her head vanished. The familiar hurt that had gripped her throat and made her eyes sting only minutes earlier disappeared as well.
In its place came a level, icy calm—and an unexpected sense of freedom.
Eleanor rose from her chair.
Without hurrying and without making a single abrupt movement, she went into the kitchen, pulled on thick oven mitts covered in bright sunflowers, and opened the oven.
A wave of dense, scorching steam rushed over her.
The apartment filled with the powerful aroma of garlic, baked apples, bay leaves, spices, and roasted meat.
At the back of the oven stood a large, heavy cast-iron roasting pan.
Inside it, Eleanor had roasted an entire pork shoulder weighing nearly seven pounds. A glossy honey-mustard crust covered the meat, while browned new potatoes and wild mushrooms gathered around it—mushrooms she had picked the previous autumn.