Addition by Toni Jordan Read Free Book Online

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4
    Tonight I focus on making dinner. Making dinner is a beautiful example of the world falling into order. I begin at 6.05 p.m., immediately after checking the time. Tonight it’s chicken and vegetables, being a Friday. Actually every night is chicken and vegetables. At 5 o’clock I marinate the 2 chicken thighs in the juice of half an orange, one clove of garlic (finely chopped), 10 millilitres of olive oil and 10 black olives. At 6.05 p.m. I put the chicken in a tray (presentation side down) and slide it under the preheated-before-I-checked-the-clocks griller. Then I cook my vegetables in the cast-iron fry pan, black and round as if designed for banging a recalcitrant husband on the head.
    The potato goes in first, peeled and cut into 5 slices in another 10 millilitres of olive oil, because it takes the longest time to cook. This takes 15 minutes. Carrot next: 1, peeled and cut into 10 slices. Onion: 1, also 10 slices. This is difficult with onions so I cut it across the middle to make 2 hemispheres, then 4 cuts on each half downwards because attempting to make 10 equal rings is close to impossible. My knife is very sharp, professionally done at the butcher’s shop in Glenferrie Road every 100 days. They think I’m a diligent but incompetent chef.
    Zucchini: 1, washed not peeled. 10 slices. Beans: 10, trimmed and tailed. This is the order, from the longest time required to the shortest, so I prepare each vegetable after the previous one has been added to the pan. If I do it like this, accurately but with leisurely attention, I add the beans 10 minutes after I begin. Then I turn the chicken, set the table with a knife, fork, placemat, napkin and glass of water and by the time I come back to the stove everything is ready. I use tongs to plate it so that the chicken is on the left with 1 tablespoon of the cooking juices spooned over it, and the potatoes are fanned on the right. The rest of the vegetables are piled in the middle. 5 shakes of the salt. I sit down to eat. It is exactly 6.30 p.m.
    I have always been a slow eater. I give each mouthful the attention it deserves. Chew each mouthful 30 times, they say, and you’ll never be sick. It’s true. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.
    It’s a slow Saturday. After my normal morning routine, I go to the café to find it almost empty. I peek in the window before I walk in. Why I’m not sure. It’s not as if I can change my mind on the doorstep and go home. It’s quiet as a library inside. No trouble finding a seat today. No Irishmen. No representatives of EU countries at all, as far as I can tell.
    Sunday is also routine. After lunch I read the paper, alternating with a pedicure. 3 pages, trim 1 toenail, 3 pages, push back a cuticle, 3 pages, base coat, 3 pages, one coat of polish, 3 pages, another coat of polish, 3 pages, top coat. Then the next toe. The beauty of this system is that the time it takes to read 3 pages is exactly the time required for a coat of polish to dry.
    Clean out the kitchen cupboards. Read. Now it’s 8.00 p.m. 27 degrees. I am sitting by the phone, waiting for my mother’s Sunday night call. My mother is a hollow, shaken woman, with skin and bones and flesh pulled taut and at the same time bowed with flapping folds. The only part of her body that holds the tiniest bit of fat is her cheeks. They are round and full like they are padded with down. She is, astonishingly, shorter than I am and much older. She and my father were late bloomers. She wears sensible shoes, sensible hats, sensible pearls around her ridiculous neck. She is a bower bird. Her beak and keen eyes are fierce. First she collects her stories and then she tells them. Her mind is some kind of wall with hundreds of tiny cubicles like an old-fashioned mail room, little cubby holes where everything is displayed for instant retrieval. How she cross-references them I’ll never know. She has so many, there must be more than one wall, so perhaps each wall has wheels on its