“I’m Anne Tolstoi Foster’s daughter. I think you worked together.” The man squinted and looked up over his glasses. Then he pushed the thinning hair back from his forehead and cleared his throat, a slow gurgling sound, and returned to the paper he was reading.“Well, lucky you,” he mumbled, but loud enough I could hear him. Then, in a louder voice, “it couldn’t have been easy.”
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction
Steak Tartare
My mother liked to meet at Smith & Wollensky, a steak place on 49th and Third, near her office in midtown. I only had an hour for lunch, so I ran the four blocks to meet her.
I am five minutes early. This rarely happened. Being late was a non-negotiable although I had a reputation for lateness. When my mother appeared at the front door, she was already removing her Burberry wool coat and scarf. She waved to the maître’d and headed to where I stood beside him. Him first, then me. When she leaned in to kiss me, her pink and gray tweed Chanel suit reeked faintly of cigarette smoke. It mixed with her Chanel No.5 perfume. A smell that was reminiscent of my childhood. Chanel No.5 was the only perfume she wore. She had a shelf in her closet stockpiled with the white and black boxes wrapped in cellophane that she had bought at duty free when she traveled. Perfume was the only thing she bought at a discount. My mother was happy to pay retail for designer handbags, coats, and clothes. I, being the queen of thrift stores, could never understand her desire to pay full price. She was proud of the money she earned, even though she complained it was never enough. But this didn’t stop her from buying pretty much whatever she wanted.
My mother was a vice president and creative director at Grey Advertising. She supervised a team of writers and art directors who create television and print campaigns for clients like Playtex and Aqua fresh toothpaste. My title was less impressive, a junior art director at J. Walter Thompson. But I work on Burger King, which was a prestigious account. I worked for James Patterson, before he became famous. He used to deliver her office mail. He found it amusing that the roles were reversed, and I worked for him. A fact he liked to remind me of at least once a month.
My mother only slightly remembered him.
“A lot of people delivered my mail in those days, dear.”
But he remembered her with some reverence, which was better than others who had worked with her in the 60s. He wanted to know how my mother had sold her book. I told him it was luck, but he didn’t believe that.
On my first day of work at JWT, I stuck my head into the office of an account director whose name I recognized.
“I think you knew my mother,” I said cheerily. An older gentleman glanced up from his desk. He raised his eyebrows but did not inquire further. This rattled me. I rambled when nervous. What the hell, I’m halfway into his office.
“I’m Anne Tolstoi Foster’s daughter. I think you worked together.” The man squinted and looked up over his glasses. Then he pushed the thinning hair back from his forehead and cleared his throat, a slow gurgling sound, and returned to the paper he was reading.
“Well, lucky you,” he mumbled, but loud enough I could hear him. Then, in a louder voice, “it couldn’t have been easy.”
When I called to tell her, she was dismissive,
“Oh him, not very talented.”
The maître’d led us to a table in the back, where the restaurant was empty. She did her best to avoid running into someone from the office and preferred to sit as far away from other tables as possible.
After my encounter with her old colleague, my mother had wisdom to dispense about working in a large office in New York. Rule number 1: When dining in a restaurant, especially in mid-town where the tables are squeezed together, make sure you look around before starting a conversation, any conversation.
“Many have fallen,” she went on, “gossiping over a salad Niçoise.” She took a small compact from her Louis Vuitton purse. “You never know whether your supervisor’s wife is having coffee at the next table.”
Rule number two: never use real names when complaining about your boss or anyone you work with.
“Mom, that’s seems silly.”
“You have been warned, my dear.”
The waiters ignored us. They preferred to fawn over the businessmen who sat up front, drank more martinis and had larger expense accounts. My mother never drank at lunch. I guess that could have been rule number three.
“Keep your wits about you,” she said as she reached into her purse again and placed a pack of Lark cigarettes on the white linen table. “Nothing worse than coming back to the office in a state of inebriation.
At last, a waiter in a black vest and matching bowtie approached the table. He nodded at my mother. She had been here before. It was unnecessary, but force of habit, he placed two leather bound brown menus, as heavy as a phonebook, in the center of the table, careful not to tip over the water glasses. He didn’t include a wine list or mention the specials.
My mother always on a diet, ordered the steak tartare appetizer. I knew she would take two bites and then light a cigarette. I, on the other hand, was starving and want to order a real steak, rare, not one all chopped up into tiny pieces, a baked potato, and a side dish of creamed spinach. If I’m ever on death row, before my execution, this meal will be my dying wish.
I’d like to order an appetizer, maybe the grilled bacon, but my mother would die of embarrassment. She was of the opinion that ladylike women shouldn’t eat in public. She had a lot of ‘shoulds.’ What one should order on a first date – practically nothing and something smaller and less expensive dish than your date. And you should expect him to pay. She had rules for how you should dress in public. Never leave the house with a safety pin holding up the hem of your skirt or with a run in your stocking as if. Because what if you should be hit by a bus and when you were wheeled unconscious into the emergency room, what would the doctor think.
My mother couldn’t help herself, “Really, darling, a steak? It’s only noon. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a salad?”
“I haven’t eaten all day,” I said, knowing she hadn’t eaten all day, either, because she pretty much existed on black coffee.
“Seriously, honey,” she tried a new approach, “You need to channel a little more Scarlett O’Hara and a little less Andre the Giant.” With a glance at the pack of cigarettes placed on the table, she took a sip of ice water instead. She’d tried to quit smoking for the last ten years with little success. She leaned in closer.
“How will Peter, or any man, for that matter, marry you if you eat this way?”
My mother liked Peter, she found him creative and worth the investment of her time. But she was growing impatient with the two of us living in sin. Even though she wasn’t the slightest bit religious and couldn’t care less about sex before marriage. It was the length of sex before marriage that concerned her. She had a saying that slipped out every so often.
“He’s not going to buy the cow when he can get the milk for free.” I cringe every time she says this. It’s as if I have no say in the matter and I am waiting for a man to propose to me.
Peter and I were living in a loft in a Masonic temple downtown. She hated we were living together with no talk of the future.
I had a job with a design company hand painting fabric. Peter was a photographer.
“Not much career potential there,” she said when we both dropped out of art school.
I introduced them two years ago, when she was in LA shooting a print campaign for Playtex bras with the photographer, Richard Avedon. She thought Peter would get a kick out of being introduced to him. Avedon had no interest in meeting us. At one point, I overheard him say, “I hate the young, they are going to replace us.”
When we met her for dinner, Peter couldn’t grasp why Avedon would shoot a commercial campaign for support bras.
“He’s so famous,” Peter said, “no offense, but isn’t this kind of beneath him.”
“Money, my dear. It’s easy to drop your high and mighty ideals when you get paid as much as he does.”
When the attention turned to me, the conversation was familiar. I had done my best to find something to wear that she would approve of. It was difficult since I lived in overalls and Mexican peasant blouses. I’d dig through my closet for something I’d tucked away, a sweater from Bloomingdales or a scarf from Fendi, a present she had bought me. It was never enough, the critique on my attire would start immediately.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a slight heel?” Not ever.
By this time, I was used to the dance. My clothes, hadn’t changed since my senior year in high school, still Birkenstocks, still black leggings. After she rolled her eyes a few times and tut tutted, she either took me shopping or we strolled down Madison Avenue Rodeo Drive and window shopped. Shopping was one of the activities we did best, even if I rarely wore what she bought.
“You’re too thin,” was the other half of the dance routine.
Like Wallace Simpson, my mother lived by the statement, “You can never be too rich or too thin.” She was way too thin, not me. It took years for me to realize this was her way of saying I was too fat. The reverse psychology never worked. I loved food and ate what I wanted. My diet in LA had been terrible – Swanson’s frozen fried chicken, Mexican food, and margaritas.
Now that we were in New York, food and perfection were still an issue.
I listened to her new campaign for Listerine and the latest office politics. I stared at the basket of rolls which the waiter placed it in front of me. Such a tease. Not brave enough to peek under the napkin, I had annoyed her enough with my lunch order. But I could smell their warm doughiness. Even the pats of butter tested me. So I waited. My stomach rumbled. Could she hear? My mother didn’t miss much when it came to appearances.
“I am so upset,” she took a sip of water. “My idea stolen right out from underneath me.” She wiped her mouth; I could see traces of her red lipstick on the linen napkin. Napkins were extremely important. On a scale of 10-1, table manners were right up at the top of the list of things she considered important. But it created tension at the dinner table throughout my childhood, when one of us slipped up.
“Tommy, Tommy strong and able, get your elbows off the table. This is not a horse’s stable, but a respectable dining table.” It made me want to lean on the table more when my mother recited this.
She had recently sold her first novel, a thinly disguised tell-all of her years in advertising. Now she worried it wouldn’t sell, and if it did, someone might sue her. She’d disguised the key villains; built composites from the bosses she felt had wronged her over the years. She was scheduled to appear on The Today Show next week and afterwards fly to Chicago to be interviewed by Oprah. I listened to her entire itinerary again. She’d kept her advertising job.
“Just in case the book flops, you never know.”
It was better to wait until the food arrived before I sprung my one piece of news on her. I wanted her opinion, on marriage or no marriage even though I knew what her preference would be. My mother was good in an emergency, more decisive than me. But I had to eat something and needed strength before I told her my news.
It was difficult to find a spot to jump into the conversation when my mother was going full throttle. I took a sip of water and eyed the breadbasket again.
“I’m not sure I have the right clothes for television.” She too eyed the breadbasket. “Maybe I should head over to Bonwit Teller after lunch and take a quick look.”
“What if I look fat on TV.”
“I wonder if there is enough time to schedule a facelift?”
When the food arrived, I lavishly buttered the potato, lathered on the sour cream, and crammed in a mouthful before my mother could make a single crack, which came anyway.
“Do you know how many calories are in a single tablespoon of sour cream?”
With my mouth full, I tried to swallow. “So, mom, I have something to tell you.” I rarely contributed to our lunch conversations, my role was that of audience and listener. The news had to be pretty significant to warrant an interruption. With her fork in the air, halfway to her mouth, she looked at me, concerned. I knew she wanted to say not to speak with my mouth full. But I had her attention.
“So, the good news is, I’m pregnant,” her mouth opened.
“And… the even better news is… that Peter and I are getting married.” This was a lie. We hadn’t decided this. Yet. It was as if the sky had opened, and the world froze in place. I waited for the thunder bolt to strike me dead for lying. For once, I had shut her up. I knew the wheels in her head were churning. She didn’t know whether to tell me how stupid I was or how delighted at the prospect of becoming a grandmother.
She was actually speechless.
But then, “Oh darling, I’m thrilled.”
She asked me who my doctor was, and where I was going to deliver, before I had even taken a bite of creamed spinach.
She took out a small notebook and jotted some notes. She went into overdrive. Such a different reaction from Peter. I continued to eat my lunch. My mother had long since stopped eating, but occasionally eyed the pack of cigarettes. I was happy to relinquish all control and have someone in charge. This was a comfortable role for me. Almost in a trance, she continued to write, I had become invisible.
“There’s so much to do…so much.”
As I walked back to my office, what the fuck was I thinking? This morning, Peter had been indecisive; marriage hadn’t been agreed upon. I wanted this baby. But why had I lied to my mother?
I called her as soon as I got to my desk. She picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Mom, you need to keep this a secret?” I took a deep breath. “Peter hasn’t told his parents yet.” I had an uneasy feeling she had already told her secretary and probably every stranger on the street.
“But honey, this is such exciting news.” I wasn’t so sure. “I really don’t see what there is to keep secret.” How about everything!
“Mom, for once, you have to listen. I only told you because I wanted you to be the first to know.” This was important. My mother liked to be first.
“Of course, Honey.” There was a brief pause. I could hear her typing, probably the list of everything that had to be done. “But I already made an appointment for the two of us at Tiffany’s, tomorrow at 10 o’clock right when the store opens.” When had she done this? There was a pause. “Do you know how long it takes to get anything printed? And the wedding announcement has to be perfect!”
But…mom…God, save me.
A lifelong New Yorker living in Vermont, finds places to hide in a warmer climate. Former Dean of Students. Current potter and writer of memoir and murder mystery. Mother of two boys.