Chapter 8 - The Kitchen on Danforth
On Tuesday afternoon, I took Theo to the butcher shop on Danforth Avenue.
The shop smelled of sawdust, cold brine, and smoked bacon. It was narrow, with white subway tiles on the walls and two glass display cases filled with thick-cut ribeyes, cured sausages, and whole chickens hanging from stainless-steel hooks behind the counter.
Mr. Costa, the butcher who had sold me the twenty-two-pound turkey three weeks ago, was standing behind the meat block in his striped apron, wiping down a heavy cleaver with a clean white rag. He was sixty-five, with thick silver hair and dark, heavy-lidded eyes that had seen forty years of neighborhood business come and go.
“Ah, the big bird lady!” he boomed as the bell over the door chimed, his face splitting into a broad, genuine smile. “How was it? Did it fit in the oven? I told my wife when you carried it out of here, I said, ‘That girl’s got courage, twenty-two pounds in an apartment stove!’”
Theo ran straight to the glass case, pressing his nose against the cool surface to look at the rows of coiled sausages.
“It fit,” I said, leaning my forearms against the top of the counter. For the first time in five days, the knot in the center of my stomach loosened completely. “It took five hours, but the meat was juicy. Even the breast.”
“Of course it was juicy!” Costa said, waving the cleaver toward the ceiling as if offended by the suggestion of any other outcome. “I hung that bird myself. Three weeks in the cooler. Good fat, good grain. If you know how to salt it, it doesn't fail.”
He looked down at Theo, reached into a small glass jar on the shelf behind him, and handed him a thin slice of mild salami wrapped in wax paper.
“So,” Costa said, leaning in, his sharp old eyes catching the shadow beneath my cheekbones. “The family was happy? They gave you a medal?”
I looked at the clean sawdust on the floor, at the reflection of the streetcars passing outside on Danforth, at my son chewing his salami with serious, four-year-old concentration.
“My mother was happy,” I said. “She and her neighbor ate it for three days.”
Costa watched me for three seconds. He was an old immigrant who had raised four daughters behind that counter; he didn't need a forensic audit to understand what wasn't being said.
“Good,” he said firmly, nodding once with the heavy finality of a man who knew the value of his own labor. “Food is for the people who are hungry, Margo. Not for the people who are looking for a reason to spit it out.”
He reached into the case, pulled out two beautiful, thick-cut pork chops with the bone in, and wrapped them in brown butcher’s paper without being asked.
“Take these,” he said, sliding the package across the counter. “Fry them with some apples and butter tonight for the boy. No charge. A thank-you for treating my bird with respect.”
“Mr. Costa, I can't—”
“Take them,” he insisted, tapping the brown paper with his thumb. “And next year, if you want a turkey, you come back to me. But you cook it for yourself, eh? Don't carry it across the city for people who don't have teeth for it.”
I took the package. The paper was cool and heavy in my hands, smelling of clean paper and cold meat.
May you like
When we walked out into the cold November afternoon, Theo held my hand tightly, his small red boots splashing through the puddles on the sidewalk, singing his tugboat song at the top of his lungs.
I didn't check my phone once on the walk home.
