The drawer stuck, like it always did, and I had to yank it with both hands. Inside: a mandoline in a plastic sleeve that had yellowed to the color of old tape, three peelers in different sizes, a garlic press with something dried in the hinge. And then the knife. The handle was almost black where her palm had worn it - the wood so smooth it felt like soap, and the blade curved up at the tip from forty years of sharpening against the same steel rod that hung by the window.
The Drawer That Had Everything
The spiralizer came in a box the size of a shoebox, the avocado slicer in a blister pack I had to cut open with scissors and then couldn't find the scissors, the egg separator shaped like a fish just loose in a bin near the register for $1. 99 and I grabbed it the way I grab things at the end of a long week. I got home and opened the drawer and it was already full, so I pushed down on the mandoline until something cracked a little and the new things went in on top - the fish staring up with its painted eye, and when I closed it I had to lean on it with my hip. Wednesday I needed to make something, anything, and I opened the drawer and pulled out the spiralizer and then the three peelers and then a pastry brush I don't remember buying, and the knife wasn't where it should have been - wasn't anywhere I could see it, was just gone into the pile. I stood there with the drawer hanging open for longer than I'd like to admit.
The handle came off in my hand, just the wood part, and I stood there holding it like a door key with nowhere to go. The blade sat on the linoleum next to the egg separator fish, the metal collar at the top already going to rust at the seam. Rust. She'd dried it every time. I picked the blade up by the spine and the edge caught the light from the overhead and I could see every pass of the steel rod in it - forty years of mornings, and I set it on the counter because I didn't know what else to do with a thing that was both ruined and irreplaceable.
The towel is a green one, thin from washing, and I fold it twice before I set the blade inside. The new knife came from a shop on Clement Street where a man with a beard let me hold six of them before I said anything, and I stood there pressing my palm against each handle the way I'd press a cantaloupe - waiting. It hangs on a magnetic strip now, just the one, and the drawer has almost nothing in it - the green towel, a box of wooden matches, a rubber band. I use the knife every morning - the same two onions, the same motion, and some days I dry it the way she dried hers, the edge away, the towel folded once over the blade. I don't know if I'm getting it right.
The Night the Knife Broke
The wooden matches ran out sometime in November and I put a lighter in the drawer instead - a blue Bic, and now the drawer holds the towel and the lighter and a single rubber band and there's so much room in it that sometimes I open it just to look. Last week I needed to peel something - a knob of ginger, the skin papery and thin - and I reached for the knife without thinking, the way the hand goes to the right pocket. It worked. The ginger came off in one long ribbon and curled on the board and I stood there a second looking at it the way I sometimes look at a sentence that finally came out right, not sure I could explain exactly what I did. The three peelers are still somewhere - probably the high cabinet over the refrigerator, nested in the spiralizer, and I haven't opened that cabinet since March.
The colander was on the high shelf, behind the spiralizer box, and when I pulled it down the spiralizer came with it and landed on the counter with a sound like someone dropping a tray. The box sat there open - the plastic parts nested inside each other, the instruction sheet still folded the way it was folded in the store. I put the colander in the sink and ran the pasta under the water and the spiralizer sat on the counter the whole time I ate, the instruction sheet catching a little air from the vent. I put it back on the high shelf after, fitting the lid down, and then I closed the cabinet and the knife was still hanging on the strip where I'd left it - blade catching the window light, and I don't know why I checked.
The cast iron had been in the oven since October, seasoned and heavy, and when I lifted it out to make the frittata the handle burned through the dish towel and I set it down fast on the burner and stood there blowing on my palm. The green towel was on the knife. I used an oven mitt shaped like a lobster, a gift from someone - stiff and clumsy, and the eggs went in wrong and I couldn't tilt the pan the way it needed tilting, and the frittata came out fine on one side and not the other, which isn't how a frittata is supposed to come out. There's a silicone handle cover somewhere, came with a set of something - fits cast iron perfectly, and I haven't seen it since I moved the spiralizer box. I ate the frittata standing at the counter anyway, the good side first.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial, medical - or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
