It was all there in my brother’s pristine Subzero: The tangerines and toaster corn cakes, the kosher salami and iceberg lettuce, the Russian dressing, individually wrapped slices of American cheese, even trimmed celery left to stand in a glass of water. J had replicated our childhood refrigerator circa 1972 without irony, without even realizing he’d done it.
I stood there with the door open, blinking.
Part of me felt…hungry. When was the last time I’d eaten a cream cheese and jelly sandwich on white bread? Another part, amazed. Who knew they still made margarine? And why? Relief lightened the mix. While a law school bachelor, J had been briefly hospitalized after eating from a rusty can of Beefaroni. Guilt reminded me I owed a visit to our parents whose fridge still held many of these items. I felt grudging respect for J’s intense brand loyalty – Thomas’s, Wishbone, Kraft – but newly snobby too. Who’s to say he wouldn’t find my fridge equally concerning. At that moment it housed nothing but condiments, batteries, and the remains of a dinner my boyfriend and I called “miscellaneous”. That is, Whatever You Feel Like Eating from The Korean Deli at 11pm. Three bean salad, sesame rice crackers, tuna and haagen daaz, mostly.
Still, my brother’s fridge haunted me. Over thirty, he’d already lived in three time zones, earned an advanced degree, gotten work, married. So where were the influences of developing taste buds, regional fare, new friends and restaurants? Was it nostalgia or stubbornness that retarded him or worse? Had he become one of those people for whom food is mere fuel, nothing to care about or enjoy? If that were true, how could I ever really trust him?
I realized he was yelling at me to close the refrigerator door. You’re letting all the cold air out.
The new wife was Finnish. She dutifully stocked and restocked the retro fridge. When I laughed that her family had gone home from the wedding hauling a case of the aforementioned Wishbone Russian dressing, J took offense.
“What makes you think they have Russian dressing in Finland?”
“Finland borders Russia? Anyway, its just ketchup and mayo.”
“What makes you think they have ketchup and mayo in Finland?”
“McDonalds?”
“What makes you think-”?
A refrigerator can
be as intimate as any lingerie drawer or medicine cabinet.
And yet no one thinks twice before telling
you to Help Yourself, Grab a Beer.
Etc. I just hoped the reverse was true- that the Finn’s favorite foods were absent from the shelves simply because they weren’t sold here. To start a marriage with a fridge filled with the food choices of only one person (and those unchanged since the third grade) could not possibly bode well for connubial bliss.
When they divorced a few years later, I thought about this, their fridge and others of my youth. In A’s (mostly mirrored) house, the appliance held nothing but Hawaiian Punch, wine and chocolate. At C’s, where conversely the ancient fridge overflowed with Italian leftovers, various aunts were always reminding you that the crisper drawer was for fruits and vegetables only. S’s parents divorced but living together, had separate, labeled food from which we kids were allowed to choose. And once at eleven or twelve, N ushered me into her kosher kitchen (two fridges!) to confess /reveal that she still ate baby food. “I’m so in the mood, aren’t you?”
A refrigerator can be as intimate as any lingerie drawer or medicine cabinet. And yet no one thinks twice before telling you to Help Yourself, Grab a Beer. The info gleaned may be overt, even mundane: Juice boxes + string cheese = Toddler. But just as often they frighten (Ever crack open a cup of live worms?), appall (An entire pig? Really?) Or touch (overnight the shelves jammed with Boost and probiotic yogurt for my sick mother gave way to the empty fridge of my widower Dad),
Questions arise: Is R too lazy or busy or depressed to throw out his moldy sandwich? Do P’s three tubs of hummus signify a lack of imagination or a clear-headed knowledge of herself, what she likes? Is M drinking too much? Did D actually spend forty bucks on that tiny piece of goat cheese? Consider this and you’ll want to put a lock on your fridge, hide your side of beef, tooth whitener, antibiotics, the four cans of whipped cream, the Burger King bag. You’ll want to pull down all the pictures magneted to the door lest some worker guy memorizes them to later kidnap your children. You’ll want to go back to your childhood fridge and have a tangerine, a stalk of celery.
My brother remarried, moved away, and divorced a second time. I have no idea what’s in his fridge. Writing this, I thought of calling to ask but by now, I don’t really want to disrupt that earlier image. In the intervening years, its become less disturbing than dear. My father’s remarried too and though he never moved, I no longer feel comfortable casually opening the childhood fridge. Everything’s changed. Its just cold air in there.