Cooking With Mayonnaise

I called my mother one afternoon and asked what she was doing.

“I’m cooking with mayonnaise,” she said.

That’s code. She wasn’t actually cooking anything. She was plotting against my father.

My grandmother was married for 63 years to a man who hated mayonnaise. She was a marvelous cook, who worked in her kitchen from early in the morning in her high heeled shoes and wrap around apron, stockings rolled to the ankles. She could make a sit-down dinner for twenty without breaking a sweat. My grandfather refused to eat much of what she made. He was, in her words, ‘the most finicky’ eater.

By the time I came along, she had worked out a lot of kinks.

One day, I came into the kitchen as she tended to something on the stove with a tight smile on her face. I pulled the step-stool over and climbed up.

“What’s that?” I asked, peering into the cast iron pan.

“Fried fish,” she said. “I’m making lunch for your grandfather.”

Creamy liquid simmered around the fillet.

“What’s that funny smell?”

She turned off the stove and reached across me for a plate.

“Don’t say a word,” she whispered directly into my ear.

We stood there listening to his footsteps, and to the sound of his humming. My grandfather always hummed. While he washed his hands in the hall bathroom, she pulled her apron pocket open and showed me the bottle tucked inside.

Mayonnaise.

“Your grandfather hates mayonnaise.”

She looked at me, and winked.

That’s when I deciphered the code. He had behaved badly. And she was leveling the marriage field.

We sat with my grandfather that day while he ate his lunch. He used a piece of bread to soak up the sauce. My grandmother offered him a genuine smile and touched my hand.

“Learn, little girl,” she said.

I didn’t ask my mother why she was annoyed. The reasons never matter. When she put my father on the phone, I was especially nice to him. If I had to guess, he was one step away from making a significant financial contribution to the ballet.

And he would never even know.

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