
How to shop
We stopped yesterday on the way to the airport, my friend and I. We were going to pick up his daughter. And there was a parking space very close to the Wegman’s door by luck and timing. Wegman’s is the way supermarket should be, with beautiful produce regularly spruced up, with fresh cheese, fish, olive oils, bread. It is a great place to shop. But it itsn’t Boston’s Italian Market under the Elevated highway. Well, neither is Boston’s market any more. 93 is sunk under, not elevated, and the market is gone.
I really didn’t understand why we got up so early that July morning. Merv and I had just gotten married and we were staying in the small Cambridge apartment with this friend and his wife and daughter. She was going to take me shopping. We left the house quietly. We walked down the sidewalk with its narrow weedy edges framed by chained link fence. We opened up the rusty gate that complained as we emerged on the street. We got into the little beetle, less parked in than jammed in. But she shifted the floor gears quickly into reverse and then into first and impossibly she made it out of the spot. She deftly threaded us through the narrow streets, bluffed us through the 5 point intersections. She zipped us in to Memorial Drive and unzipped and then zipped us again into Storrow Drive. A left and exit? Around the old prison. Is it legit? And we are under 93, with produce trucks and abandoned cars and graffiti, and other early shoppers. That tiny gap between a great steel girder and a truck? A parking space only a beetle could fit into, only a beetle driven by someone tutored in Palermo Sicily driving. Out we hopped.
She knew exactly what she was doing, this friend of mine. She took me right past the first citrus vendor ignoring his high stacked oranges, and went to the next. The young man smiled at her widely and juggled grapefruit for her, his arms tanned and muscled like grapefruits themselves. She ignored the smile, the muscles. She closely examined the grapefruit, head tilted, mouth pinched, till she found the 2 perfect ones. Then lemons. He happily bagged them for her, twisting the paper around them just so. He grinned with appreciation at her choice. The perfect ones.
This wasn’t his usual way. “Don’t touch the fruit,” he would say to the other shoppers who approached, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How many?” He would announce the price. No bargaining. No questioning. Purchase is made. Shopper is dismissed.
The day was early, but the smell of fermenting fruit was there, just a bit, just right, a light perfume just flirting with us. We went on to potatoes, to onions, to apples to beans and lettuce and tomatoes, each one a separate vendor, tending his great pyramids of balanced fruit, performance sculptures by joyful artists, each trying to get my friend’s attention, each appreciating her complete concentration, her care, her authoritative selection. “The best this week,” “look at these tomatoes, perfectly ripe.” They wanted the sale, but they wanted her negotiation even more. This American woman who knew how to shrug, how to narrow her eyes, how to scoff at a price or a line, how to raise an eyebrow, tilt a head. This woman who had studied how to choose, how to buy, how to cook, in the Palermo markets. It wasn’t about the vendor. No matter how he peacocked at her. It was about her. Her kitchen. Her menu. Her plan. Her judgment. Her choice. Just the way their mothers or grandmothers shopped. Firmly. Decisively. Except she smiled. She looked at them wide eyed, straight in the eye American. So bright, so cheerleader, so cheerful. They, masters of their produce kingdoms, were undone.
We arrived at the poultry store, next to the cheese shop. My friend was welcomed warmly by the vendor. “Hello my friend” he says in a deep voice. How was she? How was her daughter? My friend looked at the thighs, the legs, the whole chickens. Thought about her week’s cooking. The wings, the bones. She asked for chicken livers. The poultry monger looked to the right. He looked to the left. He leaned close to her and whispered “You don’t want the chicken livers, not this week.”
We walked under the highway to the fish store. Fresh mackerel! Fresh cod, fresh red snapper filets. She looked in their eyes, the fishes’ eyes. She touched the firm scaly skins. She sniffed. She took her time. They didn’t try to fool her, to entice her, to distract her. The fish monger waited quietly till she had made her choice. The three best mackerels nestled in the ice. “Scale them, please” she said firmly. He scaled the fish carefully in his big sink under streams of running water. He wrapped her glistening mackerels tightly in newspaper, then into a paper bag.
We had a grand meal from our Wegman’s shopping last night, wild caught salmon filets roasted in a hot oven with a compound white miso butter, roasted asparagus and cauliflower, watermelon and feta salad, and a cherry blueberry clafoutis topped with raspberry coulis and whipped cream. No chicken livers, not this week.