Sketch № 3: A New Recipe
Whether Violet had imagined Nessie’s plot to kill Mrs. Creaverton via poisoned key lime pie or it was true we might never know, but in the week since Dr. Graham Teek came in and diagnosed Mrs. C with her new illness, Violet’s suspicions have only grown.
Last Thursday, after the doc had run Mrs. C through tests and taken enough of her blood to choke a vampire, he came into the café wearing his white coat, embroidered Doc Graham, and a grim face. He asked to talk to her upstairs in the privacy of her apartment, but she insisted on sitting down with him at a table in the front café room. Vi stayed behind the counter, but thanks to a mid-afternoon lull, she kept an ear on the discussion, her worried eyes darting between a cup she wiped dry and her boss.
“I’m sorry,” the doc said gently to Mrs. C, “but it’s what I originally thought.
For now, until I have more data, I’m calling it Syndrome 43.
The date of the first diagnosis was April third, hence the name — 4/3. Here’s what we know. It seems to be a type of autoimmune response, triggered by certain food.”
Mrs. C interrupted, “Like the allergies?”
“Right.” Over the past few weeks, since the mysterious Quake that seems to have started all this, a handful of people have developed deadly allergies they never had before. Six deaths from those have now been recorded.
Mrs. C said, “I’ve never had any food allergies.”
“Allergies can start anytime in life, even deadly ones,” said Doc Graham. “What’s unusual about these allergies and this Syndrome 43 they seem to be linked to is what’s triggering them.”
“Which is what?”
He sighed. “Animal proteins.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. C.
“The animal products you consume, probably on a daily basis, have suddenly triggered this allergic response in you, leading to inflammation of your blood vessels.”
Violet’s French accent came from the counter. “But she eats meat every day, and she is well enough now to be down here making me dry the cups by hand so we don’t get spots, like people notice spots. If her food harms her, why is she not sick in bed and far away from the cups no one cares are spotted?”
“I don’t know yet,” said the doc. “I had one patient who had a ham and Swiss every day for lunch. She had it one day, got sick, almost like food poisoning, bounced back for a week and a half, went back to her sandwiches. Yesterday her arteries swelled up like a water balloon stuck on a faucet.”
“And?” said Mrs. C, nerves in her voice.
He looked down. “She died this morning.”
With a newfound steel, Mrs. Creaverton squared her shoulders. She tipped up her head, her short white hair framing her peaches-and-cream . . . with-a-few-deep-wrinkles complexion. “Tell me what I have to do to survive this.”
The shopkeeper’s bell chimed over the front door as a gentleman came in. He has similar wrinkles to Mrs. C’s, though his skin color is closer to the rich brown of a classic leather-bound book. He’s a regular who works with a whole group of young adults who seem to have contracted their own condition since the Quake. I’ve tried a few tactics to get him to talk to me, but I haven’t hit on the magic formula yet. All he sees is a reporter-turned-blogger who just came to this town when the Quake happened.
His name is Roscoe Belesprit. He is a retired professor of English who thinks bloggers like me are the primordial ooze at the foot of the writers’ evolutionary ladder.
“Phillipa,” he said, nodding at Mrs. C in greeting. “Violet. Doc.” He sniffed in my direction. “Blogger.”
“Have you heard of this?” Mrs. C asked Roscoe as he joined their table. “This . . .” She turned to the doc.
“Syndrome 43,” he supplied.
“In fact, I have,” said Roscoe with concern. “The Timber posted an article last night about it.”
The Applewood Timber was a struggling paper before the Quake, but since the ensuing “rot,” as the town calls it, ate away at their tiny newsroom and press just like it did virtually every other building in town, they’ve had to go fully digital.
“Doc here just told me I got it,” Mrs. C said flatly.
Roscoe was so speechless he didn’t even razz her over her slang “I got” grammar.
“I mean it, Doc,” said Mrs. C. “You tell me what I need to do, I’ll do it. I’m not going down without a fight. Anything. I’m a survivor. I can do anything.”
Doc said, “I need you to cut out all animal products from your diet.”
She balked. “All of them?”
“No meat,” he went on, “no dairy, butter, eggs, possibly honey — ”
“I can’t do that.”
“You just said — ”
“But I need to eat,” she cried, panicked. “You’re telling me I can’t eat.”
“I’m telling you that you’ve developed an allergy to animal protein,” he repeated. Still his voice was gentle. “Now, I don’t know if cutting it all out will solve this. But it’s the only thing I can think to try right now unless we either figure out an animal protein that doesn’t adversely affect you or at some point a treatment for this is developed. But, Mrs. Creaverton, we are years away from that.”
“This is insane,” she said, shaking her head. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”
“It’s no different from limiting meat if you’re a stroke victim, or even cutting out animal protein if you’re at risk for heart disease or neurological disorders.”
“Phillipa,” said Roscoe, “as I understand it, you could . . . you don’t have much of a choice here.”
“The good news — ” Doc Graham started, and Mrs. C snorted.
“There’s good news?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Plant-based diets are popular now. You should have no trouble finding recipes and prepared food you’ll enjoy. I have some places where you can start.”
“Like where?” she said. “Where do I start a plant-based diet? Fern’s Nursery? My front lawn?” She stood up.
“Phillipa — ” said Roscoe.
“Mrs. C — ” said Violet.
“Please, Mrs. Creaverton, we should talk about this,” said the doc.
“Thank you all, but I am too old to have to learn a whole new way of eating, especially when that way is not a way I would enjoy. Just let me live whatever life I have left in peace.”
With that, she went behind the counter and up the stairs, and a few seconds later we all heard her apartment door slam shut.
I understand her point. She should be able to eat a cheeseburger or a pie or whatever she wants. It’s not fair that the food she likes may be killing her. But that food doesn’t know from fair.
It’s not going to stop harming her just because she doesn’t think it should.
The next morning, I arrived at Café Confictura at six a.m., an hour before they open on Fridays. Violet, going about her prepping for opening, ignored my rapping at the door until I finally yelled to her that I wasn’t going to go away.
She whipped open the door. “What do you want before we open, person who cannot tell time?”
Lately, she’s been warming to me, I can tell.
“We talked about this yesterday, Vi,” I said, holding up a tote bag, and she grudgingly agreed to let me in.
An hour later, as Violet opened the café, Mrs. C came downstairs and paused. “What am I smelling?” she asked.
Roscoe and Doc Graham, who had shown up around six thirty as per our arrangement the day before when I told them my idea, came out from the café’s kitchen.
The doc said, “I think I found a solution for your diet problem.”
“Solution to the problem,” Roscoe corrected him.
Doc smiled. “Right.” He presented her a plate of what we’d just baked. “Breakfast?”
As a consummate culinary artist, Mrs. C can’t resist trying a new recipe — Violet told me that. Even eyeing us like she knew what we were doing, she couldn’t help herself. She sank a fork into a crispy breaded Buffalo-style fillet, cut off a piece, and popped it in her mouth.
She chewed.
She narrowed her eyes at us.
She took another piece.
“This is delicious,” she said as she chewed. “What in God’s name am I eating?”
“Tofu,” said Violet.
Mid-bite, Mrs. C frowned with all the horror of a splatter film gore-fest.
Violet kept her trapped under her gaze. “You will eat this, and you will like it, if for no other reason than to live long enough so you can find out if Nessie knew giving you that pie would make you ill.”
Nessie, I’ve gathered, owns a bakery on the other side of town, called Ambrosia. So far, that’s about the only info anyone’s shared with me, other than Violet’s suspicion that Nessie is trying to kill Mrs. C to get her hands on the café.
For a few moments, Mrs. C and Violet stared each other down. Then Mrs. C took the plate. “Okay,” she said finally. “But you try to make me eat one blade of grass and it’s back to delicious animal carcass for me.” She and Doc went into the kitchen to talk more.
Roscoe turned to me — the blogger, the primordial ooze on the writers’ evolutionary ladder — and he said, “Thank you for that recipe.”
Seriously. A thank-you from Roscoe. I was so surprised he even spoke to me, let alone so nicely, that I stuttered as I explained, “It was the same recipe that got me into plant-based. I struggled with weight loss my whole life. Tried every diet, but I wouldn’t do plant-based because I figured, why should I have to do that when other people could eat whatever they wanted? It wasn’t fair. Well, I stopped worrying about what was fair the day my heart almost gave out. I’ll say this for plant-based — it’s the only thing that’s ever kept the weight off.”
This is going to be a journey for Mrs. Creaverton, I know, having been a lover of so-called animal carcass myself. Even if she ends up embracing the change, that commitment can falter when a pepperoni pizza craving hits, or she gets bored making veggie recipes for dinner. Anyone can fall off the plant-based wagon, but this is Mrs. C’s life.
To Roscoe, I said, “I know she’s your friend. She’s becoming mine, too. I want to help her with this.”
He nodded, then sniffed in my direction again. “Next week my writer’s group will meet . . . will try to meet. They are” — his eyebrow arched — “affected by a kind of brain fog, another mystery ignited by the Quake. You’ve made it clear you’d like to sit in, observe them.”
“Yes?” I asked hopefully.
“I suppose . . . you may.”
He walked away.
Take that, primordial ooze. I just grew legs.
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This and any related blog posts are works of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to living or dead public figures, entities, places, events, and the like, are of a fictional, opinioned, and/or parodic nature. No healthcare professionals have been consulted in writing this. Any advice given or inferred is anecdotal and used at your own risk. Consult your doctor in all healthcare matters.
Clarissa J. Markiewicz is the author of Christmas In Whimsy — a heartwarming, fun novel readers compare to Hallmark Christmas movies, and recipient of Readers’ Favorite 5-star Seal — and the genre-bending new-age mystery The Paramour Pawn.
