We're getting ready to spend a month in Florence. I've been doing a little menu research whetting the appetite. After reading a short story in The New Yorker about a couple dealing with an emergency, I imagined a similar couple traveling together. Although this isn't biographical, I do proofread menus and cackle over errors. The rest of it is imagination.
Stewed Donkey
“Stewed donkey,” she read from the menu.
“Really?” he said, looking at her from over his reading glasses. He waited for the punch line, but she said nothing.
He flipped through the pages scanning the small print listing hundreds of Tuscan dishes.
“Where are you looking?” she asked. “You’re on the dessert page. What are you thinking—stewed donkey and gelato?”
“Ah, I found it —a regional specialty. Okay, that explains it.”
“Explains it? Maybe, but that copy sure doesn’t sell. It’d be more appetizing listed as braised donkey,” she said grinning, “As in bray-sed donkey.” She snorted an unexpectedly loud hee-haw. He cringed, looking around to see if anyone else had heard.
He hoped that was her final cynical remark over this meal. After their last anniversary trip to Russia he’d asked her to stop criticizing and picking apart every menu. Before each meal, she’d find and correct all the spelling mistakes, expecting him to react to her sarcastic remarks. An editor, she corrected text relentlessly, no matter where it appeared.
“I can’t help it, Jerry. The words jump off the page at me.”
The constant stream of negativity, albeit funny, was wearing him down. As the vacation dragged on from Milan to Florence to Palermo, the Costco-sized bottle of Tums he’d packed was dwindling. His occasional indigestion had morphed into full-time gastritis and unlike most tourists in Italy, he was losing weight. As he sat listening to her, he could feel the lining of his stomach slowly dissolving. He watched her twirl a lock of her blond hair in that compulsive way he found so juvenile.
Why rip everything apart? He felt they should appreciate that restaurant owners attempted to translate for their English-speaking guests. Yes, chicken chest instead of chicken breast was hilarious, but it was only one word. She put too much importance on little things. These were menus— not the declaration of independence or instructions for opening a parachute. In his opinion, she jumped on details to gratify her own ego.
He thought of himself as taking a broader view of the world.
“How good would you be at translating English menus, to...say, Chinese? Cut these folks a little slack,” he said. “And after all, it really is donkey they eat. You think it’s unappetizing but others might say it sounds delicious.”
“Hah! Look around, Jerry. Most of the people in here are tourists. For them, don’t you agree they could make it sound a little better? It’s just so damn half-assed.” She grinned, waiting for his reaction to her pun. “I say, dress it up. How about Ass braised with fennel and figs, drizzled with a red wine reduction and served with stuffed zucchini blossoms? They’d get thirty-five Euro a pop instead of seventeen.” She looked smug. He didn’t respond.
“And about translating into Russian?” She scratched her head. “That reminds me of that place in Moscow—you remember— they translated “assorted ice cream flavors” as Ice cream in the ass. As I recall you laughed hard at that one. It’d be the perfect dessert to follow bray-sed donkey,” she said. For weeks after their return from Russia, she looked at ice cream menus and muttered—”no ice cream in the ass?” He’d despaired that she’d ever quit.
When they first met, he’d found her witty and amusing. But over the years this menu thing had worn thin. So thin he’d considered making an excuse to skip the trip and stay home. Right now, he thought, I’d be calm—sitting in the kitchen eating Campbell’s soup and microwaved macaroni and cheese. The idea of eating alone usually snapped him back to reality and made him thankful for his wife. But at this moment, the solitude was attractive. Alone, he wouldn’t be popping Tums and squirming with embarrassment. He’d have the cats for company. They purred when they saw the copy on the cat-food cans.
He’d talked to his friend Rod about his feelings.
“Jerry,” Rod said. “Surely you know this happens to all couples. The very thing that attracts you at first ends up repelling you as time passes. The novelty wears off! Hang in there. She’s wicked funny and you’ll find joy with her again.”
The joy, as promised, hadn’t returned. Instead, he’d grown less and less tolerant and could swear she was becoming more abrasive. She was sitting with one foot tucked underneath her again—she knew that annoyed him. Any minute now, she’d take out that horrible silver toothpick and start poking around her molars. In public! Once, he’d suggested she cover her mouth in the European way, as she picked and prodded herself. She’d erupted in anger—accused him of being effete and prissy.
He glared at her as she bent over the menu hunting for errors and imagined her sitting on the john in a cloud of her own farts, searching for typos on the toilet paper labels. Sharing a bathroom with her in Europe without the civilizing benefit of exhaust fans had killed the last scrap of romantic interest he felt for her. He dreaded what was coming later. She'd order the donkey, of course, so she could dine out on the story. What havoc would the equine meat cause in her mean-spirited digestive tract? Perhaps the donkey would get his revenge. He gestured to the waiter for more wine.
Hee haw, he thought. It would be a long and noisy night at the Hilton.
