Gramp used to say he'd done everything in life twice. But even he wasn't a cordon bleu. He didn't come right out and say it, but if you cornered him and asked, he'd have to admit it. Mama' Aunt Gussie was a cordon bleu, and that hurt Gramp. He didn't like Aunt Gussie, and to have her throwing out what she knew about Péplucement d'une anguille (how to undress an eel) was too much.
“Hell's high button shoes!” Gramp would shout. “To eat and eat well is enough; to go into the gruesome details of gullet-plucking and liver-tickling is too much!”
Aunt Gussie would sip her orange-flavored brandy and nod. “The ultimate in la haute cuisine is something only a true Frenchman knows.”
“Great jumping Balzac!“ Gramp would shout. “Get the woman out of here before I stew her in beef broth and cold cream! Don't say cordon bleu in my house. It's a dirty word from now on!”
“Easy. Gramp.“ Mama would say.” Aunt Gussie was never more than a demi-pensionnaire at the school.“
“Demi-what did you say?” But everyone knew he was going to be vulgar and left the room.
My Aunt Gussie was a very young girl around 1900, with lots of money because her husband had died. She dressed like they did in the road show of The Merry Widow and went to Paris to “see art and life,” as she put it. But when she found out the money left to her was in trust and all she got was, as she said, “money to ride the horse cars,” she enrolled in the famous cooking school the Gordon Bleu in Paris. She felt that if things got real bad. she could always open a railroad diner in West Elk, Oklahoma, where her late husband had done well in oil. The idea of good French cooking in a dog wagon in West Elk, Oklahoma, never seemed to bother Aunt Gussie. She learned how to make twenty sauces, how to cut a chicken seventeen ways, and could make a potato look like something else. She did make a dandy omelette; I do remember that.
In Paris, Aunt Gussie got her poignées, the knives and tools for cooking, a fouet (a kind of wire net for whipping), tamis strainers, and a frying pan (solid iron and charcoal-black). Aunt Gussie learned how to boil a sauce four days, how to pick the dropped food off the floor and laughingly call it a coup du ballet Parisien. how to suck burned fingers, and how to drown a duckling in wine. She got real good at sticking her thumbs in stuff to taste it. and her veau de blanquette is still remembered there—if they haven't changed cats. She always claimed she got B in croquettes. and there is a dish called endives Gertrude (Aunt Gussie' legal front name) in some rare. old. forgotten cookbook. But you could never miss the framed thing on the wall: Diplôme de Cuisine Bourgeoise, Gertrude Camille (sic) Sbribheimer. So my Aunt Gussie (or Mama's aunt, to be just right about it) goes tooting down the halls of history with her name in the Cordon Bleu register.
All of this is old history now. but it wasn't in 1919 when Gramp and Mama and myself were crossing America in a Model T flivver. I remember when we came to Oklahoma. I cried because there were no buffaloes, and the only Indian we saw had become a millionaire from his oil leases and rode, not on a bucking white and black pony, but in the inside of an undertaker's hearse, which he had bought for two reasons: It had big glass walls, and he could recline on a camp cot and take it easy.
Mama was watching the road signs, and she suddenly leaned over from the back seat and said, “Gramp. West Elk is only ten miles away.”
“I don't care. Sari, if the whole elk is two blocks away.”
“Aunt Gussie lives there.”
“Poor West Cow.”
“West Elk,” corrected Mama. “We'll visit her.”
“Why?” asked Gramp. biting the neck off one of his cigars.
“Blood is thicker than water,” Mama spoke properly.
“So is one of her goddamn reeking sauces. Hell! even blood doesn't mix with it, You cat one of her dishes, and the damnlousy thing chases your blood for miles until it screams for mercy.”
Gramp and Mama had the idea that if Gramp ran his swear words together, I wouldn't understand them.
I said, “Where does the damn oldbag live out here? rsquo”
“Baby boy!” said Mama in panic, “Where did you learn such words?”
“— — — — ,” I said (I was saving the real good ones for the lost). “I got ears.”
“And your grammar!” Mania said and began to weep. “ The child is being ruined! And it's all your fault, Gramp. Oh why. why did I come and bring that innocent little mind along?”
Gramp stopped the car, looked at his glowing cigar end. and said softly, a defeated man who knew it, “ Which way is West Elk? We'll go see our dear Aunt Gussie.”
Mama wiped her tears away, sniffed air into her small perfect nose, and purred, “ You're not a had man, Gramp, just careless. Go back a block and turn left.”
“Thank you. Sari,” said Gramp calmly, and we turned for West Elk. Gramp knew all about women, and the thing he knew best was to give in when beaten. He hated tears, and he knew Mama knew it. Mama was a pretty bright character herself, and she never pushed her gains too far. She acted now as if going to West Elk was Gramp's idea and she was only going along for the view—which was mostly oil wells.
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