My momma would always tell me, when I was young, that the quickest way to a man's heart was through his stomach. And she wasn't wrong! In the south county, she was the blue ribbon winner for her apple pie and cheddar scones. Her secret ingredient raspberry jam was the talk of the land and she would take that secret ingredient with her to her grave. Men would fall in line to try her food at the county fair. And when she was young, she lured my father in from his father's fields with wafts of sweet corn bread, buttered herb potatoes, and dripping pot roast. She kept the other girls away by feeding him sugary tray bakes and pan fried delights. There were other bits too - personality and compatibility and love and such - but in the end, she won her place in his heart, fair and square. All through her cooking.
Yes, my momma always said that the stomach is the way to go.
So over the years of my childhood, I tried my hand in the kitchen. During the week, when I came home from school, I would wander into the kitchen to watch my momma cook. She would stir a pot of beans and trim the fat off a hunk of beef while quietly telling me all that she was doing. Then she'd bring me forward to the cutting board and, with her hands over my smaller ones wrapped around the big knife handle, she would guide me through the layers of meat.
"You see Cassie? It's all about knowing where you are in relation to what you want. You want to avoid the bones if you can, leaving them on will make the meat taste richer. But you'll want to get some of this fat and gristle out of the way, else it'll get stuck in your teeth." She'd say, as she brought the knife curving around the white tendon, stripping it away. "Cut against the grain, it'll make the meat more tender when you bite into it."
And onward she would talk and guide and teach until dinner was ready and served.
Most days, this was my happy place. As I grew to be more experienced and needed less guiding, my momma and I would fall into an easy habit of whistling while we worked. Little words were needed between us as we moved in harmony, stirring sauces and flipping vegetables. Soon enough, my momma began to trust me with more and more of her recipes. She would grin as she would pull out a frying pan and begin to explain how this particular recipe for fried chicken landed my great grandmama her husband seventy years ago. Then she would wink at me while mentioning that maybe I ought to give the recipe a try next month at a dinner party my friend was hosting.
"Mama!" I would laugh, "I don't need a man right now, best save this chicken for when the right one comes along."
"Well there's nothing a good meal can't fix Cassie, you remember that."
Now, I never got to be as good as she was, but I think I could come mighty close.
As the years passed on, so too did my father, which eventually brought me back home to care for my momma once she took a tumble down the stairs and lay in the dark for three hours with no one else in the house to help her. I had no man in school or in the handful of years after graduating, so now, when I moved home after my momma was cleared from the hospital, I found stacks of casseroles and pies across our kitchen counter with an order from my momma that I pay little Johnny a visit up the road, and that I best bring a pecan pie with me else I look like a fool showing up empty handed and my momma didn't raise no fool.
It seems that in the absence of my father and despite her still healing left leg, she was putting all her efforts into fixing up her only daughter up with a husband.
So, in obligation, I walked up the road to Johnny Beakerman's house with a plateful of pecan pie to greet the man my momma wanted to pass me off to. He used to be a spindly little pig nosed boy with straw-like hair and crooked teeth. On the school bus he would snatch my lunches away from me and rifle through them until he got to the little package of dessert my momma would wrap, which he would pocket before throwing the rest of it back to me. He was a horrid boy really, but it had been years since I had seen him, as I had not been home for long since high school nine years ago.
If my momma was right - and she often was - then maybe some pie would sweeten him up a bit.
"Well if it isn't little Cassie Sinclair, finally home!" A loud booming voice answered my knock on the door with a greeting and a hug, nearly knocking the pie plate from my hands. "Let me get a look at you. Whoo whee! You haven't changed a bit! Still so short and freckly, and why you still wearin' your hair in braids?" he teased, clutching my shoulders to look me up and down, a large goofy grin spreading across his face.
I shoved the pie at him. "Well it seems you haven't changed either Johnny, still as mean spirited as always."
He easily took the plate in his hands and moved back to let me through. We bickered as I followed him into the kitchen, some old argument that we somehow still remembered nearly a decade after high school that seemed easy enough to fall back into despite the fact that we were grown adults. But it seemed that momma's advice proved true, because as we sliced up her award winning pecan pie, we relaxed into a conversation more suited to adults that hadn't seen each other in years, catching up on where we were at in our lives.
He had changed of course. After that initial meeting at the doorway, I was able to get a better look at him over his plate of pie at the counter. He still had his straw hair, but his pig nose had thinned out to better suit his slim face, and somewhere along the way he had worn braces because his teeth were no longer crooked, even if they did have bits of pecan now stuck in them as he spoke about his plans for the family orchard out back now that he was the only one left, with his parents passed on several years back and his younger sister shacking up with some stranger out east.
When I went home that night to help momma up the stairs to her room, I told her that she'd have to wait a week to get her pie plate back on account of the fact that Johnny was going to take me out on Friday for a date and that he'd return it when he picked me up then. She went to sleep that night grinning and listing all the different desserts I could make for when he arrived.
So it was that the following Thursday evening saw me up to my elbows in flour as I attempted to make a batch of cheddar and chive biscuits. It seems that despite the countless lessons growing up and the same blood running in my veins, I hadn't quite mastered my momma's art of baking. The result was lumpy bits of some vaguely biscuit thing on a tray that I wrapped in towel for Johnny. I should've made a roast - I'm an expert at bringing a hunk of meat to glistening juicy perfection to the table - but Johnny and I were going out to eat and momma had insisted I make a snack anyway.
My momma was no help after that first pie.
"Now I thought I taught you how to make a proper biscuit!" my momma said when she saw the lumpy packet on the counter.
"I know momma, I'm sorry, I just can't seem to get biscuits right." I said as I shoved the biscuits further to the side. Maybe I'd conveniently forget them and instead grab something momma would inevitably end up making.
"Uh uh, if you can't cook then you are never gonna find yourself a man." momma said, crossing her arms and staring me down. "You give him perfection or you give him nothin'."
Johnny picked me up at 6:30 on the dot that Friday and I gave him nothin'.
Momma was not pleased.
The date went well however, despite the lack of food on my end, and on the next one I redeemed myself and was able to present Johnny with a home cooked meal of fried catfish and collard greens with crispy fries on the side.
Momma gave me her approval on that one.
As we grew closer, momma would suggest more and more of her classic "man catchin' recipes" to try on Johnny. Cornbread and barbecue chicken skewers; sandwiches piled high layered with lettuce, tomatoes, mustard, onions, mayo, and five different kinds of deli meat; and of course my great grandmama's fried chicken. I swore I thought I saw my momma counting out days to herself one day, as if to assure herself that an engagement was on the horizon.
Weeks turned into months which turned into years. It seemed that despite my momma's saying, our relationship was everything but quick. Oh I kept him fed well enough, but the longer I went without a ring on my finger, the more my momma began to worry about my future. And that worry soon began to seep into me, spreading like spilled wine across a tablecloth, doubt that Johnny was truly committed to me after nearly four years of dating. Neither of us were getting any younger. We had established our careers, we had spoken about babies, we had discussed growing old together. So where was the ring?
But before a proposal could be made, my momma suddenly fell sick. Cancer had crept into her brain it seemed, and lay dormant for years before surging forward to strike her down now. So I traveled with her to seek out specialists and doctors that could possibly help. We stayed on the road, bouncing across the country to different research and treatment centers in the hope that we could steal a few more years back.
One night, as my momma lay in bed, I held her hand and traced the veins along the back. She had grown thin from all of the chemo and her hands seemed so small in mine now, so different from when I was young and hers used to cover my own. I bumped along the calluses on the the side of her fingers from years of mixing batter and chopping ingredients. All these years together, and it was always cooking that had brought us together.
She stirred from under my gentle petting and lifted her head to meet my eyes. "I love you Cassie, you know that right? I'll always be proud of my little girl," she whispered. "There's nothing a good meal can't fix, remember, and you keep cooking and I'll be there with you."
I leaned forward and pressed my lips against her sweaty forehead. "I know momma," I choked out, "I love you too."
And with a quiet sigh, my momma passed on.
It was a week or so after my momma's funeral that I remembered that I had a boyfriend.
I pulled myself together and managed to also pull together a fresh cherry pie. It seemed that despite the abundance of casseroles from generous and sympathetic neighbors, I needed to get my hands busy before going to see my boyfriend after almost five months of absence.
I walked the familiar path up the road to Johnny's house with the pie plate in my hands, mulling over what I would say to him. Sorry Johnny, but my momma got sick and I just didn't have time to call or text when we were going from one treatment to the next, but here's a pie to maybe make things all better?
His kitchen light was on when I approached the house, so I let myself in through the back door.
"Johnny? I'm so sorry I didn't come any sooner, I was gonna call but my momma -" I stopped in my tracks at the entrance to his kitchen.
Sprawled across the counter was Johnny, shirtless and panting with his eyes closed as Susie from sophomore year geometry class licked her way up his neck like she was devouring an ice cream cone in July.
I stood frozen, the pie outstretched in my hands as I processed the scene in front of me. But before I could do anything, Susie wrenched her head up with a shriek as she saw me standing in the doorway.
"Johnny!"
He flung himself up and spun around to face me, his eyes comically wide - if there was any comedy to be had in this situation - and his neck still glistening from Susie's tongue. Shoving her behind him, he took several steps forward towards me, his hands splayed out in a placating gesture.
"Cassie, I can -"
"Stop." I cut him off with a sharp shake of my head as I thunked the plate on the counter close to me by the sink and the knife stand. I stared at the surface of the pie, refusing to look at him, instead staring at the little hearts I had shaped into the crust. There was a little bit of cherry juice on one of them that had leaked through, staining the heart red, weeping as if it had been stabbed. Ironic now as I felt my own heart shudder painfully in my chest and a shaky laugh burst hysterically out of my mouth.
There was a crashing of a screen door and my mind dimly realized that Susie had fled out the back door past me.
I turned to face Johnny, still laughing.
Later, when I returned home, I turned the oven on. I needed to cook something. Anything to get my mind off of Johnny's betrayal. There's nothing a good meal can't fix.
I had meat on hand, so I prepared vegetables and potatoes in a roasting pan. My momma's voice carried through my head as I trimmed the fat and the gristle down.
The quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
Another laugh bubbled out of me at my momma's oft mentioned advice. Well, my cooking had mattered little in the end; there was nothing quick about my relationship with Johnny and it all ended in disaster anyway.
As the roasting pan went into the oven, I sliced up a piece of my cherry pie. Nothing mattered anymore so why not have some dessert before dinner? I felt the cherry juice run down my chin but I absentmindedly wiped it off, letting it stain my hands and my shirt. I was too busy watching the oven, making sure nothing burned.
The timer soon went off and I piled my plate high. The meat was nice and juicy, perfectly rare like I always liked it. Momma would be proud of me at this culinary perfection. It seemed that there was a silver lining to this awful night. I had learned something.
I had learned that my momma was right. There's nothing a good meal can't fix.
I had learned that my momma was wrong. The quickest way to a man's heart was not through his stomach.
The quickest way to a man's heart was through his fourth and fifth ribs.
And oh, was his heart just absolutely delicious.
This was inspired by a quote from Sarah J. Mass in A Court of Misty and Fury. I found the quote on Pinterest when I was searching for new story prompts and this was born from it.
The quickest way to a man's heart, is through his fourth and fifth ribs. - Sarah J. Mass
Hope you enjoyed it!
:) Kathryn
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