Tender at the Bone Read Online Free Page A

black hair, and a deeply wrinkled face. She smelled like starch, lemons, and if she was baking, cinnamon as well.
    I loved helping her, loved feeling the fresh buttery pastry beneath my hands, loved the clean way the core came out of the apples. I loved carefully wrapping each apple in a square of pastry and pinching the top shut, just so. We’d arrange the dumplings on a baking sheet, Alice would put them in the oven, and we’d both go into the living room to watch The Perry Como Show . This was a big thrill too; my parents didn’t own a television.
    Alice always left as soon as the show was over. Then Aunt Birdie and I ate whatever she had left simmering on the stove for supper.
    On Saturday mornings we ate the remaining apple dumplings. We brushed our teeth. We made our beds. And then we went into the kitchen to make potato salad for my father. It was the only thing Aunt Birdie ever cooked. “Alice is the cook in our family,” she said.
    My mother would have pointed out that Alice was not really in Aunt Birdie’s family. She did not consider herself a particularly prejudiced person and she often pointed out that she and Dad were married by a black minister. “He was the husband of Dorothy Maynor, the singer,” she’d go on, bragging about the beautiful music. But I had noticed that, with the exception of celebrities, Mom’s world was entirely white and that she referred to whichever brown-skinned women happened to be cleaning our house as “the girl.” Dad was different: he was totally without prejudice, a fact he attributed to having been brought up in Germany. He understood Alice’s position perfectly.
    And so each time Aunt Birdie handed him the jar of potato salad he would fold his tall frame until he could reach her cheek, kiss it, and say gently, “Alice is a fabulous cook. But you make the world’s best potato salad.”
    AUNT BIRDIE’S
POTATO SALAD
3 pounds small potatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon sugar
2 onions, sliced
⅓ cup vegetable oil
½ cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons water
    Boil potatoes for 15 to 20 minutes until just tender. Drain and let cool slightly. Peel and slice into even rounds .
    Season with salt, pepper, and sugar. Add onions. Add oil and mix gently .
    Dilute vinegar with water and bring to a boil. Add to potato mixture while hot and mix well .
    Serves 6 to 8 .
    ALICE’S APPLE DUMPLINGS
WITH HARD SAUCE
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cups shortening
¼ cup ice water
5 apples, peeled and cored
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter
    Mix flour with salt. Cut in shortening with two knives until the shortening is the size of peas. Add water slowly until you can gather the dough into a ball with a fork .
    Roll out dough and cut into 5 squares. Put an apple in the center of each square .
    Mix sugar and cinnamon. Fill the center of each apple with the sugar mixture. Put a dab of butter on top of each. Bring pastry up around the apple to make a package, dabbing edges with a bit of water if necessary to seal. Chill 30 minutes .
    Preheat oven to 350° .
    Bake for about 40 minutes, or until apples are tender. Serve warm with hard sauce. Serves 5 .
    HARD SAUCE
¾ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1½ cups sugar
Dash of salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
    Cream the butter until soft. Gradually add sugar and salt until creamy and light. Add vanilla and chill .
    Makes about 1 cup .

When I was six my parents went to Europe for a month. As usual, it was my mother’s idea. I think that even then I knew that my father was not eager to leave me for such a long time, but that he didn’t know how to say so to my mother. Especially when she had gone to the trouble of arranging for the Sol Hurok of Cleveland to come and care for me.
    That was her mother, the impresario. “You’ll have a wonderful time with Nanny,” Mom assured me, taking me around the apartment and pointing out all the signed pictures of my grandmother’s famous friends. “You’ll meet Menuhin and