“Poaching eggs is time consuming. Antonietta knows this which is why she orders her eggs poached. Measuring her devotion”
Eating with Antonietta is a front row seat to some understated and therefore overstated facial expressions. Eyes downcast, to make a point. Eyebrows arching, to make a point. Face freezing eyes expanding, by far her most terrifying look particularly during breakfast, to make a point. Face freeze means something is not right. A Bloody Mary with not enough Tabasco. A person at the next table with too much forehead. “It’s too early for that” she’ll warn, index finger to lips.
But today her face is at ease as she approaches. She walks with purpose across the train platform looking for me. I wave and she looks away as if he hasn’t seen me. I grab her by the arm. She kisses my ear. I can smell her armpits.
I’ve deliberately not told Antonietta about the waitress and her drawn-on eyebrows in the cafe. Antonietta needs something to distract her from the many tables she has to choose from. The one she will want is the table for 6 that has a sign on it saying please keep this table free for groups of 6. Something about elbow room but I know it’s about seeing how far the proprietor will go to please her. She swings around surveying the cafe’s table arrangement. Finger waves lazily toward a few tables as if consulting on where I’d like to sit but we both know it’s entirely up to her.
Relationships come easy to Antonietta. Her tumbling black curls, strong nose and lips convince potential suitors of her fertility. She dates them, makes them laugh and announces that they are going out. It’s that simple. It’s the next part where she struggles. Good at wooing, hopeless at doing. She doesn’t seem to notice the pattern. Each new relationship she is convinced of its longevity and the person’s ability to overlook her option paralysis. I enjoy watching her express absolute certainty about the new union. If her eyes are wild while pontificating, I tend to say “that’s nice darling” and change the subject because she’s trying too hard to convince me and therefore herself. But this one, apparently, was different.
We choose a table near the kitchen which will have to do. She registers her disappointment at not getting the best table with downcast eyes. Chairs scrape under the table. We sit.
“I’ve met someone”.
I look down at my lap and then up again, it’s how we nod Antonietta and I, with our eyes.
“You know the one at the gym. The one I never told you about? We’ve been all eyes across the treadmill for months. He’s not the type I’d normally go for. He saw me at my worst after step class and still kept eye contact. It could of been shock but it looked like puppy eyes. Yes puppy eyes doll. I go straight up and grab him by the arm and I say you looking at me with pity or desire? He laughs, head back, I could see his molars. All his own teeth still. He is shorter than me too by a few inches so all credit to him for still wanting a piece of me all sweaty and swollen. He has a lovely pad in Covent Garden, small but tastefully furnished although the lounge suite has to go. Two leather sofas facing each other, almost kissing. The lounge room is so small. Why would anyone buy two huge sofas for such a tiny space? He’s tapping away on e-Bay as we speak sourcing an L-shaped lounge, you know one that seats three but the third person always feels unwelcome and eventually takes the beanbag, one of those”
Antonietta has just described my lounge room, killing two birds with one insult. She paints an ideal picture of love in its infancy but peppers it lightly with disdain usually in regard to poor taste in shoes or ill-conceived upholstery, this time it’s an over-sized sofa.
“Be happy for me and try not to remind me of my hopeless track record”.
The waitress pushes up against the table and whips out her order book.
“Hello there what can I get you two”
Antonietta moves her eyes toward the waitresses’ painted fingernails and then upwards toward her eyebrows. She’s a lot of face. Antonietta informs her she hasn’t had the chance to peruse the menu. The waitress smiles politely and returns behind the counter. She brings her back with fingers in the air, twinkling.
“I’ll have the Full English breakfast 1”
The waitress scribbles something down, probably ‘high maintenance bitch table 4’. I wait to place my order knowing full well amendments are soon to come.
“Do you poach the eggs? Is this an egg poaching kind of place?” she asks. She lets her head fall, it could be a nod or heavy regret. Poaching eggs is time consuming. Antonietta knows this which is why she orders her eggs poached. Measuring her devotion. She compares every food giver to her mother. She would die for her if it meant getting her eggs right. Italian eggs, we all know, are the ones that require the most devotion. I think to myself “I hope this new one can cook” and realise I’ve said it out loud and to her face.
Antonietta’s grandfather on her mother’s side was born in the Reggio Calabria in the south of Italy and was made a prisoner of war in Australia in 1946. Antonietta’s grandfather on her fathers’ side had emigrated from Beijing to find gold in the 1850’s. Two generations later Antonietta’s parents meet in Canberra in 1950’s and began selling Italian and Chinese groceries off the back of truck to local immigrant communities. This merged into a deli empire by the 1970’s and the Hua Camini fine foods brand was born. Antonietta watched her mother work 18 hours days and chose not to follow in her footsteps. Instead her father’s traits expanded into a personality terrified of commitment, refusing to ever lay her hat. London kept her interest, the longest of any place. Perhaps because of her love of the Full English. It was its elements and their endless possible combinations that appealed to Antonietta not the breakfast as a whole. Full English was the lone culinary emblem of English culture and Antonietta enjoyed rearranging its elements to subvert the tradition and to leverage the claustrophobia she was feeling being stuck in one place.
‘You’ve got massive bags under your eyes’ Antonietta tells me. I try to disarm her assault by owning my misfortune.
‘Yes it’s the lack of sunshine’.
We discuss eye cream and its correct application. It’s the ring finger and a light tapping on the bone ridge under the eyes. I wonder how different the ring finger is to the other fingers. Antonietta insists the ring finger is the only finger to use. The big old mangled index finger just won’t do.
‘It’s my liver, my destructive 20s are finally catching up with me’. I scratch my nose for way too long. I can see a ‘no’ emerging from her lips. Dead pan eyes mean a ‘no’ is coming. Before it falls I try this.
‘It’s all the alcohol I’ve been drinking’.
At first this seems to fit with his understanding of my vices because she nods but nods under sufferance. Then emerging from her crooked lips comes this.
‘No doll you’re just getting older’.
I try to own this assault too.
‘I love getting older; misheard conversations on the dance floor and their tragic consequences are replaced by fluid exchanges over dinner tables where every word is understood’.
I make a good point even though I know the consequences of conversations without the muffling of loud music and mind-bending substances can be just as tragic.
The waitress parks herself at our table but looks as if she’s broken down and we were the closest berth. Antonietta gathers her up in her big brown eyes, she’s not going to reverse out easily. ‘All Day English Breakfast, hold the sausages, hold the bacon, hold the beans and the toast. No actually I will have toast but wholemeal but hold the butter. Beans but on their own and eggs runny but not undercooked’. She glares but not for long and repeats the order. Antonietta lets her through to the next stage. I breathe out.
‘All Day English Breakfast, hold the sausage’ I say and smile apologetically.
I always make it better. Model customer. I’d serve them if they asked and still pay for my breakfast. I’m proud of my empathy. I’ve waited at bars for hours while the bar girl ignores me. She must be busy…twirling her hair and staring into space. I’ll fix my own drink. It’s the only English thing about me; I don’t like to make a fuss in restaurants, and I respect the queue. Both are signs of a civilised society, except no one gets the service they want even after queuing for it.
When breakfast arrives we scratch our receding hairlines in disbelief. How does a café as makeshift as Bella on St James Street in Brighton serve up such posh eggs. ‘Italians’ Antonietta says. ‘They do simple food better than anyone’. This is undisputed. Not while dining with an Italian anyway. An Italian whose mother allegedly does the best breakfast in the world. Every Italian will tell you their mother does the best breakfast in the world but something tells me Antonietta’s mother does. Stalwarts come in a suite he tells me. Eggs scrambled, poached, fried, boiled. Bacon piled high, crispy, lean. Toast brown, white, multigrain, rye. Orange juice freshly squeezed. Coffee full, rich, never bitter. All this on 4 hours sleep and a fist full of Valium. Perfection takes its toll.
On the way to lunch at the Pier we stop by TK Maxx. I try on a pair of jeans, one leg is flared the other tapered, stonewashed around the crutch but nowhere else. Antonietta fingers through racks of XXL designer jackets and looks like a crack head in a legal high shop, keen but suspicious. Piled up high with this year’s fashion at last years prices. Like KFC, TK Maxx is a guilty pleasure, each purchase you quietly regret when parading down Old Crompton Street. Because gays know.
At the Pier we inhale 4 donuts from the home of donuts in Brighton Doughlicious Doughnuts, at the entrance of the Pier. Antonietta objects to the minimum purchase of 4 but I assure her I can eat 3, if I have to. Mustn’t grumble. The good people at Doughlicious Doughnuts know what’s best for us. A few minutes of negotiations and I’m sure Antonietta could have managed to purchase a single donut but I couldn’t have stood the embarrassing clash of logic.
We watch the sun’s dying rays through the burnt wood of the old Pier then slowly stroll toward dinner at Sam’s in Kemp Town village. Sam’s is always a warm, homely experience. English cuisine at its most nourishing. I plan to order duck. Sam Metcalfe, owner and head chef, is so consistently good with duck I don’t care how it comes. I draw the line at feathers but with the right sauce maybe. Antonietta has a problem with the waitress. Too much eyeliner puts her off her food. In a husky voice she welcomes us. Antonietta’s face relaxes slightly, a husky voice usually means a fellow sister from the battlefield of single life and 3 day benders. She forgives her for the eyeliner. I breathe out. Antonietta’s finger, well limbered by the racks at TK Maxx, drags down the menu. It’s fills my heart with a feeling not unlike watching someone drag a finger nail down a blackboard.
‘Tell me about the fish’
‘I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask the kitchen’
Sharp intake of breath. Antonietta does tumble weed eyes. The waitress jets off toward the kitchen. I hold the endless space with an extended grimace. She returns but at a slow pace.
‘It’s cod’
Disappointment cements in every crevice of Antonietta’s 50 something face.
‘With creamed peas, leeks and something else’
Shrugs.
I laugh, Antonietta laughs, we all laugh. Genius. She knew the moment she saw Antonietta‘s judgmental eyes meander into the restaurant she was not going to win this one so she was trying nonchalance on for size.
‘I’ll have the steak then. Medium rare. Is your rare rare or actually medium or is your medium medium or actually rare?’
The waitress blows her eyes wide open. She archers one eyebrow at me as if to say ‘who is this guy’.
‘I’ll serve it and you tell me’
I laugh, Antonietta laughs, she jets off. Antonietta thumbs the air in her direction.
‘She’s good’
We live to eat another meal. For now.
Dessert is another frontier; plenty of choice and scope for Antonietta to prove once again that no one is as servile as her mother. I raise my hand to order tap water. No one notices. I lower it and decide I’m not really thirsty.