We were stirring the cheese sauce and singing Joni Mitchell when Izzy asked all the questions I’d had about the song.
“What is a case of you?”
“I’ve been wondering that too.”
“How do you drink someone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s about love? About drinking up love?”
“How do you drink up love?”
“Hold the noodle pan still.” I poured the cheese sauce over the noodles while Izzy held the pan on either side. She didn’t really need to do that, the pan wasn’t about to move, but I liked to make her feel like she was involved in every step.
“Could you drink a case of me?”
“Yes! I love you so much, I could drink a case of you.” I handed Izzy the bowl of bread crumb mix we had prepared earlier. She sprinkled it over the mac and cheese slowly, as if the pacing were important. When the pan was covered, she dumped the remainder in the middle so there was a small hill of crumbs. I smoothed the hill out with my hand. Then Izzy put her hand over what I had smoothed and smoothed it again. My mother didn’t believe in touching the food you were preparing—all contact was made through a third party: knife, fork, spatula, spoon. Even when making a pie crust, my mother pressed it into the pan using two shallow spoons. But since I’d been cooking with Izzy, I’d found that to put your hands in the food, to touch, move, tear, bend, and sprinkle ingredients straight from your fingers, gave you a better sense of what you were doing, and made the doing more effective. It might have been my imagination, but I thought the food I prepared tasted better when my hands had been in it. My fingers knew things a spoon or spatula couldn’t.
After dinner, Jimmy got out his guitar while Izzy and I served vanilla ice cream on Nilla Wafers with three marascino cherries on top. He was picking through different tunes when Dr. Cone said, “I know that one.”
“Sing it, Richard!” Sheba said. Dr. Cone rarely sang with us. He usually patted his thighs or bongoed the table and nodded with the beat.
“No, I mean I can play it on the guitar.”
Jimmy smiled and shook his head. “Doc. Come on. We’ve been here all summer and you’re just now breaking the news that you play the guitar?”
Dr. Cone smiled. “I was in a band when Bonnie and I met.”
“No way!” Sheba laughed.
“I played the guitar. And did some backup singing.”
“But you barely sing now!” Sheba seemed doubtful that Dr. Cone could ever have been in a band. It hadn’t seemed odd when Mrs. Cone told me, but as I looked at Dr. Cone now, hunched over his empty ice cream bowl, I understood why Sheba was laughing.
Mrs. Cone pushed away her ice cream, as if she were done. “I play the flute.”
“Get the guitar, Richard!” Sheba took another bite of her ice cream and Mrs. Cone pulled her bowl back and took another bite too.
“And, Bonnie, get the flute.” Jimmy kept plucking.
Dr. Cone looked at Mrs. Cone and they smiled at each other for the first time I’d seen since we’d returned from the beach. He got up from the table and returned shortly with a guitar and a small white case, which he handed to Mrs. Cone. I’d never seen the guitar in the house, which meant it had to have been in Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s bedroom closet. That was the only space in the house I had never entered.
“Wait!” Izzy ran out of the room and returned with a tambourine. She placed it on my lap.
“No, you play this. You’re good at tambourine.”
I watched Mrs. Cone assemble her flute. She finally looked relaxed and even a bit happy. Dr. Cone tried to tune his guitar, and then Jimmy put his own guitar down, walked around the table, and took Dr. Cone’s guitar from him. In about a minute he had it tuned.
“Okay. Here we go. ‘Stairway to Heaven.’” Dr. Cone started plucking on the guitar, his head bent, eyes honed in on his fingers. Jimmy was plucking the same tune, but looking at Dr. Cone. Each time Dr. Cone messed up, Jimmy said the chord, and then Dr. Cone jumped back in. Mrs. Cone picked up her flute and played along. I was surprised by how smooth and pure it sounded. Izzy picked up the tambourine, slapped it once against her thigh, and then looked up at me.
“I don’t like this song. It sounds scary.”
“Okay. Let’s clear the table.”
“I think this song is calling the witch.”
“Hmm, I don’t think so. Witches don’t like music. Not even scary music.”
I stood and started picking up dishes. Sheba had laid a rolling paper on the dining room table and was filling it with marijuana, half singing “Stairway to Heaven.” Izzy and I put all the dishes in the kitchen and then returned to the dining room to say good night to everyone. Dr. and Mrs. Cone were so into playing their music, they could barely look up to kiss Izzy. Sheba was rolling a second joint. The first one was between Jimmy’s lips.