Frost's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

By early afternoon Frost had the stock going. Bones roasted first, then a slow simmer with the onion skins and cheese rind. The kitchen smelled close to right. But right was not enough. His grandmother had finished her soup with one last step, and he could not remember what it was. He stood over the pot with a wooden spoon and tasted. The broth was clean. It was also hollow. The retired cook would sit down in five hours and know the difference in one sip. He tried to picture his grandmother at her stove. He saw her hands, the chipped enamel pot, the marsh green going in last. He did not see the finish. He wrote three guesses on a napkin. A spoon of vinegar. A knob of butter whisked in cold. A slice of the smoked jowl grated over the top like a hard cheese. Each one was plausible. Each one would lock the dish into a shape he could not undo. He pulled a small pan down and ladled three tastes. He added vinegar to the first. Butter to the second. Grated jowl over the third. He tasted them in order. The vinegar sharpened the broth but pushed the grief out of it. The butter rounded the edges into something a restaurant would serve. The jowl was closer, smokier, but still not the taste that had made a nine-year-old cry. He set the spoon down. He was guessing. Guessing would give the retired cook a hollow bowl, and she had asked him for the opposite. He walked out to the small yard behind the kitchen to breathe. A warty green frog sat on the step, mottled and still, watching him the way the one in the swamp had. He remembered the wet ditch behind his grandmother's house. He remembered her walking back from it with the green bundle wet in her apron, and he remembered what she did next. She had poured the ditch water. A half-cup of the cloudy water the greens had soaked in. Not stock. Not wine. The water that held the bitter iron of the plant itself. She stirred it in at the end and covered the pot. Frost went back inside. He lifted the bowl where his marsh greens had been rinsing and looked at the murky liquid at the bottom. He measured half a cup and stirred it into the pot. He covered it and waited two minutes. Then he tasted. The broth held. It tasted of the ground the plant grew from, of rain and cold mornings, of something a person could not fake. He set the spoon on the counter. The soup was ready. In four hours the retired cook would sit at his table, and he would find out whether the truth of a memory was enough to move someone who was not in it.