My second sardine, with Camembert and Girabaldi biscuit. I also had a glass of milk.
Sardines
When I was a little boy, my father would sometimes open a pack of Saltines and a tin or sardines packed in mustard, and we would have a little snack. I remember sitting in the dining room with my brother Michael — it must have been before Nicholas was born — and my father sitting between us, picking though the yellowed fish‐flesh with a knife and fork to remove the spine. He would pile a few little scraps of fish onto waiting Saltines and hand them to us, while we wrinkled our noses at the fishy smell the mustard could not quite hide. I don’t remember whether I liked the taste of it or not, but the memory is strongly and strangely positive, like many of the memories from that time in my life. The allure of this memory in particular and the distillations it holds of the characters of my father and brother, and even of the chairs and table, the yellow light, the three doorways which seal off the room in my recollection, the early dark of winter evenings, and, most of all, of sardines themselves, were given strength by the unity that the privileged membership in those meals brought us.
The three of us ate those meals alone because my mother could not and cannot stand the smell and sight of fish, let alone the taste of it. And out of no desire to exclude her, but only to take advantage of her absence, we ate those tins of sardines. On other nights when she was away we might share fried catfish nuggets, but the simple, unprepared nature of those sardine and cracker snacks meant that we all sat down to eat together, huddled at the table around the little tin dish of fish. The beautiful stillness and potency of that memory is the modern beneficiary of that closeness.
Two weeks ago I ended up visiting the grocery store by myself — a premature visit necessary because I had eaten the last of the bread. Like my father, I married a woman who does not like fish, so that it was only in her absence that I contemplated buying a tin of sardines. They called to me as I walked the aisles, and when I left the store, I had a little blue tin of sardines in the bottom of my bag.
They languished in their tin for two more weeks. Somewhere on the way home, their call had died, and besides, I had no crackers. But today, at a little before 1 PM, I peeled back the little tin lid and laid bare their three glistening silver bodies.
I was not able to find sardines packed in mustard, but only in brine, oil, or water. Of these three I had chosen brine as the closest to mustard and as the least likely to be unpalatable. Without the mustard I found the sight of the fish incongruously vivid compared to memory. Sardines are tinned without head, tails, or fins, but they are still unmistakably the dead bodies of fish. I poured off some of the brine into a bowl and mixed it with a little bit of mustard powder. I toasted the last of this week’s bread, and poured the mustard liquid over the top. I cut a few slices of Camembert and gingerly lifted out one of the three sardines onto the plate.
As I cut into the fish, it was immediately apparent that I had botched the job. By having cut into it the way it lay naturally — on its side — I had rendered it almost impossible to remove the spine in one piece. I succeeded in removing it in six or seven, and I ate it with the nagging dread that I would swallow a vertebra, or, worse yet, feel it crunch grainily between my teeth — the one blot on my otherwise happy memory. I managed to avoid this calamity, though a few pieces stuck awkwardly in my throat at the thought. I helped them down with my toast soaped in mustard, and returned to the kitchen to fetch a second fish.
This second fish posed a bit of a problem: when I had gathered the meal, I had only planned to eat one and to eat the last of the bread more slowly. But I was still hungry and liked the sardine better than I thought I would. I lifted the second out onto my plate and looked around for something to eat with it. There remained only two bready options at my disposal — two hot dog rolls which we were saving for meatball subs and a half‐eaten package of Garibaldi biscuits, long wafers the thickness of graham crackers, but softer, studded with tart, crushed currants, and creased for breaking. About two fifths of one of these latter had been eaten, so I took the remaining part, added a few more slices of Camembert, and poured a glass of milk. In this fashion, I disposed of the remaining sardine in short order.
When I told Kara about my lunch she said, “That sounds horrible.”