The Way to Peel an Apple

The Way to Peel an Apple

Step 1. Wash your hands.

Janus plucked the stem like a performance, a way to mourn publicly, the only way. This was to be similar to the way a gust of wind closes a door when you are watching it happening. And while it takes 13 milliseconds for a door to slam, roughly 18 mph if it hits the door like a coliseum. And you're thinking, This is happening. This door slamming apple peeling business. She practiced this way yesterday and the day before. She wanted perfection for Thanksgiving dinner next week. Janus stood at the kitchen sink, bent, elbows resting on the basin, palms cupping her eyes, ring and middle finger parted slightly to watch the stem being pushed by the stream down the garbage disposal.

Step 1.5. Choose your instrument.

Her husband committed suicide a year earlier, the day before Thanksgiving. He was Riche Rough, a failed non-fiction writer who published under R.R. He expected life owed him something, that his story was something to be told. The truth was Riche grew up on the east side of Chicago in an upper crest suburb with his step mother. He blamed his inability to fully love on his mother, who drove off one night when he was 12, not to return until his 30^th birthday, in which she asked for money to reduce the appearance of varicose veins. Had they, mother and step mother done something innately wrong? Gave him one less green bean, beat him with a switch, and worked till dawn? Whatever it was, it was their fault. He swore he could not fully, as he kept saying that when he got drunk and desolate, the word fully, he could not fully love. Janus would slice his throat in her mind when he would act like this. He was charming at one point, early in their relationship, when he would shave and dab cologne to meet her at First Place, a dingy delicatessen, known for their truffle pate, wet salads, and an ostentatious parmigiana menu; eggplant, tofu, veal, sweet potato, chicken, meatball, asparagus. Riche always ordered a plan American style bologna on white bread and she never asked why try something new. She would try a paring knife today; wondering where the vegetable peeler had disappeared to.

Step 2. Hold the apple in one hand and the knife in the other. Starting at the top, cut until you're just below the skin.

Janus moved this way around the couch. Careful, almost like a dance holding the broken remnants of her knickknacks on a lap tray, the Victorian cherry curio cabinet laying defeated at her side, corners splayed, exposing carpenters glue. She couldn't recall what events lead her to this moment. They just played over in her mind without recognition, a winding of cassette tape, slow and numb with a fingernail in the reel holes; all 565 feet of it, like a marquee, the letters backing up 1.75 inches a second without the second. She saw herself pushing the curio over, watching the glass collide with the end table and knocking off the lamp.  She moved back into the kitchen, sliding her lap tray of knickknacks; everything hot air balloon: patches and pins, tins, decals, blown glass miniature replicas, ornaments, a 3D crystal sculpture, and a mug. All the breakables, broken, the mug in fifths. She picked through the broken glass alright, valeting one sentiment over the other. Nicking herself in the process, Janus brought her mouth to her wound, suckled the glass shard, stubborn just below the skin.

Step 3. Twirl the apple until you've cut away all the skin from top to bottom.

The time had come; Thanksgiving. The guests were arriving in pairs. The formalities (Hi. Hi. How are you? Good, how are you? Good. glad to be here. Glad of you to make it.), the removal of light jackets and scarves, the doorway greetings of  pumpkin bars, chocolate tarts, pecan pie, roll cake, and cream cheese Napoleons. But, nothing apple. This was, to Janus's surprise, a relief. She had managed to produce a perfect apple pie. This was the first year without Riche, and there were tight lipped sentiments, extended condolences. She took them gracefully. But the sayings of heartache wasn't what she was interested in. She wanted to make something so sad into a pie you could touch and tighten; its doughy crisp cross top perfectly aligned and symmetrical, a way to identify intangibility.  Eat this apple pie, Janus thought, eat with your fingers if you like, scoop the insides out till there is nothing left, eat it all, eat all of me.