French Onion Soup

For once, he said he would cook.

This meant one of three things.

This meant one of three things, in three very different methods.

On one level, it meant a choice of three dishes. Salmon, French onion soup, or tacos.

On another level, it meant he had a reason to pamper her.

But on the next level up, and probably the most essential, it meant he expected something. It was an opportunity. She thought what kind.

She chose French onion soup.

It wasn’t a dish she ever made. There was no real reason it wasn’t in her repertoire, which was vast and should have included it. She made many innovative and hearty soups. In fact, by the beginning of September her entire body ached for soup season. There was one spicy squash soup that was a real pain–it had to be blended, fresh butternut squash (only available at the most expensive grocer) had to be procured and chopped, which made the hands orange and raw, and only homemade croutons seemed right on top of it. Nevertheless when the first chill hit the air, her zest for stews and broths with interesting combinations–winter salad, if you will–became both palpable and physical. She made an old family recipe called sausage tortellini soup, a million variations on chili with more or less cumin and powder, a sausage lentil soup that rivaled its name at the local restaurant, a chicken orzo that her best friend literally would not allow shared with anyone but her. So she should have had French onion soup in her repertoire. There was simply no reason it wasn’t.

Therefore it seemed his signature dish, so she asked what she should buy for it. She did not ask how else to prepare for it. She did not think to ask even though she knew it meant one of three things, in three very different methods.

It was a Sunday afternoon, seemingly only a moment after a beautiful Saturday night to themselves. She looked forward to the scent that would pervade the house when the meal was simmering. She had a fetish for interesting serving and looked forward to the crockery used to brown the bread and melt the cheese. An image of merlot seemed to glide into her mind naturally as she put the ingredients away and waited for him to ask for any help.

She was glad she already had beef broth from the stroganoff she had made last week. There was no other use for it at the moment, and she hated waste. The one paper that had interested her in school was about how good housekeeping habits a hundred years ago were more than for the home–they were a model of economy. No waste, no overspending, a contribution to efficiency. Use up your broth and you’re actually a model American. Even better, add a little water to stretch it even further. Our forefathers would approve.

She heard him fold his paper and clear his throat as he rose to gather ingredients. She observed how different his kitchen ways were from hers. Where she would grab items in no particular order and often in a dash while a sauce was bubbling and needed attention, he would organize. There would be a process, a line in chronological order, a spatial arrangement that made sense. She knew whatever he used would be returned in exactly the same spot–no shoving or pushing of spices or bottles in cabinets. She knew this because she observed his kitchen habits, but also because he beat her in the same way.

He would organize. His options would be laid out in a remarkably equidistant pattern. She never understood how you could open a drawer piled with oddly shaped items and get them arranged into rows and columns that conveyed increasing intensity as well as a museum exhibit. It was disturbing to link these things in her mind–surely the kitchen was a place for creation not destruction. It was confusing to watch him line up four onions and feel reminiscence about a certain folding table that would appear in the bedroom with a red damask cloth.

Her thoughts refocused when he froze, broth in hand. It’s not enough, he said. He needed two boxes. For four onions, she wondered? She thought if he knew about the trick of adding water. She wondered back, realizing he wasn’t exactly the type that stretches a half-worn product by diluting it. It wasn’t a meticulous thing to do.

She offered to run to the store for another. On her way out, she thought which was the better plan–to go out and leave him ruminating on her mistake or to send him out and slice the onions for him while he was gone. The one part of this soup he did not like was the preparation of onions. They made him cry. She thought if she could do both the purchase and the slicing. Probably. He would likely still be arranging.

The air was silent when she got back, making the door sound particularly creaky and the dust of late afternoon sunshine a little too hazy from the breeze. She was a little nervous he did not call out, but he did not all the time call out when she got back from an errand. She called out instead, shouting how she would do the onions since it didn’t bother her eyes as much, partly because of her typically sloppy speed. He said why yes you will.

He had already planned that out, she wondered. The sudden sound of metal when she stood outside the kitchen, however, surprised her. Then she considered the three things it meant when he cooked, and she wondered yes, handcuffs might be one of them. But to slice onions you need hands. He had once enjoyed watching her prep with shackled ankles, but that didn’t seem like the third thing she knew the meal meant.

And then she saw the hook. And her collar, the leash in his hand. And she understood. It wasn’t the onions that would cause tears.

The hardest part was eating. He tightened the chain a few times while she sliced, but watching television and staying still, especially while the soup simmered and filled the house with promise, was fine. She wasn’t really that sore until dinner, when the way the hook pressed deeply into her with each spoonful carried to her mouth made her wince. The conflict between delight in fresh soup and pain delivering it from plate to tongue made him chuckle. It was all arranged.

It occurred to her that arrangement in itself was the third thing, organizing all the other methods there were three possibilities. He had arranged it such that there were all the time three meanings to any rdeclaration he made. There the making of the soup, the reason for offering to make the soup, and the expectation to be fulfilled for this exchange. Or so she had wondered.

But that wasn’t the point. Once free and soothed, she reflected. The point must be that her thoughts were being arranged, laid out, organized. She had become, she realized far later as she dried off from a hot soak, part of his method.