CLAIRE’S FOOT

It began as a somber dinner in the German Room which was a small dining hall in the Schnitzel House. We were all seated at a long table festooned with plastic European items of Christmas like chubby little jaegers aiming their blunderbusses at squirrels and rosy faced maidens hoisting hams over their golden heads as they wandered through a small black forest made from pine branches which gave a pleasant odor to table. Our hosts, Claire and Ed, were at the heads of the table standing up and telling us how pleased they were that we could all make it to our restaurant employees Christmas dinner. Then they told us what we were having for dinner and what drinks we were allowed to have (beer, but no schnapps or brandy). They also told us precisely when we’d be able to open the little presents in front of each of us.

Up to this point I had worked in a number of restaurants doing various peon jobs because it was always easy to get and get rid of those jobs. I didn’t care. I just wanted enough money to live and pursue things that were much more important to me. But it turned out that being a dishwasher at the Schnitzel House was a considerably different kind of restaurant job. It was like visiting a foreign country for a number of hours each day that I went in. The proprietors, Ed and Claire from Switzerland, were the two most conservative people I had ever met in my life and when I say conservative I mean it in every sense of the word. They did not smile unless it was an emergency. They had no social life or friends that I could discern. Once a year they would go back to Switzerland to visit relatives and ski. Otherwise they just worked and worked. Fortunately for me I happened to be a hard worker so within a month I had at least endeared myself to Ed. Claire would tolerate me but she had a strict division in her mind between the kitchen and the floor. If I even looked at one of the waitresses through the food window she would glare at me and drive me back into the depths of the kitchen.

As I said, it was like working in a foreign country. To be more accurate it was like working in a post war, recovering, poor, country where there was a shortage of everything and nothing could be wasted. When Ed had me peel an onion I was allowed to throw away the very thin first outer skin and not a bit more. If I dropped one coin like slice of a carrot on the floor I was to wash it, without using too much water, and return it to the bowl. Ed had knives that had been butcher knives thirty years ago and had been sharpened so many times that they were now tiny paring knives their metal having been sharpened off and drained down the sinks of Europe. At the beginning of the evening I was allowed to fill the pot washing sink with hot water. But that was it. No more hot water for the rest of the night. All of these things were pretty much the opposite of the way we operated in American restaurants where we wasted and threw away half of everything without thinking twice. At first it was annoying to do what Ed wanted me to but I soon noticed that the dishes and pots did get cleaned, the food got cooked and served, and things seemed to flow very smoothly in the Schnitzel House. And then I realized a strange thing. I realized that there was something satisfying about making small, simple things work well. After a shift, I would go home and make a small batch of carrots to see if I could do it like Ed did. I know it sounds a little odd but I really wanted to slice up some carrots, cook them in butter and salt and a tad of sugar, and see how good I could make them taste. Behaving like this was a pretty sharp contrast to the way I conducted the rest of my life in the house where I lived. I lived in a house full of drug takers and alcoholics that was only three houses down from the Schnitzel House. We also had a major drug dealer living there. It was a horrible group of people and I would say that their lives were about as perfectly opposite to Ed’s and Claire’s as could be. But I think I enjoyed the contrast. It was like going between two utterly different cultures that were only two minutes away from each other. Like going from a squalid hell hole to a very safe orderly place. Maybe it even reminded me of being in the Navy a little bit. It seemed like you had to do things in the Schnitzel House for the sake of doing them, maybe just to instill order into your life. It is possible that at that point in my life I needed a little dose of order.

Probably the most interesting thing to watch at the Schnitzel House was Ed and Claire interacting with the American culture to whom they served their schnitzels. For instance there was a large caribou head attached to the front gable of the place, up over Ed and Claire’s living quarters on the second floor. Every couple of months some college students would sneak up there and steal the caribou. This would drive Ed and Claire to despair. They just could not understand what kind of person would do such a thing or why. I would try to explain that it was just college kids goofing off in the middle of the night but they would shake their heads like I was telling them something impossible. The police always returned the caribou head and Ed would have me screw it into place with more elaborate and heavy screws but it didn’t matter. Sometimes I would wonder. I would think, “You’re sleeping right on the other side of the wall from the caribou head. What are you doing? What are you dreaming? How can you not notice some college kids on your roof stealing a caribou head?” And then sometimes I would imagine Ed and Claire rolling around on their bed, naked and in a pile of cash. As far as I could tell they didn’t spend a penny on anything but the restaurant. I might mention that Claire was an extremely well formed woman. Dour as could be but the kind of woman you would fall onto your knees for and lick from stem to stern. I don’t think about those kinds of things very often. Reading and writing about sex bores me something awful so the fact that I’m writing what I just wrote about Claire should tell you something.

I could never quite figure out how old Ed was. He looked like he was about forty but then he’d tell me about how he used to cook on a coal stove back in the fifties somewhere in Europe. He wasn’t really a talker though. He always had a furrow on his brow and always seemed to be looking down on something so he did not invite conversation. He was polite but curt. Talking to Claire was out of the question. She had nothing to say to me except, “Don’t look at my waitresses,” which she said to me without using words. I wonder what she would have thought if she’d known that I often was looking at her and not necessarily the waitresses. Occasionally I would have to go up into their living quarters for some reason I cannot remember and under circumstances I cannot imagine. Ed would be sitting in an easy chair smoking a pipe and reading a paper through his antique bifocals while Claire would be tidying up the kitchen. Everything was in perfect order up there. The shades were always drawn and it was very quite. In their living quarters you felt like you were specifically cut off from America, that outside the window was the indifferent mess of jolly play and inside was the old order of Europe quietly withering away. It was interesting that Ed and Claire made it clear that they weren’t going to assimilate into American culture. They were perfectly successful inside their bubble but when they brushed against the overwhelming world around them it always tore off a little more and left them a little weaker. I remember thinking that they were were a classic case of the old biological imperative “adapt or die.” They were certainly going to die. But not without a fight.

One day, about a month before our Christmas party, Ed told me that his nephew was going to be coming over for a visit. He was coming from Switzerland and would be working with me in the back of the kitchen. I immediately had this idea that I would probably be meeting the ultra goob of Europe, a mini Ed who might be terrified of my American ways. I was looking forward to his arrival thinking that it would liven up the back of the kitchen for me. Well, when the dude arrived it took him about twenty four hours to adapt to American culture. He stole Ed and Claire’s car and drove down to Florida to party at Miami beach and do some sunbathing. He also stole some cash from them. I’ll never forget that day. I came in for my shift and asked Ed, “Where’s Hank?” whom I hadn’t even met yet.
Very matter of factly Ed replied, “He stole our car and some money and went to Florida. He drove all night and called us when he got down there. We’re very disappointed in him.”

I almost laughed right in Ed’s face. God, it was so perfect. I wondered if Hank got off the plane in D.C. and said to himself, “Hell yes I can be an American! ” It was like the wild, criminal, irresponsible, aspects of America attacked him like antibodies the second his foot hit the tarmac. Well, that was what Ed and Claire thought at least. They failed to get him into their bubble quickly enough and he blew away to Florida. After the initial humor of Hank’s prank subsided in my head I began to feel a little sorry for Ed and Claire. They had to rent a car in order to buy supplies for the restaurant. And they had to give me a raise because I was starting to find other things I wanted to do. I was definitely the best paid dishwasher in Charlottesville at that point. Every time I told Ed that I needed to move on he would give me a raise in exchange for my promise to just stick around for another week or two. I didn’t really care about getting more money, but Ed was definitely capable of making me feel needed and so I would agree to stay a little longer.

By the time we had the Christmas party I’d probably been there for six months. I was planning on being gone by the new year no matter what Ed said he was going to pay me and I thought it would be nice to be at this get together with everyone else who worked there. Especially since I never really got to talk with any of the other employees who were all wait people. I was sitting across from a girl named Candy Mason who was a pretty college student. To my left was Claire at her head of the table. After their speech laying down the rules of the Christmas party, Ed and Claire began to serve us. They were very quick and efficient about bringing out the food. They also brought us beers and Cokes and coffee. We sat there eating our dinner pretty much in silence as Ed and Claire looked on. After the main course they took our dessert orders. You had two choices, a sort of whipped cream snow man filled with a cookie like material or something called a flat cake which looked like a plain pancake to me. After dessert Ed said it was time for us to open our presents and have more coffee if we wanted it. Right about the second I got my present unwrapped enough to see that it was a small set of kitchen sieves, I felt a foot gently rub the top of my foot. I could not have been more surprised. I actually contrasted the notion of giving someone a set of sieves for a present to the unbelievable possibility that Claire might be rubbing my foot with her luscious toe. Talk about two disparate notions. It was much more likely though to be Candy Mason who was rubbing my foot because we had definitely traded many smiles through the kitchen food hatch and touched each other’s fingers while sliding plates to one another. But the angle made it seem more like it was Claire’s foot. At that moment my brain was pretty much torn right in half between belief and un-belief. I looked at Candy Mason and then at Claire. Both of them were now wearing poker faces of impenetrable material. I looked more closely and thought I saw the smallest sparkle in Claire’s eye. Who ever’s foot had been trying to court my foot had now withdrawn their foot so as to see what was going to happen next. Something must happen soon or the game would be lost. But if I touched Claire’s foot and she had not touched my foot it would be utter disaster. I looked closely into Candy Mason’s eyes. She looked happy, satisfied, satiated, and pleasant. She didn’t look the slightest bit like she was expecting something. But Claire. She seemed to be waiting for something. She was staring straight ahead and didn’t seem to be blinking her eyes at all. What a tough customer! If I touched her foot and it turned out that she had not touched my foot it would be like kicking the Pope in the balls at the Vatican. I couldn’t even really imagine what she would do. Would she write a note to Ed and have it passed down the table. Would she get up and quietly announce that the party was over? Would she stick me with a knife? I just had no idea! All I could think about was how catastrophic it would be if I touched Clair’s foot and I was wrong. And then I thought about Hank running off with Ed and Clair’s car and money. If I touched Claire’s foot and she hadn’t touched my foot then it would be like pouring gasoline on to the raging flame of American culture as it existed in her mind. It could be the final blow in the constant onslaught of effronteries. I didn’t want to see either of them break. I felt something for them despite their extremely conservative ways and lack of humor. On the other hand, what if Claire was lonely and depressed from living with Ed in a microscopic slice of Europe with its stultifying old ways. I mean that upstairs apartment was like a quiet tomb. Probably the only action that ever occurred up there was when college kids were stealing the caribou head and they didn’t even notice that! Maybe Hank had inspired Claire. Maybe she thought that if someone can just steal a car and some money without batting an eye she too could do something exciting to change her life. But maybe not. I began to think about the differences in all of us and how they might apply to my decision. Ed and Clair might as well been characters out of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Ed was sitting there with his unlighted pipe in his mouth looking like he was watching a horror movie as he stared down the table. The employees talked to each other in low voices and I could tell they were soaking up the strange gestalt of the Christmas party. I’m sure much irony was flowing back and forth. A few people were holding up their presents—a doily, a gingerbread cookie, a wooden spoon, an eraser—all things you would give someone in order to ensure they knew they were an afterthought, receivers of leftover presents or presents for the poor. But to the uber-pragmatic Ed and Claire I’m pretty sure they were viewed as useful presents that someone living in a post war, blown out basement eating rats would be happy to get. Oh the misunderstandings of people. The terrible little walls that sectioned us off from one another! I actually thought, “If only my American friends understood European history!” and “If only Ed and Clair could understand American culture!” But what would that help? I could not think my way to rubbing Clair’s foot. It was not a physical act. I didn’t do it.

After the party, as I was walking down the street to the drug house I thought about this movie called Clair’s Knee. It was one of those French art movies that could be best appreciated for the fact that essentially nothing happened for the entire movie until the very end when this guy puts his hand on Clair’s knee thus signifying the conclusion of a deep and profound romantic pursuit. It was the kind of movie which made me want to hunt down any human being who liked it and pound them into the ground for being so pretentious. But, on the other hand, the girlfriend who made me watch that movie was indeed very intelligent and probably the most normal girl I ever dated. I thought about Clare’s Knee and Claire’s foot and various forms of consummation. I thought about when things go from possible to impossible and the direction of time. In the front yard of the drug house there was a tree full of leaves which refused to fall in the cold. I stopped before that tree and listened to the leaves. They were rattling in the night wind telling me hello and goodbye at the same time. It was a long time ago but I can still feel it.