My mother loved tomatoes, when she didn't have trouble eating them, but now she requires the skin removed, and she once grew beefsteak tomatoes in her garden, the only vegetable, though a tomato is sometimes called a fruit, I remember her growing or that she had success with. Her tomatoes were tasty, large and firm, with real red, solid flesh, a glorious red deeper than skin burned under a Florida sun in April, southern Florida being near the equator, or a sirloin steak cooked over a charcoal fire to a perfect, rare purple, a deep bluish red. The beefsteaks were sweet and salty, warm if eaten fresh from the garden plot beside the house, and they smelled of rich, black earth beneath which lay sand, the swamp on which our house was built, and even the streams that ran and flowed to the ocean I loved. My mother's tomatoes set the standard against which I judge all tomatoes today, just as my father's steaks cooked over a charcoal fire set a standard, too. I watched my father charcoal broil while sitting on the grass or on the poured concrete steps that led from the blue and gray slate patio to the storm door to the back of the house, where my mother pushed her arm through the glass, and he was happy broiling steak over a fire, which he composed of briquettes and newspaper but never doused with fuel, which would, he explained, ignite it quickly but ruin its taste. My father loved the taste of good food, he took pleasure in eating, though he was never fat, sometimes plump, and he considered nutrition and diet and read serious books on the subject before the trends or fads, because he wanted to take care of himself and his body, and, when he became sick, his heart failing him, he always researched the latest medicines and procedures known for his condition. The texture of steak mattered to him, the texture of materials mattered, he held cloth in his sturdy hands and felt it with a tender knowledge, though he didn't think he was sensitive and didn't love animals. He liked our dog when she rode in the car with him, her sleek tan head resting on the back of his seat, her short body stretched as far as it could from the back seat to the front seat while he drove. He always liked to drive, he relaxed then, but he didn't really like animals.
The Count was rational, selective, and secretive, people who are secretive are often seductive and treacherous, though sometimes unattractive and without any real interest, but anyway they invite a field of controversy that can be deliberate and cover their inadequacies and lack of engagement in others. Some betray themselves, some betray others, I'm no stranger to these conditions, qualities, and circumstances. The Count collected extremely valuable antique timepieces and clocks, and I learned shortly after he arrived that he turned night and day around, arranging his life according to his own version of time, for when I awoke, he went to sleep, so his breakfast was dinner, and in this manner, he designated how he spent time. The mysterious Violet, or Contesa, wily and agile of mind, kept a close eye on him, since they'd been magnets to each other years ago, repelling and attracting each other, and it was when I realized the extent of their ill-fated, tempestuous past, I named her Contesa. In public I called her Violet, as did everyone, but during this period, when we were in seclusion together, sometimes, in her presence I'd mouth the secret name, especially when she wore shades at breakfast. I also toyed with the notion that she might be the person who could change my life, even as I renounced the idea, along with the tarot reader's charmed reading but not his charms. I didn't impose on Contesa, she didn't on me, I believe she understood the joys and limits of friendship, and her stories sometimes bore sharp points, though she wasn't a moralist, for which I was grateful, because they're dreary characters. A friendship grew between us as much by what passed unspoken and understood, though this can be misunderstood. When she says she's of a dying breed, I always think of the Shakers' unwitting resolve for extinction and their stiff-backed chairs.
One of the Count's unimportant secrets, divulged to tease me, I now think, was how best to start a fire. He taught me, as an uncle does a nephew or niece, on a moonless night after a lackluster dinner, the cook pleasing hardly anyone, in his studio where books on clocks and watches, mostly, but also of ancient history and poetry-Rumi, especiallytragedies and comedies, and mythologies lay stacked in the corners of his room and also lined two long shelves. Whenever he gave me the time, I asked him about his collection and interests, and his answers were brief, though responsible. Always, he looked at some clock, actual or imagined, while his lightly pocked skin never was anything but grayish-green, from lack of sunshine, and I could feel his horror of losing time, it slipping from him in perilous minutes and seconds, and yet I also knew how it augmented his daily drama by punctuating and compelling action and opinion. Day was night, night day, and this difference set him apart, as he was impelled to thwart time, which probably bore down on him with a unique force, pressuring his willowy, aging body, but he was someone, unlike the tall man and the disconsolate women, who didn't complain, and like Contesa, he refrained from ordinary disclosures and responses, having lived long enough to understand the futility of certain communications. I always believe I'll remember the best technique to start a fire, his method, but I don't. Today the fire caught easily, but I don't know why. Yesterday I placed the kindling in approximately the same way, and it didn't. There is a blazing fire now when yesterday the fire died out, because of the wetness of the wood or a slight difference in the configuration of the kindling or small logs with which I always begin, or because I became absorbed in other matters. Actually, I'd forgotten I'd started a fire, and because I didn't tend it the way the Polish woman tends me and remembers to return to the room where I sometimes lie with a heat lamp above my face, the fire died. If the Polish woman didn't remember, and I have at times worried that she wouldn't, when she speaks especially fast in Polish to people who telephone her, probably some of the men she is or is not dating, because of her mother's objections, my dry skin might crack or be singed by the heat, or I might develop a rash or be burned and disfigured, and if the rash were chronic, full body atopic eczema or psoriasis, or if I had a type of recurrent dermatitis that was difficult to treat, I would probably visit her salon even more frequently, for other kinds of treatments, which might have no medical value, but which might help me, in some way. The salon offers a Glycolic Smoothing Treatment, an Intensive Lifting Treatment, a 100 % Collagen and Elastin Mask, a Back Cleansing Treatment, and an Aromatherapy Treatment, which lasts one hour and twenty minutes and costs eighty dollars, and provides "deep hydration and proper nourishing of the skin, improves circulation and regeneration of supporting fibers in the deeper layers of the skin." A Collagen and Elastin Treatment requires the same amount of time and money and "helps to enrich the skin with Collagen and Elastin. It nourishes and relaxes, rejuvenates and exfoliates skin impurities. This treatment will create a younger-looking skin." Just reading these descriptions comforts me, since a word like "nourish" is soothing, because of its open vowels, a diphthong, since to pronounce the word, I must purse my lips, opening them as if I were about to kiss a lover, and though pursing my lips might etch lines around my mouth, I still like to say the word "nourish" aloud, but more I like to hear and read it. Also these descriptions, found in many catalogues or on salon wall signs, whether accurate or not, whether they actually produce what they proffer, are comforting, for I can immediately imagine a more pleasant future for myself when I read the delicious words.