When you cook for me, it is a full-bodied affair. The clang of the wok on your stovetop, countertop, worktop. Always smashing, pounding, your forearms straining as you design a meal and display the side dishes on the table: blanched vegetables in an avalanche of fresh chilli oil, small bowls of jewelled pickles, meat braised soft and fragrant. The shallow bowls are like cupped hands, and you always treat them with dignity as you push them closer, place choice pieces on my bowl of rice like an offering and I feel obligated to do more than smile in return. I want to bend over your feet and show you devotion.

Yet, as I set the table for your arrival, part of me is convinced inviting you to my flat for dinner exceeds the dimensions of our relationship.

*

We live in the same building – Nightingale 2 – that I designed with my firm for low-income workers and first-time homebuyers hoping to clutch to the bottom of the property ladder. To keep costs minimal, I designed every studio to have the same floor plan: a utility room on the right immediately when you enter with the bathroom beyond, a hall with a built-in closet that opens onto the main living space which is bare. An alcove on the left next to a balcony allows the room to be dynamic enough so as not to feel like a perfect box. When things aren’t uniform it tends to feel less like a prison.

The units were built as a shell, with only the bathrooms outfitted. The main space was left devoid of a kitchen or configuration. My theory being the tenants would be more inclined to care for the space if they had a hand in designing their home.

When I see the inside of your flat for the first time, I’m nearly nauseous at your configuration. The bed is shoved into the alcove while the kitchen swells and takes up the majority of the main room. From its corner perch facing the balcony, the limbs of the counter extend to engulf nearly two entire walls. A large table is situated within its embrace, while a small sitting area occupies what remains.

‘Is that comfortable?’ I ask about the bed. I hope, faintly, that maybe there was a design mistake. That you had ended up with this all on accident and were too polite to ask for a change.

‘I barely spend time there,’ you say as you shuffle me to the table already busy with food. I feel your push jolt through me like you are forcing open a door as you demand that I eat.

You don’t have art or a TV on your walls, but pictures of your son garnish your flat – him in the bath with a toothy smile, him holding a diploma, him dressed as a Power Ranger with a sword raised high in defiance. There are no recent photos.

I don’t ask, afraid of some trauma I might unfold into our space, but you make vague references that imply he is still alive. You want me to know, I think, but you also seem to be reminding yourself. Every time a picture cuts into your focus, you jolt at the sight before smiling.

My kitchen occupies the alcove in my flat. The cabinets are black as well as the sink, so stains and mess are less noticeable. The material and paint are matte to absorb light and focus. The fridge is integrated. There are no knobs on any of the doors. Instead, there are recessed handgrips cut in under the door’s face. The slightly textured finish, the asymmetrical lighting, the counters clear of appliances that are tucked away in precise cut-outs. Every detail is painstakingly chosen so that the eyes slip away – a sleight of hand trick by a two-bit Vegas magician. Cooking there reminds me of my mother – contained, closed-off, camouflaged.

Your meals always consist of a multitude. A constellation of bowls that connect us across the table. You never let me help and I don’t understand why you insist on doing so much. It feels extravagant. My mother preached utility in the kitchen. Our meals were quick and of no more than five ingredients. Salt, fat, heat. She argued that was all that was needed.

I tell you early on that I don’t require much effort. You click your tongue.

‘Who says this is for you?’

‘I just don’t want you to think I expect so much variety.’

‘I like choice,’ you say, ‘I never get bored. Every bite is new.’

You pile some steamed chicken and greens on your rice and shove it all in your mouth, then build a new one with a bit of cabbage and fried anchovy just to prove your point. It strikes me as strange to see food this way – of being on equal footing. A collection to make up a whole, so no one part overshadows another.

You cook me your son’s favourite meal sometime between the second and fifth meal we share together. A rich and fatty beef soup with glass noodles and fried garlic. You push the bowl toward me, the side dishes arranged between us. You pick through them and nestle sliced ginger and a tea-stained egg and violently red cabbage among the noodles. I watch you heap cilantro atop yours but leave mine barren. When you notice me watching, you ask if I want some.

‘My son never did,’ you say. I think of the boy in the photos and the harsh jut of his chin as he got older until he disappeared, and if I was him, I might demand some. Remind you that we are not the same. Maybe argue a bit. We will maybe follow the exact path you and he did before. Or, if not the same, then close enough to the foundation that the resulting structure is similar. But I take the fragile thing we have and cradle it in my hands like the teacups we sip from later that night and shake my head while I tell you I’m fine without. I slurp the noodles like you taught me as you mix your soup till the fresh greenery wilts in the broth.

You like to give advice while we eat, and tonight is no different. You explain why I should never marry a Thai. ‘Then you are stuck with their entire family.’

I stir and lift the noodles. They are viscous, and the broth makes my throat sticky. ‘I could marry your son. Maybe just stick us together.’

‘No.’

I blanch and look up at your sharp response. Something cold and sharp like the alcohol you introduced me to weeks ago spikes on your face. Something adjacent to fear. ‘I didn’t mean; I just meant.’

‘I know,’ you interrupt. You soften. You ask if I want another serving and take my bowl and refill it before I reply. My stomach hurts, but I smile and curl over the bowl after you place it before me. I enjoy the things you tell me and tuck them away to study when I’m home.

‘Do you ever visit?’ I ask later while you slice an apple. You halve it, then cut it into six slices total and score the skin with a V. When you lick your knife under the flesh, you stop before the end and place the vaguely rabbit-shaped ornament on a small plate in front of me.

‘He lives far away,’ you say and savour the skin you pluck from the shavings on your plate. ‘And is so busy.’

My mother worked everything to the bone – our finances, her hands, her patience. I remember the knobs of her knuckles when she brushed them along my cheek before darting out into the early morning and not seeing her again until the dark unfolded from the far corners of the world.

You invite me to dinner the first time because I looked lonely and because you wanted to fix that and you saw all the ready meals I was hauling up to my flat that was one floor above yours which you couldn’t help noticing after all the time we rode the lift together and figured I couldn’t enjoy eating the same things over and over and because company gives flavour – a somehow honest and true cliché. You tell me all these things, slowly, over dinner without my prompting.  

We are seen by neighbours in the lift and while gathering mail and because of our routine we grew organically out of hanging laundry together on the roof on Sundays when the weather was permitting, where you fill me in on the latest gossip from your Gin Rummy club.

I ask about your son again the week before you are meant to come over.

‘What is there to say?’ You fold clothes and I like how your hands are sure but gentle as you press them down in your basket.

‘He still hasn’t seen your place,’ I say, ‘not since you moved in.’

‘He won’t be.’

I watch you flick a sheet flat. ‘Don’t you want him here?’

‘You find other things,’ you say, ‘small things that can replace the big ones.’

I don’t know what you mean, really, but your gaze reminds me of your kitchen after you cook for me.

‘I will be at yours for dinner. Thursday.’

You leave after the reminder.

Later, when I ride the lift down with another tenant, she remarks how cute our relationship is. ‘The way you care for each other,’ she claims, ‘It is like you are family.’

There is no way to confuse us as being related. I am flat and white and featureless; you are square in the shoulders and the jaw, despite age making parts of you sag like old curtains, and squat with thick thighs. You joke that I was destined for my job because I am just like my drafting paper – a medium on which I can re-sketch my features to best suit my environment. You remind me just as often that you are a mountain, like all the women in your family, built to withstand even time.

The other tenant’s comment lodges in my throat like the red bean paste you served me between dense pancakes the week before, and I hold it there as long as I can to remember my place.

The occasions when my mother cooked for me were secreted – hidden away in our segregated kitchen. The room was an addition to the back of the house that the previous owner added. One narrow doorway led to the original like the builder almost forgot it needed to be connected. I wouldn’t even know she was in there until the smell took over the house. By the time I was clamouring down the stairs, the food would already be on the table. Those were my favourite meals, which seemed to be conjured from nothing, and she would leave me to eat alone.

I invite you to dinner so we are even as I hate being indebted and because the last time you cooked you complained about your arthritis and because when I leave your flat after eating your smile tilts too far to the side and threatens to leave with me. I repeat these things as I go about my days leading up to the date and don’t think about your son or that entire fatty bowl of noodles I continued to eat even after I was full. You probably don’t want to know how often I compare myself to him.

My mother was no good at baking. Everything came out flat. Even cookies would melt in the wavering heat and kept spreading until they became brittle like her promises. But she could sear something fierce. All her meals were like that. A dark crust that cracked and flaked when I cut into it. All food got the same treatment – cheap hunks of meat, white fish on price drop, oddly shaped vegetables she grabbed from a nearby allotment. She would heat the pan and blacken food hard and fast, just like how she worked as a stenographer at a law firm, burning facts and words to the quick. ‘Why learn something new when the way you are now is fine,’ she joked as she seared through my life.

I plan something simple after scouring the internet for easy weeknight meals: a pea and mint pasta to throw together after work. But the artichokes are right there. They sit like lumps of jade in the grocery, piled high like curled hands. I grab a bunch and wander the aisles as I put everything I already gathered back and then retrace my steps as I try to build a meal around a side dish exactly the way I am trained to envision a floor plan after being given a client’s specifications.

My mother only cooked with me when she introduced a new fling to my existence – those men that slipped in and out of my childhood like a box of cereal. Lined up on a shelf, quickly devoured, and thrown out when used up.

The meal was always unsteady, our guest supporting most of the conversation, while I tapped my fingers against my thigh as I tried to count back to the last time my mother and I ate together. But before, she would call to me, and I would join her hunched our small prep table in the set-aside space of our tiny kitchen where she would always cook the same thing for each man. I would help her prepare the artichokes the way her mother taught her and her mother’s mother. She said it was the one thing she could do that was impressive. I never saw my mother as still, as patient, as when she trimmed away leaves and stems and discarded the excess.

When I return from the grocery, I prepare a bowl of iced water and lemon. The acid films the surface with a glossy sheen. I line the artichokes on the counter. Tear leaves asunder, take a knife to the stems and slim them down so they are tender and sweet. I reveal the hearts, scoop out the insides, and, like my mother, dump the excess. I hope you aren’t familiar with artichokes, so you aren’t aware how much I have to discard to find even a bite of value. I leave them in the water to stay crisp and fresh and worthwhile. I clean. I don’t want you to see what I’m willing to do for you.

*

When you arrive and see my kitchen for the first time, you sputter like frying oil.

‘You cook in a coffin.’

‘Well, then, you sleep in one.’

‘I’m old. I’m just preparing for it,’ you say. ‘You are still young.’

I want to say that age has nothing to do with coffins but hold my tongue.

You flip through the blueprints on my desk. “You shouldn’t bring your work home. This is your space.”

I nod as I guide you to the small table in the corner and seat you so you’re facing the balcony and can’t see my space or anything else that you might find lacking. You sit and smile as you place your bag on the floor next to your chair.

You frown when I bring out our plates, artichokes centred.

‘Is this all?’

‘There’s more in the kitchen,’ I say and try to get comfortable. ‘Sorry, the table is too small to bring it all out. I don’t usually have people over.’

‘No, this is good.’

I take the remaining space at my table and pretend to eat while you pick at the dry chicken that is the main component of the meal and frown at the slightly hard potatoes. I wait when you spear one of the seared hearts, oil slick and vibrant green. Your lips wrap around it, and I look down at your plate while you chew. When you go in for another bite, I bite back a grin. Such a small thing wins you over.

You strike up a dialogue about my most recent project. You ask about the timescale of it and who I’m working with and if they respect my ideas. I feel a tightness in my chest I was unaware of fall away like when you take down a wall separating two small rooms. I think I would let you reconfigure anything about me as you continue to migrate food from your plate to your mouth. Let you tug and release and twist me into new shapes until you laugh brightly.

After, I wave off your help with the dishes and when I come back, you are arranging fruit on the table. You offer me a benign smile that I return as I retake my seat. It grows as you slap my hand away when I reach for an orange. You take it up yourself and ask what the rest of my week is like. I proceed to tell you everything, sitting at your side, while you slip your nail under the peel of the orange. The oil mineralises the air. You drop the skin on the table in chunks. My hands twitch to brush the mess away but don’t want to overstep even though we are in my flat. You reveal the fruit, and I watch you pinch the pith and flick it from the flesh. You drape the white lace over your tongue and swallow it. When the whole orange is picked clean, you tear off a segment and hold it out to me. The wedge is a bright slice of amber and perches in the bowl of your hand. A translucent bead of juice seeps down the length and adds a shine. I let you put it in my mouth and think maybe this is enough. Maybe there’s nothing more than this.

– DC Restaino