Coda

Long, round metal pipes—about 5 of them—come up vertically out of the oven. A bluish flame burns at each one’s opening. I don’t remember walking to the kitchen, or turning on the flames and am not sure how to turn them off. I don’t need 5 all five, just one.

When I set the cast iron pan over one of the tubes it occurs to me that the pipes are at irregular heights. It’s an idiotic piece of equipment—how can they expect you to cook with flames at different levels? You’re bound to get burned. Still, mama needs dinner and is too busy pollinating passion fruit flowers to come inside. The doctor said to feed her small portions of high protein meals, so I tonight she’s having a thick slab of beef, a steak.

The pan is ready for the meat, which sizzles and fills the air with the smell of garlic and pepper and sour orange juice caramelizing. I notice the cast iron is similar in color to the metal pipes, except...the pipes are more complicated—they’re the color of burning coals: black and grey and radiating red from within. They aren’t hot, though. The metal is thick enough, at least they thought of that, whoever built this contraption.

The steak looks ready, the amount of juice coming bubbling from it is less now and the sizzling has subsided. With a smoke-blackened spatula I pick it up and slide it onto a blue ceramic plate. Mama’s dinner is perfectly cooked to medium. I slice the meat so she can see how juicy it looks. Beautiful. Then from outside I hear her reproach as though she were screaming to me from within the bowels a great canyon: That’s too raw! You don’t know how to cook a steak! , her voice echoed.

It doesn't surprise me. I knew at the beginning of the dream, when I first started cooking, that she would find something wrong. I don't even have to bring it out to her. She just knows, from the smell or the sound, or from reading my thoughts (I'm convinced she's capable), that it is not a steak good enough for her. Done, then, I start to dream of something else.