The Polish Program (LSD, #2)

2. House Of Broken Love

House Of Broken Love

The grocery shop turned out to be a greengrocer, so lunch will be a green salad with olives, cherry tomatoes and rasped carrots, fresh orange juice to drink and yoghurt with strawberries for dessert, less than five minutes of work. It feels like a pity because the beautiful kitchen in Scarlett's big, fancy flat invites for cooking a seven-course dinner for twenty people.

I'm not a very good cook, not as good as my parents, who based the success of their butcher shop on their good taste for preparing what they sell, and not as good as my late grandmother who had her own restaurant, but I compensate my lack of culinary talent by our family traditions: the pleasure of preparing delicious meals and the joy of eating them together, as I experienced during my complete childhood. When I'm on a mission (which means: most of the time), I live in hotels and one-room flats, with neither the time nor the place to cook, and when I do have the time and the place available, there's nobody around to cook for, but here, in this € 40.000, fully equipped kitchen, I feel like a chef. Scarlett's voluptuous full figure is proof of the immense joy that preparing food in this kitchen gives her.

"It looks like we have something in common.", I say when Scarlett shows up. I have set the table with the fine cutlery. With the fruit juice in king-size wine glasses, next to a fine selection of plates and bowls, my simple salad and dessert look like a five-star lunch.

Scarlett changed her office outfit for what she calls «casual Friday», probably not aware that today is a Monday: a pair of designer jeans, a white, silk blouse, and black sandals that cost more than my granddad's car (which says more about the car than about Scarlett's shoes).

"What do you mean?", Scarlett asks.

"I love your kitchen, your electric oven, your stove, your Treasure & Trendy plates, your kitchen knives... It's such a pleasure to cook in a kitchen like yours."

Scarlett sits down at the table and takes a sip of orange juice: "I don't know. I never cook. This is nice juice. I thought it would be sour, but it's rather sweet."

I could keep the conversation running and explain how the origin of the fruits and their smell can tell you about their sweetness or their rather 'mature' taste, or that you can mix a lemon to give a little 'body' to it, but my mind is fully occupied by that casual remark she dropped on the table before giving her opinion about the drink: "You never cook? You have a kitchen that cost more than my whole flat, you have designer plates and crystal glasses that envy every restaurant owner, and you never cook?"

"Well, I prepare coffee, and sometimes I put a pizza in the oven, but that's about it."

I don't know what to say. I serve the salad and wait for further explanation.

"You don't know what it's like to be a working mother. I don't have time to cook."

The question mark on my face encourages Scarlett to tell her story. Between bites, she starts to realise, slowly, that today is the first day of the rest of her life. An excuse like «I don't have time» is no longer valid. She's no longer a working mother.

"I work hard, I mean... I worked hard. If you enter the office every day at 8 o'clock, you have to get up early, to shower, make-up and dress for the daily battle of survival in a man's world. I never had time to sit down and have breakfast. I poured a cup of coffee and I grabbed a croissant at a bakery on my way to work.

» At the office, we have an hour for lunch. That's not enough to go home and cook. Usually, I had lunch at one of the little restaurants in the centre. It was more efficient to eat my most important meal at midday. After work, I ran home, changed, and went to the gym, for aerobics class or work-out or Tai Chi. I also meet most of my social contacts there. After working out, we drink and snack something together. That replaces what's dinner for others.