11. Hungarian Goulash & the Carpenter Husband

Recently I found my daughter’s middle school recipe for Goulash written in her classic, left handed, scribble.  The recipe uses leftover veal, mashed potatoes, onion soup and canned corn.  It’s not really Goulash - she just called it Goulash.  Later, I noticed that she posted a recipe for Hungarian Goulash she found while visiting Eastern Europe.  I looked at it and thought, “This isn’t Goulash either!” I’ve tasted authentic Hungarian Goulash.  I didn’t travel all over Europe but I did travel the neighborhoods of Detroit.  I grew up when there were still ethnic enclaves tucked away in parts of the city.  At school many of my friends were Post World War II refugees, first generation Americans.  It wasn’t unusual to have Gawumpki (stuffed cabbage) at a Polish friend’s house, Baklava at a Greek friend’s and then Manicotti at an Italian friend’s house.  English as a second language was not unusual.

Lots of things were different then.  Most of the kids I knew had two parents.  Although Dad was the only one with an official job, Mom worked just as hard as a full time homemaker.  The difference between homemaker and housewife should be obvious. There were plenty of unhappy housewives.  But the homemaker was the core of family life and chief executive the home. In this arrangement family dinner was the highlight of the day and, dinner preparation was a major activity. When the entire family gathered around the dinner table, it was a chance for parents to reconnect with the kids.  It was also a chance for the kids to make a special request or confess a minor indiscretion.  This was a sacred time and it was considered an insult to intrude during the dinner hour.  If the phone rang, everyone glared at the ringing contraption like an uninvited guest.  Only a near death experience excused such rude behavior.   

Then we improved our lives with electric appliances and gadgets that would give us more free time.  But these new gadgets were expensive and required two incomes to pay for them.  That means two working parents with less free time.  It means Homemaker is no longer a full time job and caring for a family is no longer important work. Homemaker has been outsourced.  Day care, nannies, tutors, car pools, dry cleaners, maid service, lawn service, personal assistants, personal shoppers and home delivery has replace Mom. Even the family dinner has been replaced by bags of take out or worse yet - a singular figure in the glow of the microwave, usually while texting. We’ve lost more than our sense of taste. 

Real Hungarian Goulash is made with lots of paprika and not a hint of tomato.  Tomatoes are used in stew.  Goulash is not stew.  To make traditional Goulash you start by simmering red onions and garlic in olive oil.  When the onions are transparent, take the skillet off the heat and mix in a couple tablespoons of paprika.  Leaving the pan on the heat when you add the paprika makes the paprika bitter.  Goulash should never be bitter.  It should be hearty and pungent and with just a hint of sweetness.  Next add in the beef, soup stock or water and cook over a slow even heat till the meat is tender.   Pare and cut one or two good sized turnips into pieces.  Add them to the Goulash.  It’s the turnips that give Goulash that deep earthy taste.  I love the smell of turnips.  As soon as you start to pare them the heady aroma fills the room. Turnips are an underrated vegetable as are most of the root veggies.  We seem to prefer our veggies above ground.  But deep inside the earth, the vegetables grow hearty and kind of mysterious. 

My carpenter husband was half Hungarian, half hearty and kind of mysterious.  His father was very aristocratic British but his mother was Hungarian.  He looked like his mother.  He had her deep black hair and striking blue-green eyes.  I often suspected that they were gypsies; only a wild hearted gypsy could look that beautiful. He was mysterious like a gypsy and kind of pungent like gypsies too.  He had a deep earthy smell and never bothered with fancy grooming products. No smelly soaps or colognes, he was just unvarnished and unpretentious.  I tell folks that it was love at first sight, but I think that first, I fell in love with the way he smelled.  It was a powerful, intoxicating scent. 

I met him while visiting a mutual friend in Berkeley.  I was heading west to escape the rusting ice water drizzle that is a Detroit spring.  I was also escaping some unhappy memories. The trip turned out to be quite an adventure. I was mistaken for Patty Hearst in Wisconsin, picked up hitchhiking by five drunken Indians in Colorado, spent a week snowbound in Flagstaff before taking the train to Berkeley.  I arrived at my friend’s house in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping.  I awoke mid-day when everyone was working.  As I wandered around the empty house, all I heard were the echoes of my own footsteps.  The eerie quiet made me uncomfortable and anxious.

I searched the kitchen for coffee and found only herbal tea.  I tried a cup of tea but it didn’t do the trick.  I needed caffeine. I paced restlessly through the empty rooms and finally wandered outside.  I knew that the house had been designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and decided to take a look.  It was a beautiful house wrapped in green and drenched in sunshine.  I sat for awhile enjoying the warmth like my roommates fat cat.  Then suddenly the air was filled with the smell of brewing coffee.  Like Wimpy in the Popeye cartoon, I floated to the source of the aroma.  Up past the stone steps, through the moon gate to the workshop on the side of the hill.  I rounded the corner and found him there, bent over table top, sanding with intensity and tender affection.  The smell of fresh sawdust mixed with the coffee.  He caught me staring.  “Coffee” I said in a kind of pleading voice.  “There, grab a cup” he replied and then “Donna's friend eh?”  “Yes” I said and then I told him that I had arrived the night before.  We chatted a bit as I got the coffee. 

I admit openly that I was thunderstruck by the man.  He was incredibly handsome to be sure.  He was the kind of figure that sets a Midwestern girls heart on fire, but it was so much more than that.  Good looks alone would not have made my knees weak.  In fact, I think that pretty boys are vain and shallow and require too much maintenance.  Usually I give them a pass.  But there was something about this handsome man that was unique, something I couldn’t resist.  Like a magnet he pulled me inside and held on to me. 

Even from a distance I liked the way he moved.  He worked with a kind of slow methodical assurance.  He didn’t master the wood, he caressed it and it responded to him.  He was more than a builder; he was an artist and a maker of beautiful things. His shop was lined with skillfully refurbished antiques and bits of found treasures.  Still there was something else in his manner, a kind of masculinity that was rare back in Detroit. The boys back home got liquored up and then got in bar fights to prove their manhood.  This man had nothing to prove and it showed.  I liked that.  And the man’s scent was intoxicating. 

Sometimes I think that’s what’s wrong with our society.  We have saturated our environment with so many synthetic fragrances, that we’ve lost our sense of smell.  Our ability to smell keeps us out of danger.  We smell the smoke before we see the flames; we smell the rancid food and the toxic fumes.   

Smell is the first line of defense and the first sign of attraction.  I’m a firm believer in letting pheromones choose our life partners.  If we are misled by synthetic fragrance we could make a fatal mistake.  We could believe that we’ve fallen in love with a Ralph Lauren, Armani, Patchouli or even a reliable Old Spice and wake up next to Aqua Velva and cheap Whiskey. 

I could smell my stepfather coming up the stairs.  After the accident he drank too much and was never the same.  I think the steel plate in his head interfered with his conscience.  I think they took out his conscience and put in that steel plate.  He drank himself into a stouper and then I could smell him, all Aqua Velva and cheap whiskey, coming up the stairs. Late at night when Mama was still at work, you could smell him first as he started up the stairs.   I would close my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else.  When the mornings came, I put on my mask and faced the world.  When I came of age, I ran as far as I could.  I found a man who smelled like campfire coffee and root vegetable.  I found a man who smelled safe and we made a life.  I forgot the pain and the shame and the smell of Aqua Velva.  I curled up next to the man who smelled like turnips and sawdust and started to believe in happily ever after and that someone loved me. 

For a few years, the Carpenter Husband and I traveled together.  It was a time of deep happiness and few words.  A time of learning new recipes, breaking old habits and trying to trust my heart.  For a short precious time, we were happy together.  I should never have exposed my fragile happiness to my family.  I should have remembered their cruelty. But I thought they would look at him, at his beautiful face, his charming grin and his easy self-assurance and they would see that he loved me.  Maybe, I hoped, knowing that someone like him could love me, they would love me too.  It would make them think better of me.  It did not.  I should have remembered that anything I treasured would become a target to my family.  They were determined to prove that their judgment of me was correct.  That either he was a villain or that he did not love me. They did both.  I should never have brought him home.  Lessons learned too late. 

We came home to Michigan when I was pregnant with Max the Wunderkind.  The night he was born, I had asked Kitty to baby-sit Lilly Beth, the girl child while I went to the hospital.  The next day Kitty called in a rage because Carpenter Husband hadn’t come to pick up the Lilly Beth.  When I told her that he had come to see me first, that he had brought me a dozen roses before going to pick up Lilly Beth, it just made her angrier.   Later I talked to Carpenter Husband and told him to pick up Lilly Beth first.  He said, “I’m not going over there unless brother-in-law is home”.  I left the hospital early. 

I knew instantly that she was up to her old tricks.  It wasn’t the first time she had sent brother-in-law on some errand, locked the kids in the basement and answerered the door wearing only a towel.  “Oh I’m so sorry! I just haven’t had a moment to myself” she would say as the towel fell seductively to the floor.  It was her modus operandi. She made a hobby of collecting the things I loved, like totems. She took clothes, albums, keepsakes, and birth certificates from dead children.   I should have known that she’d try to take my handsome Carpenter Husband.  Eventually I did learn.  Years later I would send any potential boyfriend to meet my sister before getting serious.  I didn’t warn them about her.  I waited to see if they told me.  Then if they did, I’d tell them about the “sister test” and explain that “Anyone who loves me has got to be smarter than that.”  I don’t know if Kitty actually had sex with the Carpenter Husband, but for decades she pursued him and for even longer she tormented me with the possibility.   

A few months later, it was one of those horribly muggy, summer days and I had volunteered to baby-sit for Kitty’s girls.  Carpenter Husband was not happy about having four kids but he agreed to do it.  Later Mama had agreed to take our kids so that Carpenter Husband and I could go out.  We had not been on a date since the spring when baby Max was born.  I had Kitty’s kids for most of the day when I found out that they were going to Mama’s house that evening.  Mama had changed her mind and was taking Kitty’s kids instead of mine.   Carpenter Husband was pissed so I kept the kids out of his way.  At one point, after they’d had lunch, I sent them out in the back yard too play.  I watched them from the window while I washed the dishes.  Carpenter Husband went outside to water the garden.  Then he turned on the sprinkler on the girls.  Kitty’s oldest girl, Mona Lisa, was playing near the garage.  It was dangerous in there, lots of tools and broken glass.  Carpenter Husband yelled at her to stay out of the garage.  She was a timid child and easily startled by his deep voice.  When she started to cry, I headed outside.  Then Carpenter Husband sprinkled her with the hose and told her to play in the water instead.  She giggled and all was well. They darted in and out of the cool water till they were all exhausted.  Not long after that Mama picked up Kitty’s girls and took them home with her.  Carpenter Husband and I took our kids out for ice cream and a walk in the park. 

A few days later Mama called to ask how I could allow “That horrible man to do that to Kitty’s girl.  How could you let him hurt the Mona Lisa?” She said that Kitty’s girl had said that my husband had hurt her.  I had no idea what she was talking about. That one sprinkler incident was the only interaction that Carpenter Husband had with the kids all day. I figured they were talking about Carpenter Husband yelling at Mona Lisa.  I called Kitty, but she refused to talk to me.  So I called my half-a-sister Rayleen.  At first Rayleen said she would not speak to me as long as “That Man” was in my house.  I begged her to explain.  She said that Kitty’s daughter had accused Carpenter Husband of sexually molesting her.  She said, “After what happened to you, how could you sleep with a man like that!”  She swore she would never speak to me again till he was out of my life.

Until that moment, the half-a-sister had never acknowledged that anything ever “happened” to me.  In fact, she led the “liar liar” chorus.  She had the whole family hating me for lying about my step-father.  I was so confused.  Later, she would deny calling my husband a pedophile.  Later she would deny the denial.  Later I would find that half-a-sister was worse than none at all. 

I kept trying to call Kitty all summer long but she refused to speak to me. That is how she acts when she’s done something horrible.  She ran off with my first love, my guitar totting, folk singing lazy ass first love.  She came back long enough to break into my apartment and steal from me.  Time after time, she would take the money and run. 

Carpenter Husband didn’t hear from the brother-in-law but he didn’t seem upset.  He liked to call my sister “K-Mart mind” and ridiculed her for being lazy and selfish but he considered her husband a friend. He didn’t feel the need to defend himself.  In his typical way he said, “Well, you were there all day!”  But still, it gnawed at me.  Months and months of a long hot summer passed in familial silence.  Then just as mysteriously as it started, it was over. All forgotten and not a word ever mentioned again. 

I figured that Kitty’s accusations were because she hadn’t been able to seduce Carpenter Husband. She hoped that accusing Carpenter Husband of being a pedophile would drive a wedge between the two of us.  It wasn’t true.  I knew it wasn’t true.  I had been there all day.  There was not a moment.  Not a moment.  And yet, all summer long and for years after, I replayed every minute of that day, over and over, again and again.  In spite of myself, I became afraid of the Carpenter Husband. My sleep was restless and when he woke to sooth Lilly Beth the Dreaming Girl Child from a nightmare, my heart sank.  Kitty had done the damage she intended without leaving a single fingerprint.

Finding out that he had been unfaithful, that he had gambled away paychecks, and that he had been using cocaine only gave me an excuse.  I yearned for a release from my promise to him.  His infidelity gave it to me.  Guilty or not, I could not live with the fear. For the sake of my children I could not risk it. No matter how much I wanted to, I could no longer smell his sweetness, his deep warm sweetness. No matter how hard I tried all I could smell was Aqua Velva and cheap Whiskey.

Decades later, I have loved no other, partially because I love him still and partially because I could trust no one to sleep in the house with my children.  All men may not be monsters, but the risk is too great.  I also know that as much as I love him, I will never forgive him for breaking the only promise that ever really mattered to me. The promise he made to our children.  He found another woman, another child.  He forgot all about Max the Wunderkind and Lilly Beth the dreaming girl child.  He left a hole in lives and a hole in their hearts.

I could forgive his infidelities, his gambling, his stinginess, his indifference and even his betrayal.  But he abandoned his children and I was unable to protect them. He wounded them and then left them defenseless.  He made them bait for sexual predators.  This to me is unforgivable. 

So as much as I love the deep earthy taste of real Hungarian Goulash – the paprika stings my throat like fire ants.