The dining room table is exquisitely appointed, magnificent in its tasteful hospitality. It is covered with an embroidered tablecloth imported from Panama, and its contents gleam in the flickering light of tapered candles: delicate-stemmed goblets, bone-white fine china, formal-patterned silverware.
A last look at it before guests arrive fills me with a sense of accomplishment. Such a clever mirage. Just how my life might appear to an unwitting observer.
Across the hall, through the archway, in the kitchen, it’s a different story. Here, among the canned foods and just-add-water mixes, is the true picture of my life.
The dinner I am about to serve bears no resemblance to the careful splendor of the table. It has been cooked in a hurry, haphazardly. Shortcuts have been taken. Nothing — except the rice steamed in a cooker — has been made from scratch.
I am a master of counterfeit elegance. Prep time for the entire meal took 20 minutes, about the sametime it took to get the dining room table ready. All right, I’m being too generous. Ten minutes, if you count the three minutes devoted to planning the menu.
Dinner consists of a brisket on which I have poured a sauce made of powdered onion soup mixed with water (2 minutes), salad with croutons and bacon bits (3 minutes) and white rice (1 minute).
Black beans, the staple of a good Cuban diet, are the one item I try to make a go of. Or at least pretend to. I want them to appear — and taste — as if I had soaked them the night before and then cooked them with a full-blown sofrito the next morning. I want my guests to think I slaved over the stove. As my mother does.
So after I dumped the beans out of the cans, I simmered them with onions and green peppers I chopped myself. (Can you believe it?) Then I added some oregano and a bay leaf or two to complete the picture of homemade.
Some ridiculous voice from my past is chiding me for faking it. The same voice that I hear when I dine at a house where the recipe for wine-braised lamb shanks is recited as in prayer. The same voice that prompts me to watch Martha Stewart deftly dicing some perfect slab of meat. The same voice that laughs derisively as I clip and file complicated recipes I will never follow.
I like the elegance of a meal beautifully prepared but find that, with five children, a full-time job, baseball games and soccer practice, I have neither the patience nor the time. Any dish that calls for more than four ingredients is truly testing my wits. Yet, I want people to think otherwise. I want people to think I have it all together.
I keep telling myself that this is just a phase, this catching as catch can. I will make the black beans from scratch one day. When all the kids are in school. When all the kids are driving. When all the kids are out of the house.
Then again, who am I kidding? I wonder if I should just say to hell with the pretense and not worry about hiding the black bean cans. I wonder, too, if there are other women like me, so good at setting beautiful tables that you don’t notice that the fancy papaya salsa and minced scallions came straight from a Mrs. Paul’s box.
But I wonder mainly if the company will bring dessert as promised. If not, I can whip up a cheese cake with an 8-ounce package of cream cheese and a box of lemon instant pudding mix. Four minutes.
