Jo-Ann Mapson

On New Girlfriends: Kate Comes to Dinner

Whenever I endeavor to "entertain," that is, clean the kitchen down to the tiles, spend the day cooking fancy recipes (www.bonappetit.com) and invite people over I hope to impress, something humbling inevitably occurs. It's not easy acquiring a new set of women friends here in the Great Land. People are friendly, but they're busy, too. Lucky for me I have Susie Blandin in nearby Palmer, and her wonderful dog Harmony, who I'm teaching to get up on the furniture, much to Walter's frustration. However, when winter arrives in Alaska, Susie and Walter head to Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico. There they attend gem shows, and acquire great new items to sell in their "Really Good Store," and pass time getting tans.

This is my "Cheechako" winter, and I need all the support I can muster.

In my class this semester at Matanuska-Susitna College, I met Kelly Baker and her beautiful, outspoken daughter Rachel. Kelly and I clicked at once-sometimes you just know that you both dutifully eat salads but secretly crave candy bars, that you love to shop but not when you feel chubby, and that you've been through the mill several times with your kids and here is a person who will understand that. Kelly and I have been eating lunch together after every class-salads--and getting to know each other. So I invited them and Susie over for dinner on a recent Saturday night when the sun had set at 5:00 p.m. and there was nothing decent on TV (is there ever anything besides Sex and the City?).

Here's what I cooked: Wild mushroom and leek galettes in puff pastry; wild greens salad with candied walnuts, mandarin oranges and gorgonzola; sun-dried tomato and artichoke heart quiche, and my piece de resistance: chocolat pots de crème. Trust me, I can cook French a whole lot better than speak it. I laid the tablecloth down. I lit the beeswax candles. I served the drinkers Blue Moon chardonnay, the others juice and alcohol-free white zinfandel "coolers." Each dish came out pretty well, considering that the wild mushrooms were reconstituted from dry; there were no leeks to be found for the galettes so green onions had to substitute, and I held in a barely restrained urge to eat all the pots de crème before serving them. (Check out the October 2000 issue of Bon Appetit-it's an easy recipe and after you try it regular pudding will never suffice.).

We ladies sat down to eat, and suddenly the alchemic magic that only women can work was happening right there at my secondhand dining table. We began to reveal our lives through stories. The stories overlapped and entwined, binding us together in a reluctant sisterhood. Our shortcomings became just cause for laughter. When a secret leaked out, it was received with warmth and understanding. Yes, men were mentioned, and yes, heads nodded in a kind of resigned agreement, and that particular subject was lovingly shelved under the heading The Great Unknowable/He Without Whom We Cannot Live. As if to drive the point home, Rachel's cell phone rang at least three times. The smile that played across her young face indicated that our species, females romanticus, would never be immune to love.

But wait, this is leaving out the part about the dogs.

As usual, my pack of four were behaving perfectly awful, barking madly at each arrival, ringleader Max, the Jack Russell Terrorist, pretending to be Saddam Hussein, then turning placid as Gandhi as soon as biscuits were distributed. Verbena showed everyone her stitches (see November essay), and tried to French-kiss those newcomers not yet wise to her Gene Simmons tongue. Echo was the perfect lady, and bore her compliments with grace, while Cricket tried to get everyone to play ball-continuously, never-endingly, and obsessive-compulsively.

Only then was the stage set for the second act: Dog Cirque de Soleil.

The humane trap I'd set a week earlier had done its job-sort of. I caught "it" once. Then, in a moment of sheer brilliance, I opened the trap indoors to see if anything was inside. Answer: Yes, briefly. Some kind of rodent friend flew from the trap and raced around the living room and back under the entertainment center. There he/she remained quiet until halfway through my dinner party, when she decided to check out the menu--followed closely by Verbena, Cricket, and Max. Echo observed all this with canine disdain and chose not to participate. Of course, being my dogs, lazy and catered to, there was no way they could "catch" the critter.

Much laughter ensued. "You have a shrew," Kelly said, educating me on the various types of Alaskan indoor pests. Chagrined, I cleared the table, certain that all my guests would remember of this night was the shrew Olympics.

Surfing the Internet for shrew information, I learned that these animals have a nasty personality (hence Shakespeare's aptly named play), eat mice and occasionally their own kind (hmmm, sounds like our recent Presidential 'election,'), and possess the unique ability to collapse their skeletons to such an extent that they can squeeze through incredibly small openings. Ecologists say it's a sin to kill a shrew-they do so much more good than bad. My landlady, Dawn at Double Eagle Realty in Wasilla, says shrews provide wonderful entertainment. One Christmas she'd decorated her tree with strung popcorn and cranberries, and noticed that her house shrew would cling to the branches with his little paws and chomp his way down the strands. "Better than TV," she insisted. "So determined we decided to let him stay."

My very cool younger sister CJ tells of laying down that sticky paper to trap mice, and bursting into tears at the agony the little guys were forced to endure. "Never again," she says. More humane to snap their heads off in the traps and let husbands deal with it.

Lately I'm not in the mood to kill anything. Come May 2001, when reviews of my new novel, Bad Girl Creek, begin to trickle in, that may change. But for now, I've found an airtight way to store dog kibble in the garage, which shrews are reported to be fond of, and I plan to scatter mothballs in places where they might nest, taking care to make certain said mothballs are out of reach of the eternally hungry Cricket.

I call her Kate, my untamed shrew, my Alaskan winter companion, and my possibly new girlfriend. She has a temper, but I like that in women-they always seem to have earned it by surviving despite life's best efforts to drag them down. Kate's proven herself to be capable of getting out of jams-a girl Houdini. For now, we'll co-exist, Kate and me, and it's because of her that I've decided on the decorating scheme for my first Alaskan Christmas tree.

More later,
Jo-Ann

P.S. Thanks so much to all of you who've taken the time to write and respond to my essays. If there's anything in particular you'd like to me write about-the writing life, teaching college, Alaska stuff, or just in general--let me know by emailing me at jamapson@aol.com.

P.P. S. Take care, drive safely, and this holiday season, if you can, take time to remember those people in your life you often overlook. For me that means pharmacists, post office clerks, librarians, and my favorite independent bookstore people. Cards, flowers, a homemade brownie-those kind of presents goes a long way to cheer folks up during what can sometimes be a lonely time of year.

^Top