A Birthday Wish

I was never much of a birthday slut.

When I was very young, my parents threw me a succession of birthday parties at Jahn’s — our local, Forest Hills ice cream parlor — each one resulting in my crawling under the table when one of our neighbors, a semi-professional magician, made a fireball appear from the depths of his magic top hat. First came a bunny, then a string of jewel-toned scarves, and then, the fire. It terrified me no end, and I slunk down underneath the table, curled up on its cool, iron base, wrapped myself in my own tiny arms, and hid my face. I’ve suffered from a fear of fire — to increasingly smaller degrees — ever since, and it’s only in the last ten years that I’ve been able to actually grill anything without using four foot long tongs.

When I was twelve, my father rented a bus to take me and a bunch of my schoolmates to the now thankfully defunct Spaghetti Factoria, in Manhattan. I felt a little weird being the center of so much attention, and when the restaurant’s resident clown said to me, “Say, little girl, what magic trick would you like me to do for you?” I thought about it for a moment, and then asked him to disappear.

As I got older, my birthdays involved a lot of high food: one year, my father took me and some high school friends out for Homard a l’Americaine at a French place in the theatre district; its walls were severely upholstered in crimson silk dupioni, and when one of my friends accidentally catapulted a chunk of lobster knuckle meat out of its shell, across the room, and onto the wallpaper, the captain came over to have a word with my father. Moments later, our plates were removed, only to be returned with the meat cleanly extracted and the shells gone—they were probably sitting in a stockpot in the kitchen, being prepped for bisque.

In the eleven years that Susan and I have been together, my birthday celebration has run the gamut from extraordinary (we combined our birthdays with our commitment ceremony in 2003, and celebrated under a tent with a hundred people we love) to slightly silly (on the first birthday that I spent with Susan, she took me to a restaurant called Stonehenge, and all I could think about was that scene in Spinal Tap) to romantic (she once packed a picnic lunch and took me kayaking) to dream-worthy: two years ago, we sat downstairs at Chez Panisse on a quiet Monday night and had one of those experientially remarkable meals that changes everything you know about restaurant dining.

So this year, we talked for a long time about spending the day in the city, potchkying around, maybe going out to Brooklyn, and then coming back and having dinner at, well, Le Bernardin. I hadn’t been there in fifteen years, Susan had never been there at all, and so we planned it. But no matter what, I couldn’t get excited. I couldn’t get excited in the way that my father could never get excited about his birthday; it was always a dour, slightly sad occasion for him, replete with ages-old disappointment hanging heavy like dusty drapery in an empty room. Some of that must have rubbed off on me, because even though I’ve mostly liked having a birthday, it’s always been tinged with a little bit of sadness. Not sad at getting older. Just weirdly, oddly, off.

A few weeks before my birthday, Susan finally turned the thumb-screws and asked what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to go: I thought about it for exactly two seconds, and all the planning — going to the city, going to Bernardin, having to put on the proverbial monkey suit — just lost its appeal, completely.

“I want to go to the shore,” I told her, “to run my feet in the sand. And maybe, we could have lobster rolls, outside someplace.”

“Done,” she said. And that was that.

I’d never been to the Connecticut shore, and she spent summers with her parents renting a cottage there, but never staying overnight because her mother was afraid of the sound of fog horns. So, off they’d go, schlepping all the way out to the beach from Farmington, to spend the day in their rental cottage, and right around the time that her little cousins were being tucked in in neighboring cottages, Susan’s parents packed her up and went home. When the sun came up the next morning, they went back.

So Susan found us a great little seafood shack where we had our lobster rolls. We drove south, stopping at a crazy used book store where I bought a first edition of Cheever’s The Wapshot Chronicle and a 1920 Baedaker Guide to Florence and Livorno for about $20. And then Susan decided it was time to find me a beach.

We drove and we drove along Route 1; all of the beach access roads were private, and blocked off or manned by security guards, and I was losing hope. And it was then that Susan noticed a trestle, and an underpass that looked vaguely familiar.

“Would you mind if we took a look?” she said.

I didn’t.

And there it was — a sign that said Point O’Woods — the cottage community that Susan had last visited when she was a little girl. The nice security guard let us in through the gate, and allowed us to drive around to see this place that my partner loved so much, but in the end, was always disappointed by. A few minutes after we left, she pulled down another private cottage community road, until we got to the very end.

“It’s your birthday,” she said, “and you need to run your toes in the sand, and to stand in the saltwater.”

No one was around. I flung my sandals off, rolled up my pants, and stood in the tepid, slow waves of the Sound thinking about lobster rolls and the endless possibility of water, and quiet birthday magic without magicians or clowns.

 My Favorite Lobster Roll

The combination of the hot, buttered and pan-toasted bun married to the chilled lobster is unbeatable in this dish that is a summertime paean to pure, sweet excess: pack only two rolls full of the lobster meat, and have a fork handy to chow down on what will come invariably bursting out the sides.

Makes 2 rolls

One 1-1/2 pound lobster, steamed or boiled and cooled, preferably female

1 small onion, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

½ cup mayonnaise, fresh or prepared

The juice of 1 lemon

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon celery salt

1 tablespoon fresh dill

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

New England-style hot dog buns

Remove the lobster meat from the shell (and if female, reserve the roe); pull off the claws where they attach to the body, and break the body in half, discarding the head portion. Drive a knife down the middle of the underside of the tail portion, remove the meat, and set it aside. Using shell crackers, a crab mallet, or a hammer, crack open the claws, and remove all of the meat. Chop the claw meat and the tail meat into bite sized pieces, place in a bowl, cover, and refrigerate.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the onion, celery, mayonnaise, roe (if using), lemon juice, cayenne pepper, celery salt, and dill weed; taste and correct the seasoning if necessary. Blend together the dressing and the lobster meat, cover, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

To assemble the lobster rolls:

In a medium-sized, well-seasoned cast iron skillet set over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Place two rolls in the pan and “toast” until brown; repeat on the opposite side. Carefully remove the rolls from the heat, and fill with the lobster. Serve immediately, with a cold beer.

Tagged as: Cheever, Le Bernardin, Lobster rolls, recipe, The Wapshot Chronicle