It was a simple black and white composition book, swollen with clippings pasted onto the pages. Yellowing articles from old newspapers and magazines. In between, recipes written in Mom's neat pretty handwriting. How did Mom consult this notebook so often and not get smears of sauce on the margins? Caroline couldn't use a recipe card twice without staining it somehow.

She would copy the recipe out by hand, so Mom's notebook would survive the dinner, safely tucked back on its shelf. She'd follow the directions exactly, except for the one line: "a jar of tomatoes."

Dad's green thumb had produced bumper crops, and every summer saw Mom at the stove, canning tomatoes. As she grew up, Caroline picked them and helped through most of the process. She particularly liked "shocking the skins off" by putting the tomatoes through hot, then cold water baths. It was fulfilling to watch the skins crack and slide off under her fingers. She took her turn stirring the tomatoes as they cooked down. She even helped sterilize the glass jars, then filled them to the exact level Mom indicated. But Mom slid on the lids and screwed on the seals. Caroline had lived in fear of messing that up, so that the preserves would somehow be tainted and unsafe to eat. 

There was such satisfaction in seeing that row of gleaming jars on the shelves of the basement, the bright red of the tomatoes promising delicious, cheerful meals shared together.

Now any surplus food she made was preserved in a freezer. She and Mike didn't grow tomatoes or anything edible for that matter. He said it was too much trouble to fight the deer that had moved closer as the field behind the house gave way to woods. Dad's old garden had been abandoned, gradually turned into lawn, and Mom's flowerbeds shrank as growing trees cast more of the property into shade. Caroline still loved the land, but it wasn't the place she'd known growing up. And the house was bigger, with rooms added on. A more modern house, more convenient.

Yet at night when she dreamed of something happening "at home," the house surrounding her was still small, with its irregular windows and old floors you had to polish and wax.

Of course the house was better now. Nicer for company. And who wants leaking windows that let ice grow on the inside of the panes on February nights?

Her cooking was different, too. More varied. Healthier. And they ate out regularly. Poor Mom. She cooked every supper. Two or three times a year she got to eat at a lunch counter while they shopped for clothes downtown. Even when they drove to see family, Mom packed lunches. No fast foods for them. 

Tonight Caroline's dinner was going to get as close to Mom's as possible.

"He won't eat anyhow." Mike's voice was flat, tired. "He's killing himself."

It was true that her brother Jim was doing badly. Caroline had no illusions about his health or future. His bones were visible under his shirt. He said he had no appetite. 

At first he had done well with the diagnosis of heart failure. He'd gone to exercise at the hospital's gym, enjoying the help of a coach. But when he'd completed all the sessions his insurance would cover, he stopped going, even though he must have had some money to pay for a few hours a week. Even though Caroline had money.

He said later, "I decided to let nature take its course. And when I saw what the course was, it was too late to stop it." 

So now he didn't eat and he never slept at night, just dozing in a chair. Or so he said. There was a lot she didn't know. He didn't let Caroline into his apartment; she hadn't been inside in five years, and he lived only thirty minutes away by car. When she came to get him for a family gathering, she pulled up outside the apartment building, called on the phone and waited for him to come out the lobby door. She had no idea why his apartment was off limits. At times she speculated wildly. Did her only brother have some secret hobby he was ashamed to expose? Was there a companion she'd never met? Was he a hoarder? 

One grandmother had been like that: solitary on a neglected farm, facing every visitor behind a screen door that she never opened. Totally alone until she was found dead. 

How could Jim be anything like that? He'd always been the one with friends.

Well, tonight he was going to eat something. She knew he would. He was in their home, their old childhood home now altered but still partly the same. And she was making Mom's spaghetti sauce, preserved in the composition book in her faint, clear, careful handwriting. A sauce not like what you got in restaurants. Probably like no Italian had ever made. But a flavor of childhood.

Caroline would need to use canned tomatoes, but everything else would be the same. The taste, the memory. 

***

"I'm giving you a small serving, Jim." She prepped the plate and laid it before him. "Eat whatever you can. And there's more if you want. It's Mom's recipe."

They sat at the dining table. Mike, quiet, worked through his heaping plate. Jim took a bite, then dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. "Remember the time Mom and Dad took us to Mohican State Park?"

He was two years older than she, he had more memories, and as he ate slowly, they reminisced.

She got up and made him a second small helping. He'd eaten some salad and half a soft roll, too.

It would probably not be enough. Nature had taken its course. But for tonight it was everything. And Mom would be so pleased.

The End