It was bigger than usual and had things on it Anna could not place—a slab of something pink, a layer of something yellow laid up against the bank of something nearly orange. Off to one side, something white and creamy lay quiet in its hole. Anna pushed the tray away and closed her eyes. “You’ve got to eat.” Anna looked up. A nurse stood there staring. “This?” Anna said. “You want me to eat this?” “Honey, I don’t care what it is, you have to eat it. My job is to make you eat today.” After the big move, when Eva was four, maybe five, and had broadened her food range, Anna would stand in the kitchen and make things like risotto. She’d make the broth from scratch, she’d fry the onions, she’d throw in the rice, mushrooms, fennel, bacon, wildly fragranced pepper, and over the course of many, many minutes, she’d turn the thickening mass lovingly upon itself until it gained the right consistency and taste.
