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Mayta Gravy

(by Susan McNabb)


“Where did those come from?” my mother asked, seemingly astonished that someone had sent a dozen glorious Sonia roses to me at the ripe old age of 44.


I held the vase out to show them off. “From Paul,” I said, unable to hide my delight.


Her brow furrowed and she shook her head.


“Phil-Paul,” I said. She never remembered his name and usually called him Phil, so I’d started referring to him as Phil-Paul.


“And where did he come from?


Now, that was a good question. Just as I’d resigned myself to not finding a husband after all, Paul had sent me an email out of the blue, which had led to a budding long-distance romance and to the huge spray of peach-colored roses in my hands.


I left my mother’s bedroom to find a spot to display my flowers. This was my house. I’d owned it for seven years before reluctantly inviting my mother to move in with me.


She’d left her Southern roots and followed me out to Los Angeles just as I’d bought the house with my boyfriend at the time, a man she didn’t like. She might have been right about that one—he moved out and I bought his half of the house. By then, she’d moved into my brother’s duplex in Silverlake, and I was happy about that.


My mother had had a vision of us living together as companions. I was still single. She was divorced. We got along great. On paper it looked like a perfect arrangement. Only I still had hopes of finding my happily ever after with a man, something she’d moved past for herself many years before.


When my brother sold his duplex and moved away to North Carolina, I asked her to move into my guest room. How could I not? Rents had climbed too high for her to have her own place. She was still working at a job she loved. She wanted to stay in L.A.


I wondered how I’d ever find a relationship with a man while my mother lived with me. How could I invite a date in for a drink and some candlelight with my mother in the next room?


The answer was that I couldn’t. I thought my dating days were over. But what really ended was attention from men who only wanted the candlelit parts of the date. My booty-calling boyfriends left skid marks. And who was left? No one. Until Paul came along.


He met her for the first time in the Atlanta airport. She was changing planes on her way to visit my brother, and Paul lived in Atlanta.


“I’m in love with your daughter,” he said.


“You know she’s headstrong,” she replied.


He wasn’t sure why she was trying to talk him out of me, but I knew.


Before we got married, he told her she’d always have a place with us. I was impressed, but she was not.


We thought we’d all be moving to Atlanta, but in a strange twist of fate, Paul got a job that kept us in L.A., and he moved into my house as well.


Paul was always respectful and kind to my mother, and she was always polite to Paul. But not much more.


Until she found out he could cook. And he could cook Southern food.


While Paul had been romancing me with roses and love letters (okay, love emails) between flights from Atlanta during our courtship, he’d brought my mother gifts of Duke’s Mayonnaise and White Lily Flour—items not found in any grocery store in California.


And once he moved in with us, the hummingbird cakes started. (“It’s the most requested recipe from Southern Living magazine,” he said.)


As soon as my backyard crop of tomatoes ripened, we had “mayta sands” (my mother’s name for tomato sandwiches). They had to be on white bread (she called it “balloon bread”), slathered with Duke’s, and with a touch of salt.


Weekend breakfasts were often sausage gravy on homemade biscuits.


She started calling him Paul.


One day, she asked if he could make mayta gravy to go on the biscuits instead of sausage.


He’d never heard of it. I had, but only because it was a favorite that my grandmother had made—my mother’s mother.


Paul listened to my mother’s instructions, picked out the plumpest tomatoes and premium bacon, and went to work.


And that was it. They got along just fine until her death.


Paul and I have since moved back to North Carolina where we once vaguely knew each other in high school three decades before our marriage. Now I have a life I’d once thought unattainable.


And when I told Paul I was going to write this story, he reminded me of other stories about my mother. I try not to think about her because it’s just too painful now that she’s gone. He understands and misses her too. I almost didn’t write this because it would be too hard. But then he promised to make us mayta gravy this weekend, and I changed my mind.

---

Susan McNabb is a writer, former model, and commercial actor who lives in Tryon, North Carolina. She is the author of The Opposite of Famous, and can be found at https://susanmcnabb.com and on Instagram.


Mayta Gravy


5 strips premium bacon

3 large heirloom tomatoes

dash of salt

honey to taste (approx. 3 T.)


In a cast iron skillet over medium heat, cook bacon until crisp.

Remove and blot bacon strips.

Slice tomatoes and add to skillet.

Add 1/2 c. water.

Cook until skins fall off and remove skins from skillet.

Stir occasionally to reduce gravy.

Add salt to taste and honey.

Reduce heat to simmer until gravy has dark red appearance.

Crumble bacon and add back to gravy.

Adjust salt and honey to taste.

Spoon over open face biscuits.

Serves 3.

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