Fake Food
For as long as she could remember, Phyllis had sat at the front of the classroom. Whenever the teacher posed a question, her hand reached highest. Phyllis could remember the name of every teacher she’d ever had. There was squat Mrs. Davies in grade three, who used to ask her to reach supplies off the top shelf, flushed cheeks betraying her embarrassment. There were Mr. Mar and Mrs. Worthington. And there was Phyllis up front. Slender hands folded in her lap, lips pursed as if her life depended on being known. And known she was: Phyllis Blake would have been head girl, if head girls had been appointed in Baby Creek Ontario. She was a diamond in the rough—or so she believed—a russet-headed queen who peppered her essays with “heretofores” and “holistic” and had the same blue-eyed boyfriend all four years of high school. It began in grade eight, at elementary graduation, she’d explain when met with the inevitable awwws elicited by her youthful success in love. At senior prom, Henry gave Phyllis a big glass jar full of notes he’d written to her.
“For when you’re away at school,” he said. “For when you miss me.” Henry was taking a gap year to work at his father’s office furniture company.
And here was Phyllis, left leg crossed over right, seated front row at her very first university lecture. Foodways in history. “What the fuck is a foodway, anyways?” Henry didn’t try to conceal his bewilderment at Phyllis’s colour-blocked timetable. He was so negative these days. When Phyllis asked to FaceTime him after her residence orientation, he said his back was too sore from hauling tables all day. As if talking to her would engage his back in any way. She painted her fingernails red instead. She was the one in the big city, the one who got away. And if she did meet a Saudi prince or a far-flung aristocrat, Henry would build her dream house with his bare hands and wait a decade to win her back. He was her hometown boy. Henry. And she was Rachel McAdams, arm-in-arm with college chums in a cable knit sweater.
“Welcome, everyone, to History 111: Foodways in History. My name is Professor Klein. For many of you, this will be your first lecture at university, and I hope I can do the experience justice. I’ll do him justice,” quipped the girl next to Phyllis with a giggle, elbowing her in her side. Phyllis blushed, taken aback by such a random show of solidarity. The girl was right: the professor was cute. He had a look so urban that the word groomed came to mind. Her father would have called him metrosexual.
“Why food, you ask? Food is alive and omnipresent. Food sustains us. Food moves us. Food is as natural as breathing, or sleeping, or death, or even sex.”
Phyllis perked up a little at her professor’s list, aroused not by the mention of sex, but by the fact that she was now deemed old enough to consider it natural. She was an adult – her professor’s equal – if not intellectually, then physically. Phyllis leaned into her seat more casually, eager to exude comfort and ease with her place in the theatre.
“And like all of these things, food comes with a set of cultural norms, practices, and stories. It always has. Take spices, for example. Cardamom, nutmeg, pepper. Enjoyed by mediaeval kings, fraught with conflict and the wars of empire. I want each and every one of you to come to my office hour on Wednesday and introduce yourself. Tell me what your favourite food is, and together we’ll find a way to incorporate it into your final research essay. Every foodway has a history.”
Phyllis didn’t absorb much from the rest of the lecture because she was lost in a daydream about the prospect of attending office hour. She knew her professor must make six figures, and the fact that an hour of his time would be devoted to talking about food – something as natural as sex – with her, Phyllis, gave her a thrill usually reserved for Henry. She remembered the last time she felt it, at Mason Howard’s barn party. Henry had pushed her up against a hay bale and groped her breast so aggressively that she’d yelped. Henry stopped and kissed her forehead – such a Ryan Gosling move – but Phyllis wanted him to continue. She liked the idea of being the ravaged maiden, the farmer’s daughter left adrift in the barn. That was the thing about Henry: he always seemed to end the scene at its crucial point.
As her professor explained the concept of nuance—a slight shade or degree of difference—and how he hoped to find it in their essays, Phyllis realised that this slight variation was exactly what her relationship with Henry lacked. He insisted on appearing good at surface level, no matter what, despite the fact that anyone with an understanding of nuance would know that the goodness underneath is all that matters, that obviously he would never hurt her; he was her hometown boy. Nuance was simple, but Henry had clearly never heard of it. Phyllis needed a break.
That was how it began, when a seed was planted, so to speak. The seed broke ground that weekend—Phyllis’s very first weekend in the city—when her roommate, Kris, suggested that the two go shopping for fruit in Kensington Market. Something to keep in the minifridge for those late-night study sessions. It was the smell of the seafood that met Phyllis first, wafting from an old brick building painted bright blue. She was in a coastal city, flirting with a lobster fisherman. The scent was thick as ocean, and despite Kris’s open disgust, Phyllis wanted to drown in it. The market was bustling, and the girls were overwhelmed but entranced with the breadth of culture around them. Food was alive and omnipresent.
After the girls purchased bubble tea and paper bags filled with peaches, Phyllis caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye that shocked her. Professor Klein, towing a little backpack on wheels, reusable grocery bags poking out the top. It looked like something her grandmother might use. It was so unsexy, so viscerally utilitarian, that there was something sensual about it. He was so real.
