American Studies

After he asked to look at the tripe and a whole beef heart at Clancey’s, Vincent then also pointed at the upright rack of short ribs. The tripe looked strangely geometric as the butcher removed it from a plastic bin near the rear of the display and set it on the counter—the honeycombed membrane was pale and limp—and Vincent knew that no matter how his father prepared it, there would need to be a reasonable third option for the upcoming dinner. He glanced quickly at the couple beside him as the tripe appeared to sag inward, suddenly embarrassed, but they were preoccupied with the selection of bratwursts and he turned back and nodded. The heart was already butterflied when the butcher presented it, and Vincent could see the deep pockets where the aorta and ventricles were cleanly halved. He felt his stomach turn, and considered asking the butcher to prepare the organ by cutting it into manageable strips, but each half was already being wrapped in the heavy brown paper. He wondered how many tripes or hearts were sold from the counter—and he doubted many at all. The short ribs added a familiar bulk to the order, and he found the shape of meat and bone reassuring. He shook his head and wondered if this dinner would remedy his father’s changes that had originated after the accident.

At first he had protested about the dinner, but then his father had looked hurt, his boyish excitement suddenly gone. Ever since he had fallen and broken his arm, his father had been growing increasingly fixated on his childhood in Lesotho—and this second attempt, he promised, was his way of remedying the curried goat he had cooked the weekend before that had ended up too dry and gamey. As he struggled to adapt to the cast on his left arm, his father also had become fixated on wearing traditional Basotho clothing around the condo—having scoured the storage unit near Hopkins for the two boxes of blankets, music, gumboots, and the few articles he had originally mailed from home—and he seemed more comfortable wearing the blanket or the olive drab coveralls from his work in the diamond mines than not. Vincent did his best to be understanding of these unexpected interests, but it was startling to arrive at the condo and find his father stick dancing or wearing his gumboots with the tops rolled down to reveal his thin legs or cleaning the spatter from an attempt to cook chicken feet. He worried that the neighbors might hear the music and dancing and smell the cooking, or worse, even see, and that in some way his father would embarrass them both, and he pleaded with him to do his very best to keep the bouts of nostalgia concealed.

The cooking was the least of the new changes, and for Vincent it offered a reasonable middle ground that he could tolerate when his father began to prepare bowls of lesheleshele porridge and cabbage cooked with sorghum molasses and vinegar. The goat had been a disaster, however, and so he had spent the previous evening searching for recipes online to show his father after agreeing to celebrate with a second Basotho dinner. After his father suggested tripe and heart, Vincent argued that ribs would be best, but then conceded they could serve each. There were several recipes he found interesting for tartare and carpaccio of heart, but the simpler instructions for stews and barbecue skewers seemed more appropriate. He refused to search for recipes for tripe, but his father insisted he knew how to cook them in a homemade gravy he had already planned to cook in a large metal pot he asked to borrow from an Ethiopian cook at The Red Fir. The recipe was one that his mother had made, and he promised that it would be simple and filling. The pot had arrived that morning in a small box filled with packing peanuts, and was well cured and heavier than Vincent had expected. The cook had also sent several packets of seasonings and a bottle of tomato...