The Order of Presentation

It’s a short distance between the two rental properties, one block over and one block back. In spite of the heat and sporadic torrential downpours, I decided to run from the house where my family’s gathering was taking place back to the “other one” where the refrigerator was filled to capacity with food for the next day and after. The air conditioner wasn’t running there, and of course all of the windows had been shut tight because of the rain. In that closed-off environment, even an insensitive human nose couldn’t ignore the smells of habitation; adult clothing edged with sunblock, dog hair marinated in wetlands, diaper odor climbing above them all even after the source has been wrapped in plastic twice and removed from the premises.

If nothing else, I freed up lots of space when I removed the Styrofoam cooler, a soapbox-sized block originally intended to transport Omaha steaks and the dry ice necessary to keep them cold through second day shipping. At the first house the rest of the family had just finished a late dinner; if I hurry, I thought, I might be able to move my contribution in before they bring out the appetite killers: brownies, cookies, pies, cakes, and coffee.

The stifling heat was already getting to me. I donned a pair of plastic sandwich bags as makeshift gloves, and leaned away from the contents of the cooler, lest I begin to sweat onto the platters. Patrick went to a lot of trouble to arrange this, I thought, and I paid him too well to destroy it on my end.

Each cheese was painstakingly wrapped and then vacuum sealed so that I would be able to present them fresh several days after a long car ride. Even so, there was still some prep time I hadn’t anticipated, since Patrick had also enclosed grapes, strawberries, and cherries, which had to be mixed in with the cheeses on the platters - but not too close to the soft cheeses! - to create a semblance of artistic presentation. The cheese seller hadn’t provided me with bread or suggested another good neutralizing agent between tastings, and ideally it would not have been necessary, if all of the guests tasted in the proper order. But I knew we didn’t have that level of organization, so I had visited a bakery earlier in the day and acquired two loafs of a seven grain bread - too hardy by half, but useful enough in ultra-thin slices.

The arrangement took time, too much time, despite my speed setting up the platters with two plastic bags at the end of my appendages. The Cana de Cabra waited patiently in its log, all light goat’s milk with a sweet finish. Cahill’s Irish Porter, the vegetarian friendly cheddar flavored with beer, also withstood the stultifying heat, as did, surprisingly, the triple creme St. Andre. By contrast, the double creme Brie de Meaux scarcely waited for the vacuum pack’s removal before it began to ooze into a sickening puddle that threatened its neighbors, the Noord Hollander (a crunchy aged gouda that would be the most popular cheese of the night) and the raw milk Stichelton.

After a final assessment of the presentation for which I gave myself only adequate marks, I lifted both platters into the crooks of my arms and raced back to the main house as if at any moment a hospitality studies professor might call out the culinary equivalent of “pencils down.” Thunder rumbled overhead. I saw lightning over the ocean, first at a distance, and then what I imagined was much closer to the beach. Twice the platters wobbled in my arms, and I locked up my breath in my throat while I steadied myself and foresaw a potential future where six cheeses averaging $15 lb soar in an atmosphere of cherries, strawberries and grapes. The taste of this alternate-timeline humiliation threatened to overwhelm my current state, where the cheeses are mostly fine, even the Brie, and I almost set them down and summoned help from the party one hundred yards in front of me.

It passes. I made it inside and set down the platters, whole, on the counter. No brownies, cookies, pies, cakes or coffee to contend with. The kitchen was mostly dark, except for a light over the sink where a woman who married into the family washed dishes with her brother-in-law.  From there, one could hear politics on the porch and guitar hero in the den. Everyone is full.

Ultimately, several someones, part of the everyone, will come back inside, alone or in groups. They will pick at the cheese and marvel out of politeness. They will love the Noord, the St. Andre, and will probably hate the Brie, which will contemptuously sour before they get to it. For now I pierce the Cana De Cabra’s log and spread a trace amount of its insides on the end slice of bread, closing my eyes and thinking of an alternate timeline in which I’d started earlier and the family was receptive to a cheese-tasting presentation. Even there, I can hear them thinking: That’s not who we are.