Brie set up the recipe on her laptop on the counter. The keys had a decent coating of flour on them now, but pulling up the page on her phone repeatedly made the mess worse. The recipe was from The New York Times, but her older sister said it wasn’t too different from the latkes their dad used to make.
“It can’t be that different,” Spencer had squinted at the screen on her way out to a meeting. “Just make sure to add the matzo meal.”
“How much?” Brie took her phone back from her sister.
Spencer shrugged. “No idea. Feel it out.”
It was Hanukkah, and the sisters hadn’t celebrated in a few years. Their grandparents were religious, but their parents weren’t. When the girls were little, their parents tried to instill culture in them. Teaching them the holidays, and letting their parents take them to synagogue from time to time. As the girls reached the end of their adolescence, their parents stopped caring as much. The only thing remaining was the random Yiddish phrases and food. When their mother knew she was going to have a long day, she would make a kugel to have in the fridge to have one of the girls put it in the oven when they came home from school. When their dad was feeling ambitious, he would make latkes, and those were always Brie’s favorite. He at least made them every Hanukkah. They were best when the dish was still steaming, the oil so hot it would burn the roof of your mouth. It tasted the way that it looked. All golden and warm, perfectly salty. Their family had theirs with sour cream and green onion. Their dad let her flip a pancake once, and the oil was so hot she had to hold ice on her hand for an hour.
Now Brie stood in the kitchen of her sister’s apartment, already covered in flour and struggling to use a food processor. Two potatoes and one onion that she had tried to cut first before putting them in the machine. Things were a lot simpler when her dad would let her dip a latke directly into the sour cream container. Spencer didn’t care that things were different,. but deep down she did. She was working on moving forward, not dwelling on things was her way of mourning, of coping. It left Brie feeling alone and isolated 90% of the time, but it was just the way her sister was, and she knew if she really needed her, Spencer would be there. She was already letting her live with her anyway.
After finally getting the old, thrift store food processor to work, Brie added the eggs and mixed her batter. She put in a little less matzo meal than flour. How does matzo work? She thought to herself. How does this turn into matzo balls? What about matzo brei? The oil splattered in the pan next to her. She noted how lonely it was now. In a tiny kitchen by herself, figuring out how to use a food process, and knowing that someone in her family would have had an answer to her questions about Jewish cuisine.
Brie carefully used her spatula to put a dollop of the thick batter in the center of the pan. The batter sizzled as it hit the oil. She winced as the oil splashed against her wrist. Latkes essentially were potato pancakes, but fried in hot oil. With no idea how long to fry the pancake for, she burned the first pancake. The second was under done. She tasted the third one as the fourth one fried. Dipping it directly into the sour cream, she sighed. Before she realized what was happening, she was wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. God, why am I crying? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Brie wiped her eyes with a paper towel. Some days she thought that she was okay. It was easy to feel like she was okay when Spencer was somehow always fine. All she wanted to do was something to make herself feel closer to them, but the pang in her chest was too reminiscent of how she felt eight months ago and not childhood nostalgia.
“Is… something burning?” the door to the apartment opened, and Spencer’s voice carried into the kitchen.
“Dammit!” as soon as she heard her sister’s voice, Brie’s nose filled with the scent of burning. She rushed back to the stove, picking up the pan up off of the burner. “Ah!”
The metal of the pan handle had heated up as well, leaving what was going to be a large welt on her hand. The pan fell to the floor with a loud clang.
“Brie!” Spencer dropped her bag on the couch, tripping over their small space into the kitchen. She turned on the cold water of the sink, pushing her sister towards it before grabbing a few kitchen towels and picking up the pan off of the floor. She turn to face her sister instantly, her brown eyes filling with an anger Brie didn’t recognize. “What the hell happened?!”
“I-I-” she stuttered. “I’m really sorry, Spence. I- I wanted to- my hand really hurts.”
Spencer huffed in a motherly sort of way, turning off the burner and going into the freezer to get ice cubes. She wrapped Brie’s hand with ice cubes in a towel.
“I got distracted,” Brie started. “I didn’t mean- I wanted-. I’m sorry, Spencer. I mean it.”
“It’s okay,” Spencer leaned against the kitchen counter. “I’m relieved you’re fine. Did you even get to make one?”
“Yeah. I ate it though.”
Spencer smirked at that. “They’re always better hot.”
“I was thinking about Dad,” Brie mumbled.
Spencer grabbed her unwounded hand. “Yeah. He was all I was thinking about when I was walking home.”
“I wanted… to feel closer to him, I guess. What are you doing back so early anyway?”
“I wanted one fresh,” Spencer smiled. “I also-” she stopped herself.
“You also what?” Brie raised her eyebrows.
“I may have broken down in the middle of the meeting.”
Brie threw her arms around her sister, not thinking about her burned hand. “Oh, ow!”
“Careful! Keep that ice on,” she chastised. “I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to be here with you.”
“I miss them,” Brie resecured her towel and ice cubes.
“I miss them too,” Spencer sighed. “But we have our memories. And we can make latkes.”