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COURTESYH

AMILTON

FAMILY

PERSONAL HISTORY

THE LAMB ROASTWhat was cooking at our place.

BY GABRIELLE HAMILTON

The authors father (left) and a family friend roasting lambs, around 1970.

We threw a party. The same party,every year, when I was a kid. Itwas a spring-lamb roast, and we laid outfour or five whole little guys over an open

fire and invited more than a hundredpeople. Our house was in rural Pennsyl-vania and was not really a house at all buta wild castle built into the ruins of a nine-teenth-century silk mill. Our back yardwas not a regular yard but a meanderingmeadow, with wild geese and a creekrunning through it. It was a lush setting.The beer, wine, and soda chilled in thecreek, and the weeping willows bent theirbranches down over the water. Wewould braid a bunch together to make akind of Tarzan rope to swing on, out overthe stream in bathing suits and lacelesssneakers, and land in the creek.

In our town, you could walk backand forth between two states by cross-ing the Delaware River. On weekendmornings, we piled in the car and ate

breakfast at Smutzies, in New Jersey,then filled up the tank at Sam Wil-liamss Mobil, in Pennsylvania. Afterschool, I walked to Jersey and got les-sons at Les Parsonss music shop. Myhome town has become, mostly, asprawl of developments and subdivi-sions, gated communities that look likemovie sets that will be taken down atthe end of the shoot. But, when I wasyoung, it was mostly farmlandrollingfields, rushing creeks when it rained,thick woods, and hundred-year-oldstone barns. You had to ride your bikeabout a mile down a dark country road

thick with night insects to find even aplugged-in Coke machine. OutsideCals Collision Repair, that machineglowed like something almost religious.

I was the youngest of five, and we ranin a packto school, home from school,and out after dinnerlike wild dogs. Ifthe Melman kids were allowed out, and

the Bentley boys, the Drevers, and theShanks across the street as well, our groupnumbered fifteen. We spent all of ourtime outdoors, in mud suits, snowsuits, orbare feet, depending on the weather.Even in the benign woods, we foundrough pastimes. We trespassed, dragraced, smoked, burgled, and vandalized.

We got ringworm, broken bones, tetanus,concussions, stitches, and poison ivy.

My mother was French, and shewore the sexy black cat-eye eyeliner of

the era, like Audrey Hepburn and So-phia Loren. I remember the smell ofsulfur every morning as she lit a matchto warm the tip of her black wax pencil.She pinned her dark hair back into atight, neat twist, and then spent the dayin a good skirt, high heels, and an apron.She lived in our kitchen, ruled the housewith an oily wooden spoon in her hand,and forced us to eat briny, wrinkled ol-ives, small birds, and cheeses that lookedas if they might bear Legionnaires dis-

ease. She kicked our cat away from herankles and said, Ah l l l l l l, theproblem with kittens is that they be-come cats! I sat in her aproned lap everynight after dinner and felt the treble ofher voice down my spine while breath-ing in her exhale of wine, vinaigrette,and tangerine.

More than thirty years ago, herkitchen had a two-bin, stainless-steelrestaurant sink and a six-burner Gar-land stove. Her burnt-orange Le Creu-

set pots and casseroles, scuffed andblackened, were always filled with tails,claws, and marrow-filled bones that shewas stewing and braising on the backthree burners. Our kitchen table was abig round piece of butcher block wherewe prepared and ate casual meals. Mymother knew how to get everything co-mestible from a shin or neck of someanimal, how to use a knife, how to curea cast-iron pan. She taught us to articu-late the s in nioise and vichyssoise,so that we wouldnt sound like otherAmericans.

The lamb roast, though, was my fa-

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thers party. With a degree from theRhode Island School of Design, twounion cards in his walletstagehandsand scenic artistsfive able-bodied chil-dren, a French wife, and a photographtorn from a magazine of two Yugoslavmen roasting a lamb over a pit, he cre-ated a legendary party. People came

every year from as far away as New YorkCity and as near as our local elementaryschool.

My dad could not cook. He was a setdesigner for theatrical and trade shows,and he had a design-build studio inLambertville, New Jersey, where he hadgrown up, and where his own father hadbeen the local doctor. My father wentaway to college and then to art school.In 1964, he bought the old skating rinkat the end of South Union Street, with

its enormous domed ceiling and colos-sal wooden floor, and turned it into hisstudio, an open work space where scen-ery as big as the prow of a ship could beconstructed, erected, painted, and thenbroken down and shipped to New York.He built the sets for the Ringling Broth-ers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, andwe would zip around on the dollies,crashing into the legs of the chain-smoking union carpenters and scenicartists who were busy with band saws,

canvas, and paint. We ran up and downmountains of rolled black and blue ve-lour, laid out as if in a carpet store, andshoved our arms down into fifty-gallonoil drums full of glitter.

At the circus at Madison SquareGarden, we met Mishu, the smallestman in the world, and petted the longvelvety trunks of the elephants in jew-elled headdresses. We met Gunther, thelion tamer, and marvelled at his blondhair, deep tan, and amazing asshigh,

round, and firm, like two Easter hamsin electric-blue tights.

Where the rest of us saw only theempty, overgrown meadow be-hind our house, riddled with ground-hog holes, my father pictured a giantpit, with four spring lambs roasting overapplewood coals, wood smoke hangingin the moist summer air. He saw hisfriends: artists and teachers and butch-ers, with glasses in their hands. Aboutall of his work, he says, Everybody elsedoes the bones and makes sure the thingdoesnt fall down. I do the romance.

The lamb roast wasnt our only party.For a Moroccan-themed party, he builtlow couches from sheets of plywood andcovered them with huge fur blankets andorange velour from the studio. Therewere tapestries and kilims stacked as tallas me, where adults stoned on spicedwine and pigeon pies lounged. I remem-

ber walking from room to dimly lit roomacutely feeling the ethos of the eratheearly nineteen-seventiesas if it, too,were sprawled out on the scene shopcouch in long hair and a macram dress.There was also a Russian Winter Ball,for which my father had refrigerator-size cartons of artificial snow shippedin from Texas and rented a dry-ice ma-chine to fog up the rooms, so it wouldfeel like a scene from Doctor Zhivago.And there was a Valentines Day Lov-

ers Dinner, which finished with hun-dreds of choux-paste clair swans withlittle pastry wings and necks, and sliv-ered almond beaks which, when toasted,turned perfectly black. My father setthem out swimming in pairs on a giantPlexiglas mirror pond, with confec-tioners sugar snowdrifts on the banks.Swans, he said, mate for life.

The lamb roast was simple. We builta fire in a shallow pit, about eight feetlong and six feet wide. At each end of

the pit, my dad and my oldest brother,Jeffrey, set up a short wall of cinder blockswith a heavy wooden plank on top, wherethe long ash-wood poles bearing thelambs would rest. The branches of an ashtree grow so straight that you can easilyskewer a lamb with them.

Jeffrey had a 1957 Chevy truck, witha wooden bed and a big blue mushroompainted on its heavily Bondoed cab. Theday before the party, we drove out alongthe winding roads, past Blacks Christ-

mas tree farm and the LaRue bottleworks. I rode in the bed of the truck, ina cotton dress and boys shoes with nosocks, hanging on to the railing, lettingthe wind blast my face. Even with myeyes closed, I could tell by the littlepatches of bracing coolness, and thesudden bright warmth, and the smell ofmanure when we were passing a hayfield, a long thick stand of trees, a stretchof clover, or a horse farm. Finally, wegot to Johnsons apple orchard, wherewe picked up wood for the fire.

Johnsons sold yellow peaches andhalf a dozen kinds of apples in bushel

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baskets. But it was too early in the yearto buy fruit. They had pruned the treesfor the season, and we filled the truckwith the trimmings, piling applewoodbranches high above the truck bed,which wed extended with two eight-foot sheets of plywood. This greenwood would burn long and hot, hissing

all night as the sap dripped down intothe flames. My father said, Thatll burnwith the fragrance of its fruit, you see.

We got the lambs at Marescas, theItalian butchers up the road on the Jerseyside. Outside the shop were two hugeforsythia bushes, bursting with sunnyyellow flowers every spring. Inside, theenamel refrigerated cases were packedwith hunks of whole meat, ground meat,tied meat, and birds, whole and in parts.On the long green tile wall behind the

cases, where the Marescas did theirbloody work, was a giant mural, infriendly colors, of a fenced-in pasture,with cottony white sheep and porky,bristle-less pink piggies, smiling whilesniffing yellow buttercups. In the centerof the pasture was a roly-poly, mustachedbutcher in a clean white apron. To theright of the mural, hanging from pegs,were hacksaws, cleavers, and giant knives.In the early seventies, there was no ar-tisanal, no organic or free-range or

diver-picked or heirloom anything.The Marescas were just father-and-sonsbutchers, working in a shop with sawduston the floor.

Salvatore and his son Joe lookedthe partwith bulky flannel shirts un-der their long jackets and aprons, andgreasy, stained, catchers-mitt hands.But Emil, the other son, looked as if hecould have been a chemist in a lab, or ahome-ec teacherhe wore an apron,always, but with a V-neck sweater vest

over his flannel shirt and a pair of nicebrown corduroys. He had wanted to bea baseball player, I had heard, but endedup in the family business.

The Marescas could judge how oldan animal was when it was slaughteredby touching the cartilage, what it wasfed and how often by examining thefat deposits and marbling in the meat.Pointing out a thick streak of fat ina side of beef, Joe said, Here youcan see the lightning bolt where therancher started to feed him fast andfurious at the end to fatten him up,but what you really want is steady feed-

ing so the fat is marbled throughout.Every time Joe opened the heavy

wooden door to the cooler, I caught aneyeful of carcasses hanging upside down

with their tongues flopping out the sidesof their blood-flecked mouths and theirbulging eyes filmed over, along with dis-embodied partslegs, heads, haunches,sides, ribslooking like something in a

Jack London story. I wanted to follow Joein there. I wanted to be with the meat andthe knives, and to wear the long bloodycoat.

T

he night before the party, we slept bythe fire, four kids vaguely chaper-

oned by our brother Jeffrey. He routinelycollected the deer and raccoons that hadbeen hit out on the country roads, anddragged them back to hang from treesuntil they bled out. Then he cleaned thehides, burned offthe hair, and made hisown pants. He scraped the sinew fromthe bones and dried it, to make thread. I

was enthralled by his artful, freakish hab-its and his boarding-school good looks,

which were dressed down by his newhabit of wearing dashikis. He was eleven

years older, and I didnt understand thatthere was likely a psychotropic reason hecould go so long without blinking. My

Hes got your trudge.

parents probably hadnt totally under-stood this, either, because on the nightbefore the big party Jeffrey was left incharge of the fire. My brother Todd, the

second oldest, would have preferred to bein his room with the door closed, losinghimself in his electric guitar, his reel-to-reel tape recorder, his dual cassette deck,his electric amplifier, and his new solder-ing iron. With coils of solder and copperpaper clips, he fashioned little sculpturesof boats, trains, and skiers. But now he layin his sleeping bag, tuning us out, listen-ing to Led Zeppelin on his headphones,

which he had bought himself with themoney that hed earned busking in town.

Simon, who was closest to me in age,was in the middle of a preadolescentsummer vandalism spree. Every cop carhe saw was an opportunity to pour afive-pound bag of white sugar in its gastank. Glass panes in empty houses weregamely blown out with rocks. He waswaiting until we all fell asleep so hecould walk into town and leave his markovernight. My sister, Melissa, the mid-dle child, was so responsible as to have alifeguarding job, which left a whitewristwatch mark on her tanned arm.

While we lay around the sparking pit,Jeffrey came up with a little language and

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a nomenclature for our family. He startedwith my dad, the Bone, which some ofthe carpenters at the scenery shop had re-cently started calling my dad behind hisback. Ever since the eighth grade, school-mates had changed Hamilton to Ham-bone or just Ham. But someone cleverhad finally come up with the Bone and it

had stuck. Have you seen the Bone?Wheres the Bone? You better make surethe Bone signed offon that.

From Pa-Pa Boner, the lewdness ofwhich can still put Jeffrey into a breath-less laughing fit, it took nothing to getus going, and soon we were dubbed,from oldest to youngest, J Jasper Bone,T-Bone, Bonette Major, Sly and theFamily Bone, and me, Bonette Minor.Our battered Volvo station wagon be-came the Bone Chariot. Something

uniquely my dadslike the malfunc-tioning dimmer switches in our house, orthe houses almost being auctioned offatthe sheriffs sale, because he hadnt paid theproperty taxes in a yearwas Bone-a fide.Expensive champagne at Christmas de-spite the lien was Bone-issimo. And mydads parties became Bone-a-thons.

As the youngest, I didnt really getthe joke, but I thrilled to be packed intomy sleeping bag right next to my sib-lings. I felt cocooned by the smell of

wood smoke, the anchoring voices, gig-gles, farts, and squeals of disgust. Thiswhole perfect night, when everything ispretty much intact, is where I some-times want the story to stop.

I had no idea the divorce was coming.Family meeting, my mom called out,a couple of years later. We assembledin the afternoon in the long narrow din-ing room, around the wooden table thatcould seat twenty-four. Simon and I were

lying on the Oriental rug, and I turned myattention to the bushel of apples mymother kept in the coldest part of theroom. My mother shopped in bulk, like arestaurateur: she bought four gallons ofmilk at a time, and wheels of cheese. I wasgazing at those apples when she announcedto my father, Jim, its over, and the kidsand I have decided you should go.

It took more than a year to fully dis-mantle the family, but I felt as if I hadfallen asleep by the lamb pit one nightand woken up the next morning to thedebris of a brilliant party, a bare cup-board, and an empty house. I dont

know exactly how my parents worked itout, but I think that my dad was sup-posed to be in charge of us the summerafter they finalized their divorce, but hewasnt entirely up to the job; my brotherSimon and I were left alone for weeks.We were better off, we seemed to agreewithout discussing it, each to fend for

himself, rather than become allies.Our mother moved to a remote partof northern Vermont. There was some-thing about that setting that sheat thattime a rage-prone, menopausal, highlydistressed womanfound soothing. Butit held no appeal for Simon and me,whom she took with her. After a longwinter in Vermont, we returned again toour dad and the remnants of the housewe had grown up in.

That summer, my father played the

Janis Ian album Between the Linesover and over, like a much younger manmight have done. He worked long hours,then fell asleep in bed with the light onand the crossword puzzle half-finished,his felt-tipped pen leaving large blackspots where it bled into the sheets. It wasone of my dads worst financial periods,the summer of Bone-less living. Banksand creditors called every morning start-ing at seven-thirty. My dad went to NewYork and stayed there for most of the

summer, launching a show for whichhed designed the sets. I answered thephone and gave truthfully vague answersconcerning my dads whereabouts, not toderail the creditors but because I reallydidnt know where he was or when hewas coming home.

By the time my parents might haverealizeda glance in the rearview mir-rorthat theyd abandoned us, we werenot to be recovered. That summer wasthe definitive end of some things and

the hastened beginning of many others.I smoked cigarette butts salvaged frompublic ashtrays and sidewalks. I worespike heels that I shoplifted and awatermelon-red tube top. I did my firstline of coke. Over the next couple ofyears, I made friends in town who had

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nobody watching them, either, but theywere twenty and not thirteen. I giddilyflipped through the racks of adult be-havior and tried on whatever seemed at-tractive. It was a spectacularly scatter-shot approach, in which I found myselfgoing to Little League practice in theafternoons while reading D. H. Law-

rences Women in Love at night, be-cause it had a photograph of naked peo-ple in bed on the back cover.

There must have been adults whowould have liked to put a strong hand onthe back of my neck and walk me gentlyoffthe field for a quiet pep talk. But I wasmeeting only the kind who were enter-tained by the way I said cunt, fuck,dick, and shit, and who gave me theattention I was seeking. Shes thirteengoing on twenty-five, my dad used to

say proudly when introducing me tostrangers.

In the morning, we awoke and foundin the pit a huge bed of glowing coals,perfect for roasting lamb. My dad threwcoils of sweet Italian sausage onto thegrill. He split open loaves of bread totoast over the coals, and, for breakfast,instead of Cocoa Puffs and cartoons, wesat up in our sleeping bags, reeking ofsmoke, and ate these giant, crusty,

charred sausage sandwiches. Afterward,we rolled up our pants and walked bare-foot into the frigid stream, built a littlecorral with river rocks, and stocked itwith jugs of Chablis and cases ofHeineken, cream soda, and root beer.Getting beer out of the stream, insteadof just reaching into an ice-packed,bright-red cooler, was Bone-a fide. Wehad to mow the meadow and rake it,and the smell of fresh-cut grass wasBone-issimo. We filled hundreds of

brown paper bags with sand and plumb-ers candles, then set them out along thestreams edge and by the groundhogholes so that nobody drunkenly fell intothe stream or broke an ankle when it gotdark. We made tables out of plywoodand sawhorses. And we juiced up theglow-in-the-dark Frisbees in the carheadlights so we would be ready to playat the far dark end of the meadow.

The lambs were placed over the coalshead-to-toe-to-head, the way youd puta bunch of kids having a sleepover intobed. A heavy metal garden rake was keptnext to the pit to move the spent coals to

the edges as the day passed and the ashesbuilt up, revealing the glowing red em-bers beneath. The lambs roasted slowly,their blood dripping onto the coals witha hypnotic hiss. My dad basted them bydipping a thick branch covered with a bigswab of cheesecloth into a paint can filledwith olive oil, crushed rosemary, garlic,

and chunks of lemons. He mopped thelambs with soft careful strokes, as youmight paint a new sailboat. All day, as wedid our chores, the smells of gamy lamb,applewood smoke, and rosemary-garlicmarinade commingled.

The rest of the meal was prepared insuch quantities that the kitchen felt hec-tic. There were giant bowls of lima-bean-and-mushroom salad, with redonion and oregano, and full sheet pansof shortcake. Melissa snipped cases of

red and black globe grapes into perfectclusters with a pair of office scissorswhile my mom mimosaed eggsforc-ing hard-cooked whites and then hard-cooked yolks through a fine sieveontopyramids of cold steamed asparagus vin-aigrette. Melissa and my mother workedquickly and cleanly, both in bib apronswith a dish towel neatly folded andtucked into the apron string, doing thebones of our lamb roast.

Todd gave the lambs a quarter turn

every half hour. Simon parked the cars.Jeffrey politely kissed the older guests,who arrived first, on both cheeks. Iplunged in and out of the stream to re-trieve drinks.

Then they started arriving, all thelong-haired, bell-bottomed artist friendsof my dads and former ballet-dancerfriends of my mothers, with long necksand erect posture, and our friends, toothe whole pack of them. We were muddy,grass-stained, and soaking wet after

fifteen minutes. I barely recognized thewashed and neatly groomed Marescaswithout their butcher coats.

The meadow filled with people andfireflies and laughterjust as my fatherhad imaginedand the lambs on theirspits were hoisted onto the mens shoul-ders, as if in a funeral procession, and setdown on the makeshift tables to becarved. Then the sun started to set andwe lit the paper-bag luminarias, and thelambs were crisp-skinned and sticky,and the root beer was frigid, and itcaught, like an emotion, in the back ofmy throat.