Getting to know one’s onions laterally

We run into each other at the vegetable shop, the Wengs and I. Susan Weng is pushing the shopping trolley — one of those cursed with a ‘wheel’ of its own pulling one way as the owner pushes the other — while Joe is picking Spanish onions, pressing their redness tenderly between his dentist fingers.

(I am, as regular readers may have gathered, not terribly sympathetic towards dentists but I count Joe among my friends because he tells a decent joke; and he also refuses to treat me on the basis that it will lead to a falling out; a sentiment I respect. So I go instead to Chris Nguyen whose bills — apart from providing me with a reason to rail and rant — set the teeth on edge long after the memory of the drill has passed.)

John Weng, Joe and Susan’s son, is in town, on holiday from the US. Joe has confessed privately to naming his son after The Duke, the legendary Hollywood hero of the Western movie, John Wayne, which, far from surprising me, only confirmed a suspicion I’d long held, for Joe is still wrapped up in a movie era long gone by. At the least instigation he will rattle off dialogue from a Wayne film — The Wings of Eagles, Rooster Cogburn, North to Alaska. It is in the latter-named film, thanks to Joe’s perspicacity that I was able to espy Wayne’s hairpiece fall off during a fight.

“Wayne wore a toupee for a lot of his films,” Joe Weng confirmed.

Today, however, Joe is getting to know his onions, permitting himself a modicum of proximity with a vegetable he usually keeps at arm’s length.

Susan is going to, at the request of their son, bake a cheese and onion quiche (sometimes mistakenly mispronounced ‘quickie’. I know of a youngster — the son of another friend on visit from Thailand — who one spring day when the air was redolent with jasmine, asked a waitress, in a jaunty tone, for just that — ‘a quickie’ — and very nearly heaped disrepute upon himself and his family. The matter was resolved by them agreeing to leave the restaurant ‘quickie-ly’, as it were.)

Anyway, back with Joe Weng in the veggie shop, and Joe is confiding: “I, being a dentist, will not be partaking of the meal. I owe it to the patients with whom, by the very nature of the job, an entire work day is spent intermingling breath although we medical professionals make the effort at decorum by wearing a surgical mask.”

Then with a smile he asks, holding up an onion — Susan has, meanwhile, wandered over to inspect a packet of dried apricots — “Forget the quiche for the moment. Tell me, what can you make from baked beans and onions?”

“Salad?” I venture.

“Think laterally, Kevin,” he tuts, “this is not a recipe question.”

“Give up,” I say, because I could tell that’s what Joe wants me to do — cede the moment so he may make his jocular pronouncement.

“Why, tear gas,” he says, bubbling with laughter while Susan, who no doubt has heard this one before shakes her head and remonstrates, “Joe! Not in the market place, for goodness sake.”

“It’s only a joke,” says Joe.

Privately, to me, he whispers, “Wives!”

Susan has wheeled their trolley further on, inspecting the snow peas.

“It’s all about safeguarding reputation with Susan,” says Joe. “I’m the man behind the mask most days but still I must not lose face.”

On the way out, it is Susan that invites me to dinner over the weekend. “I look forward to it,” I say and she counters with, “You shall eat healthily, never fear.”

Joe says, seemingly tangentially, “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

“Now that sort of humour is acceptable,” commends Susan.

“She feels praised,” says Joe, privately, shaking my hand in farewell.