Mr. Landi’s dream job turned out not to be so dreamy when we hit the ground in Massachusetts. For reasons now lost in the mists of time, he was not to be publisher after all, but rather associate publisher, of the august industry journal ComputerWorld. Why the bait-and-switch is obscure to me, and my husband would later claim he could have sued the company, but by the time he discovered himself second in command to Herr Landmann we had fully evacuated from Brooklyn Heights and were settled in the Leave It to Beaver house in Weston.
And I do not call him Herr Landmann lightly. He and his redoubtable wife, a heavyset woman in her 50s who wore her blonde hair in Heidi braids, extended an invitation to dinner and a movie soon after our arrival. I don’t recall the menu, but the video was Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the infamous propaganda film she made for Hitler. And from the ceiling of Herr Landmann’s study hung the model Luftwaffe airplanes he put together in his spare time (yes, then as now apparently, you can buy these things as kits for the twisted hobbyist). At one point in those first months in Massachusetts, Fritz called the house and when he got me on the line, barked: “Kinder, kirche, küche!” Apparently I was not projecting a suitably submissive image for a corporate wife, a reality underscored when the girlfriend of a good friend from New York brought me a doormat as a housewarming present.
But I did make the effort those first few months in the Boston area to find friends and employment. I didn’t think I was smart enough to land a job with The Atlantic, the esteemed monthly then headquartered in Beantown, but I did manage to land an assignment with Boston magazine, to write a profile of a German-born Color Field painter named Friedl Dzubas, who showed with Leo Castelli and André Emmerich and hobnobbed with many of the greats of his day, including Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock. By the late 1980s, he was living not far from Newton, Massachusetts, and was delighted to have anyone from the press pay attention. We had a long, engaging, chatty visit, but because of the way he had set the scene for our interview, there was nowhere to place my tape recorder but on the floor (then as now I always relied on taped conversations). Big mistake, a reporter’s classic nightmare. I could scarcely make out a word, and even a professional transcription service was stymied. That seemed the end of a freelance career in Boston, though I continued writing for magazines in New York—nothing steady, just enough to feel like I hadn’t morphed into the perfect Stepford wife.
Aside from setting up house, a function at which I’ve become more adept than I’d like to be, I decided one useful way to spend my time in Weston was to quit smoking. From the New York friend’s girlfriend, I’d heard miraculous things about a certain Dr. Molotov (not his real name, of course), who had also been hailed in the local press as a miracle worker for those with addictions. I was skeptical, but at a cost of about $60 for a one-hour session this was surely worth the gamble.
Dr. M seems to have disappeared at the beginning of Covid, but in the late 80s, the Mad Russian, as he was also known, had his offices in Brookline, a spacious wood-paneled waiting room decorated with corny sunsets he painted when he was a commercial artist in Moscow, before he emigrated to the United States in 1979. A short balding man dressed in a sport jacket, he greeted us tersely and then led his “patients” into an adjoining room where chairs were arranged in a U-shape. At the front of the room stood a desk, empty except for a clock and a glass of water. As I recall, he waved his hands a few times and instructed all 20 or so of us to “relax.”
And then he went around the room and asked us one by one what had led us to seek out his services. Most announced that they were here to quit smoking, but a few mentioned other ailments: arthritis, a dislocated shoulder, a broken ankle. Dr. M waved his hands over the trouble spots, dispensing what he described as “bioenergy.” When he came to me, I announced that I too was there to kick the weed, but then I thought, what the hell, might as well go for broke, and revealed that I had been almost completely deaf in one ear since childhood. He gave me a long searching look, and then when he had finished his journey around the room, called me up to the front and asked me to sit at the desk. He positioned himself behind my back and placed the palms of his hands on each of my ears—to this day I remember the warm velvety feel of his skin, like heated suede. He mumbled a few words and moved to a far corner of the long room, perhaps 20 or 25 feet away. It seemed, from the attention others paid to him, that he was speaking. Then he turned and asked in a louder voice if I could hear him. I shook my head no. He returned to the desk and put his palms over my ears again, and again retreated to the far corner, talking to the wall. We went about three rounds with this charade before he finally gave up, opining in his heavy Russian accent, “Well, maybe we need a few sessions with this.”
At the very end, Dr. M took each of us into a small private room, where he told me to close my eyes and imagine myself not smoking. Then he waved a hand and leaned in close: “Please do not eat too much,” he whispered. “You have best body in United States of America.”
Deeply craving a smoke, I returned to my car and scrambled behind the front tire to find the pack of Marlboros I’d tossed there just before visiting Dr. M. I lit one and inhaled deeply. It would be years before I quit for good, and my hearing would grow progressively worse, until I now wear hearing aids. But Dr. M's Facebook page, last updated three years ago, is filled with accolades from celebrities and ordinary folk who gave up the weed thanks to his intervention. God bless ‘em, one and all.
Salmon Cakes
I realize these last few months that I’ve been calling myself a nascent vegetarian when more accurately I should say that I am for now pescatarian. I’ve cut out beef, chicken, pork, lamb and other mammals largely because I can no longer stand the idea of eating animals with highly developed nervous systems and am appalled at the descriptions I’ve read of factory farming. About the invertebrates, I’m on the fence, having no idea how sensitive they are to pain. But I’m not yet ready to find out—or to give up linguine and clam sauce.
And so for a new year’s eve dinner at the gallery I made a wonderful poached salmon with dill sauce (these are absurdly easy recipes and can be found all over the Internet—here’s one of my faves for the poaching technique. I ended up with a lot of leftovers, however, and no desire to eat anymore cold salmon in January. So I found a recipe for salmon cakes, a staple I remember my mother making from canned fish in my childhood, and was so pleased with the result I’m having it again tonight for dinner. If you don’t have leftover salmon—baked, broiled or poached—you can try canned but I can’t vouch for the results. (This recipe is adapted from Natashaskitchen.com and calls for using baked salmon.)
Ingredients
¾ to 1 lb. leftover cooked salmon, flaked
1 tsp garlic salt
Black pepper
Olive oil
1 medium onion, finely diced
½ red bell pepper, finely diced
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, divided
1 cup Panko (Japanese style) bread crumbs
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup minced fresh parsley
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Add 1 Tbsp butter, 1 Tbsp olive oil, and diced onion and bell pepper. Sauté until softened and golden (7-9 minutes) and then remove from heat.
3. In a large mixing bowl combine the salmon, sauteed onion and red pepper, Panko crumbs, beaten eggs, mayo, Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp garlic salt, ¼ tsp. black pepper, and fresh parsley. Stir to combine and then form into 9-12 patties, roughly three inches in diameter and ½-inch thick.
4. Heat 1 Tbsp oil and 1 Tbsp butter in a medium-sized pan over medium heat. Once butter is done sizzling, add half the salmon cakes and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes until golden brown (do not crowd the patties or they are too hard to handle). Flip and brown on the other side. Use remaining butter and oil to sauté the rest of the cakes. Remove to a paper-towel-lined plate and serve with lemon wedges, dill sauce, or tartar sauce.
“Nothing steady-- just enough to feel like I hadn’t morphed into the perfect Stepford wife.”
😂😂✨✨
dealing with Covid but will comment next time.