Crack Up

Nina fractures an egg against the bowl’s edge and, as if her hands belong to someone else, maneuvers the yolk between the cleaved halves.

“When making a chocolate soufflé, there’s no question which comes first. No room for chickens here. The eggs.” She smiles despite the heat of the studio lights. “Always the eggs. Always room temperature. At this point you might be tempted to take their temperature.”

For the benefit of the camera, she holds up an oversized thermometer to which she delivers a quizzical look. “Point is, at room temp the whites, when beaten properly, give a lighter counterpoint to the dense chocolate.”

She returns to the business of separating the egg when her hands stop midair, the yolk cresting over the shell, the beginning of a slow descent. She looks grimly into the bowl of already defiled whites before smashing the remaining mess on the counter.

There.

An assistant swoops in, sponges the granite, pushes the remnants of shell and egg into the sink. She should’ve let it all go into the bowl of whites, he thinks. They’re only eggs. At least half a dozen unopened cartons wait in the refrigerator. She goes through them like a dog through kibble. And why compound the problem with her fist?

Nina wipes her sticky fingers on a towel, shakes her hands, reaches into the pocket of her signature black apron to locate the worry stone. What was the mantra her therapist provided? It was…. It was…. To hell with it. She rubs harder.

There.

Despite her bouts of ineptness, Nina has a way with the camera, a way of laughing that recasts minor missteps as flukes. “Isn’t this why they invented outtakes?” Nina often quips. But demolishing an egg is not outtake-worthy.

She’s off her mark, more so than most days.

The assistant makes one final swipe across the counter. Nina insists everything is kept spotless.

“Nina, let’s rethink this egg separation business.” The voice comes from the director, unseen beyond the bright lights. “Rather than tilting the shell all over the place, pass the yolk between the halves.”

Another voice chimes in. “That’s assuming she makes a decent midline crack.”

There’s a billow of laughter. Nina joins in, briefly, while frantically passing her thumb across the worry stone’s shallow depression. Okay if she wishes to enter into self-effacing commentary, but who’s this person chiming in, hiding behind the bright lights? Another disembodied voice. Likely she’s never met this person although this show is her show.

Nina wills her breath into a measured rhythm.

“Over your head, I could,” Nina counters.

“Is there some gadget, a sieve or something?” This comes from another intangible voice. “Or forget this shot and go straight to bowls of separated eggs. We can stage that.”

Nina recognizes this assistant’s voice. He might be getting a little cheeky for someone so new to the studio staff.

“I don’t do gadgets,” Nina answers back, annoyed that she must explain herself. “I want the audience to see me separate eggs. This is my show.”

“Yeah, but at this rate the eggs are likely to hatch into chicks first.” This from the tenured cameraman who can risk cheekiness.

“The camera won’t pick up a bit of yolk in the whites anyway.” Nina cannot place the voice, but can’t argue the point.

She releases the worry stone, wipes her hands a second time, and reaches for a brown egg nestled in the wire basket shaped like a hen. The hen makes Nina smile before striking the egg cleanly against the rim of the bowl, producing two neat halves. So there, she thinks.

She eyes the bowl of whites; she can do this. She won’t consign another egg to the kitchen sink. Her hands float above the bowl. She passes the yolk from one half to the other, the shell’s alabaster interior catching and releasing the contents. The white, along with the murky, knotted strand of matter whose name always escapes her, slips into the larger bowl. She wonders if this matters while triumphantly sliding the yolk into the smaller bowl where two others huddle and shimmer. Three golden orbs, intact. No chance that a speck of yolk escaped to linger with and spoil the whites, rendering them incapable of producing the desired volume for her flourless chocolate soufflé cake.

She smiles at the camera. “The grand finale.” Then she rambles, questioning what she’d rehearsed earlier. Questioning her skill set. Her right to be on this stage. “Should we leave that line in? What do you think? In or out? Well, you decide.”

She reaches for an egg, mottled more than the previous two dozen, but perfect and pretty in her hand, and delivers a blow to the edge of the bowl. This time the shell doesn’t surrender into precise halves. The yolk is pierced, a yellow strand as thin as a spider’s filament threading through the white. She curses, although not loud enough for the mic to catch. Her fingers glisten, slick and handicapped by the contents of this egg as well as the previous one. She curses for forgetting to wipe her hands.

The studio lights are hot. Her upper lip glows. The make-up guy hovers off camera, aching to apply powder to an already heavy mask of foundation.

The shell is shiny and sleek and precariously held by the tips of her fingers. My fingers, she thinks, how ideal, an improvised sieve. She recalls her grandmother cupping her hands to separate eggs, gently shifting and spreading her fingers sufficient for the white to pass through.

“No need for a gadget when fingers will do,” Grams would say.

Did it have to do with the white escaping, or was Grams capturing the yolk, as she might capture a wounded bird? Did the perspective – holding the yoke versus releasing the white – factor into the success?

Nina knows it won’t matter if a speck of white escapes into the yolks. The yolks will perform. Yolks aren’t as demanding as whites. She will whisk the yolks with sugar, transforming them from brilliant orange to pale buttery yellow.

She tries the sieve business, her hands cupped over the bowl of pristine whites, catching the yolk once, twice, like the wounded bird that Grams must’ve imagined, the bird that threatens to slip away, like thoughts in one’s head, but held captive by practiced hands.

Finally, the bird – the yolk – escapes. First a rogue saffron thread pulling at its host, and then the whole thing as in defeat, Nina extends her fingers. “There.” She mutters, this time loud enough for the mic. “There, fucking egg. How arrogant of me to think you wanted to be a soufflé in the first place.”

She looks at the egg whites and the offending, battered yolk, and tries to think of another recipe that allows more latitude, something a novice can do. Because right now she knows she’s still, and will always be, a novice.

She suspects murmuring behind the intense lights, convinced the staff is casting her into the category of amateur, wondering how she ever got a show, even if the station’s new and finding its viewership, often through trial and error. Not that Nina’s execution is always flawed. And she is reliably funny.

She clearly hears them, bodiless voices. How many are there? Why so many?

They’re egging me on, she thinks and laughs at her pun.

She sinks her hands in the whites, warmed under the studio lights, too warm for a meringue anyway, and does a fair job of incorporating the yolk. She lifts her hands, looks at them as if they belong to someone else, spreads those fingers that proved inadequate. Let’s see how they perform if I run them through my hair. Or is that another voice from a dark corner telling her: Just run the shit through your fucking hair and be done with it.