By Kevin Broccoli

The may­on­naise has not been made.

As the onion con­tem­plates how long it will be until someone notices that the may­on­naise has not been made, it sees Chef Doyle trying not to cry.

Chef Doyle does not cry at work. In general, Chef Doyle does not cry at all, but the onion has no way of knowing that. We only know what the onion knows, and the onion knows that, for the most part, crying at work is frowned upon. The onion also knows that crying in a busy kitchen on a Sat­ur­day night is not helpful when the tickets are already piling up and the weeds are so high you feel like you’re in a Florid­i­an swamp.

The onion has never been to Florida. It’s from Eastern Oregon. The restau­rant is in Port­land. The onion has no opinion of Florida, or Port­land, or Chef Doyle crying. The onion has con­sid­ered having opin­ions about crying people, but opin­ions seem dense and fibrous. An onion doesn’t have much room for any­thing but itself. It has mem­o­ries and a few feel­ings, but the feel­ings are mainly about being an onion.

And concern.

Why hasn’t the may­on­naise been made yet? The onion notices Chef Doyle avoid­ing making eye contact with Chef Marza. The two chefs seem to be maneu­ver­ing around each other in a way that almost resem­bles a dance. The onion saw two of the busboys dancing in the kitchen earlier while singing a song called “El Hombre Grande” before they were chased out by the chef with the mus­tache who the onion thinks of as Chef Mus­tache, because nobody ever uses his name. They just call him “Chef.”

Chef Marza wipes her brow, and a bead of sweat falls down onto the steel prep table. A head of lettuce is grabbed with a bit too much aggres­sion, and she pro­ceeds to chop it with a fervor the onion has not seen from the chef until this moment. Chef Doyle coughs, but the cough obvi­ous­ly (obvi­ous­ly, to the onion) was meant to conceal a burst of emotion. The onion wanted Chef Doyle to cry and get it over with, but Chef Doyle excused himself from the kitchen instead. Chef Marza seems to note his exit, but it doesn’t deter her from the task at hand. The lettuce is dis­mem­bered. The onion feels sym­pa­thy for the lettuce. Someday that will be the onion. Not today, of course, because some­body has mis­tak­en­ly placed the onion behind a rather tall con­tain­er of salt, and it is almost totally hidden.

The onion knows the salt won’t spare the onion from its fate forever, but based on how infre­quent­ly the kitchen is cleaned, it’ll be a few weeks before they find it. When they do, it’s unlike­ly they will use it for food. It’ll go in the trash next to scraps and peels and an empty con­tain­er of heavy cream. The onion isn’t sure whether or not it’s happy to be cast aside instead of con­sumed. An onion that’s eaten becomes some­thing other than an onion.

An onion made garbage is still, for the most part, an onion. It’ll wind up in a land­fill or a dump some­where, and it might be allowed to exist that way until it decom­pos­es or sprouts. Most likely, it will sprout, and the onion likes that idea. It likes it very much.

Of course that all depends on whether or not some­body moves the salt. There is so much salt in this kitchen. The chef in charge of inven­to­ry is not very good at his job. That means many things get ordered even when they’re not needed, and some things never get ordered at all. Good luck finding any parsnips in this kitchen.

Or may­on­naise, for that matter.

At least, may­on­naise can be made. You can’t make a parsnip. Not unless you’re God. The onion won­dered if it was God. Could God be an onion? The onion tried not to get too lofty. If you don’t have room for opin­ions about crying, you can’t have reli­gion. You can’t have phi­los­o­phy. You can’t have resent­ment either, which is nice. That means if you end up getting chopped, you don’t hold any ill will against the person chop­ping you. If Chef Marza moves the salt, sees the onion, and prompt­ly dices it, the onion will not carry any bad feel­ings as it’s being dec­i­mat­ed. The role of chefs is to turn the food into the cuisine. The role of the food is to try and make peace with itself as the knife comes down. Marie Antoinette may have had to find that same kind of peace, but the onion knows nothing of Marie Antoinette or the French Rev­o­lu­tion, although it did over­hear one of the chefs saying some­thing about the Amer­i­can Civil War, because there had been a ques­tion about it at some­thing called “trivia” the pre­vi­ous night. Appar­ent­ly, the chef had done rather well at “trivia” and had won some­thing called a “coaster.”

Chef Doyle comes back into the kitchen. There is some red under his eyes, but he seems to be com­posed. He walks over to Chef Marza and whis­pers some­thing into her ear. She shakes her head and begins to peel a potato. Chef Doyle whis­pers again, perhaps repeat­ing what he said the first time, and this causes Chef Marza to stop peeling the potato. She stares at him. She says nothing. Her lip is quiv­er­ing. Might she cry? So much crying in this kitchen. The tickets are piling up. The busboys are coming in, but they’re not singing. They’re sweat­ing. The chef who chased them out earlier is asking where the salmon is. Where is the salmon? There should be a salmon. The onion knows there has not been a salmon tonight. A salmon will have to be made. And may­on­naise. And who knows what else.

The onion sees Chef Marza say some­thing with lips quiv­er­ing, with eyes blink­ing and blink­ing hard, with a shaky hand. She says some­thing, and Chef Doyle puts up his hands in a way that either says “I sur­ren­der” or “I’m so, so sorry.” The chef looking for the salmon is asking why the steak is cold. He’s stand­ing over a plate of steak and he’s putting his finger on the steak and he’s deter­min­ing that it’s cold. He’s scream­ing about it. He’s scream­ing “Cold! Cold!” and he takes the dish, and throws it direct­ly into the trash. Chef Marza goes back to the potato. She is not affect­ed by the scream­ing chef. Chef Doyle goes looking for salmon. Nobody does any­thing about the mayonnaise.

The onion settles into its spot behind the salt. It will be busy for another few hours, and then the tickets will stop spit­ting out of the small, gray machine that dis­trib­utes them. The rags will come out. Light clean­ing will be done, but no one will move the salt. Plans will be made to go to bars that stay open later than restau­rants. Chef Doyle and Chef Marza will leave sep­a­rate­ly. The scream­ing chef will make himself a drink at the bar in the restau­rant, and if anybody sees him, he’ll give them a look that dares them to say any­thing about it. The lights will be turned off. The night will be over. The restau­rant is closed the next day and the day after that. The onion will not see any of them again until Tuesday.

What will the onion do until Tuesday?

The onion doesn’t know. There’s uncer­tain­ty. There’s dark­ness. There’s the smell of clean­ing solu­tion and the per­sis­tence of garlic and oil.

All that would be enough to make anybody cry, but the onion doesn’t cry.

It won’t.
It can’t.

Crying is one thing the onion can’t do.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 20. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Vitor Pádua