A Childlike Treat at a Grown-Up Event

One day, when I came home from kindergarten, my mother and I got in the station wagon and drove to a hilly area of Silver Lake, I think, to visit an old family friend named Eleanor.

Eleanor, an elegant, transplanted Manhattanite and a widow, lived in a cliffhanging house shingled in redwood. Her home was full of abstract paintings and delicate objects--clearly not a house where children visited often.

She poured sherry for my mother and herself, lemonade for me and we moved out to the deck, which overlooked the city. After a few minutes, I had to go to the bathroom. On my way, I passed through the kitchen, and there, on the counter, was a plate of the most adorable small sandwiches I’d ever seen. They were triangular, crustless, made with snowy-white bread: the polar opposite of the large, crude seeded-rye sandwiches Mom packed in my lunch box.

With a child’s effortless egotism, I assumed that these perfect child-sized sandwiches had been made expressly for me. I ate one en route to the bathroom and loved the crunch of the cucumbers and their pale, icy taste. Eleanor’s dachshund, Max, followed me, eating the crumbs. Returning from the bathroom, I ate another finger sandwich--this one with butter and dark purple jam. Back on the deck, my mother said, “Did you remember to wash your hands?”

I studied my sneakers.

“Go back and wash your hands,” she said. “Now.”

This time, I took two sandwiches into the bathroom and ate them. On the way out, I ate two more in the kitchen, with Max snapping at the crumbs as they fell. I’d eaten half the sandwiches before it occurred to me that I might have done something wrong.

“What took you so long?” said my mother when I returned. “We were afraid you had washed away down the drain!”

The longer I sat and listened to my mother and Eleanor talk, the more my guilt ballooned. Thinking of a way to avoid discovery, I considered the recent, most dire afflictions of my kindergarten classmates.

“I don’t feel well,” I said to my mother. “I think I have pneumonia.”

My mother and Eleanor laughed. Eleanor said, “Are you hungry?”

“No,” I said. “I think my appendix just burst.”

“I have something that might make you happy,” Eleanor said, and went into the house. I sat there staring out at the milky air, my heart pounding, not daring to look at my mother. Then Eleanor called me into the kitchen.

“Look,” she said. “A little dog must have eaten all the tea sandwiches!” She brought the sparsely filled plate to my eye level. “It must have been a little dog, because a charming, polite, smart little girl would never do such a rude and selfish thing.”

I pawed the floor with my red sneaker.

“Let’s not tell your mother,” she said. “We don’t want her to be mad at Max now, do we?”

Eleanor has long been gone from our lives, but I remain as helpless as a child before a tea sandwich. I made them recently for a friend’s baby shower. I bought good white and wheat breads. I splurged on imported sweet butter and ham and used a friend’s exceptional homemade berry jam--truly, the better the ingredient, the more sublime the result.

At the shower, I saw immediately that my tea sandwiches were a success. One pretty little 4-year-old girl ate one, and promptly ate three more.

TEA SANDWICHES

Serves 12

1 loaf sturdy white bread

1 loaf sturdy wheat bread

1/2 pound sweet butter, preferably Plugra

1/2 pound good ham or prosciutto, sliced thinly

Berry jam

Trim crusts off bread and separate the white and wheat slices into two piles--one for ham sandwiches, one for jam.

Slice butter thinly and lay on bread. Fit ham on top, folding to fit. Smear a bit of soft butter on next bread slice (to glue them together) and close sandwiches. Cut each sandwich into six small squares.

Slice butter thinly and lay on bread. Spread jam on other slice. Close sandwiches. Cut each sandwich into six small squares.