One-Sentence Story: Traditional New England Clam Brownies

The Beach at Trouville at Low Tide by Gustave Courbet

It’s like taking the same snapshot once a year for twenty years and then laying all the photographs on the dining room table so you can see the changes stand out in full relief—adorable chubby babies growing into gawky adolescents, handsome young parents putting on weight and starting to gray, and the older generation getting frailer and frailer or simply leaving the pictures forever—because every summer on Cape Code we want to go clamming—there’s something so deeply gratifying about standing ankle deep in the waters of the cove and reaching your hand into the mucky sand to feel around for clam shells—but no one likes to eat the clams, even though we’ve tried them raw, steamed, and even in chowder, so every year we have the same discussion, what could we do with the clams?——and Paul always makes the same joke, “How about Traditional New England Clam Brownies?” and the kids always say, “Ewww!” and at the end of my week there, after I’ve lain in the hammock long enough and fed breadcrumbs to the turtles in Mary’s Lake, hiked to Silver Beach, picked huckleberries, gathered fingernail shells, and sailed to Tarpaulin Cove, I always begin to feel a deep, quiet sadness, as if I’ve finally slowed down enough to feel the sorrow at the bottom of everything (last year just a few days after our stay on Cape Cod I took my younger child to their first day of middle school, and as I looked around at the expectant faces of all those children—white, black, Asian, Latino, and every kind of mix—I thought by the time this is over someone’s going to be pregnant, and someone’s going to be on drugs, and someone’s going to get beaten up by a gang, and someone’s going to be raped, and someone’s going to be falling hopelessly behind, and the tears began pouring down my face—I sobbed for 45 minutes—boundless, heart-wrenching sobs that were wonderful really, as if I had been waiting my entire life to cry like that), but just this morning I found a recipe on the front page of the food section of our local newspaper that looks very promising: Spaghetti con le Vongole e il Diavolillo, with two pounds of clams, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, fresh parsley, dried red pepper flakes….

by Nina Zolotow

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