Tuna Casserole

Moving across the country at 22 was hard. Mom's tuna casserole made it a bit easier.

Every time I exit the PATH train as it pulls into the station at Journal Square, I keep my headphones in. Staring down at my shoes keeps me distracted from passing glances. I fall in line with the rest of the travelers, stepping up the stairs in rhythm with the shoes ahead of me, rigid and uniform, avoiding any possible misstep that would break formation. The soundtrack of Jersey City is foreign to my ears, so I play my own instead — Beach House’s “Space Song.” The yearning synths accompany me across the street, through the revolving doors and into the elevator. The droning bassline follows me up 12 stories, shielding me from small talk with my neighbors. Victoria Legrand’s haunting vocals continue their hypnotic spell as I enter my apartment, a furnished one-bedroom with more than enough space for just me. “Fall back into place,” Legrand croons, and I do.

The photos on the walls remind me of my loved ones, 2,000 miles away in Arizona, whose phones I can call but whose presence I cannot feel anymore. The skyscrapers don’t bloom in the springtime like the cacti I am used to. My closet holds keepsakes I cannot bear to look at. I’ve started memorizing my friends’ voicemail greetings. Is this master’s degree in New York really worth it? I think to myself multiple times a day. There’s an ocean between the life I once lived and the one I have just begun, and my favorite songs that play in my headphones feel like the only bridge that stretches across the sea — aside from tuna casserole.

***

Mom’s tuna casserole. It starts in the baking dish where it bakes and sizzles in the oven, countless strands of four-cheese blend gurgling in the center and turning black and crispy against the edges of the Pyrex dish, after which Mom takes it out, places it on the stove on top of an oven mitt and divides it into squares. From there, Mom takes a spatula and scoops out a serving and slides it steaming onto my plate. After dinner, she stuffs the leftovers into Tupperware containers that find a snug spot at the back of our refrigerator — out of sight, but never out of mind.

I’d eat it every year on my birthday, I’d eat it on special occasions, and I’d eat it every other week. My whole family loves it. It’s always best fresh, but it’s almost as good after heating it up in the microwave. The ingredients are simple: cream of mushroom soup, mixed with either cream of celery or cream of chicken, canned tuna, milk, butter, green peas, some salt and pepper and lots of cheese. To add some extra crunch, Mom also crushes up some Ruffles potato chips in her hands, sprinkling them on top.

Mom finally taught me the recipe before I went to college, as I wanted to learn how to cook something for myself and others that wasn’t just breakfast-related. Mom had no idea how much it would mean to me when she showed me how to make it on my own. She had learned it from her mom before her, watching her mother cook it time and time again while she stood on a stepping stool in the kitchen to see over the counter. Her mom would put crispy onions on top instead of the Ruffles, however.

***

I don’t leave my apartment much. Other than going to class, I only ever leave to pick up a rainbow-flavored vape from the nearby smoke shop — feeding the addiction I haven’t kicked since the pandemic panic. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of interacting with others — terrified at the outrageous hypothetical of being so socially inept in my new environment that I make a fool of myself in public. Maybe I’m just lazy. It’s so easy to just stay home where I know I feel comfortable. My torpor manifests most egregiously in my food delivery habits. I can DoorDash Checker’s with my eyes closed. Just scroll, tap, wait — all from the comfort of my couch. I even get my groceries delivered to avoid the possibility of confrontation.

When I was in college, I made fortnightly grocery runs to Fry's Food and Drug on Grant Road and 1st Avenue in Tucson. More often than not, I’d have one or more of my six roommates with me as I stalked the aisles and refrigerators for Frank’s RedHot and Kerrygold butter. We always went on Tuesdays, since that’s when we would get a blanket discount if we showed our University of Arizona CatCards. With Mateo, or Benji, or Zack, I bought the typical student fare of cinnamon brown sugar Pop Tarts and six packs of Miller High Life, but I also made sure to buy some canned tuna and green peas.

Our kitchen in Tucson was a biohazard. Our pantry, a crime scene — the natural result of seven young men who preferred playing Guitar Hero to cleaning the stove after pasta night. Our chore chart, scribbled poorly in pencil on a piece of printer paper, hung lopsided on the refrigerator behind a Pink Floyd button magnet, but was perpetually ignored within a month of its inception. I cooked my tuna casserole as Benji and Zack faced off in their nightly chess duel and Mateo’s drumset echoed through the walls, all while Jacob, Nick and Carson watched the Diamondbacks in the living room. And after I ate, we all took our usual spots on the couch to watch the next episode of Game of Thrones. My kitchen is much cleaner now, but I would trade it for my friends in a heartbeat.

***

I never met my grandmother. She died just months before I was born. Folks called her Kikka — a nickname coined by her eight siblings who couldn’t pronounce her given name Katherine — so routinely that she legally changed her name to it. She was a daredevil, a seasoned traveler, a social butterfly and a loving single mother of three — her husband died when Mom was 5. She was also a damn good cook with a wicked sense of humor, according to Mom.

Kikka was big on tuna, and everyone always looked forward to her tuna casserole. She cooked it for Friday board game nights with her grandchildren, where after they ate, she would beat my older half-brother Cody round after round in gin rummy, making him so upset he’d cry. My mom would ask her why she never let him win, and she’d say, “What’s that teaching him? He needs to win on his own.” 

Kikka cooked it on Thanksgiving, on the off-chance she wasn’t off-roading four-wheelers with her boyfriend Johnny instead of having family dinner. After she met some strangers on a double-decker bus traveling from Arizona to Maine, following an impromptu happy hour they shared on the top deck after they smuggled beers on board, she invited them over to her home and cooked it for them too. She always cooked her tuna casserole for others, no matter where she was. I wish I had been able to try it.

But Mom carried on Kikka’s legacy. Her passion for “feel-good food” like tuna casserole always brought us all together. I remember sitting on the floor of our kitchen when I was a kid, gazing with wide eyes through the oven window as the cheese bubbled like lava, unable to contain my excitement while my siblings talked about their high school woes at the dinner table. Even if one of us was in a bad mood, the smell would snap them out of their trance. The company dwindled as I grew older, with my siblings moving out of the house as they started their lives. Eventually, it would end up being just me and my parents — and after the divorce, just mom and me. I never thought something as universal as family dinner would mean so much to me now.

***

Two-hundred feet above the Journal Square PATH station and 2,000 miles from home, I set my pot and pan on the stove — the pot for the noodles on the right and the pan for the casserole mixture on the left. As the water boils on the right, I open up my assortment of cans. I wiggle out the beige cylindrical mass of cream of mushroom until it flops into the pan, followed by the cream of chicken, the tuna, the green peas, a bit of butter and some milk, mixing it all together with a wooden spoon as the water in the pot begins to steam and bubble. 

Oftentimes I call my mom while I cook, asking for hints on measurements and thoughts on substitutions or additions I was thinking about. Other times, my soundtrack keeps me company. To the sounds of my favorite disco music, I strut and bounce around the kitchen as I stir the cauldron and mix in chipotle seasoning, trying to perfect my own unique take on our family’s classic recipe. I belt the chorus of Odyssey’s “Going Back to My Roots” in a passionate falsetto as I crush up the Ruffles in my hands — “Zipping up my boots, I’m going back to my roots, yeah!” 

Maybe I’ll walk down to the supermarket next time, I think to myself. I continue humming the melody as I switch on the TV in the living room to HBO, gliding my socks across the hardwood floor to the beat of the kick drum. I wonder how the boys back home are doing. I should catch up with them. I slide the steaming squares onto my plate, my mouth watering at the sudden olfactory overload. As I take my first bite, my former selves return to me in an instant — and with the eyes of my loved ones on the walls watching over me, I fall back into place.