On very foggy mornings, he rolls over and murmurs sleepily to her, “We’re inside a cloud!” before closing his eyes again. Fog rolls in often on the coastline, blanketing the ocean and horizon beyond, leaving the clapboard houses to the left and right of theirs awash in a delicate mist. Humid mornings, especially before or after rain, are a study in grays: dove gray clouds, silvery gray drizzle, curtains of pewter condensation obscuring the hydrangea bushes that have been aching to burst into bloom all spring and are now reveling in their seasonal riot of color.
Warm weather fog has a particularly distinctive scent. Morning fog also has a physical sensation: the air alive and heavy with the suggestion of moisture. In combination, the smell and texture of it all conjures up other places and times and moments.
This morning she takes a run through the bank of fog. The sun hasn’t even begun to burn through the clouds—and for a moment, she feels that she could be almost anywhere. The streets and cars are ghostly in the mist, erasing all her surroundings—she really could have been anywhere.
The humidity and the faintly chemical smell of wet asphalt bring her back to summertimes when she was little. The specificity of scent makes memories flood in so rapidly and so richly that it’s less remembering and more transporting.
She’s eight years old, standing in the parking lot outside the small public library in town, piling a stack of newly acquired books into the back of their blue Volvo station wagon, wincing in advance of the burning heat of the leather against her bare legs.
She’s eating dinner outside with her sisters, cold glasses of milk in front of each plate. After they skim the cream—which is thick and ivory-yellow with fat—the rest of the milk looks tinged almost blue in comparison. She imagines the sensation of biting into a just-boiled ear of corn: each golden kernel firm and taut, the melted butter salty on her fingers.
She’s walking along the trail that runs for miles along the Gunpowder River with her sisters, her feet clad in jelly sandals that are dusty with gravel and dirt. Alongside them, they’re rolling huge black inner tubes patched in spots with duct tape, taking turns and trading off as the rubber gets hotter in the summer sun. Soon they’ll veer off, stepping cautiously down the steep grassy path that leads down to the water, clambering into the tubes and giggling as they sink inside, their arms and legs dipping into the cool water.
These long, sticky summer days always bring her back to that age: popsicles and freshly cut grass and the unrelenting heat of a cloudless July day on the farm. The scratchy feeling of hay against her skin when she helps her parents stack bales in the field up past the tennis courts. The splashing sound of pool water and the shimmering, shifting patterns that sunlight makes as it passes through the turquoise depths onto the cool slate bottom of the pool.
After a day spent outside running around in the humid heat, she would feel a certain kind of exhaustion that made sinking into an armchair, showered and in her favorite cotton nightgown (the one with thin straps and a blue polka-dot pattern and a soft texture that falls halfway down her tanned thighs) and about to eat a square of her mom’s pizza that’s making the entire kitchen—windows open with the warm evening air wafting in—smell like tomato sauce and melted cheese and yeast, feel better than any other place you could be.
Suddenly she hits a cold patch of air on her run, just around the corner from the town beach with the outdoor showers and tall white lifeguard chairs, and it brings her back to the present. Now the fog feels less warm and limpid, but rather cooler and more mysterious with a deep green smell that mingles with the distant scent of salt water.
She’s going to make dinner tonight, she decides, that will capture the best essence of summer. New potatoes tossed with fresh dill. Corn on the cob. Grilled swordfish with brown butter and capers and a squeeze of lemon. S’mores icebox cake: the graham crackers perfectly softened and sliceable after a few hours chilling against drifts of sweetened whipped cream.
She makes hers with layers of chocolate pudding instead of melted chocolate, because she likes any excuse to lick the spoon after making warm stovetop pudding. She places the dirty mixing bowl, covered in whipped cream smudges, down on the tiled kitchen floor so that their yellow lab can lick it clean, laughing when he looks up beseechingly as if to say, “There’s more, right?”
“No, no more,” she says gently, ruffling the fur under his chin and sliding open the screen door to let him lope out into the backyard, chasing the rabbits that hide under the daylily bed near the pool.
S’mores Icebox Cake
Makes one 9”x 5” cake
For the chocolate pudding
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup (49g) sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (21g) cocoa powder
1/2 cup (113g) whole milk
1/2 cup (113g) heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
For the cake
2 cups (454g) heavy cream, divided
1/4 cup (56g) mascarpone cheese, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 sleeve graham crackers (about 9 sheets)
1 cup miniature marshmallows
First make the pudding: In a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan, whisk together the cornstarch, sugar, salt, and cocoa powder. Slowly whisk in the milk, cream, and vanilla and bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat. As soon as it boils, reduce to a simmer and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture begins to thicken (about 3 to 5 minutes). Set aside to cool.
Whip 1 cup of the heavy cream with 2 tablespoons of the mascarpone and the vanilla until stiff peaks form.
Line a 9” x 5” loaf pan with plastic wrap. Place a layer of graham crackers at the bottom (you will need to break some of them to fit snugly). Follow with a layer of marshmallows, then a layer of mascarpone whipped cream to cover and fill in the spaces between the marshmallows (reserving 1/2 cup for the topping), then a thin layer of cooled chocolate pudding. Repeat the layers until you reach the top of the pan (you should be able to get 3 layers of each), and finish with graham crackers.
Place plastic wrap over the top of the pan and put the cake in the refrigerator overnight (or for at least 8 hours).
Remove the cake. Take off the top layer of plastic wrap and invert the cake over a serving platter. Remove the rest of the plastic wrap.
Whip the remaining cup of cream and 2 tablespoons of mascarpone. Spread this whipped cream over the top and sides of the cake. Top with the remaining marshmallows and briefly toast them using a kitchen torch.