Guess Who Came to Dinner?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Wow. Just skip his introduction. And read this AMAZING story from Leslie Karst. 

 Justice Is Served

My hearty thanks go out to Hank, who extended the invitation to recount my adventure with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is a fitting place for the story, for although she’s not exactly what one would describe as a “femme fatale,” the diminutive justice does share certain attributes with those sirens of noir: Like the archetypal femme fatale, Ginsburg, too, is known for her ability to entrance and hypnotize, seducing men (i.e., several of her fellow justices) into places they would not normally go.

A number of years ago, my father proudly announced to me that Justice Ginsburg, whom he’d known since the 1960s, had accepted his invitation to come speak at the UCLA law school, where my dad taught constitutional law. In a fit of exuberance, I’d blurted out, “Oh, you should invite her to dinner and I can cook!”

Rather than merely laughing, however, as I’d expected him to do, Dad said, “That sounds like a great idea.”

Thus did I find myself hosting a dinner party for the justice, her distinguished tax attorney/professor husband Martin Ginsburg, my parents, and my then-partner (now wife), Robin. Oh yeah, and five federal marshals, who camped out in my folks’ den during the dinner, watching In Living Color reruns on TV.

I’m working on a full-length memoir of the event and the months leading up to it, but in the meantime, here is a tiny taste of what transpired that magical evening:

 

At the chime of the doorbell, the four of us jumped up. After months of planning and preparing—and angsting and obsessing—the time had arrived.

They were here.

Mom and Dad greeted Ruth and Marty and got them seated in the living room while I fetched the Veuve Clicquot from the fridge and attempted to calm my nerves.

I’ve never been a chef by trade—just a small-town lawyer (and now mystery author) who likes to cook. And I’d certainly never entertained anyone on this level before. Just don’t say anything stupid, I implored myself as I poured a round of the Champagne and took the empty seat next to the justice.

We started chatting about legal writing, and—don’t ask me why—I mentioned that I had co-written a Supreme Court brief several years earlier. “Oh, really? What issues were raised in the case?” Ruth asked. “Uh... We were the respondents in a petition for cert.,” I answered slowly, trying to remember what the heck the brief had been about. “I think it involved preemption... But to tell you the truth, I can’t recall exactly what the issues were. I seem to be having a senior moment.”

As soon as the words were out I wished them back. Here I was, more than twenty years her junior, telling the justice I’m having a senior moment? Ouch.

Abashed, I excused myself to go plate up the first course: seared sea-scallops, set on a pool of ginger-lime cream sauce, and garnished with lime zest and a tiny purple orchid from my mom’s garden. As we sat down to eat, Marty announced that he was the cook in their family.

“Ruth has not made a meal in twenty-five years,” he informed us, and launched into a description of how the Ginsburg and Scalia families got together annually for an enormous New Year’s Eve dinner cooked by him.

“Nino goes down to Louisiana every year to kill Bambi,” he recounted wryly. “After they shoot the poor thing, he and his cohorts do a rough cut and then drag the bloody carcass back to D.C. for me to prepare for dinner. Last year I carved venison steaks from the loin for nineteen people.”

Marty smiled broadly and took a self-satisfied swallow of wine.

The next course was roasted butternut squash soup, topped with a spiral of crème fraîche and bright orange nasturtium blossoms I had pilfered from a neighbor’s yard. As we lifted our spoons, Robin asked Ruth about the time she had been a guest on the Met’s opera show.

“I remember you told a story about seeing Maria Callas,” she prompted the justice.

Ruth’s eyes lit up. “Yes. That was the highlight of my life.” She had come to Washington, she told us, to argue a sex-discrimination case before the Supreme Court and was waiting for the hotel elevator, on her way to the court house. When the door opened, there was Maria Callas, wearing a white mink coat and holding a white poodle in her arms.

“And Callas has always been a great favorite of mine,” Ruth said. “I thought to myself, it’s a sign; I will surely win this case! And so it turned out.”

This was the 1970s, when the then-Professor Ginsburg won five of the six sex-discrimination cases she argued before the Supreme Court. As a judge and later justice, she continued her quest for equal protection for women, and in 1996 was rewarded with the Virginia Military Institute decision, in which the Supreme Court held VMI’s exclusion of women to be unconstitutional.

During the main course, my dad asked Ruth about the VMI case. “Nino sent his slings and arrows at the Chief, that time,” Ruth responded with a sly, cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. She took a bite of her blackened ahi, then told us gleefully how Justice Scalia—who normally sent his slings and arrow her way—was the lone dissenter in the decision. He had thus directed his ire at Chief Justice Rehnquist, who had joined the majority in a concurring opinion.

On this issue, the one closest to her heart, she had won a decisive victory, with Nino the sole holdout. From the way Ruth described it that night, it was apparent that the VMI case was a symbolic turning point in her life, having finally convinced “the Chief” to agree with her on this fundamental issue of equality for women.

I grinned as Ruth chuckled and took a sip of wine. Yes, she had earned the right to wear that sly little smile.

 

HANK: How great is THIS? So fabulous!  Would you have the nerve to cook and serve dinner to RBG?  What would you ask her?  (Or who would you love to come to dinner?)

 

 

About Leslie Karst: The daughter of a law professor and a potter, Leslie Karst learned early, during family dinner conversations, the value of both careful analysis and the arts—ideal ingredients for a mystery story. She now writes the Sally Solari Mysteries (Dying for a Taste, A Measure of Murder, Death al Fresco), a culinary series set in Santa Cruz, California. An ex-lawyer like her sleuth, Leslie also has degrees in English literature and the culinary arts. You can visit Leslie on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lesliekarstauthor/, and you can go to her author website http://www.lesliekarstauthor.com/ to sign for her newsletter—full of recipes and fun Italian facts!—and to purchase all of her books.

 

 

 

About Death al Fresco, book three in the Sally Solari mystery series (coming March 13, 2018): It’s early autumn in Santa Cruz and restaurateur Sally Solari, inspired by the eye-popping canvases of Paul Gauguin, the artist for whom her restaurant is named, enrolls in a plein air painting class.

But the beauty of the Monterey Bay coastline is shattered during one of their outings when Sally’s dog sniffs out a corpse entangled in a pile of kelp. The body is identified as Gino, a local fisherman and a regular at Sally’s father’s restaurant, Solari's, until he disappeared after dining there a few nights before. But after witnesses claim he left reeling drunk, fingers begin to point at Sally’s dad for negligently allowing the old man to walk home alone at night. From a long menu of suspects, including a cast of colorful characters who frequent the historic Santa Cruz fisherman’s wharf, Sally must serve up a tall order in order to clear her father’s name.

Comments

[Hank PhilLippi ryan]

Such a wonderful story... how did you come up with
The menu?

[Mark]

Wow! I'd be so nervous in a situation like that I'd spill something within the first five minutes, even if I weren't anywhere near the food. Fun to read about, however.

[Leslie Karst]

Hank, the story of how I came up with the menu will be in the full-blown memoir, but suffice it to say that it involved much angst and worry. RBG doesn't eat red meat and loves seafood, so that intel from her husband dictated much of the menu. Thanks for inviting me to share the story with the fabulous Femmes!

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

I also think it would be such a great long essay for the New Yorker!

[Leslie Karst]

Hank: Hmmmmmmm...

[catriona]

I'd be so star-struck! This is a fabulous story, Leslie. If I had a choice of dinner guest (still living otherwise Jane Austen)I'd have Doris Day.

[Storyteller Mary]

What an amazing adventure! Brava! I love the details of flowers in the menu, and the wide-ranging conversation. Thanks for letting us eavesdrop a bit.
I borrowed the RGB Workout book, and now am even more amazed by her.

[Leslie Karst]

She is a truly amazing woman, Mary, and the more you learn about her life the more amazing she gets.

Catriona--I think if I could invite any living person to dinner it would be Timothy Ferris, the science writer, amateur astronomer, and all around terrific guy. And he lives in the SF Bay Area, so maybe someday I'll get to do so!

[Judy Alter]

Love the story, love your menu. I'd have spilled the soup or some horrible thing out of nerves.

[Ellen Byron]

What a GREAT post!! Leslie, you rock! And that dinner looks amazing.

Who would I invite to dinner? The Bronte Sisters. First, because they all looked like they could use a good meal, also because I'm a total Bronte fangirl.

[Edith Maxwell]

Leslie, I can't understand how you didn't brag about this story when we roomed together in Monterey! "Yeah, I cooked dinner for the amazing RBG," you might have said - but didn't. Color me impressed!

[Leslie Karst]

LOL, Edith. I just didn't want you to be too star-struck with your roomie--not.

Love how so many commenters worry that they'd spill something on the justice. I did, of course, have that fear, but got through the night with no case of the dropsies, thank goodness.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Catriona! If Doris Day come to dinner with you, would you please please please invite me? THAT I have to witness.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Mary, who would you invite?

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Oh,Tim Ferris! Good call! What a brilliant guy--I knew him at RollingStone when I worked there a million years ago..

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Judy, you would NOT have spilled. You'd have been totally cool.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Ellen, what a great idea. (And can we write a TV series about it? hmmmm)
Did the Bronte sisters like each other?

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Edith, so amazing! But I bet you have some stories of your own...xoxo

[Elizabeth Zelvin]

I love this story, Leslie. My parents met in law school (Brooklyn Law, Class of '24) in 1921, almost 100 years ago now. My mother got a doctorate late in life and taught Constitutional law at Queens College in NY. She was a great admirer of Justice Ginsburg. At the age of 92, she decided she wanted to meet her, so she wrote, describing herself as "the oldest living lawyer." Justice Ruth responded cordially, glad to meet a pioneering woman lawyer, and they became friends. ("What did you talk about, Mom?" we asked after that first meeting. "Everything!") On Mom's 95th birthday, she sent a card with a picture of her and Sandra Day O'Connor. It said, "Happy birthday from the Supremes."

[Vinnie Hansen]

A fabulous post, Leslie. You mentioned this occasion at your book launch, but how fun to get more of the scoop--so to speak.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Liz, what a terrific story! Wow! And the card is incredible..

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Vinnie, isn't it a once in a lifetime thing? Wow.

[Kaye George]

Some people have all the fun! If you're at Malice this year, can I touch you? Wow!

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Well, Kaye, I think we should make her cook, right????

[Nancy Lynn Jarvis]

She'my hero. I would have been speechless.

[Leslie Karst]

LOL, you all are totally cracking me up. Elizabeth--I LOVE the story of your mom and RBG. She (RBG) is indeed one of the most generous and gracious people I've ever met.

Hank--I am jealous that you know Mr. Ferris well enough to call him Tim. I'll cook for both of you if you bring him over! I've loved him ever since first reading Coming of Age in the Milky Way.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Well, let's all have dinner together! xoxoo