Recipe for Disaster (30 page)

“What about Emily?”

“She’s not really my sister, you know. My mom was married to her dad for a few years; I never even met her till a couple of months ago.”

“I dunno, she seems like a sister to me. And if you never had any before, probably a nice thing to have one show up. I’m grateful for the girls, and Murph and his gang, every day. I’m sorry you don’t have more family, Anneke. You should have had. But Jag’s family sounds good, and Emily is sweet and clearly devoted, and you can always have a flock of little ones if you’ll start before your eggs dry up completely.”

And, he’s back. “My eggs are fine, Mr. Murphy, thank you very much. Jag and I would prefer to do our family planning on our own time, and hopefully when we aren’t living in a natural disaster.”

“Suit yourself, I just think you’d rather have them, you know, with all their limbs and wits and such.”

“You’re quite the smartass, you know that?”

“Aye. That I do. Better, I say, than being a dumbass. You know us tiny-little-dick boys. Always compensating.” He gets up and clears the dishes, and we wash and dry in near silence. I’m tempted to tell him about Jag and me. I think he would understand, being a naturalized citizen himself, and I know he likes Jag. I feel like maybe he actually likes me too. But I also know I have to think about it more, and talk to Jag about it first. Maybe about Emily as well. If she is going to be staying here for much longer, both of them here all the time, it would make life so much easier to just let them in on it. If for no other reason, it will allow us to go back to our own bedrooms. I’ll wait up and if he doesn’t come home too late we can see if it’s a good idea.

When the last plate is loaded in the dishwasher and the final pot dried, Liam folds his dish towel and places it neatly on the counter.

“Thanks for a spectacular dinner, Anneke. I thoroughly enjoyed it.” He turns to me and kisses me gently on the cheek. “See you in a couple of days.”

The kiss, which was the barest whisper of lips on my cheek, nevertheless leaves a heat that doesn’t go away, even after I hear the front door close behind him.

W
ife.” Jag greets Schatzi and me as we return from our walk.

“Husband! How was your evening?”

“Quite good, thank you. And yours? How did the dinner turn out?”

“Shockingly delicious. You’ll have the tastiest lunch imaginable tomorrow.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

We head inside. “Jag, can we chat about something?”

“Of course, let me change and check my email quickly? I’ll meet you in the kitchen; we can have a tea.”

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

I head to the kitchen and toss Schatzi a treat. I get the teapot and fill it with water, setting out two mugs and some of the PG Tips teabags that Jag loves so much. I rehearse in my head the arguments for letting Liam and Emily into our confidence. Not having to be on edge around them. Not having to play slumber party every night. The ruse is one thing to keep up with all of our friends, but Liam is spending huge chunks of time with us, and will be for the better part of the next five to six months. Emily is living here, and even though I assume she’ll have to head out to get ready for school in about a month, that is still a lot to manage. It all sounds good in my head. The water is just starting to boil when Jag comes into the kitchen, looking surprisingly ashen for someone with such a rich complexion.

“I have something to talk to you about too,” Jag says. “But ladies first . . .”

“Nonsense, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Worse. Email from my parents.”

Oh no. I know it is the fear of every person who lives far away from their loved ones that something bad will happen and they won’t be close by to help. “Are they okay?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Thank god, I thought something bad happened to them.”

“Not to them, to us.”

“What happened to us?” I wonder if somehow they found out.

“They are coming to visit.”

And suddenly, telling or not telling Liam and Emily that we aren’t really a couple is the tiniest, most minute problem that could ever be imagined.

F
rom Gemma’s Journal:

Bread is the staff of life. If you can take water, yeast, salt and flour and make it into bread, you will never starve. And if you find some skill with it, a loaf and a lump of sweet butter, maybe a jar of preserves, that is a feast worthy of any king. You can be a very good cook without serious skills in pastry arts, as long as you can throw together a simple biscuit or cake to end a meal sweetly. There are quality goods in cans and jars available for sale or trade with neighbors, so if you don’t need to stock a cellar for survival, you don’t necessarily need to learn to can or preserve. But you cannot be a good cook if you cannot put forth a decent loaf of bread. Sometimes, when the stomach is tender, bread is all one can manage to eat, and sometimes, when the heart is, it is all one can manage to cook.

Gemma says I have to learn to bake bread. And so, I’m learning to bake bread. She has provided a simple recipe for the family’s favorite yeast rolls, the ones she bakes almost every day. They are served essentially every night with dinner, regardless of what the dinner is. She says she alters the shape of the rolls; sometimes they are a single puffy round, sometimes three pressed together in a muffin tin, sometimes shingled squares layered together. She makes them in twists and figure eights. The only night she doesn’t make the yeast rolls is Friday, when she makes three large challah breads, braided sweet egg bread that the family uses for Sabbath dinner, toasted for breakfast and for luncheon sandwiches when they return from Saturday-morning services. But Saturday night they return to the yeast rolls, sometimes garnished with sesame seeds or poppy seeds, or rolled with minced onions for a special treat for Mr. Rabin, who loves them despite his wife’s teasing objections that onions are bad for his digestion and worse for his breath.

It is funny reading about how Gemma learns to incorporate the traditional Jewish foods into her cooking, noting that the family is religious enough to attend services regularly and keep the holidays, but that they do not keep kosher, and in fact, that Mr. Rabin in particular takes enormous delight in Gemma’s glazed hams, bacon buns, and braised pork shanks, and Mrs. Rabin would live exclusively on delicate shellfishes if allowed. I think about my own upbringing, which was entirely devoid of religion, despite our technically Jewish background. I never thought much of it, but there are moments now that I wish I’d had that cultural touchstone, if not the faith aspect. I realize that I’m actually learning more about my own history through Gemma’s journal than Grand-mère ever gave me growing up, and I add it to the list of things that she denied me. I can’t cook, I have no religion, I have no family, no talent for relationships, clearly. But at least, maybe, I can learn this bread thing.

The rolls seem simple enough. Not quite the “
water, yeast, salt
and
flour
” that she speaks of in the journal, but not horribly complicated. I had to look up how to clarify butter, and had to do it twice when I took a quick pee break during the first batch and returned to find black bits floating in the bottom and a horrid smell in the kitchen. But the second batch went smoothly, and the dough itself was pretty easy; you make it the night before and it rises in the fridge, or the
“coolest part of the larder,”
overnight, and then you roll it out and let it rise again. Lucky for me, there is no kneading or punching down or any such nonsense, which is probably the only reason I even thought to try. Well, that and my in-laws are coming.

Not tonight, thank goodness; we’ve convinced them that the best time to come will be Thanksgiving. We told them it’s because we’re planning on taking the whole holiday weekend off, so we’ll have time to show them Chicago and have a good visit. They presumed it would be an easy time for Jag to have a short break from his studies. Regardless, it gives us five months to prepare, most importantly to get the house in better shape to hopefully impress them, so that when we tell them about Jag dropping out of school to work as a builder, they will be able to really see the quality of the work he wants to do, the potential serious and lucrative career he could have even without the doctorate they wanted for him.

We’ve already gotten the girls to agree to come to a Thanksgiving potluck, knowing that some buffering will be necessary. When we get closer we’ll add whichever of Jag’s friends are Thanksgiving orphans. In light of everything, I haven’t broached the Liam thing with Jag; he’s very much feeling the pressure of the reality of what we’ve done and what it means for him and his family, and I don’t want to put anything else on his plate. Except maybe a delicious roll or two.

By the time Liam shows up, I have the rolls formed and nestled on their baking trays. The recipe makes a lot of rolls, and they have to rise somewhere cool, so I moved all the folding chairs to the room I refer to as the Kitchen Library. It is right off the food pantry, and was originally a small maid’s room. Grant suggested we set it up as a place where the owner could store all the small appliances and cooking equipment that doesn’t need to be accessed regularly, as well as cookbooks. We are going to build it out with one large bookshelf, and the rest of the space with deep shelving that can easily hold more equipment than any passionate cook could collect in two lifetimes. For the moment, it’s just an empty room, but it doesn’t have a window and seems to stay cooler than the rest of the house, so it seems the perfect place to let the rolls rise, and I’m arranging the pans on the seats of the chairs.

“Um, Betty Crocker? You working today?” Liam asks, as I go to place the last tray of rolls on the last chair.

This causes me to throw the tray directly up in the air as I shriek in terror. Liam, quick as a cat, albeit one without a bell, reaches over my head and snatches the tray out of the air, rolls intact, and hands it to me sheepishly.

“Oops. Did it again, there.”

“Liam, if you do not learn to make your presence known AS you are approaching someone, I am going to FUCKING KILL YOU.”

“Got it. Really. What’s all this? We starting a soup kitchen?”

“We’re making rolls.”

“Yes, obviously. Are we also repairing the plaster in the master bedroom today, or is this the only thing we’re mixing up?”

“Relax. I’ve already got the plaster stuff up there.”

“Good. Where’s your better half?”

“He went to pick up Juan.”

“The cabinet guy?”

“Yeah. I want him to refurbish the drawers and doors on those dining room hutches we installed, and fix and key the locks.”

“We could have done that.”

“I know, but he’s a master, and offered to do it in exchange for me doing a recommendation letter for his kid for college, you remember Jose? The one who interned with me last summer? Anyway, I thought it would be good for Jag to watch him work and learn some stuff.” Lucky for me, Juan’s desire to see his kid get into a good college makes the risk of working with me worth it, despite Murph’s embargo.

“Smart.”

“I’d appreciate your not mentioning it at the office.” I presume Liam is aware of Murph’s program where I am concerned, and equally sure that Murph has no idea Liam is partnering on this project.

He winks. “Of course. And where is the lass?”

“Sent her on a dog walk slash coffee run.”

“Very useful, that slip of a girl. So, shall we plaster, milady?”

He offers me his arm and I take it and curtsy. “Absolutely.”

L
uckily, the plaster is in fairly good shape, considering. Sometimes when you see cracks in old plaster it means that big sections of the wall have come loose from the underlying wood lath, and can’t be saved. In this case, the cracks are just cracks; we use box cutters to gently cut away the part of the plaster around the crack that is loose, about an inch on either side, and ensure that the remaining plaster is secure. Then we mix a paste of plaster that includes horsehair, for strength, and work it into the cracks. We’ll come back when it’s cured to sand it down. Then we’ll do a thin scratch coat over the patch, and a smooth surface plaster, and when we’re done, we’ll be able to repaint the room and hopefully not see the patchwork.

With both of us working, and working quickly and with small batches of plaster so it doesn’t seize up on us, we’re able to finish the largest wall in just a couple of hours. It seems silly to stop when we’re on a roll, so we decide to postpone lunch and just keep going. By two o’clock the whole room has been patched up. We head all the way downstairs to the mudroom to clean up the buckets and our tools, passing by Jag and Juan in the dining room, drawers strewn about the room.

“Come see!” Emily says excitedly, coming over to grab my hand and take me to one of the hutches. I wink at Juan and Jag on my way by, and Liam goes to shake their hands. “Look. At. This!” Emily reaches over and with one finger, gently opens the top drawer. It slides out like magic, with full extension. Then she takes her fingertip and subtly touches the front of the drawer, which glides right back into place slowly. But I can’t see the mechanism; the sides of the drawer are still just wood.

“Did you do that?”

“I did.” She is beaming.

“I’m terribly proud of you.”

“Thank you. That’s not all. Look at this.” She reaches above to the glass door, turning the small skeleton key. The door opens smoothly, and closes flush, and the key has easy action.

“Oh, honey, that’s terrific.”

“Hey, one drawer and one door and the kid’s an expert,” Juan says sarcastically. “Why don’t you keep installing those slides, protégé.” Juan gestures at the drawers lying all over the room, the new undermount slides in small piles.

“Gotcha, boss.” Emily salutes him, golden hair dusted with wood shavings; she reminds me of when I was a teenager, working at Joe’s side, so thrilled when some new technique was revealed to me. Joe, for a simple guy, was fairly profound about certain things. I remember he said to me once, when I was at a low point, having gotten a horrible haircut that would take months to grow out, between boyfriends with no prospects, that self-esteem is fine, it is nice if you can like yourself, but that will ebb and flow almost daily. And that he could tell me every day that I was smart and beautiful, and some days I would believe him, and some days not. But the one thing he felt he could give me that I could rely on every day was a sense of self-efficacy. Because even on a day when I didn’t like myself, I would still unflaggingly believe that I was capable, that I could do things, do them well. He thought in the long run that that was the most important thing. And if the past six months have taught me anything, it is that he was dead right. Because even in my lowest moments, I do still feel like I am generally competent at the things I do. I realize that if I didn’t have that, I would have given up on learning to cook ages ago, but my deep-seated knowledge that I can actually do things keeps me moving forward.

“She’s a natural,” Jag says. I kiss him on the cheek and let them get back to work. I pick up the buckets and tools Liam and I have been using and schlep them to the mudroom to fill them with hot water so they can soak for a bit. Then I grab the lava soap and the stiff nailbrush we keep down here, and set to work getting the plaster out from under my fingernails.

“Anneke . . . I’m headed your way!” I hear Liam call from down the hall, and can’t help but laugh. He appears in the doorway.

“Thanks for the warning. Much appreciated.”

His face looks a little worried. “Um, I think the dog might be a wee bit under the weather.”

“What do you mean? Did she have an accident?” Schatzi, for all her annoying habits, would no more shit on the floor than Grand-mère would have. And in all the time I’ve known her, let alone lived with her, she’s never been sick. Ever.

“No, um, I think you should come.”

I dry my hands on my pants and follow Liam back through the dining room to the front stairs and head up a level. We go through the dog gate, and he leads me back to the kitchen, where Schatzi is lying on the floor, panting. And which is scarier, her little gray belly is oddly distended, making her look weirdly pregnant.