Recipe for Disaster (34 page)

His eyes narrow. “That’s not fair. This couldn’t have been anticipated.”

“It couldn’t have been anticipated that it would be really hard for me to not be honest with my best friends while living this farce? Hard for me to not date? I made a commitment to you, to this, and you barely even lasted FOUR MONTHS before putting the whole thing in danger? We have TWO YEARS to get through here, both of us. No, Jag, it isn’t fair, not one little bit.”

He shakes his head. “Look, she understands, she wants to help us however she can. For what it’s worth, when I told her what you did for me, she cried and said she knew you were a truly extraordinary person. She’s so grateful to you, Anneke, and so am I.”

“Well, bully for me. And congrats, husband, I’m glad your mistress loves me so much.”

“Please, Anneke, don’t be angry. I know that when you fall in love with someone you would absolutely need to tell him, and I will completely support you in that. I know it’s hard for you right now with your friends; it’s hard for me too. For us. But Nageena is committed to making sure none of them find out. It’s just not the same with friends as it is with the person you are in love with, surely you can see that.”

Yeah. When I fall in love. Not likely. “Emily’s out for the evening. Sleep in your own room tonight.”

And with that, I take my cup of tea, and head upstairs.

I get into my pajamas, and into bed. I hate everything about this. I hate being mad at Jag, I hate feeling like other people just get what they want and everything is so hard for me. I hate that it bothered me to see Grant with another woman, even more than it bothered me to see him with another man. I hate how much I enjoyed being with Liam tonight. I hate that I can’t shut my head off, so I get back up and go to my laptop.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
RE: RE: visit

Anneliese—

I’d be happy to see you while you are in town, and to meet Alan. I’d also like very much for you and Alan to meet my new husband, Jagjeet Singh. We are having a small group for Thanksgiving at our house, and hope the two of you will plan on joining us. The rest of the visit we can figure out when it gets closer. I hope you are well.

Anneke

There you go, hubby of mine. You want to throw some wrenches into the works? I’ve got one of my own.

F
rom Gemma’s Journal:

Time moves so fast sometimes, I can hardly believe it. It seems like barely a few weeks have passed since Martha married Mr. Rabin’s brother, and today they are coming for tea to visit and to celebrate their son’s third birthday, and introduce their new baby girl, just twelve weeks old, to her cousins. The tyke is adorable, but somehow manages to leave sticky handprints on everything, and their last visit meant that the satin-covered settee in the parlor was positively ruined. Mr. Rabin refers to his visits as the Reign of Terror. I’ve made three kinds of biscuits, cucumber sandwiches, and salmon croquettes. There are the first strawberries of the season, with custard sauce, and all that is left is to bake the scones. It always makes me think of my mother; scones were the first thing she ever taught me to cook. So simple, and yet so satisfying.

It took a few days for things to get back to some semblance of normal with Jag. I spent all my days working with Emily, and left him alone dealing with plaster issues on the third floor. But we finally had to deal with it when Emily poked her nose in.

“I think I should try to find another place to stay,” she said last night. “I feel like my being here is causing a lot of strain on your relationship, and things seem a little tense, and what kind of family therapist am I ever going to be if I’m actually causing trouble with your marriage!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Emily, we’re fine,” I said.

“Of course we are, don’t be concerned at all,” Jag added.

“YOU ARE NOT FINE. Something is wrong. You aren’t joking at all, Jag goes out every night after work and comes home late and you never go with him. You barely talk about anything except work and you are both being excruciatingly polite! And I know for a fact he slept in my room the other night, because the pillow smelled of his cologne. Now, I’ve ordered you some dinner, and I’m going to sleep at a friend’s tonight. Get your mojo back, and tomorrow I’ll start thinking about a plan to stay out of your hair.”

She flounced out, and we looked at each other and began to laugh. “Guess we’re in trouble, huh?” he said.

“Guess so.”

Emily had ordered us sushi from Hachi’s Kitchen, and we sat in the kitchen eating and trying to figure our shit out.

“Look, Jag, I’m sorry I blew up like I did; that wasn’t fair. I’m clearly not good at serious relationships, real or fictional. And it isn’t that I’m not happy for you and Nageena, I am, truly, thrilled for you both. It’s all just so complicated.”

“No, I should apologize. This whole thing is my fault. I should have just sucked it up and stayed in school.”

“You would have been miserable, and you and Nageena never would have gotten together.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I might be bad at relationships, but I know one thing: You aren’t attractive if you aren’t happy. Why do you think you guys just figured this out now? Because you have the security of knowing you can stay here, and a job you love that you are really, REALLY great at. You’re happy and feeling good about yourself, and that, with all your other wonderful qualities are what made her fall for you now instead of before.”

“You’re probably right. What are we going to do?”

“What we have to. We have to ramp up our happy marriage for Emily’s sake, at least for the next month before she leaves to go back to school. Then you can move back to your room permanently, and we can finish this stupid house, and find a place to live.”

“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you, Anneke, and I’m truly so sorry for making your life so difficult.”

“You’re worth it, you ass.”

“Well, then, I’m eating the last gyoza.”

“Over my dead body.” I snatch the final dumpling out of the container and stuff it in my mouth whole.

It’s very attractive when I laugh so hard it pops back out and lands on the floor, where Schatzi snatches it up and runs away with it.

It feels good to be back on good terms with Jag, which is why I haven’t told him yet that my mom and Alan are coming to Thanksgiving. Emily came back in the morning, to find us in a tableau we set up just for her benefit, both of us in our robes looking rumpled, feeding each other pancakes and bacon. She beamed, very proud of herself, and agreed to keep staying here, but promised to spend the night out at least once or twice a week so we could have some privacy.

We’re taking a step back from the fun finishing work to refocus our energies on the basement, finally getting the new HVAC system installed, if for no other reason than we desperately needed the air-conditioning up and running. We are much less stinky over here now that it isn’t a thousand degrees in the house. Liam has fully embraced the industrial vibe Jag suggested so many months ago, and the two of them set about polishing the concrete floors, which glow like stone. Emily and I cleaned up the steel beams, stripping off the paint and putting an oil seal on the metal. The bathroom is completely finished; we installed the tub in the stonework nook with a foot-deep ledge around for candles or bath products, as well as a large trough sink with two faucets in lieu of his and hers side-by-side sinks, which is a look I particularly detest. I have converted many a couple to either totally separate vanities on opposite walls when they have the room, or single long sinks with double faucets when they don’t. The shower floor we did in a variegated slate tile, a gray base with hints of copper running through it, with a simple floating glass-panel door. We hung a vintage silver light fixture, small sconces in the tub nook, two antique mirrors side by side over the sink.

It’s been reasonably low-key, and with the small exception of having accidentally roughed-in a left-side drain for the tub, which, as it turns out, actually has a center drain, without rehab drama. Ever since our night at Del Frisco’s, Liam has almost entirely stopped ribbing me, not to mention calling me by the wrong name. He still won’t tell me what he whispered in Grant’s ear that night, just said it was something he needed to say out loud. Lord knows I won’t get it out of Grant, who emailed me last week to say he was trying to figure out who he is and that he was sorry if running into him that night upset me in any way. I replied that since I was blissfully happy in my marriage, there were no hard feelings in the least and that I wished him a long happy life with the genitals of his choice.

Which is why I didn’t think twice about answering my phone when he calls.

“Hey, whassup?”

“Hi, Anneke, how are you doing?”

“Great, actually, things are really coming together over here.”

“That’s fantastic, really, that makes me happy. But, um, we have to talk about the money thing again, which makes me feel like a total ass.”

“It is what it is, Grant, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m working as hard and as fast as I can, and we are pretty sure we will be able to list it right after the New Year. So if we get a quick sale, you’re looking at about five to six months.”

“Well, the thing is, the lawyer, he called me back. And now he’s offering to buy me out at a ten percent profit.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re offering to give me 220K for my stake, even though I only put in 200.”

Fuck.

“Anneke, I know this whole thing sucks, but I don’t know what to do.”

I know what to do. You don’t cheat on your fiancée. You be the stand-up guy. You don’t pull the rug out from under people. “Me either.”

“I still have a little time on my end, but not six months. And I don’t need it all, but I do need something, at least enough to do the earnest money for the restaurant deal.”

“How long do I have, and how much do you need?”

“I need a minimum of 50K, and I need it in six weeks latest.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“What do you want me to say, Grant? I get that it is bad timing for you, it’s certainly bad timing for me. But I can’t let you just sell your share in this house out from under me, and I don’t have enough cash liquid to buy you out completely. I’ll have to figure it out, but yes, if I have to start hooking on the side, I will get you your fifty grand in six weeks, okay? Just don’t sell to anyone.”

“Okay.”

“I gotta go, Grant.”

I hang up the phone, and punch the wall. When I look up, Emily is staring at me with her jaw hanging open.

“Oh, ANNEKE!” She comes at me with one of her patented bear hugs.

“How much did you hear?” I say into her shoulder. She releases me, looks deep in my eyes.

“Enough.”

“How much is enough?”

“You owe Grant fifty thousand dollars in six weeks or he is going to sell his stake in the house to someone else.”

“Yeah, that’s enough.”

“What does Jag say?”

“Jag doesn’t know, Emily, and you are not going to tell him.”

“But . . .”

“But NOTHING. Jag isn’t to know. This is my mess. I have to figure it out.”

“He’s your husband, Anneke, your mess IS his mess.”

“This predates him. It’s grandfathered mess.”

“Doesn’t work that way.”

“If you tell Jag about this, I will tell Liam you have a phone full of pictures of him that you take when he isn’t looking.”

Her jaw flops open.

“You’re not that sneaky, kiddo, but unless you want him to know about your little personal Liam porn collection, you’ll keep your mouth shut.” She looks mortified, and I realize what I have to do. “Besides, isn’t that what sisters do? Keep each other’s secrets? You are the only person who knows, Emily. Just you and me.”

She smiles a little, and I can see how happy it makes her that I just called us sisters. I feel a little bad using it in such a manipulative way, but not bad enough not to do it. “That’s true. So it’s just a sister secret?”

I nod. “Just a sister secret.” I hold out my pinky for her, and she breaks into a full-on blinding grin, links it with her own, and we shake.

“C’mon. Go do a quick coffee run, and when you get back, come find me.”

Today we’ll be in the butler’s pantry, while Jag and Liam figure out the puzzle of the wine cellar. Liam found a restaurant in the burbs that was going out of business and bought their lightly used wine racking, and their practically new Vinotemp temperature and humidity control unit for about a quarter of what it was going to cost us. There is plenty of light oak racking, mostly for single bottles, but also some shelving for cases and some spaces for larger-sized bottles like magnums, but obviously it had been custom built for that space and now needs to be repurposed in the old canning room under the front porch, which is something of an odd shape. When they get it all in, they will give it a light sanding and then a slightly darker finish, since the very blond wood is not exactly our taste.

Emily and I finished up the building out of the butler’s pantry over the course of this week. We took the kitchen cabinets I salvaged from Liam’s old Fremont job, and installed them in a U shape around the room. The lower cabinets alternate between deep spaces with shelves and double doors, and sets of drawers, and the uppers are all glass-front with shallower shelves. We had to build a couple of custom pieces to match, to make everything fit properly, but it was fun to figure those pieces out. We had a narrow eighteen-inch space to fill on one wall, and Liam had the brilliant idea to create a single tall cabinet with a rod, where someone could hang their tablecloths instead of folding them up in a drawer. And under the one window, instead of leaving the space open, we created a window seat on top of deep, long shelves, so that someone can organize their largest platters. The upholstered seat actually flips up on a piano hinge to reveal a solid wood top, so that the future owners can get a bit of extra usable square footage when they need it for organizing or setting up for parties.

The butler’s pantry opens to the dining room with wide double pocket doors, so I want the space to serve as storage, but also as a space the new owners can use as a bar during parties. We installed a small brass bar sink, and an undercounter set of freezer drawers for ice storage. Since we saved so much on the cabinetry, we splurged on zinc countertops, which look fantastic, and as they patina will only look better. Today we’re upholstering the insides of the upper glass-front cabinets with the same leather we used in the dining room hutches. It’s a tedious job, the cutting of the pieces has to be insanely precise, and we have to make sure not to get any of the very sticky glue that we’re using to attach it anywhere on the surfaces, since it would never come off. These cabinets will be slightly more complicated than the ones in the dining room, since they have a small plate rail in the back, which will require a certain amount of patience with the leather.

I’ve brought in one of our folding tables to be a work surface, and take the time to cover it with a fresh sheet of butcher paper to have a clean surface to work on. I have my sheet of measurements for all the pieces of leather, and I have the whole hides rolled up and lying on the counter. We’ll just go cabinet by cabinet, cutting the pieces and then getting them installed. There are nine upper cabinets in here; if we work well today, I’m hoping to get at least four of them finished.