The Kitchen Daughter (26 page)

“Listen. Don’t tell me either. I’m trying to deal with two scared little girls and their hysterical mother, she is so worked up about this, I can’t even tell you. Yesterday instead of putting the girls to bed she locked herself in the bathroom and sobbed on the phone to Angelica for an hour. Maybe two.”

He turns and looks in the front window. I follow his gaze but no one is there. He says, “I don’t know if she even slept last night. I’ve never seen her like this. She said all she ever tried to do was help, and now you’ve gone crazy, and she’s washing her hands of you.”

“I’m not crazy,” I say. “I’m normal.”

He pauses and puts his fingers and thumb across his forehead, pinching, like he’s trying to press through to his brain. “I’m not going to debate this with you. Honestly, this whole thing is awful. I think you’re both having a lot of trouble dealing with—you know, your
parents. And you really need each other, but you don’t know how to handle what’s going on, and you just can’t see straight. So go home and cool off. And try this another day.”

“But it’s important.”

“It’ll still be important tomorrow.”

“It’s about Shannon.”

“Shannon’s fine,” he says. “Shannon’s inside the house right now. Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

“But I want to tell—”

“Ginny,” he says. “Please. Whatever it is you want to say, Amanda’s not ready to hear it. The longer you stay here the more the neighbors will stare. And the more the neighbors stare the madder she’ll get. She cares how things look and this looks bad. You want to give her some time to calm down.”

I say, “Is that what I want?” I intend it to sound defiant, but it comes out in a soft, questioning voice, and that’s how I find out I don’t really know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know who I am or what’s going on or what to do.

Brennan says, “Go home, Ginny.”

And I go. I climb back into the car. I close the door and the sound of it closing is too loud. I look up to see if Brennan is still on the porch, but he’s gone inside. The house presents a blank face. Nothing in the window but a curtain.

David asks, “Did it work?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

I say, “Not your fault,” but even the effort of getting those few polite words out undoes me, and I drop my head down to my knees and reach for some kind of food memory but I can’t find anything, my brain won’t put it together, matambre lungo fleur de sel zeppole. The rush of the car’s engine as it starts. Blood orange, think of oranges,
think of citrus, lemon, lime. We’re in motion. I can’t get food and I can’t get in the closet so I hug my knees and rock and I don’t know there’s a noise coming out of me until David says something.

“Shhhh. Easy, Ginny, easy,” he says. “It’ll be okay.”

“No it won’t! It won’t be okay!”

David says, “It might.”

I press my head against my knees and feel the horrible ache in my stomach. Rocking gets me nowhere. Things are black. I keen but David doesn’t tell me to be quiet so I keep keening and I try to find something, anything, to think about. We’re in a car. A car. What’s on a page with
car
?

Carpaccio.
I latch onto it. I clutch my hands around the idea as if I could touch it. I think about all the different things a person could carpaccio. The only true carpaccio is beef, though it was an invented dish anyway, named for a painter, so
true
is a misnomer. Now it’s anything sliced thin, usually raw. Scallop carpaccio. Portobello carpaccio, an invented dish from an invented mushroom. Sometimes chefs even extend it to dessert. Pineapple carpaccio, very difficult, since when you slice the outer layer of pineapple it tends to fall apart so you really need to slice it from the tender flesh right next to the core. People don’t realize the heart of the fruit is often a different texture from the edge. Almost everything has its own kind of grain. You can only get a feel for it by handling it yourself. You have to learn to recognize the difference, feeling it resist your knife. What happens when you push, what happens when it pushes back, how you refine your approach to get just exactly the right amount of pressure. That’s the only way you know.

“Ginny,” says David’s voice from far away. “Ginny.”

I open my eyes. My right hand is stretched in front of me, bent at the wrist with the fingers curled together, as if I were holding a knife. I let the hand drop. We’re sitting in front of my house, its stone steps reaching up to the portico, looking like a mile’s climb.

“Let’s get you inside,” says David. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

I push open the door. I expect my legs to be unsteady, but why should they be? It’s my heart that’s injured, not my body. Squeezed dry like a lemon wrung for juice. Collapsed like an overbeaten egg white. One foot in front of the other. Up the steps to the door.

When I get to the top of the stairs I notice his hand is on the small of my back, supporting me. Strange that I didn’t even feel it. Amazing, even.

“Come on,” he says, “inside. I’ll help you.”

“No more help,” I say, and he takes his hand away, but as I walk inside he walks along behind me, until we get to the living room.

He says, “Sit down, you look like death. There’s the couch.”

I want to protest but I fall down onto it instead. I can’t remember the last time I sat on the couch. For the first six months Ma wouldn’t let us sit on it, and although that must have been at least ten years ago, it never felt right to disobey.

When I open my eyes again David is standing with his back to me facing the mantel, staring at a scrap of paper there. The recipe, of course. I know what he wants.

“I wasn’t lying,” I say. “I promised I’d bring her. I can do it right now.”

“You can barely stand up right now,” he says. “Stay there.”

I stand up, just to prove I can. The edges of the plaster molding high above me swim a bit, then settle into place.

He says, with a biting, mineral edge, “Ginny, what’s going on? Are you really just crazy, like your brother-in-law said?”

“No,” I say firmly. I hadn’t realized he heard the conversation. I hadn’t thought about it. I play it back:
All she ever tried to do was help, and now you’ve gone crazy, and she’s washing her hands of you.
“I’m not crazy.”

“Did you tell your sister you can see ghosts? Is that what this is all about? And that’s why she won’t take your calls or see you?”

“No,” I say, “she wants me to go to a doctor.”

“Are you sick?”

“No. Well, she thinks so, that’s what it’s about. I won’t get a diagnosis like she wants me to and I told her that her daughter might have the same syndrome she thinks I have.”

“You have a syndrome?”

“I have a personality,” I say, but it’s just a reflex. Right now, I don’t believe it.

“But it has nothing to do with the ghosts?”

“No, I haven’t told her about the ghosts. But the ghosts, they had warnings, they warned me about her …” I trail off, because now I’m not sure I understood the warning. It was about Amanda, but was it also about me? Or Shannon? I don’t think they know about Shannon, but even if that’s not what the ghosts meant, she’s more important. However I succeed or fail, it’s up to me now. Shannon is so young. Her happiness depends on her mother.

“Tell me about the ghosts,” David says. “No, wait. Let me make you some hot chocolate first.”

My instinct is to say no—if I wanted some, I’d make it myself—but he’s right. Drinking something warm might help this cold, hollow, exhausted feeling.

In the kitchen, I reach for the cocoa, but he says, “You let me do that, okay?”

I pull my hand back. “Okay.”

He starts opening and closing cupboards, looking for things. He roots around in the junk drawer, not realizing right away that he won’t find what he’s looking for among the hammers and phone cords and index cards. I stay silent. Instead of wasting time disagreeing, I go over to the glass cabinets and take out
Drinkonomicon
, which I place
on the counter next to the stove and open to the right page. In case he needs it. While he is knocking pieces of silverware together in a different drawer looking for the right spoon, I open the cookbook to the Hot Chocolate page.

“Oh, I don’t need that,” he says. “I’m going to make you my specialty.”

“I thought you were going to make hot chocolate.”

“I am. But mine is special.”

“Okay.”

“It’s hot hot chocolate,” he says. “There’s a secret ingredient.”

He holds up a spice jar he’s taken off the shelf. Ancho powder.

“Okay,” I say.

“Just wait till you taste it.”

As David heats the milk on the stove, he says, “It’s not just different, it’s better. Amazing. After this you’ll never make hot chocolate any other way.”

“Won’t I?” He’s distracting me. Thank goodness.

“Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t. Because it’s the best. But if things that aren’t the best are fine with you, by all means, go ahead.”

He stirs the milk, which isn’t boiling yet.

I say, “You can do that in the microwave, you know.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think it tastes any different if you use the microwave.”

“Hush. You have your methods, I have mine.”

We stand in silence, his attention on the milk, my attention on him. I shift toward the refrigerator so I have a better view of what he’s doing, and watch his hands. When little bubbles foam around the lip of the saucepan, he spoons in the sugar first, a spoonful at a time, then the cocoa, the same way. The milk goes tan, then brown, then almost a red-brown, even before the ancho powder goes in. This last spoon
he tips in with a flourish, and stirs gently, the spoon not touching the bottom of the pan.

When it’s all done, he fills two mugs, one green, one brown.

He hands me the brown one. The brown of the cup is a different, less interesting brown than the brown of the chocolate. I put both hands around the mug and inhale. The smell revives me.

“Why don’t you hold it by the handle?”

I raise my face from the hot cocoa long enough to say, “Because I don’t,” and deeply inhale again. I am trying to discern the heat. The spice, I should say. It’s in there, but deep.

“It’s not poisoned,” he says. “Drink it.”

“I’m savoring.”

“Oh. Well. That’s okay then.”

I take a sip. I open my mouth. I learned this from a Kitcherati thread on wine tasting, but it works on all the other kinds of tasting too. The air circulating in your mouth helps things land differently on your taste buds. You taste better with air.

“It’s delicious.” The cocoa is dusky. The milk, rich. The ancho adds an earthy note. The whole thing together is perfectly bitter and perfectly sweet.

“I knew you’d like it,” he says.

We drink our chocolate, standing up in the kitchen. I can feel the cold trying to get in through the windows, but the warmth holds it off.

When I am halfway through my chocolate, David says, “Now. Ginny. Tell me about the ghosts.”

I tell him everything, simply. The ribollita that brought Nonna. The shortbread that didn’t bring Grandma Damson. The water and the wine and Necie. The brownies that brought Evangeline. Trying again with the ribollita to see Nonna, failing. The biscuits and gravy
that brought Ma. The homemade Play-Doh recipe that brought Dad. All of it. Their warnings. My mistakes. I even tell him about Dr. Stewart, even though she has nothing to do with the ghosts. Once I get started talking it’s hard to stop. I trust David and I have already opened the door. There’s nothing to hold back. I tell him about everything, even the syndrome.

After a long pause, he says, “I really … I thought … I really don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“These ghosts, this ghost thing. You say you can bring them.”

“By cooking.”

“By whatever way, it shouldn’t matter,” he says. “There’s no such thing. So I shouldn’t believe you at all. Not even a little. Because it’s not possible, and because it doesn’t make any sense.”

I say, “When you see it for yourself you’ll believe me.”

He says, “That, that right there. The way you say that. So sincere. Not even any hesitation. And then I buy it, I buy it all. Because you sound so sure.”

“I am sure.”

“And you don’t sound crazy.”

“I’m not.”

“It even makes sense, why you can do it,” he says. “Why you can bring the ghosts.”

“It does?”

“Sure,” says David. “You’re making other people’s recipes, right?”

“Right.”

“And because of this syndrome, your memory, your obsession, I bet you’re making things
exactly
as the recipe tells you. You’re doing Nonna’s recipe exactly like Nonna would, or your mom’s recipe exactly like your mom would. So that connects with them in some way.”

He’s right. It does make sense. But that’s not really what I want to know.

“And you don’t think I’m crazy,” I say.

“No. I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“What do you think I am?” I ask, desperate for an answer.

“Just someone trying to get by,” he says. “Like me. Like any of us. There are lots of people who think ghosts exist, and I’ve never been one, but … I don’t know. Mom always says she feels spirits, but that’s a feeling, right? I guess I feel Elena’s spirit, in the things she left behind.”

“Her chickadee.”

“Chickadee,” he says, and smiles.

“You still love her,” I say.

“I can’t stop. I know she’s dead. I mean, it’s a fact, I know it. But I can’t let her go. I can’t move on. So when you said I could see her—maybe that’s it. Maybe if I saw her ghost I could say good-bye and I can let go of this feeling, this guilt. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Losing someone?”

“Being responsible.”

“It was an accident.”

“It was my accident,” he says. “If I hadn’t been driving, if we hadn’t gone out that night, if I hadn’t this or that. You don’t know how many times I’ve thought, ‘If only I’d done one thing different.’ Even if I hadn’t ever met her, hadn’t brought her from Peru to Philadelphia. I wouldn’t have ever loved her, and that would have been my loss, but how bad is a loss you don’t know about? You can’t mourn all the people you could have loved but didn’t. You mourn the ones you loved and lost.”