The Secret Ingredient (20 page)

We sit down at one of the empty tables while the older man mops the floor around us. When he weaves by, he pats me on the shoulder and gives my mother a knowing look. She puts her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.

“I know the consensus is that French is the be-all and end-all of cooking, but let me tell you a secret. The best food to cook is Italian.” She flashes me a girlish grin and more color comes back into her face. “So today, you and I are going to make artichoke lasagna.”

“Sounds great.”

The next hour unfolds like a dream. We work together
almost seamlessly, as if we have done this a million times before. Even though I don’t really know my way around her kitchen and don’t want to cramp her style, the blind date feelings have diminished considerably.

After we steam the artichokes and they’re cooling, I notice my mother grab her leg and wince.

“Are you okay?”

She looks at me with a blank expression, and then says, “There’s something you should know. I don’t know if Janice mentioned it to you.”

“No.”

“No, she wouldn’t have. I have MS. Do you know what that is?”

Boom
. Two letters that make my heartbeat skip. “Kind of.”

“Have for years. It’s a neurological thing, and my case, well, it’s not a big deal, or at least I tell myself that.”

I want to scream “No!” but instead I say, “Does it get worse?”

“Should, but maybe not. There’s no way of knowing.”

As we start rolling the dough I realize that this was all too good to be true. That this not-so-little glitch was as destined to occur as everything else. I suddenly feel unbearable amounts of gratitude for even being in the same room with her right now, mixed with a tinge of anger, knowing it may not last.

As we lay all the ingredients in the pans, she asks me what it was like growing up with two dads.

“Well, you learn pretty early on how ignorant some people are. I remember the day I kind of figured out that we weren’t a normal family, and I got really mad at my dads. I had gotten teased by some girls at school. But L.A. is pretty liberal. I mean, I had a lesbian teacher, and another classmate of mine had two moms. I’m just lucky I didn’t grow up in Kansas or something. But to me, the expression of love between two people of the same sex has always been just as natural as with a guy and a girl.”

“If only everyone could have that attitude. I suppose what Bell and …”

“Enrique.”

“… Enrique were doing was changing the world in their own little way. I’ve always wondered where you ended up, but I have to say I never thought with two dads. How nice to contribute in an indirect way to the life of a non-traditional family,” she muses.

We put the lasagna in the oven and start to clean up.

“You know, I wasn’t much of a cook when I was your age,” Jane says. “But after I had you, I wanted to get away, so I traveled all over the world. I didn’t have much money, so I would stop and work until I could move again. Always in restaurants. And everywhere I went I was interested in the food, until finally in Thailand I worked as a cook. The first thing I learned to make was lemongrass soup.”

“Cool. So how did you end up here?”

“Well, I spent a few years in New York and dated a man who was a food critic. I met a lot of chefs during that time.
One of them introduced me to Andre, a hotelier based out of Montreal. He’s the one who owns the hotel you guys are staying in. We connected on a lot of levels, but never romantically. We built this place together, and we have a relationship—I cater some of his meetings, and his concierge sends a built-in crowd so I never have an empty seat. It works out well. You will notice, if you haven’t already, that the good fortune that comes your way in life is always related to who you know. It’s important to operate in an open way, and never close yourself off to possible connections. Light shines from unexpected places.”

I think about Janice knowing Jane, and Enrique finding me the job. What if I had never opened that door? I wouldn’t be standing here. The psychic was right—all our decisions are connected.

I notice a framed picture of a younger Jane, walking on what looks like a Montreal sidewalk with a dark man in a suit. “Have you ever been married?”

“No. Came close once, but I don’t think I’m the marrying type. I’m married to this place!”

“Do you have other family?”

“Just a sister. We sort of go in and out of each other’s lives. I feel that families are like braids. You drift apart but always come back together.”

All of a sudden, her face lights up.

“You know, I was thinking. Maybe I could write you a reference for Le Cordon Bleu.”

I’m starting to understand that somehow I have become
a person to whom good things happen. Not that I’ve had a lot of bad things happen to me in the past, but there’s been nothing amazing, either. “I don’t know what to say. Like I told you, it would be a dream to study at CB.”

“Wow, you’ve already got the lingo. You know what? I have a slide show from all my travels. Would you like to watch it sometime?”

“I would love to.”

“Great. Now, what are you going to do about your dads?”

“Well, I guess when I go home and they ask me about my trip, I’ll say, ‘It was great. I cooked a meal in my mother’s restaurant.’ They’ll laugh, then get uncomfortable, and I’ll begin to explain it all. Although I’m not sure everything can be explained.”

We pull the lasagna out of the oven, and the cheese is perfectly browned, our homemade red sauce bubbling over the edges.

“The secret ingredient,” I say.

“What?”

I tell her about the chef I met when I was a kid. The cook’s handprint on the dish. “Maybe we’re that for each other,” I say hopefully.

She smiles and says, “Maybe so.”

CHAPTER 30

While Lola paints her toenails, I fill her in on everything. My birth, the lasagna, the MS.

“Wow.”

“You don’t even know. But I knew there would be some kind of catch. I mean, it’s already perfect that she’s a chef who lives less than two hours from me. But it kills me—like, why does she have to be … afflicted? It makes me want to throw something.”

Lola laughs, and then looks at me very seriously. “How bad is her MS?”

“I don’t know. She was vague about it.”

“Well, the important thing is to make the best of now. Lord knows I’m learning that with Mum. We’ve played a million card games since she told me.”

As I watch the waves crashing in the distance outside our window, I notice a flock of birds following the lazy arm of the coastline. Thinking about my mother’s MS suddenly makes everything with Theo seem less important, not so end-of-the-world. I know that, no matter what, I will survive this.

After a while, we start to pack. When I’m finished with everything else, I pick up the cookbook to put it in my bag. For the first time I notice a little gap in the pages, as if they’re warped, and open it there. I see a tiny old black-and-white picture taped to the bottom of the page, and my jaw falls open in awe.

It’s Rose and Kurt! They’re dancing, with one arm around each other and their free arms held up, their hands clasped. I turn the picture over and see the date and an address written on it. I grab Lola’s phone and look up the address. It still exists, and is less than an hour away from the hotel, in the opposite direction from home.

“Lola,” I whisper. “Can I ask you one last favor?”

“Of course. What is it? What’s wrong?”

“There’s somewhere else I need to go. Do you think we could drive to San Juan Capistrano before we head home?” I show her the picture of Rose and Kurt, the address on the back. “I want to see if she still lives there.”

“It’s so close! I can’t believe it. It’s like … fate. Yes, let’s.
We can leave whenever, as I already booked the room for another night so we could leave after checkout today. It’s a beautiful drive too.”

She’s right. The road bends in slight curves, dipping and rising over the arid hills, exposing crescents of white sand and scattered sailboats on the azure ocean. The air is clean after the storm, and the world has a shine to it. Improbable as it is, I feel like everything’s going to work out.

About forty-five minutes later we arrive at the address, a weathered green house on the little strand off the beach. Lola parks and says, “I’ll leave you to it. I’m just going to take a wee bit of a walk.”

I step up to the door and don’t even think before knocking. I’m holding the picture in my hand. This is where Rose lived. A kid answers, around my age, maybe a bit older. He’s wearing a Rip Curl sweatshirt and jeans, and his hair is bleached blond from the sun. I can tell immediately that he’s a surfer. He smiles and seems pleasantly surprised to see me. His teeth are perfectly aligned, and his lips are plump. He looks like he could model for a surf magazine. Maybe he has.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“Sorry to bother you. I was just wondering—does someone named Rose Lane live here?”

He looks confused, but then smiles again. “She was my grandmother. Why do you ask?”

Oh my God, she
did
have another child. I pull the cookbook out of my bag and show him the name on the inside cover.

He flips through it, stopping at some of the notes. “This is a trip.”

I just nod, a little humbled by how ridiculously hot he is without even trying.

“Hey, do you want to come in?”

I look out and see Lola on the beach in the distance. “Sure, for a few minutes. My friend is taking a walk. I’m Olivia, by the way.”

“Cool.”

Surfer Boy puts some Oreo cookies on a plate and serves us lemonade. As I’m telling him the story, I feel like he might think I’m crazy. But he seems more interested the more I explain.

“So I just kind of made up my own story from the little bits and pieces in the book. And I guess I’m here to find out what really happened.”

“Well, I know that Grandma Rose and Grandpa Kurt had my mom late in life, and that she was their only child. Where did you get the cookbook again?”

“L.A.”

“Yeah, she lived there for a while, I know that. But I don’t really remember much else about her. I was, like, seven when she died. You know, my mom should be home any minute. She’d be cool with talking to you.”

Surfer Boy has this intelligent way of enunciating his words that belies his surfer image. Does he really not know how cute he is?

“Really? That would be great.”

He tells me about this surfing championship he wants
to win, how he came in third last year. When he starts in on sponsorships, I’m lost in his eyes, pools of grayish blue.

A few minutes later, in walks his mother. She’s tan, wearing a flowing sundress, and has chopsticks in her hair. A hip surfer mom who could either send us to bed or give us some beers, depending on her mood.

“I leave you alone for half an hour and you’re entertaining pretty young ladies?” she says to him. I can tell they have more of a friend-type relationship, like me and Bell.

Surfer Boy blushes, and it’s ridiculously adorable. “Olivia has a cookbook that belonged to Grandma,” he says, and takes it off the table and hands it to her.

“Hi, Olivia, I’m Eloise,” she says, reaching out her hand. “But people call me Ellie.”

I can’t blink. I am frozen. Her hand stays in the air. I try desperately to act normal and form words.

“You were named after …”

“My mother’s friend Eloise Lautner, why?”

I give her the book and she starts flipping through the pages. “What did she do? Write her life story in here?”

“Not really,” I say. “But I kind of made some assumptions.”

We all take a cookie.

“I guess I just got curious about a few things,” I say. Eloise pours herself some lemonade and says, “Well, I’ll help if I can.”

I think of all the questions I have, but don’t want to
overdo it, so I start with a simple one. “Did Eloise also have a husband at war?”

“Yes. But he never made it back.”

“Is she alive?”

“Yes. She’s been with the same woman for twenty-five years. They live in Topanga Canyon.”

Surfer Boy is baffled that I know more about his family than he does. I was right. Eloise was a lesbian.

“And your mother and Eloise, did they reconcile?”

She gives me a funny look. “I’m not following,” she says.

How do I get into it? I’m losing the line between what I fabricated and what is turning out to be real.

“Well, there’s some notes in there that refer to them that made me think they had a … falling-out. I think it had to do with the miscarriage?”

Now Surfer Boy is wigging out. “What?”

Eloise looks at her son and says, “Your grandmother lost a child before me. I’ve told you.” Then she turns back to me. “My mother was upset about that, as any parent would be, but their ‘falling-out,’ as you say, was due to something else. And I never quite knew what that was.”

I do
, I think.
But there’s no way I’m saying anything
.

“When she was dying, a few years after my father passed, Eloise was there. She was the person who actually watched her die.”

I can barely contain the emotion that is spreading over my face. Surfer Boy looks down at his shoes. I think of the
line in that Death Cab for Cutie song: “Love is watching someone die.”

“What is it, sweetheart?” Ellie says.

“Nothing, it’s just, I guess we all need someone there when we go,” I say.

“Hmm,” Surfer Boy says, “this is getting sort of gloomy.”

I smile and stand up. “Listen, I’m so sorry to have just showed up here, but I got attached to your family through the book, and I was so curious. And it doesn’t surprise me, but you two are super nice.”

Ellie gives me a hug and looks me right in the eye. “We try,” she says.

“Ellie, if I left that here,” I say, pointing to the cookbook, “do you think you could give it to Eloise?”

“You know what? Maybe I can arrange for you to do that yourself. Would that be better?”

“I guess so,” I say.

“Well, I’ve got to go wash up. So nice meeting you,” she says.

“You don’t even know,” I say, smiling like a dork.