The Secret Ingredient (7 page)

Kurt must be Rose’s husband. My mind starts to go full speed. What happened? Was she talking about Matthew? I don’t know why, but I can tell this Rose was a good person. Or maybe she’s still alive. Why was her mother never satisfied? I write my own note underneath hers:

You did the best you could, and that’s all you can do
.

You can thin out the jambalaya with beef stock
.

Sometimes I like to hear people talking when I go to sleep. The words and meanings go away and it’s just a voice, someone else out there in the world. I turn on the AM radio, and through the little speaker comes a voice, female, and I drown out the words, imagining it to be Rose’s voice, telling me the story of how she met Kurt.

 … We met at a county fair. Kurt covered me with his jacket after it started to rain. I refused, told him
I didn’t mind getting wet, and off we went, running through the storm, spellbound. When the rain stopped, we sat in waterlogged clothes outside the gates. We laughed for no apparent reason. From that point on, we were inseparable. We went to a diner and ate breakfast at midnight. I was always myself around him
.

CHAPTER 8

On Wednesday, my second day of work, Janice tells me I’m two days away from getting paid. She’s paying me under the table. When I was younger and heard Bell was doing that with some of the dishwashers, I actually thought he meant it literally. I panicked when he plucked down some cash for one of them, right on top of the table.

All through work I think about Theo, and the key in my pocket, and whether the psychic knew what she was talking about or if she was just lucky. When it comes time to leave, I go into the bathroom and, once again, apply a touch of mascara and some lip gloss. He better not stand me up again, almost exactly a year later. That would be pathetic.

On my way to meet him at Griffith Park I stop off at Jeremy’s place. He’s not inside, but I hear his voice in the
alley. He’s down there with Phil, and they’re looking under the hood of an ice cream truck. He’s really doing it. The truck is pink and brown, with a rusted bumper. It says
ICY COLD
in big block letters, but nothing else. At one point it probably said
ICY COLD TREATS
or something. Suddenly, I change my mind about saying hi to Jeremy, and I sneak by without being seen. I’m too excited about my date with Theo to concentrate on anything else.

Back on the boulevard I notice the old art gallery. There’s never anything in it, except for three retro TVs in the window, usually playing cartoons. Today, however, two of them are just playing black-and-white fuzz, and the other is playing an old movie. The movie I don’t recognize, but the actress I do. It is unmistakably Julie Andrews. I look at her hair, her eyes—the only woman I’ve ever looked at and seen pieces of myself. I feel tears well up in my eyes, and I know: it’s time. Even if she doesn’t look like Julie Andrews, I’ve got to find out who my mother is. I take the key out of my pocket and hold it up to the glass.

Griffith Park is filled with people walking their dogs, joggers, and what Bell calls “randoms”—people who look a little lost, or high, or maybe mentally unstable. I find myself smiling at everyone, which is not a usual thing for me. I’m not much of a romantic, but I feel an inexplicable happiness, like maybe everything is going to be okay.

Theo is sitting on the stone wall by the conservatory. The buildings of downtown L.A. rise out of the sunset smog in the distance. Theo looks older somehow; I’m not sure why. But he is still “dead cute,” as Lola would say. I sit down next to him and we watch the skyline, layers of orange trying to fight through the gray. When the sky becomes drained of color and only the smog remains, he turns to me and says, “I’m so sorry.”

I just look into his green eyes, which are swimming with remorse. He starts talking softly.

“Everything came crashing down that day. My mother, she was going to send Timothy to this institution. She hardly spent any time with him. I basically raised him. I knew he would never last in a place like that. He was terrified of going. So instead, I faked out my mother and took him to my aunt’s house in Seattle. It was one of those moments, I can’t really explain it. I had to go. It was the only way. I knew you didn’t have a cell phone. Do you have one now?”

“No. I suppose I will have to cave in at some point, but I’m trying to hold out.”

He smiles a little funny, like he thinks it’s cute I’m so removed from mass culture.

“Well, now Timothy and I are back home because my aunt sold her house and moved, and she’s got some of her own problems to deal with. But I called you at your house, Liv. Did Enrique give you the message?”

“What? No.”

“I really wanted to talk to you.”

“I did too. I sat at the ninety-nine-cent store for like an hour.”

He reaches out and pulls a stray hair off my face, and we stare at each other, wondering how the heck the universe brought us back together. We never really knew each other that well, but I’m glad he feels like he can confide in me. He wouldn’t say all that personal family stuff to just anyone.

“You look great,” he says.

I feel myself blushing, so I start to tell him about the restaurant.

“Oh no.”

“It’s pretty bad. Dad is in denial, I think. And Papá is just numbing himself with alcohol. It’s really sad. I remember when Dad first opened the place, and Papá was designing the menus … there was so much happiness there. Now you walk in and you can feel this sense of doom. Like the ceiling’s going to fall in or something.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Well, I’m working now, and Jeremy’s got this ice cream truck.…”

Theo rolls his eyes, probably thinking about Jeremy’s big talk about his band last summer. “Sounds promising.”

Three large birds fly in perfect V formation right over our heads. I think of Julie Andrews on that small old TV, smiling so effortlessly.

“Grace,” I say.

“What?”

“Those birds. It’s amazing, isn’t it? That they just spread their wings and boom, they’re soaring above the earth. That’s, like, the definition of grace.”

“I guess that’s why we fly in dreams,” Theo says.

He looks at me differently, like maybe I have changed since last summer. Of course I have. We both have.

“I was so mad at you. I couldn’t believe you’d just take off like that.”

“It was complicated,” he says. “Family, in most cases, comes first.”

“So why did you call the house only once?”

“I thought—I thought you had your reasons for not calling me back. Like you didn’t want to talk to me. And then I had my hands full up there. Timothy is not easy. You’ll see.”

You’ll see
. Does this mean we’ll be hanging out more? I try to diminish the smile that is spreading over my face. After a bit, we start walking. He takes my hand, and at first it seems clumsy, but then I relax into it, and I feel like I’m floating. I think of my earliest memory, walking in Venice Beach with one hand in Bell’s and the other in Enrique’s. They would swing me up every few steps, and everyone who walked by smiled at us. There were people on Rollerblades, hippies selling incense, punk kids with pierced eyebrows and pink hair … it was basically a circus. And there at the center, in the calm of the storm, were my dads and me. It was one of those perfect moments.

“Do you believe in destiny?” I ask.

Theo turns his soft eyes on me and says, “How do you mean?”

I tell him about the psychic. I leave out the “young man” part.

“Sounds like something’s definitely in the cards,” he says. “No pun intended.”

“I just have this feeling, like something is slipping away. I don’t know, my innocence? It’s like, when you’re a kid the biggest worry is whether or not you can have ice cream after lunch, and then you become an adult, and real threats happen, like Dad losing the restaurant. And I’ve been thinking about the fact that there’s a woman out there who gave birth to me who I don’t know and maybe won’t be able to find. It just feels like the foundation we’ve all built is breaking down.”

“Tell me about it. My mother gave up on Timothy, and I’m the only reason he’s still alive. When you’re a kid everything is a fairy tale, or they lead you to believe that by the books they give you.… Then you realize life is, well, screwed up beyond belief.”

We reach the end of the park and start walking down the sidewalk back toward Theo’s neighborhood. We pass a couple on a bench, and the man kisses the woman’s shoulder.

“The thing is, Liv, what is it
you
want?”

“What?”

“Well, from what I saw at the restaurant last year, you
always seem to be helping other people. But you need to figure out what
you
want. Like, what’s your dream?”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the famous cooking school. Not sure how the heck that would actually happen, though. It’s got to be super expensive. My guidance counselor says I can totally get into college, but what’s the point if I want to be a cook?”

Theo throws me that smile he used to give me, standing in his apron behind the dish rack at FOOD. “There’s no reason you can’t go to cooking school in France. Dreams happen.”

We stop at a crosswalk and a tricked-out car filled with what looks like gang members pulls up, the bass thumping so hard I can feel it in my heart.

“Yeah, maybe to some people—people with money and—”

“To everyone,” Theo says. “Maybe it starts out like a fairy tale, then everything gets jacked, then it all comes together in a happy ending.”

“Listen to you, Mr. Positive.”

“You have to be that way, sometimes, to survive.”

We cross the street and start picking through a parking lot sale. I see a sad painting of an apple, some costume jewelry, and a trunk full of old matchboxes. Theo secretly buys a necklace, then slips it on me. It’s blue, with small beads separated by spiky silver things. The color matches my eyes. It’s not something I would normally wear, but because he puts it on me so sweetly, I fear I may never take it off.

When we get to the block of Sunset where we separate, I notice another flock of birds, this time maybe twenty of them in formation above our heads.
Grace
.

“What about you?” I ask him. “What’s your dream?”

Theo studies his feet for a moment. Then he speaks, his voice shaky, as if he’s been waiting a long time to have this conversation. “Well, I want to race on a team, get paid to cycle and see the world. And to have someone I can be myself around. Does that sound corny as hell?”

I look up and the palm trees are lean, proud soldiers, the one constant in my life.

“No. But tell me, did you see anyone else? Up in Oregon?”

He doesn’t answer, just looks at me with what could be guilt or pity.

“The important thing is that we’re here now, right?”

I look up at him, and he cups his hand under my chin, leaning in to kiss me. For that moment, I don’t hear the cars or the birds or anything. My mind becomes as clear as an empty glass bowl.

CHAPTER 9

When I was five and Jeremy was seven, we had bunk beds that were shaped like racecars. I slept in the bottom car, and if I had a bad dream or something woke me up, I would push my feet against the bottom of Jeremy’s mattress to make sure he was there. One time I pushed and there was no resistance, so I panicked. I grabbed my blankie and walked into the living room to find Jeremy staring at the front door. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Waiting for Papá.” At the time, I had no idea why he’d be doing such a thing, but now I realize that was the first time Enrique and Bell had a spat and Enrique left. Jeremy was devastated. I was too young to really know what was going on, but I do remember Jeremy on the brink of tears, and just wanting the good to be restored in the world.

It’s around ten p.m. I’ve just gotten off the phone with Lola, giving her the details of my date with Theo. I lean back on the couch and close my eyes. I can hear Davida singing to Hank, and the scrape and roll of kids skateboarding under the streetlights. Just when I doze off, the slap of the screen door jolts me awake. Enrique is in his usual preppy outfit and has not been drinking. I know this because he looks me right in the eye.

I glare back at him and he looks surprised. “What is it? You are mad with me?”

“You remember Theo, the dishwasher?”

“Yes, I think.”

“Do you remember when he just disappeared?”

“A little.”

“Well, he said he called and left a message for me. That you were the one who took the message.”

Enrique smiles, as if this problem is nothing to be alarmed about. A scraped knee fixed with a Band-Aid. “Oh, Ollie, I am so sorry. I don’t remember. Maybe I was—”

“Wrapped up in your own world?”

He smiles again, but this time like a scolded puppy. “Not fair, Ollie. I—I know I can be … like that.…”

What is it with people and their smiles? How can they hold so much weight?

“Well, I just want you to know something: the things you do, or forget to do in this case, affect the people around you—a lot. And even though I’m upset about this,
it’s nothing compared to what’s going on with Dad. He needs you. Please, just be nice to each other. I can’t stand the tension around here.”

There’s water collecting in Enrique’s eyes. He gets a beer and brings me some orange juice in a coffee mug. He knows it’s basically the only thing I drink. When I was a toddler he once bought orange Gatorade by mistake and I wasn’t having it. I spit it out right in the middle of a crowded bus. He tells the story all the time.

“We have to help Dad,” I say.

“Bell, Bell, Bell.”

“What?”

As if we are on the set of a sitcom, Bell walks in. He looks tired but, as Lola says, charming—a poor man’s George Clooney. He doesn’t say anything but looks at us both in his way, distant yet concerned, a walking duality. He goes into the kitchen and comes back with a glass of milk. We each sit silently, together and alone, sipping our drinks and wondering what will become of us.