Too Many Cooks

Also by Dana Bate

 

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

TOO MANY COOKS

DANA BATE

KENSINGTON BOOKS

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

Twenty minutes after the pallbearers lower my mother's casket into the ground, I am back at her house, surrounded by friends, family, and thirty-two salads. Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn: salad. Potato salad. Pasta salad. Tuna salad. Ham salad. There aren't any leafy green ones, although some, like my aunt's beloved cottage cheese lime Jell-O salad, are decidedly green. No, the bowls lining the tables and windowsills are filled with the kinds of salads I grew up with in Michigan, most containing some combination of proteins and carbs, the ingredients bound up with a spoonful of mayonnaise or its zesty cousin, Miracle Whip, my mother's all-time favorite condiment. She told me she'd never met a recipe that couldn't be improved by a spoonful of Miracle Whip. That, and maybe a dash of rum.

As I rearrange the dining room table to make room for a bowl of macaroni tuna salad, I feel a tap on my shoulder and whirl around to find Meg, my best friend for the past twenty years, holding a large glass casserole dish covered with aluminum foil.

“Another casserole,” she says. “This one from the McCrays.”

“Let me guess: chicken, broccoli, and rice?”

She peeks beneath the foil. “Yep. Although I think this one has carrots in it, too.” She takes another look. “Or maybe that's just cheese. I can't tell. Where do you want it?”

I scan the table, which, in the two minutes I've spent talking to Meg, has given birth to three more creamy white salads. “In the kitchen, I guess. With the others.”

“You got it.” She recovers the dish. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay. Not great. It's been a rough week.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I'm just exhausted, you know? Physically, emotionally—I'm drained.”

She glances over my shoulder. “How's Sam?”

“My rock, as usual.”

“What a trouper. Most guys I know would have been on a plane back to Chicago after one night on your dad's pullout couch. How old is that thing, anyway?”

“Ancient. And filled with equally ancient crumbs.”

“Gross.”

“Very. But Sam and I have been together six years. If he were offended by my family or my humble roots, he would have been out the door a long time ago.”

“Rest assured, there is still plenty of honky-tonk Michigan he hasn't seen.” She looks down at her watch. “If he isn't busy later, I'd be happy to give him a tour. . . .”

I chuckle for the first time in a week. “Thanks, but no thanks. Dealing with my dad for three days has been painful enough.”

“Speaking of which . . .” Her eyes drift over my other shoulder.

I turn around and spot my dad charging toward me, his graying, floppy hair falling into his puffy eyes. He is dressed in a faded black suit and tie, the only suit he has owned in the twenty-eight years I've known him. He buried both his parents in that suit, his brother, and now, after thirty-three years of marriage, his wife.

“I'd better put this in the kitchen. . . .” Meg says, backing away slowly to avoid having to converse with my dad. He's a loose cannon on a good day, and the past three have been worse than most.

“Dammit, Kelly,” he says, adjusting his tie, which looks as uncomfortable being around his neck as he looks wearing it. “Where the hell is your mother's spaghetti salad?”

It seems weird calling it
her
spaghetti salad, as if she might walk out of the kitchen at any moment, dressed in her oversize powder-blue sweatshirt, with a big bowl of spaghetti salad resting on her arms. My mom was never much of a cook—her style of cookery mostly involved cream-based canned soup and processed cheese—but her spaghetti salad was something of a delicacy in my town when I was growing up. The combination of spaghetti, ham, cubed cheese, and Miracle Whip doesn't sound as if it should go together, but somehow, when combined, the result is downright delicious. Maybe it's the fact that every bite reminds me of my mom, but when I crave something comforting and familiar, it's the first thing that comes to mind. Just thinking about it causes a lump to form in my throat.

“Crap—I made it last night and forgot to put it out,” I say. “It's in the fridge.”

“Well, could you go get it? Everyone is asking.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Good.” He runs his fingers through his hair and looks as if he might say something more, but instead he stares at me. “
Today,
please?”

“Sorry—I'm on it.”

“Thirty minutes too late . . .”

I hurry into the kitchen, telling myself through deep breaths that my father isn't a jerk; it's just his grief talking. Realistically, he is a bit of a jerk, but not a mean-spirited one. Expressing emotion has never been one of his strengths, and since my mom's heart attack, his feelings have come bursting out in fits and starts, like water from a punctured hose. Last night he kicked his couch and yelled at it for being “lazy.”

I push past a few old neighbors and head for the refrigerator, where I find the bowl of spaghetti salad I made last night. Preparing it seemed like a fitting tribute to my mom, using my professional cooking skills to re-create the one dish for which she was known. While I'd boiled the spaghetti and diced the ham, I'd blasted ABBA's “Dancing Queen,” my mom's personal anthem, which she'd play on repeat as she danced around the house, often after a Rum Runner or two. I don't think I'll ever be able to hear that song again without picturing her twirling in the family room, her blond, feathered waves bouncing off her shoulders, a boozy grin on her face.

“Need help?”

Sam is standing behind the refrigerator door, looking handsome and decidedly out of place in his tailored Hugo Boss suit. His honey-colored hair is styled with a bit of pomade, and, as always, his deep dimples make him seem as if he is smiling, even when he is not. When Meg first met him during my senior year at University of Michigan, she called him “Ken” behind his back because he bears such a striking resemblance to a Ken doll. By extension, I guess that would make me Barbie, which, given my long flaxen hair, might work if I weren't a slight and flat-chested five foot three. I'm also pretty sure there was never a “Cookbook Ghostwriter Barbie” or an “Art History Major Barbie,” or at least if there was, she certainly never made it to Ypsilanti, Michigan.

“No, I'm okay. Just need to put this on the table.”

Sam glances down at the bowl. “So that's the infamous spaghetti salad?”

“The one and only.”

“Ever try making that for François?” he asks, referring to François Bardon, one of Chicago's most famous chefs, whose cookbook I just finished ghostwriting.

“I don't think he'd know what to do with it. I can hear him now: ‘What ees zeese . . . spa-gay-tee salade?' ”

Sam laughs. “His wife would probably assume it was some sort of Midwestern aphrodisiac.”

“The way people fight over it, maybe it is. . . .”

Sam raises his eyebrows suggestively, then catches himself. “Sorry—bad timing.”

“It's okay. My mom wouldn't have wanted a big, weepy scene.”

“No?”

“Are you kidding? She hated being around sad people. She'd want us to be laughing. Laughing, and drinking.”

Even though my mom never told me this explicitly, I know it's true. At my grandpa's funeral, when I was ten, she'd started singing the theme song to
Cheers
while some old guy played piano, so that she could, in her words, “lighten the mood.” Granted, she was on her third rum and Coke and had a long history of breaking into song at inappropriate times, including at several of my birthday parties, but nevertheless, I know she'd have preferred a veiled sex joke to tears at her own funeral. Part of me is surprised she didn't demand an ABBA-themed graveside song-and-dance in her will.

I'm about to ask Sam to restock the bar when my dad bursts into the kitchen, his face flushed. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he says. “Where is the damn spaghetti salad?”

“I was just bringing it out,” I say, lifting the bowl in my hands.

“Oh, really? Looks to me like you were talking to Dr. Cock.”

I let out a protracted sigh. “Dad, we've been over this a zillion times; it's pronounced ‘Coke.' And you don't have to keep calling him doctor.”

“Well, he is a doctor, isn't he?”

“I am. But please—call me Sam.”

My dad clenches his jaw as his eyes shoot from me to Sam and back to me again.

“I just buried my wife. I can call him whatever I want.”

I take a deep breath and look at Sam, but he just shrugs and stares back because, really, how can anyone argue with that?

 

In what is surely a Madigan family record, we blow through a handle of vodka, two bottles of rum, a bottle of Jim Beam, two cases of beer, and thirty-six salads in less than two hours. By the time most of the guests have left, only a humble bowl of ham salad and a trickle of whiskey remain.

“I'm going to take off,” Meg says, leaning in for a hug as she slings her purse over her shoulder. “You'll be okay?”

“I've got things under control.”

“If you need anything, you know where to find me. When do you drive back to Chicago?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Sam is flying back tonight because he's on call tomorrow.”

She sighs. “Dr. Dreamy. What a catch.”

My eyes wander over her shoulder, to where I see Sam drying a big salad bowl with a dishtowel. “He's a good one.”

“Good? Try great. Although I can't believe he hasn't popped the question yet. What is he waiting for?”

I pick at a ball of fuzz on my black cardigan. “We're not in any rush.”

“Obviously. It's been six years.”

“He was finishing med school when we met, and then there was residency, and—”

“And now he's doing his fellowship. I know. Those are excuses, not reasons.”

“Those aren't excuses. We've both had a lot on our plates. You know how precarious my job is—I'm always chasing the next project.”

“I still don't fully understand why you're writing
other
people's books. When are you finally going to get your own gig?”

“Writing about what? Spaghetti salad?”

“Hey—don't kid yourself. Not everyone can afford truffles and filet mignon. Some of us might like to hear from someone on our level.”

“And if a big, fat paycheck falls out of the sky for me to do that, I will. Until then . . . things are a little in flux.”

“That may be, but it still doesn't explain why Sam hasn't made an honest woman out of you. What, is he afraid you'd say no?” She chuckles to herself, but stops abruptly when I don't join in. “Wait—you'd say no?”

My stomach curdles. “What? No. Of course I wouldn't say no. He's great. He's . . . perfect.”

“You're damn right he's perfect. A cardiologist who looks like a Ken doll? Who lives and works in Chicago? You're living the dream, my friend. The
dream
.”

“I know,” I say. “I know,” even though I'm no longer sure if that dream belongs to me, or the me Sam met six years ago.

 

Thirty minutes before I'm supposed to take Sam to the airport, I wander past my brother's old bedroom and find him sitting on the bed in the dark. His twin bed still bears the Detroit Tigers comforter my parents bought him when he was ten, above which hangs a dated poster of Britney Spears in a pair of denim cutoffs and a fluorescent crop top.

“Stevie? What are you doing in here?”

“Don't call me Stevie,” he says. “I'm twenty-five. People call me Steve.”

“I don't care how old you are. You'll always be Stevie to me.” I notice a folded-up letter sitting on the edge of his bed. “What's that?”

“A letter from Mom.”

“From Mom? From when?”

“Not sure. Dad found the letters when he was looking for something in one of her drawers.”

“What do you mean the ‘letters'? There was more than one?”

He scratches the light brown stubble on his chin. “I think she left one for each of us. Yours is probably in your room.”

My head feels light. “But . . . she dropped dead of a heart attack. . . .”

“Which, apparently, was a surprise to everyone but her.”

I nod, conceding his point. A few hours after she died, my dad got a phone call from her doctor, who was effusively apologetic. Evidently my mom had visited him six months ago thinking she had a cold, but she was troublingly short of breath, so he ordered a few tests, including an echocardiogram. It turned out she had cardiomyopathy, a heart muscle disease. He'd put her on medication and told her to follow up in three months, and if the drugs didn't work, he recommended she get an implantable defibrillator. But she never showed up for her follow-up appointments and didn't return any of his calls, so he wasn't sure if she'd even filled her prescription.

This was the first any of us had heard about a heart problem, including my dad, and it made me furious. Why would she keep her condition a secret? So we wouldn't worry? Surely we had a right to know, a
right
to worry. Maybe Sam could have helped her—he's a cardiologist, after all. But what bothered me most of all was the question I'd never be able to answer: If I'd known about her condition, would it have mattered? Would our relationship have been any different? Or would it have remained the same, loving and complicated and admittedly dysfunctional?

“But I mean . . . a letter? Mom didn't even write Christmas cards. Why would she write us a letter?”