War (32 page)

Nope. Not for me. 

              My mother drove me to New Hampshire, begging me to tell her what was going. “What is this about?” she kept asking. I ignored her. I admit, I was in a state of shock. My home had been wiped clean, my family had moved to Beacon Hill, Jacob had thrown me under every bus imaginable…all in one night. I was in shock. My mother continued to beg me. “What is this about, Jasmine? What’s going on with you and Marlon?” I continued to ignore her.

             
Don’t let fear control you
, was her warning to me.

              I have nothing,
I thought.

              My aunt and uncle helped me into their home. It’s one of those homes that reminds me of Danielle’s condo: the kitchen cabinets are antique white and look tattered and worn on purpose, the countertops marble, the furnishings are grey. The flowers in the house are always bourbon roses—those dusty pink ones. The vases are all crystal, the candles are all some shade of ivory, and there are chandeliers with gleaming crystal drops hanging from gold frames in every room.  Floor-to-ceiling windows are outfitted with specially-made baby blue curtains that drape down to the floor. The bookshelves are built in, the area rugs are Persian, and every room has a chaise. Every painting is museum quality, looking like they weigh a ton
;
the bedding is always free of wrinkles and stacked with goose feather pillows in neat rows, one behind the other, all white.

How can you stay depressed in a place like that? Easily. All you have to remember is one thing:
I have nothing.

My mother stayed with me for two days at my aunt’s home. I lay in the guest room, my head nestled on those goose feather pillows, the sound of soft waves crashing on the shore outside my window, the harbor bells clanking softly. My mom came in and asked me again if I’d tell her what this was all about. My aunt came in and told me that I could stay forever if I needed to. She offered me apple pie and vanilla ice cream. My uncle came in and told me that when I was ready to talk, no matter if it was morning, noon or night, all I had to do was call him. My dad called to tell me that he loved me. My grandparents called to find out what in the world was going on. I appreciated their care. But I stayed quiet. I was devising my plan. I was in the first stage of stress.

Alarm.

What the hell was I going to do?
I had nothing.

It was on the eighth night of my confinement that I looked on my bedside table and saw a letter there. It was Danielle. At midnight, while the house was quiet and the sea rippled outside my window, I opened it and read it. The quote she ended the letter with sparked a fire in me. It was confirmation:
We are becoming the men we wanted to marry
. I had been devising my plan, in all of that silence, and now, after seeing Danielle’s letter, I knew what I had to do.

I put her letter down and continued to go through the stack of them. She had written me again. For some reason, I needed to hear what Danielle had to say. She wasn’t going to offer me sympathy, she wasn’t going to offer me encouragement; she was going to offer me a way out. She wasn’t going to allow me to wallow in my sorrow. She knew Marlon left me. She knew I had nothing. Danielle is a feminist. She was going to help me come up with a Plan B. No man needed. I tore open her second letter:

Hey, crazy girl. I wanted to talk to you about that cookbook of yours. I have three publishers clamoring to see a cookbook that offers easily made Italian and French recipes. But to be honest, they aren’t impressed with the Italian part. Everyone knows how to make Italian easily, it’s the French they’re intrigued with. As your literary agent, I suggest you drop the Italian and go full speed ahead with the French.

No problem, Danny. I’ll give them whatever they want.

I have nothing.

I know I once told you that Italian food was easy and comforting and that French food was difficult and time-consuming. I know I once compared Marlon to Italian and Jake to French. I know I told you that I was done with French recipes, but things have changed.

I have nothing.

I stayed up all night. At five-thirty in the morning I showered, dressed, grabbed my clutch, walked into the kitchen, grabbed the cloth grocery bags, and went to my aunt and uncle’s garage. I grabbed my aunt’s bicycle, placed the cloth grocery bags into the wicker basket on the handlebars and headed out to the farmer’s market. It was freezing but determination was guiding me. I recounted every French recipe I had ever learned and I set out to find local ingredients to replicate it. After the farmer’s market, the butcher was next. The wicker basket on the bicycle was packed by the time I arrived back at the house.

“Oh, hi Jazzy,” my aunt said as she sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee, her robe still on. “I was just about to check on you. Have you already been out and about?”

“Sure have been,” I said as I dropped the grocery bags on the counter. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.” She said no more.

I cut. I sliced. I pierced. I ignored. I was at work. I was making four dishes at a time. Why? Well my original cookbook included twenty French recipes and twenty Italian. Now I needed eighty French recipes and I needed them now. I heard my aunt and uncle whispering, and I’m sure he was diagnosing me. Let him. I had work to do. Uncle Neal eventually went to work. My aunt went to help some nuns and volunteer at her church. I continued to chop, slice and pierce. While the meals were cooking and simmering, I went into my uncle’s home office.

No more wallowing in my sorrow.

I booted up his computer and searched these words: postcard collections. There was a site called Pretty Posts. It was a vintage-looking website filled with grainy images of the nostalgic 50’s era, with its long colorful cars, smiling kids with high ponytails, and four person families.

I have nothing.

They offered a postcard package called Around The World in 100 Days. It came with one hundred postcards, two from each state. One postcard featured the state’s capital; the second featured the state’s second largest city. I went to grab my clutch. I’m no fool. I always had my own account apart from Marlon. Community money could be dangerous, especially at a time like this; he probably canceled all my cards. I paid for the postcards and then paid the extra postage to have them overnighted.

Why did I buy them? I was going to mail my girls a postcard a day, starting in New Hampshire and then moving to the nearest state…like I was on a road trip. If I talked to them on the phone, I’m sure I would have broken down and cried, but sending the postcards, and telling them that mommy was travelling the country to find recipes for her new cookbook was doable. They’re young; they’d think nothing of it.

With that done, I checked on the food in the kitchen. One recipe I ditched, the others I kept. Good. I needed forty more French recipes and I had three. Thirty-seven more to go. I searched the house for a camera. I found a fancy one in a utility closet. The recipes I kept, I took pictures of, from every angle. I placed them on the pretty dishes my aunt has. I adjusted the light. I opened the kitchen blinds to let in natural light. I rebooted my uncle’s computer and purchased Photoshop. Soon, I had those pictures looking perfect.

My aunt came home and tried to engage in small talk. I shooed her away. Not now, Aunty. My uncle came home and tried to say hello. But, since he’s a psychology professor, I had plans for him. No small talk needed.

“I need you to go to the head of the graphic design department at
the
college and request that one of their students do some work for me for class credit. I need to start my own website. Tell them I have a deal with Rouge Literary Agency in Boston. Give him Danielle’s number, have him call to confirm.”

“Oh, um, sure,” my uncle said.

The next day I met a dorky girl with red glasses at New Hampshire University. Sitting with her was a Computer Science major. The dean explained to me that they were both available, if that was alright, and that they would both get credit. This dean had contacted Danielle, saw the contract I had with her, saw three publishing houses that would be in a bidding war for my cookbook and was elated to have two of her students create a professional site for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just do it.

I handed the students the camera with the food images, told them I wanted the site to look like a scene out of that French movie
Amelie
: full of soft colors, fantasy, moving objects and cliché French graphics. It had to appear as welcoming and as unstuffy as possible. It needed to say:
Look how friendly, flirty and Frenchie my site looks. This food is easy to make, just give it a try.
They went to work.

And so did I.

I had nothing.

I was writing a postcard a day to my girls, tossing aside all of the letters I received (except for Danielle’s), getting dressed each day by five in the morning, heading to the farmer’s market, coming back to the house to cook, and working on my recipes until around midnight. By the time the site was done (beautifully, might I add) I had seventy-eight French recipes that were delicious. My aunt and uncle were my tasters. They liked sixty recipes. With those sixty, I went to three of their neighbors. They narrowed it down to fifty-two recipes that they loved. From there, I went to my aunt’s church. The nuns narrowed it down to forty-seven. Forty seven was fine. I’d put the first forty in the book and put the next seven on my site; one free French recipe a week for free. I could get a buzz going.

I typed all the recipes up, those I already had and those I had just created. I saved them on a hard drive my uncle had given me. I had three pictures to accompany each recipe. I then printed everything out, developed the pictures on real photo paper, packaged the hard drive and the hard copy together and overnighted it to Danielle’s home. I put a small note in the package that read,
I need a bidding war ASAP. -Jasmine

I have nothing.

While I waited for her response, I went ahead and went live with my new website. Jasmine
Harlow
was now ready to show the world how to cook. (I, of course, did not use my married name. After all of these years, I finally get why Danielle kept her maiden name.) The site was gorgeous, the graphics of the Seine River floating in the background was fun, the water glistening was neat. And it had a timer! When it was night, stars would start to come out on the top of the page and twinkle. The sun would disappear and a half moon would appear. The sign on the building marked ‘Jasmine’s Boulangerie’ flipped from Open to Closed. The sign on a building called ‘Jasmine’s Cafe' switched from Closed to Open. The kids on the sidewalk walked into brownstones, adult lovers in French berets walked out, taking their place.

I started my cooking blog and included a recipe. After a day I had fifty hits, no doubt students of the university who were told that two local students had created a site for an up-and-coming author. By day two I had twelve hundred site visits and comments to my first recipe post. People loved the site, loved the option to turn on the French music in the background, loved the graphics. By the third day, they loved the food.
Wow, this really was easy to make and it was so good!
w
ere the comments from about six people. By day four, Danielle had sent a bicycle messenger to hand deliver a package and this note:

Bidding war ended. PriceHouse Publishing offered the most. $225,000 for you to sign with them. Keep in mind, you’ll also get 15% of book sales once they reach $225,000. Don’t worry about the numbers, I’ll explain them to you later. Oh, and PriceHouse saw your site and its comments yesterday. They want to marry you. See these contracts in this package? Sign them ASAP and overnight them to me. In four weeks, you’ll get your first payout of 25%

Oh. Shit. I went into my uncle’s office, grabbed a calculator and calculated twenty-five percent of $225,000. It was $56,250.

I have something.

My own money. I sat back that day in my uncle’s office and answered all of the questions my new fans were asking me: Can I substitute ingredients? What will happen when…? Is self-rising flour the same? Is there a gluten-free version? Can you give me the cup-to-teaspoon equivalent? When are you posting your next recipe?

I smiled and answered them all.

And now, guess what? It’s Friday, I’m back in Boston and I’m $56,250 richer.

I haven’t told a soul that I’m here. My cell is blowing up but I don’t care.
Ignore
. I caught a train home and answered comments and questions on my new Apple laptop while drinking dark roast Starbucks and looking at my new Android. It beeps every time someone writes me a private message and it seems like I get at least one recipe question an hour. Then my editor called. She had questions, she needed clarification, she heaped on the praise. She tried two recipes last night. Her husband fell at her feet. I laughed, she laughed and then I said I had to go. I had followers to attend to.

I have something.

By the time my train stopped at the station, I was already at a door, checking messages on my Android, my laptop bag weighing my shoulder down, a cup of fresh brewed Starbucks in my hand. I already called a realtor and told her that I needed to see three condos as soon as I arrived. So, by the time the train stopped at my station, she had arrived and was waiting for me, a huge smile on her face.