by Katy Regnery
My stomach growls, and I realize that if I’m going to stay out of his way, I should probably use the kitchen to make myself some food now, while he’s busy.
Leaving my shoes upstairs, I slip down the small curved staircase to the first level of the house. I turn through the living room and dining room and smile as I step into the bright, modern kitchen.
There are white tiles on the floor, and the walls are painted a light yellow. In the center of the room is a slab of white and gray marble and a glass bowl holding oranges, lemons, and limes. I step forward and finger the bowl gingerly, staring at the swirling citrus colors melted into the glass, and instinctively I know that this is one of Julian’s pieces. From the window over the sink, I glance out toward the barn, but I don’t see my hot-tempered housemate, so I relax.
At my school, culinary arts and home economics are given the same weight as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in fact, there are some sisters who insist that knowing how to keep a home and feed a family are skills more useful to a young woman than geometry or a comprehensive knowledge of Charles Dickens and the historical works of William Shakespeare.
I feel at home in a kitchen and am quite skilled, though I’ve never had my own in which to work. Mosier’s was off-limits; the milieu created by his house staff was not a place for me or my mother. And the kitchen at school was always filled with dozens of girls, all charged with a task to bring breakfast, dinner and supper to the table.
The first thing I do here, besides celebrating the revelation that this kitchen is all mine for the next hour or so, is open every cabinet and drawer at the same time, then slowly spin around the room, memorizing the placement of every ingredient, utensil, pot, pan, sheet, colander, and storage supply. And I quickly realize that, while it’s a beautiful kitchen, it’s not exceptionally well outfitted. In fact, it’s missing quite a bit. There’s no slow cooker, a must-have for young mothers, or cake pans, with which to make hospitality sweets for new neighbors. Hmm.
There is, however, a good collection of basic items, which are high-end and seem almost new. Plucking a baking sheet from the skinny cabinet beside the oven, I place it on the marble counter, then add a heavy iron skillet, a rolling pin, two wooden spoons, a lemon squeezer, and a garlic press.
As I close the cabinets and drawers one by one, I take out other items I might need, adding them to the growing pile on the marble island, then turn to the refrigerator. There is no garlic, but there is a sad, solitary onion in the crisper, a package of two chicken breasts in the back, and half a container of whole milk.
In a cabinet of baking supplies, I find flour, baking powder, salt, and Crisco, all of which Gus told me I could use.
Working quickly, I grease the baking sheet, then mix the ingredients for simple biscuits, one of many recipes I know by heart.
Once I pop them in the oven, I remove the chicken from its package, pound out the cutlets until the membrane and muscle are broken, and rub them with lemon. Using the garlic press, I add minced onion, then set the breasts to the side. Just before the biscuits are ready, I’ll fry the cutlets in olive oil, and voilà! chicken and biscuits. Not a perfect meal, but not bad for limited provisions. Sister Mary Claire would be proud, I think, grinning as I put away the ingredients I don’t need anymore.
As I wait for the biscuits to finish, I snoop around the kitchen and find an old cookbook in the back of a lower cabinet. I place it on the marble slab, flipping through the pages as the smell of warm bread fills the kitchen.
Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book.
Property of Annabelle Mishkin.
Hmm. Jock’s mother? Grandmother? Great-grandmother?
I glance at the copyright date: 1956.
Probably his grandmother.
I flip through the pages, my mouth watering at the recipes, which are illustrated with black-and-white pictures and cartoon sketches. Nineteen fifties housewives with perfectly coiffed hair, wearing aprons over their crinoline-poufed skirts, smile adoringly at their business suit–clad husbands as they present a turkey tableside. It’s a version of family I never remotely experienced, but as I lean over the book, my elbows propped on the cold marble, I feel a familiar longing for something I’ve never known.
Suddenly I picture Tig in an apron and crinolines, and for the first time since my mother passed away, I’m neither angry nor bitter. I chuckle softly at the picture in my head, thinking about how much she would have hated that life, and wondering if all daughters end up wanting exactly what their mothers didn’t, wondering if women are like cuckoo clock pendulums, swinging back and forth with each successive generation.
The timer on the oven beeps, and I remove the sheet from the oven and place it on the counter, admiring the browned tops of my perfect biscuits. I light the fire under a burner and place the heavy skillet over the flame, adding a little olive oil. The flattened chicken cooks quickly, snapping in the grease, the lemon and onion adding another layer of delicious smells to the kitchen.
As I plate the food—two biscuits and a chicken breast with pan drippings on each dinner plate—I suddenly realize that, unconsciously and definitely inadvertently, I’ve made two servings. Maybe it’s because I’ve never made a meal for just myself, or because there were two chicken breasts, that it only made sense to plate two meals, but suddenly I picture Julian’s angry face, shouting at Jock, yelling at me, the diamond flecks on his arms and the moody green of his eyes.
Maybe he’s hungry, I think.
Putting away the mitt I’ve been using, and rinsing the skillet in the sink, I gather my courage. I’ll run to the barn, place the plate on the stool just outside the door, knock, and run.
I cover the plate with plastic wrap and with shaking hands open the creaky screen door and make my way down the back-porch stairs. I grimace as my soft feet touch down on the gravel driveway between the house and barn, swallowing gasps as the tiny stones dig into my flesh.
Knock and run, Ashley. Knock and run!
My heart hammers as I reach the barn, and as quickly as possible, I place the plate on the beat-up stool, knocking twice on the door before turning and racing back to the house. I barely feel the gravel this time, but my lungs are burning as I scurry up the back steps. Bruno is barking by the time I reach the kitchen, but I don’t look back.
Once safely inside the kitchen, I lean against the wall, catching my breath. When I finally peek out the window over the sink, I notice the plate is gone and feel a tiny rush of victory that makes me giggle softly.
Then I take my own plate from the marble slab, grab a fork from the correct drawer, and hurry back up to my attic sanctuary.
CHAPTER NINE
Julian
Knock knock knock!
My eyes jerk to the door, and I almost lose the spinning rhythm I’m using to etch a spiral design in the orange flecked vase I’m working on.
“What part of ‘Stay the fuck out of my way’ didn’t she understand?” I mutter, using a torch to smooth the bottom before letting it cool on the rod. Gently I dip the unfinished vase into a metal bucket of water on the floor, then prop the rod, with the vase attached, on a holding rack.
By the time I open the barn door, she’s gone, but on the stool beside the door is a plate of food covered in plastic wrap. I stare at the plate like it’s a coiled snake instead of biscuits and chicken, then glance up at the house. No sign of her.
But I can smell the food, and it makes my mouth water instantly. It smells like butter, onions, and lemons, and stirs a long-forgotten memory.
“Joyeux anniversaire, Julian!”
My grandmother’s green eyes, like my father’s and mine, shine in the late summer Provençal sunlight. She takes the top off a cooking pot with a flourish, grinning at me from across the table.
“Joyeux anniversaire, fiston!” says my father, squeezing my small shoulder with a burly arm. “C’est coq au vin. Your grandmother’s special dish. She only makes it pour des occasions spéciales!”
“Merci, Mém
ère,” I say, grinning up at her, wishing that our summer in Sault never had to come to an end.
“Treize ans.” She reaches across the table and pinches my cheeks lovingly. “Beau garçon.”
Thirteen years old. Beautiful boy.
Bruno’s soft wailing lets me know that his hound nose has sniffed out the food, and I reach for the plate, closing the door with my back.
“You want some?” I ask him.
His insistent howl tells me he wants all of it.
“No chance, buddy. We’re sharing.”
She’s forgotten to leave a fork, but it doesn’t matter. I halve the first of two biscuits and rip off a piece of the still-hot chicken with my callused fingers. One half for me, one for Bruno. And I can practically hear my dog’s sigh echo mine as he chomps down his share, then shifts his weight from front foot to front foot, hopeful for more. But it’s too good to share.
“Sorry, boy,” I say, halving the other biscuit and sandwiching the remaining chicken.
As Bruno licks the plate, I savor the rest. And it’s good. It’s so good. It’s as good as my grandmother’s coq au vin, and as much as I hate it, it makes me wonder about the girl inside.
Where did she learn to cook? Did she once have a grandmother like mine? Someone who made sure she felt loved the way I did when the sting of my mother’s abandonment was at its sharpest?
My cell phone buzzes on the wooden workbench.
Noelle.
“Hey,” I say, putting the phone to my ear as I wipe my hands on my jeans.
“Hi. What’s up?”
“Nothing much. Working on a vase.”
“Commission or gallery?”
“Gallery, I guess.”
“You should open your own shop, so no one takes a cut,” she suggests.
At twenty, she thinks she’s the master of all things entrepreneurial just because she’s majoring in business administration.
“Yeah, yeah. So you’ve told me.”
“What’re you up to next weekend?” she asks.
I shrug. “What am I ever up to?”
“Thought I might come down to see you and Bruno.”
“Really?” I ask, wondering what’s brought on this development. “You’ve only got a few weeks of school left. Don’t you want to make the most of them? You’ll be here all summer.”
“Yeah. I know. I just . . .”
I lean back against my workbench. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Spill it, tamia.”
Tamia means “chipmunk” in French, and it’s what our father called her when she was little.
She sighs heavily. “We broke up. Me and Parker.”
Fuck. She really liked that guy.
That said, I feel a small bit of satisfaction, because I didn’t. Parker grew up in a wealthy family from Connecticut, and I sensed he looked down his nose at me and Noelle the couple of times I met him, like maybe we weren’t quite up to par. Now, I couldn’t give two shits if Greenwich-born Parker Post thought I was inferior to him, but I fucking hated my gut feeling that he felt he was slumming by dating my sister.
“What happened?”
I can picture my sister shrugging when she says, “Nothing. I mean, he changed while he was studying in Barcelona. He’s all about free love now.”
“Free love?”
“Commitment free. He doesn’t believe in relationships anymore. Or . . . for now . . . I guess.”
“He cheated on you?”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Noelle . . .”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he cheated on me,” she says, and her voice sounds thinner. I think she’s about to cry, and my heart clenches.
“Fuck.”
“Jules,” she sniffles, her voice a mix of sad and peeved. “Don’t go all ballistic big brother ex-Secret Service on his ass.” She pauses. “He cares about me and said he still wants to see me. He just wants to see other people too. He feels it’s important for our personal development that we be unencumbered with commitment.”
More like for his personal enjoyment.
“You deserve better, tamia.”
“I know. That’s why I told him to take a hike.”
“Good girl.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She sighs. “There will be a lot of end-of-year parties next weekend, and I just don’t feel like seeing him . . . hitting on other girls. Hooking up. You know . . .”
Her voice is thin again.
“Yeah. Sure. Come home. Definitely. I’ll be here.”
“Cool. I miss my room.”
My room.
Oh, shit.
Jock is cool with me letting my sister sleep in the upstairs room whenever she visits, but now that room’s taken by the chicken ’n’ biscuits foundling.
“Actually, um, you can have my room instead.”
“What? I don’t want your room, Jules. I want mine.”
“Well, it’s either mine or the couch. Jock and Gus have a friend staying.”
“A friend?”
“Yeah. Some friend of Gus’s. She’s here for—”
“Wait! She?”
The question hangs between us, and I count 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
“Your roommate is a girl? Is she nice? Is she single? Is she pretty? Oh, my God. Do you like her? I can’t wait to meet her! Julian’s got a girlfriend . . . Julian’s got a girlfriend . . .”
Aside from constantly riding my ass about opening a glass shop—even to the point of suggesting that I lean on our dad’s old Simon Pearce contacts to get started—my sister has this notion that I’m lonely and need companionship. She’s made it her mission in life to jump on any and all opportunities to pair me off with someone of the opposite sex.
Partially this is my fault. I never told her the whole truth about what happened in Cartagena. She doesn’t know that I’ve sworn off women. Possibly, and probably, for life.
“Merde, tamia! You are the most ridiculous person on the planet. I don’t even know her. I’ve barely exchanged two words with her.”
“Oooo! Listen to you, cursing en français! You’re . . . affected by her. Eeeep!”
“If, by affected, you mean that I’m annoyed to suddenly have to share my home with some stranger, you’re exactly right.”
“Now I’m definitely coming home next weekend!”
She sounds happy again, and I roll my eyes. Fine. If fantasizing about my nonexistent love life makes my sister’s breakup easier, I’ll take the bullet.
“Great.”
“Blow up a mattress at the foot of your bed. We can be roomies. Like when we went to Sault.”
A rare—very rare—grin tries to turn up the corners of my lips and almost succeeds. Almost. During those summer vacations to my father’s native Provence, Noelle and I always griped about having to share a bedroom at our grandmother’s house, but deep down, I think we both loved it. I know I did.
“Text me when you leave, and drive safely, yeah?”
“Yeah. Always,” says Noelle. “See you Friday, Jules. Love you.”
“You too.”
She hangs up, and I lower the phone from my ear, wondering if my new housemate will mind my sister’s visit, and then quickly deciding that I really don’t give a flying fuck if she likes it or not.
***
Ashley
As I step into the kitchen the next morning, my eyes skitter instantly to the drying rack beside the sink. There is a clean white dinner plate there, gleaming in the sunlight, and it makes me smile. I wonder if he enjoyed the chicken and biscuits. I hope he did because I really don’t want to feel unwelcome here. I have no idea how long I’ll need to stay, and it would be so much nicer if we didn’t have to avoid each other the whole time.
Not that I don’t love my attic retreat. I do. I am so grateful for it.
Last night, I had dinner in the upstairs sitting room, washing out my dish in the bathroom sink so that I’d stay out of Julian’s way. Around eight o’clock, he
turned on the TV in his bedroom, which, I now realize, is directly below mine.
I don’t know what he was watching, but it was in French. Because I study French at school, I was able to understand some of the words that floated up through the floorboards between us: bonjour and merci, je t’aime and au revoir.
Hello, thank you, I love you, good-bye.
Mostly I wondered if he—Julian—was listening in French or reading subtitles in English.
His last name, pronounced “doo-shahm,” doesn’t tell me much about his background, but I saw it spelled on an envelope affixed to the fridge: Ducharmes, which looked French to me. There’s something romantic about my grouchy housemate being French, so I decide that he is, and leave it at that.
The kitchen doesn’t smell like coffee or breakfast, though I heard him rattling around down here an hour ago. Based on the small bowl, spoon, and glass also in the drying rack, I am guessing he had cereal and juice.
It’s nice that he does his own dishes. The nuns led us to believe that most men were slobs but that an ideal wife would cheerfully look after her husband, cleaning up after him without derision or complaint. An ideal husband is, after all, the head of every family and must be afforded the respect due to a moral compass, protector, and breadwinner.
But for all that I’ve heard these learned words a thousand times, they ring hollow in my head now, just as they did at school. Neither my grandfather nor my stepfather were especially moral, protective, or generous. Not legally, anyway.
I don’t even know for sure that such a man exists, though it is—in the words of Ernest Hemingway—pretty to think so.
I see a piece of paper on the marble counter, and my heart lifts. I wonder if it’s a thank-you note.
Alas, it’s not.
In straightforward print, it reads:
My sister is coming to stay next weekend.
I’m going to the store later today. If you need anything, write it down. Jock will pay me back.
-JD
As I take out two eggs and heat up a frying pan, I do a mental inventory of the fridge and cabinets, thinking about what ingredients I would need to cook for three.