The Cookbook Club

by Beth Harbison

  And she’d been glad of that. Until now, when it was plain that everything was going to be a lot more awkward.

  She was going to tell him in person this week. Trista was drawing up a custody agreement for her so she could get him to sign it before he had time to think.

  She quieted and listened to her heartbeat in the stillness. The clock said it was 8:00 P.M. though it felt later. She tried to breathe deep into her abdomen to quell the panic that was rising in her, but she’d feel a moment of half-relief and then the heartbeat seemed to come back stronger than ever.

  SOS, SOS, SOS, SOS, SOS.

  She stood up and paced the floor. Everything in her felt like it was reaching a crisis apex, but there wasn’t one single thing she could point to as an addressable emergency. If she went to the ER, what would she tell them? That she felt like she was going to freak out? What was the medical definition of that? It wasn’t just a panic attack, it was justified fear about the future.

  She needed someone to talk to.

  If she’d given it just a little more thought, she might have stopped herself, but she picked up her phone and called. “It’s Aja,” she said, as soon as it was answered. “Can I come over and talk?”

  * * *

  Evening Lucinda was different from Daytime Lucinda, at least visually. Whereas during the day, she was immaculately dressed, head to toe—coiffed hair and makeup in place—when Aja arrived just past 8:30 P.M., she was wearing a matching nightgown and robe, slippers, and no makeup. Only the sheen of night cream.

  “You’ll forgive my appearance, I hope,” Lucinda said. “This is most unexpected.”

  “Of course.” Aja moved in uncertainly, wondering with every step if she’d made a mistake. Actually, every third step she was sure she had and yet the reality was that this truth would come out eventually, things like this always did, and it was better to confront it now than let the fear hang over her head.

  “Drink?” Lucinda asked, stopping at the kind of credenza bar that always seemed to be in soap opera living room sets, complete with filled ice bucket. She picked up a distinctive brandy bottle and poured some of the amber liquid into a snifter.

  Aja felt her face grow warm. “No, I . . .” She gestured vaguely toward her middle.

  Lucinda gave a nod. “Ginger ale? Mineral water?” She picked up a blue bottle of Tŷ Nant.

  “Oh.” It was Aja who had made the wrong assumption, not Lucinda. “Sure. Yes, that would be nice.”

  “Or perhaps tonic with some lavender bitters? Perfectly safe, but more relaxing than plain water.”

  She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted something with a bite until she said it. “Yes. That. Please.”

  “Have a seat, dear.”

  Aja sat on the unexpectedly comfortable antique sofa, and tried to figure out what to do with her hands. The house had been professionally decorated for the season—or so she guessed, since it looked like a very high-end department store. There weren’t any colored lights at all, instead there were lots of white lights, red poinsettias, and plush creamy white ribbons. The air held a strong scent of spruce.

  For a moment the only sounds in the room were the ticking clock over the mantel and the ice plinking into the glass. Then Lucinda swept over to her and handed her the bottle and the glass. With a quick extra glance Aja’s way, she then took a coaster out of the holder and set it rather obviously on the table in front of her.

  Aja wanted to point out that she wasn’t just going to set a sweaty glass on the antique wood, but she didn’t need to get into such a petty discussion. Instead she simply said, “Thank you.”

  Lucinda sat down in one of the wingback chairs opposite her and said, “Tell me why we’re here.”

  “I think you know,” Aja began.

  “I think I do too,” Lucinda interjected, and Aja wished she could just get up and leave. “But let’s be sure, shall we?”

  “Well.” Aja cleared her throat. “As I indicated before, I am . . .” Pregnant suddenly seemed like a crude word for this 1940s movie she found herself sitting in. “In a somewhat delicate position—”

  “Let’s call a spade a spade, all right? Otherwise we’re never going to get anywhere with this discussion. I don’t have time for nonsense.”

  Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was her own natural sense of pride, Aja wasn’t sure what it was, but her anger suddenly rolled up inside of her like a special effect from one of the Harry Potter movies and spilled out.

  “Please stop the superior act,” she said, with a sharper edge than she’d intended. “Don’t mistake my politeness for weakness. Despite your wealth, you are not more important than I am, and you don’t have more rights to decent treatment than I do. You know what I’m here to tell you and you must be able to figure out that it’s not easy. But you are this baby’s blood family, which entitles me to invite you into his life or not. It doesn’t entitle you to bully me.”

  Lucinda shrank back as if she’d been slapped. “It’s . . . it’s a boy?”

  Aja reeled in confusion for a moment, then said, “I have no idea. We’ll know in a little over a month.” She paused. “Does your welcome depend on that?”

  “No.” She regained her composure. “No, it doesn’t. But you said his life, so I thought perhaps you’d found out the gender.”

  Aja gave a brief, humorless laugh. “I told the doctor I wanted to be surprised. That’s how it began, that’s how it should end.”

  “So this was . . . unexpected.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Mm.” Lucinda nodded, and then, after a considered pause, added, “I understand.”

  “Ma’am.” A soft voice came from the dining room entrance. It was an older woman, quite wrinkled, with hair so pale it could have been blond or gray, pulled back into a neat bun. “Is there anything you need before I retire for the night?”

  “Liv! Yes, thank you, could you bring some of those lovely thumbprint cookies? And gingersnaps?” She looked at Aja. “Are you hungry for something more savory?”

  She’d burned calories being upset and had been too nauseated to even think of eating. Now she was starving. The tonic water was fizzing in her hollow stomach like Pop Rocks. “Maybe a little cheese or something?” She would have settled for a Slim Jim.

  Lucinda looked her over for just a moment then frowned and said to Liv, “Perhaps a cheese plate with some fruit and that wonderful pasta you made at lunch?” Liv nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Lucinda turned to Aja. “She makes the most wonderful Italian food, of all things, makes the noodles from scratch. Odd, she’s from Stockholm.”

  Aja’s stomach clenched in hungry anticipation. She wouldn’t have said she was in the mood for pasta, but the mention of homemade noodles was pinging all her appetite receptors. “Thank you.”

  Lucinda swirled her brandy. “You are sure it’s Michael’s, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sure.” She couldn’t even be offended. It was a reasonable question.

  “I’m not surprised. He has a habit of getting beautiful women pregnant. May I ask if you’re intending to keep the baby?”

  Aja hesitated. “It hadn’t occurred to me to do anything else . . . actually. That’s a little odd. I always thought I’d be unsure, but . . .”

  “I understand. As for his involvement, if you don’t desire any, I’m sure he’ll have no problem with that. His ex-wife, Marnie—”

  “Wow! He was married, huh? Wow.”

  “So briefly that it’s hard to acknowledge. I insist on having Michelle come after school, but what I know, and what Michelle does not, is that she and Marnie will be moving to Seattle in the new year.”

  “Seattle. That’s pretty far.”

  Lucinda fluffed her hair and straightened her posture a bit. “Yes. It is. I expect I won’t see much of them again. Not until they need money for college.”

  Aja didn’t expect it, but Lucinda laughed.

  “Is Marnie . . .”

  “She’s a nice w
oman. Was always too smart and good for Michael.” She shrugged a pointy shoulder. “She has a good job. Plenty of pride. Doesn’t need much from anyone. I had to convince her to let me see Michelle, but not because we don’t get along well. Just because she is perfectly happy having just the two of them. Which I understand. I’ll try to be part of Michelle’s life, but”—she lowered her voice—“I’ll respect Marnie as well.”

  “You’re awfully understanding.”

  “Yes, well. I, myself, was there some decades back.”

  “You?” Aja couldn’t believe this admission was coming from her.

  Lucinda gave a nod. “It’s not something I talk about often, though I think about it quite a bit.”

  Aja wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry.”

  “As I am. For you. For me.” She gave a sad shake of her head. “It was before Michael came along. Before his father came along.”

  * * *

  Aja relaxed against the back padding, listening to Lucinda’s story.

  Around nine, and without allowing for second-guessing, Lucinda had insisted that Aja change into something more comfortable. She had swept her upstairs to a gorgeous room straight out of a castle in the most romantic of novels Aja had ever read.

  “I didn’t go a day of pregnancy in everyday clothes. Pregnancy is permission to wear anything from kaftans to muumuus. Anything tight is out. Pants are an absolute no. It’s the only way to keep yourself sane. Here, take this one, I’ve never worn it.”

  With that, she’d handed Aja a silky-but-solid kaftan printed with paisley swirls. She would have tried to object, because ordinarily you don’t go over to your ex-boyfriend/baby daddy’s mother’s house and accept formless clothing. But as soon as she saw it, she was drawn to it. The idea of being in something shapeless and flowy seemed like just the thing.

  Then the two of them had sat down in the grand parlor-like room, drinking tea and eating too many cookies, talking. Thankfully, Lucinda did most of the talking.

  She told the story of her one true love. It conjured golden-sun-soaked images of dusty roads and speeding Cadillacs. The man, Nico, had been Italian. Tall, dark, and handsome. High cheekbones, firm brows, a broken nose that looked just perfect, and pillowy—but masculine—lips. He had met her when she worked at a flower shop. He’d been buying flowers for a girl. Lucinda had told him not to buy a girl flowers, because all it did was give her something she would watch die.

  “And judging by the looks of him, I told him, she would already have their love affair to grieve soon enough.”

  Aja had laughed and listened as she went on to describe the way she’d run away with him, away from her family with no notice. She had been nineteen, but it wasn’t the way to just go off on one’s own. Apparently. She had left, and with him, she had traveled around from horrid motel to horrid motel and stopped in every state worth visiting. She had called home only to scream, “This is Lucinda, I’m alive, and I’m fine!” at one of the family’s housekeepers.

  “No matter how kidnapped they thought I was, they still never answered the phone themselves.” Lucinda rolled her eyes. “A dynasty of brats.”

  Eventually Lucinda’s story darkened. Nico and she had to return home. The money had run out, and she had none of her own, since she’d left her family behind. He dropped her at the end of her driveway, and she never heard from him again.

  “If I hadn’t opened the newspaper that particular Wednesday, I might never have known what had happened to him.”

  He’d been shot after an underground poker game, in which he’d won the pot. The shooter was caught, so she got to know some of the details. Otherwise she might not have known about the game—or known how unfair it was. He hadn’t deserved what happened to him. She hadn’t deserved it either. It was all just senseless.

  The shadow cast over Lucinda’s face made Aja’s heart ache in a way she’d truly never experienced.

  It wasn’t until after Lucinda found out he was dead that she also found out she was pregnant.

  Numb enough to agree to anything that would keep her slice of Nico healthy and taken care of, Lucinda agreed to a shotgun marriage with the son of another wealthy family—they’d always wanted them together anyway.

  “We’d only been married a week when I lost the baby,” she said.

  Aja had melted with empathy. “No.”

  “I entered a strange state of delusion after that. I desperately wanted to be pregnant again, as if it would mean getting back that same baby. Of course that wasn’t how it worked, and so I married a bad man. I had a son who loved that bad man more than he loved me. I spent his childhood trying to make him into a good man. But I was bitter. Tired, always, those days. Angry and resentful. And it bled through. I don’t think I failed to raise a good man. Not exactly. Though you might disagree.” Lucinda laughed. “But I didn’t raise a man I admired. And that was worse than anything.”

  Aja had felt like a lifetime of pain had been exorcised by listening to Lucinda’s story. She knew it was certainly the hormones, in part, but it was also the dark realization that she had been shutting off emotion for years. The emotion of being left by her father. The emotion of worrying, irrationally, as a child that it was her fault. The emotion of not getting enough from her working mother, and the emotion of feeling guilty for asking.

  No wonder she hadn’t noticed the way Michael could hurt her, until her hormones wouldn’t let her deny her fragility any longer. She was in the habit of taking small scraps and not only not asking for more, but also feeling guilty for wanting to.

  What she was learning now was that she was enough. And she was going to make sure she was more than enough for this baby.

  When she told Lucinda this theory, she had smiled and said, “Then you can rest assured that your baby is already looking out for you, just by bringing you this strength.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Trista

  Trista was arranging crackers around wedges of Morbier and Brie on a plate when Margo rang the bell to her apartment.

  “Come in!” she called. “I’m in the kitchen!”

  “I could be anyone,” Margo said, coming in and setting two bottles of Charles & Charles chardonnay on the counter. “You need to lock your doors, lady.”

  “Oh, come on, everyone knows how safe this town is.”

  “Exactly.” Margo twisted the top off one of the bottles. “Where are the glasses? I need this badly.”

  Trista opened one of the frosted glass cabinets and took two stemless wineglasses out. “Hard to believe you were married to him, huh?”

  Margo poured the wine and handed it over to Trista. “I thought I was going to spend my whole life with him. I promised to spend my whole life with him. Now I’m afraid to be in the house we shared—the house we were so excited to buy together just a few years ago!—because he might come over unexpectedly.” She took a sip of wine and shook her head. “I used to look forward to him coming home. I used to watch the clock waiting for him to get home.”

  Trista watched her as she spoke, saw the sadness in her eyes. There was nothing small about this, despite the fact that Margo seldom mentioned him. “People can change so unexpectedly. Even after years, after decades, you think you know someone and suddenly they turn on you.”

  Margo set her wineglass down. “Kind of makes marriage seem like an insane idea, doesn’t it?”

  “I didn’t practice family law, but everyone I know who does has horror stories. The fights can get so ugly. Particularly when there’s infidelity involved.”

  “If only I’d been that lucky. My husband just”—she shrugged—“changed his mind. Got a better offer. Whatever. Basically I’m nothing more than an ex-girlfriend to him now, and he’s a San Francisco resident now.”

  “San Francisco?” Trista took the basil to the sink and rinsed it off, squeezing the water off before dropping it on the counter between them. She picked up a stem and began pulling the leaves off and dropping them into the mortar she had by the sink.
>
  Margo nodded and reached for some basil to help stem. “His firm has an office out there and he’s transferring. Getting about as far away from this life as he can without living on an island or in another country.” She glanced at Trista. “And I don’t really blame him for wanting a change. For the split second that I thought we were going together, I was into the idea myself.”

  Trista chose her words carefully. “Well . . . it kind of seems like Max might be a good travel companion.”

  Margo’s face turned pink. “We’re just friends.”

  “Look. Margo. Would it make it easier for you to move on if you knew something bad about your ex?”

  Margo stared at her. “Where could this be going? And yes, anything makes it easier. Even the harshest truth.” She sort of laughed, sort of swallowed a sword.

  “I hope you trust me. If I had known this sooner, I would have told you, or at the very least would have done what I could to find out if you’d really want to know. And if I wasn’t absolutely sure, I wouldn’t be telling you. Okay?”

  She could barely speak. “Okay.”

  “And just for the record,” said Trista, looking nervous, “he’s clearly a total tool and you’re going to win—you win this divorce, dignity-wise. Because this is all about to come out.”

  “Trista.”

  “No, I know. Okay. So I used to work for Cromwell and Covington. I think I told you I was a lawyer, but, yeah, anyway it was there. And Calvin—”

  “Has worked there forever, yes.”

  “So when I worked there, he was sort of . . . sort of a joke. I’d been a bartender, so to me he was just par for the course. He would hit on everyone, but always in a way that felt like—less sexual and so therefore more unsettling? He would invite people into his office, asking them for advice or their opinion, or just to get to know them—”