“What’s going on? You two look like I caught you with your hand in the cookie jar!”
“We can’t say yet. Sort of a little secret. But we’ll be able to say something soon,” Kai says.
“A mystery, huh? All right, have your little whisperings. But let’s keep the case full too, okay?”
“You got it, Bitsy!”
We all get back to work, and I wonder what exactly the two of them are planning. Quite a pair, they are. I hope that Delia doesn’t leave me anytime soon, if only for the amusement of watching her and Kai together.
CORNED BEEF HASH
I’m not naturally a breakfast person. There are only two things in life I prefer to food, and they are sex and sleep, and the chance to have either will trump breakfast anytime. This is not to say that I don’t like breakfast food. I love breakfast foods, and can happily eat them all day long, with the exception of early in the morning, when, again, I’d rather be sleeping or screwing. But take me to a diner or greasy spoon at lunch or dinnertime, and I’m far more likely to order pancakes or an omelet than I am to order more time-appropriate fare. I’m an equal-opportunity breakfast-food girl, which can be a problem, since I never know whether to get an egg-based meal or a pancake-based meal, and bacon versus sausage always feels like Sophie’s Choice to me, so I’m a big fan of those enormous breakfast platters that have a little bit of everything. But if you had to make me choose, my desert-island breakfast food is corned beef hash.
I tend not to drink to excess. I love good wines with food, a small nightcap before bed. But I very rarely get drunk. In high school, when all my classmates were experimenting with Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers acquired with fake IDs, whatever they could swipe from their parents’ liquor cabinets, or get someone’s older siblings to buy, I had a small circle of odd-ball friends, and we weren’t included in those adolescent bacchanals. In college I did some of the usual frat parties, made my share of mistakes that resulted in a night over the toilet (whoever thought peach schnapps was a good idea should be shot), but I quickly learned that I neither enjoyed the loss of control that came with overindulging nor the crappy way I felt the next day.
For me, my hangovers always come almost by accident. I’m out, someone is filling my wineglass more often than I’m fully cognizant of, and before I know it, I’m giddy and then forget to stop. I don’t pound shots, I never set out to get tanked, it just sort of sneaks up on me, especially with my beverage of choice, champagne. I live for sparklers, from top-of-the-line French to my new everyday tipple, a lovely bubbly from Albuquerque, of all places, called Gruet, which I stock in both full-sized bottles for company and half bottles for my own pleasure. A long day, and you are likely to find me in a hot bath with a flute in my hand. But you are unlikely to find me passed out with an empty bottle at my side.
However, now and again, something happens that makes me do the cliché thing, and turn to the bottle for solace.
Nate and I are having breakfast when Nadia gets home. “Oh, sorry, I don’t want to interrupt, I just need to get my yoga stuff.” Nadia has been good about staying with Daniel on Sunday nights so that Nate can stay at my place.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine. You have a good night?”
“Yeah, thanks, Daniel says hi. To you too, Nate.”
“Tell him hi back.” Nathan’s voice is a little cold for my taste, but maybe it’s just morning grumpiness.
She zips into her room and reappears in a flash, carrying a bag and a rolled yoga mat. “See you guys later, have a good day off.”
“Bye, honey, say hi to Janey for me!”
“Will do.” And she is gone in a flash of pink hair.
“I want to chat with you about her.” Nathan sounds deadly serious, and I’m really not in the mood to hear his reservations.
“Again? Really, Nate, I know you don’t like her, and I know I complain about her moods sometimes, but I’m not looking to kick her out, she’s a good kid at heart.”
“But you don’t know . . .”
“I don’t know a lot, but I do know she hasn’t given me any reason to question her.”
“I’ve been doing a little research. You know, with the movie done, and no new project solidified as yet, I’ve had some time on my hands, and all her secrecy really troubles me.”
“What do you mean ‘research’?”
“I’ve been able to find some stuff out. About her past.”
“What, did you hire a private detective?”
“Of course not, nothing that dramatic. I just did a little digging, some public records, some newspaper articles, a couple of phone calls.”
My stomach tightens. On the one hand, I’m furious at him for sticking his nose in. On the other, I’m horrifically curious to know what he discovered, especially since it must be somewhat unsavory based on his obvious desire for me to kick her to the curb. I’m utterly split: I want to protect her, and tell him to stick his ill-gotten info up his ass. And I want him to tell me everything.
“Look, Mel, I’m not out to get her. I think she’s a sweet kid. But she’s living in the home of the woman I love, she’s becoming more and more involved in your business, and as protective as you are of her, I am that protective of you. I just wanted to be sure she wasn’t some con woman who might run off someday with your life savings.”
“Okay, first of all, if I had any life savings I probably wouldn’t need a twenty-four-year-old roommate of uncertain history. If she’s a con woman, she’s the stupidest con woman in the world for not picking someone who had some money! She should be working the elderly and wealthy, not the middle-aged and poor.”
He doesn’t respond.
I drop my head, knowing that as much as I wish I were the kind of person, the kind of friend who would say that nothing matters except the kindness she has shown me, that it isn’t who she was, but who she is that really counts, I’m not remotely strong enough to be that woman. “Tell me.”
The tale is a sad one, and one that makes my heart break for her more than it makes me worry about myself or my non-existent fortune. Her mother was raised Amish in Indiana, but was shunned when she became pregnant out of wedlock by Nadia’s father, who wasn’t Amish. It’s unclear how they met, but Nadia’s mother was kicked out of the clan and went to live with Nadia’s paternal grandmother, who was widowed. Nadia’s parents never married, as Nadia’s mother was underage and did not, for obvious reasons, have parental consent. Her dad developed first a drinking problem, then a drug problem, and ended up dead in an ill-conceived convenience store robbery shoot-out. Nadia’s mother decided to return to the Amish when Nadia was two, unable to handle the responsibilities of motherhood and seclusion from the only community and life she knew. She was eighteen years old, and gave legal custody of Nadia to the grandmother, and went home to suffer her punishment and eventually be accepted back into her family.
The grandmother raised her as best she could, but in high school Nadia began to rebel: petty shoplifting, not coming home nights, school truancy, and suspensions. She started drinking and experimenting with drugs, although it appears neither really took hold of her in a meaningful or dangerous way.
Whatever self-destructive tendencies remained in Nadia seemed almost entirely relegated to her choices in men. A week after her eighteenth birthday, she ran off and married a thirty-three-year-old used-car salesman, who gave her the orange Saab as a wedding present. Three weeks later the marriage was annulled, and she returned to her grandmother. She attended local community college for three semesters, but left despite decent grades. When she was twenty, her grandmother died, leaving her the house and a small amount of money. She sold the house, the proceeds of which a family friend who was a lawyer arranged to have put into a trust that gave Nadia a small but steady monthly income, and used the cash to move to Nashville. She met a married sculptor at a local art fair and packed up and moved to Indianapolis, where she lived in his studio. Then she dated a bouncer at the bar where she was working, who used her as a mule to
transport the meth he dealt on the side, but didn’t bother to bail her out when she got busted. She did four months in a women’s prison on the drug charge, and then moved to St. Louis, where she had a distant cousin. She left St. Louis after only a few weeks, heading to Minneapolis, where she had a friend from her brief time in college. In Minneapolis she met Barry, the shithead musician who moved her to Chicago and then dumped her.
Nate lays it all out for me, succinctly and simply. And when he is done, my heart breaks for her. Such a series of crappy details, and I suddenly know exactly what Delia meant when she said sometimes the past is the past for a reason. None of it changes the Nadia I know, except to make me even prouder of her for surviving. None of it changes my desire to keep her around me.
“It’s a horrible story, Nate. But not a dangerous one. Not one that would make me at all concerned about being connected to her. Doesn’t it elicit your sympathies at all? Doesn’t it make you want to help her? Why do you still seem to want her to move out?”
“Look, I feel for the kid, she hasn’t had much of a break. But I’m a pragmatist. Her history is to get involved with the wrong guy and then move away. Now, I know that this Daniel kid, for all his oddities, isn’t some criminal mastermind. But she likes bad boys, so how long before she dumps him and latches on to some asshole who might be a danger or a threat? Who might be a thief? How long before she feels like she needs to move on, and leaves you in the middle of the night without a word? You’re putting a lot of faith in someone who is flighty at best. You’re giving her tremendous responsibility with the new delivery venture; I just don’t want her to bail on you and leave you in a bind.”
“The delivery venture was HER IDEA! How could I not let her be a part of it? Nate, she may have had some bad judgments in the past, but I believe in her. I have to trust her, because she hasn’t given me reason not to.” And now I hate that I know what I know. I hate that I didn’t have the strength to not listen.
“Are you mad?”
“I’m disappointed. Frustrated, I guess. And trying not to be mad. I know that you did it from a place of love, at least I want to believe that, and not think that you were simply attracted to the idea of solving a mystery. But it is such a violation, and I hate that you took it upon yourself to investigate her, even if your intention was to protect me.”
“I admit, when I started digging, it was pure curiosity, since she was clearly hiding something. But the first thing that popped up was the drug bust, so that made me want to find out the whole story to be sure she wasn’t a danger to you. Promise. No other ulterior motives. Are you going to tell her?”
“No. She’s a fragile thing, Nate, and if anything would make her run, as you fear, it would be knowing that the past she has taken such pains to conceal has come to light. No, I’m not going to tell her what I know, what I wish I didn’t know, and I hope you won’t tell anyone else.”
“Of course not.”
“I should really get going on my day, I have a ton of stuff to do.”
“Yeah, I should get home. We okay?”
“Yeah, we’re okay.” Trust is such a big thing for me. It goes against every instinct to not just scream at him, to not let this escalate. I take a deep breath. I try to focus on what I want to believe about him. “I love that you love me enough to be worried, I just wish that you hadn’t told me.”
“Sorry, can’t unring that bell.”
“I know.”
He gets up and grabs his bag. “Talk to you later?”
“Okay.”
He kisses me. “Love you.”
I clean up the breakfast dishes, and sit with a second cup of tea. I check my watch, it’s nearly ten. In a couple of hours at most Nadia is going to come home and I’m going to have to figure out how not to alter my behavior with her, how to not just pull her into my arms and hold her and tell her it’s all going to be okay.
Nadia doesn’t come home. She calls to tell me she is hooking up with Daniel and staying at his place. I avoid Nate’s calls all day, ignoring him in favor of errands and dealing with all the accumulated tedium of the week. I wish it made me tired, but I toss and turn under the weight of my knowledge and don’t get much sleep.
Tuesday, Kai and I get in early to do our once-a-month strip-down cleaning of the kitchen and walk-in. The day is long and draining. But the worst is when Nadia comes in, happy from what has clearly been a couple of lovely nights with her strange boyfriend, and is exuberantly demonstrative in her delight, extra hugs and huge smiles. All afternoon she checks in with me, brings me cups of tea, reminds me to eat. Every ounce of her solicitude strikes straight into my heart. I know her secrets, her shame. It weighs on me.
After work, we pack up some stuff from the store, and head home for a quiet late dinner. Nadia seems to think that she has a recipe that will guarantee a good night’s sleep; she is worried about the bags under my eyes. All I know is that it is warm, spicy, lemony, and sweet and apparently deeply and importantly alcoholic, because within no time at all, I’m seriously buzzed.
“So you had a good time with Daniel, huh?”
“It was awesome. We had a great time. He wants me to move in with him.”
“Isn’t that a little soon? It’s only been a couple of months . . .”
“You’ve only been with Nate a couple of months; wouldn’t you move in with him if he asked?”
I think about this. “Probably not. It’s too soon; we don’t know each other well enough.”
“But you love him, right?”
“I do. But sometimes love isn’t enough, sometimes love isn’t right, sometimes you can love someone who won’t honor that love or return it in a healthy way.”
“But you still have to love. You still have to be hopeful about love.”
“I think you have to be hopeful, but responsible about love. Don’t shut yourself off from it, but don’t be afraid to use your head either. There’s no shame in loving someone for a time, in a way, while it works. Not everything has to be a thousand percent.”
“Yes it does, Mel. Or it isn’t love.”
“It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“I’m used to disaster.”
“Yeah, honey, I know.” Shit.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. Barry and all that. I mean, you yourself say that you have bad taste in guys, I just, I want you to be careful.”
“Oh.”
Grasping for anything to fix it, to shift the focus, I say, “Besides, I’ve gotten used to having you around.”
“Why am I feeling a little bit like Eliza Doolittle?”
“You didn’t need me to change you; you are fine just as you are.”
“Except for my taste in guys.”
“Well, yeah, that.”
We laugh, and I’m glad the initial danger moment has passed. I pour myself another drink.
A few things have become readily apparent to me. One, I’m going to lose her as a roommate sooner rather than later. Two, I’m going to have to figure out how to fess up about what I know at some point, because otherwise something is going to slip out. And three, I’m reasonably certain that tomorrow is going to be my first corned beef hash morning in a really long time.
CREAMED SPINACH
When we were little, our grandparents were members of a private club called the Covenant Club. It was a Jewish club that had been around since the early 1900s, established as a place for Eastern European Jews to gather, since the other downtown Jewish club, the Standard Club, was at that point exclusively for German Jews. Grandpa went three times a week to play racquetball and take a steam, or as he called it, a schvitz, with his buddies. Grandma went once a week to play bridge or mah-jongg. Once a month or so we would all go have dinner there. The Covenant Club was the first place I ever ate creamed spinach. I was never much for veggies, and Mom often covered them in cheese sauces, or hid them in casseroles to get me to eat them at home. But my grandpa would always order the creamed spinach, and once I tasted i
t, I was hooked.
Nathan and I walk into Chalkboard, where I’m greeted with a hug by Gil, the chef and owner. “Mel! How’s business?”
“Good, thanks.” I gesture around the packed restaurant. “And for you as well, I see!”
“No complaints, no complaints.”
“Gil, this is Nathan, Nate, this is Gil. He’s the chef.”
Gil extends his hand and the two men shake firmly.
“Great to meet you. Mel has raved about your place, so I’m very excited to finally get a chance to eat here!”
“Well, Mel knows I wish she’d close up shop and come hang out in my kitchen instead! So, any special occasion tonight?”
“Nate just finished his new movie, so we’re celebrating.”
“Wow, that’s fantastic. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. It always feels weird to have something finished. I’m glad to get it off my plate and at the same time, I have the time to second guess every choice I made.”
“I feel the same way about a new dish. The minute it goes on the menu and I get the kitchen up to speed, I’m tempted to change everything about it!” Gil leads us to a cozy table near the front window. Nathan pulls out my chair, and then sits next to me. Gil looks at us with a smile. “So, anyone allergic to anything?”
Nate and I shake our heads.
“Anyone have anything they hate?”
“I’m not big on shellfish,” Nate says.
“Me either!” says Gil. “Okay, is it all right with you guys if I just take care of you? I’ll just keep sending stuff out till you say ‘uncle.’ ”
“That’s very kind, thank you.” I mentally add two more hours of exercise to my weekly schedule.
“Wow, that’s terrific, thanks!” Nate says, clearly impressed that the chef is going to design a meal especially for us.
“Fantastic.” Gil waves over our server. “Let’s get two glasses of the Taltarni for these lovely people.” He turns to us. “My new favorite sparkler from Australia. You’ll love it. I’m going to go into the kitchen and play, just tell me when you want me to stop!” He disappears just as the waiter comes back with two flutes filled with a delicately pink sparkling wine, and Nate raises his glass at me.
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