Promises to Keep

by Jane Green

  3 cups dried figs

  1 teaspoon ground allspice

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  ⅓ cup honey

  1 bottle red wine

  2 cups water

  Method

  Heat the oil in a very large casserole dish, brown the lamb in small batches and transfer them to a plate.

  Pull the leaves off the thyme stalks and discard the stalks. Finely chop the onions, garlic, rosemary and thyme (a food processor is easiest). Fry them in the oily pan until the onion is soft.

  Add the pumpkin, figs, allspice, cinnamon, honey, wine and water. Stir well, bring to a boil and put the lamb back in. Turn down the heat and simmer for 1½ hours.

  When possible, make this dish the day before serving and place it in the fridge overnight. The next day the flavors will not only be enhanced but the fat will also have risen to the top. Skim this off before reheating and serving.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “It’s my baby sister!” Callie is sitting cross-legged on the bed in her favorite brushed-flannel pajamas and a nurse is adjusting the bag on her IV stand when Steffi walks in.

  “Steffi, this is Esther,” she introduces her to the nurse. “She is doing an amazing job of looking after me. I swear she’s the only person around here who I want giving me shots.”

  A knock on the open door and a young man walks in with equipment. Steffi gives Callie a questioning look as Callie holds out her arm.

  “They come in every hour to take my vitals.”

  “Doesn’t that drive you mad?”

  “A little.” Callie gives the male nurse a sly smile. “That’s why I requested they only send in men who are young and hot.”

  Another knock and a woman walks in with a tray and places it on the table. “Chicken soup and meatloaf, right?” she asks with a bright smile.

  “Thanks, Rose,” Callie says, while Steffi takes the steel dome off the plate to inspect the food.

  “Do you know everyone’s name in here?”

  “Only the people who come in this room.”

  “You’re amazing. And you look amazing. From what Mom said I thought you’d be on death’s doorstep.”

  Callie starts to laugh. “If you weren’t my sister you’d never get away with saying that.”

  “If I weren’t your sister I’d never have dared say it. You can’t seriously eat this stuff, can you?” Steffi gestures to the graying meat, cold cooked carrots and stodgy mashed potato.

  “The chicken soup is pretty good.”

  “I guess it’s amazing that you want to eat, right? You haven’t eaten anything for days.”

  Callie smiles. “I am feeling better, but now I realize it’s the drugs. I asked them not to wake me up last night for the pills, just to let me sleep, and I felt horrible this morning.”

  “Sick?”

  “Nauseated, and in a tremendous amount of pain. They said it can take a while to figure out the pain management and get it right.”

  “But you’re good now?”

  “Better.”

  “So what is it? Do they have any idea yet?”

  Callie shrugs. “More tests today, waiting for the cultures to form on the tests they did the other day. Someone on the team suggested it might be migraine . . .”

  “Lila said it was migraine!”

  “I know, so now they’re bringing in a neurologist.” She sighs, pulling the food closer to her.

  “You can’t eat that.” Steffi pushes the tray away and reaches into her bag, bringing out a Thermos flask and some Tupperware containers.

  “You cooked for me?” Callie is delighted.

  “Of course. I don’t want you eating this crappy hospital food and, more to the point, I don’t want you eating meat. We’ve spoken about this before, and now you’re sick again, you cannot eat this stuff anymore, okay?”

  Five years ago, when Callie was first diagnosed, Steffi went rushing over with stacks of books and Internet research, all suggesting that animal products were the primary cause of common diseases in the West, especially heart disease and cancer.

  She implored Callie to give up meat, would sit next to her chair in the chemo ward and read her horrible statistics, and Callie always said she would try.

  But then Steffi would walk into her kitchen and find Callie eating a BLT for lunch, or scrambled eggs for dinner, and she knew she wasn’t trying that hard.

  It was the most frustrating thing in the world. Steffi was certain that cutting animal products out of her diet would make a difference. If Steffi was diagnosed with cancer, she knew she would do anything and everything that had been shown to help beat the disease, particularly if it was as easy as changing her diet.

  Cancer loves sugar, she discovered. She highlighted passages in books, emailed reports, but Callie was never without her peanut M&M’s and her Butterfingers.

  “I’m not giving up the sugar,” she would say with a sigh as Steffi moaned. “I’m having chemo, for God’s sake. You can’t take away the one thing in life I look forward to.”

  Steffi unscrews the lid of the Thermos flask and Callie dips her head forward and smells.

  “Mushroom, lentil and barley soup.”

  “Mmm. What else?”

  “Spinach quiche”

  “No eggs or milk?”

  “Of course not. But . . . I made this the other day and I figure a tiny bit of dairy won’t kill you, so I brought one for you—orange and almond cake.”

  “Yum! How come this one is dairy?”

  “I have a job. Kinda, sorta. Part-time cooking for a local store. The owner’s not so interested in the vegan stuff, though, so I’m cooking just about everything for them.”

  “Oh my God!” Callie shrieks. “I am so selfish. I haven’t even asked about you! The house! The giant pony dog! Your new life! Tell me everything.”

  Steffi grins. “Callie, I am so happy it’s almost ridiculous.”

  If you had told Steffi, just a few months ago, that she would be waking up before six every morning, and not only that but she would be happy about it, she would have laughed in your face.

  But that was in New York, when she was out every night, drinking with the rest of the gang from Joni’s, or with the band and their cronies, ending up at clubs, eventually crashing in the early hours.

  She felt herself longing for a quieter life, but didn’t imagine she would fall in love with it quite as much as she has.

  Susie instant-messaged her last night on her way out to a gig, to tell her that Rob has a new, twenty-two-year-old girlfriend. Steffi felt absolutely nothing, just happiness that he had moved on so quickly, and also relief that at the time Susie popped up on her computer screen, made-up, dressed up, great new high-heeled black boots she’d bought downtown, Steffi was curled up on the sofa with Fingal’s head on her lap, in a long white nightdress and with the fire slowly burning itself out.

  She’d never owned a nightdress in her life. Steffi was the kind of girl who always slept in her boyfriend’s T-shirts and boxer shorts, but she went to check out the village on the first day, and she walked into one of the little mom-and-pop stores where they had a stack of old-fashioned Victorian nightdresses piled on a shelf.

  “Those are the best things in the world,” the owner exclaimed. “I haven’t slept in anything else for years and they get softer and softer with every wash.”

  “I’m not really a nightdress kind of girl.” Steffi smiled.

  “You will be,” the woman said. “Are you the gal who’s living in Mason’s place?”

  Steffi’s eyes widened. “Yes! How on earth did you know?”

  “I’ve lived here my entire life. There’s very little that goes on around here I don’t know about. I heard there was a pretty young thing who was a chef, and I took a chance. Tell you what. Why don’t you take a nightdress home, sleep in it, and if you don’t like it I’ll give you your money back?”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “I insist. I promise you, it will change your li
fe. I’m Mary, by the way.”

  “Steffi.”

  “I know. How about I pour you a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about yourself?”

  By the time Steffi left, with the nightdress, a bottle of Soft Scrub, a pack of two sponges and a bag of oranges, she also had a list.

  Mary had written down the numbers for Stanley the handyman, Mrs. Rothbottom who ran the church charity sale, Mick the caretaker, and the Van Peterson family, who lived in the big house on West Street and might be interested in having someone cook for them.

  “You may as well ask,” Mary said. “She’s in here every day begging me to start selling healthy ready-made meals because the big supermarket doesn’t have much in the way of organic prepared food, but I’m worried there isn’t enough of a market for it. Anyway,” she sighed, “I bet if you telephoned her and said you would be interested in cooking for her, she’d jump at the chance. Three young children, a huge house and a husband who’s never there. Poor girl could use a friend as well. Amy is her name. You tell her I passed on her number.”

  “That would be great,” Steffi said. “And you know, I could always make some healthy food for you and we could see if it sells. Maybe we could start with some delicious homemade vegetable and barley soups . . . maybe some maple and pumpkin muffins?”

  “What if they don’t sell?”

  “You wouldn’t have to buy them. I’d make them and you would just have to make space for them. I could do plates of muffins that you could just put there, next to the coffee. And the soup could go in canisters on that table over there where you have the leaflets. You wouldn’t have to pay for the food, maybe just take a percentage of what sells.”

  “Oh I don’t need a percentage. I tell you what. You take the nightdress and I’ll take the soup and muffins, and we’ll both see if it works out. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect.” Callie grinned, and they shook hands.

  “Oh, and by the way, watch out for Mick the caretaker. He’s a bit of a ladies’ man, that one.” Mary raised an eyebrow. “Don’t let him charm you, because he’s broken a few hearts in his time.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Steffi said with a laugh. “I’m taking a break from men for a very long time.”

  That night, when Steffi pulled on the nightdress, she cracked up looking at herself in the mirror. Where was the hip downtown chick who went clubbing? She looked like she’d stepped out of the early nineteenth century, but she felt cozy, and feminine, and she immediately understood what Mary had been talking about.

  Susie had gasped as Steffi walked the camera around the house, showing her each room on the video cam.

  “It’s amazing!” she breathed in envy. “But don’t you miss New York a little bit?”

  “I really don’t,” Steffi says again, to Callie this time, as Callie finishes every drop of the soup, then eagerly pulls the orange and almond cake toward her.

  “Mom always said you were a country girl at heart,” Callie says. “God, this is so good. Thank you, Steff.”

  “You’re welcome, and yes, I guess Mom was right. There’s something about the peace there. About waking up in this blanket of darkness where you can’t see anything at all, and it’s so quiet and so unbelievably peaceful.”

  “So what do you actually do all day?” Callie thinks of her busy life, getting up with Eliza and Jack, feeding them, getting them on the bus, answering emails, editing photographs, going through paperwork, running to a shoot, grocery shopping, picking up the kids, driving them to activities, making dinner, going through the bedtime routine.

  Oh God. The kids. She has to force herself to stop thinking about them, because although they are coming in every night to visit her, bringing in their dinner and eating it with her, curling up next to her on the bed and watching a movie with her, she is missing them desperately.

  She is missing her life. Her routine. Her husband. She knows she cannot think about it too much, because she is powerless over it, and thinking about it will make her upset, and there is no point because until they know what is wrong with her they cannot send her home.

  This morning was a shock. She had been feeling so much better yesterday that she started to consider that she might be home by the end of the week. It became more than just a thought; it swiftly became a fantasy, and then Callie’s reality. So much so that she had informed the nurse, Rita, that she would be home by Friday; she had missed Rita’s skeptical glance.

  It hadn’t occurred to her at that stage that she wasn’t actually getting better, that it was just the copious and constant amount of the strongest drugs available to man that were helping her feel better.

  Until this morning, when the pain rushed upon her like a vise, making her throw up twice, causing her to look longingly at the window, high on the thirteenth floor, and seriously consider smashing it and leaping out. Anything, anything, would be better than this pain.

  She actually moaned. Continually. And then she cried, because she didn’t know what else to do, and she kept crying, not making any noise, just tears running down her face, until the drugs started to take effect and the vise started to ease.

  And now, hours later, she feels almost normal. The pain is still there, but it’s a dull throb, bearable, almost as routine to her now as breathing.

  “What do I do all day?” Steffi grins. “Are you kidding? Well, first, I let Fingal out. Apparently you’re totally not supposed to let deer-hounds out without a leash, but Mason says squirrels have been known to lick his paws and he hasn’t done anything.”

  “Lick his paws? Really? Do squirrels lick?”

  “I don’t know, but you know what I mean. So I let him out and build a fire—”

  “You build a fire? Yourself?”

  “I do! I learned from a video on You Tube!” She chuckles in delight.

  “Okay. I’m impressed. Then what?”

  “Then I make breakfast—steel-cut oats and fruit for me, and I made some great bread the other day so I’ve been eating toast too—and then I feed Fingal; later, when it starts to get light, I go out and talk to the chickens.”

  “You talk to the chickens? Oh God. Reece was right. You are going mad living in the country.”

  Steffi giggles. “I love them. I find them completely fascinating. I take my coffee out there and talk to them.”

  “Do they, by any chance, say anything back?”

  “Okay, now you’re the one going mad. I’m living in the country, not turning into Sybil, for God’s sake.”

  “Kidding, okay?”

  “Okay. So we sit for a while and I just watch them. They make me laugh. And then I have to feed the goats or they’ll be jealous . . .”

  “Didn’t you say something about a caretaker? I thought there was a caretaker who feeds the animals.”

  “There is, kind of, but I think he’s part-time. Mick. I think that’s part of the problem—Mick never seems to show up, which is why Mason wanted someone living there full-time to pick up the slack.”

  “What’s the matter with Mick?”

  “I don’t know. Mason said he tended to be unreliable.”

  “Okay,” Callie says, nudging her. “So you’ve covered about half an hour. What do you do for the rest of the day?”

  “I start cooking. There’s this great woman, Mary, who owns the general store, and she’s letting me sell some food there, so I make up big batches of soup and muffins and I drop those off to her in the morning. Then I usually hang out with her for a bit. I’m getting to know the town and the people, and I’m discovering the best perch is at Mary’s counter, so I spend a couple of hours there, reading the New York Times.”

  “You actually read it?”

  “Cover to cover. I know! Can you believe it? I don’t think I’ve ever read the whole paper in my entire life, and now I read it every day. Of course the irony is I now know everything about the arts scene in New York, and who’s doing what, and where, and I’m not there anymore.”

  “It’s not exactly far. You
could drive in and do stuff.”

  Steffi pauses, for she has thought exactly the same thing. Susie keeps telling her to come in, since she is only an hour away . . . and yet it feels as if she is a lifetime away, and for the time being she needs to stay out of the city.

  Steffi has spent her life running. She isn’t sure what from, or perhaps what to, but she has spent her life going from one relationship to the next, from one job to the next, from one group of friends to the next. Everything has been a drama, a whirlwind, a flurry of activity, and suddenly, out here, she has found something she never realized she was looking for: peace.

  And the thought of jumping on a train, of elbowing through Grand Central, of weaving through the streets of New York and pushing her way into a crowded bar, or club, or restaurant, fills her with anxiety.

  “I’m not ready to go back, you know?” she says to Callie. “Of course I’ll start going in, but I feel like this is my new life and I want to just embrace it for now. I’m loving it so much, I want to immerse myself in it totally. Does that make any sense?”

  Tears fill Callie’s eyes. “Okay,” she says. “I know I shouldn’t say this because you’ve only just moved in, and it’s all so new, and knowing you, you could turn around in three weeks and say you hate the quiet and you miss the buzz of the city and you could move back there ri—”

  “I’m not going to,” Steffi interrupts.

  “That’s my point. I know. I think you’ve finally found where you belong.”

  “That’s it!” Steffi says. “You’ve put your finger on it. It feels, oh God, I can’t believe I’m going to say something as clichéd as this, but it feels like I’ve come home.”

  “Well, it’s hardly surprising,” Callie says, pushing the tray away and leaning back on the bed as the nurse comes in. “You’re a vegan chef with an inner earthy crunchy goddess who’s been held down by this rock chick you always thought you were supposed to be.”

  “So I’m not really a rock chick? I’m an earthy crunchy goddess?”