The Recipe Box

by Sandra Lee

  “Well, time to roll up the proverbial sleeves,” Ken said as Grace and Emma stood, shell-shocked, in front of the Book Nook—or what was left of it. Emma had wanted to drive directly there when they had pulled into New London. The charred wreck of the Book Nook was the sorriest sight that Grace had ever seen. The pictures had not captured the real damage. “Oh, Mom,” Emma had said when she saw it, her voice shaking. Mike had tried to prepare them, but the reality was even worse than they could have imagined. Tim had to move out of his apartment above the shop, so he and Ken had gotten a place together in town. There was no telling when the building would be cleared for safe occupancy. “If it weren’t for Mike, Tim might have even died of smoke inhalation,” said Ken. “Mike is a hero.”

  “It’s just my job,” Mike said quietly. “I wish I could have done more. But these old wooden buildings were built before modern code. They’re charming, but they’re tinderboxes.”

  “Well,” said Tim, taking a deep breath. “There is some good news today. The insurance adjuster called about an hour ago. They are going to pay for the rebuild. We are totally covered for the structure. The decorating part, no, but we can figure that out.”

  “Yes!” cheered Ken. “We will rebuild. Better than ever!”

  Grace wasn’t sure how this would happen, but she cheered, along with Ken. It was amazing how, in spite of the disaster of the fire, Ken looked happier than she had ever seen him. The tightness that always surrounded him in LA seemed to have unwound, and he and Tim were working together on something important to them both. It wasn’t on national television or involving movie stars; it was something small and personal, and that made it even more precious. Not just to Ken, but to all of them.

  As they stood in front of the burned, boarded-up porch, a woman with a toddler and a golden retriever came up to Tim. “I hope it won’t be too long before you’re up and running,” she said, touching his arm anxiously. She gestured to her group of young moms across the street in the park. “We all miss this place—and you.” She turned to Emma. “And you, young lady! My Max misses your stories, and your beautiful bird, don’t you Max? Let us know if we can help.”

  “People,” announced Ken in his best Artie imitation, “there’s a hole in the sky in New London, Wisconsin, and we’re gonna fix it!”

  The first thing that Grace unpacked when they unloaded the U-Haul at her mother’s house, while Mike and some of his buddies from the firehouse were carrying in boxes, suitcases, and armfuls of clothes on hangers, was the recipe box. She’d wrapped it back up in the bubble packing that Lorraine had shipped it in and put it in a canvas bag on the floor of the backseat, under Halo’s cage. After all, it was a well-traveled member of the family, having crossed the Atlantic Ocean and now half the USA twice.

  Unpacking had to happen in a hurry because there was no time to waste. The Book Nook had to reopen for the 3F. It was funny, Grace thought, how so many things in her life had revolved around fall in New London. It would always remind her of Leeza; it was their special time together. That’s why she knew things would be all right. Leeza was surely watching over them, if fall was involved.

  Squeezing into the house was going to be tight. There were only two bedrooms; Grace figured she would sleep on the pull-out in the tiny den while Emma moved back into the red and black “girl-cave,” as Grace thought of it.

  “I still feel bad about leaving you so suddenly,” Ken said. They were looking for knives to slice open the taped-up boxes. “I should never have left you in the lurch like that, but I knew you could do it.”

  “Now I do, too. You actually did me a huge favor.”

  “Well in that case, I have another favor for you.” He smiled, took her hand, and led her up the stairs, past the two bedrooms on the second floor, to the attic. Grace could hardly believe what she saw at the top of the stairs. The old, dusty attic had been transformed into a room that looked like a marshmallow floating on a white cloud.

  “We had a little junk sale,” Ken explained. “Lorraine and I cleaned out about twenty years of crapola.” The room had been painted shiny white top to bottom—walls, exposed beams, floors. A queen-sized bed with a fluffy white duvet sat in the middle, with white gauze draped from the ceiling beams. White gauze looped across the ceiling and fluttered at the single window, which showed only the blue sky. The only furniture was her old dresser, now painted glossy white with new crystal pulls, and a huge mirror in a white-painted frame. A large white overhead fan spun lazily, rippling the fabric.

  Grace gasped. “This is so—lovely. I can’t believe you did this. Oh my God, Ken. How did you do this? How did you know we were even coming back?”

  Ken shrugged. “All part of the game plan. I admit I had a secret weapon. It’s amazing what a fire brigade with a few cans of paint and a spray painter can do. Even Claire kicked in.”

  “Claire?”

  “Yes, wonders will never cease. And speaking of makeovers—how about my goddaughter? I take all the credit. The show choir is doing Les Mis this fall. I see Cosette in her future.” He cocked his head and looked sideways at Grace with that wry smile she knew so well. “I had confidence you’d come back. A Musketeer never leaves another Musketeer for very long. It’s a rule.”

  Footsteps sounded on the steps, and Lorraine emerged from the attic stairwell with a bouquet of daisies in a Mason jar. Smiling, she placed it on top of the dresser. “Welcome home, Gracie.”

  Grace had always loved daisies. There was a sturdy, undaunted happiness to them. Once, when she was ten, she’d gotten in trouble for picking all the daisies out of Lorraine’s garden. So this was, she knew, a special gesture. So many people cared. There was white, there was sky, and there were daisies. Such gifts. She didn’t fight it when she felt tears wet her cheeks.

  “Battle stations, everyone,” commanded Ken as Tim, Grace, and Mike gathered around a pizza. Tim and Ken were living in an industrial loft that had been a storage facility over a garage. But it had thirteen-foot ceilings and exposed brick walls, and Ken had shipped up his furniture from Malibu. Ken propped up his iPad and displayed a mood board on Pinterest, showing a collection of pictures fashioned like a digital scrapbook.

  The plan was simple—keep the atmosphere clean, organic, and modern, with fun, unexpected touches. Add a Wi-Fi hot spot and oversized communal tables made from reclaimed barn-wood planks nailed together and protected by specially ordered glass tops. Reclaimed barn wood would also be used to create a mantel for an oversized wood-burning fireplace. “This should be a refuge,” Ken said. “There’s enough craziness and noise out there in the world.”

  “This is going to be our new look,” he announced. “Natural meets modern. With a touch of opulence, like this crystal chandelier. And reclaimed wood for the walls. That beautiful old wood—it just warms everything up. Then cross that with something modern. But all neutrals. I’m seeing browns, and a white the hue of clotted cream. And candles—scented cylinder candles, and silver serving pieces. Simple. Real. Like a new age barn. We’ll rename it the Book Nook Barn.”

  “But first we have to tear the damaged walls down,” Mike said, frowning. He clearly wasn’t thinking clotted cream. “And put the new walls up. And the electrical. I can do it, but the timing is beyond tight if you want to make the 3F.”

  “Well the mayor can speed-push the approvals through. Snoopy will make sure of that. So we’re fine, as long as the physical footprint doesn’t change. Here’s the timetable.” He clicked to another page.

  Ken’s timetable was impossible, even Grace knew that. She could create a work plan, but she didn’t see how they could finish the job. Maybe Artie could meet a schedule like this, but in New London there just weren’t those kinds of resources, and she told Ken that.

  “True,” he acknowledged. “What would the Three Musketeers do?” he asked rhetorically.

  “Get reinforcements?”

  “Of course! Call for reinforcements! Bring in Roberto and the A Team! The Lost Ones has a two-week hiatus from
production following Labor Day. New London, you are about to go Hollywood.”

  Every night, Grace went home to “The Cloud,” as she called her attic bedroom. It wasn’t air-conditioned, the summer’s heat rose to the top of the house, and the bathroom was downstairs, but she could hear the end-of-season crickets in a chorus outside through the open window, and the ceiling fan stirred the air. Collapsed on top of the fluffy duvet in a white T-shirt, she slept better than she had in years.

  The first day of high school was a rite of passage, Grace thought. Somehow, she was more nervous than Emma.

  “It’s no big deal, Mom,” Emma said impatiently. “Everybody’s already hooked up on Facebook, so we all know one another already. And I have my friends from the reading group and the Book Nook. Von says…”

  “Von?”

  “We’re on Twitter.” She gave Grace a look. “Since you shut me out of the Skype account.”

  “You were not supposed to communicate with him. I don’t understand, Emma.”

  “You just said I couldn’t Skype. I didn’t.”

  How stupid of her to think she could pull the plug with Emma simply by changing the Skype password. Today’s kids were global operators with limitless ways to communicate. Text, Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, cell phone, Skype… When Grace was in high school the phone rang constantly, endlessly irritating her parents, but it was just one phone. Now, the same phone was silent, eclipsed by technology. The house was often eerily quiet, even if three people were actually talking to six others. Who knew who was talking to whom? Revolutions could be—and probably had been—planned soundlessly. There was no point, Grace knew, in trying to unplug Emma. Reactivating anything was just a SIM card away. Grace had heard from other moms that there were kids who carried a deck of SIM cards, changing them like outfits to camouflage who they were talking to and what they were doing online. She didn’t want to have a relationship like that with Emma. The bigger issue, the eternal elephant in the room, was Grace’s secret and Von Vasser. Grace needed to figure out what she wanted.

  Emma’s new confidence helped her ease into the school activities in New London. With encouragement from Grace and Ken, she decided to go out for show choir. Going back to the high school with Emma brought it all back, especially the tryouts, which were scheduled before the start of the school year. The building itself was different—in the late nineties, the town had built a new high school, and the wobbly risers she and Von had stood on in the gym had been replaced by an impressive new auditorium with theater-style seating, a catwalk, a full lighting and sound booth, and even a greenroom—it was practically professional level! The talent roster was surreal, Grace thought, as she observed a senior rehearsal. Many of these kids were state-ranked singers, and a few had reached the nationals. Since it was competitive, nobody could ever just coast. As a freshman, Emma was going to be watching the older girls, earning her place, learning how to fit in, making her own mark. She didn’t yet have a friend like Leeza, but the girls from the reading group had taken her under their wing.

  Emma had gone through at least six ideas for her outfit for the first day of school and had settled on a short denim skirt she’d made herself from an old pair of jeans, a man’s dress shirt with the cuffs rolled, one of her belted skirts, and flat booties without socks. She debated on a floppy hat with a big pin on the brim, and decided against it. School started before Labor Day these days, something Grace would never understand, but they were somehow going to be ready.

  The thermometer hit a record high, and sweat soaked through the back of Grace’s sleeveless shirt as she made yet another water run. Grace could never remember an August in Wisconsin that was this hot and humid. She parked in front of the Book Nook and dragged the Styrofoam cooler, heavy with water bottles and ice, onto the front porch. Then she pulled out as many of the sweating, cold plastic bottles as she could carry and carried them inside to pass out to the team. Ken had set up fans, but all they seemed to do was swirl sawdust around the room. Still, nobody was complaining. The scene reminded her of an old-fashioned barn-raising, with groups of people pulling up wall framings, nailing railings, sawing, and sanding. The burned-out areas had been demolished and carted off in Dumpsters, and the remaining space looked raw and new inside the Victorian shell, which would stay. Ken, wearing a yellow hard hat, was immersed in blueprints, while Tim was glued to his BlackBerry, firing off e-mails. Mike had set up a pair of sawhorses and a table on the porch, where he was using a jigsaw to cut angles from lengths of barn wood for the molding. As Grace returned for more water bottles, he looked up from under his goggles. “You know, you’re very distracting. I could have cut my arm off.”

  “Don’t shoot the water girl.” She tossed Mike a bottle of water. “How’s it coming?”

  He wiped his forehead with his shirt and gestured to the group inside. “Thanks to those Hollywood guys, we’re going to beat our timetable. I mean, you’ve got some real master carpenters in there. It’s borderline intimidating.”

  “Who do you think builds all those sitcom sets?” Grace said with mock indignation. “These are the guys who can turn day into night, inside into outside, summer into winter—they have the magic.”

  “Do you think they could muster up a short freeze?”

  “I’ll put in the request. Do you think we can be ready?”

  “The crew’s leaving the second Sunday following Labor Day to go back to the show. Everything will be framed in by then, including Tim’s apartment upstairs. Electrical, and the sound and security systems are going in this weekend. After that, we close up the walls, and it’s just the icing on the cake—and that’s your department. Snoopy said he’d rush the Certificate of Occupancy.”

  Tim leaned out of an open window frame. “Grace, we’re counting on you. Fire up that Cupcake Brigade!”

  “Right!” Grace snapped her fingers enthusiastically, but she wondered how she was going to do it. Emma was in school, and she herself had work to do online for the production company to keep some money coming in. But Tim’s can-do attitude was infectious. No matter how great the obstacle, he’d bounced back with something better and stronger. Grace couldn’t imagine how she’d have reacted if her business and her home had almost burned to the ground. When she’d asked him about his apartment above the Book Nook, Tim had brushed off the question, although she knew from Ken that almost everything he owned had smoke or water damage. Instead, he’d focused on rebuilding “for my kids and my moms.”

  “They’re at loose ends. They have no place to meet, greet, and read,” Tim had said sadly. “What’s going to happen to reading and the exchange of knowledge, news, and ideas in this town? They need their Book Nook.” He looked genuinely alarmed. “It’s their sanctuary! An island of civility in a world of reality shows and disposable content! Dickens. Faulkner. Dostoyevsky. Maya Angelou. J. K. Rowling. We can’t just lose them to—blogging!”

  “That’s my Tim,” Ken said fondly. “I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s out to save the world, one paragraph at a time.” For once, Ken was not being sarcastic.

  The heat was getting really oppressive, Grace thought as she sat fanning herself on the front porch, trying to figure out a way to bring attention to the bake sale. Fall was always one of the busiest times of the year. The migration of the wild birds was a big deal—and not just the snowbirds on their way to Florida and Arizona. New London was flooded with tourists, and everyone was selling something. The new and improved Book Nook Barn needed to get noticed.

  Suddenly there was a loud honk from a car. A red Mercedes convertible had pulled up and parked behind Mike’s van. Claire, wearing huge, dark sunglasses and a tennis outfit, was behind the wheel. Sara was in a car seat in back. A huge diamond glinted on Claire’s left hand as she waved at Grace.

  How did she manage to play tennis with that skating rink on her finger? Maybe her strategy was to blind her opponents. “Hi, Claire. Sara! Hi, sweetie!” Grace waved at the little girl, who waved back. “Welcome to the construction
zone. Be careful with that white skirt.”

  “Oh, I’m not going in. Sara can’t go into a construction zone; it’s unsafe. We’re on our way back from nursery school. Is Tim on-site? I’ve got some exciting news. Tell him and Ken to meet me across the street, in the park. You too, Gracie! And Mike, you too!” Her ponytail swung as she lifted Sara out of her car seat.

  “What could be so important?” Grace asked Ken as they all dutifully trooped across the street.

  Holding Sara’s hand, Claire led the group to the center of the small park. “All right,” announced Claire, smoothing her short skirt. “Looking directly across the park is the Book Nook. Over on our left is the playground, with the slides and swings. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a real focal point for our park? Something that will help the Book Nook, too?”

  “Put us down for that,” Ken said.

  “Well—David and the City Council approved it today. We are going to build a town gazebo right in this very spot where we’re standing. People will be able to sit in the shade of our beautiful new gazebo and read, or talk, and there can be concerts there, too. Plus, it will look beautiful looking across from the Book Nook.”

  “Amazing! How is it being funded?” Ken asked.

  “That’s the best part. It’s being generously donated by Von Vasser. In honor of his cousin Leeza. We’ll have a plaque and a naming ceremony—Leeza’s Gazebo. A permanent reminder of our wonderful Leeza, who loved gardens. Fifty years from now, people will come and sit in the gazebo and enjoy the park and think of Leeza. Isn’t that thrilling? Von has promised to come over from Zurich for the opening ceremonies. This will make all the news.”

  Grace froze. She hoped Mike didn’t notice. A gazebo in Leeza’s honor sounded wonderful, of course, but it meant Von would be back in town, and she’d finally have to deal with her past once and for all.