Breakfast at Stephanie's

by Sue Margolis

  “You have to wrap it in loads of foil,” Estelle went on, “but it works a treat. I’ll give you some before you go. The first time I did it, the fish tasted a little bit like Rinse Aid, but I think I’ve got the hang of it now.”

  It was a second or two before she noticed her father. He was sitting at his desk in the Glassmans’ pub-style conservatory, spectacles perched on his bald head, peering intently into his computer screen. Surrounded by a thicket of yucca leaves, palms and various dangling tendrils, he looked like a distinguished botany professor hard on the trail of a new genus of lupine; although it had to be said that his M&S tracksuit, instead of the botanist’s regulation worn gray cardigan full of holes, did rather spoil the illusion.

  Harry had been against the conservatory from the word go. He objected on grounds of heat loss and the calamitous effect this would have on his gas bills. Estelle kept nagging and eventually won him over, maintaining that the conservatory, which looked out over the garden, brought nature into the house. In fact there wasn’t a great deal of nature to be found in the Glassmans’ fifty-foot back garden, made up as it was of a twenty-foot concrete tiled patio and a small patch of lawn bordered by the narrowest of low-maintenance flower beds. It soon emerged that Estelle wasn’t so much concerned about bringing nature inside as ensuring that visitors to the house had an IMAX view of her two-thousand-quid John Lewis patio furniture and outdoor heater.

  “Penis extensions,” Stephanie heard Harry mutter to himself. “What do I want with bloody penis extensions?”

  “Harry! Please! Jake’s here.” Estelle turned to Stephanie. “It’s all this junk e-mail, driving him mad.” Harry saw Stephanie and Jake and his face broke into a smile. He stood up, arms open wide. “Hello, sweetie,” he said, hugging Stephanie. He looked down at Jake. “And who have we here, eh? The Big Bad Wolf?” He bent down, but before he could hug Jake, the sword, which he was waving wildly, connected with Harry’s eye.

  “Jakey! No!” Stephanie took the sword from him. “Look, you’ve hurt poor Granddad. Now say sorry.”

  “Nobody listens to me,” Estelle said in that singsong way of hers.

  “It’s OK,” Harry said, dabbing his watering eye with a handkerchief. “No harm done.”

  Jake looked like he was about to dissolve into tears. Harry scooped him up and took him to the window. “There was a fox on the lawn earlier on. Let’s see if it’s still here.”

  “Look, you know best,” Estelle said to Stephanie. She had lowered her voice the way she did when she talked about S-E-X, “but this monsters and carrying swords thing. It’s all a bit violent, isn’t it? I’m sure it must be giving him nightmares. And you read him that dreadful thing—what is it?”

  “Where the Wild Things Are. It’s a classic. He adores it.”

  “When you were his age you were into Noddy.”

  “Which is about a weird-looking homosexual teenager and an older man,” Harry butted in, “who persecute black people. Very nice.”

  He winked at Stephanie, who started laughing. Realizing she’d lost this battle, Estelle shrugged and asked who was for coffee.

  “Just a quickie,” Stephanie said. “The girls are coming at eleven. Where’s Grandma?” Estelle explained that Lilly was upstairs putting on her makeup. She was staying for lunch and then she was off to a funeral. Harry was giving her a lift to the cemetery. When they couldn’t see the fox, Harry took Jake into the living room to choose a video. Her parents had practically a library of Disney films.

  “Jake looks a bit peaky,” Estelle said, getting mugs down from the cupboard.

  “Yeah. He’s got a bit of a cough. I hope he isn’t coming down with something. He hasn’t got a temperature, though.”

  “Are you sure he gets enough green vegetables?”

  “Yes, Mum. He gets enough greens.”

  “And fruit?”

  “And fruit.”

  Stephanie was trying to imagine the balloon of her irritation floating skyward, but today, for some reason, it remained determinedly grounded and seemed to be inflating rapidly.

  “I’ve got some children’s echinacea upstairs,” Estelle went on. “I’ll give him some in a minute.”

  Just then Harry came back in. “Look,” he said to Stephanie, indicating his computer screen. “Look at all this junk I get.” She followed him over to his desk. There had to be two dozen junk e-mails in his mailbox.

  “God, I thought I got a lot,” she said. “Still, only takes a moment to delete it.”

  “But I shouldn’t be getting it in the first place. Nobody should. I don’t need a mortgage, new golf balls or a loan. I don’t require a penis extension, I don’t want to see Jenny and Heather get down, and I certainly don’t need Viagra.”

  A meaningful snort from Estelle, which Stephanie chose to ignore.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “what is a penis extension? Some kind of prosthesis? Do they have to operate or do you strap it on?”

  “Harry, Harry. For crying out loud, give it a rest.”

  It was Grandma Lilly. She was tiny, with wonky blue eyeshadow and newly coiffed hair that looked like a giant auburn cotton candy. Although she was almost eighty she retained her dancer’s posture. As a child she’d learned ballet, discovered she had a real talent and, before she met her husband, spent several years appearing in West End musicals. In 1945 she even went to Paris to appear in a cabaret with Maurice Chevalier. Everybody agreed that Stephanie had acquired her love of performing from her grandmother. Lilly had also been a bit of a babe. Stephanie had seen the photographs. There were still traces of it, even now—the vivid turquoise eyes that refused to fade, the high cheekbones and girlishly full lips.

  “You’ve been going on about this all morning. You’re obsessed. You sound like my friend Vera. She’s got this bee in her bonnet about Ex-Lax. She thinks they add Imodium to it to make you use more.” Stephanie couldn’t help noticing that in the background Peggy Lee was singing “The Folks Who Live on the Hill.” It seemed appropriate somehow.

  “Hi, Grandma,” Stephanie said lightly. She stood up. As she kissed her grandmother she got the familiar whiff of herring.

  “I just said hello to Jake. He looks a bit peaky. You know what my mother used to give us children when we weren’t well? Calves’-foot jelly.”

  “Mum,” Estelle said, “don’t be ridiculous. You haven’t been able to get that stuff for fifty years.”

  “So,” Stephanie broke in, taking in her grandmother’s navy trouser suit with outsized seventies’ lapels, “you’re off to a funeral.”

  She nodded. “Your dad’s going to drop me off.”

  “He’s only taking you,” Estelle said, “if you promise to behave when you get there. No practical jokes like the last funeral you went to.”

  “Sid Hirsch was ninety-three,” Lilly retorted. “He had the best sense of humor of anybody I’ve ever known.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think his children appreciated you and Vera sticking a ‘just buried’ sign on the back of the hearse.”

  At that moment Jake reappeared, clearly bored with the video. He climbed onto Estelle’s lap. She kissed him and held him to her large bosom.

  “Gan’ma come look after me at my hou-is?”

  Stephanie closed her eyes and pressed the lids with her hand. Thank you, Jake.

  “I’d love to, darling, but you’ve got Mrs. M.”

  “Mrs. M. bad.”

  “Oh, no. Mrs. M.’s not bad,” Estelle said. “She’s lovely.”

  Stephanie looked up. “He means she’s got a bad hip,” she explained. “She broke it last night after her darts match. She’s going to be in hospital for weeks, apparently.”

  “So, what will you do? Who will look after Jakey when you’re at work?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll phone round a couple of agencies. I’ll sort something out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Agencies. You don’t have agency money. And how can you even think of having strangers looking after your child? I’ll come
. It’s settled. I won’t hear another word.”

  Stephanie struggled to find an excuse. “But what about Dad? Won’t he mind you leaving him every day?”

  “I’ll come too,” Harry said. “I can introduce Jake to the wonders of char siu pork.” Stephanie suddenly had visions of Jake starting school with not only dentures (courtesy of the Fondant Fancies) but an appointment for an angioplasty. “Well, Mum, if you really don’t mind.”

  “Mind? How could I mind?” She put her arms tight round Jake and kissed the top of his head. “As if I’d let my only grandchild be looked after by strangers.”

  Lilly insisted on showing Stephanie to the door. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of your mother. Have you managed to find out anything—you know, about what we were talking about?”

  “I have and it’s fine. My friend Ben, who’s a GP, said you can carry on doing what you’ve always done. No problem.”

  “Really?” She grinned. “I won’t electrocute myself?”

  “No, you won’t electrocute yourself.”

  “Excellent.” Then she gave a wicked laugh. Stephanie also told her what Ben had said about doing some gentle exercise.

  “Tai chi? What’s that? Sounds like one of those slimy tofu things you see on dim sum carts.”

  Stephanie said an old boyfriend of hers used to do it and that it was part ancient Chinese spiritual teaching, part meditation and part self-defense. When Lilly said she didn’t think it sounded quite like her and that she was much more of an old-time dancing girl, Stephanie took the hint.

  In Stephanie’s opinion, the perfect fry-up contained several key elements. For a start the bacon had to be streaky (more flavor) and done to a crisp. The sausages had to be brown but not burned and preferably the cheaper, fatty kind because, like streaky bacon, only they delivered that authentic fry-up taste. The 95 percent lean pork varieties were for wimps and totally unacceptable, as were fancy herbified ones. The fried eggs had to have a hint of crunch on their underside, but it was imperative that the yolks were thick and creamy and as yellow as a school bus. The best way to achieve the creaminess was to baste the eggs with the oil during frying. That way, the yolk’s outer membrane turned into a smooth white cataract, leaving the yolk soft. The fried bread had to be crisp like the bacon, but not oozing fat. Most important of all were the baked beans. Under no circumstances could these be merely heated. They needed to be cooked very slowly over the lowest possible heat, until they burst their skins and turned into a congealed pinkish lump.

  Stephanie had acquired her fry-up skills years ago. One summer, when she was a senior, she’d gotten a job waitressing at The Acropolis, a Greek greasy spoon in Archway. The owner, Nick, reckoned he’d been cooking all-day breakfasts since he was sixteen. He’d probably been eating them since then, too, since at the age of fifty or thereabouts, he had the figure of Baloo. He chain-smoked while he cooked, saying it improved his concentration, “and thee flayva.” Then he would break into loud guffaws. Certainly most of Nick’s breakfasts arrived at the table with a light ash accompaniment, but none of the stubby-fingered geezers who made up the clientele seemed to notice. Apart from his chain-smoking theory, what Nick taught her more than anything was the importance of timing.

  Twenty minutes before Lizzie and Cass were due, Stephanie laid the table, squeezed the oranges in Jimmy’s fabulous chrome juicer and broke the eggs into a bowl. Then she pricked the sausages and put four slices of bread in the Dualit toaster. Finally she took out his largest Le Creuset frying pan and placed it on the industrial six-burner stove, ready to go.

  The women’s Sunday breakfast tradition went back years. It was the one day they could always get together. The rest of the week Stephanie was working, often late, Lizzie had the twins and Cass was up to her eyes managing her advertising business, plus, of course, her unending string of blokes.

  She had met Cass when they were students on another summer waitressing job. They were working at the same Hampstead coffee shop. A shared interest in insubordination had drawn them together. They’d spend their breaks in the back with the trash cans, smoking joints and taking the piss out of the customers. Cass was reed thin and pretty, but not quite beautiful. If you were being picky, you’d say her mouth was just a tad Julia Roberts and she also had a couple of slightly crooked front teeth. But even then, she was completely at ease with her body. It was this confidence that had always made her attractive to boys. Apparently she’d lost her virginity at some absurdly early age like thirteen or fourteen.

  “All I can say is,” she confided to Stephanie a few months ago when they were discussing their earliest sexual exploits, “thank God Seventeen didn’t have a gossip column.”

  After university she worked for Saatchi and Saatchi for a few years. Then she left to set up her own advertising company. Stephanie put Cass’s ballsiness down to her public school education. She was entirely without self-doubt. She simply assumed that she had the right to go out into the world and claim what was hers. Getting the business off the ground was a struggle, but she turned the corner financially just before Jake was born—which was how she could afford to hire the doula for Stephanie.

  These days she was still sexy and vampy—the kind of woman who, when she got dressed in the morning, began with her Jimmy Choos.

  Lizzie, on the other hand, was a real beauty. A natural blonde, creamy white skin, dazzling blue eyes. Stephanie met her on their first day at secondary school. Most of the other first-years knew each other when they arrived because they’d been to the same primary school, but Stephanie and Lizzie had only just moved into the area and knew nobody. They found each other, looked after each other and had been doing it ever since. They’d been through some tough times together: boyfriends chucking them, both getting mediocre A-level grades and having to stay at school an extra term to do retakes, Lizzie’s dad dying suddenly in the middle of it all.

  When they were sixteen they used to spray their hair pink and orange and go off to see the Jam or the Clash and get back at three in the morning. Neither set of parents knew because the pair had arranged to stay with another friend, a girl called Caramel, whose house smelled of patchouli oil and whose parents didn’t care what time they got home.

  Then Lizzie went to Bristol to study English. After a few months she had grown her hair long and was dating floppy-haired boys called Piers or Hugh and wearing their cricket sweaters. Stephanie wasn’t surprised. Lizzie had never been at ease with the rebellion thing. There had always been something deeply conservative about her. For a start, she was hooked on romance. Not many people knew, but Lizzie actually had a hope chest. It was an old pine chest that sat at the end of her bed. And Lizzie never actually put anything in it. Her dottily old-fashioned mother did. Every so often she would add another set of M&S sheets or a couple of Liberty print tea towels. Even though she was embarrassed by the hope chest, Lizzie was sucked into her mother’s 1960s’ pearls-and-amontillado-before-dinner image of marriage. Even when she was at university, she bought a subscription to Bride magazine. She always knew who the most fashionable caterers were and, even though she was, under normal circumstances, the most even tempered of souls, she could get quite heated when she saw just a hint of gypsophila in a wedding bouquet.

  Lizzie left university with an honors degree and got a job in the City as a trainee hedge fund manager. Pretty soon she had met Dom, a handsome corporate lawyer, and had fallen madly in love. He took her on romantic weekends to Rome and Venice, where he would present her with something understated but exquisite from Tiffany. In return she spent her Sunday afternoons in the summer watching him play cricket.

  They were married on a clear, crisp winter’s afternoon, just as the sun was setting. The perfect Devon village was blanketed in snow. The trees in the churchyard glistened with white fairy lights. Inside the fourteenth-century stone church, scores of tall white candles flickered in the semidarkness, casting a soft golden light onto the sea of winter roses and lilies of the valley.

 
Lizzie wore the simplest oyster satin gown and matching coat. It must have cost well into four figures, since simplicity like that never comes cheap. Six tiny flower girls in ballet shoes and oyster dresses with dark green velvet sashes sat on tiny dark green velvet stools and behaved impeccably. When Lizzie said “I do,” her exquisite face turned toward Dom’s solid, square jaw, everybody knew it would be forever. Dom and Lizzie. Lizzie and Dom.

  They started trying for a baby almost immediately. Two years later, when nothing had happened, they started in vitro fertilization. Finally, three grueling years later, the twins were born at The Portland by cesarean—squeezed in between Dom’s split capital investment trust meetings.

  Lizzie was so overjoyed to be a mother at last that it didn’t occur to her to go back to work. These days she wore chinos and Sebagos, drove Archie and Dougal to their trumpet lessons in Dom’s company minivan and went with Dom to the kind of dinner parties where people discussed loft extensions and agonized over schools. She sent handmade thank-you notes with pressed dried flowers on them, and when Dom was working late in the city, which was most nights, she went to bed with How to Be a Domestic Goddess and the latest Martha Stewart catalogue.

  When she first introduced them, Stephanie wasn’t sure if Lizzie and Cass would hit it off, but they did. Cass made Lizzie laugh and Cass, whose life was a chaotic round of work, blokes and parties, probably found something old-fashioned and comfortingly grounding in Lizzie, although she’d never admit it.

  Cass arrived first, carrying a bottle of Lanson. She’d come straight from the gym and was wearing a pink Juicy Couture tracksuit. Her red curls were tied back in a ponytail. “I thought we’d make Bucks Fizz,” she said, handing over the bubbly. “I need something to cheer me up.”

  “Wassup?” Stephanie said, fetching the jug of freshly squeezed orange juice.

  “I’m manless. Virtually for the first time in my entire adult life, I have nobody.” She put her gym bag down on the counter and started rooting around inside for her cigarettes.