“Hey, Emily, um, sorry I haven’t called . . . um . . .”
“Oh, goodness, you must be busy as anything, no worries at all, it’s why I figured I’d swing by, you know, try to catch you before you head out for work.”
“I work here, actually.” Why the hell did I say THAT?
Her eyes widen. “How cool is that! I feel terrible; I actually don’t really know what you do. But whatever it is, I bet it’s awesome to just be able to work from home. Especially a home as beautiful as this one, they just don’t make them like this anymore.” She looks around reverently. “It’s one of the reasons I’m so excited to move to Boston; I can finally see some serious architecture. I’ve been wandering all over Chicago just marveling at the buildings, and last week I went to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park and that was just, I mean, LIFE CHANGING!”
She puts the dog down, and before I know what is happening, she has come right on in, and is taking off her coat. Today’s hat is powder blue with some sort of yarn Mohawk in various shades of green, and earflaps, and the mittens are purple with yellow sunflowers. Apparently her winter-gear “shopportunity” was not just epic, but may have happened while high. She looks around for a place to put them, but I haven’t done the front closet yet, and don’t have a coatrack, so when she doesn’t find a logical place, she stuffs the hat and mittens in the pocket of her coat, and drapes the bulky thing over her arm.
“Come on in,” I mutter, taking the bundle of outerwear from her and dumping it over the back of the one chair in the living room.
“I know it’s a horribly rude thing, but would you mind awfully maybe taking me on a tour of your house; it is just one of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen!”
Well, for whatever faults she clearly has, at least she has an eye for a nice building. Might as well get this over with; if I can spend a little time touring her around the house, then I can hopefully get rid of her for good.
“Sure. Follow me, and just be really careful and try not to touch anything.”
She grins at me as if I’ve handed her a Wonka Golden Ticket, and claps her hands excitedly. “Hooray!”
Hoo-freaking-ray.
Apparently the building is magical. As soon as I started taking Emily around and showing her the house, explaining what it was and what I am trying to do, she shut the hell up. She oohed and aahed appropriately, asked a couple of questions, but essentially we did a tour and I talked and she listened, Schatzi clicking along at her heels. We finish up in the kitchen, and feeling magnanimous, I offer to make some tea.
“Anneke, this place, it’s amazing. I have to ask, how are you ever going to leave it when you’re done? I mean it’s so YOU, not that I know you even a little bit, but I feel like I kind of do just seeing what you are doing here and how you think about every detail and it will just be perfect, how on earth will you be able to give it up?”
And she’s back. I offer her a cookie from the glass jar on the counter, in hopes that if she puts food in her face this noise will stop coming out of it.
“If I don’t sell it I will be bankrupt and unable to eat, and I’m pretty sure the new owners aren’t going to see me as a feature they want to keep.”
“Do you always live in your projects?”
“This is a first.”
“Well, I can see why you would, even just for a little bit of time, I would totally want to live here, to be in this place, I suppose even if I knew it couldn’t be my forever home I could always have the memories of having lived here for a while, and I’d probably have done the same thing.”
“That’s a nice way to look at it.” I’m wondering exactly how I’m going to extricate this gangly child from the house.
“Hello!” Jag’s voice floats up the stairs. Hallelujah!
“Up here,” I call out, and I can hear his tread on the steps. Schatzi leaves her perch under Emily’s chair to go greet him. He enters the kitchen, removing his coat and dropping it over the folding chair at the worktable.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company.” He crosses over and extends his hand. “Jagjeet Singh. Everyone calls me Jag.”
“Hi, Jag! I’m Emily Walsh. Everyone just calls me Emily.”
“Lovely to meet you, Emily.” They both look at me, waiting for me to fill in the obvious blanks. I swear to god, these days I cannot stand people.
“Jag is working with me on the house. Emily is visiting Chicago.” I’m not really sure how else to describe her, but clearly she has some ideas.
“I’m Anneke’s long-lost never-known stepsister from Florida. Her mom was married to my dad, and I dropped in on her head like the house in The Wizard of Oz all excited to meet her and she never even heard of me! But I’m in town for a little bit, and I always say that family is about the best thing you can ever have in your life, so I’m just pestering her and imposing on her time while I’m here so we can get to know each other.”
I love how I’m suddenly the Wicked Witch of the East in this little florid scenario she’s just painted. Although, if someone dropped a house on me I wouldn’t have to listen to her voice anymore, so it does have some merit as an idea.
“I see.” Jag turns to me, probably registering the pained look on my face, and then nods. “Well, then I should leave you sisters to each other. Anneke, I will be downstairs in the powder room doing the demo. Emily, nice to have met you.” And giving Schatzi a quick pet, he heads out of the kitchen.
Et tu, Jag?
“I’m sorry, you must want to get to work. What are you doing today?”
Whew. “Yeah, I should. We are working on the first-floor bathrooms.”
“What are you going to do in there?”
“Nothing fancy. Install the tub and toilet and vanity in the full bath, which is almost done, then demo in the powder room. We have to rip out the plaster and replace it with tile backer board, tile the walls and the floor, install a new toilet and a small sink, hang a mirror, do some lighting.”
“All for two little rooms. How long will that take?”
“Three days or so, depending.”
“Cool.” She pauses. “Do you think, I mean not today, but maybe another time I might come watch? I mean, I’m really interested in all of this, I watch HGTV like NONSTOP, and I’m always doing little DIY projects with furniture and stuff and I think it would be amazing to just see how some of this happens live and in person. You know, if I wouldn’t be in your way or anything. I could even help, if you wanted, I’m good at painting for sure, I repaint my room wherever I am at least once a year when I get bored and need a change, but I could even just be the garbage girl or coffee fetcher . . .”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, just to get her to shut the hell up. Except now her whole face lights up and I realize that I have just opened Pandora’s freaking box. “But not today. I’ll, um, let you know if we’re doing something worth seeing.” Not.
“You’re so awesome, Anneke.”
“Thanks. But I really should . . .”
“Oh god, yeah, I’m totally leaving, I promise, just one more thing, do you like really get completely immersed in the work all day? Where disruptions like really mess with your flow and stuff?”
“Pretty much.” Maybe this will keep her from more drop-ins.
“I figured. So I’m wondering, if you ever wanted me to come over and walk Schatzi, or take her to the dog park or something, like be her doggie day care person, I would totally love to do that. If it would be helpful, you know, so you didn’t have to worry about her or stop work when she wants to go out or needs her exercise or whatever.”
“That’s very nice of you.” Which it is, even if it is the last thing I would ever agree to. Schatzi can go all day without a potty break, and the fact that she likes Emily so much means that by saying no I both prevent ADHD Emily from being in my airspace AND deprive the undeserving dog of lovin
g companionship, which I think is a win-win.
“COOL!” she says as if I have said yes, and now I have to rack my brain to see if she has tricked me into something. “Okay, well, I’ll maybe come by tomorrow afternoon to play with her, around two or so, that will be awesome, and if you don’t want to be bothered, you can just leave the door unlocked or something and I can just pop in and grab her quiet as a mouse. Thanks again, Anneke, have a good workday, I’ll see you later!” And she pops out of her chair, and picks up the dog. “I’m going to be your dog walker, pretty girl, what do you think about that?”
“NO.”
She stops twirling with the dog, who glares at me with the fury of a thousand suns.
“Emily. The dog is fine. It was a nice offer, but I have to decline. And I have to get to work.”
Her face falls like I just took her ice cream cone away from her.
“Oh. Well, if you change your mind . . .”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know.”
I follow her downstairs, and she gets back into her festive winter garb.
“Thanks again, Anneke, I’ll talk to you soon. And really, the house”—she gestures around—“it’s just, EVERYTHING.” The look on her face is killing me, and I can feel myself soften the tiniest bit.
“Thanks, Emily, it means a lot to me that you appreciate it.” I know I should probably let her walk the hateful dog. Or that I should tell her that later this week we are going to do a cool conversion of an antique sideboard into a bathroom vanity for the second floor. But I can’t make the words come. I can’t give her what she wants or needs from me.
“Cool. Good luck with the bathrooms.” And she leaves.
My main feeling is one of relief to have her gone, but there is the smallest little part of me that feels shitty about how I treated her. Which pisses me off. Why should I feel bad for this unwanted interloper who keeps foisting herself on me? Why on earth should I care what she feels or thinks, when two weeks ago I didn’t even know she fucking existed?
Which does make me think. She did know about me. My mother might not have mentioned her little mini-me of a stepdaughter on the rare occasions we would have spoken during her time as Mrs. Walsh, but clearly she said something about me to Emily. Something that wasn’t so awful since it made Emily wonder why I never visited, made her want to seek me out. And despite myself, I’m very curious about what exactly my mother might have said about me, how she described me, what characteristics she attributed to me. Was there even the smallest bit of pride on her part?
Doesn’t matter. Can’t matter. I do not have time to get embroiled in this kind of familial bullshit. The only good thing about not having family is that you don’t have to put up with family crap. I look at Caroline and her siblings; who needs that kind of hassle? I’ve safely removed my mother from my life. And I realize that all she knows about me right now is my email address. I had to get a new cell phone when I left MacMurphy; the old one and its number belonged to them. I didn’t exactly send out an I’ve Moved card when I left Grant’s and came here. Of course, Emily found me, since the landline here is in my name, but that would require someone caring to look me up, which Anneliese never has. I certainly haven’t missed her.
I can’t help but wonder what sort of fictional daughter she created in my name that would make Emily so hell-bent on weaseling into my life. I already have a dozen reasons to be annoyed at that girl; the very idea that she has me even pondering my mother in the most superficial way is just one more.
I head into the front room and catch Schatzi perched on the windowsill, staring out the window like a war bride waiting for her soldier to come home. When she turns to look at me her gaze is downright soulful, and from her mouth dangles a single sunflower-adorned mitten.
13
From Gemma’s Journal:
Cooking is both an art, and a craft. Anyone with time and inclination can become a good cook. To be a great cook, one must have deeper passions.
“Anneke? I’ve brought leftovers from my potluck dinner last night, can I offer you lunch?”
The smells wafting from the containers Jag has brought make this a very easy decision.
“Yes, please! What are we having?”
“Tandoori chicken, rice and lentil pilaf, samosas.”
“Yum. Lucky me.” The past two weeks have been a sad backslide in my tentative new relationship with cooking. It started with my attempt to make a baked sweet potato. For whatever reason, I just wanted a simple baked sweet potato. With butter and a little cinnamon. And Gemma keeps saying that you can smell when things are done, which Grant always said too, so I didn’t set the timer. Some people can smell when things are done. You know what I can smell? The smell of a baked sweet potato that has exploded inside a very high-end oven, and burnt into unsalvageable superglue all over the interior. You know what that smells like? It smells like two and a half hours on your knees with your torso in an oven, huffing oven-cleaner fumes till you hallucinate the dancing-hippo scene from Fantasia as reimagined by Lady Gaga. This triumph was followed by two days of ramen with cut-up hot dogs in it, which was a level of sodium that turned my fingers and toes into plump little sausages. Then when I got my courage back up to try to cook something again, the unfortunate discovery that the pork chops in the clearance bin at the little convenience market should probably not hang around for three days before you cook them. Remember the exploding Yorkie? I think I may have shat one out. Want to know why I invest in Toto toilets and no other brand? Three words: Double. Cyclone. Flushing. Essentially, they sort of automatically clean the bowl while they flush. The stupid old toilet that was the vessel of my unfortunate post–pork chop buttpocalypse? Needed cleaning after every event. I’m so excited to have the new Toto installed downstairs. Not that I have plans to poison myself again, but one never knows.
You would think two days of essentially living in the bathroom with cramps doubling me over, my poor little pink starfish ravaged by liquid colon acid and subpar toilet paper, would have taught me a lesson, but nope. I went back to the kitchen as soon as I was feeling better to whip up such classics as “Not Enough Ketchup in the World Meatloaf” and “Brick Chicken: Not Cooked Under a Brick, Cooked to the Consistency of a Brick.” I tried to make Caroline’s famous mashed potatoes, she sent me the recipe generously, but I didn’t have a ricer, or even know what one is for that matter, so I just attacked them with the hand mixer and made something so gummy and gluey I was tempted to save it for spackling. Apparently my early successes were not an indication of being any sort of natural cook.
The past three days I’ve just made microwaved frozen meals for dinner, followed by enormous bowls of popcorn. Whatever else I suck at in the kitchen, which is turning out to be pretty much everything, I make spectacular popcorn. Especially on this stove. I do it over the simmer burner, which makes it all pop up huge and fluffy and never burns. The same cannot be said of my one attempt at salmon. Let’s just say that charred salmon jerky does not a lovely supper make.
I let Jag serve me a plate, and tuck into the weirdly vivid magenta-tinged chicken, still tender and moist despite being reheated. The rice pilaf is studded with whole spices and sweet strings of fried onions and nuts and nuggets of dried apricot, and the thin crisp pastry of the samosa hides a spicy mix of potatoes and peas. It is the best thing I’ve eaten in forever, and I wolf it down. Jag laughs at me, and my lack of manners.
“Did you cook this?” I say around a huge mouthful of rice, at least the rice that didn’t fall off my fork into my lap.
“I made the chicken, my friends made the rice and the samosas.”
“Please thank them for me.”
“I shall. I shall.”
We eat our plates in contented silence. It’s been a good productive couple of days; we finished the first-floor bathroom, and it is a full realization of the design I had in my head. The Carrara marble wainscoting I’d discovere
d under the drywall cleaned up like a dream, brilliant white shot through with subtle gray veins. The basket-weave-pattern marble tile on the floor is a classic pattern, and Jag was a very quick study in fixture installation. In addition to the Toto toilet I picked out, one with simple traditional lines, I got their matching pedestal sink. I had the original claw-foot tub reglazed, and we put it in with a vintage nickel-plated floor-mounted faucet and handheld showerhead I found at a salvage yard.
The small square shower I wanted to install in the corner had been troubling me. I wanted the bathroom to have a separate shower, I personally hate taking showers in a bathtub, and we had the room to include it, but all of the surrounds I saw just felt clunky and didn’t match the clean, open feel of the elegant space. Then Jag suggested we use a pair of old greenhouse doors I had in the garage, tall with weathered iron strips holding nine-inch squares of wavy old glass. The two were big enough to create a comfortable square; we firm mounted one door and left the other to swing open and serve as the shower access. When we got it in, it was clear that it was the perfect choice, mostly glass, the shower floats in the corner, and the dark squares look terrific against the pattern on the floor. More than ever I’m grateful for Jag and his ideas, his assistance, and especially for his very pleasant company in these very long days of hard work.
“There is something we need to discuss,” he says, looking down at his plate.
Uh-oh. I feel the proverbial rug begin to shift under my feet. “Sure, Jag, what is it?”
“Um, this is very bad timing, I know, but it’s about my visa. The six-month visa was denied.”
Suddenly this delicious meal turns to lead in my stomach.
“I’m so sorry. What did they say?”
“No real info, something about it being in conflict with my existing visa. The good news is that means that school hasn’t sent any info to anyone that I’m no longer enrolled, so my current visa is still okay. But the bad news is that it makes me ineligible for the tourist visa, and now that I’ve been denied that once, apparently it makes it unlikely that I would get one again unless I go home for a few months and then come back.”
Recipe for Disaster Page 16