by Rachel Hauck
“Joy?”
“Yes, Jesus? You’re taking me home to heaven?”
“Joy, focus. He’s not coming for you this minute, but I’m pretty sure He’d tell you to go out there and cook up a storm. Have fun. Be confident. He’s with you.”
“Luke, please . . .”
“I know, babe.”
The tender, mellow resonance of his voice sank through her. “I wish you were here.”
“Me too.”
“But you’re not, and I have a job to do.” Joy snapped to attention, surging with confidence. “I’m an award-winning athlete. SEC and NCAA Player of the Year. I can do this. Just go out there and cook. Win this thing. I’m a champion.”
“There’s the spirit.”
“Okay, it’s the top of the seventh inning and the team is up by one. I just have to strike out the next three hitters.”
“Joy, listen to me. Just fry everything. Don’t overheat the pans, but make sure the oil is at the right temperature before cooking. Pick a meat, batter and fry it. Batter is eggs, milk, flour, salt. If it’s a vegetable, batter and fry it, add a spice of some kind. Garlic. Take your time. Think. You know more than you realize. Make the caramel and chocolate for apples as a dessert. Easy. You’re there.”
“Miss Ballard, Miss Ballard, twenty seconds.” The floor manager careened around the side of the set. “There you are. Twenty seconds, Miss Ballard.”
“Luke, it was nice knowing you. And I just want to say I really wish you had kissed me at the Mars versus Venus party. And the night in the meadow. And then when you burned your hand. There, I’ve said it.”
“Yeah, I guess you did.” His tenor anchored her and flooded her heart with confidence. “Maybe I’ll kiss you when I see you again.”
“If I survive.” Stage lights flooded the kitchen set. Bette’s intro music played. “I feel like a gladiator. The coliseum awaits.”
“Die with dignity.”
“Not screaming and wailing obscenities at Wenda? Shoot, you’re no fun.”
“Hey, Joy, seriously, I’m praying for you.”
“Please welcome Joy Ballard and Wenda Divine.”
The cook-off wasn’t centered on a secret ingredient but a recipe. A Joy Ballard recipe dug from show archives.
How did they get a show archive? Joy fussed with pots, clamoring about her kitchen station. The recipe they were making was her own chili. This was beyond horrible. Horrible would be a summer prairie right now. Think, think, think, remember the Tailgate Chili. But all Joy remembered was it tasted really good.
She eyed the exit. What if she just walked? Laid claim to her rider and exited stage left? Next segment, she’d quit. Leave. And then what? How would she recover, explain it to Allison and TruReality? The notions nailed her feet to the stage floor.
“Our staff made the chili from Joy’s show archives.” Bette stomped her foot playfully at Joy. “You’ve got to get recipes up on your site, girl. What are y’all thinking?” Her faux accent was getting annoying. “I guess you will with your new cookbook. We’re going to tell you all about that later in the show. Anyway, Wenda tasted the recipe and will attempt, in a daring feat, to duplicate Joy’s recipe, including a secret ingredient.”
“Oooo,” said the crowd. Joy went numb.
“Are we good to go?” Bette rested one hand on Joy’s back. The other on Wenda’s. “This should be a breeze for you, Joy.”
Like a solar gust from hell, sure. Seriously, Jesus, how do I get out of this?
Joy shot Wenda a dagger-glance. She caught it with a glance of glee and mouthed, You’re going down.
“You have twenty minutes to make the chili and the corresponding dessert with the Ballard Tailgate package. Peanut Butter Football Pie or Overtime Chocolate Cookies.” Bette laughed. “Don’t you just love these names? Then our judges, Gina Laredo, Vic Dean, and Nancy Partridge from the Food Channel, will judge our winner. Ready, ladies?” Bette dashed off the set. “And we’re cooking off!”
Luke flipped through channels from the chaise-like chair next to Red’s bed. It’d been six hours since Joy called. What was she doing?
Red slept with steady, even breathing. The surgery to unclog two arteries had gone well. Dr. Hester was pleased.
Luke pulled his phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, then set it aside. In a moment of panic, she confessed some stupid desire to be kissed. Don’t go thinking she’s in love with you, man.
Luke surfed through the channels, looking but not seeing.
She’s probably out on the town, down in Tribeca, celebrating her success with Allison and Bette, maybe Dan and some handsome producer with Hugh Jackman eyes.
Out Red’s hospital window, the plains of Oklahoma stretched toward an end-of-day horizon, east meeting west, a pinkish-gold sky touching the dark arc of earth.
In Beaufort, he missed the prairie, the stretch of treeless land to nowhere. But now he missed the steam of the lowcountry and the scent of pine and palmetto.
He missed Joy.
He should stop whining about bankruptcy, third-floor lofts, and lack of a future. He should seize the day. Tell her they belonged together. Lyric and Annie-Rae needed a man to look after them. He could do it, step up to the plate, lose himself in the tight and turbulent cocoon of their home.
Luke exhaled in time with Red. When he glanced back, it blessed him to see his father sleeping peacefully. He was glad he came. Red needed him. The door shoved open and two nurses entered, chatting, then flirting with Luke when they caught him looking.
“. . . I’ve watched it on YouTube a dozen times already, but it never gets better. I mean, how embarrassing.” Stephanie, the petite one with cat eyes, checked Red’s vitals.
“I thought she was funny, playing around at first, then, oh my gosh, did you see the judge’s face?” Zoe, the tall one with a braid halfway down her butt, shot something into Red’s IV.
“What did that judge from the Food Channel say? ‘I think I threw up in my mouth.’” Stephanie laughed, batting her lashes at Luke. “Looks like your dad is doing good.”
“Yeah, he’s sleeping well.” He sat forward, muting the television.
“What were you two talking about?”
“Some video on YouTube. Zoe, tuck in that side of Mr. Redmond’s sheet. Do you know that TV show host, Joy Ballard? I’d never heard of her before, but she was on The Bette Hudson Show today, and oh my gosh—”
“The woman could not even make her own chili recipe.” Zoe untucked, then tucked Red’s sheet corner in a square. “Blood shot right out of Bette’s eyes.”
Her own recipe? Wenda trapped Joy with her own recipe? An evil notion wrapped in brilliance. A secret ingredient could be botched by the best chef. But Joy’s own recipe left her without excuse. Outing Joy would take more than sticky pasta or undercooked chicken. And Wenda knew it.
“Stephanie, I need to see this video.”
“We’re not supposed to let anyone on our computers, but I suppose if you’re just looking over my shoulder.”
Luke jerked open the door. Stephanie scurried after him.
“Do you know this chick or something?”
“Yeah, she’s a good friend.”
Half a million hits already. Did they put out a press release? Come watch a cooking show host crash and burn.
The funniest part wasn’t Joy but Bette yelling, boxing the air, striding from one side of the set to the other, the crew scattering. This particular footage was taken by someone in the audience.
In the right-hand margin, several more videos had been posted. Joy’s expression told the whole story. Her apron was stained. Strands of hair clung to her face. Mascara bled around the edges of her eyes. Her blouse sat cockeyed across her shoulders.
“It’s on television news now.” Zoe returned to the nurse’s station. “Just saw it on Fox News. Your daddy is doing much better, Luke. Bet you’re glad.”
Glad? Yes. For Red. But his heart was breaking. While he sat with his recovering, now-healthy fat
her, his best friend was fourteen hundred miles away, dying.
Twenty-six
Beyond her window, New York City bloomed in a sea of lights. If Joy had a way to dive into that ocean, she’d be gone. She wanted to get lost in the city that never sleeps, become one with the lights, the music, the rhythm of heels crunching against pavement, the demand of a cab’s horn along Broadway.
Instead, she was trapped inside. In her humiliation. It’d been six, seven hours since Bette gaped at her with a menagerie of horror and disgust, spitting out her large slurp of Joy’s chili.
For the tenth time in as many minutes, Joy’s phone rang, its light breaking the room’s darkness.
But she didn’t move. The ringtone ended. Joy collapsed forward, burying her forehead between her knees. The edges of her nose burned from the hotel’s rough tissues. Every blink scraped her eyelids against her swollen eyes.
The darkness deepened and Joy relived the disaster over and over without pause. Bricks of shame stacked up, enclosing her emotions.
In twenty minutes Wenda had created Joy’s chili the way Daddy used to and revealed the secret ingredient. Cinnamon.
Foiled by cinnamon.
When Joy said, “Cinnamon? Really?” her mike communicated every nuance of her surprise. She caught herself and attempted to play it off and putty the crack. “I make so many recipes. It’s easy to forget a secret ingredient.”
But the putty was no match for the dynamite Joy mixed together in her chili pot. So anxious and nervous, working with a fantasy confidence that she could actually beat Wenda, she didn’t brown the meat before adding tomatoes and beans. No, Joy just dumped them all together, boiled, and stirred.
She mistook sugar for salt. Well, they look the same. Especially when sitting next to each other in small, open dishes.
Then she added garlic in an effort to nail her own secret flavor. And cumin? Not a dot or dash. Half a palm full. Sugar, cumin, and garlic. All swimming in a greasy pool of boiled ground sirloin.
The one judge, a cheeky man with a curl on his lip, said . . . what did he say? “I think I threw up in my mouth.”
Wenda boomed in with a cackle and shouted. Shouted. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. Joy Ballard is a hack and a fraud. She cannot cook.” Wenda danced a jig. “She can’t even make her own chili. Joy, my eight-year-old knows to brown the meat before adding the tomatoes and beans.”
As the judges spit out their bites of Joy’s chili, choking, reaching for their water, the studio audience watched in syrupy silence.
The light of friendship in Bette’s eyes flamed red. The director called cut. The floor manager snapped to and ordered the audience evacuated. Bette exploded, swearing like a jilted lover, tearing into her producer and crew for not vetting her guests, declaring they were all working overtime, yes, weekends, to prep a new show to take this bleeping one’s slot.
Allison chose that particular time to return from Starbucks and stand in the wings. Bette tore into her.
“You set me up with this fraud? Allison, we are not friends anymore. How could you do this to me? All the favors I owe you? Paid. In. Full.” Her words flew, cut in two. “And you, Wenda Divine. Friendly rivalry? You lying cretin. You’ve humiliated me. Tell your agent to never call me. For you or any of his clients. You disgust me.”
“You’re overreacting. Bette, this is great TV.”
Joy slapped her hands to the sides of her head as if to stop the continual play of voices and images. So tired . . . so tired. She wanted to sleep, but when she closed her eyes she saw her defeated form standing in Bette’s studio as folks shuffled past her. No one spoke or glimpsed her way. It was worse than being cussed out. She was invisible.
Joy leapt out of her chair. Her knees buckled, her legs shimmied. Pacing the room, she tried to find her logical bearings, the North for her emotional compass. Where was Jesus? If He was with her, how could she crash and burn so vividly?
His name rose in her spirit and slipped through her lips. Jesus. In her darkness and distance, He was still her only Light. Standing at the foot of her bed, Joy gathered herself, shouting His name into her soul to awaken her hope.
After she’d been abandoned and left alone by Bette’s staff and crew, Joy exited the studio into the nippy fall air and hailed a cab. The limo that had picked her up with chilled mimosas and warm bagels had long since left. But as she reached for the cab’s door, a staffer from the show appeared out of nowhere, lifted Joy’s hair, and removed the turquoise necklace. Her humiliation was complete.
When she got to the hotel, she wasn’t even sure she’d have a reservation for the night. Or if she did, whether she’d have to pay the bill. But she did. And Joy never felt so grateful.
In the cascading light of the Chrysler Building, Joy resigned herself to her fate. It was over. The world would know, if they didn’t already. She should be relieved. Grateful for the charade to be ended.
But she was sad. She’d ruined the show, tarnished the last of Daddy’s name, and killed any chance for Luke’s talent to shine. The money would be missed. The potential money even more. She’d wanted to do something fun with the girls for Christmas this year.
She’d miss getting up in the morning with a purpose. Even in her early, unsure days on the show, Joy loved going to work, earning her way.
Falling back onto the bed, Joy reached for her phone and scanned the call list. Allison. Allison. Allison. Mama. Mama. Mama.
But none from Luke. Joy tossed the phone toward the pillows.
He’d never talk to her again.
Why didn’t I walk off? Refuse? A diva display would’ve been better than humiliation. Why didn’t I break a leg? But, no, I couldn’t quit.
Jesus, what do I do now? What is the food of the One who sent me?
Red was awake and eating his green Jell-O when Luke returned to the room. “Look at you, Son. Who died?” Red chuckled. “I can ask that now that I know it’s not going to be me.”
“Joy.”
“Joy?” Red’s Jell-O cube wiggled off his spoon and dropped to his lap.
“She didn’t die physically, Red. She was on The Bette Hudson Show. Blew a cook-off, and it’s all over YouTube.”
“Blew a cook-off? That ain’t nothin’.” Red popped the cube into his mouth and wiped the green stain from his hospital gown with the heel of his hand. “Any chef can have a bad day. And she’s just a home cook, ain’t she?”
“Red, she didn’t have a bad day; she crashed and burned. Her career is over. My career is over.” Dang it, Joy, you couldn’t even brown meat?
Red shoved his tray to the side. “Is that what’s bothering you, Luke? Joy blowing your career?”
“I’ve been on the phone for an hour with friends from my restaurant days. They’re up in arms about her, calling her a fraud, a poser. Asking me if I knew and how I could’ve protected her.” He huffed against the rain-stained windowpane. Beyond the sparse parking lot lights on the edge of the blacktop, there was nothing but darkness. “Even have entertainment news shows calling, wanting to know what’s going on.”
Luke’s leg twitched with the urge to ride. Saddle up Trixie and gallop across the prairie night with only the moon as comfort and put this whole summer behind him.
“Can’t be that bad. What’s the big deal?”
“To foodies, it is a big deal. They feel defrauded, cheated. I helped Joy pull off the masquerade, so I’m just as guilty.”
“Well then, you got a problem, don’t you, boy?”
“Yeah, I do.” Lord, really, this was Your big plan for me?
“Your problem is you’re in love with her. Just like I told you when I was in Beaufort.” Red settled back, head dug into his pillow, eyes closed.
“In love?” What he felt at the moment wasn’t love. “No. Definitely no.” Because he was going to leave Beaufort for Portland. He’d decided it during his third viewing of the YouTube clip.
“Simmer down. You’re mad now, but you’ll realize. You love her.”
&
nbsp; “Got yourself a couple of new heart parts and you think you know everything about love.”
Red chuckled. “It’s good to have you here, but you best get on home. See if you can comfort that gal.”
“She doesn’t need my comfort.” Luke peered down at his phone vibrating in his hand. Linus.
“Got your message, Luke. Checked out YouTube. So, when can I expect you in Portland?”
“Joy, I know you’re in there.” The heavy hotel room door vibrated with fist pounding.
Joy flopped her arm over the side of the bed. She’d just drifted off. Sitting up, she shoved her hair from her eyes and stared at the twinkling Chrysler building lights until her vision blurred.
The pounding didn’t stop. “Joy, open up!”
“She died and went to heaven.” Joy’s words stumbled over her parched lips.
“Joy! Open. Up.” Allison added kicking to the pounding. “I can do this all night.”
Rolling off the bed, Joy crawled toward the door, pushing to her feet before gripping the door handle’s cold, hard surface. “You’re drunk.”
“You bet I am.” Allison teetered and wobbled as she entered the room. “Because if I were sober, I’d want to punch the living daylights out of you.”
Joy raised her arms, leaving her torso exposed and unprotected. “Come on, take your best shot.”
“You know what you are, Joy?” Allison stumbled backward into a chair, a bottle of caramel-colored liquid dangling from her grip. Dark wisps of her hair danced and shimmied above her head and outlined her face. “A dream killer. Dream. Killer.” She tipped the bottle to her lips. A splash of bourbon ran down her chin.
“I’m ordering coffee.” At the bedside table, Joy clicked on the lamp and reached for the phone. Her weak fingers trembled, barely gripping the receiver, and her exhausted eyes refused to focus on the phone’s small-print directory. She mashed zero and asked the operator for room service.
“What the heck, Joy? Chili. It was chili. You couldn’t even make your own chili recipe? Ground beef and beans.” Allison fell back against the chair. “Unbelievable.” Another swig of bourbon. “Don’t order me coffee. I got my comfort right here.” She patted the side of the bottle, her words sloppy and slurring.