The Lost Recipe for Happiness

by Barbara O'Neal

  “How’s Ivan?”

  Her shoulders twitched. “He’s in surgery. They don’t know.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not necessary. Why should both of us be sleep deprived?” As she spoke, she moved stiffly around the room, picking up bits and pieces, a blouse, her socks, a bracelet she wore on her left wrist where most people wore a watch. Her defenses were so thin and tattered they were like an ancient negligee. He could see right through them.

  He went to her, pulled her into his arms, and held her against his chest. “Elena, let go for once in your life, let go before you shatter.”

  She only allowed his comfort for the blink of an eye before she pushed him away. “I can’t.”

  “Be hugged or let go?”

  “One leads to the other, and I can’t afford them. Not right now, Julian, okay?”

  And suddenly he realized that she might never let him in, that this might be an entirely one-sided relationship, with Elena offering tidbits here and there, while Julian poured himself, all of his heart and soul and longings and dreams, into it. He thought of her friend Mia, whom she’d cut out of her life so coldly, after how many years of friendship?

  As he stood there, he felt the distance between them widen, or perhaps it was that he was only now seeing the truth of it, the truth of the dynamic, that Elena stood aloofly at the top of an icy mountain, and he—her swain, her supplicant—tried to scale the slippery summit to no avail. He saw that the events of her life had stranded her there, alone, that she had not gone willingly. And yet…

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital and drop you off. If you need to get back, Patrick can bring you.”

  She looked at him, and he could tell she sensed the distance, too. “Thank you. Don’t wait up. I’ll probably stay with Patrick. He’s a mess.”

  Julian nodded.

  Alvin whined softly.

  Ivan awakened slowly to a sensation of gagging and a headache that was like bombs going off. In his body were aches and pains and one dead zone around his ankle, which felt muffled or smothered.

  A voice said, “He’s coming around,” and Ivan coughed as something slid out of his throat. There was rawness in his throat, a blast of pain in his face, his mouth. He opened his eyes a crack, gathering details, trying to piece together what he remembered, but there was a buzz in his brain and he couldn’t really think, and this room was lit with a cold bluish fluorescent light. He could hear the buzz of it. Someone took his hand.

  Patrick said, “Ivan?”

  He opened his eyes. There was Patrick, peering at him, his face ravaged with tears. “What happened?” Ivan rasped, and the words barely came out around the rawness.

  “You wrecked your car. Ran into a tree three blocks from the Orange Bear.” Patrick glared at him. “You must have been going sixty to wreck the car that badly, they think.”

  Ivan slowly shook his head. “I can’t remember anything.” There was a wisp of something, some faint unpleasant memory, and his bruised head skittered away.

  “It’s all right, don’t worry. It will come back.” Patrick took a breath. “I thought you died, Ivan.” Tears spilled down his face. “I thought you died.” He kissed him, and Ivan tasted the salt and tears and there was something wrong, but he couldn’t remember what it was. As Patrick kissed him, he just let the light of that fill him up, and he fell asleep.

  Around 3 a.m., Elena sent Patrick home for a nap and a change of clothes. He was upset in ways she’d never seen, pacing and weeping. “I should have gone outside, made sure he was all right. It was humiliating for me, but how much more for Ivan? That wasn’t fair. I’m not usually so mean. But I was tired of him fighting and being jealous and I wanted to teach him a lesson.”

  Elena nodded, rubbed his back, listened and listened and listened as he covered the same ground, over and over. “I’ll sit with him,” she said. “Then I’ll go home when you get back.”

  Alone in the room with Ivan sound asleep, Elena dozed. When she awakened, Isobel was there, sitting on the end of the bed, her legs teenager skinny, her neck looped with a dozen cheap necklaces. Her trademark. “He almost killed himself,” she said, putting her hand on Ivan’s knee. He didn’t stir. “He’s got so much love in him, poor guy.”

  Elena nodded, feeling hollow as she listened to the blips and bleeps and gurgles, the faraway sound of pages—why did hospitals still use such noisy technology anyway, when every nurse and doctor could wear a cell and be paged via text? Then patients could sleep.

  “Is there anything more depressing in the world than a hospital room in the middle of the night?” Elena said.

  “You were there a long time,” Isobel said. She was still looking at Ivan with a slight frown.

  Elena nodded. It made her feel hollow to sit there, looking at Ivan’s ravaged face. His lower lip, always so sensual anyway, was swollen twice the normal size and had a split through the middle of it, angry and moist. One eye was swollen shut, and there was an odd mark on his cheek, a fabric imprint. He’d broken a few ribs, and his left ankle, but it was cleanly broken and after a week he’d be able to stand on the cast. They thought he had a concussion, and he was covered with assorted cuts and bruises and stitches, but considering the impact, he’d been very lucky.

  The chef computer in her was running scenarios of how to make the kitchen work without him for a few days. At least he hadn’t broken anything critical, like a wrist or a shoulder or—

  Isobel touched his brow, his hair. “He doesn’t say how bad it was,” she whispered. “When he was a child.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad,” Isobel said. She kissed his forehead. “Now he has you. You have him.”

  He made a sound and moved restlessly. “Hey, Jefa,” he said. His voice was ragged.

  A swell of emotion burst in Elena, and she jumped up, feeling tangled and hot and relieved and furious and grateful. So many emotions charged through her throat that she couldn’t find words. “Don’t you ever do something like that again, Ivan, do you hear me?”

  He looked stricken, and that wasn’t her goal. She didn’t know what her goal was. She picked up his scarred, tattooed hand, feeling tears well up in her eyes and cascade over her face and pour out in such waves that she couldn’t speak. She put her hand on his face, lightly, gently, and shook her head. “I need you, Ivan. I need you to live, okay?”

  He raised a hand and pulled her head down to his chest and she wept and so did he. “Thank you,” he growled.

  Isobel put her hand on Elena’s head. Then she was gone.

  When Patrick returned, Elena called Julian. “I need a favor,” she said. “I need to do something today. I need to go to the airport.”

  When he picked her up, he was aloof and quiet. Which she deserved. “When will you be back?” he asked finally, when they stopped at the curb at the airport.

  “This afternoon. I’m just going to see my mama.”

  He reached out and turned off the ignition. “I need to get something off my chest before you go, Elena.”

  “I don’t really have a lot of time, Julian,” she said, putting her hand on the door, ready to bolt.

  “You have enough time.” He pulled off his sunglasses. “We’re at a crossroads, Elena. I’m not the kind of man who can settle for a little bit of you, here and there, whenever you feel like letting me in.”

  Enormously uncomfortable, she looked away, watched a woman in an expensive parka cross the street. “Julian, this is not the time for—”

  “There’s never a good time.” He reached into the back seat and pulled out a notebook. “Before I give you this, I want to tell you that I am in love with you.” He took a breath. “Not a little bit. I love you like you were made for me. I think you love me, too, but you have to get over your fears and let me in, or it will never work.”

  “Julian, don’t do this right now! It’s been a really long night and I’m feeling very emotional and I just want to go see my mom, okay? I’ll b
e back this afternoon.”

  “There’s one more thing.” He held the notebook in his hands. “I have a confession to make. The movie we’re going to start filming in June is a ghost story. About a woman who lost her soul mate in a car accident and is haunted by him.”

  Elena stared at him.

  He took her hand and put the notebook into it. “This is the script,” he said, his rich dark eyes direct. “Take it and read it. If you hate it and you don’t want me to make the movie, I’ll pull it.”

  She started to shove it back at him. He pushed back, patiently, quietly, that same stillness that had so captured her the first time they sat together over a meal in Vancouver rippling from him and touching her.

  “Just read it,” he said. “Give me a chance.”

  Afraid she’d fall apart right there, Elena yanked open the door. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

  He leapt out of the car and came around. In the bright cold, in front of God and everyone, he said, “I love you, Elena.”

  She nodded, and ducked away, tucking the script under her arm. She knew she was being cold. She heard Patrick and Mia and everyone else telling her to let her guard down. But it was her guard that had held her together.

  This one time, though, she turned around and made her lurching way back to him. “I’ll read it,” she said. “But I am who I am, too.”

  “I get that.”

  It was a wildly expensive but fairly short commuter flight to Santa Fe, bumpy and probably dangerous. Elena recognized a famous actress behind giant sunglasses, and in the front of the plane was an Arab businessman in a five-thousand-dollar suit. He wore heady cologne.

  Elena wore her sunglasses as well, to cover the ravaged swollenness of her eyes. She was exhausted, emotionally, physically, and mentally, but this was her one and only day off, and she didn’t have any time to waste. She didn’t read the script, not yet. It sat in her lap, burning hot, but she didn’t let herself think, a trick that had worked for her for twenty years, the only way she’d found to cope with her losses. Look forward, never back.

  The propellers were very loud, and she leaned against the window and watched the mountains zigzagging away beneath the plane, thickly coated in white. Here was a land where you could still find isolation if you wanted it—there was a single house, with a plume of smoke drifting into the sky, so still it looked as if it had been painted there. There were tiny ribbons of road in places, and sudden, open vastness of valleys that stretched for miles and miles and miles between ridges of mountains. It was rugged, dramatically beautiful country, the blues and whites so calming. The beauty gave her rest. She dozed.

  The plane landed at the tiny Santa Fe airport, and Elena went to the ladies’ room to wash her face. She looked a little better than she had this morning, the mottled marks of heavy weeping faded, but she still looked tired and wan. She washed her face in cold, cold water, feeling it wake her up a lot, and then, from her purse, she fished out a makeup bag and repaired the damage as well as she could. A little cover to hide the dark circles, some mascara to make her look like she cared about herself, a touch of blush to cover the sallowness.

  Every bone in her body hurt, and that pain showed. It was turning her into an old woman. Taking a breath, she squared her shoulders, then combed her hair and marched out to rent a car and drove into Santa Fe proper for breakfast. She was starving.

  It had been a long time since she’d been in the sophisticated little town where she had spent so much of her time as a kitchen slave, learning the basics of a kitchen, the arrangements and the hierarchy and the toughness she’d need. It came easily to her. She worked hard, harder than anyone, because she had no other life, and only this chance. She never complained. She spoke Spanish. She knew food and understood it. When the male quadrant tried to intimidate her, she donned an icy aplomb and gave back as good as she got, winning their respect.

  To stretch out her spine and hip, she walked around the still-quiet plaza and surrounding side streets, ambling by the places she’d worked. Some were still there. Some were gone, replaced by some other up-to-the minute hot spot.

  The wintertime sun was warm, and the walking eased her body, and she circled the shops around the plaza peacefully, stopping happily in a drugstore she’d frequented to buy a postcard, and ducking beneath the roofed and ancient porches. Indians set up their wares along the Palace of the Governors. A woman in her sixties with dreadlocks and sandals walked by, bracelets by the thousands weighing down her skinny wrists. A pair of homeless people, young, unidentifiably male or female, smoked on a bench in the center. Not many others on a January Monday.

  She ducked into the Plaza Café for a breakfast to fortify herself, and was slammed, hard, by the heady scent of chile and pork and eggs, all made the New Mexico way. She heard the sound of her accents, her home, the sound of Spanish and Indian layered over English, and stared, stunned and hungry, at the shapes of faces she had missed, the broad cheekbones and particular grins. Dark-skinned men with long hair falling down their backs, clad in worn jeans and boots and checkered shirts, sat next to a knot of locals in their sixties, speaking ancient, colonial Spanish, next to a well-tended Anglo couple in their sixties dressed in golf casual. The wife wore a huge yellow diamond on her finger.

  Elena felt dizzy and pulled the sunglasses off her face, breathing in. “You okay, honey?” the hostess said, coming over. She had black hair worn in a style not worn by anyone but old Mexican or Italian women of a certain age, curled tight to the head, neatly done by the beauty parlor every week.

  “I will be,” she said in Spanish, “when I’ve had a good breakfast of my own kind of food.”

  The woman grinned and replied in kind. “You been away, then, huh?”

  “Long time,” Elena said, settling into a seat by the wall, with a view of the restaurant all around her. She ate carnitas and blue corn tortillas and drank two big mugs of coffee with sugar and cream, letting the sound of home wash over her like Chinook winds, restorative and warm. The Spanish, the Indians, the Anglos. The smell of onions, the bustle of glasses and silverware clanking.

  She sat a long time, feeling lost pieces of herself thawing, flowing back into place. She watched a trio of Indian men with thin long legs and barrel chests rib each other and the waitress and the busboy. The table of Mexican couples, exceedingly well tended, as clean and pressed as fresh laundry, who had obviously been meeting every Monday for a long, long time, maybe decades, talked about somebody’s funeral in a cheerful way. The CEO and his I-don’t do-casual wife paid with an American Express card. One of the Indian guys pulled a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket and counted out the ones, smoothing each one as he laughed over something one of the guys said to him.

  In her stunned and exhausted state, she could make no sense of the well-being that flooded her, the feeling of alignment that fortified her for what lay ahead. But she didn’t have to make sense of anything. She just had to take one step and then another. She felt oddly disconnected, as if some fake front person had taken over, or maybe her ghosts, and she was just along for the ride.

  The next step was climbing into her car and driving north. She took it.

  FORTY-TWO

  CARNITAS

  MARINADE

  Juice from two fresh limes

  1 T lime zest

  1 tsp fresh ground pepper

  1–2 garlic cloves, peeled and whole

  1 cup water

  MEAT

  2 lbs. pork butt

  2 1/2 lbs. lard

  1/2 cup water

  1 large onion, cut into quarters

  2 garlic cloves, slivered

  1 T ground cumin

  1 tsp salt

  1 tsp black pepper

  3 long strips lime peel

  2–3 New Mexico green chiles, roasted, peeled, and cut into strips Water

  MARINADE: Mix all the ingredients except the water in a glass bowl. Put the meat in the bowl and add water to cover meat lightly. Marinate for 2 hours or o
vernight.

  MEAT: When ready to cook, pour off the marinade. Place the lard and water in a deep heavy pan like a cast-iron Dutch oven and add the onions, garlic, and spices. Warm over medium heat until the lard is melted, then add lime peel and the meat. Reduce heat to medium low and let the meat simmer until it is stewed through, but not browned. Take out the meat and skim the onion and garlic from the fat, then replace the meat, turn up the heat to medium high and let the outside get nicely browned and crispy, about 15 minutes.

  Serve with fresh cilantro, pico de gallo, lime wedges, avocados, grilled onions, and, of course, fresh tortillas.

  FORTY-THREE

  It was a blustery day, with wind scudding in blasts over the road. A tumbleweed the size of a tractor tire danced and bounced along the length of a fence. A plastic grocery bag swooped and sailed on a current, then fell abruptly to the ground. Elena felt the gusts against the side of the car, bumping her first to the left, then to the right. Correcting for the wind, she would have to correct again when it stopped.

  “I hate wind!” she cried aloud. Then more quietly, “Hate it.”

  Espanola had grown a little since the last time she was there, but not very much. A Wal-Mart had sprouted in what used to be a field, and the main drag now boasted a couple of fast-food chains, but mostly it was the same weary-looking gas stations and liquor stores and farm stands now closed for the season, everything all the more bleak in January, when the color was leached from the grass, and the sky wore a thick sweater of eggplant clouds.

  Once she could have named nearly everyone in town, Spanish, Indian, or Anglo. She would have known the cousins of cousins and who loved who and what they did on Saturday nights and whose grandma was sick. At any given function, from county fair to church potluck, she would be related to at least a half-dozen people, often many more.