Delicious!

by Ruth Reichl

  Book Two

  Magic Moments

  Dear Genie,

  Watching Diana drive off felt so horrible. It wasn’t like watching you go, but still … We said all that stuff about staying in touch, but everything’s different from a distance. As you know.

  Working at Fontanari’s this weekend was as bad as being back home after everything happened—all that pity. Rosalie kept trying to play matchmaker, pushing me out front every time a single guy walked through the door. I could feel them all worrying about me, and it just made me edgy and irritable.

  But the new job starts tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to that. How’d I get so lucky? Everyone else is out there pleading for work, and I get to hang out in a cozy mansion while I consider my next move. I’m sure I could get an editorial assistant position at some other magazine, but after Delicious!, it’s all downhill. I don’t want to just write, I want to write about food. I could always work at Fontanari’s. But, much as I love them all, it doesn’t feel like moving forward. I try to think what you’d do in my place.

  xxb

  My key still worked, but the mansion was dark as I climbed the stairs and so silent that even my quiet footsteps boomed through the empty building. When Jake said I’d be the one, I didn’t quite get that I’d be the only one.

  I could not have imagined these eerily empty halls, the thunderous silence, the vacant offices littered with trash. In the five days we’d been gone, most of the furniture had been moved out, but they’d left broken pieces, and here and there I’d come upon an upturned chair missing a leg or two. Piles of abandoned photographs lay in dejected heaps in every room, and in the halls big plastic dumpsters overflowed with old notebooks, broken staplers, and forgotten office supplies. Piles of unused boxes sat waiting to be filled. The air smelled like damp paper, and hanging over everything was an odd odor of decay.

  Most of the office doors were open; crisscrossed yellow tape shouting CHECKED + EMPTY stretched across each threshold. It was dark, so dark. Sammy’s door was closed, but tape with the word UNSANITIZED in huge letters had been posted there, as if vicious germs waited inside, poised to leap out and attack. I walked down the hallway, futilely flipping switches until it finally hit me: Someone had taken every accessible lightbulb.

  They’d left a couple in my office, and it was a relief to watch the lights come stuttering on. But, beyond it, Jake’s empty office loomed. I kept listening for Sherman, but of course he wasn’t here.

  How could I pretend this was a normal workday? Still, I began to open the mail I’d found spilled across the lobby floor.

  “Dear Delicious!,” read the first one. “Is it true that you’ll continue to honor your Guarantee? If so, I would like to point out that there was nothing wild about the ‘wild mushrooms’ in the turkey stuffing featured in your final issue. Shiitake, as you must surely know, are now widely cultivated.… ”

  And exactly what would you like me to do about that? I wondered crossly. It turned out that what Mrs. Bowman wanted was a refund because she felt tricked by our “false assertion.”

  A flash of rage surged through me. “Dear Mrs. Bowman, you could easily have gathered your own mushrooms and substituted them for the ones called for in the recipe.” I stopped typing. What did I care? I deleted the words one by one.

  “Dear Mrs. Bowman.” I was typing more slowly. “I am so sorry that you were unhappy with our mushroom stuffing. If you will send us your receipts, we will cheerfully refund your money. We want our readers to have happy memories of a great magazine. All of us here at Delicious! wish you very happy holidays.”

  I sensed my phantom coworkers gathered around me, silently applauding. Then I picked up the next letter. I’d give everyone their money back. Why not?

  Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll buy lightbulbs. And some flowers. I’ll bring in a teakettle. It’s not so bad.…

  A skittering sound came from the hall, and my heart began to race. I jumped up to peer fearfully into the corridor. Empty. Was that a mouse’s tail disappearing around the corner? Or was it only my imagination? I sat down, trying to calm myself. I was being ridiculous, I knew that, but I needed a human voice to put this in perspective.

  I thought about calling Aunt Melba, anticipating the conversation. She’d be sympathetic. She’d say, once again, how much Dad missed me. She’d suggest, again, that I quit the job and come home. No thanks.

  As I was thinking that, my phone rang, and I looked down to see that it was Dad.

  “Just checking in on you,” he said. “This has to be hard. Things were going so well, and now this. I wanted to make sure you’re still coming home for Thanksgiving.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that. Would you mind terribly if I didn’t come?”

  “Yes.” His voice was quiet. “I would mind terribly.” He heaved a deep and audible sigh. “I miss you. I worry about you. I’d like to lay eyes on you. But I would understand.”

  “Really?”

  “You think I don’t know how you feel?” He sounded almost angry. “You think I don’t understand why you ran away? I don’t like it, but I understand it. And I know why you need to keep us at arm’s length. If you think coming home right now will be too hard, well, you need to do what you think is best for yourself.”

  “Really?” I said again, a bit stunned by his generosity. “Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

  “I love you too. And I’ll come—we’ll come—as soon as you’re ready. Say the word.”

  I hung up the phone and found that I was crying. “Stop it!” I lectured myself. “Just stop it!” I knew that what I needed was the familiar querulous voice of Mrs. Cloverly.

  “Is something wrong, dear?” My call had startled her. When I explained that the magazine had closed, I heard a sad, watery little sigh. I knew how she felt; her world had just grown smaller.

  “But the Guarantee will continue as before.” I tried to sound jolly.

  She sounded hopeful. “I can still call?”

  “Absolutely.” I was surprised by how much more cheerful she’d made me feel. “I’ll be here every day.”

  But every day the gloomy building grew more neglected, and it was hard to keep my spirits up. I understood that Young Arthur wanted someone there to keep the building from seeming completely abandoned, but by the third Monday, the empty rooms with their yellow tape seemed even more forbidding, and Jake’s dark office was a heavy, reproachful presence. The odd smell I’d noticed had grown stronger, and by Wednesday I was imagining whole families of mice rotting inside the walls. Walking down the hall, leaving for the long Thanksgiving weekend, my foot brushed one of the piles of forgotten photographs. It slithered toward me like a snake, and I went running down the stairs and out the door, slamming it behind me. I was relieved to have a few days away.

  Dear Genie,

  The Timbers Mansion has morphed into a nightmare, and I can’t tell another soul how horrible it is. Dad and Aunt Melba would want me to come home, but what am I going to do in California? Go back to school? No, thanks; I don’t think I could take it. Sal and Rosalie have offered me a full-time job, but that’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life, and I couldn’t bear to hurt them. You think I should stick it out, right? At least until I figure something else out? I know you do.

  I spent Thanksgiving working at Fontanari’s, and afterward we all went upstairs and ate turkey together. It made me think about Sammy. I remembered something he said the first time I had dinner at his house—that he was lucky to know when he was happy. I envied him, but now, looking back, it makes me feel so stupid because, in spite of everything, at that moment I was pretty happy too. It just went right by me. Next time I hope I’m smart enough to recognize happiness when I have it.

  Miss you, miss you, miss you.

  xxb

  On the Monday after Thanksgiving, the Timbers Mansion smelled even worse. I climbed the stairs, juggling coffee in one hand and a bunch of roses in the other, burying my nose in the flowers. In the hallway I k
ept my eyes straight ahead, trying to avoid the broken furniture, the dumpsters, the tape across the doors. I put the roses in a vase, took a sip of coffee, and sank gratefully into my chair. Then I picked up the phone and called Mrs. Cloverly.

  It was pathetic, really, that this crazy old lady in a trailer park had become such a necessary presence, but when I talked to her I could almost fool myself into thinking that nothing had changed. She’d spent the weekend cooking, and her three vile dishes kept us busy for an hour.

  But when I hung up, the silence was so thick that I jumped when a board creaked in the hall.

  It was not my imagination: Someone was out there, walking toward me. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my body. I stood up. At least they wouldn’t catch me unawares.

  The footsteps stopped outside my doorway and an apprehensive voice called, “Is somebody there?”

  I knew that voice! I ran into the hall and threw my arms around Sammy.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you attempting to terrify me into an early grave?”

  “How the hell did you get in?”

  “I will have you know that my key still works. And I was sternly admonished to retrieve my personal effects at the earliest possible opportunity.”

  “Then why didn’t you come sooner?”

  “For this?” He waved a hand, indicating the decrepit hallway in which we stood. “I was high up in the mountains when your missive reached me. I screamed. I wailed. I wept. I returned to Istanbul and began peregrinating through the city like a demented chicken, intending to change my tickets and embark on the next New York—bound conveyance. I was at the airline office when a thought struck: I was behaving like an ass. This was the last waltz, and nobody was about to question my expenses. So I snatched up my tickets, rented a limousine, upgraded myself to the presidential suite, and made reservations in Istanbul’s finest restaurants. Young Arthur be damned!” He looked me up and down and added frankly, “It seems that you should have done something similar, my dear. Whatever you have been up to has done you very little good.”

  I put my hand up to my hair, remembering that I hadn’t bothered to comb it this morning. I wished I’d washed my face. I saw nobody during the week, and some mornings I was tempted to come to work in my pajamas. Still, it was humiliating to be caught like this. “Forget about me. What will you do?”

  “Dear one, do not waste a moment fretting over me.” He smoothed his tweed suit. “I was in this business before you were born. I know everyone. Now that I have returned, I shall have three offers before the week is out.” He pulled me down the hall. “Come help me pack.”

  Sammy sniffed suspiciously and said, “What is that deplorable aroma?”

  I shrugged it off. “Dead mice behind the walls, I think. Nobody comes to clean anymore.”

  “Hmmf.” Sammy stood in front of his closed door, staring angrily at the yellow tape. “Unsanitized?” He ripped it savagely off. “Unsanitized?” He fit the key into the lock. “What a barbaric notion.” The door swung inward, creaking on its hinges, and I held my breath.

  His lovely orchids were dead. They lay shriveled against the wall, mere skeletons now, their fronds groping blindly. But everything else had survived, and I picked up the beautiful copper teapot, happy to find it unharmed. Sammy snatched it from me, running his fingers across the patina as if it were a beloved pet. He looked again at the pathetic plants, then pulled them gently off the wall and deposited them in the garbage. “Ruby—Young Arthur’s secretary, you know—has been leaving daily messages, insinuating that if I fail to clear out my office, everything will be forfeit to Pickwick. But you have yet to explain your own presence here. Wait.” He held up a hand. “Allow me to conjecture. The Guarantee?”

  “You’re very perceptive.”

  “I take it Mrs. Cloverly continues to be your number-one customer?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Not anymore. The new crazies put her efforts to shame.”

  “Goody.” Sammy sounded delighted. “Tell!”

  “I’ll do better than that.” Suddenly feeling lighthearted, I went off to get the most absurd letter of the day.

  Dear Sir or Madame:

  Is it too much to expect that, despite the magazine’s unfortunate, untimely, and in my opinion utterly unnecessary demise, you will continue to stand behind the Delicious! Guarantee? I certainly hope not, for I have a complaint of an extremely serious nature.

  Each year I allow each member of my family to request one special cookie for Christmas. This year Aunt Emma has requested the Nutty Apricot Lace Cookies that you published in the seventies. I remembered them as crisp, chewy, and rather likable. Well, sir, I thought I had lost the recipe, but when I went to my file I had no trouble whatsoever locating it.

  I did think that the recipe seemed to be missing some crucial ingredients. But I have enormous faith in your fine cooks, and I followed the recipe exactly as written. Let me assure you that I am being kind when I say that these were horrid little hockey pucks and that I wished with all my heart that the recipe had been lost.

  Then I recalled the Delicious! Guarantee. The ingredients were modest—oatmeal is not very dear—but it is the principle, you see. My receipts are enclosed. If you have an alternate but excellent recipe for something resembling a Nutty Apricot Lace Cookie, please enclose that along with the check. I don’t like to disappoint Aunt Emma.

  Faithfully yours,

  Emmajane (Mrs. Gifford) Janson

  Sammy laughed until he was wheezing. When he had finally sobered up, he gave me an incredulous look. “This is how you are currently employed? Responding to women who request refunds for antique recipes?”

  “There’s apparently no statute of limitations on the Guarantee.”

  He began to laugh again. “I will wager that Emmajane miscopied the recipe. Did you seek the original?”

  “It wasn’t in the database.”

  “And the recipe index?”

  “Jake took his back issues with him.” I hesitated a moment. “I’d have to go to the library to do that. And …” I gestured upward.

  “You are loath to venture into that long-locked room. I quite comprehend. Have no fear.” He patted my arm. “I shall accompany you. Have you the key?”

  “I bet it’s in one of the drawers in Jake’s desk. The desk is so big they didn’t bother moving it out.”

  He linked an arm through mine, leading me into Jake’s nearly empty office. “At one time the library was my favorite room in this entire edifice, but when Jake pronounced it off-limits, I quite forgot its existence. It has been eons … I would appreciate a last look.”

  The key was where I’d expected it to be. I snatched it up, and together we climbed the grand, dusty staircase. As we rose, the evil funk grew so strong that Sammy pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. “No doubt it is the stinking corpse of the magazine, rotting around us. The smell! How do you bear it?”

  “You get used to it.”

  He patted my hand and looked at me, eyes filled with pity. “Oh, my dear.” His voice was soft. “Oh, my dear.”

  We walked through the sad shambles of what used to be the art department and stood before the scarred library door. It was a solid piece of wood, but when I put the key into the lock, it sighed softly as it swung inward on its hinges. We tiptoed into cool darkness, the air scented with an ancient perfume that mingled paper, leather, and, oddly, apples. The Persian carpet was so soft that I felt as if I were floating into the long, high, book-lined room. The curtain-shrouded windows provided no illumination, and I fumbled for the light switch. As I turned it on, the room became infused with a soft golden light that fell across heaps of books lying on long oak tables, as if phantom readers had just put them down, planning to return at any moment.

  Deep suede armchairs were scattered invitingly around the room; the Tiffany lamps above them gave off a jewel-like glow. A huge, ancient globe, taller than I am, stood in one corner, and in the other a gi
ant dictionary perched regally on a wooden stand. “I had forgotten how beautiful this room is,” Sammy whispered with a kind of reverence.

  I walked to a desk in the middle of the room; it was fantastically decorated with inlaid wood, a midnight sky depicting the signs of the zodiac. The chair behind the desk was as tall as a throne, and when I sat down on the dark-blue velvet cushion, it seemed to enfold me in an embrace. I looked at the shelf next to the chair, unsurprised to find that it held back issues of Delicious!

  While Sammy went off to explore, I settled into the chair, leafing through the back issues in search of Nutty Apricot Lace Cookies. If the recipe had been there, I would certainly have found it, but by the time I put down the December 1979 issue, I was positive that Mrs. Gifford’s recipe came from some other magazine.

  “Come here!” Sammy’s voice was muffled, as if it was reaching me from a great distance. I stood up, but I could not see him. “I am in the nether regions of the library. Make haste!”

  I followed the sound of his voice, but when I reached the back wall, Sammy was still nowhere to be seen. “Where are you?”

  “Are you standing beside the very last shelf?” His voice was coming from behind the wall.

  “Where are you?” I repeated.

  “Go around to the end of the bookcase and give it a hearty shove.” I walked to the edge of the shelf, put both hands in front of me, and pushed. It vibrated a bit, moved forward an inch, then rocked back into place.

  “Do not be delicate. Harder!”

  This time I put my whole body into it, and the shelf rolled sideways, revealing a small doorway hidden in the wall. Sammy’s head suddenly appeared, like a turtle from its shell. “Please join me.” He was obviously thrilled that he’d surprised me, and he gave me a delighted grin before his face vanished.

  The narrow doorway was about four feet high, and as I squeezed through I wondered how Sammy had managed it. I found him standing in a small dim room, the size of a child’s bedroom, illuminated by a single lightbulb. Floor-to-ceiling shelves covered all four walls, and they were absolutely stuffed with papers. “What is this?” I whispered. “Did you know it was here?”