“With Jane? That’s not what I meant. I could find a kitchen somewhere. I just need to cook.”
“You need to stay here.” Dad’s look disarmed me. “My girls are hurting. Both my girls.”
I opened my mouth to protest and closed it again.
“It’ll also give me an excuse to come back on Saturday. Jane needs more help than she’ll admit.” Dad leaned down, kissed me on the forehead, and walked out of the room.
I still had no words when Dad pulled out of the driveway minutes later. I tripped forward, perhaps to run after the car. I’ll never know . . .
“Elizabeth, right?”
I spun around. Nick, the guy from the park, stood close behind me.
“Yes.”
“Is Jane here?”
“She’s still asleep. Was she expecting you?”
“No worries. We planned to meet tomorrow. I just wanted to bring her these.” He stretched a brown paper bag in front of him.
I expected something light by the way he held it, but my arm dropped with the weight. “What is it?” I opened the bag, and the scent of apples, sweet and ripe, wafted up. They were brown and shriveled and resting in a Pyrex bowl. The sight was incongruent with the wonderful fragrant smell.
“I have a fantastic tree, cooking apples really—too tart to eat. But I freeze a lot. Jane mentioned last week that she loved applesauce, so I defrosted my last batch for her. They make the best applesauce I’ve ever had.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you know how to make applesauce?”
“I can figure it out.”
“It’s super easy; just add sugar and stew them over a low heat.”
And cinnamon? You should also add nutmeg or a little chili, but not too much. I shrugged and simply said, “Thank you.” I wasn’t feeling much like a chef or like talking. I glanced down the road. Dad was gone.
“You’re welcome.” He paused. “Are you okay?”
I turned to find him staring at me. “Fine. Why?”
“You . . . you look lost.”
“I’m fine.” My words lacked conviction.
Nick smiled, and I noticed his eyes crinkle in the corners. “I almost didn’t recognize you, you know?”
“Why’s that?”
He wiggled a finger up and down, drawing lines from my head to my toes. I looked down. I was wearing jeans and an oversize sweatshirt of Peter’s I’d grabbed from the hall closet, and I stood barefoot.
“Yes?” I arched my tone, daring him to comment.
The grin disappeared. “You look . . . different.” Nick paused and we stared at each other. His eyes softened, and I reinforced my glare until he shifted his gaze. He broke contact first as he turned to walk away. Four strides and he called over his shoulder, “Thanks for passing those along.”
I turned and stalked back into the house, now angry—not about what he’d said, but about how I’d treated him. Then my next thought stopped me dead in my tracks: Jane doesn’t know I’m still here. I pulled the apples from the bag, hoping they might ease the shock. I was also impressed at how quickly Nick must have frozen them last fall and how well he’d done the job. They still retained a firm skin and texture.
I set them to slow cook with salt, pepper, sugar, cinnamon, and a scant touch of nutmeg. Very traditional. Very English. I looked around the kitchen. The anticipation of confronting Jane, of nothing to do for a few days, of failure, made me jittery, and I tried to formulate a list. I came up with nothing, so I started straightening Jane’s house: the kids’ scattered clothing; Peter’s books; Jane’s keys, tissues, mugs, glasses . . .
It reminded me of our house growing up. Mom was cluttery as well—and I might be, too, but for Suzanne, my dear borderline OCD roommate. I’d migrated her direction to keep the peace in our tiny apartment over the past four years, and it had worked—a serene apartment and a more organized kitchen at work. Now, faced with clutter everywhere, including my eruption in the guest room, I laughed at how foreign but comforting it felt.
I paused in the living room. The sun’s rays shot over Lake Washington and ignited the room’s beige walls, warming them from ginger to gold. New York had been cloudy this spring, and I’d been cloudy with it, but in this moment all my cloudy spaces felt ablaze with light. Jane’s Red Sunshine comment bounced before me.
What will the blaze find in me? The thought came unbidden to my mind. In New York such thoughts didn’t break in over work, traffic, and chaos, but in Jane’s living room I had no list, no restaurant, no friends, and now no clutter. I sipped my coffee and snuggled into the couch as I watched the light bounce off flecks of dust in the air, making it look like fairy dust dancing around me.
I chuckled. This fairy dusting would upset Jane. She’d take it as a sign that her housekeeping, her work ethic, and her life weren’t up to snuff. Just like when she said she was letting her clients down and had to give up her business. Jane was a pro at self-flogging.
Another thought crept in. How different am I? I knew how to hurt Jane because I knew what would hurt me. For years I’d defined myself by my work, my skills, my résumé, and my restaurant. Without that, what was left?
I reached for my phone and texted Suzanne: JANE IS MESSY. YOU’D GO NUTS. I’VE PICKED UP EVERYTHING AND NOW I’M BORED. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
She replied: IT’S NOON. MARKET WELL UNDERWAY. SUPER BUSY. ENJOY YOUR BOREDOM. IT’S CALLED VACATION.
Clearly I couldn’t bug her. So I texted Tabitha: VACATION IS TOO QUIET. ALL GOOD THERE?
She replied immediately: I’M HEADING TO FEAST NOW—PREPARING MORE BROTH. KEEPING LOBSTER RISOTTO WITH SAFFRON ON MENU FOR COUPLE MORE DAYS. LOVE THAT DISH. OTHERWISE A TYPICAL DAY. GO HAVE FUN.
If I wanted out of exile, I needed to recapture my zing. So I quit pestering people and returned to the applesauce. It smelled delicious and comforting; the nutmeg played against the tart of the apple and the sweet of the brown sugar. Nick came to mind. Jane would appreciate the apples—his apples—as I had appreciated the flattering light dancing in his eyes and the tone of his voice . . . before I’d shot him down.
Chapter 11
DANNY CAME HOME FROM SCHOOL BOUNCING LIKE A jumping bean. Jane had been up and roamed and moaned for a couple hours and watched a movie, but now she was down for another nap, and I was bored silly.
“What’s up?” I pulled the last pan of chocolate chip cookies from the oven.
“Kai and Eric are going to the park. Can we go? Please.”
“Do you want to, Kate?” I suspected the park might be passé for a teenager. I looked over at her as Danny tried to squeeze a yes out of me under the guise of a hug.
“Sure, some friends will be there.” She shrugged.
“Okay then, grab a cookie and let’s go.” They each grabbed three cookies and headed back to the door.
We cut through a hedgerow down to the street below. It felt like we were tramping through someone’s yard.
“Are you sure we can do this?”
“Of course.” Kate smiled at me. “This used to be a street. Dad said in the thirties it washed out and the city didn’t rebuild it, so now the houses get to plant gardens and stuff on the land, but it’s public too.”
“Cool.” I eyed the houses on either side as we walked down the drive. “Hey, check out that kitchen. It’s gorgeous.”
“Aunt Elizabeth, you don’t look,” Kate chided. “You just walk.”
“Is that bad?”
“Dad said it’s rude.”
“He’s probably right.”
Danny looked back at me and smiled. “She tells me not to look too.”
“You never look, Danny. You do great,” Kate said, and Danny smiled bright.
I touched Kate’s shoulder. “You’re a good sister.”
We turned the corner onto Madison Street and headed toward the park. There were shops, small restaurants, a hardware store, and a few beauty salons.
“What was this?” I stopped in front of a small vacant storefront with a brigh
t orange awning.
“It was a sandwich shop. It closed a couple months ago.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Mom said it was overpriced and mediocre.” Danny mimicked his mother’s voice.
Typical Jane.
Then we turned into the park. Kate was right—her age group was here. Danny’s too. And younger. And older. The huge park was alive and packed with kids and adults. The younger ones swarmed the monkey bars, the swings, and the swirly things—tons of cool playground contraptions that sported bright colors. The older ones stood in groups chatting or impressing each other on the balance beams or climbing stone sculptures. There was even a fifty-foot zip line that I knew I’d have to try someday soon.
But not today. Danny’s comment about Jane reminded me of my own struggles with her. My mind still felt muddled with the fact that she had thrown up my home-run shepherd’s pie and had also assumed I wouldn’t stay, couldn’t stay—as evidenced by her surprise at finding me in her kitchen this morning. It was another rejection, and I couldn’t let it go.
I had been poking at the applesauce when she had walked in and jumped.
“You scared me. I thought you and Dad left.” She glanced around as if trying to find Dad.
“He did. I decided to stay and help you out.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t show you the sights, Elizabeth. I—”
“I’m here to help. Cook, I hope. I don’t need to be entertained.”
“I don’t understand.” Her look belied her statement. She understood; she didn’t believe.
“It’s true.” I paused and felt my heart flutter. “Let me help.”
She must have heard the plea in my voice because her eyes softened, flickering to question. And she was right to do so—I wasn’t sure myself why I had stayed. I shifted my eyes away and motioned to the stove.
“I made you a soft-boiled egg and a piece of twice-toasted bread. How does that sound?”
“Good.” She sounded surprised. “Thank you.”
“So we begin.” I laid down the spoon and set out her small breakfast.
Neither of us spoke while she ate, and after she finished she headed to the basement to fold laundry. We’d spent the rest of the day carefully avoiding each other.
I now sat on a bench and wondered if the next few days would feel so formal and awkward. I watched kids loop across the monkey bars and spin themselves dizzy on some twirling thing. I looked up to see sunshine shoot around puffy marshmallow clouds. And slowly, slowly, I started to relax.
“IT ISN’T RIGHT. IT’S NOT RIGHT,” I MUMBLED. “I’M close. Stop trying. Just feel it. Don’t think.”
“What are you doing?”
I spun around. Kate watched me from the doorway to the basement.
“Salvaging my career,” I whispered, then added, “Making soup. Come taste.”
She blew on the spoon to cool it before she took a bite.
“It’s good, Aunt Elizabeth.”
“You like it?”
“It’s okay.”
“Then it’s wrong.” I sighed and returned to my mutterings. “It’s close, so close. What’s needed? Something . . .”
Kate stared at me with puckered eyebrows. I nudged her.
“All true artists are mad, you know . . . Last night we all loved the shepherd’s pie, right?”
She nodded.
“But your mom didn’t. She didn’t even swallow one bite before she heaved it up.”
“It’s the medicine. She can’t keep anything down.”
“But what if she can? What if we can find something that sneaks past her nose and her mouth and actually gets to her stomach? See, that’s the thing about last night.” I warmed to my subject. “She didn’t throw up because the food couldn’t sit in her stomach—it never got there. She threw up because it triggered a reaction in her. So I think if we like it, if it tastes normal to us, then it will taste bad to her. It’s a leap, I know, but your dad said that her mouth can feel sore, sensitive, taste like metal—all sorts of stuff we don’t experience.” I put another spoon into the soup and stirred; the rhythmic motion helped me think.
“Your mom mentioned the metal taste again today, so I’m trying to find something that reacts differently—a spice, a flavor that plays against the metal and lessens it.”
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s okay, sweetheart. I’m barely hanging on myself.” But I needed this. It felt as if Feast’s future depended on this meal. Maybe it did.
“Are you going to make the soup taste like metal?”
I laughed. “No, I’ll make two dinners. If I’m right, hers will taste weird to us and ours not so good to her.”
“She needs to eat more.”
I looked down at Kate’s steady sad eyes and squeezed her shoulders. “I know, kiddo. That’s what I’m working on.”
There’s a scene in Emma when Emma sends arrowroot “of very superior quality” to Jane Fairfax—and Jane refuses it. Beautiful, self-satisfied Emma had probably never imagined such a thing—a rejection of her work as Lady Bountiful. And for Jane to tell her that she “was not at all in want of anything . . .” In other words, Back off, Emma. Who could fathom such a slight?
Did you? The question rose unbidden and unwelcome. I cringed at the link between Emma’s arrowroot and my shepherd’s pie. I took a deep breath to clear my mind and stirred the soup again.
After Kate returned to the basement, I separated the soup into two smaller pots. Time to experiment. I thought about Jane, and only Jane, and hoped that this offering might be welcomed.
The soup was a mixture of beans, root vegetables, and greens—a rich country stock. My frustration mounted as I couldn’t think what to add, how to change her soup, how to make it work. I shook my head. I was again making this soup’s success about me and not Jane—how naturally that occurred.
My sister walked into the kitchen just then and perched on the counter stool. “Hey, I just woke up. Did the kids do their homework?”
“We went to the park for a while, and they’re doing it now.” I turned to her. “What do you like to eat these days?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since the egg this morning.”
“And I won’t.”
I needed help—there was something out there, beyond reach, and for the first time in months I felt close to it. I needed the zing of getting it right and of food and meaning fusing.
“Forget trying to feed you. Tell me something you like right now. Anything.”
Jane narrowed her eyes. “My kids, always. Peter, most days.”
“Not good enough.”
“My family’s not good enough?”
“I didn’t mean that. Can you use more senses? What do you like to smell? What’s tasty on your good days? What makes you feel happy and secure? What do you like to touch?”
Jane chewed her lip. I turned back to the soup so I wouldn’t keep adding questions. I closed my eyes, listening and waiting.
Jane never thought like this—at least as far as I knew. That was one of the reasons we never understood each other. There was the age gap, of course, but we also viewed the world through different-colored lenses. To Jane it was an ordered space along a linear line. To me—a chaotic mixture of sights, sounds, smells, and experiences to be fused together to make something new and different. Coloring outside the lines always unnerved Jane.
She started slowly. “I love the way Danny smells. I love Kate’s hair, it’s so soft and thick.”
I glanced over. She raised her hand to her own. She didn’t run her fingers through it; she simply patted it as if anchoring it to her scalp.
“I love the smell of clean-sheet day. I love to touch wool. My fingertips feel foreign, like there’s a layer on them, and rubbing wool feels soft and comforting. It’s a little scratchy too. I love the damp green smell of a sunny day when it’s still wet but trying to dry, like the blueberries we bought the other day that weren’t too
strong in my mouth, not at all metallic and icky . . . I love reading Jane Austen and watching the movies and the smell of fires. All that makes me feel secure and believe everything is going to be fine, even though it may not.” She swiped a tear. “There’s a lot I love, Lizzy, and it all hurts. It’s painful to see what may not be there soon.”
I didn’t think. I just walked around the island and pulled her into a tight hug. “It’s all here and so are you. You’re strong, Jane. You always were.” I held her tight, and the years fell off me. She was that spectacular older sister who could do no wrong, and I was the kid who worshipped her.
She nodded into my shirt. I kissed the top of her head and stood back.
“Is that what you wanted to hear?” she whispered.
“It was perfect.”
She smiled through her tears and gave a little shrug. I quirked a small smile. Neither of us was comfortable with vulnerability and emotion. “I’m going to find the kids.”
She walked down to the basement and I knew. I knew exactly what to add to her soup.
I turned on the broiler to char some corn and added a touch of almond milk to her pot. I grabbed a handful of watercress and hovered over the pot. Maybe . . .
I looked toward the basement door, catching sounds of laughter. Jane. My sister. I scrunched my eyes shut. Jane. And I threw in the watercress and stirred. The corn had charred and an acrid smell assaulted me. I pulled it from the oven, cringed, and scraped it into her pot.
“Dinner, guys,” I called down the basement stairs.
Kate and Danny emerged laughing and pulling Jane behind them.
“I should harness these guys,” she teased and ruffled Danny’s hair and plopped a kiss on top of Kate’s. Both drew into their mother, and suddenly I saw my own within her.
“What?”
“You look . . . just like Mom.”
Her eyes glistened and she pulled her kids a touch tighter. “Thank you.” She then squeezed them with a tickle chaser and they bounced away. “See, guys, I’m the best, most gloriously wonderful mom in the whole wide world.”
The kids laughed and pulled out their chairs. The scritch scratch of wood on wood brought us back to the business of dinner. And after a quick grace, given by Kate and featuring “the best, most gloriously wonderful mom,” I watched Jane stir her soup. She took a whiff and looked up at me. A smile played on her lips.
A Katherine Reay Collection Page 32