by JoeAnn Hart
Vita ground her molars. When had people become so afraid of food? The chances of getting salmonella or E. coli were exceedingly slim, and yet, by law, she had to put that paranoid statement at the bottom of her menu about undercooked food being a health hazard. How silly. She believed that animals should never be abused or overcooked. Grilled tuna had to be pink, lamb blue, beef bloody, otherwise what was the point? All pleasure involved some risk.
“I won’t,” she said. “First, you come in here and accuse my staff of stealing your tawdry silver, then you give me this.” She threw the catalog into the open trash can.
“Why did you tell me pieces were missing if you didn’t want me to find the culprit?”
“Open your eyes, Gerard. Have you taken a good look at Mr. Lambert lately? Or do you just have eyes for his daughter?”
Gerard stepped back as if slapped, but he could not keep himself from blushing. “Don’t be ridiculous. If I keep an eye on her at all it’s to make sure she doesn’t lead an attack on your meat-filled kitchen. And what about Mr. Lambert?”
“Luisa says that more than once she couldn’t find all the pieces at his table, or the tables around him.”
“She made that up to cover her own carelessness. Or theft.”
“Gerard, even from down here, I can tell members are giving him a wide berth. My bet is that he was even in on the goose hunt. I think Phoebe realized it only after she called the police, so she had to lie to protect him.”
“You were on the fairway, and yet you claim you didn’t see the goose hunt. What about that? What were you even doing out there so early? I’d understand if you were in the kitchen,” he said, waving his clipboard around the room, “because you chefs are crazy that way, but you were out on the course. Are you hiding something?”
Vita ripped her toque off her head and threw it on the counter. “What would I be hiding, Gerard? A life? Because I seem to be missing one around here!”
“Simmer down,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose to stop a searing pain in his head. “I’m just trying to get the overhead under control here. To get something, anything, under control. I’m already afraid to ask what you’re going to order for the Fothergill Cup banquet.”
“I’m going to be very thrifty, as a matter of fact,” said Vita, turning her back on him to hide her smile. She busied her hands arranging a plate of muffins. “We’ll talk about the menu later, when I have it laid out. Here, I made these for you.”
Chocolate-cherry, Gerard’s favorite. “Let’s not you and I start getting short with one another,” he said, accepting the plate. “There’s enough going on as it is.” He picked at a crumb and turned to leave, but as he did, something in the outside stairwell caught his attention. “What’s that?”
Vita held her breath. There, on the stone steps, stacked like a World War I entrenchment, sat ten twenty-five-pound bags of cornmeal. “Misdelivery,” she said in a pitched voice. “They’re coming back to pick it up tomorrow.”
Gerard bent down for a closer look. At Cornell he’d been taught all the many ways that employees could rob a restaurant. Over-ordering, then reselling the stock was common. But that was usually shrimp and steak, not cornmeal. Cornmeal was chicken feed. But what if it wasn’t cornmeal? Wasn’t she Colombian? Her family may have left cartel country before she was born, but it could still be in her blood. Could this have something to do with why she was out on the course before dawn? A drug pickup?
“Wait a minute.” Gerard stood up, startled, as a memory unfolded before him. “I know this logo. An empty bag was in the skiff with the dead goose.” He turned and looked at his chef, who held her forehead in her hand, mentally wringing the necks of the chickens that had come home to roost. “What’s going on, Vita?”
“I think you’re right. It’s time we had a talk about the Fothergill banquet,” she said, looking up and smiling. “Take a seat, Gerard. Let me pour you some coffee.”
“Don’t coffee me, Vita. Have you been feeding the geese? Have you lost your senses, like Barry, and let yourself become attached to those dirty creatures?”
“No,” she said gravely as she poured a cup. “I haven’t let myself become attached. Not too attached, anyway.” She looked up at him. “You shouldn’t get to know your food.”
Gerard reached out for support and felt the stainless-steel counter alive and shaking beneath his hand. Even the inanimate objects in the room seemed afraid of what was coming. “This is a joke, right?”
Vita placed the ERCC mug near him and shook her head sadly. The truth would either set her free or get her fired. “I’m raising geese out on the island to butcher for the banquet.”
The response was immediate and electric. “No! No, no, no,” he screamed, putting his hands on both sides of his head, fearful that his own pale neck was about to be put on the chopping block. So little oxygen reached his brain he nearly fainted, and he had to marvel at the elegant mechanism of the autonomic reflex system, which kept his heart and lungs operating even now.
“There’s no going back.” Vita calmly pointed to the bags of cornmeal on the steps. “I’ve invested so much, Gerard, not just feed, but time. I have to get my business done with the geese before they wander off for the day. That’s why I was on the course so early. I saw it all. The bird fell practically in my arms.” She held out her open arms to Gerard, as imploring as any medieval saint. “I wanted to try the recipe before the banquet. That’s why I hid the goose and lied about what I saw. Not for Bellows, but for you and me, for all of us here at the Club. We’re in this together.”
“N-no,” Gerard sputtered. “You’re in this alone and out on the street if you feed one more beak.”
“Other investments are at stake.” She attached her hand to one of his shoulders. “I asked Barry to use biological controls on the turf. He’s gone to seminars, bought supplies. The geese can’t eat grass full of herbicides, can they? Otherwise, that’s what we’d be serving to the members. Poisoned meat.”
Gerard pushed her away. “Impossible. Barry would never change turf protocol without consulting me. This is a golf course. The greens are our glory, and the only way to maintain that glory is through constant applications of chemicals.”
“Barry has seen the light,” she said, thinking how his love for Forbes had led the way to the green revolution on the Eden Rock links. “But if you’re going to force him back to his evil ways, wait. I only need two more weeks of grazing before the geese have to hang.”
“Hang?” said Gerard, his mind still tumbling around the words biological controls.
Vita did not, at that moment, care to explain what hanging entailed and so skipped to what she thought would be her closing argument. “The best part is, my plan will deplete the geese and feed the members. We’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
Her poorly chosen metaphor set Gerard on a run around the counter for the exit. But for a woman of voluptuous dimensions, Vita was not just fast, but agile. She leaped over the counter and beat him to the swinging door, latching it shut.
“The answer is no, Vita.” He ducked and swayed, trying to get around her. “Absolutely not. Start planning another menu.”
No, she was in too deep now. She had to preserve her culinary vision, her chance at excellence. It was no longer about doing it for the Club—she had to do it for herself. “Let’s make a deal, Gerard.” She straightened her chef’s double-breasted jacket, preparing for battle. “You let me do this, and I’ll make sure you come out alive from the Board meeting.”
“How?” he croaked, weak with frustration. Was there no way out? What Vita was doing was illegal—albeit, as she said, highly practical—and as he was ultimately responsible, he would be the one to hang for the crime. But if he did not give her permission, he might lose her or force her deeper underground with her birds, where he would not be able to monitor the situation. He was tired of surprises. He might as well hear her out. “You don’t have that kind of power.”
Vita picked up a chocol
ate-cherry muffin from the tray, took a bite, and sighed with contentment. “Oh, yes. I do.”
Chapter Eighteen
Fading the Ball
FRANK NICASTRO broke the polished surface of the pool as he wearily executed his strokes, shattering the golden glow of the water. So engrossed was he in getting from one end to the other, he didn’t see Madeline arrive. But she did not pass by unnoticed from above, in the lifeguard’s chair.
“Hey, Mrs. Lambert,” Scott called in his nasal, slow-motion speech.
Madeline shielded her eyes from the sun behind him. She felt the heat of it on her face and tried not to look directly at his legs, splayed at the hips and draped over the white armrests. His position made her curious about body jewelry. Where, exactly, on genitals did an earring hang?
“Hi, Scott.” She put her things on a teak table and shook out her towel with undue enthusiasm. “How are you?”
“Whipped. Spent the day with this bad boy in my mouth.” He fondled the silver whistle that hung around his neck, cradled in his hairless sternum. “There was some screaming and whining around here today, I’ll tell you. I’m blowed out.”
Madeline understood. Just picturing the pool at prime time made her anxious. Kids crying over nothing and everything until mothers or sitters pressed goodies on them, and so they learned to cry even more, until everyone was locked in a cycle of outbreak and appeasement. After a few seasons by the pool with Phoebe, a puppy started making a lot more sense than another baby.
She smiled at Scott in sympathy, then turned her attention to rubbing Clinique SPF 8 on her arms, watching the white lotion soak into her flesh, then disappear.
“Want me to get your back?” Scott asked, untangling his legs to climb down.
She shook her head with such force that wisps of streaked hair fell across her eyes. “That’s okay. My husband did it before I left.” Which he most certainly hadn’t, but she could not allow a lifeguard to do what Charles had long ago stopped doing, even if it meant burned skin. It would feel like cheating. Then she smiled at her own silliness. Perhaps Arietta was right, maybe she was a prude.
She settled herself on a chaise longue out of Scott’s conversational range, tugging at her bathing suit where it bunched and clung. Women’s voices rose from the tennis court. Her old partners. They’d told her they were disbanding their group since no one’s schedule seemed to mesh this summer. Apparently, only Madeline did not mesh. Anne Farnsworth, Beryl Hall, and Ariel Weber talked simultaneously, while Hilary Fisher, Madeline’s replacement, rhythmically nodded as they strolled single file along the ridge toward the club-house in silhouette, like a string of paper dolls. Madeline could tell by their overly determined postures that they were actively not looking at her, except for Hilary, who was not quite so talented as all that yet. She glanced in Madeline’s direction and her hand began to rise in a friendly reflex, but then she caught herself, rubbing her nose instead. She disappeared from sight over the hill, and they could both make believe she hadn’t seen Madeline after all.
Madeline told herself they were just being polite, not wanting to place social demands on her right now, what with her life so embarrassingly in disarray. Perhaps they had gotten tired of hearing her say Charles was fine, when he was so clearly not. They had eyes. She would have thought they’d be glad she’d taken the trouble to lie, but maybe even they had a limit to pretense. What safe subjects were there to talk about, after all, in Madeline’s world? How’s Charles? How are the goats? How are you?
Pain spread from her temples, forcing her eyes shut. It was not, as she first thought, a headache coming on, but the pressure of unshed tears. She could never bear to cry, and what good would that do anyway?
She put her sunglasses on and pulled Elle Interior out of her bag, through which she hoped to find a solution to her life, a very large distraction by way of a home renovation. Flower arranging was not going to be enough. Her compositions were positively rigid and gave her no pleasure. At last week’s class, she was given a Japanese ink print of flowers and told to “capture its essence.” Lucy, the overall-wearing instructor, said it was all about looking. Madeline copied hers perfectly, she thought, but when Lucy came around, she pointed out that in the print, a beetle clung to a partially devoured rose leaf, which spoke of beauty surpassing flaws and imperfection being part of life. She must train her eyes not to pass over these important details.
Madeline didn’t get it. Was she really supposed to include damaged material in her arrangements? Maybe what she needed instead was a new bedroom, like the one on the page in front of her, something romantic, with faded chintz at the windows, petit-point pillows on the settee, an antique frame next to the bed. The article said that one’s husband should be made to feel like a guest in the bedroom. Unfortunately, that’s just how Charles behaved, like a guest, slipping into bed after an evening spent clanging around in the garage, then sneaking out early to get to the rubbish bins before the bums sobered up. What she needed was a husband, not a guest.
Drops of water fell on the page. She touched her face. It wasn’t her; it was Frank dripping from his swim.
“Madeline, my pet,” he said, wiping his face with his towel. “Why so glum?”
She smiled, and it hurt. “Too much thinking, I guess.” She closed the magazine.
“Do your husband and child figure into all this thinking?” He cleaned out an ear with the corner of the towel.
She nodded, barely moving her head. There was not much left to hide.
“Excellent.” He bent in a crescent to shake his head clear. “Thinking about them will take your mind off of what other people think about them for a minute.”
She did not even attempt to disguise her irritation and loudly reopened her magazine.
Frank raised a hand above his head and dried his hairy underarm, giving it a sniff before spreading his towel on the lounge next to Madeline’s. His flesh, while still substantial, no longer quivered when he sat down. “Is that some shelter porn you have there?”
She looked at him without comprehension; then he leaned over with a grunt and lifted the magazine from her hands. As he paged through it, a withered fuchsia bloom being used to mark a page fell in his lap. He stuck it behind his ear. “I’ve been invited to many a home since I’ve joined the Club,” he said, examining a layout of a bathroom. “All beautiful, but as impersonal as a luxury hotel.”
Madeline thought living in a hotel wouldn’t be so bad. When she and Charles were first married, they lived in the Back Bay, renting a sweet apartment that looked out over the river. There was no outside maintenance to worry about because its public face was the superintendent’s problem, not hers. Things got a little crowded when Phoebe was born, but it didn’t matter. She could just pop her into the stroller and the whole city would be at their feet. Parks, playgrounds, outdoor cafés, children’s museums. They were never lonely or bored. That didn’t happen until they took Charles’s parents’ house over when his father died and his mother hightailed it south. In the suburbs, there was nothing to do and nowhere to go except for the Club, which became her lifeline.
Frank continued talking as he paged through the magazine. “The members seemed stiff too, but with a few drinks, most of them loosened up. Sometimes too much so. The first month I was here, people bought me drinks and confided the most intimate details of their lives. Maybe they thought in my line of work I couldn’t be shocked by anything. It’s unbelievable the pain some of these people live with. Families riddled with suicides, addictions, bankruptcies. Relatives with extended hospitalizations or jail terms. DUIs, restraining orders, involuntary manslaughter. Debilitating disease, rampant cancer. Public lewdness. My whole life, I’ve wanted to join a place like this, only to find it barely functions.” He closed the magazine with a slap of thick, glossy paper.
They went silent, as Madeline refused to encourage him to tell more. She knew too much as it was. A group of teenage girls entered the pool area, giggling and touching one another. Sarah Quilpe,
flat-chested and leggy, wiggled a few fingers at Scott. She should be more discreet, thought Madeline. There had been a golf pro at the Club in the eighties whose name appeared so often in the book that Arietta felt it necessary to arrange for his dismissal, and she’d hate to see that happen to Scott.
“But what’s to be done?” Frank yawned then let his chin sink into the cushion of his throat. “All we can do is let the sensual pleasures to be had here give us strength to face the ugly world out there.” He threw the magazine back on her lap. “So you’re looking for a change?”
Madeline’s mind was far away, and it took her a moment to realize that Frank was talking to her. “Charles has been after me for a while to renovate. The kitchen is basically the same as when we moved in.” She hadn’t intended for that to happen. In fact, she’d wanted to make the house hers right away with new everything. Before she’d dropped out of school to marry Charles, she’d been an art history major and had all sorts of ideas about design and architecture. She’d had opinions. Where did they go? She’d told herself that Charles was happier the way things were, but to be honest, she was the one who had stalled. She’d been afraid. The rooms, with their mellow carpets and invisible antiques, spoke of generations of stability, a look she dared not tamper with, for fear her home would start saying something about herself she hadn’t intended. “At the very least, I need some new appliances.”
Frank’s eyes were closed as he soaked up the day’s enduring heat. “Just make sure you get a stove you know how to turn on. The Viking is the sacred altar of my religion, but for most of these bozos, it’s just another surface for the delivery boy to lay down the ham and pineapple pizza.” He shook his head, deeply grieved.
“What’s your kitchen like, Frank?” she said, turning too quickly toward him. “Do you have a stove you know what to do with?”
Frank opened his black eyes in delight. “I know where all the buttons are, if that’s what you mean. But it’s lonely to turn it on by myself. It’s why I eat out. But if I were married, I’d never leave home.”