“And she has special dietary needs as well?”
“She’s . . .” Kathryn paused, choosing her words carefully. “She’s very particular about what she eats.”
“A little picky?”
“No, not picky. Particular.”
“In what way?”
“Well, she’s vegan, but she also only eats food that’s . . . what is the word she’s always using . . . ? ‘Clean.’ You know—organic, seasonal, nothing processed, that kind of thing.”
“Oh, okay. That’s fine.”
“But you see what I’m saying—we all have slightly different needs. Would you be able to make a meal that suits all of us?”
“Sure. Like one night I could make a chicken dish for dinner for you and your husband and the side dishes could all be vegan so that your daughter could eat those, along with a legume-based dish for protein.”
“Good. Excellent. That will make her happy.” She ran her hand against the edge of the counter. “Zoe has . . . a lot of opinions about food. She runs some sort of food blog—I forget the name. Apparently it’s pretty popular. She takes meals and snacks very seriously. A little too seriously sometimes, if you ask me, but . . . well, there you have it.”
Lizzie already had an idea of what Zoe might be like, and she wasn’t sure they’d get along at all. For starters, on some level she blamed people like Zoe—young whippersnappers with an Internet connection, an expensive camera, and a moderate interest in food—for torpedoing her TV career. Lizzie knew that wasn’t entirely true or fair, but she couldn’t help but feel that the proliferation of beautiful and free content on the Web—content that rivaled her own in sensibility and style—helped tip the scales against her. Why should the Food Network pay her to tell twenty-year-olds how to eat healthily when someone who was actually twenty was happy to do so online for free?
Aside from a personal grudge, Lizzie was also wary of Zoe’s obsession with so-called clean eating. Lizzie liked to eat healthily, but the main reason she’d started Healthy U was because she saw an opportunity, not because she was a health food zealot. These days, people seemed to take themselves so seriously, as if eating an Oreo cookie were tantamount to shooting heroin. She worried what it would be like to subject herself to that mentality for an entire summer.
“Anyway!” Kathryn chimed, cutting through Lizzie’s thoughts. “What about your experience with large parties? Can you cater for large groups?”
“Definitely.” This wasn’t so much a lie as it was an aspirational truth. Technically, Lizzie had never cooked for a group larger than twenty, but she felt confident she could handle something bigger.
“Oh, good, good—we love throwing a good party! It’s sort of what we’re known for. Well, among other things.”
Lizzie wasn’t exactly sure what those other things were, other than making a lot of money, but before she could ask more about their celebrated fetes Katherine jumped in.
“There’s so much more to discuss, but first why don’t you start on the sample meal? We can talk about everything else while you’re cooking.”
Lizzie reached for her bags and hopped off the stool, feeling Kathryn’s eyes on her as she walked to the other side of the counter.
“I was so relieved when Linda passed along your name. Our chef quit unexpectedly, and by the time he did, all of the good people we knew were already booked for the summer.”
“I’m glad she was able to connect us.”
She looked Lizzie up and down as Lizzie pulled a filet of salmon and a bunch of leeks from her bag. “So how does a former Food Network star end up here? I mean, something must have gone wrong. This couldn’t have been part of the plan, right?”
It was the question Lizzie dreaded most, and the one for which she didn’t have a good answer, or at least an answer a potential employer might receive in a positive light.
I got old.
I wasn’t cool anymore.
People got bored.
But mostly . . . I screwed up.
None of those answers would do. So instead, she replied with her standard, vague response.
“It’s a changing industry,” she said.
“I read about that somewhere. In the Times? Or maybe it was InStyle. No, that doesn’t seem right. Vogue maybe? I can never remember where I’ve read things these days, especially if it was online. Someone sends me a link, and I click on it, but most of the time, I’m more interested in the article or pictures than what site I’m visiting. That isn’t always true, of course, but in this case I guess it is, although—” Kathryn cut herself off as she glanced at the leeks. “Oh! Leeks! I love leeks. Such a random vegetable to love, I know, but I’ve had a thing for zucchini leek soup ever since I tried it at Canyon Ranch a few years back. What are you planning to do with those?”
Lizzie felt her confidence return, relieved they’d moved on from a topic she didn’t want to discuss and moment in her life she didn’t want to relive. She couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t come up again. It almost always did. All she could do was hope that the next time Kathryn asked she’d already have the job and she could deflect her again or, at the very least, come up with an answer that wouldn’t get her fired.
CHAPTER 5
Linda,
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! Your boss may be a nut, but he is also a savior. Lizzie starts work next weekend (how is it Memorial Day already?!), and she’s thrilled. Or maybe that’s just me. She’s relieved, at any rate. Whether that’s because she won’t have to live at home with me all summer or because she’ll have a job working for a multimillionaire, I’m not sure. Probably a little of both. I’ve told her she has to snap as many photos as possible of that house (without being rude or seeming nosy, obviously, but I mean, come on—14,000 square feet??? I need to see this!).
Anyway, the talk Gary took me to was really interesting! I had no idea how much harm I’ve probably been doing to my own body. The shampoo I’ve been buying, foods I’ve been eating, the stuff I’ve been using to clean the house . . . It’s all so toxic and terrible! Gary said he’d come by this week and help me clean out my refrigerator and pantry (and my medicine cabinet too, but I’m thinking one step at a time—I’m not ready for him to see how many wrinkle creams I own . . . hahaha). He’s already recommended a few supplements I should start taking, so once we’ve cleared out all the bad stuff in my kitchen, we’ll probably take a trip to the grocery store and stock up on all the healthy things I *should* be eating. I know—a date at the grocery store? Is this dating in the 21st century? Or just dating at 61? (Can we pretend it’s the former?)
Oh, and as for the lunch offer—I’d love to, but I have my mammogram that day (bleh), so I can’t make it downtown. Maybe the following week? Let me know what works for you.
xxoo
S
CHAPTER 6
Lizzie arrived in Avalon the Friday before Memorial Day, at nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. A drive that was meant to take only two hours had taken five, and Lizzie was sure she’d left her sanity somewhere on the Garden State Parkway. She’d known the holiday traffic would be bad and that the bad traffic might sour her mood, but she hadn’t expected to be borderline psychotic by the end of the journey. Kathryn hadn’t specified an arrival time—technically, Lizzie didn’t begin working for them until tomorrow, and the Silvesters’ annual Memorial Day barbecue wasn’t until Sunday—but Lizzie had hoped to arrive by one, and so aside from having been trapped in a car for five hours, she now felt as if she were late. Late, stiff, and flustered: not how she’d hoped to start a new job.
She tried to bring her anxiety under control as she drove along Avalon Boulevard and turned onto Dune Drive, putting herself in the heart of Avalon’s business district. You’re here, she told herself. You’re here, and you have a job, and you will be able to pay your bills. That’s all that matters.
Was it really all that mattered? No, she supposed it wasn’t. But as Kathryn had outlined it, the job seemed manageable, ideal even—a position from Memorial Day un
til Labor Day, with one day off per week, that would mostly involve cooking for Kathryn and her friends. Her husband, Jim, would come Friday and stay for the weekend, but during the week he would be back in Philadelphia, and so most of the time Kathryn would have the run of the house. In mid-June Zoe would arrive, having just returned from Nice, but Lizzie wasn’t sure how long Zoe would be staying or how many meals she typically ate with her family. Given Kathryn’s interview questions, Lizzie assumed Zoe would partake in at least some of the meals, but Kathryn had been uncharacteristically light on those particular details once she offered the job. She’d been even lighter on details when it came to Nate, Jim’s son from his first marriage, who apparently planned to visit for a week in July.
Lizzie slowed the car as a family of four scurried across the street, chairs and umbrellas in tow as they made their way back from the beach. Lizzie had always loved the Jersey Shore’s relaxed vibe. She and her family had stayed in different towns over the years—Ocean City, Cape May, Sea Isle—all with different personalities but with the uniting characteristic that, at least during the daytime, there was no dress code or timetable or requirements of any kind. People rolled out of bed when they wanted, threw on a bathing suit, cover-up, and flip-flops, and made their way to the beach.
Lizzie stopped at the red light across from Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, a shore institution with outposts dotting the southern Jersey coast. When she was eight, her parents had rented a small house in Ocean City with her uncle, who happened to be named Bill, and his wife and three kids. The entire crew would pile into Uncle Bill’s at breakfast time and fill up on silver dollar pancakes and pork roll. Lizzie’s uncle would ask the kids how they liked “his restaurant” and to let him know if they had any complaints because he would get back in the kitchen and handle it.
But Lizzie never had any complaints because the pancakes were impossibly fluffy and tender and her parents let her cover them in more syrup than they ever did at home. One morning, she just kept pouring and pouring, her eyes trained on her mom and dad, who were staring in opposite directions and didn’t seem to notice. When Lizzie finally put the syrup down and goaded them into looking, her dad frowned and her mom sighed, but neither of them told her off in the way she’d expected.
“This vacation rules!” she’d said as she shoveled the sopping, sticky pancakes into her mouth. She didn’t realize her parents’ permissiveness stemmed from the dissolution of their marriage and a correlated willingness to do anything to keep Lizzie happy. When they sat Lizzie down once they returned home and told her they were getting divorced, a part of Lizzie wondered if only she hadn’t used so much syrup maybe they would have stayed together. She knew now, of course, that had nothing to do with it, but seeing the Uncle Bill’s logo brought back a torrent of memories she’d happily packed away.
The light turned green, and Lizzie carried on along Dune Drive, the cafés and sandwich shops giving way to one beautiful house after the next. Her recollection of Avalon was hazy—she’d gone once with her parents two years before their divorce and once with her mom and Aunt Linda a year after—but Lizzie somehow remembered the houses being more subdued. She’d heard that many of the quaint beach cottages had been replaced by large, expensive homes, but by the looks of it “many” meant “most.” As she drove along, she spotted the occasional one-story cottage, but those homes looked out of place and a little shabby compared to the sparkling three-story manses surrounding them. Given how few of the older, smaller homes remained, Lizzie knew it was only a matter of time before they’d all be sold off, torn down, and replaced with buildings three times their size.
She glanced up as she passed the water tower just before 39th Street: AVALON . . . COOLER BY A MILE. She rolled down the window and let the sea air fill the car. She wasn’t a beach person per se (she burned easily and didn’t really like swimming in the ocean), but she loved the smell of the shore. The air was thick and salty. It had texture. New York air had texture, too, but it was unpleasant and sticky and often smelled of sewage. Here she could stick out her tongue and almost taste the freshness of the ocean.
Within a few blocks, the side streets on Lizzie’s left gave way to a thicket of Japanese black pine, bayberry, and white cedar trees. Every few blocks, there would be a break in the dense vegetation, where a walking path would lead to the beach. But otherwise, this particular area along the coast was devoid of houses or shops and was instead overrun by nature.
Lizzie knew these must be the high dunes she’d read about when she Googled the Silvesters and their beachfront mansion. Avalon’s high dunes were a lush two-mile stretch of maritime forests and grasslands that soared thirty to fifty feet above sea level, providing a protective buffer between the town and the sea. A few years back, the Silvesters bought a parcel of land on this formerly undeveloped area and won approval to build a fourteen-thousand-square-foot home, which set off a firestorm among locals and longtime Avalon enthusiasts. They worried the Silvesters were ruining the character of the beach town they’d known and loved and were putting other residents at risk by compromising the dunes’ protective nature. But ultimately the detractors lost and the Silvesters won, and soon other McMansions followed on the last untouched stretch of Avalon’s coast.
“You will reach your destination in two hundred yards,” the GPS alerted her.
Lizzie narrowed her eyes as she tried to read the house numbers as she crossed 51st Street. All of the homes built on the high dunes were hidden away, ensconced by trees and shrubs, as if people were trying to keep a secret that they’d built where they shouldn’t. When the GPS announced that she’d reached her destination, Lizzie turned into a driveway lined with brick red pavers and stopped when she reached a closed wrought-iron gate.
She gasped. The house . . . it couldn’t even be called a house. It was a palace. A sand castle brought to life. The sprawling edifice was even the color of sand, a muted buttery yellow that was offset by rust-colored shutters and windows wreathed in bright white paint. She counted three porches visible from the front (and was that a fourth?), each covered by a roof held up by thick white columns. If someone had told her it was a hotel, she would have nodded and said, Sure, and assumed she wouldn’t be able to afford a room.
It was just so . . . big. Maybe a hair smaller than their Gladwyne home, but that was their primary residence. This was a second home—a third, actually, if she was counting the apartment in New York she’d read about. Did it really need to be so big? On the one hand, the Silvesters had the money and the necessary parties had approved the building plans, so why not? The Silvesters had the right to build whatever house they wanted to build. But knowing the particulars of their family arrangement—that Jim was only there on weekends, that they had only one daughter, that the only time they really used the house was for three months in the summer—Lizzie couldn’t quite understand why they needed so much space. Did the gardeners and other staff live there too? Or did the Silvesters dislike one another so much that they needed to put thousands of square feet between them? And if the latter was the case . . . what had Lizzie gotten herself into?
She pressed the buzzer on the call box, and a woman’s voice answered, similar in accent but different in tone to that of the housekeeper Lizzie had met in Gladwyne.
“Hi, it’s Lizzie Glass,” Lizzie announced into the receiver. “Sorry I’m late—traffic was terrible.”
“Not a problem,” the woman replied. “Park your car in the lot on the left, and I’ll come out to meet you.”
The lot? Lizzie shook her head in disbelief. She’d never seen a house with its own parking lot before. The gates opened, and Lizzie pulled the car up the broad, paved driveway. It was her mom’s car—a well-maintained Honda Accord that she’d been kind enough to lend—and although Lizzie was grateful, she was suddenly conscious of its mediocrity when compared to the Silvesters’ lavish estate. Ahead of her, she saw a small fountain surrounded by black-eyed Susans, hot-pink impatiens, and daylilies. To her left was a flat, r
ectangular area that looked as if it could accommodate a dozen or so cars. She parked in the far corner, next to a crepe myrtle.
She had popped the trunk and stepped out of the car when she saw a middle-aged woman with tan skin and cropped auburn hair walking toward her. She was dressed in white from head to toe: polo shirt, belt, pants, sneakers.
“Hi,” the woman said, smiling as she extended her hand toward Lizzie. “I’m Renata. Welcome.”
Lizzie shook her hand. “Thank you. Sorry again about the delay.”
“What delay? You are perfectly on time. Traffic is always terrible, especially Memorial Day weekend.” Her eyes landed on the contents of Lizzie’s trunk. “I’ll get someone to help with your things, yes?”
“Oh, that’s okay—it’s only a few bags.”
Renata clicked her tongue. “Please. It’s my job to make sure everything is taken care of. Come, I’ll show you inside and help you get settled.”
She grabbed one of Lizzie’s bags, and Lizzie took another and followed Renata toward the house.
“How long have you worked for the Silvesters?” Lizzie asked as they passed the water feature. It was even more beautiful up close, with sheets of water cascading down two circular stone discs.
“Ten years,” she said. “First in their old house, then in this one.”
“Old house?”
“The one they built before this one. It was smaller.”
I’m pretty sure Independence Hall is smaller, Lizzie thought.
Renata led Lizzie toward the front steps, a steep curved staircase made of stone that climbed so high Lizzie needed to tilt her head back to see the front door. Did the Silvesters really climb these steps every day? It seemed like a punishing journey to make even once, much less multiple times a day. Maybe that’s how they kept the riffraff out. If someone managed to break through the front gate with the intention of robbing the place, he’d take one look at those steps and say, Fuck it. I’d have an easier time climbing Everest.
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