Delicious! (37 page)

“Poor Joan-Mary; she’s worked so hard. She must be furious.”

“It comes with the territory. It’s a tough business. And it wasn’t all for nothing; he’ll recommend her to his rich friends.”

“I’m beginning to see why she considered Anzio and the oven a nuisance.”

“As far as I’m concerned …” He paused for a fraction of a second, and I could feel him weighing the wisdom of whatever he was about to say. He chanced it. “The way I see it, this was the universe’s way of throwing us together. If Pickwick Publications hadn’t put the house on the market, you and I would have spent the rest of our lives sniping at each other at Fontanari’s.”

I had to admire the way he went for it. “Yeah, I might never have known there was more to you than a great big complainer.”

“I think that’s my cue to hang up.”

Ruby was right behind him, calling to warn me that Young Arthur was on his way. “Mr. Pickwick says he’s going to restore the building to its former glory, whatever that means.” I could hear her settling into her chair, preparing for a good gossip. “You should have heard him; he sounded almost normal.”

“He’s turning the Timbers Mansion into a museum?”

“Not a chance. He’s turning it into corporate headquarters. Thinks
it will be classy. He keeps comparing it to Gracie Mansion. And listen to this: He’s renaming the place Pickwick House.”

“He can’t do that; it’s always been the Timbers Mansion.”

“According to him, the Pickwicks have been there longer than the Timbers family ever was and they should have renamed it a long time ago. Anyway, some historian just called—she sounded like an old lady—to say there are some kind of valuable letters hidden in the library. Sounds dicey to me, but she apparently knew one of the librarians in the deep dark past. Odd, isn’t it, that she called today of all days? She wants to catalog them, and the lawyers think there might be a tax advantage.”

Anne had lost no time; she was worried that they might throw the letters away before she could get to them.

“So,” Ruby continued, “be prepared. He’s meeting the historian there. And he’s got some other weirdos coming too. That decorator he’s so in love with, who thinks she’s God’s gift to the universe. His architect and an architectural historian, whatever that is.”

Ruby was still talking when the downstairs door opened. From the sound of the voices, there were three of them, but by the time they came up the stairs, reinforcements had arrived. As they came down the hall, I went to the door, trying to see who was there. Anne gave me a surreptitious wave behind Young Arthur’s back. Mitch did too. The man with the shock of pure white hair over a startlingly young face must be the architect. The aloof young black woman had to be the decorator, and the harried-looking girl at her side, scribbling furiously on a pad, her assistant.

Young Arthur spotted me in the doorway. He seemed as surprised to see me as he had on Saturday. He’d obviously forgotten that I worked there. “What about her?” he asked the black woman, jabbing a thumb in my direction.

“I can’t have anyone in the Timbers Mansion while I’m working.” Ruby was right; she did have a lordly manner. She turned to the assistant. “She’ll have to be moved. Call Ruby and have her arrange it with someone in HR.” As the entourage swept on to Jake’s office, Anne carefully
avoided eye contact, but Mitch wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh.

In the next room, Mitch and the architect conferred while Young Arthur told the decorator how he wanted his office to be furnished. As I listened to him going on about desks, sofas, and bookcases, it hit me that
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would disappear with the Timbers Mansion. Work uptown in the corporate offices? I’d been wondering how I would know when it was time to go. When Young Arthur and his entourage left the premises, I picked up the phone, called the main number at Pickwick Publications, and asked for Human Resources. I was done.

The woman I spoke with seemed flustered. “So you’re giving two weeks’ notice?”

“No. I’d like today to be my last.” Sal had always said he’d hire me full-time at Fontanari’s.

“You’re the only one in the building, as I understand it,” she said, and the hesitation in her voice made me realize that she didn’t know what to do. “I’m going to have to put you on hold.”

It was at least five minutes before she came back on the line. “We’re sending someone right down,” she told me. “He’ll do an exit interview and answer any questions you might have. He’ll be there within the hour.”

“You have created a dilemma,” said Sammy when I described the conversation. I could almost see him rubbing his hands with delight. “There are no instructions in the rule book to cover this particular situation. Naturally they want to ensure that you do not abscond with company property. Some flunky will take possession of your computer and formally escort you from the premises. You have precious little time. Do not waste another moment conversing with me.”

“What do I have to do?”

Sammy was unusually succinct. “Erase your electronic footprints. Delete your emails. And be certain to copy every telephone number and email address that may prove useful in the future.”

“Like what?”

“It would be wise to ascertain that we have a means of communicating with all our former colleagues. There are certainly some numbers you neglected to put into your cell.” A note of exasperation crept into his voice. “You have merely to peruse your Rolodex. The worthwhile numbers will immediately make themselves known. Cease this dawdling!”

Next I texted Dad and Aunt Melba.

“About time you left that miserable job!” Aunt Melba’s reply was almost instant.

Dad’s came right behind it. “Melba’s right. Come on home!”

“No,” I texted back. “I’m going to Akron. I have to find Lulu. At least, I have to try.”

“How exciting,” was Aunt Melba’s immediate response. “I have a feeling you’re going to find her. I’m so curious what she’ll be like.”

Dad’s response, typically, was more measured. “Do your best. But please don’t expect too much. A lot of years have passed, and you don’t have much to go on. If there’s anything I can do to help …”

Finally I called Mrs. Cloverly, to tell her I would no longer be fulfilling the
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Guarantee. Unfortunately, she was so intent on telling me about some vile English-muffin recipe the magazine had run back in the sixties that I wasn’t sure she’d understood.

“But why would you bother making homemade English muffins?” I asked, giving in.

“Isn’t that obvious, dear? They cost far less than store-bought. And since somebody was kind enough to give me English-muffin molds for my birthday, I could hardly let them go to waste.”

“People must consider you quite the cook.”

I smiled as I said it, but the joke flew right over her head. “People were always giving me cooking utensils.” She was in dead earnest. “Mostly I took them back—who needs all that nonsense?—and I built up quite a credit at the Cleveland Cookshop. Unfortunately, I still had it when they closed. Very annoying, I must say. But that’s neither here nor there. We were discussing muffins. I just wish you could taste them.”

“Well,” I said, thinking that this might be one way to make her understand that I was leaving
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, “that’s not impossible. Now that I don’t have a job, I’m planning a trip to Akron.”

“Cleveland is so close! You must come visit.” Was she willfully refusing to hear me? “In fact, you could stay with me. Why pay for a hotel?”

I hastily declined her invitation; I had always imagined her house as a double-wide in a trailer park, stuffed with a large collection of miniature ceramic birds. “At least come to tea,” she urged, giving me her address. “I promise not to make you eat these vile muffins.”

I promised. Then I hung up and began to empty my desk. By the time the man from HR showed up, I was deleting the last files on my computer.

“Got everything?” He was younger than I’d expected, tired-looking, in a badly fitting suit.

I pointed to the small cardboard box. “Not much to get. I haven’t exactly made this home.”

He pulled out a form and began to ask perfunctory questions about why I was leaving the job. When he was finished, he nervously jingled the change in his pocket. “I’m supposed to escort you out the door.”

“Do you mind waiting a minute? I’d like to take a last look.”

He gave his lips an anxious lick. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to let you.”

“Oh, come on. I’ll only be a couple minutes.”

He seemed troubled, but at last he nodded. “I’ll wait downstairs. Don’t take too long.”

I walked up the stairs, remembering that first morning when Jake and Sherman had stood waiting for me on the landing, mourning again the passing of that lovely dog. He’d been my first friend at
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In the old photo studio, I had a memory of Maggie sending me off on that wild-anchovy chase. Passing through the kitchen, I could almost hear Diana’s voice. “Gingerbread Girl … Maggie thinks you’re wasting our time. But what you’re really wasting is your talent.”

Her words stayed with me as I climbed the stairs again, and they were still with me as I walked through the empty art department.

Then I was at the library. The reassuring apple scent engulfed me, and I flashed on the first time Sammy and I had come through this door. We were unaware that the room was crowded with ghosts who were about to propel us into the present and force us to face the future.

I flicked the switch and watched the soft golden light spread across the shelves. Savoring the deep calm, I sat down on a soft suede armchair and picked up one of the books piled onto the long library tables. I got up and went to the card catalog, laid my cheek on the rough wooden surface, and pulled a drawer open just to hear its deep, almost human sigh. I gazed at the colors, grateful to the benign librarians who had nurtured my friendship with Sammy. I hoped Anne would be able to rescue them from whatever lonely fate the Pickwicks had planned.

I moved on to the zodiac desk, thinking of the day Richard had spread his photographs across its fantastic surface. Seeing his pictures for the first time, I’d been awed by his ability to find beauty buried in the grotesque. But, more than that, Richard had made me understand that sight is not a gift but an act of will.

I made a final pilgrimage to Anzio, turned on the lightbulb, and looked up at all those crumbling files. I remembered how safe I’d felt waking up here with Mitch, and then an avalanche of memories came tumbling down. Sammy telling me about his mother’s war. Richard’s fury about his nonna and how she’d lost her house. The Murrow broadcast, “Orchestrated Hell.” And the day I introduced Sammy to Genie … and began to let her go.

“Thanks, Lulu.” I said it out loud, feeling foolish. And then I said it again. “Thanks for everything.” I ducked out of Anzio, slid the bookcase back against the wall, and left the Timbers Mansion for the last time.

M
ITCH’S PLACE WASN’T FAR FROM MINE, BUT IT WAS IN AN ODDLY
hidden pocket of the city where the Lower East Side collided with Chinatown, and I’d never been there before.

“Take the F to East Broadway,” he’d texted. I emerged from the subway to find myself on a wide, heavily trafficked street dense with trucks careening off the Manhattan Bridge. On one side of the street, children played in the park; on the other side, pedestrians pushed past one another, hurrying home, trying to beat the dark. Grocery stores with crisp roast ducks hanging in the windows stood next to coffee boutiques and shops filled with pungent barrels of exotic pickles.

“Text me when you get to the paint store,” he’d said. “I’m next door. I’ll come down and let you in.”

I’d expected something old and gracious, but this building was shiny-new. Mitch was waiting near the lobby door. He hustled me inside, put his arms around me, nuzzled my neck. “I’m glad you’re here. I was afraid you’d change your mind, but you’re actually early.” Arms still around me, he led me into a tiny self-service elevator.

“I quit my job!”

“I thought you would,” he replied evenly. I glanced at him, disappointed; I’d expected more of a reaction.

He seemed to sense my mood. “You said you had to go find Lulu.” He rubbed his soft beard against my cheek. “How could you do that and keep the job? Push two.”

When the elevator door slid open, we were right inside his apartment,
which gave me an immediate impression of space and light. Then I saw that it was not an apartment but a long, spare, high-ceilinged loft with windows on both ends stretching from floor to ceiling. Cabinets made of a soft butterscotch-colored wood ran down one entire wall. The other wall was white, which made the red sofa against it very bright and the geometric coffee table very black. In the middle of the room, there was a table made of the same butterscotch wood, a rectangular white island with two sinks, and a large old-fashioned high-backed black-and-white enamel stove with two ovens, four burners, and a grill.

I walked to the windows on the east end and looked down at the park across the street. A man was pushing two children on the swings, sending them higher and higher. Mitch took my hand. “Come.” He led me to the other side of the loft. As we got closer, I could see that the floor ended in a spiral stairway. The window at this end stretched down another story, all the way to the ground. In the late-afternoon light, the space was spectacular, all air and sunlight, open to the garden just outside. I could make out grass and trees, and something in the middle. A bench, maybe?

“It’s not what I expected.”

“You thought I’d have an old house, right?” Mitch kicked off his shoes, and I saw that his socks were unmatched; one turquoise, the other purple. I smiled. “Well, I used to. I bought a run-down old Victorian in Brooklyn right out of college, when you could get them in Fort Greene for practically nothing. I worked on it for years. It was an Eastlake, actually.”

“Like the lock?” I was glad I’d remembered.

“Yes! The house was always nagging at me about some detail that needed fixing, and somehow I kept doing more and more. Then a client saw it and fell in love. Made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He wanted everything—not only the furniture but the art and the plates. Everything. I wasn’t looking to sell, but …” He ran his hand up my arm. “At first I was kind of depressed, but then I realized that he’d offered me a
kind of freedom. You have no idea what a relief it is to come home and do nothing. C’mon, I’ll take you downstairs.”