In the Bag (4 page)
“Sure.”
So I went back up to the room to get my drawings and briefcase. I had three more messages from Solange. Now the air-conditioning wasn’t working in the Palacio de Cristal.
“It was working y/day,” she wrote. “Today = nothing. People cannot sweat like pigs @ exhibit opening!”
I assured her everything would be in working order before the opening reception on Tuesday night. And then I felt immediately exhausted by the hours of work ahead of me.
I knew I didn’t have time for a real meal. I grabbed a Toblerone from the minibar and chewed it without pleasure.
Leaving the hotel, I stopped outside the business center. Webb was still sitting in front of a computer. He was eating potato chips from a plate and laughing at something on the screen. Some sort of computer game, no doubt, played with a new so-called friend in New Zealand or Hong Kong.
I paused to watch this boy I’d raised from birth. Here we were in a European capital, and he’d rather spend time in front of a computer screen. He’d rather play a damn game than walk through the streets of Madrid.
Like all parents, I attributed what I didn’t like about my son to nature while crediting my nurturing skills for the traits I did like.
Webb was a sweet boy. A good person. I had no doubt of that. And as if to reassure me of this fact, Webb chose that moment to turn and look at me through the glass doors of the business center. He flashed a smile my way before happily returning to the computer.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I
had to find Coco’s bag. Either that or put up with a pouty teenager for a week.
A quick Internet search yielded the following information: If an airline loses a bag, the passenger can claim up to twenty-eight hundred dollars. But approximately 98 percent of all bags reported lost or stolen are eventually found, so passengers rarely get more than the two- or three-hundred-dollar pittance the airline provides to compensate for the hassle of a late bag.
That wasn’t going to help. The camera alone was worth three hundred dollars. And I really didn’t feel like schlepping back to the airport again to fill out the necessary paperwork.
I knew if I told Coco the airline would give her five hundred dollars, she’d be happy. Yes, it would mean lying to my daughter. But it would be worth it to get on with this vacation and not have to put up with her sour attitude. Besides, it’d be fun to go shopping in Paris. I could buy Coco a few nice pieces that she could take with her to college in the fall.
I liked this approach, but I wanted to mull it over for a minute before I committed myself to a five-hundred-dollar fib.
By habit, I went to my e-mail account, where I deleted the junk without reading it. I then skimmed messages from friends and former colleagues. A waiter I’d known a few years earlier had sent me a link to a newspaper article.
Chicago Tribune, Sunday, April 17
What Does Daisy Sprinkle Want?
View full text of story
I couldn’t resist. I clicked on the link and read the story.
What Does Daisy Sprinkle Want?
Chicago’s Favorite Chef Quits—Again
Less than a month after winning the coveted James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef, Daisy Sprinkle has left Bon Soir, the trendy French restaurant that lured her away last year from Maison Blanche, which lured her away from . . . Well, who can remember anymore?
Sprinkle’s m.o. since arriving in Chicago almost two decades ago has been to flit from restaurant to restaurant, transforming each as if with fairy dust into the city’s “it” place to eat. But as soon as she’s succeeded—and sometimes within days of that success—Sprinkle moves on, usually without notice or, it seems, reason.
In an interview last year with Celebrate Chicago! magazine, Sprinkle compared her work in some of the city’s finest restaurants to parenting. “Both require hard work, long hours, good luck and endless loads of laundry,” quipped Sprinkle, a single mother who is known to demand in her contracts a “clean, quiet, private room in the restaurant” for her daughter to study while Sprinkle works her magic in the kitchen during the grueling 3-till-midnight dinner shift.
But the chef who has made an art of launching new restaurants has become increasingly talented at leaving them.
All of which begs the question: What does Daisy Sprinkle want? And what will it take for her to stay at one eatery long enough for us to dine there more than
I couldn’t read a word more. The banality of it made my teeth hurt.
Fairy dust?
Is that what they thought my secret was?
Flitting?
Magic?
God help me.
If anyone ever bothered to watch me in the kitchen, they’d know my secret: I worked like a dog, especially in a new kitchen where there was an enormous amount of work to be done to establish high standards and perfect protocol. Everyone had to know what was expected and what wouldn’t be tolerated.
I was best at beginnings, when I could teach my colleagues in the kitchen, as well as the waitstaff and even the owners—it was shocking how little people who owned restaurants knew about food—how it wasn’t magic that produced an exquisite meal. It wasn’t
fairy dust
. It was hard work. And when you did it right—that meant mastering the techniques, using the best and freshest ingredients, and having the right equipment—it was as gloriously predictable as, well, a perfect crème brûlée.
But a good meal should be surprising, too. In every dish, there should be something you can’t quite identify. Something that pulls you in for another taste. That’s what makes cooking an art.
And what I had said to that reporter from
Celebrate Chicago!
was that the long hours, hard work, good luck, and laundry were the
only
things cooking and parenting had in common. In all other respects cooking was the antithesis to parenting. You could do all the right things with a child, use all the best ingredients—private schools, expensive summer camps, cello lessons, chess club—and still turn out with something you wouldn’t want even your closest friends to see.
Food obeyed me. I understood it. Teenage girls were a different story. As if to remind myself of this fact, I glanced over at Coco. She was typing away furiously with a wild grin on her face.
One minute she was in tears, the next she was giddy with joy. She was the most unpredictable creature on earth. But one thing was constant: she was a perfectionist, like her mother, which meant she wasn’t happy when life didn’t go her way.
I logged off the computer, grabbed my purse, and walked over to Coco. “Are you ready to— ”
“Mo-om!” Coco shrieked.
“What?”
“You’re
reading
my e-mail!”
She said it with the sense of righteous indignation she’d perfected when she learned to drive and became an expert on that and everything else.
“I promise you, I am
not
reading your e-mail,” I said. I resisted the urge to tell her I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what petty drama was unfolding back home among her friends. (They are all very nice girls, I should note. But my God in heaven, the never-ending
drama
cultivated by these young women exhausted me on every level.)
I closed my eyes and recited the following information: “The airline will give you twenty-eight hundred dollars if they’ve really lost your bag. But it’s more likely that they’ve simply
misplaced
your bag. And for that, they’ll give you, uh, let’s see. Five hundred dollars.”
“Okay,” Coco said, turning her back to me. “Actually, I need five more minutes.”
“Actually, why?” I was trying to break her of this
actually
habit.
“
Moth-ur!
” she yelped. “I’m in the
middle
of something. Can’t you see that?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be outside.”
As I waited, I reminded myself what Nancy, my therapist, always said. How important it was at times like these to breathe. How deep breathing really did help to slow the heart rate and prevent anxiety attacks. How simply breathing could make you feel better.
Still, I had to wonder if I’d made a major blunder in bringing Coco with me on this trip. Was her constant emotional whiplash a result of hormones? Or was it becoming who she was?
Senior prom was Saturday night, and Coco hadn’t been asked. She purported not to care. “Nobody goes to those dances,” she’d informed me recently. “Dating is for
losers
.” But I knew many of her friends were going to the dance with dates—not in a group, as Coco had as a junior. I could only guess that this e-mail emergency concerned a friend who had recently been asked—or axed—by a boy.
Coco was a leader in her peer group. As frustrated as I was with her at the moment, I was glad she was the friend other girls could confide in. I resolved to try to be more patient with her in the name of the sisterhood.
Meanwhile, the newspaper headline waved in my brain like an enemy flag. “What Does Daisy Sprinkle Want?”
Should I make them a list? I could’ve rattled off a whole menu of things I wanted: Good health for my daughter and me. A fulfilling career. A comfortable home. Financial security.
Of course I wanted those things. Everybody did. The problem was, I had all of them. So what else did I want? What else were women like me supposed to want?
I looked in the window at Coco typing. Now she was laughing with her eyes closed and both hands cupped over her mouth. My daughter, the human teeter-totter.
Clearly she was in the middle of something. Is that what I wanted? To be in the middle of something complicated and dramatic? To be a cheerleader for someone else’s romance? Or to have a romance of my own?
No, thanks. I’d done that. I’d been doing that for years. The last time was a year and two restaurants ago. (Or was it two years and three restaurants ago? Time flies when you’re not having sex.) In any case, it was with the owner of a French restaurant in Oak Park who had convinced me to leave a bistro in the Loop. The guy, Chuck (“Why were you even
taking
calls from a man named Chuck?” my friend Solange later demanded), insisted he couldn’t live without me and my
poulet roti l’ami Louis,
otherwise known as roast chicken. For what it’s worth, any moron can make it. You just rub a chicken with poultry fat—goose fat is best, but chicken fat will do—before roasting.
I stupidly took a job at Chuck’s restaurant and more stupidly started dating Chuck—only to be told by a waiter six months later that I was just a side dish. The hostess (the hostess!) was his entrée. And, oh yes, I also learned that Chuck was married to a woman who lived in New York.
Solange put it best:
Chuck that.
So what
did
I want? Another ridiculous and humiliating relationship? No. Another seventy-hour-a-week job? No. Not yet, anyway.
I wanted to visit museums and lose myself in art for a glorious week. I wanted to eat fabulous food for seven whole days without worrying about price points or profit margins. I wanted to spend time with my daughter without the interruption of cell phones—hers or mine. Some new Chanel makeup would be nice. Shoes? Only if I found a pair I couldn’t live without. Clothes? I could always use another silk blouse or two and some lovely new underwear.
It was settled, then. During our week in Paris we’d shop, museum hop, and dine in the finest restaurants. And that, right there, was the answer to the question posed by the headline.
Never mind what Daisy Sprinkle wants
, I thought.
I know I need a small vacation.
Was that so much to ask?
I
was responding to her first message when I got her second:
Fr: CocoChi@com
To: Webbn@com
Subject: Re: Your bag
Hello again, Mr. Nelson.
My mom has done a little research and says the airline will reimburse $2,800 for a lost or stolen bag and $500 for a late bag—that is, one that’s delivered to a passenger days after he/she arrives.
Your thoughts(Still can’t find the question mark on this keyboard. I miss my iPhone. Sad. . . .)