One Foot in the Grove (3 page)

Black smoke billowed from the skillet on the range. I plugged my ears as the smoke alarm screeched overhead.

“What the hell!” muttered Chef Loretta.

Loretta was a large, oddly quiet woman with dark features, big hands, and no neck. Daphne had hired the native Rhode Islander a few months earlier after she'd shown up in response to an ad for a chef to cook for Knox Plantation guests. Despite her New England background, Daphne said Loretta had prepared the most delicious Southern-style meal she'd ever tasted. My sister hired Loretta on the spot and gave her a small basement apartment to live in, rent free.

Loretta shut off the blender and marched across the kitchen floor to the imported, fire-engine red, double-oven Lacanche range. Grabbing the skillet handle with a mitt before yanking it off the gas burner, she tossed the smoking pan and its charred contents into the farmhouse sink.

“Now you've messed up my timing,” Loretta shouted over the screaming smoke alarm. “I need those cracklin's for the biscuit batter!”

“I'm so sorry!” I dragged an oak chair across the
wide-pine floorboards before racing around the kitchen, looking for something to fan the smoke away from the overhead alarm.

Except for the huge red range and the Sub-Zero refrigerator, both of which Daphne surreptitiously yanked from her Atlanta home during her divorce, the spacious, smoke-filled kitchen was pretty much as it had been while I grew up, with red laminate countertops, white farmhouse sink, creamy painted cupboards with glass-fronted built-ins for china, and a round claw-foot oak table and six pressed-oak Larkin chairs.

“I told Daphne that I
can't cook
,” I shouted. “She said I was just helping serve the guests.”

Grabbing a thin wood-composite cutting board, I jumped up on the chair under the alarm and furiously started fanning the smoke near the screeching ceiling device. Loretta turned up the fan in the giant ventilation hood over the red range. As I continued flapping on the chair, Loretta marched around, muttering to herself, tending to her various in-progress dishes. Finally, the screeching stopped. I jumped from the chair and ran to open the back door, hoping the remaining smoke would drift outside.

At the range, Loretta stirred her crowder peas and butter beans, a classic Southern side dish flavored with savory ham hocks and spicy hot peppers, as they simmered on a back burner. Oil in a big cast-iron skillet heated on another burner while a second skillet was half filled with olive oil, ready for the fresh trout that Loretta would dredge in buttermilk, spiced panko, and pecans.

Big Loretta turned and stared at me, like a thug who wanted me gone. Her look gave me the creeps. She grabbed a third cast-iron skillet and thunked it on an open burner. Next, she marched across the floor, yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed a package of salt pork, and tossed it on the cutting board before unwrapping it and slicing off a hunk. With freakish speed and precision, she diced the salt pork and tossed it into the skillet.

“Start again. This time, don't stop stirring until the bits
are browned. Then, right after the cracklin's are done, you'll have to drain them on paper towels and make the biscuits right away,” she ordered. “Guests will be down to eat in another thirty minutes, and I've got okra and trout to fry.”

“But I can't cook!”

Loretta brushed a baking sheet with olive oil and placed it in the oven to warm.

“You don't have a choice,” the Rhode Islander said tersely. “I worked too hard to get here. I'm not letting the likes of you screw this up for me.” And she gave me that if-looks-could-kill stare again. It occurred to me that it was remarkably similar to the Southern-woman stare that I'd gotten from Tammy Fae earlier. I'd never noticed the look while I'd lived in New England. But then, there were lots of things that I hadn't noticed during my eighteen years in New England. Apparently, the stare was a universal expression. At least when it came to me.

So, for ten minutes I stood, as instructed, under the tutelage of dour Chef Loretta, stir-frying salt pork bits until they were suitably browned and brittle. At one point, I took the skillet off the heat, ready to dump the cracklin's on a paper towel to drain, but Loretta grabbed my arm and said, “More!” So, I returned the skillet to the burner and stirred the bits until they were extra crispy.

Meanwhile, Loretta hustled about stoically, working next to me as she used a slotted spoon to scoop up and drop sliced okra dredged in a panko and buttermilk mixture—this one with cornmeal, eggs, and hot sauce—in and out of the hot oil on the range top. Somehow, at the same time, dredged and fried the trout filets in pairs, bumping my leg for me to move aside when she needed to open the oven in front of my knees to keep the already fried filets warm while she worked on the next batch.

She thumped my arm, and I dumped my cracklin's on a paper towel and placed the hot pan in the sink to cool.

“Here,” ordered Loretta as she directed me to a large bowl filled with flour. The flour was arranged so that there
was a deep well in the center. Loretta poured cream into the well, stirring with a spatula until the flour was moistened. “Dump in the bits.”

I dumped the drained salt pork cracklin's into the flour mixture and stirred.

Loretta and I continued to work that way, side by side, with Loretta occasionally barking out instructions. I transferred my dough to a slab of lightly floured marble and carefully followed Loretta's commands, patting the dough down with my floured hands, folding and patting down the dough again. She handed me a drinking glass, and I pressed the rim into the dough to make each biscuit round, before placing each round onto an already-greased baking sheet. Loretta brushed on some whisked egg whites over the biscuit tops before grabbing the baking sheet and sliding it into the oven. Wisely, I noticed, she wasn't letting me near the ovens.

Although it was the kitchen where I'd grown up, prepping the meal with Chef Loretta seemed so different from the days I remembered as a child. After Mother left, Daphne, Pep, and I used to cook together—Pep and I had been so young, we stood on stools at the counter. We'd laugh and tease one another, almost always screwing up whatever it was we were preparing. Of course, we'd fooled around—spaghetti ended up on the walls, ketchup on the counters, and we ate more cookie dough than we actually baked. And fried food? Forget it. Daddy'd be cleaning up spattered grease from the walls, counters, and floors for hours after we'd gone to bed. Afterward, we'd all sat around together at the kitchen table for our family meals. I can't imagine what it must've taken to clean our clothes. Finally, after a year or so of blackened and raw dinners—it's a wonder someone didn't end up in the hospital from burns or food poisoning—Dad hired a woman from down the road, whom we affectionately called Auntie Ella, to come and cook dinners for us.

Behind me, I heard a light footstep in the kitchen.

“Gracious, me! All this smoke!” I turned to see my sister, Daphne, still in her head wrap and ugly linen tunic, fanning her face with one delicate, lily-white hand, her heavy gold charm bracelet jingling away. In her other hand, she held something poofy, made of black-and-white fabric. It looked like another one of Amy's froufrou Blooming Belles dresses.

“How are y'all gettin' along?” Without waiting for an answer, Daphne said lightheartedly, “Good! Now, the guests are already downstairs in the living room, and they'll be ready to eat any minute. Eva, I brought this down for y'all to wear.”

As she spoke, my sister fitted a short tulle petticoat around my waist and pressed it closed with Velcro. Like a tutu, it barely covered my shorts.

“What the . . .”

“I see you're wearin' a black tee shirt. That'll work just fine,” she fussed. Something dropped over my head, and Daphne's arms were around my waist again, pulling the sides of an apron to the back where she tied a big bow.

“Daphne, what is this?” I looked down to see I was wearing a full-waisted black apron with a white top skirt in the front. It was miniskirt length. Both the black sweetheart-shaped neckline and white top skirt were bordered in thick rickrack trim. The overall effect screamed French maid.

Daphne stepped back and took me in.

“Oh, that's just
dahhwr-ln'
on y'all!” She clucked her tongue. “I wish we had time to style your hair . . . Your little ponytail will have to do.”

The apron and tutu-like miniskirt circled all around me, completely covering my shorts.

“I'm not wearing this.”

“Of course you are,” cooed Daphne. “I need y'all to look like a legitimate server, and the twins took their uniforms home. Last time they did that, I heard they wore them to some sort of fraternity debauch at the college.” Daphne shuddered. “Besides,” she said, looking me up and down,
“if it's good enough for me, it's certainly good enough for y'all. I used to wear this little outfit all the time.”

“You used to wear this outfit? This?” I looked down at the French maid getup, with its ridiculous miniskirted crinoline. “Wait. No.
Oh no!
It's a French maid costume . . . for the bedroom! Isn't it?”

“Isn't it precious?”

I pictured Big Boomer ripping off the Velcro-wrapped crinoline from my sister's lithe frame before he pounced . . .

“
Eeeew
. No way. I'm sorry, sis, there is no way I'm wearing this ridiculous thing. Get it off me.”

I reached back to untie the bow at my waist. Daphne grabbed my hand, firmly leading me toward the dining room door.

“Boomer used to love me in this little number! He said I looked like every man's dream.” She sighed wistfully. “Now, y'all just go on out there and serve the guests. With the black tee underneath, it looks perfectly normal. Y'all look adorable.”

“Forget it! Daphne, what are you thinking? This is a guest inn, not a brothel.”

She gave me the look.

“Eva, this is an emergency! Y'all can't go out there looking like Daisy Duke.” She turned to Chef Loretta. “Doesn't she look like a classy French server, Chef Loretta?”

Loretta grunted.

“See? I told you. Now here, take these out to the guests.”

Daphne plopped a delicate china plate brimming with food in each of my hands before pushing open the swinging door and shoving me into the dining room. Before I could turn back, the door swung closed and the guests looked up expectantly from my granny's antique mahogany table.

Seated at the formally attired table, under the dimmed crystal chandelier, the two men from New York, Sal Malagutti and Guido Gambini, wore pastel-colored polyester golf shirts with wide collars that framed their thick necks and heavy gold chains. They looked like a pair of grumpy toads.
There were big gold rings on their stubby fingers. Sal, seated on the left, with a pristine white linen napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt, appeared to be a bigger, older toad than Guido, who was seated on the right.

Across from her husband, under an overprocessed beehive hairdo, Bambi Gambini wore ginormous false eyelashes that looked like black butterflies had landed on her blue eyelids. Glossy pink lipstick drew too much attention to her artificially puffed lips. She'd pulled the zipper on her bright pink velour jogging suit low enough to expose her balloonlike boobs bursting from a teeny white scoop-necked tee. Next to her, Judi Malagutti was slightly older looking than Bambi—maybe in her forties—but still young looking for her age. Big boned, she was olive skinned with near-black eyes and a very low forehead. A straight hairline defined the thick, somewhat unruly, long black hair. Judi also wore a velour running suit—hers was yellow. And she wore lots of gold jewelry. Although not beauty-pageant, plastic-pretty like Bambi, Judi was attractive in a smoldering, earthy sort of way. Judi barely looked up at me as she continued speaking to her husband.

“Why not, Sal?” she said. “Women have used olive oil in beauty routines forever, right, Bambi?”

“Um-hum,” said the blonde as she nodded. The expression on her face didn't change at all.

I set each china plate—filled with pan-fried Georgia trout drizzled with pecan brown butter, pork-seasoned simmered crowder peas and butter beans, buttermilk coleslaw, and pan-fried okra—in front of each woman. Then, I went to the kitchen door, where Loretta waited with two more plates of food.

“It's a cockamamy idea,” growled Sal. “You girls waste my time with harebrained crap.”

“I remember mother heating olive oil and putting it in my hair as a conditioner. And great-grandmother used to mix it in her night cream. Didn't you guys do the same, Bambi?”

“Uh-huh.” No change in her expression. Bambi placed a pressed linen napkin in her lap and studied the food on her plate.

I served a plate of food to each man.

“Sal, we could feature all sorts of skin care products,” continued Judi. “We could call the company ‘Olive Glow Bath and Body' or ‘Judi's Natural Beauty.' What's wrong with that?”