Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel (5 page)

We sit down on her bedroom floor, next to the trunk, thousands of pictures splayed at our feet.

It is like a map of my grandmother’s life. And my life, too. My grandmother is seated over by the black-and-white photos, but I’m surrounded by swaths of color. I see a few of her past husbands—the Mattress King with a glass of sangria in one hand and my grandmother in the other; the pop star, performing at the Carlyle in New York City; and even one of the Senator, when they were at an NRA fund-raiser in upstate New York. My grandmother stops and stares at one photo in particular, so I lean over and snatch it from her hands. It’s a picture of her with her first husband.

“Rhett Butler,” I say.

“Oh, him,” she says. “I was just looking at that photo to remind myself of how young I once was.” And then, before I can formulate my next thought: “Look at this photo.”

I scoot over.

“It’s all of you, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “That’s me, that’s your grandfather, and that’s your mother.”

“Wow,” I say. They all look so happy. I’m not accustomed to seeing my mother look happy.

“I think you look like your mother here,” my grandmother says.

“I think I look like you.”

She pulls me to her for a hug.

“If that’s what you think,” she whispers into my ear, “then you do.”

I do not look like my grandmother. I’m nowhere near as pretty. I look just like my mother. Unfortunately, she’s the one person in the world who I don’t want to look like. Don’t want to be like. Growing up, I used to wish that my grandmother was my real mother. I can’t say that much has changed. My grandmother wishes that I could be closer to my mom, not resent her quite as much as I do, but I know that she secretly cherishes our close relationship. I’m not sure we’d have that if my mother was fully in the picture.

It’s hard to look in the mirror and see my mother staring back at me. I see the parts of her I wish I hadn’t inherited—her inability to stay in one place for too long, her instinct to run at the first sign of a problem. She was always running. And sometimes I feel like I always want to run, too. After all, isn’t that how I got out here this summer? My life in the city got a bit too complicated, so I ran to the one safe place I could go, the one place I knew I would be secure.

I’d much rather resemble my grandmother. She never judges my life choices. She always lets me be. With my mother, it was always as if I couldn’t live up to some ideal that she had made up in her mind for me. Nothing was ever cool enough or hip enough for her. What I always longed for throughout my entire childhood was to be normal. To be like all the other kids who populated my school. But she lived outside of normal.

It was a cruel joke, really, to put me in an Upper East Side prep school and then expect me to stand out. To not follow the crowd. I ended up an outcast who was desperate to fit in, and I’m not sure I’ve ever entirely escaped that feeling.

My grandmother, on the other hand, saw the importance of living a “normal” life. She understood why a little girl needed the jeans everyone else was wearing, or why it was important to be invited to the sleepover party that everyone else was attending. She didn’t see living a normal life as a sin. She thought you could live a normal life and make it extraordinary for yourself. Which I suppose is what she does. She makes a casual lunch at home, just the two of us, into something exciting. Into an event. “Life gives you enough to cry about,” she always tells me, “so you have to celebrate the times when you can be happy.”

It’s what I would like to do for myself. But I don’t really know how.

Eight

I never knew my father. Never even met him.

As my mother explained to me—years before it was actually appropriate to have done so—my father was a man who didn’t want to be a father. He was a friend to my mother, and when she decided that she wanted to have a baby, he agreed to help her under the condition that he would not have a role in my life, that he wouldn’t have to actually
be
my father.

The best way to characterize their relationship would be to say they were work colleagues. He was a reporter for the
Washington Post,
and they often found themselves on assignment together. Through the years, I’d ask my mother to tell me the story of how they met. I was desperate to romanticize it, make it something more than it was, but my mother never let me. “He was a friend, nothing more,” she would say, even though she could tell how badly I wanted to turn it into a fairy tale, to make it something grand.

I’m not angry about it anymore. At least not like I used to be. As a child, I’d sneak off to the New York Public Library and comb through old issues of the
Washington Post
on microfiche, looking for my father’s bylines. I’d sit in the stacks and make up elaborate stories about how my father, when I was born, realized that he really did want to be a dad, and had only stayed away for so long because of his important work. I wouldn’t hold it against him when he finally came back for me, I vowed, I would just run to him and hug him and tell him that everything was okay, since we were a real family now.

These fantasies kept me going for much of my young life. They kept me warm at night, helped me fall asleep. I’d be on a school trip to the Bronx Zoo and I could practically see my father coming toward me from Tiger Mountain, ready to be my dad. Or I’d be with a friend at the Aquarium in Brooklyn, and I’d imagine my father surprising us and then taking us to the Coney Island boardwalk for a hot dog and a ride on the Cyclone.

I don’t have fantasies like that anymore. Now that I’m an adult, I understand that we all make decisions in life. Some are good, some are bad, but we make the decisions. And my father made his.

Still, I like to believe that my father feels that not knowing me was one of the bad ones.

Nine

Raoul is taking us wine tasting today, although my grandmother would probably disagree with that statement. It’s not so much that he’s taking us, which my grandmother would take to mean that he’s invited us, it’s that he’s driving so we can drink whatever we like. If you ask me, that’s even better.

“Notes of berry and wood,” my grandmother says, swishing a glass of pinot noir around her mouth.

My grandmother knows how to taste wine properly. You take a sip, swirl it around your mouth, then open your mouth slightly and breathe in some air, so that you can then taste the wine once it’s been aerated. Then, for your grand finale, you are to spit the contents of your mouth out into a bucket, aptly named the “spit bucket.” Since I have decided that getting drunk is the whole point of wine tasting, I refuse to spit. My grandmother, also, refuses to spit, but for altogether different reasons. She thinks it’s unladylike.

“Berry and wood,” the sommelier says. “That’s very good.”

The sommelier has taken a liking to my grandmother. When we first walked in, he said that he couldn’t place her trace accent. She explained that she was born in France, and he was immediately enchanted. Apparently, he studied wine in France for four years. Ever since he said that, my grandmother has been playing up her French accent. “Feminine wiles,” she will later tell me.

“This wine is very good,” my grandmother says. “Don’t you think, Hannah?”

“It’s very good,” I say. For a minute I consider whether I’m slurring my words, but then decide that I am not. I take another bite of aged brie on a hearty seven-grain cracker, just for good measure—and to make sure I don’t embarrass my family by falling over drunk at the Southampton Vineyard.

I do not taste berry and wood. I just taste wine.

“We’ll take a case of this, too, dear,” my grandmother says, and the sommelier smiles. There’s a sparkle in his eye and I’m not sure if it’s because my grandmother is flirting with him, or because he just sold another case of wine. We already have three cases in the car.

The sommelier uncorks another bottle.

“Dessert wine?” he asks, even though it’s not really a question. He’s just about done uncorking the wine, so even if we didn’t really want it, it seems that dessert wine is in our future.

“I love sweet wine,” my grandmother says. “I grew up on Rieslings from Alsace.”

“Ah”— the sommelier nods— “the Alsacian Riesling. Perfection.” And then to me: “Your grandmother has a very fine palate.”

“Yes,” I say, downing the rest of my pinot noir. “That’s one of my favorite things about her.”

The sommelier furrows his brow and my grandmother regards me skeptically. I wonder what she will be more annoyed about later: that I made one of my “clever quips,” or that I wasn’t flirting with the sommelier, whose age is somewhere between my grandmother’s and mine.

“Shall I pour?” the sommelier asks.

“Yes, please,” my grandmother says with a smile. She’s very good at brushing things off. I wish I could be like that. If something annoys me, I’m likely to sulk about it for days.

The sommelier motions to the back, and the chef brings out dates stuffed with goat cheese and almonds. I take one and let it melt in my mouth.

“Great pairing with this wine, isn’t it?” the sommelier asks.

“Great,” I say, even though I haven’t yet touched my glass.

We sip wine and eat our dates (my grandmother, one; me, four), and talk about how wonderful the pairing is. Once the dates are gone, I move back to the baked brie and seven-grain crackers. I keep my eyes down, lest anyone see me pairing a Muscat with the wrong cheese.

“That’s very good, Hannah,” the sommelier says. “I think brie is a wonderful complement to this wine.”

My grandmother beams.
See, I knew we could teach my classless granddaughter something if we stuffed her full of enough wine!

“Yes,” I say, and nod soberly. “Very good complement.”

“You know,” the sommelier says, “when I was in culinary school, I used to think my beverage classes were a real joke. I used to get drunk in wine class and not even pay attention!”

He looks at me. Clearly, that was the punch line.

“That’s so funny,” I say, without actually laughing. My grandmother smiles broadly. She will later remind me of the importance of laughing at a man’s jokes, even if they aren’t funny.

“But then I went to France to study pastry and I just fell in love with wine. I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but it changed my whole life’s course.”

“Hannah knows a little something about that,” my grandmother chimes in.

“Oh?” he asks. “Did something change your life’s course recently?”

“Hannah got arrested,” my grandmother says.

I feel my face getting very red. I’m not sure if it’s the wine or my grandmother’s declaration, but I take a sip of water, just to be safe.

The sommelier is riveted. He’s practically sitting at the edge of his chair. I would have thought that someone who works with fine wines, who has dedicated his life to the finer things in life, would find this story somewhat distasteful, but my grandmother has piqued his interest.

“She’s wanted by the State of New York for attempted murder,” my grandmother says.

“No, I’m not,” I say, but the sommelier still has his mouth on the ground. He’s practically panting. He’s like one of those dogs you see in a cartoon whose mouth drops to the ground and tongue unrolls while his eyes pop out of his head. “I was
questioned
by the New York City police. I was not arrested.”

“For attempted murder,” my grandmother says.

“For attempted murder?” the sommelier asks.

“For attempted murder,” I say.

“Who did you try to kill?” he asks.

“I didn’t try to
kill
anyone,” I explain. “It was an accident and his mother completely overreacted and tried to press charges.”

“Whose mother?” he asks.

“Her ex-boyfriend,” my grandmother says, in a hushed tone. “So, you’d better watch your step. Don’t get too close to this one.”

I’m about to explain that this all wasn’t really such a big deal—my ex is completely fine, and I only came out here to try to get a little rest and relaxation before rebooting my life in the city—but we’re interrupted by the winemaker who has a case of wine on each shoulder.

“I’ve got a case of the pinot noir, good choice,” he says. “And I also brought out the Muscat, just in case you wanted that, too.”

“Sure,” my grandmother says, “why not?”

The winemaker retreats to the car.

“We should be going,” my grandmother says. “It was so nice to meet you.”

“It was my pleasure,” the sommelier says, taking her hand and kissing it.

“Thank you for everything,” I say. I think about trying to explain, telling him that I’m not an attempted murderess, but then decide otherwise. After all, it’s not like I’m going to be seeing him again. I walk toward the door.

“I’d love to see you again,” the sommelier says, taking my hand.

“Oh, sure,” I say. “This was fun. Maybe we’ll come back again.”

“I mean just you and me,” he says. “May I have your telephone number?”

“Who me?” I say. “Don’t you mean my grandmother?”

“Why would I mean your grandmother?” he asks, laughing.

“Oh, right,” I say. We just stand there for a minute, staring at each other. I don’t particularly want to give him my number—the truth is that before my grandmother started in with all of the joking around about my legal situation, I was not having a good time with this man. I found him a bit pedantic. He does have nice hair, especially for his age, whatever that might be. It’s full and wavy with a sprinkling of gray. He’s got wrinkles next to his eyes, but for some reason, on men, that’s always so sexy. But when he told me that my beloved Santa Margherta pinot grigio was overproduced and awful, I wanted to punch him.

It’s as if we are both waiting for the other one to speak. Technically, since I was the one to speak last, the onus of conversation should be on him. But he stands there, just staring at me with a stupid grin, presumably waiting for me to hand over my phone number.

Since I don’t know what else to do, I give it to him.

Ten

My last relationship ended badly.