Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel (8 page)

Dividends? His trust fund is so large that he doesn’t even need to dip into it. He can live large off the mere dividends. I can barely process this information.

“Is that what you do?” he asks me.

I say yes just to end the conversation. Trey points out parts of Connecticut we can see from the boat and I start wondering exactly how long this day cruise is going to last. Maybe I should have pled seasickness to keep us docked in their slip? I hear footsteps coming from the starboard side of the boat.

“Excuse me, please,” one of the staff members says. She’s wearing the yacht’s uniform: khaki short shorts along with a polo monogrammed with
Zelda May
with her name embroidered under it: Inga. Her long blond hair is braided into two pigtails. “It’s time for lunch, if that’s okay with you.”

“Fine,” Trey says. “Grab me a Sam Adams Summer Ale and meet me at the table with it.”

“Of course, Mr. Pennington,” she says.

“Do you want anything?” he asks me.

“Oh, okay,” I say. “May I please have a glass of white wine?”

“Certainly.”

“I like a girl who drinks during the day,” Trey says, smiling as he helps me up from my chaise longue.

I think but don’t say,
I’ll need to drink if I’m going to get through the rest of this trip.
And then I do.

Twelve

Mornings in the Hamptons are different from mornings in New York City. In the city, it’s a hurried affair—a quick shower, throw on clothes that aren’t too wrinkled, grab a bite to eat as you run out the door.

But here, morning is a ritual. We wake, and slowly get out of bed. I wear actual pajamas that have coordinating robes, so I can be covered up for breakfast. I have slippers. I put them on and then pad into the bathroom. I freshen up, then put on my robe and make my way to the breakfast table.

Breakfast is always a buffet with two or three choices of hot meals (today: pancakes and scrambled eggs) and a few choices of cold (granola and blueberry muffins). My grandmother’s chef makes coffee to order, even though my grandmother and I drink the same thing every day (she, espresso; me, black coffee). We have three different newspapers to read (the
New York Times,
the
New York Post,
and the
Washington Post
).

The staff does not eat with us.

My grandmother has maintained a large staff for as long as I can remember. There’s Raoul, her driver, and his wife, Martine, who works as housekeeper. In the summers, they live on the top floor of the garage in a small two-bedroom apartment. In the winters, they live in their own house in Queens.

She had two chefs, both formally trained in the classic French technique, although they could both do any type of food you might like. Alec, the older of the two, had been working for my grandmother since she was married to the Italian race car driver. On their honeymoon, he told my grandmother that he really appreciated home-cooked meals, which my grandmother took to mean that she should hire a chef. Jean-Marie, the younger of the two chefs, came aboard when my grandmother married the Mattress King. He really loved French food—the Mattress King never met a heavy sauce he didn’t like—so Jean-Marie was hired to infuse healthy alternatives into his diet. Alec strenuously objected to a hollandaise with low-fat cream, so he gave my grandmother an ultimatum: it was either Jean-Marie or him. Alec had been with her for years, but my grandmother had fallen in love with Jean-Marie’s avocado salad, so Jean-Marie got to stay on, and Alec left. Also, my grandmother doesn’t take kindly to threats.

There is one person whose job it is to “run the house.” What that means exactly, I’m not quite sure, but I think Eleanor’s formal title is social secretary (think 1940s screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn). I think part of her job responsibilities include paying bills and maintaining certain accounts, like the phone and cable, but I could never be sure about that, since my grandmother doesn’t like to talk about money. She’s very good at acquiring it, but doesn’t think it’s seemly to talk about it.

Eleanor is in charge of the rest of the staff and she loves being in charge. I see her walk around the house, looking down her nose at everything, making sure that each task is done with an eye toward perfection. She often travels with my grandmother, since one of her main responsibilities is to maintain my grandmother’s social calendar.

There are also two other housekeepers who come in two days a week to keep things clean. My grandmother likes a clean house. When she was married to my grandfather she took her role of suburban housewife very seriously, and takes tremendous pride in her home (or homes, I should say). Even though she no longer does the cleaning herself, she sees no reason why her homes shouldn’t be immaculate.

Finally, there is a groundskeeper, who lives out at the estate year-round. During the colder months, when my grandmother isn’t here, it’s his job to maintain the grounds and the houses—to make sure that no pipes freeze, that no animals take up residence in any of the buildings, that the toilets get flushed once a week. For the months when my grandmother is out here full time, he concentrates on the landscaping and does small repairs on an as-needed basis.

Each staff member has been around for years, but I can’t say that I know any one of them all that well. They do a very good job at remaining invisible—doing large amounts of their work when my grandmother and I are out shopping or strolling on the beach, remaining mostly in the kitchen when we are around.

My grandmother has decided to cook tonight. Which means that we have the kitchen to ourselves today. In fact, we have the whole house to ourselves, because she’s given the staff the day off. Raoul and Martine are spending the morning relaxing in their apartment, but mostly everyone else has gone to the beach.

We don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen, my grandmother and I. Generally, breakfast is set out on the enormous butcher block that serves as the centerpiece to the kitchen, and my grandmother and I eat our breakfast in the adjoining sunroom. But today, after breakfast, we get ready quickly, and meet back at the butcher block to discuss our plan for dinner.

She’s making coq au vin. I’ve been informed that it takes the entire day to cook, so I’m prepared. We sit on stools at the butcher block, and make a list of the ingredients we will need. I check the pantry as my grandmother calls out various ingredients that we may already have in the house, as she compiles a list of the things we will need to pick up in town.

I see a newspaper clipping taped to the back of the pantry door. It’s old, the edges are so yellow that I’m almost afraid to touch it. The clipping reads:

“What is this?” I ask.

“Oh, that silly thing?” she says. “I’d almost forgotten all about it. My mother clipped it out of a newspaper when we first got to America.”

“But you saved it,” I say. “It must have been important.”

“It reminds me of my mother,” she says. “She wanted so badly to be American. For all of us to be American. So she would clip things like this out of the paper all the time.”

“You say it to me,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“You say, ‘That’s not the recipe for a happy life.’”

“My mother used to say that to me when I was a girl,” she says with a smile on her lips.

“Your mother said it to you and now you say it to me,” I say.

“I used to say it to your mother, too, you know,” she says.

“So, then, what
is
the recipe for a happy life?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe you and I will discover it this summer.”

*   *   *

It’s a beautiful day. I’m surprised she doesn’t want to spend it outdoors as she normally does, but I’m thrilled that she’s teaching me to cook. I really don’t know my way around a kitchen, but even though my grandmother seldom prepares her own meals anymore, she’s still an amazing chef. It’s one of the things my mother recalls most fondly from her childhood, and I do, too. In between all of the jet-setting, my grandmother and I had lots of days like this, when we would stay in and she would cook for me. She used to make a truly amazing cheese sauce that I loved when I was younger. She’d pour it over pasta, cauliflower, really anything she had in the house. A nice contrast to the room service meals I was accustomed to.

We get to the market and stroll the aisles. I’m glad that she insisted we dress to go to the market—it seems everyone here is dressed to impress. I know my grandmother would have been disappointed if I’d come in what I normally wear to the supermarket in the city, sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“Is this something your mother used to make for you?” I ask, excited about the thought of a shared history with my grandmother. Her mother made it for her, now she’s making it for me.

“No,” my grandmother says simply. “We were rich. My mother never would have made this. Coq au vin is something I made for my first husband, the one who looked like Rhett Butler, after we ran off and were living in Montmartre with no money.”

“Oh,” I say, and put my head down into the produce.

“Coq au vin and beef bourguignon were two staples back then,” my grandmother explains. “But they were considered peasant food, so my mother would never have made them. They’re only now coming into vogue. Back then, we ate it because it was cheap; you could use inexpensive cuts of meat since the braising made them soft.”

I want to ask her why, then, we are making it now, but I don’t. I assume she has her reasons. I wonder how closely linked they might be to looking at the old photographs of her first husband.

My grandmother picks up a few sprigs of thyme and smells them.

“Fresh,” she says, and holds them out for me to smell. I take a whiff, but I can’t tell whether they smell fresh or not, so I simply smile and nod my head.

In the car ride home, I learn that her secret ingredient, the thing that makes her coq au vin special, is using riesling in place of red wine.

Once we get back to the house and unload the groceries, we take a break for lunch. I never saw either of my grandmother’s chefs taking a break for lunch, but she assures me that the dish should be served hot, so we have a bit of time before we begin cooking.

We bring our chicken, pepper, and avocado wrap sandwiches (prepared by Jean-Marie before she left for the day) outside and eat by the pool. We don’t talk much, which is a big change from the usual. I try to just smile and eat my sandwich and pretend that everything is normal, but my grandmother is somewhere else today.

After lunch, we come back to the kitchen and begin our prep work. As I stand at the butcher block chopping carrots and cremini mushrooms, my grandmother prepares the chicken. I want to say something to her, but I get caught up in the chopping. As I chop, my mind wanders and I begin to feel calm. Calmer than I’ve felt in a while. Maybe this is why people love cooking. I’ve heard people say that cooking relaxes them, but I always found that it wasn’t worth the effort to cook for hours on end, only to eat the product of your hard work in under half an hour.

My grandmother, of course, doesn’t eat like that. She makes every meal last a long time. Savors every bite. She takes long sips of her wine and enjoys the meal. Before coming out here, I ate most of my meals standing up or on the go. My grandmother thinks that eating a meal without sitting down at a table is barbaric.

With all of our prep work done, it’s finally time to start cooking. My grandmother guides me through how to brown my pancetta perfectly, and I feel such a sense of accomplishment at doing a task well. That’s another thing I’m learning about cooking: I love completing tasks, checking things off a list. It makes me feel good to have browned my pancetta perfectly, that my grandmother now trusts me with browning an entire chicken.

Next, we add the carrots, onions, garlic, salt, and pepper to the pan and cook the mixture until the onions are lightly browned. We add the cognac and put the pancetta and chicken back into the pot. Then, my grandmother takes over for the next part, while I watch. She adds the wine, chicken stock, and fresh thyme, bringing the whole thing to a simmer, carefully adjusting the heat on the burner to get just the right amount of fire. Once she’s happy with the simmer, we cover the pot and put it into the oven. It needs about forty minutes in the oven, so my grandmother suggests a quick swim while we wait.

She takes her time in the pool to relax and stretch her legs out. I, on the other hand, am checking my watch like a maniac.

“What will happen if it overcooks?” I ask my grandmother. I’m trying for a leisurely tone, but it comes out anything but.

“It won’t overcook,” my grandmother says.

“But we’re in the pool,” I say, feeling my pulse racing. “How will we know?”

“If it overcooks, we can always make it again,” my grandmother says, waving her arms out in the water. She looks like a beautiful mermaid.

“But when you cooked it for Rhett, you couldn’t afford to buy the ingredients again,” I say. “What would you do if you overcooked it?”

“I didn’t have a pool to relax in while it cooked,” she says, smiling. “Back then I used to sit in the kitchen and wait.”

“So, should we be waiting?”

“No,” she says. “We should be relaxing. We worked hard to cook a beautiful meal, and in forty minutes, we’ll take it out of the oven and finish it off. There’s nothing to worry about. It will be delicious. Or it won’t be. But anyway, it’s just dinner. It’s not the end of the world.”

“What would you do with Rhett if you overcooked the dinner?”

“We would throw it away and spend the night making love.”

I look away and then float off to the edge of the pool. Suddenly, I am no longer interested in the time.