Spooning (11 page)

A week before the party, the members of the Cooking Club met to revisit our assignments and take a few recipes for a test drive. Wade immediately jumped into teacher mode.

“Now, we all recognize that none of us is ready to tackle a
meat dish, aka, the main course, yet, right?” We all nodded, noting the gravity of our faults.

“It is only October though,” Syd rationalized. “We've only had the Cooking Club since August.”

“Syd.” Wade had the patronizing tone down pat. “We are all on the same page here. We are Cooking Club virgins, and we shouldn't try to pretend we are experts at the various techniques—”

“Yeah, but speak for yourself!” Tara interjected. “I got pretty good at some other techniques when I was a virgin through practice, practice!”

“Cooking, Tara, we're talking about cooking,” Wade admonished. “So, I will buy some stuffed chicken breasts at Zabar's. It's too early to subject our guests to one of our main course attempts.” We all nodded again nonplussed.

“You know, chicken cutlets could make good fake boobs,” pondered Tara. “Right size and consistency, you could mold them right under—”

“Macie, you're in charge of Funeral Potatoes, right?” interrupted Wade. She was bent on her dinner party mission and not going to be derailed by Tara's sexually errant brainstorms.

“They are divine and appropriately named,” Macie replied. She was at the stove already, ready to whip up a sample of her dish. She had really risen to this challenge.

“Funeral?” Syd questioned.

“Think potatoes, dirt, corn flakes, grass … a sinful dish six- feet deep, or should I say under. At least six centimeters,” she concluded holding up a brand-new Pyrex dish. “All of you, grab a peeler, a knife, or any sharp object you can find.” We all hovered over the yellow Formica countertops wielding our instruments.

“A tad phallic,” Tara observed. Syd was digging into the potatoes with swinging scoops of the peeler, each thrust sending a sliver of potato skin just inches from her face.

“I've been working on the railroad!” she sang. “All the live long day!”

“Syd, you peel
away
from you,” I said giving her my best Jane Dough impression.

“These are tools of mass destruction you know,” Sage sniffed, looking intently at the peeler. Anything to do with food was considered a tactical threat to her waist line.

“Blood! There is blood!” screamed Syd.

“That's it kids—abort mission!” Wade commanded. “Abort mission, I said.”

“It's okay,” Macie agreed as we put down our peelers. “You can use frozen hash browns in this recipe.”

“Now you tell us!” Tara huffed, flexing her cramped fingers.

“Now for the rest of the dinner,” Wade continued as we sat back down at the kitchen table. “Sage's making fat-free sorbet to cleanse the palate, Tara's making broccoli with some sort of sauce—”

“Mystery sauce,” Tara winked, somehow making it sound sexy and mystifying.

“Syd—white bean salad.”

“It might be white and brown beans. I'm not sure yet,” corrected Syd.

“Okay, and I'm making the assortment of stuffed canapés … and Charlie?”

For the last week, I had been hiding out in the test kitchen at work hoping to perfect my ambitious contribution to our dinner party. After my very first day on the job, my mother had recommended that I find a cozy corner in the kitchen so that
the good cooking vibes could “rub off on me as much as possible.” I soon found that I was lured into the test kitchen not so much by the desire to hone my culinary skills but by the amazing smells that wafted through the sets. Who knew roasted cauliflower could smell so divine? The head chef was a great guy who let me drool (I mean observe) over his shoulder as much as possible. And he was my hero as he would often recommend shortcuts whenever he could. Case in point: my current task to perfect the Diva's famous toffee for our Halloween soirée.

“Charlie, you don't need a double boiler but if you use a regular pan, you have to watch the mixture every second and stir, stir, stir,” the chef instructed. I just nodded along scribbling his instructions furiously. I didn't know if I had a double boiler. Nor did I know what I should be stirring the mixture with, a wooden spoon, a metal whisk, a plastic scraper, a spatula? Since working at
S&S
, I could now recognize the variety of utensils that could aid one in the kitchen—but I wasn't up on their exact uses. So I'd decided that I'd just use all four. I was determined to master Jane's toffee recipe for Mr. J. P. Morgan, or put on five pounds trying.

Now surrounded by my five best friends, I couldn't wait to reveal my plan.

“I'm making toffee!” I exclaimed a little too eagerly. “Mr. J. P. Morgan loves my toffee. It's his favorite sweet.”

“You mean he loves Jane's toffee.”

“Semantics,” I conceded, handing out samples I'd snatched from work. Sage bowed out gracefully as always, but the rest were licking their fingers in delight.

“Way to step up, Charlie. You learned how to boil sugar?” Macie asked.

“Yep! Well, these are some of Jane's samples but I think I'm up to the task. Just, um, where do you get a candy thermometer?” All six of us dissolved into little girl giggles.

“
T
o be or not to be? Or rather
what
to be?” An hour later, we were lounging in the living room, watching Macie mix her Funeral Potatoes while Syd mulled over a teen magazine, looking for costume ideas. Ever the eternal teenager, Syd figured that any magazine boasting glitter would have ingenious ideas when it came to fashion. She had nabbed the October issue by about September 10 and had been obsessing ever since.

“I still think we should do a group thing,” suggested Tara, never one to shy away from group entertainment. “We could be a Brownie troop, Brownie troop 69.”

“Cute idea, but I look pathetic in brown,” negged Macie, sprinkling the corn flakes on her potatoes.

“I can't be a Brownie,” threw out Syd with no explanation. After moments of silence, I asked the logical, “Why?”

“I had a bad Brownie experience.”

“And?” all five of us asked.

“Well, I was working toward my Wilderness badge and, to make a long story short, my troop leader denied me the badge.” Syd never had a short story; rarely did she have a logical one.

“Spill it, Syd-O,” Macie said.

“Well, I like the outdoors. But nature and wilderness are not the same things,” Syd shook her head. “Wilderness has the word ‘wild’ in it. Did any of you ever realize this?” Amid our shrugs, she continued, “Well, my troop went camping for forty-eight hours so that we could earn our Wilderness badges. To begin with, we didn't know I had an allergy to oak trees
until I sneezed so hard and so loudly that the deer ran away before anyone got a picture for the troop scrapbook. Innocent mistake, right? Not my fault I have allergies,” she sniffed. “And I didn't know what poison ivy looked like until every girl in the troop was wearing the leaf wreaths I had made in their hair. Itchy shit. And I took too long of a shower and flooded a red ant hill and all the little, tiny red ants floated into our cabin.” I fought back a giggle.

“And since I wasn't a good swimmer, I had to wear my floaties on my arms in the canoe, which meant I really couldn't paddle, so Angelyn and I kept going in circles, so she threw up—which then made me jump up and we capsized. Angelyn swallowed too much lake water and threw up again, and became dehydrated so we had to go home after ten hours, not forty-eight. I didn't get the badge.” Syd took a few deep breaths and managed not to let the tears in her eyes spill over at such miserable memories. Tara's eyes squinted as she bit her tongue to keep from laughing.

“I did earn the cookie badge. Surprise, surprise,” she bemoaned patting her thighs. “I was my own best customer. It was the one measly badge I earned. And as if Brownie life wasn't trying enough, my mother just stapled my one badge to the sash. Everyone else's mothers sewed, but mine was stapled!” Macie tried in vain to cover up a snort.

“Stapled badges really don't stay on that well,” Syd philosophized. “So no Brownies. I just want to be an angel. Is that so unoriginal?” she concluded.

“The white factor is questionable,” muttered Tara, nibbling some of the corn flakes off of Macie's potatoes.

“But I could do the wings thing, and a halo, and lots of glitter,” she mused, then switched to scouring the new dELiA
^*
s catalogue for teenybopper ideas and trends.

“I was never allowed to buy a costume,” Macie reminded us. “We had to make ours each year. Why spend money on those crappy plastic gowns?” Throughout college, she had usually slaved away on her Halloween costumes for weeks. Jane Dough would have been proud.

“Yeah, you only spend millions on the materials to make your costume,” joked Tara.

“Well, you all will be amazed at my idea this year.” Macie stuck her potatoes in the oven, then ran to her room and came back trailing a garbage bag. A few white feathers floated through the air.

“What the …” began Tara. Macie whipped open the bag. Inside was a pile of white feathers—a mound actually.

“Guess!” she cried with glee. “Guess what I am going to be!”

“Good God, a pillow? That's fitting with your buxom bust!” Tara laughed herself off of the couch.

“Shut up, Tara. No, I'm a chicken! See,” she reached inside and pulled out a long strand of the feathers, “I saw this costume on a Web site for kids. You wrap the boas around your body, and this one is for the top of my head, and then I wear yellow tights and dish gloves on my feet. I even made a cardboard beak!”

“Where did you ever find yellow tights?” I asked.

“Aha!” she cried triumphantly. “I couldn't find them anywhere.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Sage chimed in.

“So I bought white ones and spray painted them yellow. Ta da!” Well that explained the mysterious yellow paint lines in the basement next to the washing machines. Sydney burst out in a fit of giggles. Macie's smile began to fall but then she thought better of it and began laughing too.

“Hmm, you'll be finger-lickin’ good, I guess!” quipped Tara.

Syd turned to her. “So give, Tara. Who or what are you going to be? Let me guess—something French and something dirty?” We all just smiled. Tara had been a French maid (ruffles and all) umpteen times before. There should be a law against used and abused costumes.

“I just want to be recognized and remembered,” Tara innocently claimed. Yeah, and if our party turned out as planned, there would be a list of men who would definitely remember her and not from her costume alone.

T
wo days before the big dinner, I decided to be Wonder Woman. I'd had a childhood love affair with Wonder Woman. I wore the Underoos with pride and I was forever sneaking out of the house in the starred panties and red and gold tank top. My mother had asked that, out of respect for the family, I wear either the tank top or the bottoms—the top with a pair of shorts or the bottoms with a T-shirt—but never sport both at the same time. Never one to listen to authority, I would cut out the cardboard crown, don the underwear (top and bottom), and sneak out through the garage. Who knew Wonder Woman lived on Mockingbird Lane? Needless to say, I had decided to revert to my childhood fantasy and don a cape. There were sure to be other superheroes out there tonight, but while Batman had his Batgirl, I would be secure with just my invisible jet.

My choice was also fueled by the fact that a few weeks earlier during our second rendezvous, Mr. J. P. Morgan had mentioned that he might be the Hulk.

“Hunk,” I'd corrected him in my mind. I figured a green beast would be easy to spot at our party though even now his
response annoyingly remained at “Maybe.” When I'd bumped into him at Top Shelf a few nights earlier and ended up back at his apartment, I'd kept up the pretense of the Evite making it sound like it was a big old bash that we were having. Little did I know how foretelling my lie would be.